Heidegger’s insight deepens when applied to human existence. Our lives are not experienced as an infinite field of options; they are structured by horizons—time, mortality, social roles, language, and circumstance. Paradoxically, these limits can intensify meaning, because what matters stands out against what cannot be done or cannot last.
In Being and Time (1927), Heidegger argues that finitude is not an external constraint tacked onto life; it is part of how life becomes intelligible to us at all. The “boundary” of time, for example, can turn vague intentions into concrete commitments, allowing projects to truly begin. [...]
