Perhaps you could quote some highlights. I'm not a subscriber, and I'd prefer to respond to a particular point.

That one dies one's own death seems at least as central. — t0m

I agree absolutely. I also liked Carman's apt description of biological perishing and biographical demise.

I suspect the 'existential wholeness' aspect of death is what is most important, and that the mineness of death you mention receives its importance due to the centrality of this 'wholeness' aspect. Heidegger eventually says something like that it is through anticipatory resoluteness that dasein gains its existentiell wholeness; or that the ontology of death finds its existentiell attestation in anticipatory resoluteness. So regarding dasein's wholeness, which is what he is primarily questioning at this point in the book, and how he introduces the chapter, existential death (anticipation) is but one part it seems... Does this make sense?

I must confess that I haven't figured out what is meant by 'wholeness' in this context. Unless it means that seeing or revealing Dasein as a whole is made possible by anticipatory resoluteness? Is this about how the writing of Being and Time itself became possible? Just a guess.

On the other hand:

In this opening up Dasein can see itself as complete and know that life is there for us to live for ourselves. Dasein emerges from the ‘one’ to its own individual possibility. — timjohnneal

and this

The completeness of Dasein is not a matter of having a complete theory of it. It is the possibility of Dasein itself being 'complete' or 'whole,' that is, of Dasein's ability to be as an entity that 'exists' by taking a stand toward being. — link

https://books.google.com/books?id=7D1BDgAAQBAJ&pg=PT163&lpg=PT163&dq=dasein+wholeness+death&source=bl&ots=5nU3su1o4J&sig=lt0afumPo7AWppF-BSWVe6zPVCQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjvkvT9sIDXAhVHZCYKHSrACh4Q6AEITTAJ#v=onepage&q=dasein%20wholeness%20death&f=false

I can relate to that very much. Yet it seems vague. I think the two ideas are related. I see my completeness by understanding something like basic if not complete theory of Dasein. (All of this is conjecture humbly offered. Heidegger is my favorite right now, but I've only just started studying his own texts as opposed to interpreters.)

That one dies one's own death seems at least as central. The "they" can talk their talk, but I swim that last lap radically and beautifully alone. Death "individualizes Dasein down to itself." It opens up Dasein's absolute groundlessness. We exist against a background of the nothingness from which we emerged and to which we must return. From when to when is the how. The life given to us in its radical specificity is the unique ground of our finite possibilities, finite because we know that they are always already closing down. — t0m

I am still having a hard time with this but I am starting to see what I could not see last night. My problem of this individualisation that emerges from Dasein is whether the latter is an actual completeness or whether there is a pathology to the concept or form itself, that ultimately we do not actually escape the content that underlies this groundlessness (perhaps even epistemically). From a Kantian angle, for instance, all that is left is the form of Good, but what this means is that we reduce our actions into this moral locus that we assume to be universal. Carmen, I think, is spot-on because of the fact that it must be a demise of these possibilities.

This is some good rock'n'roll along the same lines. The lyrics sure as hell aren't B&T, but the "feel" of authenticity and resoluteness is there.

"There ain't no guru who can see through your eyes."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Pttt0WCy9k

No, not working for me. What makes you trust your own eyes?

As opposed to the eyes of others? That's a good can of worms. But let's say we don't trust our own eyes. Is this not a trust of our own distrust?

Meanwhile, if the fear of falling into error introduces an element of distrust into science, which without any scruples of that sort goes to work and actually does know, it is not easy to understand why, conversely, a distrust should not be placed in this very distrust, and why we should not take care lest the fear of error is not just the initial error. As a matter of fact, this fear presupposes something, indeed a great deal, as truth... — Hegel

That is a condition we can never escape, hence why I said death is, to a degree, a type of consciousness enabling us to distrust. As Dasein exists in the background of an existential nothingness, angst - the very fear - is the genesis where 'man' without temporality is born and where we presuppose this as 'truth' in what becomes the initial error. All we can do is distrust this trust.

Among my favorite passages on this subject:

"[In Heidegger] the death that approaches ... singles me out, singularizes me, [and] posits my being on its own, delivers me over to the force of life that is singularly my own. It is the shadow of nothingness approaching that gives me the sense of the end, the end of the life that is singularly my own to live, that disconnects me from the general and recurrent fields of tasks that are for others. The dark shadow of death closing in draws the line of demarcation between the possibilities and tasks that are recurrent, walling them off from me as possibilities and tasks that are for-others, and isolating the range of possibilities and tasks that are for-me. The sense of the end that anxiety contains, the sense of ending, is what assigns an end to every move, and to the whole trajectory of my life. lt is what determines
ends, ends that are for-me, and an ending for each of my moves. The irreversible direction that my own death assigns to me is what gives direction and directives to each move that is my own." (Alphonso Lingis, Sensation)

Of course we do modify our views. But we mostly act non-theoretically with the "trust" of know-how. I would also contend that we are always already invested in a "fundamental pose" with respect to what is wrong or right, with a more or less explicit notion of virtue. This "pose" can break down and require modification when confronted by "indigestible" experience or persuasive speech.

