Levinas - The Levinas Reader (ed Hand)

There is: existence without existents 35darkness. Total negation then would be impossible, and the concept ofnothingness illusory. But Bergson's critique of nothingness only aims at thenecessity of a being, a 'something' which exists. It always approaches Beingas 'a being', and ends up with a residual entity. The darkness into whichconsciousness plunges, which has put out every glimmering of light inbeing, is also understood as content. The fact that it is a content obtainedthrough the negation of all content remains unconsidered. But this is justwhat: is new in this situation. Darkness, as the presence of absence, is not apurely present content. There is not a 'something' that remains. There isthe atmosphere of presence, which can, to be sure, appear later as acontent, but originally is the impersonal, non-substantive event of the nightand the there is. It is like a density of the void, like a murmur of silence.There is nothing, but there is being, like a field of forces. Darkness is thevery play of existence which would play itself out even if there werenothing. It is to express just this paradoxical existence that we have introducedthe term 'there is' We want to call attention to this being a density,an atmosphere, a field, which is not to be identified with an object thatwould have this density, or that would be taken up in the breath ofexistence or situated wjthin a field of forces. We want to call attention to theexistential density of the void itself, devoid of all being, empty even of void,whatever be the power of negation applied to itself. Negation does not endup with being as a structure and organization of objects; that which affirmsand imposes itself in the extreme situation we have imagined, and which weapproach in the night and in the tragic, is being as an impersonal field, afield without proprietor or master, where negation, annihilation andnothingness are events like affirmation, creation and subsistence, but impersonalevents. A presence of absence, the there is is beyond contradiction; itembraces and dominates its contradictory. In this sense being has nooutlets.In modern philosophy the idea of death and of anxiety in face of deathwas opposed to the Bergsonian critique of nothingness. To 'realize' theconcept of nothingness is not to see nothingness, but to die. As death, andan attitude taken with respect to death, the negation of being is not merelyan impassive thought. But nothingness is here still conceived independentlyof the there is, without recognizing the universality of the there is; thedialectical character of the presence of absence .is not taken note of. Onestarts with being, which is a content limited by nothingness. Nothingness isstill envisaged as the end and limit of being, as an ocean which beats upagainst it on all sides. But we must ask if 'nothingness,' unthinkable as alimit or negation of being, is not possible as interval and interruption; wemust ask whether consciousness, with its aptitude for sleep, for suspension,for epoche, is not the locus of this nothingness-interval.