Martin Heidegger’s mortal ontology

Abstract

This paper aims to discuss some of the ways in which the heideggerian concept of “being towards death” is decisive for the task of the fundamental ontology as proposed by Heidegger in Being and Time. From the assumption that time is the horizon of the understanding of Being in general, the original mode of donation of being must be temporally understood. Insofar as the temporality of Dasein is first revealed through the analysis of being towards death as its ownmost possibility, it should not be enough to clarify the structures of existence in the form of a conceptual structure of time; the mode of donation of Being should be brought about in death. The task of the fundamental ontology, i. e., the question of how we can in general know, cannot be resolved anymore in the relationship between the finite being and the infinite transcendent, nor as infinite manifestation of will, though it should be resolved from the most radical finitude.