Connecting to the OP, I think this pose becomes more authentic as it attains a distance from what one say, one does. That I die alone helps to urge me on toward self-possession. The experts, even the famous intellectuals from whom we learn, can't do our dying for us. Heidegger himself has become part of the 'they' for intellectuals. One understands Heidegger this way. Heidegger himself, along the same lines, is an entity revealed to me in terms of my own future.

For me "authenticity" is about leaning less and less on the "they" as a ground, to reach less and less for external or 'alien' justifications. I aim to speak from the I as opposed to from the we. You may say that this I is born from the we. I agree. But I'm suspicious of attempts to obliterate this emergent individual as something that can be reduced to its origins.

...walling them off from me as possibilities and tasks that are for-others, and isolating the range of possibilities and tasks that are for-me... — StreetlightX

Nice.

Yet it seems vague — t0m

I agree. It does seem vague. I'm no expert either but I think the reason it looks vague to us is that we perhaps don't have a complete understanding of the phenomenon that Heidegger is getting at. Whereas he probably did. At the start of Div 2 he claims that our interpretation of the meaning of being will only be as good as our interpretation of dasein; the latter interpretation is supposed to function as the basis for the former interpretation. His claim is that for any interpretation to be accurate and not arbitrary, the phenomenon to be interpreted needs to be grasped as a whole. He then denies that we have the whole phenomenon (of dasein) in our grasp due to Div 1's focus on everydayness. How can we get the whole phenomenon in our grasp? This question instinctively leads to a discussion of death, which, it turns out, does not constitute dasein's wholeness on its own; this is the same as saying that authenticity is not constituted by death, or our response to it, alone.

I think the kind of wholeness he is grasping for through discussing death, guilt, etc. is the finite temporal unity of past and future in originary temporality. This is super complex and I don't have a sound understanding of originary temporality yet. But this is the path of his phenomenology in Being and Time as I see it. I doubt we can understand what he's getting at with death until we understand what he means by the primordially finite existential future/past of originary temporality. I may be wrong. But this how I'm currently thinking.

I'm no expert either but I think the reason it looks vague to us is that we perhaps don't have a complete understanding of the phenomenon that Heidegger is getting at. Whereas he probably did. — bloodninja

That sounds about right. But I'd leave open the possibility that he was trying to say something that wasn't easy to say. It's also possible that he didn't want to say it explicitly. He was already becoming famous, so possibly he chose his words very carefully. It's my impression that B&T was already revolutionary. But I'm just hypothesizing. I plan to keep reading and thinking.

From The Concept of Time [20 page lecture]

Yet to what extent is time, as authentic, the principle of individuation, i.e., that starting from which Dasein is in specificity? In being futural in running ahead, the Dasein that on average is becomes itself; in running ahead it becomes visible as this one singular uniqueness of its singular fate in the possibility of its singular past. What is properly peculiar about this individuation is that it does not let things get as far as any individuation in the sense of the fantastical emergence of exceptional existences; it strikes down all becoming exceptional. In being together with death everyone is brought into the 'how' that each can be in equal measure; into a possibility with respect to which no one is distinguished; into the 'how' in which all 'what' dissolves into dust. — Heidegger

What is this 'how'? Is it how one "plays" the unique "hand" that one is dealt? Is no one distinguished because we can only be judged in terms of what we can hope to do with our varying live options? The healthy, rich kid with scholarly parents has different possibilities than Maggie, a girl of the streets. Is this 'what' that dissolves into dust some kind of universal 'they'-object? Is becoming exceptional struck down by the richness of every life lived in or as time?

I think I understand the becoming visible of the singular fate, more or less. I've been using the word "groundlessness," but I mean something like the risky venture of all uniqueness that doesn't hide behind some established abstraction or pre-interpretation of Dasein. To live the singular 'how' is perhaps to venture into the uncanny realm of creation even of standards that do not exist yet. The unique shape of one's disastrous and glorious past in all of its absurd detail is the only basis, the basis that was not chosen but can be now. I should say that that's only a plausible reading IMV.

I'm not claiming Levy means the same thing:

...
if you want a revolution
grow a new mind
& do it quietly
if you can

return to your childhood
and kick out the bottom
then become a being
not dependent on words
for seeing
... — D A Levy

From the book The Concept of Time. (Note how they don't capitalize 'being.' I think this is the right move. I shied away from Heidegger to some degree because that capitalized Being looked like hogwash.

Running ahead toward the ultimate possibility reveals the pastness of being-in-the-world, the possible 'no-longer-there'. There is no remaining within the world of concerned engagement. The world loses the chance to determine being-in in terms of what it deals with in its everyday concerns. By itself the world can no longer endow Dasein with being. What provides Dasein with a secure footing as distance and difference from others --who are there in the with-world and as the public realm --dissappears when the world fades into the background. The world recedes, as it were, from the contexts in which it is encountered in terms of its significance and becomes merely present-at-hand.

