Episode #102 - Transcript

Hello, everyone. I’m Stephen West. This is Philosophize This!

Today’s episode is part three in a series on Heidegger. I hope you love the show today.

So, the last couple episodes have been setting the stage for this one. Descartes, who’s by no means the only guy responsible for this, but in the sense that he’s the godfather of philosophy proper, in the sense that so many subsequent thinkers commented on his work and responses to his work, in the sense, Heidegger thinks, that he essentially just took a medieval, dualistic way of looking at being, threw a little pizzaz on it, added some sprinkles, and called it “Cartesian subjectivity,” in that sense, Descartes is sort of the poster boy for this subject/object way of looking at the world and all the assumptions about how to look at things in the world that come along with it. He took things off the rails, Heidegger thinks. And it eventually led to all kinds of different outcomes from thinking about ourselves as agents fundamentally separate from being, from treating these entities within nature as merely resources at our disposal as human beings.

But one of the most important assumptions, an assumption that may not seem very sinister on the surface, is the assumption that this realm that we all seemingly navigate is primarily just something to be known. The world is something to be known. Our job is to look at the world, examine it, study it, and arrive at knowledge about it. You see this way of thinking all throughout the history of science. You see the history of philosophy filled to the brim with these elaborate analytical systems produced by philosopher after philosopher trying to get to the foundation of things like what grounds knowledge, what makes knowledge possible; how do we use the faculties of our human minds to get to this knowledge about things in the world?

And the cool thing about Heidegger is that he doesn’t have a problem with this whole process that people are entranced by that they’d call arriving at knowledge about being. He certainly thinks this is one type of way that you can look at a single piece of being. But he always returns to the question, is this the totality of what being is? Do these facts that we’re arriving at answer the question “What is being?”

Well, what is being, Heidegger? Sure are throwing that question around a lot. And, unfortunately, we can’t really science away this question quite yet. I mean, you don’t look through the Hubble telescope deep into space and see some Being thing out there that we can study, right? So, the question becomes, how do we study being?

Well, Heidegger thinks, because there’s no Being that we can look at out there, you don’t study Being with a capital B; you study beings. And, again, the best way to do that is not to come at it from an outsider’s perspective, asking a question like, “What is a human being?” The better way is to ask the question from a phenomenological perspective, a question that’s more like, “What is it like to be a human being?”

Well, to begin to answer that question, Heidegger would want us to look at what is unique about our situation as human beings. What is it about the being of a Dasein that distinguishes it from all the other types of beings out there like rocks or trees or anything else? Well, here’s the answer. There are two primary features of a Dasein that distinguish it from other beings, and the beautiful thing is that these two things do this whether that Dasein’s living in 2017 or 1492 or 10,000 BC.

Here it is. A Dasein, Heidegger says, is a being that, one, takes its own being as an issue or takes a particular stance on its being. In other words, a Dasein is fundamentally an ontological being, the type of being that asks questions about its own existence and then all the other questions that sort of blossom out of that pursuit. That’s one. And two is that to be a Dasein is to be a being constantly engaged in tasks or activities that we care about.

Now, we’re going to unpack this further. Let’s just talk for a second about this concept of being constantly engaged. You know, just like Husserl and many others talk about consciousness and they say that there’s no such thing as some neutral, disinterested consciousness floating around out there, that consciousness is always what they call actional and referential, or that consciousness is always doing something and pointing towards something. For example, throughout the years, philosophers have oftentimes looked at consciousness like it’s this empty container that we sort of fill up with perceptions. You know, the theory being that when you’re in a room and you engage in the act of analyzing things in the room around you, your senses pick up information and sort of populate this otherwise empty container called “consciousness.”

But these phenomenologists realize something when they start to take a closer look at consciousness. They realize that consciousness doesn’t seem to be like some empty container that we fill up with perceptions. It seems to be something that we’re engaged in. That, when you’re engaged in that act of analyzing things in the room around you, your consciousness is always actional -- meaning it’s doing something; in this case, analyzing -- and it’s always referential or pointing towards something -- in this case, the things in the room.

Well, obviously Heidegger doesn’t believe in this notion of consciousness, but here’s him saying in a similar sort of way that there’s no such thing as some neutral, disinterested Dasein out there. There’s no human being that’s just completely devoid of intentionality, an empty container backlit at a museum somewhere for scientists to study what it is to be a human being. No, to be a Dasein is to always be doing something and pointing towards something, more specifically, to be a being that is constantly engaged in tasks or activities that we care about.

