Being-toward-Death

The problem it answers

What does the fact of one's own coming death have to do with how one exists right now? The most common contemporary stance treats death as an event that will eventually happen but that has no particular bearing on present life; we know we will die, but we get on with what we are doing. Martin Heidegger's analysis in Being and Time (1927) argues that this stance — the forgetting of death that characterizes inauthentic everyday existence — misses something structurally essential about human existence.

Death, on Heidegger's analysis, is not primarily a future event but a constitutive structure of Dasein's being. Dasein exists as being-toward-death (Sein-zum-Tode) whether it acknowledges this or flees it. The recognition of this structure is what makes authentic existence possible; the flight from it is the mode of inauthentic everyday existence in which most human life is lived.

The core claim

The core claim has three parts.

Death is not primarily a future event. The everyday conception treats death as an event that will happen at some point: now I am alive; later I will die; the now and the later are different. Heidegger argues this conception misses what death actually is for Dasein: death is a possibility that constitutes Dasein's existence right now — the possibility that Dasein will no longer have any possibilities, which structures every actual possibility Dasein takes up.

Death is Dasein's most distinctive possibility. Death is non-relational (no one can die my death for me), uncircumventable (no possibility can avoid it), certain (its occurrence is not in doubt), and indefinite (its time is not specified). These four features make death the possibility that most distinctively belongs to me as the being I am.

The recognition of being-toward-death enables authenticity. Authentic existence is not produced by external circumstances; it is produced by Dasein's taking up of its own being-toward-death, the recognition that Dasein is the kind of being whose existence is structured by its coming end. Inauthentic existence is the flight from this recognition into the comfortable, anxious busy-ness of das Man (the They), in which death is treated as an event that happens to other people but is concealed from one's own life.

History in one paragraph

The doctrine is developed in Being and Time (1927), especially Division Two, Chapter 1. The analysis builds on substantial earlier work in existentialism and phenomenology: Kierkegaard's analyses of anxiety and despair (the Concept of Anxiety, 1844; the Sickness Unto Death, 1849) had developed the phenomenology of human finitude in ways Heidegger inherits; the broader phenomenological tradition (Husserl) had developed methodological resources Heidegger deploys; the German Romantic tradition (especially Hölderlin) had developed thematic resources Heidegger draws on. The contemporary classical heritage included Augustine's analyses of finitude and Pascal's Pensées (1670), with which the Heideggerian analysis has substantial structural affinities. The post-Heideggerian reception has been substantial: Sartre's Being and Nothingness (1943) engages being-toward-death and modifies it (Sartre's account, against Heidegger, treats death as an external event rather than a structural feature of consciousness); contemporary phenomenology of mortality (Iris Murdoch, Bernard Williams, Mark Johnston) continues to engage the Heideggerian framework. The broader cultural reception extends far beyond academic philosophy; the contemporary popular discourse about living as if you will die, the philosophical-spiritual reception through Stoic and Buddhist parallel traditions, and the substantial literature on the psychology of death awareness (Ernest Becker's The Denial of Death, 1973; Irvin Yalom's Existential Psychotherapy, 1980) all engage Heideggerian themes whether or not they cite Heidegger directly.

The structure of Dasein as being-toward-death

Heidegger's analysis in Being and Time Division II Chapter 1 proceeds carefully. The first move: death cannot be approached from the third-person perspective in the way it usually is. When we say death in everyday discourse, we typically mean the event of biological cessation that happens to organisms. This third-person concept misses what death is for the one who dies — the structural feature of one's own existence that the third-person perspective cannot capture.

The second move: the first-person phenomenology of death is not the experience of dying (which is not yet death) or the experience of being dead (which by definition does not exist as an experience). It is the recognition that one's existence has a coming end that is not just an event in time but a structure of one's existing right now. Dasein exists ahead of itself (the structure of care developed in Division One), and what Dasein is ahead of itself toward is, ultimately, its own death.

