Being-towards-the-end (Sein-zum-Ende) stands as one of the most rigorously developed ontological concepts in the depth-psychological and existential-phenomenological canon, receiving its most systematic articulation in Heidegger’s Being and Time (1962). There, it designates not the biological terminus of life but the structural condition whereby Dasein always already comports itself in relation to its ownmost, non-relational, and not-to-be-outstripped possibility—death understood as an existential mode rather than an event. The concept is irreducible to any empirical account of dying: it cannot be appropriated from the deaths of others, nor captured by biographical, ethnological, or psychological typologies. What distinguishes Heidegger’s analysis is the insistence that Being-at-an-end and Being-towards-the-end are categorically distinct—the former a present-at-hand cessation, the latter a constant structural orientation pervading Dasein’s thrownness. Everyday Dasein characteristically covers over this orientation through the public ‘they,’ tranquilizing its ownmost anxiety before death into anonymous certainty. Authentic Being-towards-the-end, by contrast, demands resoluteness and anticipation. The concept intersects with temporality, care, guilt, and the possibility of Being-a-whole, making it a gravitational center for the entire analytic of Dasein. Depth-psychological readers—Hillman on character and the lasting life, Frankl on meaning in extremis—approach cognate territory through different idioms, while the corpus of Heidegger himself remains the indispensable primary source.
Being-at-an-end implies existentially Being-towards-the-end. The utter-most “not-yet” has the character of something towards which Dasein comports itself.
This passage draws the foundational distinction between mere cessation and the existential structure of Being-towards-the-end, establishing that death is always already an issue for Dasein as a mode of its Being.
, Being and Time, 1962thesis
In setting forth everyday Being-towards-death, however, we are at the same time enjoined to try to secure a full existential conception of Being-towards-the-end, by a more penetrating Interpretation in which falling Being-towards-death is taken as an evasion in the face of death.
Heidegger argues that the everyday evasive mode of Being-towards-the-end is itself phenomenally revelatory, since flight from death discloses the very possibility it flees.
, Being and Time, 1962thesis
How is the ontological possibility of an authentic Being-towards-death to be characterized ‘Objectively’, if, in the end, Dasein never comports itself authentically towards its end?
This passage opens the existential projection of authentic Being-towards-death, pressing the question of how such authenticity can be structurally described given its constitutive hiddenness from others and from fallenness.
, Being and Time, 1962thesis
In Dasein, as being towards its death, its own uttermost “not-yet” has already been included—that “not-yet” which all others lie ahead of.
Heidegger demonstrates that the ‘not-yet’ of death is not an outstanding remainder but an already-included structural constituent of Dasein’s Being-towards-the-end from the outset.
, Being and Time, 1962thesis
if Being-towards-the-end should afford the existential possibility of an existentiell Being-a-whole for Dasein, then this would give phenomenal confirmation for the thesis that ‘care’ is the ontological term for the totality of Dasein’s structural whole.
This passage links Being-towards-the-end directly to care and to the possibility of Dasein’s wholeness, establishing the concept as the existential key to Dasein’s structural integrity.
, Being and Time, 1962thesis
If dying, as Being-at-an-end, were understood in the sense of an ending of the kind we have discussed, then Dasein would thereby be treated as something present-at-hand or ready-to-hand.
Heidegger establishes that interpreting death as mere termination commits a category error, reducing Dasein to the ontological mode of things rather than preserving the existential character of Being-towards-the-end.
, Being and Time, 1962thesis
the certainty which belongs to such a covering-up of Being-towards-death must be an inappropriate way of holding-for-true, and not, for instance, an uncertainty in the sense of a doubting.
Heidegger analyzes the distinctive inauthenticity of everyday certainty about death, showing that covering-over Being-towards-the-end constitutes a positive mode of holding-covered rather than simple ignorance.
, Being and Time, 1962supporting
can this resoluteness undergo an existentiell modalization through Being-towards-death? What does it mean ‘to think through to the end’ existentially the phenomenon of resoluteness?
This passage links Being-towards-the-end to the question of authentic resoluteness, exploring how anticipatory resolve temporalizes Dasein’s Being-guilty and discloses the full existential weight of the concept.
, Being and Time, 1962supporting
‘As long as it is’, right to its end, it comports itself towards its potentiality-for-Being. Even when it still exists but has nothing more ‘before it’ and has ‘settled its account’, its Being is still determined by the ‘ahead-of-itself.’
Heidegger demonstrates that the structure of ‘ahead-of-itself’ within care persists even in hopelessness, confirming that Being-towards-the-end is a permanent ontological condition rather than an occasional awareness.
, Being and Time, 1962supporting
dispels the danger that it may, by its own finite understanding of existence, fail to recognize that it is getting outstripped by the existence-possibilities of Others.
Heidegger notes that finite understanding of Being-towards-the-end guards against the misappropriation of others’ existence-possibilities as substitutes for one’s ownmost possibility.
, Being and Time, 1962supporting
Death, in the widest sense, is a phenomenon of life. Life must be understood as a kind of Being to which there belongs a Being-in-the-world.
Heidegger situates death within the broader ontological framework of life as Being-in-the-world, resisting reductive biological or psychological accounts that dissolve the existential structure of Being-towards-the-end.
, Being and Time, 1962supporting
The soul goes through many death experiences, yet physical life goes on; and as physical life comes to a close, the soul often produces images and experiences that show continuity.
Hillman’s depth-psychological perspective offers a counterpoint to Heidegger, arguing that the psyche’s relation to its end is imaginal and open rather than structurally conclusive, complicating any simple finalism.
, Suicide and the Soul, 1964supporting
If the final purpose of aging is character, then character finishes life, polishes it into a more lasting image.
Hillman reframes Being-towards-the-end as a process of character consolidation, suggesting that the approach to death refines and discloses the particular irreplaceable image each life embodies.
, The Force of Character: And the Lasting Life, 1999supporting
thrownness into the possibility of the “nothing”: H. 277 … thrown Being-in-the-world … Being-towards-death.
This index entry confirms the systematic co-location of Being-towards-the-end with thrownness, nullity, and thrown Being-in-the-world across Heidegger’s text.
, Being and Time, 1962aside
in living unto its days Dasein stretches itself along ‘temporally’ in the sequence of those days.
In discussing everydayness and temporality, this passage provides contextual background for understanding how Being-towards-the-end pervades the ordinary temporal stretch of Dasein’s existence.
, Being and Time, 1962aside