Clarissa Dalloway's Heidegerrian Dread

December 10, 2023

A thing there was that mattered; a thing, wreathed about with chatter, defaced, obscured in her own life, let drop every day in corruption, lies, chatter. This he had preserved. Death was defiance. Death was an attempt to communicate, people feeling the impossibility of reaching the centre which, mystically, evaded them; closeness drew apart; rapture faded; one was alone. There was an embrace in death.

From Mrs. Dalloway

When words have lost their grounding, they become idle talk, which Heidegger suggests is to some extent an unavoidable social phenomenon. Words become so familiar that they become alien. In order for words to remain meaningful, we must preserve a certain amount of discomfort about them. Dasein's homelessness confers a special status upon it. The alienating experience of idle talk is also a precondition for Dasein's conscious efforts to ground itself. The combination of being at home and not being at home is what makes Dasein's experience authentic, for it forces it to situate itself within Being as a whole. Heidegger intimates that an intangible voice of Being pulls Dasein beyond its immediate environs, forcing it to continuously transform the home that it is in. Dasein is always also more than it is. This is why the inauthentic social world that Heidegger somewhat disparagingly refers to as das Man becomes not just the enemy of authenticity, but also its driving force.

From Froese, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Daoist Thought-Crossing Paths In-Between.