This relates back to that notion that the world to human beings is not, primarily, just something to be known. Heidegger uses the example of a hammer. You know, when we look at a hammer, is our initial experience of that hammer to analyze it and break it down into what elements it’s made of and how much it weighs and what color it is? No. As human beings, our base-level experience with a hammer is to look at it as equipment to be able to carry out certain tasks. It’s not until, he says, the hammer breaks that we even start to think about it in terms of it being a separate thing that we can arrive about knowledge about. In other words, we weren’t able to engage in the process of knowing things about that hammer if we weren’t already more fundamentally being in what it’s like to be a human being -- to be engaged in tasks.

Now, if we accept this premise, if we accept the premise that a Dasein is fundamentally an ontological being that is constantly engaged in tasks that it cares about, then what explains the vast chasm of behavioral differences between somebody born in 10,000 BC, literally sharpening their teeth with rocks, and somebody born in 2017, sharpening the contrast on their pictures on Facebook? What explains it? After all, we’re both ontological beings. We’re both beings constantly engaged in the world.

Turns out, it comes down to the last part: ontological beings constantly engaged in tasks that we care about. The things we care about and the various things that dictate the things we choose to care about, many of which are entirely out of our control -- this overall concept of care becomes a central focus in Heidegger’s philosophy. And the way he breaks down what a Dasein ultimately chooses to care about is commonly explained in terms of three major factors; the group of which is sometimes called the “care structure.”

What a Dasein ultimately chooses to care about comes down to three things: its facticity, its fallenness, and its existentiality. Now, understand that when Heidegger uses the word “care,” he’s not talking about care in the sense of, you know, you care about your newborn baby or you care for your grandma Beatrice when she gets the chicken pox. No, when you love something, you care about it; when you hate something, you care about it. When you’re envious of something, you care about it. The scope of what Heidegger means by “care” is much wider than the way we might conventionally use the word.

And, as we discuss each of these three major things that structure what it is a Dasein cares about, try to think about how this applies to you. Try to think about how your individual facticity, fallenness, and existentiality shade what it is that you care about.

So, the first one is Dasein’s facticity. Heidegger would say, look, it’s not like before you were born you found yourself on some cosmic game show where you got to pick when and where you were born, who your parents were, how tall you were. No, what happened was, one day you just kind of found yourself thrown into existence, thrown into a particular historical context, a particular cultural context, a particular socioeconomic class, a particular gender. None of these are things that you explicitly chose, but all of these things drastically influence the tasks you care about enough to be constantly engaged in.

This collection of things about your individual being that you had no control over whoever you are, you know, the fact you were born in 1975, the fact you have a giant nose -- it scares small children -- the fact that your mom and dad secretly hate each other, and you grew up in a loveless home -- whatever it is that you are, these facts and many others like them individual to you make up the facticity of your existence. And, again, this facticity strongly influences what things you decide to care about.

For example, for a Dasein living in 10,000 BC, just based on the facticity of that Dasein’s being, there will never be a point in that Dasein’s life where it cares about, you know, going down to the gym, training for two years, flying to Nepal, climbing to the top of Mount Everest, and then taking pictures about how awesome its life is. Now, in the same way, for you, just based on the facticity of your being, there’s never going to be a point in your life where you care about going out into the woods, covering yourself in mud with nothing but a spear, and taking out a predatory buffalo. You know, just playing the odds.

But the point is, Heidegger would say that oftentimes the tasks we decide to be constantly engaged in and care about have very little to do with us; they’re sort of decided for us by the particular facticity that we were born into.

So, the first one’s facticity. The second one is fallenness. Fallenness is one of these concepts where, depending on how you’re interpreting Heidegger, it can be perfectly clear exactly what Heidegger’s talking about, or fallenness can start to take on this sort of mystical feel where you generally get the points he’s making about it, but it always feels like there’s some other -- some more spiritual layer to it. And you don’t ever really feel like you’re fully grasping the entirety of what Heidegger’s getting at. At least that’s how it’s always been for me. And, in the commentary I’ve read, I’ve never seen anyone articulate that side of it in any sort of clear way. But, again, this show isn’t the place to lay out every possible interpretation of Heidegger, so I’ll go on with the more common explanation of fallenness.

You know, because a fundamental aspect of Dasein is to be engaged in tasks -- we’re always being towards something -- and because there’s no formal powwow where you, your family, your friends all sit around a fire discussing exactly what tasks you’re going to engage in down to the tiniest minutiae -- as Daseins, as human beings, we sort of fall into tasks by default. Now, where do we get this default set of tasks to be engaged in? Well, from other people around us who tell us how we should be behaving.