So being-in is directed to a state in which it finds that 'nothing whatsoever' can affect it, that is, its being before nothing. This nothing, as that which Dasein is faced with, throws Dasein's being back solely onto itself. This ownmost 'in itself' will no longer be 'there' in the world. This 'pastness' which is in each case one's own, pulls Dasein back from its lostness in the public averageness of 'one.''One' can no longer be the 'one.', one can no longer have others replace or choose in lieu of oneself. 'One's' capacity to cover things up distintegrates. Flight into the irresponsibility of nobody is cut off. 'Pastness' reveals the ultimate possiblity that Dasein is handed over to itself, in other words it becomes manifest that, if it wants to be what it is authentically, Dasein must exist of its own accord. — Heidegger

I'm going to be semi-authentic and put this against an un-hip 'fringe' thinker like Stirner. I now that Husserl was aware of him, so even influence is possible. "Edmund Husserl once warned a small audience about the "seducing power" of Der Einzige, but never mentioned it in his writing." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Stirner

I'm by no means trying to reduce Heidegger to Stirner. They are quite different. But both insisted on the human being as a who as opposed to a what. Both made something of nothing.

The unique, however, has no content; it is indeterminacy in itself; only through you does it acquire content and determination. There is no conceptual development of the unique, one cannot build a philosophical system with it as a “principle,” the way one can with being, with thought, with the I. Rather it puts an end to all conceptual development. Anyone who considers it a principle, thinks that he can treat it philosophically or theoretically and inevitably takes useless potshots against it. Being, thought, the I, are only undetermined concepts, which receive their determinateness only through other concepts, i.e., through conceptual development. The unique, on the other hand, is a concept that lacks determination and cannot be made determinate by other concepts or receive a “nearer content”; it is not the “principle of a series of concepts,” but a word or concept that, as word or concept, is not capable of any development. The development of the unique is your self-development and my self-development, an utterly unique development, because your development is not at all my development. Only as a concept, i.e., only as “development,” are they one and the same; on the contrary, your development is just as distinct and unique as mine.

But it is not true, as Stirner’s opponents present it, that in the unique there is only the “lie of what has been called the egoistic world up to now”; no, in its nakedness and its barrenness, in its shameless “candor,” (see Szeliga, p. 34) the nakedness and barrenness of concepts and ideas come to light, the useless pomposity of its opponents is made clear. It becomes obvious that the biggest “phrase” is the one that seems to be the word most full of content. The unique is the frank, undeniable, clear — phrase; it is the keystone of our phrase-world, this world whose “beginning was the word.”

The unique is an expression with which, in all frankness and honesty, one recognizes that he is expressing nothing. Human being, spirit, the true individual, personality, etc. are expressions or attributes that are full to overflowing with content, phrases with the greatest wealth of ideas; compared with these sacred and noble phrases, the unique is the empty, unassuming and completely common phrase. — Stirner

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/max-stirner-stirner-s-critics

(I should stress that I find that political interpretations of Stirner miss what I'd call the point.)

Perhaps you could quote some highlights. I'm not a subscriber, and I'd prefer to respond to a particular point. — t0m

Subscription is free for 30 days. Get the subscription, download the text, cancel it immediately. You'll still be able to use it for 30 days though, so you can download books and other things that you want. There's many books in the documents section.

There's nothing I want you to respond to in particular, I just think it's a different perspective from yours, and you'd find it interesting. It's a 30 page essay, it's a quick read.

The world loses the chance to determine being-in in terms of what it deals with in its everyday concerns. By itself the world can no longer endow Dasein with being. What provides Dasein with a secure footing as distance and difference from others --who are there in the with-world and as the public realm --dissappears when the world fades into the background. The world recedes, as it were, from the contexts in which it is encountered in terms of its significance and becomes merely present-at-hand. — Heidegger

This suggests to my that Dasein found its being in the world. It was alienated from its being, but this alienation is seductive in that it offers a secure footing as "distance and difference" from others. To be against the abyss is have all of this distancing and differing torn away. We are stark naked in the storm, and so, really, are all those expert voices. They can say what they want to the dying man. They'll be around to change their minds in the morning, possibility intact.

Unaccommodated man is no more but such a poor, bare, forked animal as thou art. — King Lear

To bring in a little Stirner here (and I am only speculating or offering a possible interpretation) , the distancing and differencing (from others) is derived from one's projected being in the world of the they, the great stage of fools from beside the abyss. This projected is a crystallization of ego in terms of the day, which is a 'world-historical' ego. Dasein in everydayness is a respectable object with certain duties and privileges, anything but uncanny. Living the death of this world-historical or projected ego opens up the absolute "I" which is never an it and cannot be further specified. That's because it is freedom with a past, or a vivid set of determinate and specific possiblities "over" a determinate and specific null basis or past.

This interpretation of the conscience passes itself off as recognizing the call in the sense of a voice which is 'universally' binding, and which speaks in a way that is 'not just subjective.' Furthermore, the universal conscience becomes exalted to a 'world-conscience,' which still has its phenomenal character of an 'it' and 'nobody', yet which speaks --there in the individual 'subject'- as this indefinite something.

