Week 9 -- Heidegger con't

Death being uncertain and certain

Based on the fact that we don’t spend every waking moment thinking about death, it does make us more sane – but it also means that death is off to the side. Despite the fact that we know death is certain, when we look at ourselves and the people we surround ourselves with, we don’t always look and say “oh, that person will die”. It’s an interesting conundrum.

Death being indefinite

This serves more or less as a derivative of the previous statement. Death is indefinite because we don’t see death as in “tomorrow”, we see death as “somewhere in the future”, where the “future” continues to go farther and farther ahead. The reality is that death isn’t moving away; its getting closer.

Death as an individual event

This is an interesting concept; although many different people are effected by a person’s death, only that one person has to face death in the end (at least, for that point). So I guess in a way it depends on which event your speaking of – the event of morning (which is everyone but the individual) and the event of dying (which is the individual).

Living life to full value by expecting death

While I think there is some value in living life like you could die tomorrow, I don’t think living that way constantly would do you much good. Expecting death would create a buildup of anxiety that would lower your performance overall. I believe, in this case, just a little bit of acknowledgement of death would go the longest way.

Courage to expect Death

Once again, a derivative of the previous question. Courage is required to expect death, even if it is the recommended dose I mentioned previously. But I also believe that it’s a courage that everyone can obtain.

Death generating authenticity

I’ve actually considered this previously, mostly throughout high school. I came to the conclusion at that time that yes, death does genuinely, on average, takes someone out of an inauthentic state to an authentic one, if only for some time. I believe both the “neighbors” of the death experience the authenticity, though only temporarily, while the actual individual dying will always experience full authenticity near death.

Why are there things rather than nothing?

Why are there things rather than nothing? While I do believe there’s an answer to this question, I don’t think we’re even close to solving it yet – there’s still many things we need to understand about our universe first before we can even get a good hypothesis out of this. So, for now, I think this question is something we don’t really need to worry about, but I do agree that it is the fundamental question of our existence.

Why do we feel like we “need” to do things?

For a good reason – while this might all be a simulation, and for nothing in the end, this still serves as reality as we are aware of, and thus we must treat this as the true reality in order to hedge against other possibilities.