The Possibility of Being-towards-death – Part 2 (BT 262/263) (2025) Malarstwo autorstwa Noël Van Hoof

Martin Heidegger – Being and Time – BT 262/263

But Being towards this possibility, as Being-towards-death, is so to comport ourselves towards death that in this Being, and for it, death reveals itself as a possibility. Our terminology for such Being towards this possibility is “anticipation” of this possibility. But in this way of behaving does there not lurk a coming-close to the possible, and when one is close to the possible, does not its actualization emerge ? In this kind of coming close, however, one does not tend towards concernfully making available something actual; but as one comes closer understandingly, the possibility of the possible just becomes 'greater'. The closest closeness which one may have in Being towards death as a possibility, is as far as possible from anything actual. The more unveiledly this possibility gets understood, the more purely does the understanding penetrate into it as the possibility of the impossibility of any existence at all. Death, as possibility, gives Dasein nothing to be 'actualized', nothing which Dasein, as actual, could itself be, It is the possibility of the impossibility of every way of comporting oneself towards anything, of every way of existing. In the anticipation of this possibility it becomes 'greater and greater”; that is to say, the possibility reveals itself to be such that it knows no measure at all, no more or less, but signifies the possibility of the measureless impossibility of existence. In accordance with its essence, this possibility offers no support for becoming intent on something, 'picturing' to oneself the actuality which is possible, and so forgetting its possibility. Being-towards-death, as anticipation of possibility, is what first makes this possibility possible, and sets it free as possibility.
Being-towards-death is the anticipation of a potentiality-for-Being of that entity whose kind of Being is anticipation itself. In the anticipatory revealing of this potentiality-for-Being, Dasein discloses itself to itself as regards its uttermost possibility. But to project itself on its ownmost potentiality-for-Being means to be able to understand itself in the being of the entity so revealed – namely, to exist. Anticipation turns out to be the possibility of understanding one'sownmost and uttermost potentiality-for-Being – that is to say, the possibility of authentic existence.

(Translation by John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson)

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