The gentlemen had risen to see me off. I murmured my superficial farewells, and only then did the secret grip release me. Nonebeingis dependent on the being it negates. Dependent means two things. It points first of all to the ontological priority of being over nonbeing. The term nonbeing itself indicates this, and it is logically necessary. There could be no negation if there were no preceding affirmation to be negated. Certainly one can describe being in terms of non-nonbeing; and one can justify such a description by pointing to the astonishing prerational fact that there is something and not nothing. One could say that being is the negation of the primordial night of nothingness. However, in doing so one must realize that such an aboriginal nothing would be neither nothing nor something, that it becomes nothing only in contrast to something; in other words, that the ontological status of nonbeing as nonbeing is dependent on being. Secondly, nonbeing is dependent on the special qualities of being. In itself nonbeing has no quality and no difference of qualities. However, it gets them in relation to being. The character of the negation of being is determined by that in being which is negated. This makes it possible to speak of qualities of nonbeing and, consequently,of types of anxiety. #RandolphHarris 1 of 5

Up to now we have used the term nonbeing without differentiation, while in the discussion of courage several forms of self-affirmation were mentioned. They correspond to different forms of anxiety and are understandable only in correlation with them. I suggest that we distinguish three types of anxiety according to the three directions in which nonbeing threatens being. Nonbeing threatens human’s moral self-affirmation, relatively in terms of fate, absolutely in terms of death. It threatens human’s spiritual self-affirmation, relatively in terms of guilt, absolutely in terms of condemnation. The awareness of this threefold threat is anxiety appearing in three forms, that of fate and death (briefly, the anxiety of death), that of emptiness and loss of meaning (briefly, the anxiety of meaninglessness), that of guilt and condemnation (briefly, the anxiety of condemnation). In all three forms anxiety is existential in the sense that it belongs to existence as such and not to an abnormal state of mind as in neurotic (and psychotic) anxiety. The nature of neurotic anxiety and its relation to existential anxiety will be discussed in another chapter. We shall deal now with the three forms of existential anxiety, first their reality in the life of the individual, then with their social manifestations in special periods of Western history. However, it must be stated that the differences of types does not mean mutual exclusion. #RandolphHarris 2 of 5

We have seen for instance that the courage to be as it appears in the ancient times conquers not only the fear of death but also the threat of meaninglessness. Sometimes we find that in spite of the predominance of threat of meaninglessness, the anxiety of death and condemnation is passionately challenged. In all representatives of classical Christianity death and sin are seen as the allied adversaries against which the courage of faith has to fight. The three forms of anxiety (and of courage) are immanent in each other but normally under the dominance of one of them. However, nothing is more common than the idea that we, the people living in the Western World of the twenty first century,are eminently sane. Even the fact that a great number of individuals in our midst suffer from more or less severe forms of mental illness produces little doubt with respect to the general standard of our mental health. We are sure that by introducing better methods of mental hygiene we shall improve still further the state of mental health, and as far as individual mental disturbances are concerned, we look at them as strictly individual incidents,perhaps with some amazement that so many of these incidents should occur in a culture which is supposedly so sane. #RandolphHarris 3 of 5

Can we be so sure that we are not deceiving ourselves? Many an inmate of an insane asylum is convinced that everybody else is crazy, except oneself. Many a severe neurotic believes that one’s compulsive rituals or hysterical outbursts are normal reaction to somewhat abnormal circumstances. What about ourselves? Let us, in good psychiatric fashion, look at the facts. In the last one hundred and sixty-three years, in the Western World, have created a greater material wealth than any other society in the history of the human race. Everyone is looking with a mixture of confidence and apprehension to the World leaders of the various people, ready to heap all praise on them if the succeed in avoiding a war, and ignoring the fact that it is only these very World leaders who ever cause a war, usually not even through their bad intentions, but their unreasonable mismanagement of the affairs entrusted to them. In the last 3,000 years of history, no less than about eight thousand peace treaties were signed,each one supposed to secure permanent peace, and each one lasting on an average two years. Our direction of economic affairs is scarcely more encouraging. We live in an economic system in which a particularly good crop is often an economic disaster, and we restrict some of our agricultural productivity in order to stabilize the market, although there are millions of people who do not have the very things we restrict, and who need them badly. #RandolphHarris 4 of 5

Right now our economic system is function very well, because, among other reasons, we spend billions of dollars per year to produce armaments. Economists look with some apprehension to the time when we stop producing armaments, and the idea that the state should produce houses and other useful and needed things instead of weapons, easily provokes accusations of endangering freedom and individual initiative. We have a literacy above 90 percent of the population. We have radio, television, movies, a newspaper a day for everybody. However, instead of giving us the best of past and present literature and music, these media of communication, supplemented by advertising, fill the minds of people with the cheapest trash, lacking in any sense of reality, with sadistic phantasies which a halfway cultured person would be embarrassed to entertain even once in while. However, the mind of everybody, young and old, is thus poisoned, we go on blissfully to see to it that no immortality occurs on the screen. Any suggestion that the government should finance the production of movies and radio programs which would enlighten and improve the minds of our people would be met again with indignation and accusations in the name of freedom and idealism. “And now my children, see that ye take care of these sacred things, yea see that ye look to God and live. Go unto this people and declare the word, and be sober. My children, farewell,” reports Alma 37.44. #RandolphHarris 5 of 5