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.After death, all my choices will have been made already, and the story of who I am will be complete.This is why Heidegger claims that the authentic confrontation with death in Angst individuates human existence.When I confront my own death, I see that it is something that no one else can do for me, something I will have to face myself.This in turn casts my whole life in a new light.Recognizing my death as the unavoidable end to my own life shows me that my existence is mine and mine alone.The completed story of my life will be the result of the possibilities I chose for myself from out of the situation into which I was thrown at birth.I alone will have been responsible for whoever I was.Beyond that, in Angst, the meanings of all the ordinary things of the world slip away, such that things in the world are no longer relevant at all.If we imagine Alfred in Angst, the silver tray and grandfather clock would no longer be things of concern to him.In the authentic relation to his own death, such things would be, quite simply, nothing.Why should this be the case? Because confronting my own death puts all of my projects in question.Things show themselves to us in terms of their relevance to our projects, but in the consideration of one’s life as a whole that Angst brings about, our projects themselves appear to us as what they really are: possibilities we have chosen for ourselves.In our average, everyday way of existing, people don’t often deeply question the choices they have made for their lives.Alfred doesn’t lie in bed every morning wondering if he has any real reason to get up because most of the time, he simply thinks of himself as being a butler, and butlers get up in the morning to do their jobs.However, in Angst, being a butler would appear as a choice Alfred has made for himself, and in showing itself as a possibility, being a butler would appear as something changeable.In other words, it’s not written in stone that Alfred has to be a butler for the rest of his life; he could choose otherwise and begin a wholly different life.In short, Angst lets the world as it is fall away, bringing one’s projects into question by showing them as possibilities, and allowing one the freedom to choose a life (and thus a world) for oneself.I Shall Become a BatMindful of his own mortality, Batman is able to maintain a single-minded determination about his mission, seeing his life and his world exclusively in terms of the singular project he’s chosen for himself.Instead of being driven by guilt over his parents’ death (an event he really had no control over) or by a violent need to exact vengeance for that traumatic loss from criminals who had nothing to do with it, perhaps the real impact of that fateful night was instilling in young Bruce Wayne an authentic understanding of his own life as finite and limited.If Heidegger’s claims about our relation to death are right, then the consideration of his own death in Angst would have allowed Bruce to decide on a life for himself without any regard for the expectations of so-called normal society.Free to organize his entire existence around a mission of his own choosing, and limited only by the possibilities into which he finds himself thrown (which aren’t very limiting when you’re an heir to billions), an authentic recognition of his own inevitable death could have allowed Bruce Wayne to become Batman purely out of a sense of responsibility for his own existence.To some extent, this Heideggerian interpretation of Batman is supported by the comics.The end of the first chapter of Frank Miller’s Batman: Year One (1987) beautifully illustrates the idea of Angst as giving one the freedom to choose a life.Having completed his years of training abroad, Bruce Wayne returns to Gotham.Although he wants to somehow take a stand against the criminals and corruption in his city, he has yet to find the right means to accomplish his goal.After a botched attempt to help out an underage prostitute, Bruce sits alone in the dark, bleeding profusely, having an imaginary dialogue with his father.Although he realizes that his wounds are severe enough that he could die, he doesn’t seem very concerned about them.Rather, he is concerned with the possibility that he may never find a way to do what he feels he should.He thinks to himself, “If I ring the bell, Alfred will come.He can stop the bleeding in time,” but having lost patience with waiting for the right solution to appear to him, Bruce would rather die now than continue living a life that doesn’t fulfill the expectations he has for himself.Physically confronted with his own death and remembering the night his parents died, Bruce recounts all the possibilities he could take advantage of, if only he had a project to organize them: “I have wealth.The family manor rests above a huge cave that will be the perfect headquarters.even a butler with training in combat medicine.” Yet none of that matters without a concrete project to take make use of it; as Bruce says, it’s been eighteen years “since all sense,” all meaning, left his life, and he’s become absolutely desperate for a project that will once again give his world significance.Then, without warning, a bat crashes through the window, and everything falls into place.The possibility of a project that will give meaning to his life suddenly shows itself, making itself available for him to choose.At the moment when Bruce says to himself, “I shall become a bat,” the whole of his new existence, his new world, comes into view, and from that point on, his every action will be determined from out of this one, authentic choice of a life [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]