Thrown Impossibility: The Ontological Structure of Despair

Abstract

This thesis is a phenomenological analysis of the ontological structure of despair. It begins with an analysis of Heidegger’s work on ‘Affectedness’ whereby through the critique given by Ratcliffe it is seen that moods are primordial and condition the way the world can matter to the subject. It then expatiates the phenomenology of despair where despair is ‘lived impossibility as such.’ Explicating the phenomenology of despair then involves subjecting Freud’s essay ‘Mourning and Melancholia’ to a Heideggerian hermeneutic analysis as discussed by Kristeva and Foucault in particular and also Radden more generally. This phenomenology of despair is then drawn into comparison with Heideggerian ‘Anxiety’ and it is concluded that despair is comparable to Heideggerian anxiety when it is subject to a negative existential reduction as put forward by Dreyfus. The final section of this paper then maps the phenomenology of despair onto the temporality of Heidegger’s care structure, ultimately explicating the ontological structure of despair. This involves a close analysis of the radical diminishing of Heideggerian ‘Projection’ or ‘Understanding’ as is reflected in the radical disruption to temporality that occurs in despair, particularly the diminishing of the futural self- the most profound consequence of which is the loss of the capacity to project towards one’s ownmost possibility, that of death. It is argues that death becomes impossible which then means that life itself becomes impossible.