Ending does not necessarily mean fulfilling oneself. It thus becomes more urgent to ask in what sense, if any, death must he conceived as the ending of Dasein.
In the first instance, "ending" signifies "stopping", and it signifies this in senses which are ontologically different. The rain stops. It is no longer present-at-hand. The road stops. Such an ending does not make the road disappear, but such a stopping is determinative for the road as this one, which is present-at-hand. Hence ending, as stopping, can signify either [245] "passing over into non-presence-at-hand" or else "Being-present-at-hand only when the end comes". The latter kind of ending, in turn, may either be determinative for something which is present-at-hand in an unfinished way, as a road breaks off when one finds it under construction ; or it may rather constitute the 'finishedness" of something present-at-hand, as the painting is finished with the last stroke of the brush.
But ending as "getting finished" does not include fulfilling. On the other hand, whatever has got to be fulfilled must indeed reach the finishedness that is possible for it. Fulfilling is a mode of 'finishedness', and is founded upon it. Finishedness is itself possible only as a determinate form of something present-at-hand or ready-to-hand.
Even ending in the sense of "disappearing" can still have its modifications according to the kind of Being which an entity may have. The rain is at an end—that is to say it has disappeared. The bread is at an end—that is to say, it has been used up and is no longer available as something ready-to-hand.
By none of these modes of ending can death he suitably characterized as the "end" of Dasein. If dying, as Being-at-an-end, were understood in the sense of an ending of the kind we have discussed, then Dasein would thereby be treated as something present-at-hand or ready-to-hand. In death, Dasein has not been fulfilled nor has it simply disappeared; it has not become finished nor is it wholly at one's disposal as something ready-to-hand.
On the contrary, just as Dasein is already its "not-yet", and is its "not-yet" constantly as long as it is, it is already its end too. The "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. Death is a way to be, which Dasein takes over as soon as it is. "As soon as man comes to life, he is at once old enough to die."iv
Ending, as Being-towards-the-end, must be clarified ontologically in terms of Dasein's kind of Being. And presumably the possibility of an existent Being of that "not-yet" which lies 'before' the 'end',1 will become
1 '. . . die Möglichkeit eines existierenden Seins des Noch-nicht, das "vor" dem "Ende" liegt . . .' The earlier editions have '. . . das ja "vor" dem "Ende" . . .'