Antinomy 3: Existence Vs. Non-existence

These three very different types of possible motivation can lie behind a preference for non-existence that is not coupled with an evaluation that life is not worth living. The dialectical situation is different in each of them. In the “indifference” type of case, the explanation lies primarily with the weakness of the evaluation. Since life is only just barely worth living, there is room for a preference not to have been born, the preference having arisen from anxiety, tiredness, or a fastidious “perfectionism.” In the “suffering” type of case there is, by contrast, a firm positive evaluation of life as worth living, but there is also a strong contrary attraction to the thought of non-existence because non-existence lacks suffering. In the third, “self-dislike” type of case, one recognizes that one’s non-existence would be preferable according to a standard that one accepts, which makes one’s existence (with all of its pleasures) distasteful to one.

Extract taken from:“Ten Moral Paradoxes” by Saul Smilansky

Why do we exist? Is there meaning behind our, seemingly, meaningless existences? Do we have to resort to objective and subjective point of views again? How do we know something exists? What is existence? Why I wish I wouldn’t exist, when I, actually, can’t produce a definition of existence?

When I realize everything is, everything is there, things are things, I am me, and you are you, I get that horrible feeling, that overwhelming feeling of confusion. I get desperate. All those sickening thoughts bouncing in my head. If only I could get rid of them. “The Nausea”, as Sartre calls it. A state of mind in which you try to understand what is out of the reach of our human understanding. You face “existence”, and you get lost in the fruitless effort of trying to add meaning to what is, by nature, meaningless. All colours fade away to black, and a gloomy atmosphere surrounds everything you can possibly see, if you see anything at all.

I wish I hadn’t been born. I think that from all the possible types, the one that best describes me is: “suffering”. I got sort of shocked when I read that you can wish not having been born and think that life is worth living at the same time. But, I still feel that my evaluation of life is negative, not positive. I wonder, am I lying to myself again? Do I really wish to be alive, or I long for death?. I suppose I just want not to exist, since non-existence lacks suffering.