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====== a morte como possibilidade máxima do Dasein (2013) ======

//Data: 2023-12-16 22:36//

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Heidegger determina o conceito existencial completo de morte da seguinte forma: "como o fim do Dasein, a morte é a possibilidade mais própria, não relacional, certa e, como tal, indefinida e insuperável do Dasein." (SZ: 259f/248) Esta concepção da morte ancora-se no cuidado [Sorge] como ser do Dasein, ou seja, na estrutura extática fundamental que determina o ser-aí extático do Dasein. A morte é o mais próprio do Dasein porque só eu posso morrer a minha morte. O ser do Dasein é aqui mais radicalmente individuado. Isso também significa que, ao correr em direção à morte, o Dasein pode aceitar plenamente sua culpa ontológica. Aceitar a morte é um ato não relacional, tal como ouvir a consciência e assumir a culpa ontológica. Ninguém pode fazer isso por mim. Não o posso fazer por mais ninguém. Assim, a resolutividade (o eu autêntico do Dasein) que é revelada aqui significa uma quebra de "todos os status e capacidades "mundanas" do Dasein" (SZ: 307/293). Da renúncia aos entes e ao estatuto mundano surge uma compreensão autêntica do ser. Esta renúncia equivale a correr em direção à morte como possibilidade máxima.

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Heidegger determines the full existential concept of death as follows: “as the end of Dasein, death is the ownmost, nonrelational, certain, and, as such, indefinite and insuperable possibility of Dasein.” (SZ: 259f/248) This conception of death anchors in care as Dasein’s being, i.e., in the fundamental ecstatic structure that determines Dasein’s ecstatic being-ahead-of-itself. Death is ownmost to Dasein because only I can die my death. Dasein’s being is here most radically individuated. This also means that by running forth towards death Dasein can fully accept its ontological guilt. Accepting death is a nonrelational act just like listening to one’s conscience and taking over one’s ontological guilt is. No one can do so for me. I cannot do so for anyone else. Thus, the resoluteness (Dasein’s authentic self) that is disclosed here means a breakdown of “all “worldly” status and abilities of Dasein” (SZ: 307/293). From renouncing beings and worldly status an authentic understanding of being arises. This renunciation is tantamount to running forth toward death as utmost possibility.

On the face of it, it is trivial to say that death is certain. We obviously all have to die. However, by the term certain 2 Heidegger means that only when Dasein self-investigates and self-founds its being-in-the-world and being-with-others, can Dasein reach proper certainty about itself. This certainty is precisely not purely self-referential because it arises from the care-structure. Thanks to this non-self-founded certainty Dasein becomes free for authentic factical possibilities of being. Factical possibilities are in fact to be actualised. Facticity3 is Heidegger’s term for Wirklichkeit in the existentiell sense. We do not set the conditions of facticity, but qua Dasein we are free to investigate those conditions. From the perspective of Dasein’s transcendental self-investigation this means that in the analysis of death Dasein has been thematically disclosed in terms of the necessary conditions of Dasein’s factical freedom. Thus Heidegger speaks of Dasein’s “passionate, anxious freedom toward death, which is free of the illusions of the they, factical, and certain to itself” (SZ: 267/255) This freedom arises from resolute running forth. In resolute running-forth Dasein comes “face to face with the possibility to be itself.” (ibid.) With the analysis of death, the text reaches into Dasein’s most fundamental structures and here Dasein is pure possibility. Through realising itself as pure possibility Dasein can assert itself as being fundamentally open for its authentic, factical possibilities of being. Once Dasein has disclosed for itself its potentiality-to-be in this way, Dasein cannot overturn or surpass this finding. [...]

Yet, there is an important twist. Even though Dasein is now fully disclosed in its being, Heidegger reminds us that “Dasein is equiprimordially in untruth.” (SZ: 308/295) That is to say, even though Dasein has found its authentic self, this does not eradicate inauthenticity. Dasein is still “open for its constant lostness … which is possible from the very ground of its own being.” (ibid.) On Müller-Lauter’s and my readings that ground is death. Thus, if death is that very ground and Dasein always remains open for lostness etc., then death here also shows itself to be utterly uncontrollable, inaccessible and unavailable. As such death can, however, fully disclose Dasein’s being and retain Dasein’s “untruth,” i.e., concealedness, of which inauthenticity and fallenness are possibilities. Untruth also points to the simultaneous concealment in every disclosure. For that self-concealment, which is conditional on death as “ur-possibility,” Dasein’s being is never static and objectively available but retains its performativity.

