Fleeing in the Face of Death (BT424/425) (2025) Schilderij door Noël Van Hoof

Martin Heidegger – Being and Time – BT424/425

But wherein are grounded this levelling-off of world-time and this covering-up of temporality? In the Being of Dasein itself, which we have, in a preparatory manner, interpreted as care. Thrown and falling, Dasein is proximally and for the most part lost in that with which it concerns itself. In this lostness, however, dasein's fleeing in the face of that authentic existence which has been characterized as “anticipatory resoluteness”, has made itself known; and this is a fleeing which overs up. In this concernful fleeing lies a fleeing in the face of death – that is, a looking-away from the end of Being-in-the-world. This looking-away from it, is in itself a mode of that Being-towards-the-end which is ecstatically futural. The inauthentic temporality of everyday Dasein as it falls, must, as such a looking-away from finitude, fail to recognize authentic futurity and therewith temporality in general. And if indeed the way in which Dasein is ordinarily understood is guided by the “they”, only so can the self-forgetful 'representation' of the 'infinity' of public time be strengthened. The “they” never dies because it cannot die; for death is in each case mine, and only in anticipatory resoluteness does it get authentically understood in an existentiell manner. Nevertheless, the “they”, which never dies and which misunderstands Being-towards-the-end, gives a characteristic interpretation to fleeing in the face of death. To the very end 'it always has more time'. Here a way of “having time” in the sense that one can lose it makes itself known. 'Right now, this! Then that! And that is barely over, when . . . ' ['. . . “jetzt erst noch das, dann das, und nur noch das und dann . . .”'] Here it is not as if the finitude of time were getting understood; quite the contrary, for concern sets out to snatch as much as possible from the time which still keeps coming and 'goes on'. Publicly, time is something which everyone takes and can take. In the everyday way in which we are with one another, the levelled-off sequence of “nows” remains completely unrecognizable as regards its origin in the temporality of the individual Dasein. How is 'time' in its course to be touched even the least bit when a man who has been present-at-hand 'in time' no longer exists? Time goes on, jus as indeed it already 'was' when a man 'came into life'. The only time one knows is the public time which has been levelled off and which belongs to everyone – and that means, to nobody.

(Translation by John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson)

Verwante thema's

Martin Heidegger