Existence and Subsistence: The Power of Concepts

The Weeping Woman. Pablo Picasso 1937.

By Christian Sötemann

Imagine a married couple, Laura and Audrey.  Both have regular work. Then, Laura loses her job, and Audrey’s mother dies.  The couple are now in a double predicament.  On the one hand, they will struggle to pay the rent.  On the other hand, they will have to work through Audrey’s mother’s death.

Now imagine an alternative situation, again involving Laura and Audrey.  Laura and Audrey now both lose their jobs.  This deepens their struggle with the rent.  Yet Audrey’s mother is still alive and well.

We would be somewhat justified in calling both situations ‘existential crises’, since both have to do with human existence.  Yet we might also apply two different terms to Laura and Audrey’s experiences – one being a problem of ‘existence’, the other a problem of ‘subsistence’.  It may not be an exact distinction, but it can point to two different – and at times overlapping – spheres.

In the first example, Audrey and Laura undergo problems of ‘existence’ (Audrey’s mother) as well as problems of ‘subsistence’ (Laura’s job).  In the second example, it can be construed as a problem of how to subsist at all.  Now, we might ask wherein the difference lies, more exactly.

Deepening our Meanings

Subsistence, here, concerns physiological survival, and the provision of basic material needs.  One does not have to subscribe to Marxism to agree with Marx when he pointed out that ‘life involves before everything else eating and drinking, a habitation, clothing and many other things.’  The psychologist Abraham Maslow has suggested that basic needs such as these precede more complex ones such as appreciation by others or self-actualisation.

One might be tempted to state that their problems of subsistence are about material necessities, to continue their existence on biological and economic levels.  And yet – it would be fruitful to reserve the term ‘existence’ for certain phenomena inextricably interwoven with human life, which go beyond self-conservation and material safety.

‘Existence’ may further be differentiated from ‘being’.  One may discern this in a human death.  When we die, we do not turn into nothingness.  There is always still something there: ashes, or a lifeless body dissolving into dust.  To quote Sartre, there is not less – ‘there is something else.’  However, human life – a unique existence – is lost.

Being turns into different being. Something remains on one level – but on the existential level, a most drastic change occurs when a human being dies. And that is regardless of whether one takes an atheist stance or postulates an immortal soul, since the latter would still indicate an existential transformation.

Philosophers like Heidegger saw a difference here, and even though one can be critical of the ideas which led to this distinction, there is some merit to the idea of reserving the term ‘existence’ for human beings, in that it enables us to contemplate the existential dimension of human life.

In this understanding, ‘existence’ goes beyond the mere ‘being there’ of something, in spite of all changes, and instead points to the existential – to questions of death, one’s take on the meaning of the world, loneliness and freedom and responsibility.  These are the ‘ultimate concerns’ that the existential psychotherapist Irvin Yalom has identified.

Differentiating our Meanings

Whatever the case may be, there is something that shows us that the spheres of ‘existence’ and ‘subsistence’ cannot be identical.  Even if one has all that is needed for physiological and economic survival, one is still confronted with the inescapability of death and the task of committing to a meaning of one’s own life, among other things. No material protection can relieve existential issues, once they come under scrutiny.

Granted, with rare exceptions, one has to achieve a certain level of material security to ponder the questions of ‘existence’ at all. The philosopher who ponders the meaning of the world is unlikely to be able to do so without access to food and drinking water and a place for nightly recuperation. Even Diogenes resorted to his tub, after all.  The sphere of existence requires the opportunity to go beyond questions of daily survival.

Thus, if one accepts this distinction between ‘subsistence’ and ‘existence’, one could shine a light on economic struggles and perceived injustice on the one hand, and discuss issues of a human being’s general position in the world from a more contemplative point of view on the other.  By defining ‘subsistence’ and ‘existence’, one may now employ these terms to powerful effect in philosophical debate as well as psychotherapy and psychological counselling.