A distinção que Heidegger faz entre morte e falecimento pretende tornar claro que os pressupostos científicos ônticos sobre a morte no sentido comum não são a sua principal preocupação e não influenciam diretamente a sua investigação ontológica. Aquilo a que habitualmente chamamos morte é o que Heidegger chama falecimento em Ser e Tempo. No entanto, só podemos dar sentido à morte, à morte ôntica, por assim dizer, por causa da morte ontológica. Heidegger deseja revelar plenamente o fenômeno da morte para mostrar que só podemos relacionar-nos com a morte da forma como o fazemos porque já estamos sempre direcionados para ela e, mais precisamente, porque o nosso próprio ser é estruturado por ela. É a isto que ele chama ser-para-a-morte e esta estrutura é o próprio cuidado (Sorge). (SZ: 329/315) (…)
Assim, a morte ontológica tem de fato a ver com a finitude mortal. No entanto, a morte não é simplesmente o fim da “vida” de alguém. Para Heidegger, em Ser e Tempo, a morte não é externa a nós, não é um acontecimento no futuro que ocorre num momento ou noutro. Pelo contrário, a morte é inerente ao Dasein. A morte é assim que o Dasein é. (…) A morte não é nada para nós. (…) Assim que o Dasein é, o Dasein está numa relação inerente com a sua morte, que não é a cessação da “vida” do Dasein, mas o limite onde o Dasein começa. É por esta mesma relação com a morte que podemos dar sentido e somos tocados pela morte dos outros, em primeiro lugar. O Dasein é assim que a morte é também significa que a morte é assim que o Dasein é. [Em outras palavras, a experiência que Heidegger procura no contexto da morte é uma experiência no pensamento, uma experiência do ser, não uma experiência do domínio empírico.
First of all, death is not to be taken in the ordinary sense of the end of someone’s life, or more technically, death is not demise. Thus, the ontological phenomenon of death Heidegger is after has nothing to do with the measurable end of someone’s life, or with dying in the ordinary sense of the word. Yet, death, and this is the crux, is neither of merely metaphorical meaning nor does death have nothing to with mortality, as, for example, Blattner maintains in his paper on “The Concept of Death in Being and Time” (Blattner 1994). (…) I strongly disagree with such readings. Not only does Heidegger clearly state that “edification ” or “rules of behavior toward death” (SZ: 248/238) are not at all at stake in the analytic of death. Additionally, such a reading entirely ignores Dasein’s ecstatic temporality and distorts that death in Being and Time does something else entirely. I shall show that death as the utmost limit of Dasein’s existence is precisely the condition for world to arise and not the cause of its collapse!
(…) The Ackermann aus Böhmen is a dialogue between a farmer who just lost his wife and the Grim Reaper himself, who tells the farmer that “As soon as a human being is being born, he is old enough to die right away.” (SZ: 245/228) (…) Heidegger refers to what death tells the Ackermann aus Böhmen in order to show that his own understanding of death as a way of being that Dasein takes over as soon as it is, is not so far-fetched as it may seem. Heidegger refers to Tepl’s text for historical reference, to show that it is an old wisdom and that death is invariably structurally co-constitutive of Dasein. Heidegger’s reference to Tepl to me is indicative that one can also read parts of Being and Time as a meditation on human mortality, a retelling of the memento mori for our age.
Heidegger’s distinction between demise and death intends to make clear that the ontic scientific assumptions about death in the ordinary sense are not the primary concern and do not directly influence his ontological investigation. What we usually call death is what Heidegger calls demise in Being and Time. Yet, we can only make sense of demise, ontic death, as it were, because of ontological death. Heidegger wishes to disclose the phenomenon of death fully in order to show thereby that we can at all relate to death the way we do only because we are always already directed toward it and, more precisely, our very being is structured by it. This is what he calls being-toward-death and this very structure is care itself. (SZ: 329/315) (…)
Thus, ontological death does have to do with mortal finitude. Still, death is not simply the end of someone’s “life.” For Heidegger in Being and Time death is not external to us, not some event in the future that occurs at some point or other. Rather, death is inherent in Dasein. Death is as soon as Dasein is. (…) Death is not nothing to us. (…) As soon as Dasein is, Dasein is in an inherent relationship with its death, which is not the cessation of Dasein’s “life”, but the limit where Dasein begins. It is for this very relationship with death that why we can make sense of and are touched by the dying of others in the first place. Dasein is as soon as death is also means that death is as soon as Dasein is. (…) Put differently, the experience Heidegger is after in context of death, is an experience in thinking, an experience of being, not an experience of the empirical realm.
(…) To say that death is nothing to us would be a meaningless claim for Heidegger. For him, death always already determines Dasein’s possibilities since Dasein is, as soon as it is, directed towards its ownmost possibility, it is death that co-constitutes Dasein’s horizons of understanding. It is from that very directedness that Dasein receives its meaning in the sense that this directedness-towards… lets disclose beings and its world. (…) Being-in-the-world, as I show in further detail below, is authentically performed by Dasein only in authentic being-towards-death. (…)
Lastly, it is crucial to note that even though death is central to Heidegger’s entire philosophical project, he does not advocate for suicide. Precisely the opposite is the case. Suicide does not play a role in Being and Time at all and is barely mentioned in the later philosophy either. But in the Prolegomena Heidegger points out very clearly that suicide perverts death, because suicide turns death into something present-at-hand, into an actuality. As Heidegger points out, this turns also being into an actuality and no longer understands our existence as possibility, but as something present-at-hand over which we believe to exercise full control (GA20: 439/317f). Note that Heidegger here also explicitly makes the connection of death and being and that the possibility-character of death is crucial to understand the possibility-character of being. Furthermore, this means that by maintaining and living up to the possibility-character of death, its hovering in a way, Dasein gets to understand that being itself is possibility. This early insight will be crucial for the rest of the thinking path.