Descendants, Where Are You?

by Hubert Cua (part 3 of 5)

I wrote this article with the intention of criticizing, but not falsifying Martin Heidegger.


For Martin Heidegger, Being is Time. Human beings exist temporally in the stretch between birth and death. Being is time and time is finite, because it comes to an end with our death. The only authentic death is one’s own. To die for another person would simply be to sacrifice one-self.

From what Martin Heidegger says, here are some things that we can analyze. Married to Elfride Heidegger, Martin Heidegger said this during World War 1. Some soldiers usually reason out that they fight and sacrifice for their descendants. Considering that he has children already, he seems to be selfish when he said this.
However, considering that he said this during the time when theocentrism is still prevalent, can we say that he is selfish? He just overshot when breaking through theocentrism. He wanted to direct himself from God to self.

Also, don’t we be in our descendants, like surnames, memories, ancestral possessions, last notes and genes? Even without all of these, except the genes, the fact that our descendants exist itself already connotes that we exist.