Heidegger: Being and Death

• Man is fundamentally "being-in-this-world", directed towards the world and possessing the power to be within it.
• "Being-in-this-world" involves interacting with things ("concern") and others ("solicitude").
• Dasein ("There-being") is the term for the being of man, enabling encounters with beings.
• Dasein actualizes its possibilities and is always ahead of itself, absorbed in things and people.
• "Care" is the fundamental structure of Dasein, where man always has potentiality for being which constitutes being "ahead-of-itself"
• As man exists in the world, he never reaches his "wholeness"; he always remains unfinished except through death
• Death brings wholeness, ending potentiality and the "there" of man and everything is settled
• Death is the transition from Dasein to no-longer-Dasein, making it impossible to experience
• Observation of others' death only provides an objective view, not the subjective experience of dying.

Death and Representation

• Death involves the totality of man, where Dasein ceases; the death of Dasein is not representable
• Death is personal and constitutive, wherein "no one can take the other's dying away from him."
• While man exists and there is lack of totality, death marks its end, it is is a "not-yet" that is accessible where Dasein is already its "not-yet".
• Dasein's end should be understood as being-towards-the-end, a being-towards-death, not a description of an afterlife
• Man as being-towards-death aligns with his basic state through the structure of care.

Being-towards-death and Care

• Care is defined as "ahead-of-itself-Being-already-in (the world) as Being-alongside entities,"
• Being-towards-death is also must be understood through Dasein's being: existence, facticity, and falling.
• Death is man's ultimate possibility and the uttermost ‘not-yet', towards which he comports himself.
• Death belongs to the individual and stands as the possibility that one must take over themselves, not merely an event"
• The issue in death involves ones being in the world where existence the possibility of cutting off from others
• The possibility is impending, revealing uttermost possibility, distinctly as it cuts one off from others

Everyday Being-towards-death – Inauthenticity

• People are ignorant of death and engrossed in self concern that hides their being-towards-death, though remain absorbed in the world.
• Death is known as a mishap, and hidden by "they," who talk of it as an impersonal event, "a 'case of death'"
• The ‘they' level off death, make it ambiguous and hides its mineness, non-relational aspect, and inevitability.
• The "they" talk dying individuals into the belief that they will recover, tranquilizing inevitable death
• Thinking about death is considered a sign of cowardice, where instead the attitude remains one of indifferent tranquility
• Heidegger considers this tranquility as alienation from potentiality for being-towards-death.
• Everyday being-towards-death is a constant evasion through explanations that he is still living.
• Even in indifference, lies the uttermost possibility of existence, where man still has potentiality for being.
• The impersonal ‘they' view death with ambiguity, denying its certainty, and only see death as an empirical observation"
• The everyday man evades the higher certainty of one's own death in carefreeness and superior indifference
• The inauthentic man intervenes urgency matter to definite death, however, he flees from death and actually derives his certainty of death from being-towards-death.

Authentic Being-towards-death

• The authentic response involves facing the true implications of death through facing possibility and not evading
• The possibility must not be actualized to happen through suicide that demolishes all potentialities of man
• Authentic being-towards-death is an anticipation to become death and impossibility
• Anticipation, man comes closes to impossibility of any existence
• Facing death means that man realizes that death is ownmost possibility, through fulfilling himself and his own personal existence.
• Individualizing reveals man's "there" (alongside-things/concern and being-with-others/solicitude), and to be known to his possibilities and self relations with extreme opposition
• Accepting death is to free and delivered from possibilities. Freeing ones self from becoming secure to become dictated by
• Authentic and now acceptive man is now for the first time can understand more and choose the possibilities that has became determined by end in time
• The certainty of death corresponds to the certainty of being-in-the-world, meaning being demanded to determine authenticity.

Anxiety and Authentic Being

• Indefiniteness calls for authentic Dasein to open constant threat in the world and being "there"
• Open to threat is anxiety that faces of extreme opposition. Individualizing makes becoming more certain to the totality
• Authentic being-towards-death is freedom of death, that which been realigned from illusion and factical towards anxious and free

Karl Rahner's Notion of Death

• Heidegger's freedom reaches a theological development in death
• Death is not overtaking or evil, and as act of man death is act of self-affirmation
• Thus, constitutes the highest act of freedom to open to transcendence.

Freedom and Commitment

• Death involves the whole man with no concupiscence, the evil lessening power to choose
• Never makes a total final commitment with the totality, and that is when commitment reaches with finality and definite
• As point of life it's a point to culmination
• Free act always carries being fulfillment build to whole, with man anticipating bringing himself.