Time, Death, and Conscience

Time is also crucial for the analytic of Dasein: ‘Dasein’s Being finds its meaning in temporality’ (BT, 19).
Awareness of one’s own death snatches one from the clutches of the ‘they’: since Dasein must die on its own – dying is not a joint or communal enterprise – death ‘lays claim to it as an individual Dasein . . . individualizes Dasein down to itself’ (BT, 263). This confers on Dasein a peculiar sort of freedom, ‘freedom towards death’ (BT, 266).