Yet, Müller-Lauter argues that death loses its character of “ur-possibility” (cf. Müller-Lauter 1960: 42f) when Heidegger states that death “is constantly certain and yet remains indefinite at every moment as to when possibility becomes impossibility.”(SZ: 308/295 me) The fact that death becomes impossibility, claims Müller-Lauter, refutes death’s original character of possibility, for it temporalizes death and because death is now apparently actualised as impossibility. True, Heidegger is quite unclear here and by saying “becoming” one could infer that Heidegger seems to suggest that death as possibility is actualised as impossibility. The question hence is whether there is a sudden reversal in the character of Dasein’s ur-possibility. If that were the case, then that would mean the breakdown of Dasein’s existential self-investigation because as an existential possibility is not a modal category applicable to beings present-at-hand. The ur-possibility must retain its non-actuality and possibility-character. Furthermore, note also that possibility as existential is not contingent as modal possibility is. Rather, possibility as an existential “is the most primordial and the ultimate positive ontological determination of Dasein” (SZ: 143f/139) This, in turn, means that Dasein is not free floating and perfectly at liberty to self-actualise as it wishes (libertas indifferentiae). Even though Dasein is pure possibility, Dasein does not choose itself absolutely freely in its actuality (factical existence) at any given moment. This was Sartre’s grand misunderstanding. Instead, “Dasein exists as thrown, brought into its there not of its own accord.” (SZ: 284/272) Hence, as a positive ontological determination of Dasein possibility is what posits Dasein. Death is that possibility that posits5 Dasein so that Dasein is always already determined by its “not.” However, this positing does not take place from out of a timeless sphere, as Müller-Lauter suggests (cf. Müller-Lauter 1960: 51) Qua limit, he maintains, death is outside Dasein, and hence outside time. I have argued the exact opposite. Death qua limit is integral to Dasein and as possibility death immanently posits Dasein. Death is only as long as Dasein is (this is a complete reversal of Epicurus). Thus, when Heidegger says that death becomes impossibility, this does not mean that death loses its character of existential ur-possibility. Instead, “becoming impossibility” now says that death qua possibility is of an abeyance continuously oscillating between possibility and impossibility. This movement thus rather enforces the character of death as ur-possibility, precisely because as such death gives Dasein nothing to actualise. What always and essentially oscillates between two poles cannot be grasped and cannot be reduced to either side. To say that death becomes impossibility, that death is “the possibility of the measureless impossibility of existence” (SZ: 262/251), emphasises that the being of Dasein is never something present-at-hand; that Dasein’s being is always purely an event . Precisely this becoming im-possibility thus guarantees Dasein’s withdrawal from reification. This, in turn, guarantees Dasein’s freedom. Death as existential possibility must, for the law of equiprimordiality and simultaneity, contain its opposite within itself. By becoming impossibility death shows itself as “ur-possibility” because the movement from possibility to impossibility and from impossibility to possibility is only possible insofar as the “ur-possibility” contains the impossible. Thus, I understand the notion that possibility becomes impossibility as saying that this fundamental possibility always already and at once self-differentiates (in the sense of auf- and aus-differenzieren) as possibility and impossibility.

Death as hovering possibility and impossibility conditions all of Dasein’s factical possibilities: “Even in average everydayness, Dasein is constantly concerned [es geht um] with its ownmost, non-relational, and insuperable potentiality-of-being, even if only in the mode of taking care of things in a mode of untroubled indifference … that opposes the most extreme possibility of its existence.” (SZ: 254f/244) Death structures Dasein’s average, everyday existence and thus permeates Dasein’s world. That is, death gives rise to world as the horizon against which beings appear as beings. Bearing in mind Müller’s claim that world is the rising of being, it is death as ur-possibility that brings most radically before being as the non-available presence in excess of itself thanks to which beings appear.

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//PS: NIEDERHAUSER, J. A. Heidegger on death: an answer to the Seinsfrage. Cham: Springer, 2021.
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