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Personally, I would not think that death were necessarily a telos, even supposing our being-a-whole is a telos and achieved through our relation (of freedom toward) death, but I'm guessing many people do think of it that way

Authenticity requires that death be achieved not as an endpoint, but as an origin and telos of life itself

https://existenz.us/volumes/Vol.9-1Gosetti-Ferencei.pdf

Does Heidegger believe in a human or life telos, and if so is it only death?

I am asking because of the idea of life as a series of roles, and if its purpose and end is only to not exist, then I'd have thought we couldn't make them our own, that we can find neither space for rebellion, nor to consider anything beyond how well we play our role (not e.g. to what end).

Telos is the ancient Greek term for an end, fulfilment, completion, goal or aim

https://www.rep.routledge.com/articles/thematic/telos/v-1

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  • this question has been upvoted, but i worry i am very unclear on the words it uses (role, telos, whole, etc.)
    – user71399
    Commented Sep 14 at 21:02

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For Heidegger death is not really a telos (which would be an essence and thus ontic), but rather is a structural part of our temporal existence (Being-towards-death). Most approach death inauthentically according to Heidegger, that is, death is something that happens to someone out there (a corpse), which allows death to remain anonymous and factual. What is important about death is that if one has an episode where death is confronted not anonymously but with Angst (typically translated as "anxiety," but unlike fear it has no intentional object), you have the chance to treat death as the possibility of not having any more possibilities for yourself. Time becomes intimately bound up with the problem of Being (which was to be covered in one of the divisions of Being and Time that was never published).

I'm not very familiar with "the late" Heidegger, but I don't believe this basic analysis of his changes. Someone can feel free to correct me if I'm mistaken.

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One does not find or discover a telos (= aim, goal) like a precious stone or like discovering America. A telos has always to be set by someone.

  1. Whether your death is a telos of your life can only be decided by yourself. Certainly your death is not the telos of human life, taken in general.

    In most cases persons do not set their death as the telos of their life. There are enough other candidates from the social domain, the family domain, the science domain etc. From certain religious viewpoints the human death is considered the telos of the human life, because it can qualify for an eternal afterlife in heaven.

  2. For human life in general there is no one who sets a telos.

    The only candidate I could imagine were the biological evolution: To make room for the next generation to allow better adaption.

    But it is one of the main statements of the theory of evolution that the concept of telos does not apply to the biological evolution.

Concerning Heidegger's view there are other participants more competent than I to answer your question.

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