PART TWO: DEATH AS AN ONTIC EVENT: coming to terms with the phenomenon of death as a determinate possibility

PART TWO: DEATH AS AN ONTIC EVENT: coming to terms with the phenomenon of death as a determinate possibility

INTRODUCTION "Death is here and death is there r Death is busy everywhere r All around r within r beneathr Above is death - and we are death." - ShelleYr Death Heidegger's penetrating descriptions of man's Being-in-theworld as a Being-towards-death reveal the ontological roots of the finitude of human existence r reveal how "we are death"r but my next question must be: what can be said about death as an ontic event r as a concrete happening which shatters our everydayness and recasts the ontological meaning of our existential horizons through the prism of a new definitive r determinate figuration of our finite existence? Part II of this volume presents some preliminary considerations in answer to this question r both from the point of view of one's own imminent death as well as from the perspective of the death of a significant "Other" in one's lifer someone whom one loves. But perhaps initiallyr it will be best to take a moment to consider the etymological significance of this word "e-vent"r as we inherit it from Heidegger. What is meant by the English word "event" can be expressed in German in several waysr but Heidegger seems to rely primarily on two terms: one is Begebenheit; the other is Ereignis.

136 THE EVENT OF DEATH: A PHENOMENOLOGICAL ENQUIRY When Heidegger writes: "Dying is not an event; it is a phenomenon to be understood existentially";l or "The call does not report events; it calls without uttering anything";2 he is using the word "Begebenheit" in a way which seems to convey more the aspect of a fortuitous episode or incident, rather than an essential happening. Indeed, this is even more evident when we read of how in anticipatory resoluteness, "Dasein becomes free from the entertaining 'incidentals' with which busy curiosity keeps providing itself primarily from the events of the World. "3 "Ere ignis" seems to convey a similar meaning in some parts of Sein und zeit. Heidegger tells us that an event (Ereignis) can be understood in the sense of an impending event encountered environmentally: "for instance, a storm, the remodelling of the house or the arrival of a friend, may be impending; and these are entities which are respectively present-at-hand, ready-to-hand, and there-with-us."4 1 SZ 240. 2 SZ 277. 3 SZ 310. 4 SZ 250; cf. also 152.

THE EVENT OF DEATH: A PHENOMENOLOGICAL ENQUIRY 137 Death can be encountered as merely "a well-known event occurring within-the-world. As such, it remains in the inconspicuousness characteristic of what is encountered in an everyday fashion. "5 In passages like these, Ereignis is almost interchangeable with Begebenheit; indeed, at one point, echoing the Begebenheit reference above, Heidegger repeats that: "... the call asserts nothing, gives no information about world-events [Ereignisse]".6 On the other hand, even here one does sense a greater - breadth to the Ereignis (translated as "world-event"), than is evident in the more fortuitous nature of the Begebenheit, and in fact, further on in sein und Zeit, there is an important change felt in how Heidegger employs the word Ereignis. The change comes primarily in those sections which center on the problems of temporality and historicity. Speaking of the "double meaning" of the "past", Heidegger remarks that "the past belongs irretrievably to an earlier time; it belonged to the events of that time; and in spite of that, it can still be present-at-hand 'now'".7 On the following page, the kind of questions posed by Heidegger reflect this slightly different usage of the word "event" 5 SZ 253. 6 SZ 273. 7 SZ 378.

138 THE EVENT OF DEATH: A PHENOMENOLOGICAL ENQUIRY (Ereignis). Suggesting that man is to be seen as the "subject" of events, Heidegger asks however: "How is the historizing character of such events to be defined? Is historizing a sequence of processes, an ever-changing emergence and disappearance of e vents?.. Does Dasein first become historical by getting intertwined with events and circumstances? Or is the Being of Dasein constituted first of all by historizing, so that anything like circumstances, events and vicissitudes is ontologically possible only because Dasein is historical in its being?"8 Even more significant, though, is the mention of "event" ("Ereignis" ) in terms of a "historical happening" and in the context of Heidegger's exposition of "the ontological enigma of the movement of historizing in general". He explains that: "... when, for instance, a ring gets 'handed over' to someone and 'worn', this is a kind of Being in which it does not simply suffer changes of location. The movement of historizing in which something 'happens to something' is not to be grasped in terms of motion as change of location. This holds for all world-historical 'processes' and events, and even, in a certain manner, for 'natural catastrophes'."9 Such an understanding of "event" begins to foreshadow the later Heidegger's understanding of the term, where the "history of Being" in its revealing/concealing truth is seen to be the pure happening of the primordial disclosure as the Ereignis. Such "history of Being" (i. e. Being in the sense of Ereignis) begins with its epoche, its keeping itself to itself; the various epochs of this history are the epochs of man's progressive fal- 8 SZ 379. 9 SZ 389. Emphasis mine.

