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finitude,

as

Heidegger

sees

it,

is

not

only

the

limitation

of

his

temporality

in

time;

his

being

is

also

radically

limited

in

space.

Man's

world,

as

comprising

the

other

beings

to

which

he

is

essentially

and

really

related,

never

coincides

with

the

totality of

beings

as

such,

but

is

always

a

restricted

phenomenal

field

bounded

by

an

external

environment.

The

reason

for

this

. . .

is

that

man's

having

a

world

at

all

is

grounded

not

in

his

openness

to

possibility

as

such,

but

in

his

being

necessarily

confined

to

some

specific

range

of

possibilities

inherited

from

his

finite

past

and

projected

into

his

finite

future.

Thus

man's

relatedness

to

others

is

itself

relative.

He

does

not

participate

in

them

fully,

as

they

are

in

themselves,

but

is

in

principle

required

to

encounter

them

under

the

perspectives

imposed

by

his

own

particular

projects

of

self-understanding.

Naturally,

in

his

average,

everyday

existence,

man

is

not

fully

conscious

of

this

spatial

limitation

of

his

world

and,

in

fact,

hides

from

himself

the

situational

character

of

the

'truth'

(Wahrheit)

constituted

by

his

highly

restricted

encounters

with

others.

He

treats

other

things

and

persons

as

the

mere

objects

of

his

own

finite

appreciations,

and

so

'falls'

(

verfällt)

or

succumbs

to

his

world

by

absolutizing

its

limitations.

As

authentic

existence,

however,

man

acknowledges

that

the

truth

in

which

he

stands

is

always

a

relative

truth,

and

he

holds

himself

open

for

ever

new

encounters

with

others

whose

being

in

themselves

transcends

their

being

for

him

as

objects

in

his

world.

Although

as

a

man,

he

must

continue

to

exist

within

his

world

and

may

always

succumb

to

a

new

bondage

to

it,

his

authenticity

consists

in

being

dialectically

free

from

it,

and

therefore

free

for

both

himself

and

the

other

beings

that

make

up

the

environment

beyond

him

(The

Reality

of God: 154 f.).

is

to

flee

from

it,

to

try

to

suppress

one's

awareness

of

one's

radical

finitude

by

existing

as

though

one

were

not

finite.

Thus,

for

example,

despite

the

fact

that

our

relatedness

to

our

world

is

always relative,

we

typically

hide

from

ourselves

the

situational

character

of

the

'truth'

(Wahrheit)

treat

other

things

and

persons

as

the

mere

objects

of

our

own

finite

appreciations, and so 'fall' or succumb to our world by absolutizing its limitations. Or, again, we try to evade the fact of our own having to die by talking about death as something that happens only in general – not to this unique individual or that but to an anonymous 'one' (das Man). . . . I do not die, but one dies -- someday, far away in the future. Furthermore, this attempt to suppress one's awareness of one's real situation is a social conspiracy already well underway before anyone of us as an individual arrives on the scene and is tempted to succumb to it. Indeed, on Heidegger's view, the privileged part of my world made up of my fellow human beings is ordinarily and for the most part simply one grand conspiracy to evade the threat of nothingness by creating and maintaining the world of everydayness. Every thing and person has its proper place -- namely, the place assigned to it by the ideas and values of the relevant social-cultural group, its language and institutions; and the rules of conventional behavior in force in the group relieve one of the responsibility of making one's own free decisions in face of the novel demands of the moment ("Heidegger's Existentialism": 11)