You know, there’s that quote that you see every now and then; it goes something like, “Get a job. Go to work. Get married. Send your kids to school. Follow fashion. Walk on the pavement. Save for old age. Obey the law. Now, repeat after me: I am free. I am free.” Heidegger thinks there’s so many things about our modern, technology-focused, consumer-driven societies that make it easy for us to just fall into a set of tasks predetermined by how other people tell us to behave, to become not one’s own self as a Dasein but a they-self or das Man as he calls it.

He’s critical of this very modern idea of people being looked at -- of human beings being looked at as primarily just consumers, consumers of nature. He’s critical of this strange virtue that we seem to have of just living your life out, consuming more and more stuff all around you. He writes in one place, “The circularity of consumption for the sake of consumption is the sole procedure which distinctively characterizes the history of a world which has become an unworld,” and that this whole process of consuming for consumption’s sake is sort of being bankrolled by nature as we talked about last time.

He writes elsewhere, “Nature becomes a gigantic gasoline station, an energy source for modern technology and industry.” And what he’s saying is, given the particular facticity that we’re all born into, it’s really easy to just fall into this role of being a modern, technologically minded consumer waiting around for the next thing to consume, seeing yourself as separate from the world, separate from nature.

This whole way of being, by the way, propagated by what Heidegger sees as the most elaborate and powerful propaganda machine in the history of the world, that magic box sitting in your front room or that magic screen in your hand that tells you all the stuff you need to be consuming, all the life choices you need to be making, and all the tasks you need to be engaged in as a Dasein.

He writes about it almost explicitly as being a form of slavery. He says, “Hourly and daily they are chained to radio and television. All that with which modern techniques of communication stimulate, assail, and drive man -- all that is already much closer to man today than his fields around his farmstead, closer than the sky over the earth, closer than the change from night to day, closer than the conventions and customs of his village, than the tradition of his native world.”

Keep in mind, Heidegger’s not writing an ethical doctrine when he’s talking about this idea of fallenness. He’s just talking about one part of the nature of what it is to be a Dasein. Fallenness is an important part of being a Dasein. And, while at first we may not like to admit all the ways that we’re behaving simply because somebody else told us to behave that way, but make no mistake, we’re all doing it at varying levels. We’ve all, in a sense fallen into tasks as Daseins. It’s part of our nature.

So, the first thing that has an effect on the tasks we decide to care about was our facticity; the second thing was our fallenness. And the last piece of this care structure is our existentiality. Now, another way of putting all that I just said there is to say that the first thing that has an effect is the reality that you were thrown into; the second thing is what other Daseins are already doing around you. And the last thing are the possibilities that you have at your disposal.

Existentiality -- the reality of being a Dasein is to be a being that has possibilities. What Heidegger’s saying is, look, you’re a Dasein, okay? You are a particular kind of being that has possibilities. You’re not a rock. You’re not a tree. You know, a rock can’t just decide one day it’s going to pack up its suitcases and now it wants to live at the Grand Canyon because it’s like Mecca for rocks. No, a rock is a particular type of being, and you as a Dasein are also a particular type of being, a type of being that has, by its very nature, possibilities.

Now, when you consider these three parts of the care structure -- facticity, fallenness, and existentiality -- when you arrive at this place of realizing how they drastically affect the way you’re going to be behaving, Heidegger thinks at this point you’re left with a choice. It’s a choice of living in a certain way on a giant spectrum between what he calls “authenticity” on one end and “inauthenticity” on the other.

Now, the sort of quintessential example of an inauthentic person is someone who really only embodies the first two parts of this care structure, their facticity and fallenness. They’re thrown into existence in a particular time and place, and they fall into tasks that other people around them to do, never really considering the possibilities at their disposal about other ways to live their life, never considering the whole branch of existentiality.

Now, as you can imagine, the antithesis to that, living authentically, is to radically consider the possibilities you have and to live in a way that brings about what he calls “Dasein’s own potentiality,” to be deeply engaged in asking these ontological questions about being, to examine and understand your own facticity including the cultural and historical context that you were born into, to be introspective and to realize the tasks that you’ve fallen into simply because somebody else told you to do it. To be truly authentic is to fully embody the statement “being one’s own” or living for yourself.