THE EVENT OF DEATH: A PHENOMENOLOGICAL ENQUIRY 139 ling out of his relationship to Being, which need not be negative but are both a positive manifestation of man's relatedness to Being, as well as a promise of a revelation of Being in its truth. Therefore, as Ereignis, "event" is the truth of Being as the happening of the revealing/concealing illumination - and thus, as the belonging-together of man and Being. Meaning both advent (ad-venire: to come to, to arrive) as well as the event in the sense of e-venire, to come out, the E-vent as oc-currence is a disclosure of truth in the coming together of man and Being. "The Event", explains Heidegger, "delivers man and Being into their essential togetherness. "10 Thus, while Thought thinks Being, "Being is not a product of thinking. On the contrary, essential thinking is an event (Ereignis) of Being"ll, which means that Ereignis is not something that can ever "present" itself as an object to thought, or be re-presented within a certain concept of subject, object or substance. This is not to say that the leap out of metaphysical thinking away from the separateness of man and Being, is a leap into a vague, mystical, intuitive kind of cognitive experience, but on the contrary, in surrendering meta-physical concepts, the leap of thought becomes 10 ID 31. As cited in Vers~nyi, L. Heidegger, Being and Truth, p. 156. 11 WM 103, e.t. 356.

140 THE EVENT OF DEATH: A PHENOMENOLOGICAL ENQUIRY a co-rrespondence to the Ereignis, in a letting-be of truth in its revealing/concealing mystery. The big mistake, at this point, is to come to another kind of metaphysical conclusion, that the Ereignis in the later Heidegger is no more than a domain "behind" sein, which domain renders the Being-man relation intelligible. This, I think, is a common mistake, reflected in both the interpretations of the metaphysician as well as the mystic. (The metaphysician too easily conceives of the Ereignis in terms of a supreme "beyond", and the mystic may similarly conceive of a domain "beyond" the empirical world and inaccessible to it.) But the fact that Heidegger is neither a metaphysician nor a mystic in this last sense, simply goes to show that the Ereignis is not an abstract domain or ground "behind" Sein"; it is an e vent. Etymologically related to the verb ermugnen: to appear before the eyes, Ereignis is the lighting-up event whereby Dasein can be present to its own authentic being. This is important to remember. Rather than speak of Ereignis in terms of any sort of domain suspended in itself, we must understand it within the context of the event of man and Being reaching one another in their essence and therefore - belongingness. To realize this relationship of mutual owning - eignen- in which man and Being belong ( are ge-eignet) to one another, is to meditate on the Ereignis.

THE EVENT OF DEATH: A PHENOMENOLOGICAL ENQUIRY 141 Otherwise, the difference between Being and beings, the "between" itself, would be simply another metaphysical domain reflecting the separateness, rather than the essential belonging, of man and Being in the appropriative event. Inasmuch as the difference is more than a metaphysical domain, reflecting instead a belongingness, "overwhelming and arrival appear in each other in reciprocal reflection. Speaking in terms of the difference, this means: perdurance is a circling, the circling of Being and beings around each other. "12 The leap beyond metaphysical thought is, therefore, something other than a simple forward leap into another abstract or even simply "mystical" domain, which, for originality's sake, we will now label "Ereignis" rather than "Being" or "God"; on the contrary, the event, as something other than a mere abstraction, allows of a unique concreteness (in an ontological, rather than an empirical sense) because it is a "circling" e-vent, rather than a mere conditioning ground or domain. As shall become evident, the ontic e-vent is not just a particular incident, then, nor is it revelatory of a domain of "Being" beyond it; rather, as we intend to use the word, an e vent is a happening, an oc-currence, an arrival (ad-venire) and a breaking-out, (e-venire), rooted in temporality which reveals, brings to light (er-hugnen) and yet conceals the mutual owning 12 10 137-8; e.t. 69.

142 THE EVENT OF DEATH: A PHENOMENOLOGICAL ENQUIRY (eignen), the belongingness of man and Being- that is, the Ontological Difference itself. **