Paste your essay in here…Søren Kierkegaard and Martin Heidegger are highly regarded as two of the most important existentialists philosophers of the 19th and 20th century, respectively. Kierkegaard’s work has heavily influenced those who have followed, including Heidegger. They have both focused a lot of their life’s work by looking at human existence, being, and death. One cannot stress enough how much their work has influenced philosophers since the 19th century. One aspect that is extremely interesting is their views on living and dying. They believe that death plays a big role in our finite lives and we need to come to understand why that is. Kierkegaard’s response relies heavily on his idea of the subjective and Heidegger’s views are very similar even though he approaches it slightly differently.
Kierkegaard approaches the problem of death by comparing the various options and highlighting the difficulties of a transcendentalist position. As one who typically takes religion and personal immortality for granted, wanting to be convinced of his survival of death, Kierkegaard attacked the self-assurance and pointed out that there is no absolute proof but only the consequences of the options we choose to accept in the life that we live. We are reminded by Kierkegaard that death is the only final and certain event in our human life, ironically an uncertain certainty because it can happen at any moment in time. The dead die and turn to nothing, their efforts to leave any trace behind is frustrated by the dark hand of time. Ultimately, man is finite and the human race consists of finite individuals in which cultures pass away and everything eventually turns to dust, which nothing left behind. He wants to view enjoyment as life’s ‘purpose’ but sees man as the tragic hero at the mercy of fate, suffering and death, robbing him of pleasure and happiness as life continues. Kierkegaard is known for being a man of Faith. A lot of his work has been created through his 19th century Danish Christian point of view. He believed that Christianity had been forced upon people in a manner that was dogmatic and he did not like that. Even though he was a true man of faith, his faith was slightly different than the dogmatic faith at the time. Kierkegaard introduced a new dimension into his form Christianity which was known as the subjective.
The subjective is believed to be the only real, authentic perspective from which one can live one’s life. This would mean that nothing in life is definite. Christianity would become a paradox, which was not safe to say at the time. It is an unfixable paradox in which the finite and the infinite have to be sustained at the same time, of the same being, Christ. Christ is and isn’t. He is one thing and he is another. This paradox is an aspect of life that has to be embraced. In order to become subjective, one would have to become aware of the finitude of human existence and stop fantasizing to the certainty of finding salvation in the afterlife, which is promised by religion. It involves a radical renunciation of dogmatic morality and the normal ways in which one relates to the world as it were. One has to give up everything and anything that one believes in. It involves transcending the very distinction between the secular and the religious, which is stressed by Johannes de Silentio. This means that becoming subjective, is to truly embrace one’s mortality and everything that is involved. This is possibly what it means to fear death and tremble before it. He believed that all of society was in death-denial. This subjective fear is extremely different from the objective fear of death, in which people believe that death is a terrible event in our lives or is the action of someone greater than us. Even though people see death all around them and attempt to comprehend the objective fact that everyone dies, few people truly understand and realize, subjectively and deep inside, that they will die at any moment in their life, just like everyone else.
Heidegger’s view of death is known for its emphasis on the problem of life in the world with death being the biggest factor behind the scenes of life. An important parallel can be seen between Heidegger’s concept of being-toward-death and that of subjectivity in Kierkegaard. Heidegger’s differences between the authentic and inauthentic approaches of existence can be seen to almost parallel the subjective and objective approaches of existence in Kierkegaard’s work. They both want a rejection of the superficiality of everyday life. Both Kierkegaard and Heidegger believe that through the growth of the fear of death, it becomes possible to reject the shallow and sinful ways of the world and live what one would consider is the “right way”. Heidegger believes that at every moment of its life, Dasein is Being-ahead-of-itself, oriented towards possibilities, and is thus never complete. Its existence is complete through death. But can one experience one’s own death? Heidegger suggests that Dasein understands death through experiencing the death of others around it, but it never fully grasps it. We can feel sad and cry for others but we cannot experience what they are actually experiencing. Heidegger considers this Being-with the dead, which is a mode of our continued existence. As Heidegger states:
The greater the phenomenal appropriateness with which we take the no-longer-Dasein of the deceased, the more plainly is it shown that in such Being-with the dead, the authentic Being-come-to-and-end of the deceased is precisely the sort of thing which we do not experience. Death does indeed reveal itself as a loss, but a loss such as is experienced by those who remain… The dying of Others is not something which we experience in a genuine sense; at most we are always just ‘there alongside’. (Being and Time 47: 282)
Even though Dasein cannot experience its own full death, it can relate with others, making it a possibility that can always occur. In a way that reveals that Dasein’s death cannot be escaped, it will happen. Once it does happen, Dasein ceases to exist. This awareness of death as an always present possibility that has yet to occur is a very important factor when it comes to our existence. This ever-present possibility reveals the authentic self. Death is inevitable which reveals that, Dasein is basically finite.
Heidegger claims that Being-towards-death is realized in authentic and inauthentic modes. Heidegger’s idea of anticipation is to express the form of projection in which one looks forward to a possible way of being. Since death is a constant possibility, the authentic form of projection in this case is anticipation. Death is not only revealed authentically in projection but also in his idea of thrownness. Heidegger’s idea of Anxiety opens up the world to me in a unique way. This leads to the revelation that there is the possibility of a world without me: “Dasein finds itself face to face with the ‘nothing’ of the possible impossibility of its existence” (Being and Time 53: 310). Dasein attempts to mask the awareness of the meaning of our own deaths by de-individualizing death. This causes Dasein to escape from the meaning of its own death. This can be interpreted as a way in which Dasein conceals Being. The certainty of death achieved by idle talk is of the wrong kind. This reveals that my own death can never be actual for me, since I cannot view it from my perspective but only through the “They”. It is either someone else’s death or no ones. The inauthentic mode in relation to death is understood through his concept of thrownness. Fear can reveal only certain looming events in the world. Fearing death would be considered treating my death as a case of death. Wherein anxiety, knowing that there is the possibility of me not being in the world, reveals my death. He does not want us to expect to just die but he wants us to anticipate death and own it. He wants us to live life fully with this ever-present possibility and make the world and all the ever-present possibilities mine.