Now, as you can imagine, this is far from a dichotomy. It’s not like you’re either a mindless drone going on with whatever people tell you to do or, “Oh! I don’t just go along with what everybody else says to do. I must be authentic!” No, we all exist on different points along this spectrum of authenticity. And even if you’re someone who’s self-aware enough to have corrected a few things along the way -- you realize that they were just the way other people told you to act -- what most people do, by and large, is they get to a point in their life where they feel like they’re living authentically enough, and then they just sort of stop asking these ontological questions.

They stop trying to arrive at a deeper understanding of the culture and time period they were born into. They stop actively examining their behavior, trying to identify the things that they’re doing just because someone told them to do it at one point. What happens is, in practice what most of us end up doing, we arrive at these sort of rest stops on this giant road trip of life, and we end up living out the rest of our lives largely inauthentically but telling ourselves a story: “Oh, well, I’m more authentic than that person over there, so…”

And the interesting thing to think about there is that this too is part of what it is to be a Dasein. Again, Heidegger’s not writing an ethical doctrine here. He’s talking about the nature of what it is to be us. He never says that living authentically is better than living inauthentically. He’s just sort of laying it out. Though, I mean, you get the sense when you read it that to live inauthentically is to essentially leave out the entire existentiality part of that care structure. You get the sense that when you’re living at one of these authenticity rest stops along the highway that you’re essentially missing out on a third of what it is to be a Dasein.

Anyway, to be truly authentic -- to truly be one’s own, to live for oneself -- it’s a lifestyle. It’s all in. You don’t dabble in total authenticity. And Heidegger says what happens when you start living this sort of lifestyle of authenticity, certain things start to happen. Because when you’re truly engaged considering possibilities, asking these ontological questions, if you’re a Dasein like we are immersed in this modern culture, what inevitably starts to happen is you start to notice all the symptoms of our sickness, all the symptoms of us being these modern Daseins immersed in a world that’s 2,000 years sick and alienated from being.

Lots of symptoms Heidegger points out. For one, you start to see scientific inquiry -- you know, measuring and weighing and examining things -- as more like curiosity than it is actually understanding things. You see it as curiosity versus understanding. You start to hear the symptomatic way that people commonly talk to each other in today’s world.

“Oh, what’d you do yesterday?” “Oh, well, I, uh, you know, I took Timmy down to the pool. We got in the water. And, you know what, would you believe it? There was a flip flop floating in the water. I mean, who is this person that left their flip flop? Is there a person walking around the world right now with one flip flop on just going on about their life? Actually, that reminds me, the other day I was at the grocery store, and I had this coupon for baked beans. And, I’m telling you, this machine was just not taking this coupon today. Not today!”

This is not a long-winded joke, by the way, this is actually how a lot of people talk to each other. And Heidegger thinks that when you live authentically you start to see this sort of conversation as more idle chatter than actual speech: idle chatter versus actual speech the same way you see science as more curiosity than understanding.

Now, tons of examples of these symptoms of our modern sickness of being. Probably the most famous one is the distinction he makes between thinking and calculating. You know, for example, in this modern world, you may be an app developer. And you may go to work day after day, making that app, programming, planning, designing, troubleshooting. And you may use your brain all day long, and people may deeply admire how you use your brain all day long. You may do all that and you may fancy yourself a thinker. You may even say that you think about stuff for a living. But Heidegger would say, in actuality, you’re not really thinking there; you’re doing something different. You’re sort of calculating things.

Now, again, Heidegger thinks, this calculative type of thinking is a direct result of modern society and how disconnected we are from being. And as harmless as it may seem on the surface, he thinks this type of thinking could eventually lead to a place where, he says, “the approaching tide of technological revolution in the atomic age could so captivate, bewitch, dazzle, and beguile man that calculative thinking may someday become accepted and practiced as the only way of thinking.”

So, when you live this truly authentic lifestyle and you pull yourself out of this process of sitting at a rest stop, being authentic enough, just engaging in one task after another, to Heidegger, you start to see the modern world for what it actually is, a world that is thousands of years disconnected, almost hopelessly disconnected from being. This is why Heidegger uses so many Greek words throughout his philosophy. He’s returning to these ancient languages that were used to describe aspects of being before we were so disconnected from being. So, when he looks at the Greek word for technology, techne, and he sees that it means “revealing” -- I mean, if I came to your house and you asked me what technology was, and I looked you dead in the eyes and I was like, “Technology is revealing,” you’d look at me like I was crazy. At the very least you’d be looking at me like I was an insecure person that’s trying to sound overly deep.