But this public conscience --what else is it but the voice of the "they"? — Heidegger

Also:

What is it that so radically deprives Dasein of any possibility of misunderstanding itself by any sort of alibi and failing to recognize itself if not the forsakenness with which it has been abandoned? — Heidegger

In my translation (M&R), there is only one bold-typed phrase. Is this true in the German? I don't know. But that phrase is freedom towards death.

Anticipation reveals to Dasein its lostness in the they-self, and brings it face to face with the possibility of being itself, primarily unsupported by concernful solicitude, but of being itself, rather, in an impassioned freedom towards death --a freedom with has been released from the Illusions of the 'they', and which is factical, certain of itself, an anxious. — Heidegger

Is this not "dark," subversive?

Compare and contrast?

The unique should only be the last, dying expression (attribute) of you and me, the expression that turns into a view: an expression that is no longer such, that falls silent, that is mute.

The ideal “Man” is realized when the Christian apprehension turns about and becomes the proposition, “I, this unique one, am man.” The conceptual question, “what is man?” — has then changed into the personal question, “who is man?” With “what” the concept was sought for, in order to realize it; with “who” it is no longer any question at all, but the answer is personally on hand at once in the asker: the question answers itself. — Stirner

We wish to repeat temporally the question of what time is. Time is the 'how'. If we inquire into what time is, then one may not cling prematurely to an answer (time is such and such), for this always means a 'what'.

Let us disregard the answer and repeat the question. What happened to the question? It has transformed itself. What is time? became the question: Who is the time? More closely: are we ourselves time? Or closer still: am I my time? In this way I come closest to it, and if I understand the question, it is then taken completely seriously. Such questioning is thus the most appropriate manner of access to and of dealing with time as in each case mine. Then Dasein would be: being questionable. — Heidegger

Hey Tom, sorry I haven't had much time to engage in this discussion. But what do you think Heidegger means by pastness in The Concept of Time?

Running ahead toward the ultimate possibility reveals the pastness of being-in-the-world, the possible 'no-longer-there'. — Heidegger

By 'the possible no-longer-there' I take him to mean no longer 'in' the world. As he says in B&T being-in is largely determined by our moods/disposedness/attunements (or 'state-of-mind' in the M&R translation). The attunement in which one is no longer there in the world, and where the world becomes backgrounded, is angst. Is the past in the sense that he is getting at simply angst?

Try replacing 'pastness' with 'angst' in the below quotations. In my opinion it brings great clarity:

'Pastness' reveals the ultimate possiblity that Dasein is handed over to itself, in other words it becomes manifest that, if it wants to be what it is authentically, Dasein must exist of its own accord. — Heidegger

This ownmost 'in itself' will no longer be 'there' in the world. This 'pastness' which is in each case one's own, pulls Dasein back from its lostness in the public averageness of 'one. — Heidegger

I shied away from Heidegger to some degree because that capitalized Being looked like hogwash. — t0m

I wonder if your present engagement with Heidegger means your opinion of Being has modified.

I find this at the start of an essay of his, Metaphysics as History of Being: (The book is The End of Philosophy, isbn: 0-226-32383-8.)

"'Being' means that beings are, and are not nonexistent.... 'Beings' are considered what is actual.... The Being of beings lies in actuality." He then quickly distinguishes between "actual" and "existing" and "real," and goes on to discuss Being in terms of "whatness" and "thatness." (My example: two, for example is "actual" (defined as efficacious in some sense - all those senses in which two just is efficacious)," but it appears to be confusion over the distinction between terms like actual and real and existing that leads some folks to suppose that there must really be a two somewhere.)

Elsewhere Heidegger discusses the Greek word for truth, aletheia. One translation is: ἀ–λήθεια is "the state of not being hidden; the state of being evident."

Putting these two together, aletheia and Being, I find myself "on the way" to some comfort, if not actual understanding, of Being. I also feel some confidence in that comfort-if-not-understanding in virtue of its seeming simplicity, which quality I think is a touchstone for the understanding of thinking ,that, at first and ante-simplicity, appears more towards the opaque.

On the "Being" versus "being" issue, I think I can clarify a little. I'm not against mysticism, but I like my mysticism to be mysticism and my "labor of the concept" to be the "labor of the concept." By capitalizing the word being in English, a translator IMV encourages a mystical interpretation of this word.

