Temptation (BT 252/253) (2025) 绘画 由 Noël Van Hoof

Martin Heidegger – Being and Time – BT 252/253

In setting forth average everyday Being-towards-death, we must take our orientation from those structures of everydayness at which we have earlier arrived. In Being-towards-death, Dasein comports itself towards itself as a distinctive potentiality-for-Being. But the Self of everydayness is the “they”. The “they” is constituted by the way things have been publicly interpreted, which expresses itself in the idle talk. Idle talk must accordingly make manifest the way in which everyday Dasein interprets for itself its Being-towards-death. The foundation of any interpretation is an act of understanding, which is always accompanied by a state-of-mind, or, in other words, which has a mood. So we must ask how Being-towards-death is disclosed by the kind of understanding which, with its state-of-mind, lurks in the idle talk of the “they”. How does the “they” comport itself understandingly towards that ownmost possibility of Dasein, which is non-relational and is not to be outstripped? What state-of-mind discloses to the “they”that it has been delivered over death, and in what way?
In the publicness with which we are with one another in our everyday manner, death is 'known' as a mishap which is constantly occurring – as a 'case of death'. Someone or other 'dies', be he neighbour or stranger [Nächste oder Fernerstehende]. People who are no acquaintances of ours are 'dying' daily and hourly. 'Death' is encountered as a well-known event occurring within-the-world. As such it remains in the inconspicuousness characteristic of what is encountered in an everyday fashion. The “they” has already sowed away [gesichert] an interpretation for this event. It talks of it in a 'fugitive' manner, either expressly or else in a way which is mostly inhibited, as if to say, “One of these days one will die too, in the end; but right now it has nothing tot do with us.”
The analysis of the phrase 'one dies' reveals unambiguously the kind of Being which belongs to everyday Being-towards-death. In such a way of talking, death is understood as an indefinite something which, above all, must duly arrive from somewhere or other, but which is proximally not yet present-at-hand for oneself, and is therefore no threat. The expression 'one dies' spreads abroad the opinion that what gets reached, as it were, by death, is the “they”. In Dasein's public way of interpreting, it is said that 'one dies', because everyone else and oneself can talk himself into saying that “in no case is it I myself”, for this “one” is the “nobody”. 'Dying' is levelled off to an occurrence which reaches Dasein, to be sure, but belongs to nobody in particular. If idle talk is always ambiguous, so in this manner of talking about death. Dying, which is essentially mine in such a way that no one can be my representative, is perverted into an event of public occurrence which the “they” encounters. In the way of talking which we have characterized, death is spoken of as a 'case' which is constantly occurring. Death gets passed off as always something 'actual'; its character as a possibility gets concealed, and so are the other two items that belong to it – the fact that it is non-relational and that it is not to be outstripped. By such ambiguity, Dasein puts itself in the position of losing itself in the “they” as regards a distinctive potentiality-for-Being which belongs to Dasein's ownmost Self. The “they” gives its approval, and aggravates the temptation to cover up from oneself one's ownmost Being-towards-death.

(Translation by John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson)

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Martin Heidegger