The idea of existence is manifold. In the language of Aristotle it is a thing said in different ways. And these diverse ideas of existence proposed to us become all the more numerous, first, as our thought gives birth, so to speak, to the idea of truth, of nontemporal existence, of existence in a time that is no longer time but a sort of dead time; and then as this thought can be concentrated even on perceptions and judgments, which generates multiple existences and times—at least in appearance.
If, therefore, we are compelled to choose among these modes of existence, if, that is, existence is forced to choose existence, we could suggest that what exists above all, on the one hand, is that which resists our effort, and on the other hand, the effort of the subject in relation to that which resists. Existence would be defined by the resistance of the exterior to the interior, by the effort of the interior upon the exterior, and above all by the relation and union of the two. For there is also a union of feeling between this interior and exterior. We have chosen in this way simply because it is perhaps in the idea of resistance and in the idea of effort that the idea of existence is presented with intensity. We therefore link together the idea of existence with the idea of intensity.
This does not yet provide us with the structure of existence. Existence, to exist, signifies, etymologically, to exit from, ex-sistere, to exit either from the kingdom of the possible or from the absolute. What stands out from among the sum total of possibilities or separates itself from the absolute exists. However, this idea of detachment does not sufficiently characterize existence in itself. It is not only in relation to this totality, to this whole from which it detaches itself, but is it perhaps also in itself that existence is a detachment, an act of shattering itself? In this sense we are tempted to say that by itself existence is imperfection, that it appears as a rupture from the absolute, as, in itself, a wound, an estrangement.
Yet immediately we must contradict this idea: simultaneous with this imperfection and wounding, existence is also, and constantly, a manner of achievement and perfection. This is a classical idea; it can be found in Aristotle, with the notion of entelechy, and in Descartes, for whom the degrees of existence correspond to the degrees of perfection. More recently, and in a concrete form, we encounter it again in Whitehead.
Thus just as we have seen that existence is simultaneously the existence of the subject who expends effort, and of the object that resists him, an existence of a subject that is opposed and united to the object, we also see existence as separating and splitting apart and also as being accomplished and united to itself.
We could also say that existence is decision. This leads us toward Jaspers. Existence is decision but this decision is determined by the given [la donnée] that I am. I am given to myself in a specific way, and this decision is often only a kind of illusion, or, at least, it is only a choice between possibilities retrospectively discovered.
Let us retain from this discussion that existence is both decision and given, choice and nonchoice. And let us conclude that existence will never be able to be described or circumscribed except by apparently contradictory concepts, choice and nonchoice. In this way we see that this existence is not susceptible to being deduced starting from something else, from that something that classical philosophy called essence. Just now we defined existence by means of intensity, now we define it by means of irreducibility. Even so, it is still true that we are describing a sense of existence rather than an idea of existence.
Existence, such as we have described it up to this point, is perhaps too narrow; we should add that there is existence only if there is content to it. If existence is reduced to existence it does not exist. It only exists by means of its content; the existence of an “I” only exists through the other or others. It is perhaps because of too great a detachment from the other or others—a detachment that at least characterizes certain dimensions of the contemporary world—that certain philosophers have thought that there could be consciousness of existence only in feelings like boredom, anguish or sin (Kierkegaard), or nausea (Sartre).1 It does not seem necessary, however, to have recourse to these feelings in order to be conscious of existence, if it is true that existence is not only an existence of the “I” but also union with another. Hence existence has content, and which is rich. There is existence only where there is content and an object.2
The descriptions of the existentialists risk making existence into that which least exists, an abstraction. Concrete existence is always existence before a task, in an action or facing another being. An existence is a relation with something other than oneself.
We could place in opposition the thought of a philosopher like Bosanquet and that of a religious thinker like Kierkegaard. Clearly Kierkegaard does not completely negate the “other,” but he often (not always) reduces existence to a meditation on a single, divine other. According to Kierkegaard, I take hold of my existence in meditation before God. The two positions are antithetical: on the one hand, there is Kierkegaard and especially anyone who would push thought further by detaching the human being not only from every human other, but even from God; on the other hand, there is the position of Bosanquet, who attempts to expand continually the content of existence. These two positions each have their particular danger: one, an intensity that is too great; the other, a richness that is too great. If it is true that the painter and the sculptor are absorbed in the work they undertake, then it is also true for the philosopher, who, like Bosanquet, orients his effort toward a maximum enrichment, of doing something so that he no longer exists in the sense of the term “to exist”; his overly opulent opulence may lead to the nullification of his ego, an I that becomes the sum total of all the works that he admires as aesthetician or philosopher. On the other side, the inverse position equally runs the risk of dissolving the I in an overly intense intensity that is purely subjective. We should also emphasize the eminent value of poverty, of a spirit that withdraws into the unicity of a passion or a thought. The mystics above all have insisted on this idea.
Let me briefly clarify the idea of the feeling of existence. We could wonder about the relation between existence and the I. This is a problem that is capable of being clarified by means of, for example, the work of Proust. Proust observes his I undergoing a process of separation. He insists on what he calls the irregularities of the heart; there is no longer anything but phenomena without substance. This is an original appearance. We could set opposite this idea one exposed by Ramon Fernandez in his book De la personnalité, namely that there is truly existence only if there is a recovery of these phenomena in a permanent I, if there is at least the appearance of a certain center, by relation to which these phenomena become ordered. There must be a core and even—if these metaphors are compatible—a sort of radiation [extending out from it].