The issue is only further complicated by Wittgenstein's notion that it is not how but that the world is that is "the mystical." I agree. The "brute fact" that there is a there there is mystical, lyrical, eerie. So the word "being" does connect to a "rational" mysticism, especially if one believes as I currently do that we are thrown into (at least epistemic) brute fact as we are thrown into our human cognition itself. Intelligibility itself remains mysterious. But as I currently understand Heidegger, he's trying to do conceptual work. He wants to make intelligibility itself as intelligible as possible. The "originary temporality of Dasein" is a clarification or simplification of this issue, a reduction to simplest terms. I'm still digesting B&T, so that's where I'm at so far. This seems pretty good: http://faculty.georgetown.edu/blattnew/topics/docs/temporality.pdf

I also like Dreyfus. Anyway, I think of an understanding of being as a basic framework for understanding entities or beings in general. These basic frameworks tend to be invisible. Phenomenology can unveil these frameworks to some degree. But we already always have some framework, and this is what makes the attempt to unveil this framework possible. I like dragging McLuhan into this. Beings are the message. The dominant understanding of being is the medium. The medium is more effective and more invisible the more we focus on the message. If philosophy is "really" or most properly ontology, then it aims to unveil the most general medium. An understanding of being is contingent, but it tends to function invisibly as necessary. So philosophy can be conceived as the revelation of the contingency of (apparent) necessity. But maybe this is "anti-philosophy," since a "theological" philosophy arguably operates in the reverse direction. "Time and chance" are reinterpreted as providence. This is the "best of all possible worlds," etc.

*I'm blending my other concerns with an in-progress digesting of B&T. So all of this is humbly offered. Maybe it lays the ground for further conversation.

By 'the possible no-longer-there' I take him to mean no longer 'in' the world. As he says in B&T being-in is largely determined by our moods/disposedness/attunements (or 'state-of-mind' in the M&R translation). The attunement in which one is no longer there in the world, and where the world becomes backgrounded, is angst. Is the past in the sense that he is getting at simply angst? — bloodninja

I was trying to figure out "pastness" also. I think your theory is plausible. Something I recently found illuminating is relevant here, I think. Attunement seems to be on the right track. Blattner seems to think of it in terms of what we are already interested in.
http://faculty.georgetown.edu/blattnew/topics/docs/temporality.pdf

.

I'm not sure why the formatting of the quotes below is off. I tried to fix it. Couldn't. But at least you have some samples of the paper I linked to.

In other words, the possibility of being a musician is futural, not because it is merely
possible, rather than actual. Instead, it is a possibility that can never be actual, a future that can
never be present...Temporalizing does not mean a “succession” [“Nacheinander”] of the ecstases. The future is notlater than beenness, and this is not earlier than the present [Gegenwart]. (Heidegger 1979: 350)In other words, Dasein’s possibilities are not the sorts of items that can be actualized in thepresent. I never can have become a musician, even though I am now pressing ahead into being one. I call this claim the Unattainability Thesis (Blattner 1999). What does it mean to say that I cannot have become a musician? The point is not that
there are conditions on being a musician that I cannot satisfy (say, I have no rhythm). The point
is rather that understanding myself as a musician is not attempting to bring about some possible, future state of myself. The possibility of being a musician is not an end-state at which I aim; it is not something that I “sometime will be” (Heidegger 1979: 325). Being a musician is alwaysfutural with respect to what I am doing now. Of course, one can have attained the social statusof being a musician: the prerogatives, obligations, and expectations that devolve upon a personin virtue of occupying a certain station, role, career, or occupation in life. A social status,
however, is not the same as an existential possibility, what Heidegger calls an ability-to-be
(Seinkönnen). An existential possibility is a manner of self-understanding with which one is
identified in virtue of pressing ahead into it.
— Blattner

This touches on one of my favorite themes (and in fact on Stirner). To be futural is to "incarnate" a role. To be futural is the "how." My future does not approach me "from" the future, sliding at me as I stand in the present. It is the ideal how, the "hero myth," or "the fundamental pose." It is the "statue" of my ideal self that I want to "maintain." I never achieve it. It is a pose that must be continually reaffirmed. Blattner's reading reminds me of Sartre. In order to maintain this pose (true artist, good father, profound philosopher) I have to act and react in the present in a certain way. If Blattner is right, then "future" is a somewhat deceptive or confusing term. But if you read the whole paper, you'll see IMV why is is finally justified. What gives continuity to our lives? As Rorty says, we want to be able to describe our past as a story of progress or ascension. "Personal" time is primordial. It involves the "basic pose" or "ownmost" understanding of existence. Then there's "world time" and "nature time," both of which are derivative in a certain sense from personal time. Or perhaps personal time and world time are equiprimordial, and this is the tension between authentic and inauthentic modes. We "sink" into world-time away from our ownmost pose or mission, but we buoyantly return to personal time.

Just as the “ahead” in “being-ahead-of-itself” describes a future that can never come to be
present, so Heidegger argues that the “already” in “being-already in a world” picks out a past
that never was present. Dasein’s originary past is, recall, its attunements, the way things already
matter to it. I am always already “thrown” into the world and into my life, because I am always
attuned to the way it matters to me. These attunements are the “drag” that situates and
concretizes the “thrust” of my projection. These attunements, however, are not past events.
They do not belong to the sequential past, as the various episodes of my life-history do. In
Heidegger’s language, they are not “bygone” (vergangen). They belong, rather, to the existential
or originary past, to my “beenness” (Gewesenheit). My attunements were not at one time
present, after which they slipped into the past. Rather, at every moment that an attunement
characterizes me, even at its first moment, I am already thrown into it; it is already past. — Blattner

