a picture held us captive

The infinite and the finite weave a thread through the greatest thinkers. As I wrote here Tolstoy boils the infinite argument down to saying – “what meaning has my finite life in an infinite universe?”

Heidegger, according to Simon Critchley on a Guardian blog on Being and Time, completely rejects the idea of an infinite context.:

“The self can only become what it truly is through the confrontation with death, by making a meaning out of our finitude. If our being is finite, then what it means to be human consists in grasping this finitude, in “becoming who one is” in words of Nietzsche’s that Heidegger liked to cite.”

Reading the Tolstoy’s Confession made me think – well obviously you need religion if you put your life in the context of infinite duration and meaning.  As I’m out of the market for religion, I’ve got no choice but make sense of the finite life. But how to live your life in full awareness of finitude, in full awareness of my own death, seems just as difficult. Here’s what Critchley says about Heideggers being-towards-death.

“Freedom consists in the affirmation of the necessity of one’s mortality. It is only in being-towards-death that one can become the person who one truly is. Concealed in the idea of death as the possibility of impossibility is the acceptance on one’s mortal limitation as the basis for an affirmation of one’s life.

So, there is nothing morbid about being-towards-death. Heidegger’s thought is that being-towards-death pulls Dasein out of its immersion in inauthentic everyday life and allows it come into its own. It is only in relation to being-towards-death that I become passionately aware of my freedom.”

Is that really the best rationalization for being a passionately free human being? What if you live a passionately free life without once thinking about your death – isn’t the action the thing to be judged on, not the reason? Does it function as a description, not an argument? Perhaps the person who lives passionately free just is living authentically in regards to their death.

It is sometimes hard to understand the tone of philosophy. Why does Heidegger seem deep rather than, say, confusing? Why is the version of these ideas that normal people can actually understand have this odd cultural “an introduction to” place. A place which prevents anyone from reading them as ideas to live by, instead of intellectual curiosities.

Don’t we deep down just want to say – grab life by the nuts, however you rationalize it doesn’t matter. If phenomenological analysis helps, do it. If religion helps, do that too. If farting down a trumpet helps, do that.

The failure of philosophers has been that, despite setting out completely new ways of living, despite having iterated new possibilities for being human, despite wrestling with the most fundamental questions of life, few people have actually lived differently because of them. In introductions to Heidegger, something about his massive influence is often said. I don’t see much evidence of people taking a more authentic attitude towards death.