Dasein confronted to Death 

Death as a phenomenon is one of the biggest mysteries of our existence. Death is a central issue in all religions and philosophical theories, we cannot think the human being without his ultime limit: death. Many myths and stories were invented in order to explore this “world” we completely ignore. Men even tried to find a representation of death through, for example, the skeleton of death, the angel of death, etc. Today, even if human beings discovered various things , they still didn’t discover the phenomenon of death. The reason of this mystery is that no one could do this experience and analyze it during his existence, we can say that death is the end of existence, the limit of human beings as Heidegger defines it in Being and Time. However, the obsession of death   as a limit is far from being a handicap for human beings. Death is very positive in the way it made us go beyond it in different ways. In what extent can we say that death-which is the end of existence and its mystery-is a spectacular source of energy for human beings ?

Death as an extension of human imaginary : 

Men dropped their power, their pleasure, their freedom in order to have this eternal life God promised them in monotheistic religions. Death is one of our biggest fears, therefore, we can say that human beings have chosen to create ans to believe in a God that is going to offer them an eternal life just for them to avoid thinking about the absurdity of death. Monotheism offers an extension of life into a better life after death, that’s why it was, and it is still very successful : it fights absurdity with faith. Although faith may appear as a weakness of Men, it can also be considered as a smart idea men came with. Developing one’s imaginary to this extent shows the greatness of human intelligence, their consciousness of their limites and their capacity to sublime their fears until going beyond them. 

The fear of death is also very constructive. Men always refused the idea of their non-existence, they always tried to fight against death. Although no-one would be able to win a fight against death as we saw it in the movie entitled Seventh Seal. Humain beings always fought death in order to keep it away as much as possible. This eternal fight against death made us as human beings make much progress and extend life and time the most possible. The development in the health field is a good example of the numerous progress our fear of death has allowed us to. However, human beings have not only fear of death, they are also very curious about it, and this curiosity is also going to be a very interesting source of intellectual stimulation. 

To existence is to fight for life, not against death. Fighting against death is surviving 

“Je voudrais mourir par curiosité / I would like to die out of curiosity” Georges Sand. 

The mystery of death is that no one can precisely analyze it like any other kind of phenomenon. Death is not an experience that can be reproduced and that is exactly why it’s such an impossible field to explore. All these questions surrounding the idea of death made Georges Sand, a french author write the following sentence : « I would like to die out of curiosity ». We would like to die to discover this world, we would like to die to finally stop fearing death, being anxious about the idea of it, we would like to die in order to possess and hold death the way it inevitably possesses us. Curiosity made human beings wright, dream, fantasize about death and about eternity. Many writers, from antiquity to modern times, wrote about death, about what we should expect after death, what would death be like. The three holy books of monotheism generously developed this world beyond our world and its secret. I believe it explains a lot about this three books being the best-sellers of all time. 

The phenomenon of death made also people fantasize its contrary : eternity, eternity that Jesus promised to his followers, eternity that is represented by the Vampire characters, characters who have so much success in literature and cinema. This success of vampires may be explained by the fact they are the incarnation of a human fantasma : eternity. 

What if we were eternal ? 

We are not going to talk about the demographic boom in our planet that eternity can cause , but only the absence of death and it’s consequences on human achievements, their energy and intelligence. The absence of death is the absence of the ultimate deadline. Death is the deadline of existence, that is why human beings try, throughout their lives, to fight against it or keep it away as much as possible. Men always tried to keep existing, reason why they have written books, gave birth to children who would bear their names, invent something that will mark their names in history books , etc. We can say that the quest for eternity facing the inevitability of death created the human intelligence, allowed the human progress and made the human being différent from other beings.

As a conclusion, we can say that without the existence of death, there would be no existence at all. Human being is a Dasein because he has a deadline. What defines this Dasein is the way he is going to explore death, to think death, to fight against death during his life to proof his existence. Therefore we can say that existence is both life and death united in one phenomenon. Death is  the end of existence but the fatality of death is also the reason of existence.