I like "drag" in the above description. One might think also of inertia or momentum. If existence is what it understands itself to be and it understands itself to be an ideal how or "future," then the other part of this structure is the "rest of the train." The future or the how is the "head" of the snake, the cutting edge. Remember the tubes in Donnie Darko?

come to be present and a past that never was present.
But Why Call It “Time?”
At this point one might certainly suspect that something has gone wrong. One might
argue that if Dasein’s possibilities are the sorts of things that cannot come to be present, then
they are not futural either, and if not futural, then not distinctively temporal. In other words, one
might urge that if the argument above holds, the sense of “ahead” in “being-ahead-of-itself” is
only metaphorically temporal. Heidegger acknowledges the force of this consideration, when he
concedes that his interpretation of Dasein “does violence” to the everyday understanding of
human existence (Heidegger 1979: 311). Still, he believes that his interpretation is required by
the phenomena.

Heidegger answers that originary temporality explains time, and for that reason it
deserves the title originary time. So, when we have shown that the “time” that is accessible to Dasein’s intelligibility is not originary and, what is more, that it arises out of authentic temporality, then we are justified, in accordance with the proposition, a potiori fit denominatio, in labeling temporality, which has just been exhibited, originary time. (Heidegger 1979: 329)
Time as we encounter it in our everyday experience is not originary. How do we encounter time
in our everyday experience? Heidegger distinguishes, in fact, two sorts of everyday time, worldtime and time as ordinarily conceived. Time as we ordinarily conceive it (der vulgäre
Zeitbegriff) is time as the pure container of events. Heidegger may well build the term
“conceive” into its name, because he wants to emphasize that when we disengage from our
ordinary experience and talk about and contemplate time as such, we typically interpret time as
such a pure container, as the continuous medium of natural change. — Blattner

If Blattner is right, that explains why B&T is so confusing.

This goes back to the original issue of what living one's death makes possible. I think it makes the fundamental pose or originary time visible. From a Stirnerian/ironist perspective, I'd say that it is too painful or foreclosed to see this structure from the outside as long as one is invested in a particular myth. Because seeing the structure unveils the contingency of that pose. In other words, to understand the "the sacred" in most general terms is to (at the same time, as the same "action" or insight) demystify every particular pose. One "dies" into ironism. But one can still come back into the world and invest in it without completely losing that terrible distance glimpsed via angst. One foot in the grave, the other at the very center of life.

The prospect of resigning one’s self-understanding points toward an ominous threat that
Heidegger believes looms constantly before Dasein, what he calls “death,” but which is not
exactly what we normally call “death.” In II.1 Heidegger defines death as the “possibility of the
impossibility of existence” and characterizes it as a “way to be Dasein.” Heideggerian death is a
way to be Dasein and, therefore, not non-existence per se. The latter, the end or ending of a
human life, Heidegger calls “demise” (Ableben), in contrast with death (Tod). For clarity’s sake,
I will call Heideggerian death “existential death.” Existential death is the condition in which
Dasein is not able to be or exist, in the sense that it cannot understand itself, press ahead into any possibilities of being. Existential death is a peculiar sort of living nullity, death in the midst of
life, nothingness. What would it be like to suffer existential death? To be unable to understand
oneself is not for one’s life to cease to matter altogether. As Heidegger says early on in Being
and Time, Dasein’s being is necessarily at issue for it. The issue, Who am I?, How shall I lead
my life?, matters to me, but when existentially dead no possible answer matters. All answers to
these questions are equally uninteresting. This is what Heidegger calls anxiety, although on its
face it sounds more like what we today call depression: the total insignificance of the world,
including the entire matrix of possible answers to the question, Who am I? Anxiety and
existential death are two sides of the same coin: global indifference that undercuts any impetus
to lead one sort of life or another.To tie all this together, Heidegger accords the phenomenon of existential death ontological importance, because it signals something about the very nature of humanpossibilities. If existential death looms constantly as a threat to who I am, then who I am, my possibilities, can never characterize me in any settled way. If they did, then I could never find
myself unable to be them. Hence, my originary future is not the sort of thing that can be present,
not a property that can positively characterize me in the way in which a determinate height or
hair color, or even a determinate social status, can characterize me. It is a future that is not later
than, that does not succeed, the present. — Blattner

I did look into Voeglin, though not that paper. I like him. It's possible that you've mistaken me for a Kojevian of some stripe, but I'm far more apolitical than utopian. I'm just willing to learn from those who were and are intensely political. My notion of the "transcendence" is edgy to the degree that it is edgy precisely in its distance from the respectability of civic virtue. It is open to being an "idiot" or "private person." It is open in the sense of not assuming that "idiocy" is "bad."

On the "Being" versus "being" issue, I think I can clarify a little. I'm not against mysticism, but I like my mysticism to be mysticism and my "labor of the concept" to be the "labor of the concept." — t0m

I don't think it's mysticism. If a brick, bicycle, potato, pencil, house car, etc, all are - are beings in virtue of the fact that they are - then their being (Being) is one thing they have in common. This Being never is - an is that isn't. I think it's safe to say that you could take the above mentioned things apart and never find the Being part. It would seem, then, then Being is an attribute of the observer. If Heidegger says so, I haven't found it. And I think he does not say it because that's not what he's concerned with - although in a way, it is.

