In 1926: living at the edge of time - Monoskop

BEING-IN-THE-WORLDS OF 1926 461
Fascinating Death
The contrast between fear and anxiety is parallel to that between "being-at-home"
and "the uncanny." Fear takes its "orientation from what
we encounter in the immanence of the within-the-world."82 Because of
such dependence on encounters within-the-world, fear makes Dasein
"forget and back away in the face of a factical potentiality-for-Being. "83
But what fear actually forgets becomes clear only through its contrast
with "anxiety," which Heidegger labels as the more "basic state-ofmind.
"84
Anxiety discloses an insignificance of the world; and this insignificance
reveals the nullity of that with which one can concern oneself-in other
words, the impossibility of projecting oneself upon a potentiality-for­
Being which belongs to existence and which is founded primarily upon
one's objects of concern. The revealing of this impossibility, however,
signifies that one is allowing the possibility of an authentic potentiality-for-Being
to be illuminated. What is the temporal meaning of this
revealing? Anxiety is anxious about naked Dasein as something that
has been thrown into uncanniness. 85
The uncanniness of Dasein, which both being-at-home and fear would
like to forget, has the same cause as the "impossibility of projecting
oneself upon a potentiality-for-Being which belongs to existence." This
cause is death, the unavoidable horizon that limits Dasein in all its
projects and attempts at being meaningful. But it is also the horizon of
Dasein, which, according to Heidegger, contributes more than anything
else to the beauty of authenticity and resoluteness, and of actions carried
out in that spirit.86 [see Action vs_ Impotence, Authenticity vs. Artificiality]
"Anxiety arises out of Being-in-the-world as thrown ... But anxiety
can mount authentically only in a Dasein which is resolute. He who is
resolute knows no fear; but he understands the possibility of anxiety as
the possibility of the very mood which neither inhibits nor bewilders
him. Anxiety liberates him from possibilities which 'count for nothing'
... , and lets him become free for those which are authentic. "87
Despite the (generally acknowledged) influence of Kierkegaard's philosophy
on these passages, it is obvious that Heidegger's fascination with
anxiety and death mirrors numerous variations on the same topic in the