COMMONWEALTH ASSOCATION FOR
EDUCATION, ADMINISTRATION AND
MANAGEMENT
VOLUME 1
ISSUE 4
ISSN NO 2322-0147
DECEMBER
2013
THE CONCEPT OF BEING AND
NOTHINGNESS
Excellence International Journal of Education and
Research (Multi- subject journal)
Excellence International Journal Of Education And Research
VOLUME 1
ISSUE 4
ISSN 2322-0147
THE CONCEPT OF BEING AND NOTHINGNESS
Anit Kotwal
Lecture in Philosophy
G.C.W. Gandhi Nagar, Jammu
Jammu and Kashmir
Mobile No: 8803743748,
Email: anitkotwal@gmail.com
ABSTRACT
In this article the writer has taken the concept of being and nothingness, and tried to
explain this concept, and stressed has been given to aware the people about it , and told
that it has been in practical use after the philosophy has developed the thought process in
this world. The approach has been taken to give or provide the clear concept of being and
nothingness the stress has been also given to aware the scholars educationists
psychologists teachers and the peoples working in the field of education. The philosophical
thought regarding ultimate reality and about its universal values, and the global concepts
regarding ultimate is taken into consideration.
Key words:- Being, Nothingness, reality, Thoughts, Values, existence, etc.
INTRODUCTION
The concept of being evolves at a developed stage of philosophic thought.
As we know about the study of history
of “ European
philosophy”,
Parmenides, is the first philosopher how has developed this concept .He
characterizes “Being” as an eternal, all- pervading indivisible Reality, and the
world of charging particulars as its appearances or as non-being, In short,
Parmenides’s conception of being. Projected that the, all-comprehensive,
eternal, immutable and universal ideas which are the ultimate root of the
universe. And the world of contingent has been regarded as non-being .Thus
Plato projected that the
‘Idea of the Good’, Aristotle said it is the ‘Prime
Mover’, in mediaeval philosophy it was regarded as ‘God’ and in Hegel’s time
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it is the impersonal ‘Absolute Thought’. All these names virtually signifies one
or the same thing, i.e., Being.
Jaspers, make’s a distinction between the object world (Dasein) and what
he calls ‘Existenz’.
‘Existenz’ is synonymous with selfhood. Jaspers, strongly affirms that the
existence of the objective world is as given and it un-alterable; it is also
different from the human reality. But nevertheless, it is in the Dasein, that a man
exists in this world. According to “Jaspers’ the solid affirmation of the reality of
the external world, and of the fact, that man is, in one sense, is an object
interrelated with the other objects. It is the basic, and is in the midst of Dasein,
both natural and human, that the possibility of ‘existence’ (Existenz) appears.”1
Jaspers points out that the limitations inherent in man are helpful for him
to get him free being, which can help him to reach inwardness, by way of
transcendence, he can never reach the transcendence itself (Being-in -Itself). “I
think of a cipher of transcendence in the world, not of transcendence itself. And
I lose it, whenever I try to realize it as distinct from existence”. 2 , Of course,
knowledge of the external is necessary for our becoming aware of the inner
deficiency. Because of this awareness the root of our further awareness of the
presence of “Being – itself’ is Transcendence in the sense that it lies beyond the
split between the realm of ‘Being-there’ and that of ‘being- oneself’, though it
embrace both. We cannot comprehend the Transcendence, because it is
Absolute, while our knowledge is essentially a relative character. And, it is our
awareness of the relative character of scientific knowledge, that induces in us to
pursue the Absolute knowledge, even though in our pursuit of Being-itself, we
are practically confronted with nothing, i.e., no definite object. We are in
despair. And in that case, as Jaspers maintains, faith in God is the only resort.
According to him, consider it from the existential stand point, Being-itself is
God; and He “cannot be encompassed by way of the historical manifestations
through which He speaks to man”.3
For Jaspers, then, even faith is not
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competent to give us knowledge of God. In fact, man can freely participate in
the world of being, only because Being-it, i.e.; God, is Transcendence.
Gabriel Marcel, another theistic existentialist, also regards God as being
lying beyond the epistemological split between ‘subject and object’. And as a
theist he attaches due importance to the role of faith.
According to Marcel, being is ‘mystery’ and not a ‘problem’. It is
important to refer Marcel’s distinction between ‘problem’ and ‘mystery’. We
grapple with a problem and inwardly experience a mystery. The evil, e.g., may
at once be treated as a problem and experienced as a mystery .It is problem,
when I act as an observer, and it is a mystery, when I am personally involved in
it. Therefore “the evil which is only stated or observed is no longer evil which is
suffered”.4
For Marcel, everything is filled with Being; so that we need no speak of
‘Nothingness’; and the path of
faith leads a
private individual for the
realization of the eternal Being; and this immediate experience of Reality,
being is absolutely private, is in-explicable by reason and is also
incommunicable .
