Presence in Reality Arman Hovhannisyan Abstract: As I tried to show in my earlier works (An Endeavor of New Concept of Being and Non-Being, Non-Being and Nothingness and Reality as Being and Nothingness), the environment in which the human being is finding itself should be characterized by being and nothingness, and any non-metaphysical philosophy must consider such an understanding of Reality as the utmost category which is above being, Universe, etc. In this article, I will try to shed light on the place and role of the human being or the presence or this-being in Reality as being and nothingness. I This-being, as being understanding itself as being, is doing that meeting the being out of itself. Only in such a meeting is it discovering the "am", after which is turning again to the being surrounding it and is attributing "is" to it. Nothingness is out of being which means that this-being, too, is nothing out of being. Such an assertion seems to be contradictory, as one may ask how any being understanding itself can be nothing. And nevertheless, this-being is understanding itself as being not only in its meeting with the being surrounding it, but also and first of all due to that meeting, and any being is nothing when not understood or at least felt. And in fact, if we try to deprive this-being of the things and phenomena filling its mind, their ties and correlations, the content of its senses and mind related in one way or another to the world surrounding this-being, to being, so, as a matter of fact, nothing will remain in it. Mind, thinking, spirit, senses, characterizing this-being, do not have any content initially and, as such, are nothing. Even if their object is inside and not outside, all the same, that object has its origin in the world of being surrounding this-being. Directivity toward ..., intentionality is not only the mode, but also the very basis of this-being's being. This-being is not only understanding, but also finding and getting its being in the world of being. Nothingness in this-being is at the same time both transcendent to the world of being and embedded in that world, is thrown into that world, it is acquiring being in that 2 Arman Hovhannisyan. Presence in Reality world. Nothingness in this-being is moving permanently to being from which is getting its content. Simultaneously, however, nothingness in this-being is imparting being to the surrounding world. Meeting that world and discovering itself as being, this-being is ascribing being to that world immediately. These passages from nothingness to being and from being to nothingness, which seem contradictory for the world of being, are quite understandable in Reality. Here the point is a so called "concrete" nothingness, which is somewhat "torn off", separated from the world and is understanding its separateness as being. Nothingness in this-being, from the aspect of time, is the instant, and from the aspect of space the point. This-being is always finding itself in the present, in a given instant, and is opened toward the past and the future. The future is moving toward this-being, becoming present and afterward past, and however time is only touching this-being, passing "by its side", and nothingness in this-being stays out of time, like the absolutized present, the instant, which is out of time, too. This-being in the instant is the very nothingness in this-being. This-being can tell nothing on the whereabouts of nothingness in it. Nothingness is everywhere in this-being and nowhere at the same time, it is identical to this-being and at the same time differs from the integrity of its body parts, from its body as a whole. Feeling pain in a certain part of its body, this-being perceives that internal pain as something conflicting with its "core", something outer and alien, of which it is willing to get rid: this-being stops perceiving the given part of its body as its own organic part, it becomes alien to this-being, and nothingness in this-being seems to "shrink" a little, leaving outside that troubling part and considering it a threat to its own being. Therefore, we can assert that the "place" of nothingness in this-being is the point which we know as an absolutized unit of space. Nothingness in this-being, however, as we have already mentioned, is somewhat separated, delimited from the surrounding world and is understanding its separateness as being. Therefore, nothingness in this being from the temporal and spatial aspects, the instant and the point, are separated from the surrounding world as well. In other words, the instant and the point in this-being are separated from the abstract, metaphysical instant and point of the world of being, which, as we have already 3 Arman Hovhannisyan. Presence in Reality demonstrated, are non-being for this-being and nothingness in themselves and characterize eternity in time and infinity in space. So does all this mean that nothingness in this-being is not eternal in time and infinite in space? The answer to this question is a definitely negative one. It is this-being that is finite in time and space, but not nothingness in it. This-being is finite as long as it is in the world of being, in the horizon of time and space, which remains always and everywhere outer and alien to nothingness in this-being. Having once got out of the world of being, nothingness in this-being will retrieve itself in eternity in the face of the instant, liberated from the bonds of being and stopped once and for all, and infinity in the face of the really philosophical, non-metaphysical point. II This-being, therefore, must search for its sense only in Reality, it should try to find out the sense of its being in correlation, in connection (if only we can use these terms here) with its own non-being. Coming from non-being and going toward non-being, which is, as imagined by thisbeing, nothingness in itself, this-being has to come to terms with the fact that its place and role in the world cannot be limited by its place and role in the world of being, as the latter is not self-sufficient for this-being, and it should look for an answer to the question relating to its place and role, its sense, in Reality as being and nothingness. Although nothingness is transcendent to this-being and unreachable for it, although this-being is only in the world of being and is not in the world of non-being, which is imagined by this-being as nothingness in itself, nevertheless, nothingness has to do with and relates to this-being, and moreover, has to do with and relates to it most fatally and decisively. This-being is perceiving its own being and that of the surrounding world as a ceaseless passage from nothingness to being and vice versa in the face of its own birth and death, of beginningless and endless temporal and spatial succession, of movement and change of things and objects, and finally of changes in the content of its own mind. Therefore, in search of the answers to the questions relating to life and death, moral principles, and other key questions of the traditional philosophy, this-being must consider itself not in the world of being but in Reality. 4 Arman Hovhannisyan. Presence in Reality Most probably, this-being will never find the answers to these questions, as its existence is limited by the world of being. Though nothingness, non-being relates to this-being, nevertheless, this-being cannot find any beingal connection between itself and nothingness, and cannot get behind determining that relation and observing the margin between being and nothingness. Any real philosophy, therefore, is possible not as an answer but rather as questioning, the seeds of which this-being is finding in itself emerging in the world. When that questioning exceeds its limits, this-being gets instead of Philosophy either metaphysics, lost in the world of being, or fantasy, wandering in an illusory world. On the other hand, only Philosophy has to do with that questioning, and the latter cannot be an object for concrete sciences. Having their roots in Philosophy, the sciences, however, have gone quite far from that questioning, even more than metaphysics has done. And nevertheless, there are sciences which are finally reduced to that questioning. Those are the social sciences, "sciences on spirit", such as Ethics, History, Literature etc., which relate to this-being's co-being, co-existence with others.