Não só a morte, mas também a angústia (ou ansiedade, como é frequentemente traduzida) desempenha aqui um papel central, porque “(a) angústia individua o Dasein”. (SZ: 187/182) A angústia não é um estado psicológico nem o medo, por exemplo, da morte. Em vez disso, a angústia como tonalidade afetiva fundamental é “uma revelação distintiva do Dasein”. (SZ: 184/178) Para Heidegger, a tonalidade afetiva não é um estado de espírito contingente, mas sim existencial. A tonalidade determina o Dasein no seu ser. Revelação é o termo decisivo aqui. A angústia não tem um objeto, mas o seu “diante-do-que”, Wovor, é o “ser-no-mundo como tal”. (SZ: 186/180) A angústia literalmente e estritamente “vem sobre” o Dasein apenas durante a sua auto-interpretação transcendental-hermenêutica.
Not only death, but also angst (or anxiety, as it is often translated) plays a pivotal role here because “(a)ngst individuates Dasein”. (SZ: 187/182 ta) Angst is neither a psychological state nor fear of, say, demise. Instead, angst as fundamental attunement is “a distinctive disclosedness of Dasein.” (SZ: 184/178) Attunement is not a contingent mood for Heidegger, but is an existential one. Attunement determines Dasein in its being. Disclosedness is the decisive term here. Angst does not have an object but its “before-which,” Wovor, is “being-in-the-world as such.” (SZ: 186/180) Angst literally and strictly “comes over” Dasein only during its transcendental-hermeneutical self-interpretation. Consider the following claim by Heidegger: “The nothingness before which angst brings us reveals the nullity that determines Dasein in its ground, which itself is as thrownness into death.” (SZ: 308/295 ta) Rather than describing the experience of someone in their lifeworld, from a transcendental perspective—i.e., from the perspective of the That of Dasein’s existence17—this means that the fundamental-ontological conception of angst allows Heidegger to disclose Dasein in its nothingness. The fact that nothingness permeates the being of Dasein, however, does not mean that there is no self. This rather points to the essential tension between being and nothing which Dasein holds itself out into in advance and which is what enables any encounter of beings in the first place. This also points to the “not” of the “not-yet” of the ecstasy of the future that predominantly constitutes Dasein’s horizon of understanding. That is, Dasein is ecstatically (out of itself) toward that which is not yet and this movement constitutes the present moment thanks to which Dasein understands itself and the world. The analytic of angst (and death) reveals Dasein’s solipsism. This, however, does not mean that Dasein is “an isolated subject-thing (transposed) into the harmless vacuum of worldless occurrence”. (SZ: 188/182) Quite to the opposite, singling out Dasein, i.e., separating Dasein from beings unlike Dasein, most radically discloses that Dasein is always already in the world and always already with others. That is because singling-out is an abstraction and is immediately pushed back to who Dasein is. Abstraction cannot remain where it is, for then the result of the analytic would be empty and formalistic. Put differently, the solipsism is not a static result of the investigation, but is a momentary abstraction in the course of Dasein’s self-investigation. Dasein’s self-investigation, then, depicts an experience of transcendence in the sense of an experience of finitude. This experience at once brings Dasein before its own finitude and before being as such in its finitude. Here we see the striking difference between Epicurus and Heidegger. For Epicurus the analysis stops short of an ontic fear of demise and breaks off Dasein’s self-investigation. For Heidegger proper angst is what fundamentally attunes Dasein to be authentically in the world and pushes Dasein to investigate further.