In Being and Nothingness, Sartre criticizes Heidegger’s conception of death in Being and Time and offers his own account of the finitude of existence, which is grounded not in the certainty of death, but rather in our choices and freedom.
Since Sartre himself acknowledges that his views on death are supposed to oppose and argue against Heidegger’s conception of death in Being and Time, it should be mentioned, from the beginning, that there are multiple critiques directed to Sartre’s reading of Heidegger that argue that Sartre’s views are merely existentialist misinterpretations of Heidegger regarding the place of the subject in philosophy, the distinctions on which Heidegger bases his conception death, and what Heidegger means by “being-toward-death”. (This article explains Heidegger’s existential conception of death in Being and Time)
For instance, Sartre considers subjectivity to be the ground from out of which any philosophizing-thinking should arise, and hence thinks that Heidegger’s questioning is problematic, for it is, from the start, endeavors to avoid, or not to pass through, the Cartesian cogito.
Another critique directed to Sartre’s interpretation of Heidegger is that Sartre overlooks and misreads Heidegger’s conception of death and especially Heidegger’s distinction between “perishing”, “demise”, and “being-toward-death”.
There is also another critique that thinks that Sartre not only misinterprets the distinctions in which Heidegger grounds his notion of death, but also Heidegger’s whole notion of “being-toward-death”.
Although such critiques and arguments are important and justified, Sartre’s views on death, as will be shown, deepen, add to, and render richer any attempt at thinking death from out of life or within life.
Sartre on Death
Sartre sees death as “nothing but a certain aspect of facticity and of being-for-others” and as “nothing other than the given”. This means that, for Sartre, one’s death is only to a small extent related to one’s life and hence it “is not an ontological structure” of one’s being:
“Death is in no way an ontological structure of my being, at least not in so far as my being is for itself; it is the Other who is mortal in his being. There is no place for death in being-for-itself; it can neither wait for death nor realize it nor project itself toward it; death is in no way the foundation of the finitude of the for-itself. In a general way death can neither be founded from within like the project of original freedom, nor can it be received from the outside as a quality by the for-itself. What then is death? Nothing but a certain aspect of facticity and of being-for-others—i.e., nothing other than the given. It is absurd that we are born; it is absurd that we die.”
Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness
Seeing death as merely a “given” does not change the relation into which humans and death are always placed, that is, the finitude of humans. Humans, for Sartre, are finite beings, yet what renders this finitude possible in the first place and constantly confirms it is not a death awaiting and happening in the future, but rather the limitedness pertaining to the present regarding the individual’s need to choose a certain project, that is, the limitedness belonging to the need to choose and hence to act in accordance with this choice.
For Sartre, finitude originally arises from, and is first made possible because of, the temporal inevitability of pursuing a specific project before another and, at the same time, the impossibility of reversing or changing this sequence of projecting, this order of choosing.
Seeing finitude not as a death that awaits and takes place in the future, but rather as what constraints and renders limited the projecting belonging to and happening in the present is a critique directed to Heidegger’s conception of death in Being and Time and an attempt at arguing for both the radical freedom lying at the heart of our being and the distance separating death from life, the distance that renders death not important to life, the distance that renders death meaninglessness.
Death Is Meaningless
Sartre argues against Heidegger’s view that no one else can die for me by saying that no one else can also love for me. In fact, Sartre says, it is not only loving or dying that no one else can do for me, there are many other things in the world that no one else can do for me.
Sartre also says that death can neither individualize nor be awaited and that one cannot experience one’s own death, for if one dies, then nothing remains to be experienced. That is, every experiencing and all experiences disappear when one dies and ceases to exist.
Hence, according to Sartre, any attempt at linking oneself together with one’s death, that is, any attempt at seeing one’s death within one’s life is nothing but an attempt at viewing oneself through the eyes of other, through the point of view of the other and nothing more.
Since Sartre, arguing against Heidegger’s views in Being and Time, thinks that death cannot be experienced by oneself or within one’s life, death becomes in the existentialism of Sartre nothing but a contingent fact, which is meaningless and has no meaning to one’s life or oneself.
