Being and Non-Being

Being and non-being are not two separate substances for Tillich but two poles of a single dialectical reality. To be is to be finite — limited, bounded, dependent on conditions one did not choose. To be finite is to stand in relation to non-being — to the boundaries beyond which one's existence does not extend, to the nothingness that surrounds every moment of existence, to the threat of annihilation that belongs to existence simply by virtue of being existence rather than necessity. Non-being is not mere absence (the way an empty room lacks furniture). It is active negation — the shadow that finitude casts, the threat that makes courage necessary and cowardice possible. Tillich insisted that non-being is experienced in three forms corresponding to the three dimensions of finitude: as fate and death (the awareness that one will end), as guilt and condemnation (the awareness that one's actions are always partly wrong), and as emptiness and meaninglessness (the awareness that the frameworks organizing one's life might