Thinking about Death: Heidegger and Being Toward Death

This video talks about Heidegger's idea of Being-towards-death and more specifically the consequences and insights one might attain from simply reflecting upon one's mortality. Death is sort of uncomfortable to talk about or even think about, it can lead one to very depressing thoughts. However, there are certain ideas that are revealed to us from a perspective of Being-towards-death. Heidegger's philosophy is notoriously complicated, complex, and extensive, with many philosophers coming up with different interpretations of his work. We'll be looking at Being and Time section 50.

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Music: Lo-Fi Beats To Philosophize to by D p S C

[Eternalised]

What a timing, just stumbled upon Heidegger! Enjoyed this video, one really appreciates the humour element in the philosophy community. When I do a little bit of memento mori - it's a kind of double edged sword, I see the senselessness of things, but also makes me value and appreciate the moment more. I've always thought of life as "the only game to play", for me death is nothingness, being unconscious. This concept is so strange that we create concepts such as heaven and hell, samsara, nirvana...

[Mtmonaghan]

We are the only creature that interprets itself, that is intends itself. Most of us take up a cultural social norm as an possibility to be towards, and even chat to ourselves in the manner that ONE would do so. To really be a myself you need to gain access to the truth of the self that is hidden by the oneself, that is to be authentic. Feel your self as thrown from YOUR past, don’t try and get before it with the help of some utube BS. Be along side others and things in a true manner, don’t just say what the conversational situation demands. You are always being possible, you are never actual, you are always choosing to being a possibility of your self. So make sure the one doing the choosing is YOU. If you do this it will make you anxious but you will be choosing from a position of TRUTH.

[filmpjeskijkenFijn]

i thought that non-relational was about that death is a thing that you can only face on your own. you are confronted with death in the other, but never with your own. your own possiblity of not existing is something you can only face on your own

[Over-Boy]

Someday, I'm going to read Being and Time in graveyards.

[ironuckles]

Heidgger would say your desire for technology to make you live forever is a falling into techne instead of being authentic dasein.

[Ol-T]

I’m a Heideggerian philosophy student, spent about ten years reading him. 8 months just ok Being and Time. I think you generally have the idea with Heidegger but learning to live in his language is a big part of it. So when he attacks Descartes, it’s like you said, we put an artificial framework over being. So taking Heidegger out of his language is great for simplifying it, but simplifying it is removing its strength.

The biggest area that gave me pause, was on insuperability. I think you’re right, we cannot get past death. But I took it in more of epistemological and caring sense. There will be no cares beyond this, no knowledge, nothing, not even blackness. All that is you will never get beyond that looming threat. Like death waiting for Ananzi the spider to come down.

[floccinaucinihilipilificat]

I know nothing about philosophy, but I think you explained it in a way that I feel like I have some grasp of what he's talking about. Great video :)

[anhumblemessengerofthelawo]

_I resent it when people claim that Heidegger is difficult and complex. That he's at all hard to understand. This man has the reverse effect for me; it feels like I'm being walked backwards in time to the revealing itself. I guess you either get it or you don't._

_same thing with Heraclitus_

_oh, listening to your video now, I see you corrected yourself for this assertion with great piety. No worries. But I think it's bad scholarly protocol for an advanced teacher to tell his students how difficult of a time they're going to have with the text! Unless it's Nietchze, bc it's inherently not understandable. Jk._

_your video goes beyond entertainment and reaches into the green ray, love vibration. Your video is art. Heidegger has a way of opening us up._

_I've been studying the Kabalah (tree of life) lately and juxtaposing Heidegger's thoughts on phrenasis and techne. Opening some interesting albiet primordial connections_

_badass! LMAO. we should be friends._

_Adonai_

[justaman]

I really enjoy talking and listening to others discuss death. Thanks. Cheers.

[demit]

except death doesn't mean "death" for heidegger, he means it as a projectless projection into the world, where entities don't influence dasein one way or another, and things don't have a prospective point to them. Death=/=demise, where you croak and kick the bucket. In fact, anxiety actually comes the fear of demise, because when we demise, we have to face the fact that there is no right way to die as there is no guaranteed right answer to how we should live in the first place. I believe Heidegger calls death the "null basis of a nullity", that is, when we see ourselves as the nothingness that it is, and the world as the nothingness that it is.

[tonycash]

What's a bit depressing though is the whole thing is basically pointless, two eternal bookends of "Nothing" , as if, none of this actually exist. Unless there is something beyond? One day we all find out.

[jakjohnson]

Do you ever get into metaphysics? Read any Alan Watts?

[lulka]

Great video but I have a couple problems with your summarization of Heidegger's Thinking about Death.

Heidegger would be against the impression that you must reflect upon yourself in order to live more authentically. He would have claimed that reflecting is counterintuitive to living an authentic life. Oneself must simply do and be to live authentically.

Death is not an end, and it is inauthentic to look at it as such. It's not like a goal that you get to or achieve so, we cannot look at it in such a way unless we specify it as living inauthentically.

[hanskung]

Wait! How do you know we "disappear into the nothing?"

[alexanderdavis]

6:29 *immortality, lol. We understand, though.