Cristian Ciocan

Le § 45 de Sein und Zeit met en relation la totalité et la mort. En fait, il y a chez Heidegger, trois concepts de totalité : 1 / la totalité ontologico-existentiale et a priori de l'êtreau-monde et du souci ; 2 /la totalité a posteriori des choses intramondaines composées de parties ; 3 / la totalité existentielle temporelle de l'existence « entre » la naissance et la mort. Heidegger essaie de résoudre la tension entre un moment essentiel de la totalité ontologique (notamment de l' « en avant de soi » ) et la totalité existentielle qui est constituée par le ne-pas-encore qui sépare le Dasein de sa mort. Cela s'accomplit par la modification du concept de totalité (Ganzheit) comme être-tout (Ganzsein), être-tout possible (mögliche Ganzsein) et pouvoir d'être-tout (Ganzseinkönnen), mais aussi par l'élaboration des rapports structurels entre l'idée de totalité et l'idée de fin, ce qui implique l'analyse détaillée de plusieurs variations structurelles de ces notions. Traitant cette question, Heidegger se réfère aux analyses platoniciennes, aristotéliciennes et husserliennes. Sein und Zeit's paragraph 45 relates totality and death. In fact, with Heidegger there are three concepts of totality : 1 / an existential-ontological totality which is a priori of the being-in-the world and care ; 2 / an a posteriori totality of intra-mundane things made of parts ; and 3 / a time existential totality of existence lying « between » birth and death. Heidegger tries to solve the tension between an essential moment of the ontological totality (namely the « afore one's self » ) and the existential totality composed of the not-yet which separates the Dasein from death. It occurs through the change of the concept of totality (Ganzheit) as all-being (Ganzsein), all-possible being (mögliche Ganzsein) and power to be all (Ganzseinkönnen), but also through the elaboration of the structural relationships between the idea of a totality and the idea of end, which implies a detailed analysis of several structural variations of such notions. While dealing with these matters, Heidegger refers to Plato's, Aristotle's and Husserl's analyses.

The purpose of this article is to analyze the significance of the absence of the problem of living body in Heidegger's analytic of Dasein. In order to evaluate the occurrences of the problem of the body in Being and Time, I also refer to the context of some of Heidegger's later work where there is to be found a sketch of an ontological investigation of the living body. I analyze then in detail the scarce occurrences of body in the fundamental ontology, showing finally that the lack of a proper phenomenological examination of living body generates a series of conceptual difficulties for the problem of Dasein's death, precisely when the issue of dead body is at stake.

This study intends to provide some benchmarks for a full analysis of the evolution of the problem of death in Heidegger ’s thought developed after Sein und Zeit. The question that guides our investigation is how the phenomenology of death is still the center of Heidegger ’s philosophical interest, after the analytic of Dasein. Our discussion focuses on the period 1931–1935, following a chronological order, in order to call attention to some of the distinct stages of the thought on death after Sein und Zeit. We begin by analyzing the reactions of Heidegger himself on the reception of the problem of death in the first period after the publication of Sein und Zeit. After that, we analyze the emergence of the subject of death in three courses: the course of the winter semester 1931–1932, the lecture from 1934/1935 on Hölderlin, and the lecture in the summer of 1935 – An Introduction to Metaphysics.