The eminent existentialists thinkers, Martin Heidegger, Jean Paul Sartre,
and others, in their way of thinking, advocate complete elimination of all notion
of God, from the sphere of philosophy .Being, is no doubt an ontological entity,
but it is not a ‘mystery’ or anything divine conducive only to subjective
experience .It is an ontological problem to be openly discussed .The aforesaid
thinkers are known as atheist existentialists.
Heidegger, an atheist, maintains that the problem of being is of immense
importance; for him, it should be considered the starting-point of all philosophy
.So that the problem of, being, occupies the central position in most of his
works. ‘What is philosophy? So that, the problem of being occupies the central
position in most of his works. In his ‘What is Philosophy?’
He defines
philosophy as the conversation between “Being” and the being in an individual
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man. And philosophic knowledge consists in man’s awareness of the
concersation. “We finds”, says Heidegger, “the answer to the question, what is
philosophy? Not through the historical assertion about the definition of
philosophy, but through conversing with that which has been handed down to us
as the being of being?”5 Again he says: “The answer to then question: ‘What is
Philosophy?’ consists in our corresponding to (answering to) that towards which
philosophy is on the way. And that is the Being of being”.6
Existence can be attributed only to man; everything else simply ‘is’, (or is
present) on earth. Being is the Reality that remains nascent in every human
existent as a mere possibility which he, on his own initiative, seeks to transform
into actuality. Man alone can do this; so that he alone can exist. His existence
consists in his spontaneous effort to realize Being. Such an existing human life
of spontaneous activity directed towards the realization of “being” is what
Heidegger calls Dasein. Being is simply an ontological entity, and not anything
divine; and no question of revelation of being to a being arises at all .Nor is it
necessary for a being to foster faith in being.
The term ‘Dasein’ may be analyzed into ‘Da’ and ‘Sein’ ; ‘Da’ means
‘There’ and ‘Sein’ means ‘Being’; ‘Dasein’ therefore signifies the ‘There’ of a
human being or ‘Being-there’ Dasein may be described as ‘Being-in-the-world’a being that has been in the world as inseparable from it. The innermost essence
of Dasein is to be “Being-in-the-world”. This characterization of the human
being is nothing ‘ontic’, i.e., factual. Although the term ‘existence’ can be
attributed exclusive to man, yet it is not true to say that every man does actually
(ontically) exist. To exist is not
simply to be given in the world. Not that a
Dasein does exist, but that it possesses the power to transform itself into an
existent by an active and conscious participation in the life of the world.
Therefore “it is an ontological definition, which means that Dasein can be in
existence, i.e., as Dasein, because its essential constitution is ‘Being-in-theworld,”7 a unitary phenomenon. Heidegger’s aim is to mark a transcendental
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analysis of “the structure of Dasein, as it actually is, in its relation to the things
in the world, non-human and human.”
Every Dasein is encompassed in the unity of being. Being is therefore
nascent in each man in the form of possibility. A human being, on the other
hand, feels an inner urges to actualize what is possible in him. Once he becomes
conscious of his inherent capacities and at the same time of his inevitable death,
he is prone to reflect upon himself; and with this he becomes out and out an
individual. He freely decides what he proposes to be; in other words, thinks
first of all of the future, then he mentally moves back to the past, and the finally
comes to be conscious of the ‘present’ situation constituted by other things and
beings. Thus ‘future’, ‘past’ and ‘present’ are what Heidegger calls ecstasies of
Temporality that produce time. In his discourse entitled “an Account of Being
and Time’ Dr.Werner Brock puts the same thing as follows: “Temporality is, as
Heidegger emphasizes, the original and fundamental ‘Outside-itself’ (ausser
sich) in and for itself. ‘Future’, ‘past’, and ‘present’ are thus turned the
‘ecstasies’ of Temporality”.8
By ‘future’ Heidegger means, not the ‘now’
which will be. It is a phenomenon to grasped only ill relation to a Dasein
meaning towards itself in thought together with its potentiality yet to be
actualized. “Heidegger points out”, as Dr. Werner Brock observes, “that the
original phenomenon of the ‘future’ consists in this kind of ‘coming’, namely,
in that Dasein come or moves to or towards itself in its potentiality, enduring it.
