QuestionsShould we fear death?Being-toward-death
Should we fear death?An anxiety that enlightens

Being-toward-death

Martin Heidegger 1889 · 1976What is Being? We have forgotten the question.
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What it claims

One exists authentically only by standing before one's own death rather than fleeing it (being-toward-death).

Why

Death is my most personal possibility, which no one can live for me: facing it pulls me out of "the They" and makes me myself.

In short

"Being-toward-death" is an argument by Martin Heidegger (Being and Time, § 27, 47-53) on the question "Should we fear death?" (answer: an anxiety that enlightens). Its claim: One exists authentically only by standing before one's own death rather than fleeing it (being-toward-death). According to AskPhilosophy's logic check (Z3 solver), the argument is valid only if one grants a premise the author leaves unstated (P2). AskPhilosophy presents 3 objections, 2 of them with a documented reply, and the original text behind each premise, checked word for word.

Being and Time, § 27, 47-53
Valid with an implicit premise

In everyday life, says Heidegger, we are not really ourselves: we think, judge and act as "one" does (the "they", das Man). He looks for what can bring us back to ourselves. His answer: our death, not as a future event but as a possibility that is always our own. The "they" says "one dies" and avoids the question. Standing before one's death (he writes "anticipating" it) opens an "authentic" existence. Careful: "authentic" is not a moral compliment (see the Letter on Humanism).

P1Being oneself truly (existing authentically) means getting out of the "they": most of the time, each of us is dispersed into the they and must first find himself.
P2 · implicit premiseFacing one's death, there are only two ways to be: to avoid it, as the they does, or to stand before it ("anticipate" death). There is no third attitude.
P3Death is my ownmost possibility: no one can die in my place, it undoes all my ties with others, and I cannot outstrip it.
P4Avoiding this possibility means staying in the they: the they turns death into a public event ("one dies") that happens to no one in particular.
Therefore one exists authentically only by standing before one's own death rather than fleeing it (being-toward-death).

click a premise to reject it

If you accept every premise, logic forces you to accept the conclusion. So the debate is about the premises.
Checked by a logic solver: the premises cannot all be true while the conclusion is false.
Without the implicit premise: Without P2, the computer finds a case where a person is not authentic although she does not flee her death: she accepts it calmly without "anticipating" it, or she turns from the they by another route (love, art, wisdom). This is exactly the route Epicurus opens.
Valid if one accepts P2, the premise added out of charity. The reasoning: being authentic requires leaving the they (P1); fleeing one's death means staying in the they (P3 and P4); but not fleeing it means anticipating it (P2). Without P2, nothing says one cannot leave the they by another route, or avoid fleeing death without "anticipating" it: this is the most disputed premise.
Analogy. Someone avoids looking at the car's dashboard because he does not want to see that the tank is almost empty. He reassures himself: "one runs out of fuel someday, but not now". Heidegger would say this person lives without knowing he is driving toward a limit, and that looking at the gauge is the condition for choosing where to go with the fuel that is left.

Objections

3

Each objection is a conversation: click to see who replies and where the debate stands.

E
Epicurus ("death is nothing to us") 300 BC · attacks premise 2

There is a third attitude, and it is the best: to understand that death is nothing to us. When we are, death is not there; when it is there, we are no more. So it deserves neither flight nor anxiety, and life is better without this worry. (Letter to Menoeceus, paraphrased: the text is not in our corpus.)

no reply
summary: their text is not yet in our corpus
We have not yet found a direct reply by Heidegger in the texts.
The debate goes on (our summary) Heidegger can be defended thus: Epicurus speaks of death as an event we do not experience, whereas Heidegger writes that dying is not an event but a possibility that is always mine (§ 47). Epicurus can be defended thus: this "possibility of the impossibility of existing" is just what he says we need not fear, and nothing shows it is the key to an authentic life. We found no answer from Heidegger to Epicurus in our corpus.
Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness 1943 · attacks premise 3

My death is not my ownmost possibility. A possibility is something I project and can realise. Death, on the contrary, is the end of all my projects: it makes me, in the eyes of others, a finished life. It comes from outside, as a contingent fact that escapes me, and far from giving life a meaning, it removes all meaning from it. (Paraphrased: the extract is not in our corpus.)

Heidegger replies
summary: their text is not yet in our corpus
Heidegger Answer anticipated by Heidegger (Being and Time, 1927, before Sartre)
Death, understood as a possibility, gives Dasein nothing to "actualize".
Heidegger (same passage, next sentence)
Death is the possibility of the impossibility of every way of comporting oneself, of every way of existing.
The debate goes on (our summary) This passage answers part of the objection: Heidegger had already said that death as a "possibility" is not a thing one actualizes. It does not answer the other half (death is a fact that escapes me and that others will see from outside, so not "my" possibility), nor the idea that it removes all meaning from life. Heidegger writes before Sartre: he could not have him in view, and we found no later answer from him on this point.
E
Emmanuel Levinas, Time and the Other 1947 · attacks premise 3

Heidegger makes death the moment of highest lucidity, where I gather myself on my ownmost possibility. But death is the event over which I am no longer master: as it approaches we are "no longer able to be able", it brings a passivity, not one more mastery. Later (Totality and Infinity, 1961; lectures "Death and Time", 1975-1976), Levinas adds that the first death that concerns me is the other's, for whom I am responsible before I think of myself. Isolating Dasein in its death misses this bond. (Paraphrased: these texts are not in our corpus.)

Heidegger replies
summary: their text is not yet in our corpus
Heidegger Answer anticipated by Heidegger (Being and Time, 1927, before Levinas), on the bond with others only
Death individualizes Dasein, but only so as to make it, as being-with, understanding of the potentiality-for-being of others.
The debate goes on (our summary) This passage, written before Levinas, partly answers the last point: for Heidegger, isolation before death does not cut one off from others, it opens one to their possibilities. It does not answer the rest. Levinas does not deny this isolation: he disputes the order. For him the death of the other and responsibility for the other come first, whereas in Heidegger understanding others goes through the relation to my own death. He also disputes that death is a possibility one can "take on". We have no answer from Heidegger to Levinas.