Martin Heidegger's writings juxtapose the master view of human agency with the view of agency as response. Instead of the willful, self-assertive subject of modern philosophy, who is the autonomous author of her capricious subjectivistic choices, the human is conceived by Heidegger as respondent to situations that open up before her. As that being bestowed with the originary freedom of the background understanding of beings as a whole in their interconnected significance, the human's free act has a direction, delimitation, and source that is not merely inner. However, response is not instinctive reaction. It is concerned, openended, and questioning engagement with the particularities of the situation rather than production of capricious acts of the will by autonomous subjects, who are unconnected spectators of the situation. Heidegger's proposal attempts to go beyond the humanism of the willful subject.

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Coming to know and accept one's impending death allows terminally ill persons to face their mortality without deception. While life as such is a constant race towards death, terminal illness brings one's own death closer to experience. Being in the face of death in this manner can be transformed into an ontologically rewarding experience. Research on medical practices of truth telling in cases of terminal illness tends to show that there is healthy acceptance of impending death in western contexts, whereas in other contexts patients are more likely to do well when poor prognosis is concealed from them. This paper considers the case of knowing one's death in terminal illness, and explores responses to truth-telling and allied issues in non-western contexts like India from a philosophical/reflective rather than prescriptively ethical or empirically evidenced perspective. It argues that culturally contextualised, sensitive ways of helping patients know that they are terminally ill can lead to a more spontaneous and freer acceptance of death in nonwestern contexts.

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