Georgetown University LogoGeorgetown University Library LogoDigitalGeorgetown Home
    • Login
    View Item 
    •   DigitalGeorgetown Home
    • Georgetown University Institutional Repository
    • Georgetown College
    • Department of Philosophy
    • Graduate Theses and Dissertations - Philosophy
    • View Item
    •   DigitalGeorgetown Home
    • Georgetown University Institutional Repository
    • Georgetown College
    • Department of Philosophy
    • Graduate Theses and Dissertations - Philosophy
    • View Item
    JavaScript is disabled for your browser. Some features of this site may not work without it.

    Heidegger's Investigation of Death: Human Finitude and the Final End

    Restricted Access
    View/Open
    View/Open: Magid_georgetown_0076D_13001.pdf (1.1MB)

    Creator
    Magid, Oren Michael
    Advisor
    Blattner, William D.
    Abstract
    In this dissertation, I put forward a novel interpretation of Heidegger's investigation of death in Being and Time before arguing that death serves to ground the intelligibility of human existence. I show that in situating Heidegger's use of `death' with respect to what interpreters identify as its ordinary sense - passing away - they fail to distinguish between two ordinary senses of `death.' `Death' ordinarily refers to either passing away or the non-existence that follows. I argue that the latter, existentially understood, is what Heidegger means by `death.' This non-existence is not a lack or empty nothingness, but an understanding of oneself and the full span of one's existence as having passed. On my interpretation, Heidegger's claim that we are always `being towards death' means that, prior to passing away, we always make sense of ourselves and our existence on the basis of a glimpse ahead to when we will have been born, have existed, and have passed away - when we will be dead. I argue that such glimpses ahead include and integrate the whole of one's existence, grounding and unifying all more particular, determinate self-understandings, which themselves serve to ground the intelligibility of everyday existence. I then argue that for Heidegger, Dasein's `finitude' labels the way it makes sense of itself and the world from the possibility of death as the final end of its disclosive being-in-the-world. Thus, Heidegger's investigation of death manifests neither a morbid concern with life's end, nor a merely arbitrary connection to what we ordinarily mean by `death.' Instead, Heidegger dialectically distinguishes between ordinary senses of `death,' offers us an existential way of understanding one of these ordinary senses, and shows how death, so understood, grounds and unifies the intelligibility of existence.
    Description
    Ph.D.
    Permanent Link
    http://hdl.handle.net/10822/760916
    Date Published
    2015
    Subject
    Authenticity; Being and Time; Death; Finitude; Heidegger; Inauthenticity; Philosophy; Philosophy;
    Type
    thesis
    Embargo Lift Date
    2017-05-02
    Collections
    • Graduate Theses and Dissertations - Philosophy
    Metadata
    Show full item record

    Related items

    Showing items related by title, author, creator and subject.

    • Thumbnail

      Protection of Human Subjects; Informed Consent; Standards for Institutional Review Boards for Clinical Investigation. Final Rule 

      Unknown creator (United States. Food and Drug Administration, 1991-06-18)
    • Thumbnail

      The Final Trip: Five Authors Explore What Happens to the Body After the Physician Pronounces Death Review of the Undertaking: Life Studies From the Dismal Trade, by Thomas Lynch; Death to Dust: What Happens to Dead Bodies, by Kenneth Iserson; Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers, by Mary Roach; the Troubled Dream of Life: Living With Mortality, by Daniel Callahan; First Cut: A Season in the Human Anatomy Lab, by Albert Howard Carter III 

      Meyer, Charles R. (2004-01)
    • Thumbnail

      Recollections of Death: A Medical Investigation 

      Sabom, Michael B. (1982)
    Related Items in Google Scholar

    Georgetown University Seal
    ©2009 - 2018 Georgetown University Library
    37th & O Streets NW
    Washington DC 20057-1174
    202.687.7385
    digitalscholarship@georgetown.edu
     

     

    Browse

    All of DigitalGeorgetownCommunities & CollectionsCreatorsTitlesBy Creation DateThis CollectionCreatorsTitlesBy Creation Date

    My Account

    Login

    Statistics

    View Usage Statistics

    Georgetown University Seal
    ©2009 - 2018 Georgetown University Library
    37th & O Streets NW
    Washington DC 20057-1174
    202.687.7385
    digitalscholarship@georgetown.edu