(…) três proposições sobre a vida: (1) a vida é uma “unidade sequencial e um processo de maturação” (Einheit der Folge und Zeitigung), a temporalização de um período de tempo delimitado, um processo-múltiplo (Zeitigung, Erstreckung, Vollzugsmannigfaltigkeit) que se coaduna e “se mantém unido” — mesmo que a coesão ocorra através de um distanciamento original que se pode tornar “uma aversão original” (Ursprungsabstdndlichkeit) e até “hostilidade direta”, 6 (2) a extensão temporal da vida traz consigo uma sequência de possibilidades, que devem ser tomadas num sentido estritamente fenomenológico, não como possibilidades lógicas ou como possibilidade transcendental a priori; (3) a vida combina os sentidos de (1) e (2) ao ser o colapso — ou, talvez, a imposição — de possibilidades (möglichkeitsverfallen), o selar da vida com e por possibilidades (möglichkeitsgeladen und sich selbst ladend), ou a própria formação e cultivo de possibilidades (Möglichkeiten bildend; cf. weltbildend nas conferências de biologia de 1929-1930). O todo (das Ganze) da vida, enquanto processo temporal de uma extensão limitada de possibilidades que nós moldamos e que nos moldam e nos sucedem, chama-se atualidade, Wirklichkeit, “de fato, a realidade na sua imprevisibilidade específica como poder, destino (Schicksal)”. Se tentarmos reduzir esta complexa descrição tripartida da vida a uma única afirmação, podemos dizer que a vida se processa como uma extensão limitada de possibilidades, algumas que escolhemos e cultivamos, outras com as quais estamos sobrecarregados, todas essas possibilidades — mas especialmente aquelas sobre as quais não exercemos qualquer controlo — constituindo o caráter destinado ou fatídico da vida.
Heidegger begins with three propositions concerning life: (1) life is a “sequential unity and process of maturation” (Einheit der Folge und Zeitigung), the temporalizing of a bounded stretch of time, a process-manifold (Zeitigung, Erstreckung, Vollzugsmannigfaltigkeit) that coheres and “hangs together”—even if cohesion occurs by way of an original distancing that can become “an original aversion” (Ursprungsabstdndlichkeit) and even “direct hostility”,6 (2) the temporal stretch of life brings with it a sequence of possibilities, which are to be taken in a strictly phenomenological sense, not as logical possibilities or as transcendental a priori possibility; (3) life combines the senses of (1) and (2) by being the collapse—or, perhaps, the imposition—of possibilities (möglichkeitsverfallen), the saddling of life with and by possibilities (möglichkeitsgeladen und sich selbst ladend), or the very shaping and cultivating of possibilities (Möglichkeiten bildend; cf. weltbildend in the 1929-1930 biology lectures). The whole (das Ganze) of life, as the temporal process of a bounded stretch of possibilities that we shape and that shape and befall us, is called actuality, Wirklichkeit, “indeed, reality in its specific imprevisibility as power, destiny (Schicksal).” If we try to reduce this complex tripartite description of life into a single assertion, we may say that life proceeds as a bounded stretch of possibilities, some which we choose and cultivate, some with which we are saddled, all such possibilities—but especially those over which we exercise no control—constituting the destined or fateful character of life.
One is struck by the dour and even dire mood of the fundamental categories of life. Life is a bounded stretch, a finite process. It involves an original distantiation that can readily become aversion and hostility. Itself a sequence of possibilities, life succumbs to possibilities: verfallen is the very first word attached to Möglichkeit. If life lives out its days caught on the horns of the modalities of necessity and possibility, its reality will always be a bleak one: reality will of necessity hinge upon possibilities that are essentially susceptible to degeneration. Life is loaded (geladen) and is self-burdening. Such is its reality. Such is the power of its impenetrable destiny. Such are life, existence, and even “being” itself: “Life = Dasein: in and through life ‘being’” (85).
Heidegger does not speculate on the origins of the apparently irremediable degeneration of life. Yet the very parataxis of his analysis says something (369) about the source of declivity and decline. That in which, on the basis of which, for, with, and toward which life lives; that from which life lives, on the horizon of which it lives, Heidegger calls world. “Life in itself is related to the world (weltbezogen)” (86). It is the world-relation of life that will continue to haunt Heidegger, not only in the first division of Being and Time, where a modally neutral description of the everyday life of Dasein continually breaks down and becomes a pejoration of the everyday as somehow “improper,” uneigentlich, and not only in the 1929-1930 biology lectures, where the “world-relation” is that which invariably binds the life of Dasein to the squalid life of animals, but also throughout Heidegger’s later career of thought. Here, of course, we are near the outset of that career. Here the process-meaning of life is its being drawn to the world, as our everyday speech shows when it identifies life and world. To stand in the midst of life is to confront the world; to live in a world of one’s own is to lead one’s own special life. Life inevitably interprets itself in the refracted light of the world. Life, in a word, is relucent, reluzent (117ff.; cf. SZ 16, 21). If much later, in the Nietzsche lectures, Heidegger is suspicious of the ambiguous identity of life, world, and (human) existence, he early on accepts the concatenation of Welt, Leben, Dasein, and Sein as evidence of the meaning-content of life-in-process. Phenomenological research dare not try to forge or force such concatenations. Nor forget them. It can only respond to the compelling character of factical life, even if the world-relation of life seems to contaminate all of life, existence, and being. In the fundamental categories of life, says Heidegger, suddenly ventriloquizing the spirit of Hegel, “life comes to itself’ (88). Yet life tends to misunderstand itself, fall away from itself, precisely into the relucence of the world. Life is full of detours (umwegig) and is, as we have already noted, “hazy” (diesig). In a word, relucent life is ruinous. Worse, the very animatedness of life, what Aristotle called κίνησις and μεταβολή, is ruinance. From here it is all downhill, and we are always already there.