On Doubt and Death

From Being and Time up through his later writings, Heidegger regards mortality a
s man's defining characteristic. In Being and Time, Heidegger argues that the co
re of the authentic behavior which reveals Being and individuates human existenc
e lies in an authentic being-towards-death. Dasein is not the ground of its exis
tence, but the ground of the "not". For Dasein individuates itself by choosing a
mong its possibilities. Yet with every choice, it annuls all other possibilities
, since it can select only one. Its power and capacity to be is mainly a power n
ot to be. It is the ground of a nullity (Nichtigkeit). The not is a possibility
rooted in Dasein's existential constitution which, far from being a negation of
things, makes them possible: it allows them to show themselves as they are in th
emselves.
In his later writings (for example, in "The Thing"), Heidegger uses the term 'mo
rtals' to refer to man. The concept of "mortals" suggests that the meaning of th
ings and the semantic field created around them is preserved only so long as the
human being participates in the play of revelation as a mortal, finite being. I
t is death that allows man to give meaning to his existence and to his world. Hu
man existence is not the ground (grund) of Being, but the abyss (abgrund) which
creates meaning, which lets meaning arise through his existence. It follows that
while human existence is not the ground of itself for Heidegger, like Dasein ea
rlier, it is the ground of the not.
The role of death in Heidegger's thinking is analogous to that of doubt in Desca
rtes'. The Cartesian doubt is generally regarded, rightly, as a mechanism for th
e production of first principles. It is a means of pushing knowledge to its limi
ts so as to discover what cannot be doubted. Those ideas which can survive even
the strongest doubt can thus be considered unshakable foundations for philosophy
. Doubt is thus part of the cognitive act, it is "essentially connected with the
indubitable," (7) that is with certainty.
But the basis of doubt for Descartes is man's finitude. In his third meditation,
Descartes argues that if man had been able to produce the idea of an infinitely
perfect being - that is, God - he would be perfect and all knowing himself and
not suffer from doubt. But clearly, being finite, man cannot grasp God's infinit
e substance. The doubt that ultimately leads to certainty thus rests on human mo
rtality, much as does Heidegger's meaning.
In criticizing Descartes' view of man, Heiddeger does not question the cogito as
such. As we saw above, Heidegger regards man as having an understanding of Bein
g. His argument is that taking the ego cogito as a starting point leaves the sum
indeterminate. In a lecture in 1925, Heidegger says:
This certainty, that "I myself am in that I will die," is the basic certainty of
Dasein itself. It is a genuine statement of Dasein, while cogito sum is only th
e semblance of such a statement. If such pointed formulations mean anything at a
ll, then the appropriate statement pertaining to Dasein in its being would have
to be sum moribundus ["I am in dying"], moribundus not as someone gravely ill or
wounded, but insofar as I am, I am moribundus. The MORIBUNDUS first gives the S
UM its sense. (8)
With this turn of the Cartesian formula, Heidegger is not trying to exorcise tra
ditional philosophy from the Cartesian phantom. Rather, he is trying to conquer
Cartesianism by completing the Cartesian inquiry on man. To be, to exist, is to
be finite, that the possibility of death, which is ultimately realized, accompan
ies all of our acts, including the act of thinking. The meaning of sum, for Heid
egger, is finitude.
(1) Heidegger M., Poetry, Language and Thought, New York: Harper and Row, 1971,

p. 18.
(2) Poetry, Language and Thought, p. 41.
(3) Destruktion is the term used in Heidegger's Being and Time (Oxford: Basil Bl
ackwell, 1980); Abbau can be find Heidegger's Basic Problems of Phenomenology (B
loomington: Indiana University Press, 1982); Verbindung is discussed mainly in "
The Principle of Identity," in Identity and Difference (New York: Harper and Row
, 1969, pp. 23-41); for Uberwindung see Heidegger's Nietzsche.
(4) Nietzsche, vol. 4 p. 97. See Aristotle's words: "that which is called a subs
tance most strictly, primarily, and most of all, is that which is neither said o
f a subject nor in a subject, e.g., the individual man or the individual horse."
(Aristotle's Categories, 2a 11-13).
(5) Heidegger, Basic Problems of Phenomenology p.111.
(6) Heidegger M., Discourse on Thinking New York: Harper and Row, 1966, p. 7.
(7) Nietzsche, vol. 4, p. 106.
(8) Heidegger, M. History of the Concept of Time, Bloomington: Indiana Universit
y Press, 1992, pp. 316-317.