"Die Welt is fort, ich muß dich tragen."—"The world is gone, I must carry you."
This line of poetry by Paul Celan is an ideal lens through which to examine Heidegger's philosophy of death as it appears in Being and Time: the first half more or less sums up Heidegger's thoughts on death, while the latter half expresses a synthesis of sorts of Heidegger's two main critics, Levinas and Derrida. In this way it serves as both a summary and a dismissal of Heidegger's position, brought about with great economy of words.
Leaving aside biographical considerations—namely that Celan was a Jewish poet writing in German whose parents were killed in a concentration camp during the Second World War, and Heidegger was a member of the Nazi party—the line is an appropriate starting point for launching a critique of Heidegger's existential analytic of death because in unpacking its meaning we find that it evokes a number of questions, all of which he addresses at one point or another.
"Die Welt"—What is the world, and what does it mean that we have access to it? "Die Welt is fort"—In light of what the world is, what then does it mean to lose it? (i.e., What is death as such?)
For Heidegger, the world is "the accessibility of beings as such" (Metaphysics, 269). Consequently it is only proper to human beings, to Dasein, for only Dasein has access to things as such; animals are in the world but "poor in world", because though they interact with things they do not have access to them in the same way that Dasein does (Metaphysics, 268). Along the same lines, it cannot be said of something like a stone that it has "access to the world"—for a stone can experience beings as such even less than can an animal. This distinction in life—between Dasein, which has access to other beings as such, and not-Dasein, which is denied such access—is maintained in death; only Dasein can be said to die, while other entities can only be said to perish or pass away. Thus there is ground for Heidegger's limiting his inquiry (in Being and Time) to the death of Dasein alone; and so we too will limit our inquiry in the same way, taking it as given that such a distinction is valid.¹
In any case, death as such is not simply the end of Dasein's existence, though it can be said that it is the end of Dasein qua Dasein—Heidegger says that "[t]he end of the entity qua Dasein is the beginning of the same entity qua something present-at-hand" (Being and Time, 281).² "Present-at-hand" is a technical term that Heidegger uses to draw a distinction between different types of phenomena with which Dasein interacts: something "present-at-hand" is a phenomenon that Dasein must consider on its own terms, as such, e.g. a thunderstorm, or another Dasein. (Contrast this with a phenomenon that is "ready-to-hand", which is something that Dasein puts to use directly, in a sense acting through it; e.g. a hammer.) So after its eventual passing-away—that is, after having lost the world—Dasein itself is not lost to the world; it is still a phenomenon to be accessed as such, but it is no longer Dasein in that it no longer accesses other phenomena in the same way as it can be accessed—it is no-longer-Dasein.
In fact, Heidegger goes on to claim that to become no-longer-Dasein is not just an arbitrary endpoint to life—rather it is the sine qua non of living itself: that "[t]he 'ending' which we have in view when we speak of death, does not signify Dasein's Being-at-an-end [Zu-Ende-sein] but a Being-towards-the-end [Sein zum Ende] of this entity" (Being and Time, 289). That is, that to live is to be-toward-death. Because the endpoint is so clear, there is a great deal resting on the future. Consequently, Dasein is in large part defined by its futurity—for as long as it is alive, "there belongs to Dasein, as long as it is, a 'not-yet' which it will be—that which is constantly still outstanding" (Being and Time, 286). And since Dasein is so largely defined by the not-yet, it is perfectly consistent that upon its death it becomes something different; that "the coming-to-its-end of what-is-not-yet-at-an-end (in which what is still outstanding is liquidated as regards its Being) has the character of no-longer-Dasein" (Being and Time, 286).³
So all of life for Dasein is being-toward-death, and death is the moment at which all of Dasein's projections into the future—all of that which for Dasein is not-yet—come to an end. In other words, death is the moment at which everything that is proper to Dasein comes into its possession, for only in dying can Dasein come to claim all of its projections into the future. Since Dasein is defined by those projections, suddenly being possessed of all of them means that by definition it has become no-longer-Dasein. And in having become no-longer-Dasein, "the deceased has abandoned our 'world' and left it behind"—he or she no longer has access to it in the same way as before, when he or she was a being-toward-death (Being and Time, 282).
"Ich muß dich tragen."—Where does that leave the death of the Other—the You that according to Celan I must carry upon the disappearance of the world? (And why must I carry the Other?)
For Heidegger, a defining feature of death is that it can only be experienced by one for oneself: "coming-to-an-end implies a mode of Being in which the particular Dasein simply cannot be represented by someone else" (Being and Time, 286). This leaves each Dasein in the rather curious position of being completely alone as it dies; it is curious because having spent its entire existence being defined by its ability to access other phenomena and to be accessed by them it is now denied that access, in becoming-no-longer-Dasein. But that is not to say that the death of one person is entirely useless to everyone else. Instead, Heidegger says that we can witness the death of another, and learn from it: "In the dying of the Other we can experience that remarkable phenomenon of Being which may be defined as the change-over of an entity from Dasein's kind of Being (or life) to no-longer Dasein" (Being and Time, 281). But such an act of witnessing does not make our relation to the death of the Other authentic or genuine in any way; in fact the opposite is the case.
Recall that the death of each person is only his own; the moment at which he becomes complete in himself, no longer defined by that proper to him which is not-yet. Says Heidegger, "[t]he dying of Others is not something which we experience in a genuine sense; at most we are always just 'there alongside'" (Being and Time, 282). Being alongside him as he dies does not change anything about that fundamental alone-ness of death; one cannot die for another (in the sense that one cannot experience death on the Other's behalf).
