Existence

The existence in philosophy

The existence in metaphysics

To exist is to be; to be is to exist. Thus the existence is it something of immediate, which constitutes the beginning of tout.
In this direction, the existence is the simple fact of being, the being designed without determination no, predicate, anything: the being thus starts with the indetermination of the existence, indetermination because of being pure and simple. Thus, this first Idée of the existence would make us conceive it by a immediate Connaissance. From this point of view:

to be and thought is identical;
the existence is immediately known.

The knowledge of what is the existence is thus resulting originally from the existence even. Each one would thus have an immediate knowledge of the immediate one. These points raise some of the fundamental difficulties of the Philosophie:

if the existence is known by one me, can the existence of the things be deduced about it?
is the existence immediately known by our Conscience?
is the existence an object of knowledge?

The metaphysical origin of the existence

In this last distinction, one can estimate that philosophy traditionally chose the being with the detriment of the existence, which results in the formulation of Aristote: the eternal object of all research present and passed, the point always outstanding: what the being? what the substance amounts requiring? (Metaphysical, Z, 1,1028 B 5) Following Plato, the search for Aristote thus goes on the gasoline, and not on the existence, and the existence would be thus occulted: the existence must always métaphysiquement be thought compared to the gasoline; the gasoline is the condition of intelligibility of the existence.

From this essentialist point of view, it rises several consequences imporantes:

the gasoline is the possible being, and the existence the real being;
the existence of a being is function of its gasoline;
the existence is thus defined by its gasoline, and it is the concept of gasoline which expresses best the existence;
the existence is subordinated to the laws of the gasoline, which thus gives him its limits and its perfection;
the difference between the gasolines produces a hierarchy of the i.e existences a hierarchy of reality: there is order;
more one gasoline is perfect, plus the existence which results from this is perfect;
God (or the Good, the pure act, etc) - being sovereign gasoline, whose proceeds any existence is that; it would be besides also only true gasoline, whose existence necessarily rises, which would make of all Métaphysique and all Science, a Théologie ( Philosophie first at Aristote).

However, this Métaphysique poses a very simple problem: if the existence then depends at this point on the gasoline (Définition, intelligibility, structure of the to be, Raison to be, etc) why something does exist there outwards of the gasoline?
An answer is that God has creates the gasolines and achieves this passage of possible to the reality which the human reason does not arrive has to think (see also Plato, Timée). But the problem is always the same one: how a supreme gasoline can pose out of it something of quota and inferior, the existence?

Existence and existentialism

Vis-a-vis these problems, one can want to think the existence in an autonomous way, independently of the gasoline. It is the existential inversion of metaphysics: the fact of existing becomes the starting point of the thought, which gives direction truly to our experiment. It is the existence without gasoline, i.e without reason and hierarchy.

The existence, in the Metaphysical Western, is in-outside Concept: in this direction, one cannot reproach him for having been unaware of the existence, since the existence is simply what escapes the gasoline: the existence does not result from the concept, it is not a predicate but a position this which is posed here and now (cf Kant).
But the existence is also what is individual, and consequently it concerns not the knowledge on what is, but subjectivity. It is thus the individual who is existing it, and the knowledge of its reality passes by its conscience and its acts (its will). However, it is this aspect of the existence which is unaware of the metaphysical speculation, to which philosophies are opposed which leave the individual, his freedom and its lifestyle choices.

The Réalité of the existence can be apprehended in an emotional way (cf sensitivity at Rousseau), independently of the Raison, i.e that what in east seizes does not deduce from the gasoline, is not demonstrable, is irrefutable (Nietzsche) and thus seems especially an irrational phenomenon. But this emotional conscience can be conceived like a “mood” ( Stimmung , cf Heidegger) a priori, i.e a tonality of the existence which precedes the seizure by the things in their characteristic. This tonality is then contemporary of what is called “opening in the world. ”

nausea, at Sartre, the things losing their utility direction cannot be named any more; it is then their pure existence which becomes invading, unverifiable. The conscience hesitates between fusion subject/object and the rejection.
distresses: for Heidegger, the anguish, unlike the fear, does not have identifiable real object in the experiment. The fear can be fought by the use of means of protection against a well identified danger. The anguish, on the contrary, not having any object, is an anguish of nothing, and its source is to consequently existing it itself which has to be in an authentic way.
Happiness: contrary to contemporary philosophies of the existence which place in the middle of exist, in its structure even, of the rather negative feelings, a Philosophe as Rousseau thinks of finding under the falseness of the social life the pure pleasure of existing it which is the natural blooming of the sensitivity: this sensitivity is for him the starting point of the existence.

In philosophies of the existence, the Liberté is an absolute, the gasoline indépassable of the existence. But this freedom cannot be its own base, because there is a factitiousness originating in the freedom which thus reveals insurmountable finitude of it. Freedom is nevertheless the man even, his existence and it defines the human condition: we are condemned to freedom, we are thrown there, exactly as we are jetés in the world.

Nature of the existence of the objects

Existence of the past

" The past exists only by the traces which it left in the présent" (Paul Valéry)

the forgotten symphony

It is known that, towards the end of its life, Mozart a symphony wrote which played forever and whose manuscript was lost. This symphony exists it " still today; some part" , or is absolute nothing?

The existence in logic

The concept of existence knew an important renewal thanks to the developments of the Logique mathematics with Frege that Russell has follows mentioned again and developed in a famous article One Denoting . The great contribution of Frege is the introduction of new a Quantificateur in logic $\ exists$ .

For Frege to affirm the existence of an object does not consist in allotting a new quality or predicate to him. The sentence " there exists a mountain of or" do not mean that one must allot two qualities to this mountain a) which it is out of gold and b) which it exists. To say of an object which there exists is not thus by no means a preaching according to Frege but amounts affirming that the Ensemble qualified objects of " mountain of or" is not empty.

Mathematics

Let us take an example: let us imagine that our Univers is a plan in which all the creatures are flat worms. Let us draw a left hand and a right hand. In a plan, it is possible no to pass from the drawing of to that of the other. But the worms dish can imagine one the 3rd dimension perpendicular to the 2 others which will enable him to make an imaginary three-dimensional rotation in order to transform a drawing of right hand into a drawing of left hand. Now let us extend this example to the human being: by a rotation in a space with 4 dimensions we could transform a right glove into a left glove. We cannot do it and that proves well that the 4th dimension is imaginary compared to the 3 others. But that does not prevent from making calculations and geometry with 4 dimensions.

What reality compared to perception that we have some? Mathematics goes beyond the real or imaginary debate, moreover the complex term wants to say real and imaginary.

$\ exists$ is the mathematical symbol for the existence, and $\ not \ exists$ that of the inexistence.

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