Sartre exposes a circular argument in Heidegger’s individualization of death.
Evidence
One can, in fact, expect a particular death but not death. The sleight of hand introduced by Heidegger is easy enough to detect. He begins by individualizing the death of each one of us, by pointing out to us that it is the death of a person, of an individual, the “only thing which nobody can do for me.” Then this incomparable individuality which he has conferred upon death in terms of the Dasein, he uses to individualize the Dasein itself; it is by projecting itself freely towards its final possibility that the Dasein will attain authentic existence and wrench itself away from everyday banality in order to attain the irreplaceable uniqueness of the person. But there is a circle here. How indeed can one prove that death has this individuality and the power of conferring it? … But is the death which will overtake me my death? In the first place it is perfectly gratuitous to say that “to die is the only thing which nobody can do for me.” Or rather there is here an evident bad faith in the reasoning; if one considers death as the ultimate subjective possibility, the event which concerns only the for-itself, then it is evident that nobody can die for me. But then it follows that none of my possibilities taken from this point of view—which is that of the cogito—whether taken in authentic existence or unauthentic—can be projected by anyone other than me. Nobody can love for me—if we mean by that to make vows which are my vows, to experience the emotions (however commonplace they may be) which are my emotions. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1248
Categorization
- XREF: Core to the Sartre-vs-Heidegger debate that grounds Beauvoir’s own reworking of freedom and authenticity; ties directly to the reader’s stated project of building the systematic backdrop to Beauvoir.
- QUESTION: Worth chasing: is Sartre’s reading of Heidegger’s Sein-zum-Tode actually fair, or a deliberate misreading in service of his own ontology of freedom?