Summary: Being and Nothingness (page 3)

For Heidegger, various human attitudes—such as hatred, defensiveness, or regret—imply an understanding of nothingness. Anxiety arises when the human being discovers nothingness as a phenomenon.

According to Heidegger, the human being—or more precisely, human reality (Dasein)—stands at the intersection of being and non-being. In turn, the world is suspended in nothingness: Anxiety is the awareness of this dual and perpetual negation ¹.

Nothingness and the world are thus inextricably linked: Nothingness is that through which the world acquires its shape as world. To apprehend the world as a world is an act of negation ².

If nothingness is the nothingness of the world, then being lies at its heart. At every moment, we encounter small pockets of non-being within being. For instance, when I say that Peter is not here, I reveal a pocket of nothingness.

Enjoyment, absence, alteration, repulsion, and regret are all marked by negation—they are forms of non-being.

There exists a pull from beings beyond the world, which possess as much reality and power as other beings but simultaneously harbour non-being within themselves ³.

It is crucial to understand that nothingness can only arise against the backdrop of being. If nothingness is given, it is neither before nor after nor outside being; instead, it resides within being itself, at its very heart, like a worm ⁴.

Without negation, no question could ever be posed—least of all the question of being. Negation refers us back to nothingness as its source and ground. We realise that nothingness cannot be conceived apart from being. Yet this intra-worldly nothingness cannot be produced by being-in-itself: the notion of being as complete positivity does not include nothingness as one of its structures ⁵.

As we have seen, it is being-for-itself—human consciousness—that creates nothingness. Sartre demonstrates this in an argument that synthesises the foregoing analysis.

First, it must be noted that nothingness is not; rather, nothingness 'is been'. Nothingness does not annihilate itself; it is annihilated ⁶. Therefore, there must exist a being, distinct from being-in-itself, that possesses the capacity to nihilate nothingness—to sustain it through its own being. This being is the means by which nothingness is introduced into the world ⁷.

We have also observed that questioning is the means by which nothingness is brought into the world:

To pose a question, the questioner must withdraw in a nihilating way from what is questioned. By doing so, the questioner escapes the causal order of the world and detaches themselves from being ⁸.

In the act of questioning, there is a double movement of nihilation: the questioner nihilates what is questioned by placing it in a neutral state, suspended between being and non-being. At the same time, the questioner nihilates oneself in relation to what is questioned by distancing themselves from being, thus opening up within themselves the possibility of non-being ⁹.

Ultimately, because the question originates from a questioner, the human being reveals themselves as a being who brings nothingness into the world ¹⁰—or, more precisely, as the being through whom nothingness comes into the world ¹¹.

This is no minor point. It reveals a fundamental aspect of human existence: freedom.

The essential question thus arises: What must the human being be for nothingness to come into the world through them? ¹²

The human being cannot annihilate the mass of being that constitutes the world. What they can change is their relationship to that being:

This capacity of human reality to generate a nothingness that sets it apart from the world was named by Descartes, following the Stoics: it is freedom. ¹³

¹ I, 4, p.52
² ibid.
³ ibid., p.56
⁴ ibid.
⁵ I, 5, p.56
⁶ ibid., p.57
⁷ ibid.
⁸ ibid., p.58
⁹ ibid.
¹⁰ ibid.
¹¹ ibid.,
¹² ibid.,
¹³ ibid.