Being-towards-death frames mortality as the source of authentic existence

Evidence

Heidegger had long since pointed out that no one goes forwards forever. In Being and Time, he depicted Dasein as finding authenticity in ‘Being-towards-death’, that is, in affirming mortality and limitation. He also set out to show that Being itself is not to be found on some eternal, changeless plane: it emerges through Time and through history. Thus, both on the cosmic level and in the lives of each one of us, all things are temporal and finite. — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 933

Categorization

• DEFINE: Clarifies the key Heideggerian concept of Being-towards-death as affirmation of finitude rather than dread of it.
• XREF: Connects to the reader’s interest in how existentialist temporality diverges from eternal/Platonic models of Being. — connects to: Perceiving one’s own body as an object converts its lived possibilities into dead-possibilities; Attitudes toward death rest on a more fundamental project of living; A materialized double signals death while an immaterial double sustains the subject — Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, 321 (+12 more)

Broader Connections

• Cultural worldviews structure conscious experience to mask death’s inevitability #corroborates (0.85) — Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg, Tom Pyszczynski, The Worm at the Core, 184
• Mortality reminders uniquely trigger worldview defense unlike other threats #corroborates (0.80) — Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg, Tom Pyszczynski, The Worm at the Core, 91
• Abstract philosophical systems offer only the consolations of death #complicates (0.80) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Ethics of Ambiguity, 148
• Beauty-making functions as a defense against temporality and death #responds-to (0.78) — David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity, 1295
• Identifying with death extends one’s identification with existing social conditions #complicates (0.75) — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 1520
• Birth and death frame the experience of midlife. #qualifies (0.72) — Lynch, Thomas, The undertaking-life studies from the…, 427