Being-Nonbeing

Just as two version of the same drawing can be concurrently located within the event of drawing, so can one embody the dual postures of “being” and “nonbeing.” In his book The Courage to Be, philosopher and theologian Paul Tillich defines three types of anxiety in the face of nonbeing: the ancient world faced a general fear of death in the face of a difficult life circumstances, the medieval world was primarily concerned with a fear of moral corruptness, and the modern era a confronted fears rooted in spirituality and meaning. During the 20th century, many philosophers challenged the definition of life and existence itself, each attempting to offer some sort of consolation to the modern man. While many (such as Albert Camus and other existentialists) advocated for a bold assertion of self in face of the difficult question of existence, Tillich asserts that in order to overcome this anxiety common to us all (and one that we still face today), we must have the courage to embrace “nonbeing.” By questioning and contemplating the fact that we will no longer exist at some point in time, Tillich argues that we are paradoxically then able to fully be.

Being is a condition we all understand; it is our daily existence.  Each day we wake to define what being means to us, perhaps through work or leisure. Tillich defines being as moving towards something through an endeavor: “[t]he Latin word for endeavor is conatus, the striving toward something. This striving is not a contingent aspect of a thing, nor is it an element in its being along with other elements; it is its essentia actualis.” In other words, the endeavor itself is the thing, the definition of existence. However, simply operating in the realm of the endeavor can still include a denial of nonbeing, leading to a pure hedonism and existence only for the sake of existing. Periods of anxiety will continue to emerge through similar historical trends described previously. Anxiety could also manifest itself as the desire to either completely rebel against a system or, conversely, to wholeheartedly pledge oneself to a group or cause.  However, nonbeing is a condition that is ephemeral; it is something we can speak about as a distant event, but not something we can understand in our current state of being.  The Existentialists, while also struggling to articulate what it meant to not-be, could though being to see glimpses of this state penetrating manhood’s being during their time:

“[The Existentialist] realized that a process was going on in which people were transformed into things, into pieces of reality which pure science can calculate and technical science can control. ….the individual self is an empty space and the bearer of something which is not himself, something strange by which the self is estranged from itself.  Idealism and naturalism are alike in their attitude to the existing person; both of them eliminate his infinite significance and make him space through which something else passes.”

No longer defined by a strict binary condition, existence takes on a holistic quality of striving towards something while owning both being and nonbeing, or as Tillich says, “Accepting acceptance through being unacceptable is the basis for the courage to be.”[1]

[1] Paul Tillich, The Courage to Be, p. 152