SEVEN PAPERS ON EXISTENTIAL ANALYSIS ... - Wagner College

tantamount to saying that I do not exist. In validating my existence, the Other can truthfully be
said to bring me into existence. Without that validation, I am a mere thing.
The terms we are using – existence, being, other, and all of the personal pronouns – are
temporal terms. Experience can be described only in temporal terms. The temporal terms past,
present, and future were invented to account for the paradoxical ontological status of the
human sort of be-ing, who both is and exists. As already noted, what I am refers to my past and
its future, while my existence refers to my personal present. As a dimension of temporality, my
personal present emerges with my existence, demarcating a before (the past) and an after (the
future), which circumscribe what I, who exist, am.
Every existence is temporally unique. My present is mine alone. I speak only for myself, on
my own behalf. The only meaningful temporality to me is my past and its future. The common
time, measured by clocks and calendars that we claim to share is a momentous fiction. As we
will see, as one emerges through his existence into experience (which always implies others), his
personal present opens up a manifold that includes his past and the future his past has placed
before him. The generalized notions of "the Past" and "the Future" are collective fictions
visualized as pointing in opposite directions from “the Present” toward indeterminate termini on
a unidirectional, future-oriented continuum. A conventionally dated "Present" is designated and
reified and it is our destiny to live out the consequences of this fiction.
“The Past" and "the Future" are the precipitates of the reification of existence. History and
destiny are their manifestations in Western culture. These collective fictions are attempts to
materialize what is essentially the private and unavailable experience of each individual
existence. When we subscribe to the fictions of the collective historical Past of tradition or the
fateful Future of common sense and planning, we do so in flight from the remoteness, singularity,
and uniqueness of each unique existence. It is not inevitable that one's personal present
emerge, however. That happens only when an other validates one's existence. Only then does
the personal present appear.
A close examination of the origin and history of the term existence in the history of
philosophy (until Heidegger) reveals a flirtation with and retreat from the idea presented here,
that only human beings both exist and are. Much confusion has resulted, as well as many
conflicting and, finally, unacceptable arguments about the ontological status of the human
being (5).
Animals, plants, inanimate things, and imaginary and other mental entities, including
God, are. They are in various ways. Some (the animate and the inanimate) are by being real
("steadily present on hand," as Heidegger would say); others (mental entities such as memories
and imaginary beings) are by be- ing absent, either physically or temporarily, or both physically
and temporally. But none exist. They lack a personal present and therefore also lack a past and
a future. Ideas and God lack the temporal present in a way that enhances them by making
them eternal and therefore unchangeable, while the fact that animals lack a personal present is
a deficiency.
Living things, inanimate things (including all products of human fabrication), mental
entities, and even the idea of God have temporal meaning only for us. The human being is the
only temporal being because he or she exists. Everything in experience, including mental
entities, bears the mark of time. Eternity – the absence of time – is the idea of the absence of a
temporal spanning or the compression of an infinite span into a timeless instant (the so-called
eternal now). Animals live in what might be called an indefinite or indifferent "now."
B. Bodily Being and Existence
We see the difference between and being most clearly in the dual nature of the human body.
As an animal, a human being has a body. Existing, he is his body. Animals have their bodies; their