This means that in anticipation any Dasein can have wrenched itself away
Anticipation (Vorlaufen) toward death is the existential act by which Dasein individuates itself from the 'they' and achieves authentic selfhood.
, Being and Time, 1962thesis
Anticipation
Anticipation occupies a remarkably diverse terrain in the depth-psychology corpus, appearing as an ontological structure, a neurobiological state, a phenomenological temporal horizon, and a clinical phenomenon at once. Heidegger's treatment is foundational: anticipation (Vorlaufen) toward death is the distinctive existential act by which Dasein wrests itself from the anonymous 'they' and confronts its ownmost, non-relational potentiality-for-Being. This is not mere prediction but an authentic temporalizing mode that discloses finitude and makes possible genuine resoluteness. Panksepp translates a structurally cognate notion into affective neuroscience: the SEEKING system generates anticipatory states that are neurochemically instantiated through dopaminergic circuits, producing escalating behavioral excitement prior to reward — what he originally named the 'expectancy system.' Barrett's predictive-processing account of brain function recasts anticipation as the primary operational mode of neural activity, wherein the brain continuously projects forward-looking simulations tested against incoming sensory data. Craig situates anticipated feelings as future quantal units within the cinemascopic model of awareness, directly integrated into the ongoing emotional present. LeDoux differentiates anticipation as the constitutive feature distinguishing anxiety from fear. Lorenz recovers a Platonic lineage in the Philebus, where soul-pleasures of anticipation are examined as prospective 'writings and paintings' oriented toward the future. Across these traditions, the central tension concerns whether anticipation is constitutively temporal (Heidegger, Husserl-Thompson), motivationally generative (Panksepp, Schore), or epistemically predictive (Barrett, Craig).
In the library
Only anticipatory resoluteness understands the potentiality-for-Being-guilty authentically and wholly — that is to say, primordially.
Anticipatory resoluteness is identified as the sole mode by which Dasein can own its guilt wholly, linking anticipation structurally to authentic temporality and conscience.
, Being and Time, 1962thesis
it seems as if animals working on FI schedules exhibit a gradual intensification of behavioral excitement, or anticipation, as each interval draws to a close.
Panksepp identifies anticipation as a neurobiologically instantiated state of escalating arousal generated by the SEEKING system prior to reward delivery.
, Affective Neuroscience The Foundations of Human and Animal, 1998thesis
To determine whether this spontaneous form of anticipatory conditioning has primacy over scalloped operant responding, the spontaneous sniffing of rats was monitored
Spontaneous anticipatory conditioning, arising before instrumental behavior, demonstrates that anticipation has neural primacy over voluntary reward-seeking action.
, Affective Neuroscience The Foundations of Human and Animal, 1998supporting
Association also involves the retention and anticipation of sense or meaning. Earlier experiences are affectively 'awakened' by later ones on the basis of their felt similarities, and they motivate the anticipation that what is to come will cohere with the sense or meaning of experience so far.
Thompson, drawing on Husserl, establishes anticipation as an intentional structure within passive genesis, whereby habitual sense-transfer motivates prospective coherence of experience.
, Mind in Life: Biology, Phenomenology, and the Sciences of Mind, 2007supporting
Socrates returns to pleasures of anticipation, referring back to Passage 2… The pleasures and pains of the soul 'through itself' are concerned with the future
In Plato's Philebus, Lorenz identifies pleasures of anticipation as soul-pleasures oriented exclusively toward the future, constituting a philosophically distinct class of prospective affect.
, The Brute Within: Appetitive Desire in Plato and Aristotle, 2006thesis
Fear can, like anxiety, involve anticipation, but the nature of the anticipation in each is different: In fear the anticipation concerns if and when a present threat will cause harm, whereas in anxiety the anticipation involves uncertainty about the consequences of a threat that is not present and may not occur.
LeDoux uses the quality of anticipation — certainty of present threat versus uncertainty about absent threat — as the diagnostic criterion distinguishing fear from anxiety.
, Anxious: Using the Brain to Understand and Treat Fear and Anxiety, 2015supporting
the capacity to store complete representations of prior feeling states is necessary in order to be able to make comparisons of the current feelings with the feelings at any past moment or with anticipated feelings at any future moment.
