Abstract

The concepts of mortality and finitude are central to Hegel's and Heidegger's philosophical projects. They propose that the confrontation with, or the awareness of, death awakens us to self-consciousness or to authentic existence. Yet they both focus on an individualized encounter with a death which lies in our future. This paper argues that in addition to this atomistic mode of being-towards-death there is also a certain 'feminine' relation to death which arises in being-with the dying other and grieving for those who have died. This experience suggests that our death is approached in the context of the deaths of others and is immanent within life: this death is inter-relational and intrinsic rather than isolated and futural and impending.