Existence, Death and the World at the Juncture of Being and Time. On F. Dastur’s Death. An Essay on Finitude

Abstract

Based on the aforementioned work by F. Dastur, we review the approach to mortality-finitude present in Being and Time. There, the finitude of existence connects with the ontological structure of “being-in-the-world”, by virtue of which both our behaviours and their correlative phenomena are inscribed in a limited horizon of possibilities, that is, factually open and susceptible to revocation. However, the destitution-institution of this horizon ends up being referred to a self-referential activity of the human subject: the most “authentic” moment of existence, in which Dasein, anticipating its own death, would abstain from the world and the latter would be nihilised. In our opinion, this approach deserves to be corrected from the ontology of Ereignis developed by the “second” Heidegger, where it is understood that human beings can participate in the emergence (or collapse) of an epoch of being without constituting the centre or the sole factor of this event. From this perspective, the ontological relevance of the theme of death lies not so much in the finitude of the individual as in the finitude of the world.