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Being and Time

But the medical concept of the 'exitus' does not coincide with that of "perishing".

From the foregoing discussion of the ontological possibility of getting death into our grasp, it becomes clear at the same time that substructures of entities with another kind of Being (presence-at-hand or life) thrust themselves to the fore unnoticed, and threaten to bring confusion to the Interpretation of this phenomenon—even to the first suitable way of presenting it. We can encounter this phenomenon only by seeking, for our further analysis, an ontologically adequate way of defining the phenomena which are constitutive for it, such as "end" and "totality".


48. That which is Still Outstanding; the End; Totality

Within the framework of this investigation, our ontological characterization of the end and totality can be only provisional. To perform this task adequately, we must not only set forth the formal structure of end in general and of totality in general; we must likewise disentangle the structural variations which are possible for them in different realms—that is to say, deformalized variations which have been put into relationship respectively with definite kinds of entities as 'subject-matter', and which have had their character Determined in terms of the Being of these entities. This task, in turn, presupposes that a sufficiently unequivocal and positive Interpretation shall have been given for the kinds of Being which require that the aggregate of entities be divided into such realms. But if we are to understand these ways of Being, we need a clarified idea of Being in general. The task of carrying out in an appropriate way the ontological analysis of end and totality breaks down not only because the theme is so fur-reaching, but because there is a difficulty in principle: to master this task successfully, we must presuppose that precisely what we are seeking in this investigation—the meaning of Being in general—is something which we have found already and with which we are quite familiar.

In the following considerations, the 'variations' in which we are chiefly interested are those of end and totality; these are ways in which Dasein gets a definite character ontologically, and as such they should lead to a primordial Interpretation of this entity. Keeping constantly in view the existential constitution of Dasein already set forth, we must try to decide how inappropriate to Dasein ontologically are those conceptions of end and totality which first thrust themselves to the fore, no matter how [242] categorially indefinite they may remain. The rejection [Zurückweisung] of such concepts must be developed into a positive assignment [Zuweisung] of them to their specific realms. In this way our understanding of end and totality in their variant forms as existentialia will be strengthened, and this


Being and Time (M&R) by Martin Heidegger