The third move: the four characteristics of death that make it distinctively Dasein's. Non-relational: no one can die my death for me; the substitutability that holds for many human activities does not hold for death. Uncircumventable: every possibility Dasein takes up is bounded by the possibility that there will be no further possibilities. Certain: that Dasein will die is not in doubt; the only question is when. Indefinite: the when is not specified; death can come at any moment, in any circumstance.

Together these characteristics make death the possibility that most distinctively belongs to me as the being I am. Other possibilities can be taken up or refused; this possibility is constitutive of the kind of being Dasein is.

Authentic and inauthentic being-toward-death

The distinction between authentic and inauthentic modes of relation to death is central to the analysis.

Inauthentic being-toward-death. The mode in which das Man (the They) lives. Death is treated as an event that happens to other people — one dies, but not I. The newspaper reports deaths; statistical actuarial tables predict average lifespans; the funeral home handles the practical arrangements when death finally happens. Throughout, death is kept at a distance, made an object of public knowledge rather than a structural feature of one's own life. Inauthentic being-toward-death is not malicious; it is comfortable, anxious, and the default mode of much human life.

Authentic being-toward-death. The mode in which Dasein takes up its own being-toward-death as its own. This is not morbid preoccupation with death (which would be a different kind of flight). It is the recognition that one's existence is finite, that this finitude structures every actual possibility one has, and that the recognition gives present life its weight and shape in a way the flight cannot.

The authentic mode is what Heidegger calls anticipatory resoluteness (vorlaufende Entschlossenheit) — the resolute taking-up of one's possibilities in light of the recognition that there will not always be possibilities to take up.

Common confusions

Being-toward-death is not preoccupation with dying. The doctrine is not the recommendation that one think constantly about death or prepare obsessively for its arrival. It is the structural analysis of how mortality conditions the being one is right now.

Being-toward-death is not a recipe for anxiety. Anxiety in the technical Heideggerian sense (Angst) is the felt disclosure of being-toward-death; the recognition can be experienced as anxiety in this technical sense. But the recommended mode is not chronic anxiety; it is the anticipatory resoluteness that takes up the recognition without being immobilized by it.

Being-toward-death is not the same as belief in personal immortality (positive or negative). Heidegger's analysis is at the level of existential structure, not at the level of metaphysical claims about whether the soul survives. The analysis applies regardless of one's views about an afterlife.

Live debates

The Heideggerian vs. Sartrean accounts. Sartre in Being and Nothingness explicitly rejected Heidegger's account of death as a constitutive structure of consciousness; for Sartre, death is an external limit that ends consciousness rather than something internal to its structure. The contemporary literature continues to engage this disagreement.

Death in feminist phenomenology. Subsequent feminist phenomenologists (Iris Marion Young, Lisa Guenther) have engaged Heidegger's account of being-toward-death and developed it in directions that emphasize the social and political dimensions of mortality that the original analysis treats less directly.

Empirical psychology of death awareness. The substantial empirical literature on Terror Management Theory (developed by Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg, and Tom Pyszczynski from Ernest Becker's Denial of Death) has produced experimental evidence that mortality awareness shapes a wide range of behaviors; the relation between this empirical work and Heidegger's structural analysis is engaged by some contemporary philosophers.

Contemporary engagement

Major recent scholarly work includes Stephen Mulhall's Heidegger and Being and Time (1996; revised 2005), Iain Thomson's Heidegger, Art, and Postmodernity (2011), Hubert Dreyfus's Being-in-the-World (1991), and the substantial work of Mark Wrathall, Taylor Carman, and William Blattner. The contemporary phenomenology of mortality (especially in work on aging, illness, and end-of-life care) continues to engage Heidegger.

Further reading

• Heidegger — the author of the doctrine
• Being and Time — the central text
• Existentialism — the tradition
• Authenticity — the existential value being-toward-death enables
• Kierkegaard — the predecessor whose analyses of anxiety and despair the doctrine extends
• Sartre — the successor who modified the account

This is a Pillar concept. Satellite concepts should link here as their parent.