That the relationship I have with the death of the Other is inauthentic in no way precludes my witnessing it all the same. Heidegger makes allowances for that, and even concedes that in a sense we can "be with" our dead even though they are no-longer-Dasein:
In such Being-with the dead [dem Toten], the deceased himself is no longer factically 'there'. However, when we speak of "Being-with", we always have in view Being with one another in the same world. [...] But in terms of that world [Aus ihr her] those who remain can still be with him. (Being and Time, 282)
This being-with-the-dead is the "ich muß dich tragen" of Heidegger. Even though the deceased are no longer in the world, we as Daseins still have access to them as phenomena present-at-hand; that is how we can still be with them even in their absence. (And that could even be construed as a good thing; for surely it is valuable to observe the process of becoming-no-longer-Dasein, so we know what we have coming to us.) But that changes nothing about the fundamental nature of dying: that to die is to be alone, and we can only ever die for ourselves and by ourselves regardless of how many bystanders are bearing witness. This is the nature of death for Heidegger by its very definition: only I can experience my death, and so the only authentic relationship with death I can have is with my own.
The main criticism of this very lonely view of death is a phenomenological one from Levinas, revolving around a fact of chronology: that the death of the Other precedes my own. The implications of this fact are manifold, and call into question the entirety of Heidegger's analytic of death.
Because his death is before mine, Levinas says, "the death of the other affects me more than my own" (God, Death, and Time, 105)—for once I have died, I am no longer around to be affected by anything, even my own death. (This much seems obvious.) But if the importance of my own death is deprecated, then the death of the Other must take on a heightened importance—for it seems equally obvious that death cannot be entirely meaningless, as it is nothing less than a disappearing from the world. "It is my receiving the other—and not the anxiety of death awaiting me—that is the reference to death. We encounter death in the face of the other" (God, Death, and Time, 105). Death, then, is not something solitary; and though I still cannot die in place of the Other, I can (and must!) die for him, on his behalf, because he extends me the same courtesy.
But by far the most serious problem with Heidegger's argument is inadvertently made apparent by Heidegger himself, in his definition of death—the process of becoming-no-longer-Dasein but instead a phenomenon present-at-hand, with no projections into the future. (That is, when the possibility of future possibilities becomes impossible.) The instant of my death is also the instant at which I am no longer Dasein—the instant at which the world is no longer accessible to me. And so as soon as I am in a position to experience death as such, I am also in a position that leaves me with all of my possibilities exhausted—I am left with "nonaccess to death as such" (Aporias, 76). Thus my own experience of my own death is inauthentic.
Both Levinas's argument and the fundamental problem with Heidegger's text above are echoed by Derrida, who elaborates upon them thus:
The death of the other [...] becomes [...] 'first', always first.... The death of the other, this death of the other in 'me', is fundamentally the only death that is named in the syntagm 'my death', with all the consequences that one can draw from this. This is another dimension of awaiting as awaiting one another, awaiting oneself at death and expecting death by awaiting one another, up to the most advanced longevity in a life that will have been so short, no matter what. (Aporias, 76)
Regardless of the angle from which we approach the problem of the Other's death (i.e., as Derrida from within the text, or Levinas from without it, as an ethical problem), we are left with the answer that even on his own terms, Heidegger's argument for the authenticity of Dasein's own death is contradictory and self-defeating. If my own death is unavailable to me, what relationship to death can I possibly have that is genuine and authentic?—I can relate to the death of the Other, which is the only death that can possibly be made mine.
"Die Welt is fort, ich muß dich tragen." If my death can never be mine, just as the Other's death can never be his, in order to prevent death from becoming utterly meaningless we must, in some sense, die for each other. (Thus in death we are even less alone than in life!) That leaves us in the position of always awaiting death, though not necessarily being-toward it as Heidegger would have it—instead we are being-toward the death of the Other, because his is the only death with which we can have an authentic relationship; and it is in "receiving the other" and carrying the burden of that experience with us that we can truly come to know what it is to die.
¹ See Derrida's Of Spirit for a compelling argument against the validity of that distinction.
² The moment of death itself is Dasein's coming to realise its ownmost potentiality—thus it can be said that it is the point at which Dasein becomes radically unique, complete in itself. For the purpose of this essay, this realisation is more important than other modes of existence that Dasein might take on after death; with death thought of in this way, it encourages "a way of Being in which Dasein is towards death" (Being and Time, 247).
³ A necessary consequence of being defined by futurity is that Dasein is a finite being—a conclusion that would likely be unacceptable to any philosopher who sought to preserve the soul's immortality.
Derrida, Jacques. Aporias, trans. Thomas Dutoit. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004.
-------. Sovereignties in Question: The Poetics of Paul Celan, ed. Thomas Dutoit and Outi Pasanen. New York: Fordham University Press, 2005.
Heidegger, Martin. "Being and Time (Selections)". Memento Mori: Reflections on Death course reader. Halifax: University of King's College, 2005-6. (That means I don't know who to blame for the translation, and for that I am sorrier than you can imagine.)
-------. "The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics (Selections)". Derrida: Legatee and Legacy course reader. Halifax: University of King's College, 2005-6. (Same disclaimer goes for this, too.)
Levinas, Emmanuel. God, Death, and Time, trans. Bettina Bergo. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002. | 
