Life is a how, a category of being, and not something wild, profound, and mystical. It is characteristic of the “philosophy of life” that it never goes so far as to inquire into what is genuinely meant by the concept “life” as a category of being. Life is a being-in-a-world. Animals and humans are not at hand next to one another, but are with one another; and (in the case of humans) they express themselves reciprocally. Self-expressing as speaking about . . . is the basic mode of the being of life, namely, of being-in-a-world. Where there is no speaking, where speaking stops, where the living being no longer speaks, we speak of “death.” The being of life is to be generally understood, in its ultimate ground, through this basic possibility of life. Speaking, then, refers to the being-context of the life of a specific way of being. [Heidegger  , GA18:21]