Natality and Mortality
This chapter reconsiders mortality in view of its connections with birth and natality, arguing that mortality is a relational phenomenon. Because we are relational beings, when someone dies who was important to us, we lose part of our own selves, and so different people’s deaths shade into each other. We have grounds to fear our deaths because they spell the end of our relationships and because on death we will cease to be in the world as one that we share with others. To elaborate these ideas, I draw on Beauvoir’s work and on Heidegger’s analysis of Dasein’s supposedly non-relational mortality, which can nonetheless help us to draw out what implications follow if our mortality is in fact relational. One implication is that mortality loses the priority over natality that Heidegger accords it; another implication is that fidelity, as well as authenticity, is important in our ethical lives.