ABSTRACT
At the end of Heidegger's life, in the moments prior to fulfilling his sentence of death by poison, Socrates contemplates, in serenity, the relation of truth and death: 'The one aim of those who practice philosophy in the proper manner is to practice for dying and death'. Death was a central theme of Heidegger's thought throughout his entire philosophical career. Heidegger thus describes Dasein as a 'being-towards-death': 'Factical Dasein exists as born; and, as born, it is already dying, in the sense of Being towards death'. Heidegger analyses the differences between humanity and animality in several key texts, The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics, the Parmenides lectures course, the 'Letter on Humanism'. Near-death experiences of any sort do not guarantee this state of awareness, as what is required is an ontological understanding of the matter: the continual anticipation of 'the possibility of the impossibility of any existence at all'. Young asserts that Being and Time is a 'work of heroic nihilism'.