If things are beings and no thing or things is Being, then Being must lie in how beings are. Heidegger identifies this first with the Greek energeia, and I confess I don't have a handle on this word. This evolves to the Latin actualitas, apparently the ability to cause an effect. From there to actuality in terms of reality and existence.

The first lesson I take from this is that people understood the world in different ways at different times. I don't know what the Greek saw, felt, understood when he saw a house. Or the Roman. But I accept the possibility it differs from my experience of these things.

To what end? What exactly is Heidegger getting at? My guesses aren't worth the mention. But at least so far no mysticism at all.

That Blattner article is great!

One might think also of inertia or momentum. If existence is what it understands itself to be and it understands itself to be an ideal how or "future," then the other part of this structure is the "rest of the train." The future or the how is the "head" of the snake, the cutting edge. Remember the tubes in Donnie Darko? — t0m

I'm not so sure about this... Heidegger does describe a 'temporality of circumspective concern', which is more closely related to world time than primordial temporality, and the Donnie Darko tubes are probably a nice illustration of this. Regarding primordial temporality, which is what Blattner is discussing here, I don't think the metaphor of a train will really work. This is because the train metaphor and the Donnie Darko tubes imply a temporal succession and primordial temporality is not successive. By "drag" I think Battner is only illustrating the thrownness that structures our projection into an existentially unattainable for-the-sake-of-which. This thrownness is our existential determinateness, or in a word, mattering. Maybe "drag" was not the best choice of word for him to use...

I was thinking about the 'how' issue you raised above. I would disagree that the 'how' is anything ideal, it is rather existential. Perhaps one way to think about it is that normal successive time is characterised as a 'what', whereas non-successive primordial temporality is characterised by the 'how'. Or rather, perhaps non-successive primordial temporality and the 'how' are the same thing. Perhaps in that early lecture he was still grasping for his original conception of primordial temporality, and the 'how' was a temporary placeholder for it? In the Concept of Time he says:

"...the fundamental character of this entity is its 'how'." (pg. 13) Or in other words, Dasein is primordial temporality, in B&T language.

We wish to repeat temporally the question of what time is. Time is the 'how'. If we inquire into what time is, then one may not cling prematurely to an answer (time is such and such), for this always means a 'what'.

Let us disregard the answer and repeat the question. What happened to the question? It has transformed itself. What is time? became the question: Who is the time? More closely: are we ourselves time? Or closer still: am I my time? In this way I come closest to it, and if I understand the question, it is then taken completely seriously. Such questioning is thus the most appropriate manner of access to and of dealing with time as in each case mine. Then Dasein would be: being questionable. — Heidegger

Just a thought... Maybe death just is this existential unattainability?

I don't think the metaphor of a train will really work. This is because the train metaphor and the Donnie Darko tubes imply a temporal succession and primordial temporality is not successive. — bloodninja

I agree. I chose a bad metaphor. What I was thinking about is the tension between the "future" and "pastness" within a "present" structure. But now Kojeve comes to mind. The "how" is mostly inherited from the genuine past, so maybe "pastness" is the content of the how. I picked up Carol White's book recently and (as you may remember in the paper), she wrote of marginal practices or understandings of being brought to centrality. So perhaps the "unity" involves not a tension or opposite but something more like form versus content (though I'm not happy with that either.) In any case, Blattner's "un-attainability thesis" seems quite important if true.

The ahead-of-itself is grounded in the future. Already-being-in
... announces in itself beenness — B

Is pastness or beenness just the announcement of being-in? Is this just a stressing of always alreayd being in the middle of things? I seem to recall Heidegger insisting that the how is never the how-in-itself. Is it like a rose in steel dust? Is it the way that being-in is shaped by ahead-of-itself?

I was thinking about the 'how' issue you raised above. I would disagree that the 'how' is anything ideal, it is rather existential. Perhaps one way to think about it is that normal successive time is characterised as a 'what', whereas non-successive primordial temporality is characterised by the 'how'. Or rather, perhaps non-successive primordial temporality and the 'how' are the same thing. Perhaps in that early lecture he was still grasping for his original conception of primordial temporality, and the 'how' was a temporary placeholder for it? In the Concept of Time he says:

"...the fundamental character of this entity is its 'how'." (pg. 13) Or in other words, Dasein is primordial temporality, in B&T language. — bloodninja

That's a good point. Perhaps the "how" is the whole of non-successive primordial temporality. I do find it hard to ignore something like the "ideal" having a deep place in Dasein. What I have in mind is the role that one is identified with, the "for-the-sake-of." Why, for instance, are we interpreting Heidegger? How does that fit into our big plan for ourselves or into our individual understandings of being?

Existence is that aspect of Dasein’s being that it always is what it understands itself to be. — B

It "just is" good. We can find reasons if asked, but even there we already find it good to be able to find reasons. In my view, this "how" of being able to find reasons would be necessarily self-subverting. It gives birth to philosophy.

