Abstract
This paper examines the two different modalities of finitude identified by Heidegger, i.e. perishing and dying, respectively attributed to animals and to human beings. The first goal of the paper is to bring to light the structural link in Heideggerian philosophy between death and language, by virtue of which Dasein dies properly only within the symbolic space originated by the word. The second goal is to assess the extent to which the Heideggerian distinction between perishing and dying has held up in the environment of contemporary philosophy: despite some unavoidable limitations, recent scientific outcomes seem provide its validation.
“On ne meurt qu’une fois, et c’est pour si longtemps!” (Molière).
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Notes
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We must consider that, in Heidegger’s view “Da-sein is not something objectively present which then has as an addition the ability to do something, but is rather primarily being-possible. Da-sein is always what it can be and how it is its possibility” (Heidegger 1996:134).
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The underlying rationale of Figal’s analysis of the Heideggerian notion of death is expressed as follows: “We can rightly refute that the meditatio mortis, more elaborately developed by Heidegger, leads to what he actually meant to demonstrate. Heidegger’s goal was to manifest how the comprehension of being imminent and undetermined must be understood as an anticipation of death” (Figal 1991: 222).
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On this point, Hofstadter (2001: XII) recognizes that “in The Origin of the Work of Art (1935–36) Heidegger had already pointed to the function of poetry as the founding of truth: bestowing, grounding, beginning”.
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The shift that Heidegger made from an un-poetical to a poetical conception of language is expounded in detail by Di Martino (2005: 72).
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In this sense Vattimo rightly remarks that “in as much as the work of art constitutes a disclosure or a project in need of being gedichtet, invented, then the essence of every art-form is Dichtung, poetry” (Vattimo 1989: 124).
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Concerning the nature of language, in Hölderlin and the Essence of Poetry, Heidegger states that “Language is not a tool at man’s disposal, but that primal event which disposes of the highest possibility of man’s being” (Heidegger 2000, 56).
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On these premises, Heidegger can declare that man is a sign because he points out, he indicates others from himself: “As we are drawing toward what withdraws, we ourselves are pointers pointing toward it. We are who we are by pointing in that direction not like an incidental adjunct but as follows: this “drawing toward” is in itself an essential and therefore constant pointing toward what withdraws. To say “drawing toward” is to say “pointing toward what withdraws”. To the extent that man is drawing that way, he points toward what withdraws. As he is pointing that way, man is the pointer. Man here is not first of all man, and then also occasionally someone who points. No: drawn into what withdraws, drawing toward it and thus pointing into the withdrawal, man first is man. His essential nature lies in being such a pointer. Something, which in itself, by its essential nature, is pointing, we call a sign. As he draws to ward what withdraws, man is a sign. (Heidegger 1968: 9).
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From the Heideggerian perspective the “captivation is the essence of animality means: The animal as such does not stand within a manifestness of beings. Neither its so-called environment nor the animal itself are manifest as beings” (Heidegger 1995: 248).
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Leroi-Gourhan explains the link between the capacity to symbolize and death, in its religious scope, in these terms: “The reflective intelligence which not only grasps the relationship between different phenomena but is capable of externalizing a symbolic representation of that relationship was the ultimate acquisition of the vertebrates. […] Where this acquisition takes the form of technicity, the faculties of reflection and the neurovegetative organization of the association areas of the cortex merge into one; where it is a matter of “gratuitous” intellectual operations, the gradual development of the frontal and prefrontal areas appears to have entailed a progressively growing faculty for symbolization. Archaeological evidence of such activity-which goes beyond technical motor function-is elusive for the early Quaternary, but by the Palaeoanthropian stage some archaeological evidence begins to become available. These activities, the earliest of an aesthetic or religious character, can be classified in two groups as reactions to death and reactions to shapes of an unusual or unexpected kind” (Leroi-Gourhan 1993: 107).
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The elements here discussed are each linked to death in a different way: some concern the relationship of the individual with his or her own death, some concern how the deceased are considered. We must point out that Heidegger is interested in the relationship that the individual develops with his or her own death, while the issue of the deceased is only hinted at in Being and Time. In pondering the issue of the deceased, Heidegger reckons that access to one’s own mortality cannot be achieved through the experience of the death of others (Heidegger 1996: 221–224). In these two different scopes, we should recognize the different natures of scientific and ontological inquiry.
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Redaelli, R. (2021). Poetically Man Dies: Heidegger and the Limits of Man in Word and Death. In: Di Martino, C. (eds) Heidegger and Contemporary Philosophy. Contributions to Hermeneutics, vol 8. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56566-4_6
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