Krell (1994:361-363) – The “Factical Life” of Dasein

A “vida” não é uma estrutura existencial do Dasein. E, no entanto, o Dasein morre. De fato, até nasce para esse fim: o nascimento é um dos dois fins de uma existência final ou finita — Dasein natal, Dasein fatal. A este respeito, Heidegger acolhe o testemunho de um camponês medieval da Boêmia, que ficou recentemente viúvo e que tem uma queixa contra a Morte. No entanto, Heidegger segue o exemplo do seu antecessor medieval anónimo, permitindo que a Morte tenha a última palavra. Der Ackermann aus Bohmen começa: Malévolo subversor de todos os povos, completamente maligno para todo o mundo, devorador assassino de toda a humanidade, tu Morte, a minha maldição sobre ti!

[…] O nascimento e a morte do Dasein terão de ser interpretados de uma forma que não dependa das categorias não esclarecidas e não examinadas das ontologias tradicionais, especialmente a categoria do “vivo”. Quase sempre, “vida” aparecerá entre “aspas” em Ser e Tempo. Quase sempre, a “vida” terá de ser afastada, por exemplo, nos momentos seguintes da análise, que convém examinar com atenção.

[…] A vida cai no fosso que separa os entes que são da medida de Dasein e os entes que são completamente diferentes de Dasein. A vida não precede nem sucede à análise existencial, mas permanece fora dela, sendo simultaneamente necessária e inacessível para ela. Em suma, a vida suplementa o Dasein e, como todos os suplementos, é a morte do Dasein. A ontologia fundamental descobre uma espécie de ser-aí que nasce e que morre, uma existência que “fixa” terminologicamente como Dasein; o que não consegue determinar é se tal ente está alguma vez propriamente vivo, ou o que essa “vida” pode significar.

“Life” is not an existential structure of Dasein. And yet Dasein dies. Indeed, it is even born to that end: birth is one of the two ends of an endlike or finite existence-Dasein natal, Dasein fatal. In this regard Heidegger entertains the testimony of a medieval Bohemian peasant, one who has recently become a widower, and who has a complaint against Death. However, Heidegger follows the lead of his anonymous medieval predecessor by allowing Death to have the last word. Der Ackermann aus Bohmen begins:

<poesie>Grimmiger tilger aller leute, schedelicher echter aller werite, freissamer morder aller menschen, ir Tot, euch sei verfluchet!

Malevolent subverter of all the people, thoroughly malignant to all the world, murderous devourer of all mankind, thou Death, my curse upon you!

Death, offended by the farmer’s accusation, replies:

<poesie>Weistu des nicht, so wisse es nu: als balde ein mensche geboren wird, als balde hat es den leikauf getrunken, das es sterben sol. Anefanges geswisterde ist das ende. . . . [A]ls schiere ein mensche lebendig wird, als schiere ist es alt genug zu sterben.

If you knew it not before, know it now: as soon as a human being is born it has drunk from the proffered chalice, and so it is to die. The end is akin to the beginning. . . . The instant a human being comes to be alive it is old enough to die.

In an early lecture course at Freiburg, Heidegger cites Luther’s commentary on Genesis to similar effect: Statim enim ab utero matris mori incipimus. “For as soon as we abandon our mother’s womb we begin to die” (GA61 182).

We, who? How many of “us” are there? How many mother’s sons and mother’s daughters? How many peasant men and women? How many living creatures? If the classical and perdurant definition of human being is zoon logon echon, “the living being that is essentially determined by its capacity to speak,” Heidegger resists “life” as an earmark of Dasein. The birth and death of Dasein will have to be interpreted in a way that does not depend on the unclarified, unexamined categories of traditional ontologies, especially the category of the “living.” Almost always, “life” will appear in “scare-quotes” in Being and Time. Almost always, “life” will have to be shooed away, for example, in the following moments of the analysis, which one ought to examine quite closely.

1. [Section 10->ET10], where the fundamental ontology of Dasein is demarcated or delimited over against anthropology, psychology, and, a fortiori, biology;

2. [Section 12->ET12], where human being as embodied being is affirmed, albeit in a way that leaves the human body, the body of Dasein, largely undetermined;

3. [Sections 35-38->ET35], on the “falling” of Dasein, which is the very ani-matedness (Bewegtheit) of existence;

4. [Sections 40-42->ET40], where “anxiety” and manifold “care” define what it is to be human by spilling over into other receptacles of life; and in [subsections 43b-c->ET43], where the principal ontological problem of “reality” is the being of nature and of the sort of thing we call life;

5. [Sections 47-49->ET47], where the death of Dasein is set in relief against the perishing of animals and the mere demise of a forlorn, inappropriate Dasein;

6. [Subsection 68b->ET68], where the ecstatic temporalizing of having-been, mood, and anxiety is made to bedazzle an already bedazzled and benumbed life;

7. [Sections 78-81->ET78], in which the path of the live-giving sun rises once again (as it did in [section 22->ET22]) in order to pose the timely question of the life of Dasein, a question eventually posed to beings as a whole;

8. [Sections 72-74->ET72], where Dasein finally turns to the “end” of its birth, destiny, heritage, and history in the world-historical fate of a “generation” and a “nation.”

In each of these locations in Heidegger’s Being and Time, locations we will not be able to visit in this brief space, “life” proves to be both essential to existential analysis and utterly elusive for it, quite beyond its grasp. Life falls into the gap that yawns between beings that are of the measure of Dasein and beings that are altogether unlike Dasein. Life neither precedes nor succeeds existential analysis but remains outside it, being both necessary to it and inaccessible for it. In short, life supplements Dasein, and like all supplements it is the death of Dasein. Fundamental ontology discovers a kind of being-there that is born and that dies, an existence it “fixes” terminologically as Dasein; what it is unable to determine is whether such a being is ever properly alive, or what such “life” might mean.