Love, and death: Kierkegaard and heidegger on authentic and inauthentic human existence

Abstract

Several commentators on Kierkegaard and Heidegger have noted the similarity between Heidegger's account of authentic temporality in Being and Time and Kierkegaard's discussion of time in The Concept of Dread. By drawing attention to a not very well known essay of Kierkegaard's, ‘The Decisiveness of Death’, I attempt to show that there is a very close connection between Heidegger's and Kierkegaard's entire views on authentic human existence. In the second part I try to locate in The Present Age, not just the equivalent of das Man in Heidegger as numerous commentators have done, but the presence of the entire temporal structure of inauthenticity with equivalents for each of the ‘fallen’ modes of inauthentic being described by Heidegger in Being and Time. The result is that the previous attempts by commentators to restrict early Heidegger's originality vis‐a‐vis Kierkegaard begin to look like masterpieces of understatement. In the process of reaching this conclusion I try to shed light on several often misun...