the destiny of a people

Esposito as

the (Espo-

sito,

Heidegger, it seems, offers us a well-articulated

and detailed framework with which to think the

improper character of our being. However, com-

munity and property in Heidegger’s oeuvre

become entirely different questions, as can be

seen in that famous and often-discussed

passage in Part II of Being and Time where

Heidegger describes the destiny of a people as

a Geschick into which the individual seems to

disappear:

But if fateful Dasein, as Being-in-the-world,

exists essentially in Being-with Others, its

historizing is a co-historizing and is determi-

native for it as destiny [Geschick]. This is

how we designate the historizing of the com-

munity, of a people. Destiny is not something

that puts itself together out of individual

fates, any more than Being-with-one-another

can be conceived as the occurring together

of several Subjects. Our fates have already

been guided in advance, in our Being with

one another in the same world and in our

resoluteness for definite possibilities. Only

in communicating and in struggling does

the power of destiny become free. Dasein’s

fateful destiny in and with its “generation”

goes to make up the full authentic

historizing of Dasein. (Heidegger, Being

and Time 436)

To understand what is at stake in this passage,

we must reflect upon how Heidegger makes

the connection between identity and commu-

nity. In Heidegger, the community is something

we will have to be – a finite condition that con-

stitutes me rather than the silhouette of a lost or

yet-to-be-attained commonality. Since Dasein is

also Mitsein, every mode of Being is always a

finite being.