an understanding way to the ownmost, nonrelational, and insuperable possibility of Dasein? What attunement discloses to the they that it has been delivered over to death, and in what way?
The publicness of everyday being-with-one-another "knows" death as a constantly occurring event, as a "case of death." Someone 253 or another "dies," be it a neighbor or a stranger. People unknown to us "die" daily and hourly. "Death" is encountered as a familiar event occurring within the world. As such, it remains in the inconspicuousness10 characteristic of everyday encounters. The they has also already secured an interpretation for this event. The "fleeting" talk about this, which is either expressed or else mostly kept back, says: one also dies at the end, but for now one is not affected [unbetroffen].
The analysis of "one dies" reveals unambiguously the kind of being of everyday beg toward death. In such talk, death is understood as an indeterminate something which first has to show up from somewhere, but right now is not yet present for oneself, and is thus no threat. "One dies" spreads the opinion that death, so to speak, strikes the they. The public interpretation of Dasein says that "one dies," because in this way everyone can convince him/herself that in no case is it I myself, for this one is no one. "Dying" is leveled down to an event which does concern Dasein, but which belongs to no one in particular. If idle talk is always ambiguous, so is this way of talking about death. Dying, which is essentially and irreplaceably mine, is "distorted into a publicly occurring event which the they encounters. Characteristic talk speaks about death as a constantly occurring "case." It treats it as something always already "real," and veils its character of possibility and concomitantly the two factors belonging to it, that is, its non-relationality and its insuperability. With such ambiguity, Dasein puts itself in the position of losing itself in the they with regard to an eminent potentiality-of-being that belongs to its own self. The they justifies and increases the temptation of covering over11 for itself its ownmost being-toward-death.
The evasion of death which covers over dominates everydayness so stubbornly that, in being-with-one-another, those "closest by" often try to convince the one who is "dying" that he will escape death and soon return again to the tranquillized everydayness of his world taken care of. This "concern" has the intention of thus "comforting" the "dying person." It wants to bring him back to Dasein by helping him to veil completely his ownmost nonrelational possibility. Thus, the they provides a constant tranquillization about death. But, basically, this [254] tranquillization is not only for the "dying person," but just as much for
10. Cf. § 16.
11. Cf. § 38.