The running forward (In thought), makes dasein authentically one with future”.9
But the Dasein cannot move forward without any reference to what has already
been done. The future course of action needed for this onwards march can be
determined only by an adequate assessment of the past which is ever retained in
the mind. Thus “the dasein can move towards itself in the mode of the ‘future
only by moving backwards towards its past at the same time”10. The present is
the third mode of Temporality of Dasein, which directly refers to the concrete,
given situation in which the dasein finds himself, and in the formation of which
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he is required to play his part for rendering it present. Thus there is continuity
between the three modes (ecstasies) of Temporality. “The ‘past’ originates from
the ‘future’ so as to engender the ‘present’”.11 These three movements of
Temporality of the Dasein constitutes what Heidegger calls ‘Care’.
To define being as indeterminate is, as Sartre says, “to make being pass
into nothingness; this is what by implication has introduced negation into his
(Hegel’s) very definition of Being”.12 If being passes into nothing, and if they
are virtually the same thing, they as opposites can very well move
simultaneously in the process o dialectic; Sartre therefore says that “non-being
is not the opposites of being; it is its contradiction. This implies that logically
nothingness is subsequent to being, first posited, then denied”.13 To be strictly
logical, we must distinguish between the contradictories and the contraries or
the opposites, ‘Good’ and ‘bad’ e.g., are opposites, while ‘good’ and ‘not-good’
are contradictories. So also are being and non-being. In order to have the
contradictory of being, it has to be posited first and then denied. Nothingness
therefore posits the existence of being, and being is what it is. Even if it is
possible for me to deny all content of being, “I am nevertheless forced to affirm
at least that it is”; and that I “cannot cause it not to be …….” 14 All that I can do
is to deny that it is this or that. Being is and ‘nothingness’ is not. Nothingness,
therefore, can it no way infect “the nucleus of being of Being, which is absolute
plentitude and entire positivity”.15 And “Non-being is denied in the heart of
Being”.16
Sartre also criticizes Heidegger. We have already seen that according to
Heidegger, “there is a ‘pre-ontological’ comprehension of Being involved in the
conduct of the human reality as well as of Non-being involved in the negative
propositions it makes and in the negative attitudes it adopts”.17 (e.g., hate,
prohibition, regret, etc.) He also maintains that a man in ‘dread’ can have an
immediate experience of Nothingness or Non-being, as ‘dread’ is fear for
nothing definite. The Nothing is original and is the ground of transcendence and
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negation. The human reality or Dasein surpasses itself and the world “because it
posits itself as not being in itself and not being in the world”.18 Thus Dasien
in its pursuit of Being continues to negate itself and perpetually transcends itself
and the world, till it is ultimately submerged into Nothingness. “There is, then,
Nothingness around Being, though Being expels Nothing from itself. Being,
included the self and the world, is some what like an island in the sea of
Nothingness”.
19
This position resembles that of the nihilist Buddhist,
“according to whom, there is a Void out of which the procession of things and
beings unintelligibly emerges and in which the procession unconsciously
terminates: annihilation is destiny of all”. 20
Sartre starts his discussion on Bing with ‘man’ who is a self- conscious
existing being. Man alone can raise the problem; he alone can ask: what is
Being like? Sartre differs from both the realist and the idealist, and formulates a
view of Being of his own. Unlike the idealists, he never considers being to be
merely an essence destitute of all existential elements; nor, unlike the realist,
does he regard it as existing independently of human consciousness. In short,
for Sartre Being is neither the origin of consciousness, nor is it dependent upon
consciousness for its existence. It is simply given. It is what it is; it is selfidentical and non-temporal. “Being is, Being is in-itself. Being is what it is”.21
Nevertheless, as Sartre maintains, apart from the conscious human being there
would be none to raise the problem of Being as also to deal with it. That is,
however, no reason why Being should be considered to be dependent upon
consciousness. “Being is already there without reason or justification”. 22 And
men cannot bring it into existence. Further, Being is not the reality behind its
appearance, or a noumenon behind the phenomena. It is immanent in, and it also
transcends, its appearances. “It is not exhausted by any or all of its appearances,
though it is fully there in each one of its appearances”.23
In Sartre’s philosophy there are two modes of Being- In-self (en soi),
and For-itself (pour soi). Being, when present in a man as constitive of the
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possibilities in him, is what Sartre calls In-itself. For-itself is the human reality.