Death Renders Life Meaningless
Sartre links together the existentialist notion of the absurd with death and thus sees death as what deprives life of meaning and meaningfulness. According to Sartre, death removes and takes away meaning from life, leaves it empty and hollowed out, and hence renders it meaningless.
Death renders life meaningless and senseless, since it is itself meaningless and senseless. Since death renders life meaningless and is itself meaningless and senseless, it cannot be considered to be the completion of life, for it cannot be freely decided or determined within life, that is, from out of one’s life.
In a word, death is meaningless and brings about meaninglessness and senselessness; it is radically impersonal and thus it cannot individualize; It cannot be awaited, for if death is to be awaited, it will disrupt and disturb the individual’s whole projects, since this awaiting is itself a project, the project of not having a project or the project of the impossibility of projecting.
Death Is Not Different From Birth
Sartre disagrees with Heidegger’s view that death shapes Dasein’s “being-in-the-world” toward its future as “being-toward-death”, and says that death does not belong to life and cannot be thought from out of one’s life; death is outside of life and comes from the outside.
Thus, there is nothing that can be done about one’s death; it cannot be awaited and it cannot be considered to be one of one’s possibilities. Death is nothing but a fact, a mere fact in one’s life, in the life of the other; a fact that cannot be distinguished from birth.
“We must conclude in opposition to Heidegger that death, far from being my peculiar possibility, is a contingent fact which as such on principle escapes me and originally belongs to my facticity. I can neither discover my death nor wait for it nor adopt an attitude toward it, for it is that which is revealed as undiscoverable, that which disarms all waiting, that which slips into all attitudes (and particularly into those which are assumed with respect to death) so as to transform them into externalized and fixed conducts whose meaning is forever entrusted to others and not to ourselves, Death is a pure fact as is birth; it comes to us from outside and it transforms us into the outside. At bottom it is in no way distinguished from birth, and it is the identity of birth and death that we call facticity.”
Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness
Death and the Self/Other Relation
“Death cannot therefore belong to the ontological structure of the for-itself. In so far as it is the triumph of the Other over me, it refers to a fact, fundamental to be sure, but totally contingent as we have seen, a fact which is the Other’s existence. We should not know this death if the Other did not exist; it could not be revealed to us, nor could it be constituted as the metamorphosis of our being into a destiny; it would be in fact the simultaneous disappearance of the for-itself and of the world, of the subjective, and of the objective, of the meaningful and of all meanings. If death can to a certain extent be revealed to us as the metamorphosis of these particular meanings which are my meanings, it is owing to the fact of the existence of a meaningful Other which guarantees the location of meanings and of signs. It is because of the Other that my death is the fact that as a subjectivity I fall out of the world and it is not the annihilation of both consciousness and the world. There is then an undeniable and fundamental character of fact—i.e., a radical contingency—in death as in the Other’s existence. This contingency at once puts death out of reach of all ontological conjectures. And to contemplate my life by considering it in terms of death would be to contemplate my subjectivity by adopting with regard to it the Other’s point of view.”
Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness
This account of death as “the triumph of the Other over me” must be read together with Sartre’s account of the look. For Sartre, the look of the other reduces oneself to merely an object and hence deprives oneself of one’s freedom and of any possibility of becoming free.
In order for oneself to not be reduced to an object lacking and deprived of freedom, Sartre says, one must look back at the other. Looking back at the other is the beginning of the triumph of oneself over the other, for it is an endeavor to carry out a reduction of the other to an object. (This article introduces and explains Sartre’s account of the look and the problem of other minds)
Understood through this account of the look, being dead means, for Sartre, being unable to look. That is, being dead means being deprived of the possibility of looking back at the other, and thus being only looked at. And to be only looked at means to be turned into an object with no freedom.
This account of the look and this thinking of the self/other relation are based on Alexandre Kojève’s interpretation of Hegel’s dialectic of the master and the slave. Sartre takes this master/slave dialectic and renders it the ground in which any relation linking together oneself and the other is grounded, expressing it differently and poetically in No Exit: “Hell is other people”.
For more articles explaining Sartre’s philosophy, visit this webpage.