Being is logically prior to nothingness, which has only borrowed existence.
Evidence
If we remove from this original emptiness its characteristic of being empty of this world and of every whole taking the form of a world, as well as its characteristic of before, which presupposes an after, then the very negation disappears, giving way to a total indetermination which it would be impossible to conceive, even and especially as a nothingness. Thus reversing the statement of Spinoza, we could say that every negation is determination. This means that being is prior to nothingness and establishes the ground for it. By this we must understand not only that being has a logical precedence over nothingness but also that it is from being that nothingness derives concretely its efficacy. This is what we mean when we say that nothingness haunts being. That means that being has no need of nothingness in order to be conceived and that we can examine the idea of it exhaustively without finding there the least trace of nothingness. But on the other hand, nothingness, which is not, can have only a borrowed existence, and it gets its being from being. Its nothingness of being is encountered only within the limits of being, and the total disappearance of being would not be the advent of the reign of non-being, but on the contrary the concomitant disappearance of nothingness. Non-being exists only on the surface of being. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 208
Categorization
- DEFINE: Reverses Spinoza’s dictum — ‘every negation is determination’ — to ground the concept of nothingness entirely in being.
- XREF: Directly builds the ontological scaffold Beauvoir’s The Ethics of Ambiguity operates on — the priority of being, the derived status of negation. — connects to: The For-itself has only marginal, borrowed being derived from what it nihilates. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 48; Nothingness is logically subsequent to being, not its opposite. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 205; Nothingness is logically subsequent to being and always supposes a specified being (+5 more)
- DEEPTHINKING: The claim that through negation, existence precedes essence in the sense that nothingness must be conceived within, not against, being — inverts the naive cosmogonic frame on purpose.
Broader Connections
- Nothingness is logically subsequent to being and always supposes a specified being
#corroborates(0.95) - Nothingness is a supported recoil from Being that enables consciousness to exist
#corroborates(0.80) - Nothingness is an act of being putting itself into question, unique to consciousness.
#expands(0.80) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 336 - Possibility arises only through a being that comprehends and embodies its own possibles.
#expands(0.75) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 382