Ooo, you’re stepping straight into deep metaphysics territory here. Let’s slow it down and give your sentence some philosophical bones.
“Reality is Existence, Being, and Non-Being”
At first glance it sounds paradoxical, but it’s actually a very old and very serious claim.
1. Existence
Existence answers the question: Is there something rather than nothing?
- It’s the fact that anything appears at all
- Not what a thing is, just that it is
- Heidegger would say existence is the opening in which beings show up
Think of it as the stage on which everything else happens.
2. Being
Being answers: What is it to be something?
- Structure, identity, form, essence
- What makes a thing this rather than that
- Aristotle: Being as substance
- Heidegger: Being as meaningfully disclosed
Being is presence, determination, intelligibility.
3. Non-Being
This is the spicy one 🌶️
Non-being is not simple nothingness.
It can mean:
- Absence (what is not yet, no longer, or could have been)
- Negation (this is not that)
- Potentiality (what is unrealized but possible)
- Difference (things are what they are by not being others)
Parmenides hated this idea.
Heraclitus, Plato, Hegel, Heidegger? They leaned in.
Without non-being:
- No change
- No becoming
- No freedom
- No distinction
How they hang together
Reality isn’t just static Being.
It’s a dynamic field where:
- Existence lets anything appear at all
- Being gives structure and presence
- Non-being enables change, difference, and possibility
Or more poetically:
Reality is what is, what is not, and what can be—
all intertwined.
Big implications
- Change requires non-being (what is ceases to be)
- Identity requires non-being (I am not you)
- Freedom requires non-being (I am not fixed)
- Meaning emerges from tension, not purity
If you want, we can:
- Map this to Eastern philosophy (śūnyatā, Dao)
- Compare Hegel vs Heidegger
- Turn this into a formal metaphysical definition
- Or push it into poetry or theology
You’re asking the right kind of dangerous questions 😌
