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Heidegger on Human Finitude: Beginning at the End
Author(s) -
Magid Oren
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
european journal of philosophy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.42
H-Index - 36
eISSN - 1468-0378
pISSN - 0966-8373
DOI - 10.1111/ejop.12170
Subject(s) - socratic method , epistemology , philosophy , appeal , interpreter , action (physics) , fragility , vulnerability (computing) , psychology , law , computer science , political science , chemistry , physics , computer security , quantum mechanics , programming language
Interpreters generally understand Heidegger's notion of finitude in one of two ways: (1) as our mortality – that, in the end, we are certain to die; or (2) the susceptibility of our self‐ and world‐understanding to collapse – the fragility and vulnerability of human sense‐making. In this paper, I put forward an alternative account of what Heidegger means by ‘finitude’: human self‐ and world‐understanding is non‐transparently grounded in a ‘final end.’ Our self‐ and world‐understanding, that is, begins at the end, and authenticity requires us to interpretively appropriate the full range of this understanding. After laying out this view of finitude, via an analogical appeal to the Socratic account of action and desire in the Gorgias, I discuss its relationship to the two leading views of finitude mentioned above.