At the Scaffold

We have seen that Heidegger acknowledged the need for his existential–ontological interpretation of death to receive testimony at the level of the existentiell so as not to be accused of being a merely ‘fantastical exaction’. We have also seen how he himself approached this existentiell attestation of Dasein’s capacity for authentic resoluteness in terms of the phenomena of conscience and guilt. Yet although our readiness to take upon ourselves the guilt of existing as thrown towards death is seen as the guarantee of such an existentiell capacity, as the expression ‘anticipatory resoluteness’ illustrates, the chapter on conscience and guilt seems almost assiduously to avoid a direct reference to death itself. ¹ How, then, in the light of Heidegger’s account of resoluteness, might we actually envisage such a confrontation with death on the part of a normal human being, an ‘I’ in the average everyday ‘empirical’ sense – you or I or he or she?