Heidegger would say that the reason I sound so crazy there is because of how alienated we are from technology as an aspect of being. How convenient, he would say, that when we search for the essence of technology like we did last episode, we realize that technology is the art of revealing. In other words, by studying these ancient languages, Heidegger thinks that we can gain an insight into the true essences of various aspects of being.

So, living authentically. Let’s go back for a second to the road-trip example. Some people never even leave the house on this road trip of authenticity. Most of us find ourselves at various rest stops along the way, satisfied with how authentic we are. And the further you travel down this road -- the more work you put into being authentic -- makes sense, the fewer and fewer people that you’re going to see camped out at these rest stops.

Well, that’s a bit of a problem for me, Heidegger. Where is all of this going? Because as far as I can tell, I’m going to keep putting in the work; I’m going to keep heading further and further down this road of authenticity until eventually one day I’m going to find myself at a rest stop, and nobody’s going to be around me. In fact, nobody’s going to be around me for 100 miles. In other words, what if I continually work on myself and I’m engaged in these ontological questions -- I’m listening to that voice inside of me that tells me I can be something better. I’m acting on its advice. I’m learning about my facticity and fallenness. -- what if I do all that, and then one day I look around me, and I feel alone?

I put in the work, and now I just see most people as these willfully inauthentic Daseins, passively going along with a culture and a historical context that, now that I understand it, really is just arbitrary. They’re engaging in rituals and behaviors that they don’t really understand. And they aren’t bothered by the fact that they don’t understand them. Is this really the life that I want, Heidegger, to look around and feel alienated from everyone? Why not just camp out at one of these rest stops with people that I like and call it a life?

Now, I’m sure there’s a lot of people out there where maybe you don’t feel completely alone in the world, but you can certainly relate to this sentiment, right? Because just being the kind of person that you are, being the kind of person that seeks out new information and tries to think as clearly and distinctly as you can, there’s probably already moments that you have where the average person weighs in on their thoughts on a particular matter, and it’s some variation of “It is what it is,” or they’re parroting some talking point they heard on TV. And it's not crazy to think, if that’s the majority of people, you might start to feel a little bit alone.

Well, imagine this taken to the absolute extreme. We can look at this exact same situation in a Nietzschean way. Nietzsche -- huge influence on Heidegger. And, if you want the full explanation, go back and listen to the episode on Thus Spoke Zarathustra. But I feel like most of you will know what I’m talking about when I reference his different stages of development between the camel, the lion, and the child. We’re all born camels. Most people die camels: beasts of burden told where to go. Loaded on our backs are all the cultural expectations of how we should be behaving. Then at some point, hopefully, we transform into the lion. We scream out that great existential “No!” We say no to these ways of behavior, realize them for what they are: the way that everybody else does things, nothing more, nothing less.

Our goal eventually is to slay the dragon Thou Shalt, where written on every scale of the dragon is some way that you must be behaving. And after slaying that dragon, our goal is to eventually transform into the child, or a state of being where we can create our own values, create our own meaning, pick and choose which of these cultural norms we want to go along with. The point being that now we choose how to behave; it wasn’t something loaded onto our backs from birth.

And, while Nietzsche would no doubt have solutions here, you can at least imagine going through this entire transformation and arriving at the end of it feeling kind of alienated from most people. After all, most people are born camels and die camels, to Nietzsche. Once you see them for the passive beasts of burden that they are, mindlessly going along with an arbitrary culture, is it really enough to tell yourself for the rest of your life that, you know, “I’m just so awesome and so much more transformed than these other people. I can’t help but be fulfilled with my existence.”

Well, Heidegger has a solution to this feeling of alienation. Once you arrive at a place of true authenticity, once you ask the ontological questions and understand the facticity we’re born into and the fallenness all around you, now it’s time to go back. Now it’s time to realize that a fundamental aspect of what it is to be a Dasein, remember, is to be born in a particular facticity -- more specifically, a historicity, as he calls it -- a historical context, a cultural context with rituals and traditions. This is part of what it is to be a Dasein. Our job at this point is to re-immerse ourselves within our particular culture or set of traditions, embracing that facticity, enhancing the whole process by looking at it through this authentic perspective that we’ve developed. If you live in ancient Athens, that means to embrace the legal system and become an olive farmer. If you live in 1930s Germany, it’s to become a Nazi, which is exactly what Heidegger did.

