Heidegger suggests that the meaning of our being must be tied up with time. We are temporal beings – born into a world that existed before us with its religion and culture, its history already written, and to make sense of this world we engage in various pastimes to get by. We might have a family, build a career or a house, and in doing so we place ourselves on a trajectory towards some sort of future. But there’s a limit to our projects, a point at which everything comes to an end, whether finished or unfinished, and that limit is our death. This is what Heidegger calls “being-towards-death”.

However we are so absorbed by our pastimes and distractions that we simply forget that there’s an outermost limit to our pursuits; and in so doing, says Heidegger, we live an inauthentic life. It’s not until we project our lives onto the horizon of our death that authentic life can be found.

¶ 3:33 PM