Nina Doublet

Mark Rozaheguy
Phil 201
21st of november 2014
Second Response - Question 5
Blanchot and Heidegger both study what happens to the self when it encounters death.
Blanchot says it destroys the self in the perspective of death as neutral, while Heidegger says it
helps the self to find its ultimate truth in the perspective of death as my own death.
To understand the neutrality of death through Blanchots point of view, we need to
understand how the self reacts to the encounter of death. The self lives through time through
events. Blanchot says that the self goes from the past and repeats itself in the futur. He means
that, for example: if the self is victim of a traumatic event, the self will not live the event on the
moment when it occurs. The self will continue on living and repress it as if it never happened,
however this event will be reflected through the subconscious in everydayness. So this moment
will never have occurred in the present, it will always be something in the past, which will be
repeated in the futur through the selfs behaviour. Blanchot explains that death is seen as a
trauma: the void of the future: there death has our future. The void of the past: there death has
its tomb(15). It is the emptiness of the futur when thinking about death, and once the self has
been there, in this futur, the self is no more and can only look back at its tomb. No one should
encounter or come across Death. When the self reaches this limit there is no going back because
there is no more self to return to, there where nothing was ever present. Once you realize you

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are going to die, and make death a part of every moment, every thought, then each thought
becomes mortal(1), every thought the last thought(1).
Blanchot then tries to understand why, once the self has encountered death it is no more?
Why is it detached from existence? From where does this power of uprooting (p.1), uprooting
from society, preoccupation, of being in time, comes from? does death allows self-reflection or is
it something neutral, the it, the non being? This can be understood, with a simpler example; the
neutrality of the sea. Blanchot talks about it _the sea, what is this it? The pronoun it is neutral,
The sea has a neutrality to it, an itness. There is something nonhuman about it, something that
threatens our individuality, our humanness. It is this neutrality which is related to death. Except
that death is not something to be placed in a specific location. It is nowhere, it is a possibility.
This neutrality is neither general, or personal, it is a multiplicity. For example: life is neutral, it
goes beyond every living things, beyond what each living things see. Life is external to it, life is.
Death, in the same way, is external, it just is. Therefore because death is something external,
which is in not related to the self, the self should not comme across death.
To understand Heideggers view of death as my own death, my time, it is necessary to
first understand forerunning. Forerunning is concerned with the encounter of death. It is
maintaining Dasein ahead of itself. Dasein is the self in the now, the now in the present fix, the
now yet to come and the now that has passed. Dasein is time. Dasein is I am in every moment,
being conscience of itself. Each person has its own Dasein, its own while, to decide how to live
the while, not what to do with it; each Da-sein is its time, its while.(198) Most of all Dasein
is futural, in the way that, the self always lives for something yet to come, a futur goal. Death is
the further away Dasein can go in the futur. Dasein to its most extreme is death. Death is the
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extreme-possibility of Dasein. The realization of being-gone as a possibility, helps to detach one

self from society, from such and such people, surrounded by these vanities, these tricks, this
verbosity(207). Thus Forerunning is encountering death in everydayness, keeping it in mind as
a possibility. Since Each Dasein is its time and that Dasein is about maintaing oneself in
forerunning, then death is my death, my time.
As death is in time, in the futur and that Dasein is time, death is considered a part of the
self. This being gone, as that to which I forerun, brings about a discovery in my thus
forerunning to it: it is my being gone(p.207). Death as a possibility is my own, nobody else
than I will witness my death. Each person experiences death in a different manner. For
example: each person has its own, body, my body, which might be weak, strong or anywhere
in between, through which life is experienced in different manners. It is the sense of my body,
minness. The same goes for death. By maintaining Dasein ahead of it self, the self can always
come back to the everydayness, to find its ultimate truth. With the encounter of death as my
own death, my time, the self goes from the present to the futur, comes back to the present and
then to the past.
After looking at Blanchots and Heideggers point of views on death we can see that they
both think of death as a detachment from society. However they do not go to the same extremes.
Heidegger sees the encounter of death as detachment of society, of preoccupation, of futilities
that keep away the self from finding itself, from completing its Dasein. Blanchot on his side sees
this detachment, this uprooting, as a detachment from the self itself, on the encounter of death,
it is no more.

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Then we have forerunning versus death as a trauma. Heidegger sees death as something
to attain Dasein in its ultimate state of being. It is a necessity to keep Dasein ahead of itself
(forerunning), to keep death in mind as a possibility. On the other hand, Blanchot sees it as a
traumatic event, which on the contrary destroys the self. For Blanchot if death is kept as a
possibility in the everydayness, then the thoughts are dying, ideas shouldnt stop.
The authors also have different views on how the self is going through time in relation to
the encounter of death. Heidegger thinks that the self goes from the present to the futur to
encounter the possibility of death. The self can then go back to the present in the everydayness to
realize the ultimate truth. On the other hand Blanchot thinks that once one comes across death, as
said before, the self is destroyed. It can not come back to its present, where it never was. In
everydayness the self goes from the past to the futur and repeats it self.
Heidegger thinks that death is my own death, as one has its own Dasein, which is time
and which keeps itself in forerunning. Blanchot on the opposite sees death as something neutral.
For Blanchot, Heideggers point of view of the self as the center of everything, the true self
always coming back to the present fix is false, it is only a concealment to turn away from the
neutral, nothingness, indifference. Death is indifferent to you, it is neutral.

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1242 words
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