An idea · Twentieth Century (to mid-century) · first attested 1927
Being-Toward-Death
Authenticity comes from resolutely facing one's own finitude.
For Heidegger, death is not an event that ends life from outside but a structural feature of human existence: I am the being-that-will-die, and this colors every moment. Inauthentic existence flees this fact into the chatter of everyday life. Authentic existence resolutely accepts mortality, and from this acceptance receives the gift of a finite, urgent life that is one's own.