Man is self-consciousness embodied. In every human reality Being presents
itself as both In-itself and For-itself: and man as a self-conscious being can
directly apprehend the internal rift between the two. This rift is focused by
human consciousness. The human reality or For-itself is of self-transcending
character; it moves towards the In-self by any way of transcendence. According
to Sartre, man himself is not responsible for his coming into being. In Sartre the
For-itself has been characterized as “an always future project” and also “as a
pursuit of Being in the form of selfless. This involves the question of
possibility, of valve, and of temporality, all of which prove to be integrally
related to the basic concept of the For-itself--------”.24 Sartre maintains that in
spite of all its efforts, the For-itself can never reach the In-itself. That is to say,
the union of the For-itself and the In-itself is an impossibility. For a man it is a
goal- an ideal-ever to be pursued, never to be reached.
To criticize the ideology of before Sartre and Martin Heidegger it is
concluded that as regards Heidegger’s view of Being it may be said that it is
infected with an ambiguity. On scrutiny it is found that Heidegger in his
conception of Being seeks to incorporates two mutually contradictory views
which he himself cannot reconcile. Firs he conceives of Being as the allembracing, eternal and underived, highest genus; and then again he describes it
as the possibilities or potentialities in the human realty or Dasein that passes
through time and formulates the historically constituted by his life-long effort to
materialize those potentialities. In Heidegger we hardly have any cogent,
account for how “Being” can at once be eternal Absolute of the Hegelian type, it
is liable to be pure Thought that transcends the concrete world of experience.
And the world of experience, as we have already seen, cannot be derived from
such a Being. Moreover, to hold this view is to admit that ‘existence’ can be
derived from ‘essence’- a view which is just the reverse of the basic position of
Existentialism: ‘existence precedes essence’.
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Sartre also can do no better than Heidegger in this respect. His
conception of Being is no less vague. He presents us with a Being which is
neither abstract nor concrete. It is transphenomenal, yet there is no noumenon
behind it. It is both dependent upon, and at the same time independent of,
consciousness. What, then, is the relation between Being and consciousness?
Then, again, Sartre defines consciousness as “a being such that in its being, its
being is in question in so far as this being implies a being other than itself”. 25
Now, if consciousness itself is a being, how is it related to the In-self or the Foritself? Sartre remains silent. Besides, Sartre holds that Being simply is; and
since it is a transphenomenal entity, it is beyond human power to make it
otherwise. Now the problem is: What it is like. It may be said that Being is; and
that every individual by his own conscious effort makes the ‘what’ of himself
and with this also makes up the ‘what’ of Being. But Sartre denies all possibility
of full realization of Being; so that he cannot quite say what it is like. Of course,
unlike Heidegger, Sartre does not deviate from the original (existentialist)
standpoint, in so far as he presupposes the existence of Being (In-itself) and
considers it to be logically prior to the human reality (the For- itself). That it is
impossible man to comprehend being has been expressed by Sartre in the
following sentences: Being-in- itself is never either possible or impossible.
Sartre thus himself admits his inability to throw light on the nature of being.
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Refernces
1. David E. Robert: Existentialism and Religions Belief; A Galaxy Book, New York,
Oxford University Press, 1959; P.235.
2. Karl Jaspers: Philosophy; tr, by E.B. Ashton; University of Chicago Press, 1970;
P.106.
3. Karl Jaspers: Way to Wisdom; Yale University Press, 1964; P.47.
4. Marcel: Philosophy of Existence: P.9.
5. Heidegger: What is Philosophy: tr, by William Kluback and J. Wilde; Vision Press
Ltd., London; P.71.
6. Ibid. P.71.
7. Martin Heidegger: Existence and Being Intro. By Werner Brock; Vision Press,
London; 2nd, 1956; P.40.
8. Martin Heidegger: Existence and Being Intro. By Werner Brock; P.95.
9. Op cit P.92.
10. Martin Heidegger: Existence and Being Intro. By Werner Brock; P.93.
11. Op cit P.94.
12. Sartre: Being and Nothingness; P.17.
13. Ibid: P.17.
14. Op cit P.18.
15. Ibid: P. 18.
16. Ibid: P. 18.
17. Dr. A.C. Das: The Presidential Address; the Indian Philosophical Congress. Now,
1970; P.4.
18. Ibid: P. 4.
19. Ibid: P.4.
20. Op cit P.5.
21. Sartre: Being and Nothingness; Intro. P. ixxix.
22. Op cit: Translator’s Intro.; P. xxix.
23. Ibid: Tr.’s Intro. P. xxiv.
24. Ibid: Translator’s Intro. P. xxiii.
25. Sartre: Being and Nothingness; Intro. P. IXXIV.
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