Researcher ORCID Identifier

0009-0006-6437-0432

Graduation Year

2024

Document Type

Campus Only Senior Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts

Department

Philosophy

Reader 1

James Kreines

Reader 2

Yuval Avnur

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© 2025 Gal·la Lopez-Grado Salinas

Abstract

In this thesis, I reevaluate the inquiry into the “Meaning of Being” as articulated by Martin Heidegger in "Being and Time" (1927). Can the meaning of Being be reduced to our everyday intelligibility, provided we expand our understanding of “sense” beyond conceptual comprehension? Or is Being irreducible to both conceptual and pre-thematic intelligibility? Through a critical examination of the relationship between Dasein’s Being and “the nothing,” as presented in “What is Metaphysics” (1929), I advocate for the latter perspective (the irreducibility of Being to intelligibility). This relationship finds resonance in the existential concept of Death in Division II of "Being and Time." I introduce Hubert Dreyfus, a proponent of the former view, and elucidate the limitations of reducing Being to mere pre-conceptual intelligibility. Drawing on Mulhall’s interpretation of Death as the "nothing" and incorporating Mark Sinclair’s analysis of Heideggerian “possibility,” I argue for the “nothing” in Death as co-constitutive of Dasein’s Being, conceptualized as “being-possible.” To draw this conclusion, I first posit that the “nothing” consists of the impossibility of conceptual and pre-conceptual notions of “sense.” Contrary to the interpretation of Death as an episodic experience, I develop a characterization of Death as the “virtual” possibility of an impossibility in a dual sense. This perspective facilitates understanding “the nothing” as neither prior nor external to Dasein’s Being but ontologically inherent to it. Through this thesis, I aim to advance the discourse on Being in relation to "the nothing," challenging the philosophical oversight of interpreting Being as an intelligible entity.

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