In other words, Dasein’s possibilities are not the sorts of items that can be actualized in the present. I never can have become a musician, even though I am now pressing ahead into being one. I call this claim the Unattainability Thesis (Blattner 1999). What does it mean to say that I cannot have become a musician? The point is not that there are conditions on being a musician that I cannot satisfy (say, I have no rhythm). The point is rather that understanding myself as a musician is not attempting to bring about some possible, future state of myself. The possibility of being a musician is not an end-state at which I aim; it is not something that I “sometime will be” (Heidegger 1979: 325). Being a musician is always futural with respect to what I am doing now.
....
This world-time now-structure is, however, embedded in originary temporality as merely
one of the latter’s ecstases.

We wield equipment in order to tackle tasks only because we understand ourselves the way we do: I apply contact cement to my disintegrating formica countertop, because I understand myself as a homeowner. In Heidegger-speak, the in-which of involvement “goes back to” (zurückgehen) the for-the-sake-of-which of self-understanding. — Blattner

This for-the-sake-of-which is the "fundamental pose" or self-interpretation. So the for-sake-of-which explains the in-order-to which explains nature time and world time?

Conceiving the future as a what in the container of non-primordial time obscures this how? Is the self-obscuring of the how? The revelation of the how is only a possibility for Dasein. Heidegger himself is one understanding that existence can have of itself?

If Blattner is right, then originary temporality is not time-like. It only "earns" the time-like metaphor-system from its ability to explain "degenerative" or less primordial time (time proper in the sense of ordinary understanding.) Does this make sense to you?

Why do humans bother to structure time as they do? Our use of time as a sequence of nows is part of a how that is more primordial than these nows. Not it from bit, but now from how?

Just a thought... Maybe death just is this existential unattainability? — bloodninja

It could indeed be. Or maybe death reveals or clarifies this unattainability?

death and anxiety reveal important structures of Dasein’s being. That Dasein can find itself unable to understand itself and project forth into a way of life, that it can find itself equally indifferent to all human possibilities, shows that it is capable of living as nothing, as a question without even a provisional answer. This, in turn, forces us to recognize that the possible ways to be Dasein are not possible as potentially actualizable, that Dasein presses ahead into a future that never can become present. The latter implies, finally, that originary temporality is not successive. — B

The first lesson I take from this is that people understood the world in different ways at different times. I don't know what the Greek saw, felt, understood when he saw a house. Or the Roman. But I accept the possibility it differs from my experience of these things.

To what end? What exactly is Heidegger getting at? My guesses aren't worth the mention. But at least so far no mysticism at all. — tim wood

Just to be clear, I wasn't accusing you of mysticism. I was just explaining my dislike of the capitalization. I read Steiner's book on Heidegger with pleasure, yet I didn't come away with a clear conceptual picture of what Heidegger was getting at. I knew that language and being were important, that the being-question was important. But I don't remember getting anything like what Blattner and others provided. Now I've switched to the Stambough translation and like it much better. So I'm feeling my way in to a [conceptual] thinker who seems quite different to me than the fuzzy picture in Steiner's book. But I may just finally be getting at just how deep and meaningful the question was to begin with. Dreyfus helped. I started to think in terms of understandings of being, of mostly invisible "frameworks" that disclose entities in the first place so that "normal" science can begin.


I also agree with your main point. I was first exposed to Heidegger via Rorty and Kojeve. Rorty stressed the idea in your quote. I suppose that "finitude" added to that notion would include the denial that there is a final or right or eternal way of understanding being. In another lingo, we can't see outside of our own form of life. Or perhaps we can't see very clearly out of our own form of life. We'd have to be able to see a little outside this form of life or inherited pre-interpretation of being to believe that others understood being differently.

This for-the-sake-of-which is the "fundamental pose" or self-interpretation. So the for-sake-of-which explains the in-order-to which explains nature time and world time? — t0m

I think that is roughly how it unfolds in B&T

Why do humans bother to structure time as they do? Our use of time as a sequence of nows is part of a how that is more primordial than these nows. Not it from bit, but now from how? — t0m

Because nobody would understand what the time was otherwise haha. But I think Blattner/Heidegger argue that originary temporality is more or less the framework that makes sense of, or structures, world time. So world time, I think, or perhaps the temporality of circumspective concern, is the "making present" within the non-successive, finite future/past of originary temporality. In other words world time is contained within originary temporality. I think Blattner mentioned that in the article, he calls it the "world-time embeddedness thesis".

I do find it hard to ignore something like the "ideal" having a deep place in Dasein. What I have in mind is the role that one is identified with, the "for-the-sake-of." Why, for instance, are we interpreting Heidegger? How does that fit into our big plan for ourselves or into our individual understandings of being? — t0m

Doesn't the ideal in the sense you are using it imply a conscious awareness of it? I'm not so sure that is the level at which Heidegger is doing his phenomenology. I'm not denying that we don't all have ideals.