Existence
Existence is the widest concept in Objectivism: it names everything that is, taken together, and is the first of the three axioms of Objectivist metaphysics. The proposition "existence exists" asserts that something is, prior to and independently of anyone's awareness of it.
“Existence exists — and the act of grasping that statement implies two corollary axioms: that something exists which one perceives and that one exists possessing consciousness, consciousness being the faculty of perceiving that which exists.”
~ Ayn Rand, "Galt's Speech", Atlas Shrugged
Why it is an axiom
An axiom is a proposition that cannot be denied without being presupposed by the denial. Existence qualifies: anyone who argues that nothing exists must exist to make the argument, must be aware of something in order to have anything to argue about, and must use concepts that refer to things.
This is why an axiom cannot be proved, and why the demand for a proof misunderstands what an axiom is. Proof means deriving a conclusion from prior premises. Existence has no priors; it is what every proof rests on. It is validated instead by showing that any attempt to reject it uses it. See Axioms and Proof.
What it does not claim
"Existence exists" is deliberately empty of content about what exists. It does not say the universe is material, or eternal, or finite. Those are questions for the special sciences, not for philosophy. The axiom fixes only that reality is, and therefore that reality is the standard against which claims are measured.
The corollary that does carry content is identity: to exist is to be something in particular, to have a nature. Existence and identity are not two facts but one fact viewed from two angles, which is why Rand treated "existence exists" and "A is A" as inseparable.
The primacy of existence
From the axiom follows the primacy of existence: reality is what it is regardless of anyone's wishes, beliefs or feelings. Consciousness is the faculty that perceives existence, not one that creates it.
The opposite view, the primacy of consciousness, holds that some consciousness determines what is real, whether a god's, society's, or one's own. Rand regarded this as the root error underlying mysticism, subjectivism and collectivism alike.
Common misunderstandings
- That it is a trivial tautology. It is uninformative about particulars by design. Its work is done in what it rules out: revelation as a source of knowledge, wishing as a means of altering facts, and the claim that reality is a construct.
- That "existence exists" means the universe is eternal or self-caused. It does not address the question. Causality applies to entities acting within existence, not to existence as a whole.
- That refusing to prove it is special pleading. Every system of thought must terminate somewhere. Objectivism's claim is that it terminates in something self-evident and self-supporting rather than in an arbitrary starting point.
See also
- Axioms · Identity · Consciousness
- Primacy of Existence · Primacy of Consciousness
- Existents · Metaphysics · Fact
- Fallacy of the stolen concept — the error committed by denying an axiom
Discussion
References
- Rand, Ayn. "Galt's Speech", Atlas Shrugged. Random House, 1957.
- Peikoff, Leonard. Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand, chapter 1.
External links
| Metaphysics Topics |
|---|
| Axioms: Existence, Consciousness, Identity • Corollary: Causality, Primacy of Existence |
| Reality: Primacy of Existence, Existents, the Metaphysically Given versus the Man Made |