Abriegelung, “trancar-se” ou “fechar-se”, sequestrar-se e produzir assim uma situação de isolamento forçado. Heidegger garante-nos que esta terceira característica do cuidado e da preocupação é ainda menos perspicaz do que as duas primeiras, e nós acreditamos nele. A sintaxe é estranha, tal como o pensamento: Mit der Neigung in ihrer abstandsverkümmernden Zerstreuung gerät und ist weiter in Verlust was? “Com a inclinação, na sua dispersão, uma dispersão que deteriora a distância, algo mais se perde e permanece perdido – o que é?” (105). O que se perde é aquilo que está “antes” de mim, não num sentido espacial, nem sequer num sentido temporal. Quando vivo com base em algo (ich lebe ausdrücklich von etwas), o meu eu factual ou mundo do eu é co-experienciado, se não for intelectualmente apercebido. No entanto, este “antes” nunca é totalmente apropriado (106: unterbleibt die Aneignung des “vor”), e a sua relação com as coisas afrouxa. O que é que se perde? “Nesta qualidade velada, a ‘vida’ fala.” A vida fala por detrás da máscara das suas variadas significações. A vida é larval.
Abriegelung, “bolting” or “locking oneself away,” sequestering oneself and thus producing a situation of enforced isolation. Heidegger assures us that this third characteristic of care and concern is even less perspicuous than the first two, and we believe him. The syntax is odd, as is the thought: Mit der Neigung in ihrer abstandsverkümmernden Zerstreuung gerät und ist weiter in Verlust was? “With inclination, in its dispersion, a dispersion that deteriorates distance, something else gets lost and remains lost—what is it?” (105). What gets lost is that which is “before” me, not in a spatial sense, nor even in a temporal sense. When I live on the basis of something (ich lebe ausdrücklich von etwas), my factical self or self-world is co-experienced, if not intellectually apperceived. Yet this “before” is never fully appropriated (106: unterbleibt die Aneignung des “vor”), and it relation to things slackens. What gets lost? “In this veiled quality, ‘life’ speaks.” Life speaks behind the mask of its varied significances. Life is larvant. (Is it the mask of grammar and logic, the Stoic and Scholastic mask, that obscures living speech?) What gets lost is life itself, as taking trouble and being concerned about itself, das Leben als sorgendes. What gets lost is the simple fact that life comes to the fore as such—“the temporalizing of life’s proper Vor-kommen” (106). Such proper coming to the fore must be appropriated, emphasizes Heidegger once again (ist. .. anzueignen!). In hyperbolic pursuit of significance, life avoids itself, evades itself, allows itself to get sidetracked (107: es geht sich aus dem Wege). As life closes the distance between itself and other things, other people, it represses that distance (Heidegger uses the psychoanalytic word, no doubt unwittingly, attaching it to his own variation on Nietzsche’s “pathos of distance”: Abstandsverdrängung). As a result of repression, life gains an illusory self-assurance. In a kind of evasion (107; cf. SZ §40), life preoccupies itself with itself in order to forget itself. “In taking trouble [Sorgen), life incarcerates itself from itself [riegelt sich das Leben gegen sich selbst ab\. Yet precisely in this incarceration life does not get shut of itself. Averting its glance again and again, life seeks itself, encountering itself precisely where it never guessed it would be, for the most part in masquerade (larvance).”
(375) Frenetic in its search for scraps of meaning, for ever-novel significance, life becomes careless of itself. Its most passionate concerns mask a lack of concern (Unbekümmertmg), which nevertheless is troubled. Restive. Life mistakes itself ceaselessly, makes endless errors, and takes such endlessness to be infinity and the plenitude of eternity. Always more life! Always more than life! Such infinity is the mask that factical life holds up to the world. Larvance is the ruse of infinity, as Heidegger will later portray it in the final lines of section 65 of Being and Time. He criticizes the unclarified idea of infinity and eternity that vitiates “modern life-philosophy” as a whole. Although he names no names, he is surely thinking of Jaspers’ Psychology of Worldviews (1919), just as we might think of works in our own time that operate with an uncritical appeal to Eternity and Infinity: “With this infinity, life blinds itself, enucleates itself. Incarcerating itself, life lets itself go. It falls short. Factical life lets itself go precisely by expressly and positively fending off itself. Incarceration therefore proceeds and temporalizes as elliptical. Factical life paves its own way for itself by the way it takes its directives (Weisungnahme), inclining, repressing distance, shutting itself off in the direction of life” (108). Which brings us to the final relational category of factical life.