One cannot fully live unless one confronts one's own mortality.

This hallmark of
existentialist thought owes much to the works of Martin Heidegger. Heidegger (1
889 1976) was born in Germany's Black Forest region. He held an early interest in
theology and the priesthood, but soon shifted his attention to philosophy. At th
e University of Freiburg he studied under Edmund Husserl, and eventually succeed
ed him as chair of philosophy. Heidegger went on to become a leading exponent of
phenomenological and existential philosophy, which he blends together in his B
eing and Time (1927).
In this monumental work Heidegger addresses issues related to death, exploring t
he human being in his or her temporality. This connection is important. For Heid
egger, the human being cannot achieve a complete or meaningful life, or any kind
of "authentic existence," unless he or she comes to terms with temporality a uniq
uely human awareness that a human being is a finite, historical, and temporal be
ing. The awareness of death is a central beginning for understanding this tempor
ality.
According to Heidegger, the human being must understand that he or she is a "bei
ng toward death" ( Being and Time ). "As soon as man comes to life," he says,
"he is at once old enough to die" (Heidegger 1962, p. 289). Therefore the awaren
ess and acceptance of death is a requirement for authentic existence. Heidegger
refers to the inauthentic self as the "they-self." This is the self that is infl
uenced by the crowd or the "they," rather than by its own unique potentialities.
The they-self sees death as a subject producing "cowardly fear, a sign of insec
urity" (p. 298) and therefore a fit topic to be avoided. Avoidance of death can
be achieved by an evasion technique Heidegger refers to as the "constant tranqui
lization about death." In so doing, the they-self "does not permit us the courag
e for anxiety in the face of death" and promotes instead an "untroubled indiffer
ence" (p. 299) about death.
Death, the they-self argues, is something all human beings will experience one d
ay in the undetermined and, therefore, easily ignored future. People experience
death in the death of others, and draw conclusions about their own deaths. As He
idegger states, this is as if to say, "One of these days one will die too, in th
e end; but right now it has nothing to do with us" (p. 297). But for Heidegger d
eath is not a shared experience at all; rather, it is one's "ownmost" and a "non
-relational" experience. That is, death is something one can only do by oneself,
as each person dies his or her own death.
What is the proper attitude toward one's death? Heidegger rejects the cowardly f
ear proposed by the they-self. The only proper mood, he argues, when one comes "
face-to-face" with the "nothing" that death reveals, is a courageous "anxiety" (
p. 310). This anxiety or dread, as the scholar Michael Gelven points out, is dif
ferent from fear in that fear attaches to some actual object, while anxiety focu
ses on freedom and possibility. Only such a mood, says Heidegger, will bring abo
ut an "impassioned freedom towards death " (p. 311). Heidegger's reflections o
n death, therefore, are not obsessions with morbidity. Nor does he offer a relig
ious hope of life after death. Rather, healthy anxiety about death provides cour
ageous awareness and acceptance of death, and of one's finitude.
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