(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); Martin Heidegger and Ludwig Wittgenstein's philosophical writings about our personal deaths and our relation to them as individuals has interested me; both have an in-depth analysis of death, and though seemingly the two views are not mutually exclusive, I believe favoring a side is viable.

Heidegger would say that dasein (for those who don't understand, click You must login or register to view this content.) can only authentically deal with death in a deeply 'own' and individual manner (because of the "Jemeinigkeit" of death). What strikes me at first is how obvious they seem to me and yet how far removed they are from common notions regarding death and mortality in the general populous, especially with Heidegger.

In fact, Heidegger himself observes that common notions regarding death are usually abstractions and derivatives of the immediacy of our own mortality, to explain how far removed his remarks are. He says that we are continuously dying, in the sense that we are always mortal and that the possibility of our death is always immediate; but yet we seem to distance ourselves from this immediate possibility by speaking either in general and/or abstract terms about death. Death is commonly seen as something that can happen to anyone, but that is not deeply personal and immediate in the way Heidegger says we are, thus we are fleeing from the possibility of our death, from our mortality, by making it abstract and/or general. We see the deaths of others as similar to, or of the same sort as, our own death, that much is true; whilst no amount of knowledge about someone else's death can help us face our own personal deaths, which hardly makes death something general or shared. Thus we are always living with death, but flee from it by 'mortifying' it; by generalizing and/or abstracting it [in a Heideggerian sense].

Interestingly, Wittgenstein seems to agree with Heidegger in the aspect of that our own deaths are special [and thus, different] in comparison with the deaths of others, and claims that because we do not live to experience our own death. While Heidegger and Wittgenstein agree that our own death is not an event in our lives, they come to radically different conclusions about what this concept entails. We constantly live with death and that we are constantly 'dying' in a metaphoric sense, Heidegger says, whereas Wittgenstein implies the opposite and [basically] says that death is not our business; that death belongs to the dead and "eternal life" belongs to those who are living in the present. Wittgenstein's line of thought is therefore a lot like Epicurus' line of thought when he says: Death, therefore, the most awful of evils, is nothing to us, seeing that, when we are, death has not come, and, when death has come, we are not.

I am personally leaning towards Epicurus' and Wittgenstein's interpretation of death. I obviously accept Heidegger's and Wittgenstein's claim that my death is not a moment nor event in my life [to which I will thus never experience], but I do not see how my death would be immediate in the way Heidegger seems to think it is.

To expand upon their analysis, if anything, their claim that our personal death is not an event in our life seems to imply that our own personal death is never an issue for us, so that we should find nothing but apathy in ourselves when contemplating our own death; that is something I agree with, but it seems unnatural to me to take death as seriously as Heidegger does, yet many existentialists agree with Heidegger on this one.

What are your thoughts about this? Do you believe that death is always immediate to dasein? Do you believe that Wittgenstein's perspective is a way of fleeing from the immediacy of death?; or do you think Heidegger is unjustified in making his claims about the immediacy of death and that he is mistaken in his observation that people tend to flee from the immediacy of death? Also, if you agree with Heidegger, then what is this immediacy of death?; how does it show itself to you, or how is it present in your life experience?

You must login or register to view this content.

i belive in jesus

I believe in Zeus. Praise Zeus!

I agree that we cant live to experience our own deaths, that's a bit contradictory because you can't be dead if your alive (who would have thought?), unless you interpret it that we live to die which in a sense is true because we will all die someday. I am with Wittgenstein on this one, death belongs to the dead and not to the living and vice versa. Its also evident that we as a species try to distance ourself from death as much as possible (as stated in your post) which is going against Heideggers claims (one reason for me going with Wittgenstein).