But here we find a new antinomy of existence. Existence is surely this re-entry into the self or this return to the self, but it is also (Bosanquet), an exit from the self. There is not even necessarily a link between the feeling of existence and the feeling of the “I” who exists. There can be existence and the disappearance of the “I,” and not only in the moments of collapse described by Sartre in Nausea, but also in instants of intense plenitude. Being rendered anonymous, delivered from his or her “I,” is the goal of mysticisms. It is also what André Gide has proposed on occasion. This would be the existence of an I who would no longer be me, who would be, so to speak, outside of me. These two moments of “outside me” and “for me” move us closer to a dialectic rather like Hegel’s. Hegel saw well the I as union of these two moments, of the opposition of something to me and of the withdrawing into the self.3
This analysis shows us that we find ourselves less before an existence than before a feeling of existence. This will cause us to pass from the phenomenology of existence to the study of existence as something that we absolutely cannot reach. We could also be led there through the intervention of Aristotle, when he highlights the fact that being is something different for each kind of being, or by Berkeley, when he critiques the idea of existence in general.
It will then be said that existence does not let itself be defined, since there is the existence of the “I,” of the “you,” of “him or her,” of “that.” This very conjugation of the verb to exist, its repercussions in thought, proves that no means exists by which we can characterize existence in a single manner. The diverse existences that we have enumerated are in no way identical. Even if we restrain ourselves to the [bare] existence of the “I,” we still repeat the conjugation: “I have existed” and “I will exist” are not identical to “I exist.” It could even be said that existence arises rather from “I will exist” or “I existed,” than from “I exist” in the sense that everything I understand about myself is from either the past or future, and above all from the future if we are to believe Kierkegaard and Heidegger: according to them, it is starting from the future that I ceaselessly construct myself. Existence will then tend to be defined by regret or hope. This forces me to consider that I am able to speak about existence only from outside of it, from behind it or before it, without ever managing to remain interior to it. I am forced to remain at a certain distance from my existence. This is the human condition. It has been said that human existence is essentially a questioning of existence. In reality, the questioned falls silent or disguises itself when it questions itself. I therefore do not think that human existence can consist in questioning itself. On the contrary, the questioning runs the risk of making its existence vanish.4 Existence flees before itself.
We thus return to an idea analogous to that of Jaspers, the idea of the failure of every interrogation of existence, and even the idea of failure in general.
However, I do not think that existence is uniquely in the past or future. It is in act—or in acts—that the existing being is destroyed and built up, for existence, of itself, is ceaseless destruction and construction. And it is in the acts by which this existent not only witnesses itself in the past or future, but is constituted in the very present as being the one who has this or that future or this or that past. This is what the Kierkegaardian idea of repetition signifies.5 The I, the individual as me, is the one who puts his or her seal on something from the past and says, “I am doing something that genuinely constitutes me.” The same idea recurs as an element in the Nietzschean conception of the eternal return, the idea that at every instant the existing being intervenes in his or her existence through his or her “yes” or “no”—that one can or wants to assert oneself.
The problem of existence is not resolved theoretically, but practically, by the feeling that one has of being capable, to a certain degree, of reconciling one’s past, future, and present.
Actually, every response to the question of existence is unsatisfying; the question is too general. The lone word, existence, is too vague for the feeling of existence that we had to describe. When someone says, “I exist,” a boundary exists between “I” and “exist” just as another, insurmountable boundary persists between the felt “I” and the expressed “I.” Furthermore, when we attempt to look at it, the feeling of existence flees our gaze.
It only lives powerfully when it is hidden.
1. This very idea of nausea as source of consciousness of existence was glimpsed by a disciple of Heidegger, Levinas, who has today, however, distanced himself from his master.
2. The philosophy of existence is a philosophy of transcendence. Existence is ecstasy, in the primitive sense of the word, an exit outside of the self; the human being is such inasmuch as it is standing outside of itself, in order to be in proximity to what is manifested. In this way the phenomenon of intentionality is most deeply understood. Dasein itself is outside of itself, is projected beyond. Existence transcends. The two ideas of existence and transcendence are reconnected in the idea of being-in-the-world, in the idea of being-with.
3. It would be necessary to study also—and this is essential—the relations of existence and time. It would have to be determined in what sense existence happens in space and time, such that we conceive them on the surface, then in this concrete time that Bergson calls duration, in the tragic time that Heidegger attempts to define, and how finally at certain moments existence seems to attain a supratemporal level.
4. A study could be attempted on the categories of existence such as boredom, work, leisure, risk, and even hope, regret, defeat, resignation, fate.
5. There is also a notion of repetition in Proust: he is felt to exist when he joins—or rather when there is joined in him—a past instant and a present instant. But in Kierkegaard the will, the intensity of the will, has more room, as it were, and the existence that one reaches is not an existence in a manifestation of eternity but an existence in time.