Poetically Man Dies: Heidegger and the Limits of Man in Word and Death

This paper examines the two different modalities of finitude identified by Heidegger, i.e. perishing and dying, respectively attributed to animals and to human beings. The first goal of the paper is to bring to light the structural link in Heideggerian philosophy between death and language, by virtue of which Dasein dies properly only within the symbolic space originated by the word. The second goal is to assess the extent to which the Heideggerian distinction between perishing and dying has held up in the environment of contemporary philosophy: despite some unavoidable limitations, recent scientific outcomes seem provide its validation.