Martin Heidegger at Todtnauberg (BT383/384) (2024) Schilderij door Noël Van Hoof

Martin Heidegger – Being and Time – BT383/384

“Being and Time” (original title “Sein und Zeit”) is the magnum opus of German philosopher Martin Heidegger. It was written in 1927,  and a key document of existentialism. Translating Heidegger's ideas into images is difficult or maybe impossible, that's why the illustrations can be seen as a free interpretation inspired by the book. The text passages in the book are indicated by a number, which makes it easier to place the illustrations in full context.
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As thrown, Dasein has indeed been delivered over to itself and to its potentiality-for-Being, but as Being-in-the -world. As thrown, it has been submitted to a 'world', and exists factically with Others. Proximally and for the most part the Self is lost in the “they”. It understands itself in terms of those possibilities of existence which 'circulate' in the 'average' public way of interpreting Dasein today. These possibilities have mostly been made unrecognizable by ambiguity; yet they are well known to us. The authentic existentiell understanding is so far from extricating itself from the way of interpreting Dasein which has come down to us, that in each case it is in terms of this interpretation, against it, and yet again for it, that any possibility one has chosen is seized upon in one's resolution.
The resoluteness in which Dasein comes back to itself, discloses them in terms of the heritage which that resoluteness, as thrown, takes over. In one's coming back resolutely to one's thrownness, there is hidden a handing down to oneself of the possibilities that have come down to one, but not necessarily as having thus come down. If everything 'good' is a heritage, and the character of 'goodness' lies in making authentic existence possible, then the handing down of a heritage constitutes itself in resoluteness. The more authentically Dasein resolves – and this means that in anticipating death it understands itself unambiguously in terms of its ownmost distinctive possibility – the more unequivocally does it choose and find the possibility of its existence, and the less does it do so by accident. Only by the anticipation of death is every accidental and 'provisional' possibility driven out. Only Being-free for death, gives Dasein its goal outright and pushes existence, it snatches one back from endless multiplicity of possibilities which offer themselves as closest to one – those of comfortableness, shirking, and taking things lightly – and brings Dasein into the simplicity of its fate [Schicksals]. This is how we designate Dasein's primordial historizing, which lies in authentic resoluteness and in which Dasein hands itself down to itself, free for death, in a possibility which it has inherited and yet has chosen.

(Translation by John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson)

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Martin Heidegger