You know, there’s some people out there that think that Heidegger’s whole Nazi life should have been an entire episode in this series -- what he did to Husserl, what he did to other public intellectuals. I don’t know. To me it’s always seemed like kind of a fallacy. To me the ideas either have merit or they don’t. I don’t really care much about the mouthpiece that they came out of. But I understand the other side too. The guy was a Nazi. It’s understandable.

But, anyway, I want to close out the episode today with one of the most famous ideas from Heidegger’s philosophy. It’s a way of looking at your life that naturally arises out of the process of living authentically. It’s the idea of being-unto-death. So, again, a fundamental aspect of being a Dasein and a crucial aspect of living authentically, to Heidegger, is the process of looking into the future and considering different possibilities that you have. But what’s the ultimate possibility that we all eventually have to deal with? We’re all going to die! You’re going to die; I’m going to die. Really think about it. You, you right there listening to this, you are going to die.

Now, why is it so weird when I say that? Like, if me and you were having a conversation and you told me some thing that you wanted to do five years from now, and I asked you back the question, “Well, what if you die before you ever get to do that?” -- I would be the weird one in that conversation. If I was at a Q and A with a World War II vet and he’s 117 years old sitting on stage, and I get up in front of the room, and I ask, “Hey, when do you think you’re going to die?” I would be the weirdo. I get the pejoratives.

But death is a certainty. If you’re living authentically, you realize that it’s an inevitability. What if I brought up some other inevitability of being a Dasein? We’re all eventually going to be hungry. You’re going to be hungry; I’m going to be hungry. Why is that not weird to consider? Why is one of those so weird to talk about and the other one sounds like the beginning of an Applebee’s commercial?

Heidegger thinks that most people think about death in this disconnected sort of abstract way. They say, “Yeah, I’m going to die one day. Can’t live forever.” But do they ever stop and really consider the weight of that reality? In a strange way, we live our lives as though we’re not going to die. But is that for the best? Heidegger thinks that so many modern cultures do practically everything they can to allow us to never have to think about the fact we’re going to die someday.

You’re not supposed to talk about death. It’s a very personal thing. It’s taboo. When somebody dies, that’s the absolute worst thing that could have ever happened to them. We hide the reality of death. We relegate it to these distant buildings called hospitals and morgues so that nobody ever has to look at it directly in the face. No, we just sort of forget about it, go along with our lives. You go to a party; somebody asks you, “Hey, who are you? Tell me about yourself.” And what do we say? We say things like, “I’m an IT consultant,” or “I’m a psychology student,” or “I’m a wife,” or “I’m a husband.” But are these things really who you are? Or are these just roles that you play within a society?

So, who are you, actually? “Oh, I’m… IT… uh, I’m, I’m a good singer, and I’m, um, I’m quiet. And I’m a handsome man.” But aren’t those just roles that you play within a society too? I mean, considering the fact that when you say someone’s handsome or you say someone’s pretty, all you’re really doing there is comparing them to how handsome or pretty every other member of society has been that you’ve seen so far. So, that’s not you.

Who are you, actually? “Oh, oh, okay. I get it now. Well, I, I have values. I have principles. Who I am is somebody that cares about people. I believe in turning the other cheek. I believe -- yeah!” But, if you took away those values, you’d ostensibly still be someone, right? If you got fired from your IT job, if you got expelled from school, if you got divorced from your wife or your husband, you’d still be someone. So, who are you really underneath all this other stuff? When you truly face death -- most of us only do it when we’re on our death beds -- it’s only in that moment that you think of your life as a whole.

You know, it’s so easy to just get lost in the everyday of just being engaged in task after task that we care about, to think of death as this distant thing that we’ll start thinking about when we’re 80 or something. But truly facing the reality of death, Heidegger thinks, makes us into true individuals. Because when you’re on your deathbed, you’re not laying there thinking to yourself, “Here is the sad demise of an IT consultant, a man who…”

No! In the moment of death, you’re given this new perspective. You instantly have a wholistic view of your life, one that can be subdivided into chapters and themes. In the moment of death, you’re not thinking about yourself in terms of the social roles that you played. You don’t think about some job that you had. For the first time, you’re thinking about who you are underneath it all. Ironically, Heidegger thinks, for the first time you’re actually living for yourself. You’re not spending so much energy trying to get everyone’s approval about who you are or who you were.

Maybe the best way to encapsulate the point here are from words from Heidegger himself. In 1961 in a lecture, somebody raised their hand and they asked Heidegger one thing they could do that would help them on this lifelong, ongoing quest of living with authenticity. And the advice he gave them was to spend more time in graveyards.

Thank you for listening. I'll talk to you next time.