analysis of Being-certain with regard to death ; and this Being-certain will in the end present us with a distinctive certainty of Dasein.
For the most part, everyday Dasein covers up the ownmost possibility of its Being—that possibility which is non-relational and not to be outstripped. This factical tendency to cover up confirms our thesis that Dasein, as factical, is in the 'untruth'.xv Therefore the certainty which belongs to [257] such a covering-up of Being-towards-death must be an inappropriate way of holding-for-true, and not, for instance, an uncertainty in the sense of a doubting. In inappropriate certainty, that of which one is certain is held covered up. If 'one' understands death as an event which one encounters in one's environment, then the certainty which is related to such events does not pertain to Being-towards-the-end.
They say, "It is certain that 'Death' is coming.'1 They say it, and the "they" overlooks the fact that in order to be able to be certain of death, Dasein itself must in every case be certain of its ownmost non-relational potentiality-for-Being. They say, "Death is certain"; and in saying so, they implant in Dasein the illusion that it is itself certain of its death. And what is the ground of everyday Being-certain? Manifestly, it is not just mutual persuasion. Yet the 'dying' of Others is something that one experiences daily. Death is an undeniable 'fact of experience'.
The way in which everyday Being-towards-death understands the certainty which is thus grounded, betrays itself when it tries to 'think' about death, even when it does so with critical foresight-that is to say, in an appropriate manner. So far as one knows, all men 'die'. Death is probable in the highest degree for everyman, yet it is not 'unconditionally' certain. Taken strictly, a certainty which is 'only' empirical may be attributed to death. Such certainty necessarily falls short of the highest certainty, the apodictic, which we reach in certain domains of theoretical knowledge.
In this 'critical' determination of the certainty of death, and of its impendence, what is manifested in the first instance is, once again, a failure to recognize Dasein's kind of Being and the Being-towards-death which belongs to Dasein—a failure that is characteristic of everydayness. The fact that demise, as an event which occurs, is 'on!y' empirically certain, is in no way decisive as to the certainty of death. Cases of death may be the factical occasion for Dasein's first paying attention to death a tall. So long, however, as Dasein remains in the empirical certainty which we have mentioned, death, in the way that it 'is', is something of which Dasein can by no means become certain. Even though, in the publicness of the "they", Dasein
1 'Man sagt: es ist gewiss, dass "der" Tod kommt.'