Craig argues that anticipated future feelings are represented as quantal units in the AIC's cinemascopic model, enabling temporal comparison essential to emotional awareness.
, How Do You Feel? An Interoceptive Moment with Your Neurobiological Self, 2014supporting
That future unit… will contain expected feelings, that is, predictions made by internal models of the world and of others' behavior based on heredity and experience. If the present conditions do not match the expected conditions, the dissonance can immediately produce increased salience in the ongoing present moment (e.g., surprise).
Craig formalizes anticipated feelings as forward-stored representational units whose mismatch with present conditions generates emotional salience through prediction error.
, How Do You Feel? An Interoceptive Moment with Your Neurobiological Self, 2014supporting
Addiction can be conceptualised as a three-stage, recurring cycle — binge/intoxication, withdrawal/negative affect, and preoccupation/anticipation (craving)
Koob positions anticipation (as craving) as the third and driving stage of the addiction cycle, constituting a pathological transformation of normal reward-anticipation circuits.
, Neurobiology of addiction: a neurocircuitry analysis, 2016supporting
Panksepp (1986) describes an 'expectancy command circuit' that connects higher limbic areas in the orbitofrontal cortex with lower brain stem areas… and supports emotional functions involved in positive expectancy processes.
Schore cites Panksepp's expectancy circuit — a dopaminergic system linking orbitofrontal cortex to brainstem — as the neurobiological substrate for positive anticipatory affect.
, Affect Regulation and the Origin of the Self: The Neurobiology of Emotional Development, 1994supporting
Musical or narrative tension builds uncertain predictions, engaging a cascade of stimulus-driven expectations until resolution ultimately satisfies the predictions, eliciting pleasure.
Schoeller extends anticipation into aesthetic experience, arguing that the buildup of uncertain predictions through musical or narrative tension constitutes a pleasure-generating anticipatory cascade.
, The neurobiology of aesthetic chills: How bodily sensations shape emotional experiences, 2024supporting
Through prediction, your brain constructs the world you experience… your experience right now was predicted by your brain a moment ago. Prediction is such a fundamental activity of the human brain that some scientists consider it the brain's primary mode of operation.
Barrett frames anticipation as the brain's primary operational mode, where all current experience is the product of prior predictive construction rather than reactive stimulus processing.
, How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain, 2017supporting
Dasein is here thought of as 'running ahead' towards it or up to it rather than into it.
Heidegger clarifies that anticipation involves a prospective orientation toward death as possibility — running ahead — not a literal arrival, preserving the structure of possibility itself.
, Being and Time, 1962supporting
studies of AIC activation during aversive anticipation showed modulation by uncertainty; both types of study suggest that feelings are compared across time in the AIC.
Neuroimaging evidence links aversive anticipation specifically to uncertainty-modulated AIC activation, supporting a temporal comparison mechanism for feeling states.
, How Do You Feel? An Interoceptive Moment with Your Neurobiological Self, 2014supporting
All animals move forward in an energetic search pattern, sniffing vigorously and investigating, mouthing, and manipulating prominent objects in the environment.
Panksepp describes the behavioral signature of SEEKING-system activation as forward-directed appetitive engagement, the behavioral expression of anticipatory arousal.
, Affective Neuroscience The Foundations of Human and Animal, 1998supporting
Whatever used to happen 'in the moment' was often the result of hours, if not days, of preparation… All that planning — that highly detailed, imaginative production — was part of the buildup and part of the denouement.
Perel observes that what passes for spontaneous erotic encounter is structurally constituted by anticipatory elaboration, repositioning conscious planning as the clinical form of desire's prospective architecture.
, Mating in captivity sex, lies and domestic bliss, 2007aside
Scale of anticipated religious coping… Religious coping was greater in response to threat and loss than challenge, and in response to threat than loss.
Empirical data show that anticipated religious coping is differentially activated by threat, indicating that anticipatory appraisal modulates the mobilization of spiritual resources.
, The psychology of religion and coping theory, research,, 2001aside