References
- Being and Nothingness, London, 1957, p. 17n.
- Yale, 1961.
- War Diaries, tr. Quintin Hoare, London 1984, p. 134.
- L'Être et le néant, Paris, 1953, p. 40. Henceforth EN, followed by page number. In English: Now a quick look at questioning, when we seemed to have attained our goal, suddenly reveals that we are surrounded by non-being. It is the permanent possibility of non-being, outside us and in us, which conditions our questions on being. (Though I have not used Hazel Barnes' translation, I will give page references to her text in the form BN followed by the page number. This passage occurs on p. 5.)
- In a word, it being is everywhere, it is not only Non-being which is inconceivable, as Bergson claims; from being negation could never be derived. The necessary condition for saying no is that non-being be a perpetual presence in us and outside us, that non-being haunts being.
- But on the contrary non-being which is not can only have a borrowed existence; it takes its being from being. Its non-being of being [more idiomatically ‘its complete lack of being’] is only encountered at the limits of being and the total disappearance of being would not be the arrival of the reign of non-being, but on the contrary would be accompanied by the vanishing of non-being. Non-being only exists on the surface of being.