ability for “more,” which in this case is my ability to keep on doing what I cannot not do as long as I am alive, namely ex-sist as mortal becoming. Ex-sistence is a matter of asymptotic becoming: it can never be fully actualized if that would mean completely overcoming my becoming by achieving some final goal. As the dynamic, forward-stretching ability to keep on keeping on, I am always living beyond any particular goal I may actualize or any stage of life I may attain.187 Whatever possibilities I may actualize, I am always already beyond them (never “too old for my victories”),188 always extended ahead into yet further possibilities, right up to the possibility of dying. In fact, the only way I can cease being ex-sistential ability is to die.
Along with “Möglichkeit” in the singular, another name for ex-sistential ability is “Seinkönnen,” which makes its first appearance in §18 (SZ 86.16=119.8). It has been translated into English as either “potentiality-for-being” (M-R) or “potentiality of being” (S-S), neither of which is on the mark.189 As the ex-sistential ability to keep on ex-sisting, Seinkönnen is the very essence of ex-sistence, not something I can choose to be or do. Ex-sistential ability is a necessity. If I am to ex-sist at all, I have to be always enacting my ability to ex-sist. The object of ex-sistence-as-ability is that very same ability. As von Herrmann puts it:
187. “Wesenhaft ihm selbst vorweg”: SZ 406.14=458.16 (§79, ¶1). To name this asymptotic becoming, Heidegger draws on Heraclitus’ ankhibasiē (Ἀγχιβασίη, fragment 122), Gaisford, Sudae lexicon, I, 84.8–9; cf. GA 77: 1.1=1.1.
188. Nietzsche, “Free Death” in Thus Spoke Zarathustra I, n. 21.
189. Neither are the French: Vezin and Martineau, pouvoir-être; Italian: Chiodi-Volpi, poter-essere; Marini, poter essere; Cavalcante Schuback: poder ser; Spanish: Rivera, poder-ser; Gaos, poder ser; Tzavara: δυνατότητα, possibility. Wang-Qinjie: 能存在 (néng cúnzài): able to exist.
190. Von Herrmann, I, 113.16–21.