Editing Nothing (section)

====Existentialists====
The most prominent figure among the [[existentialism|existentialists]] is [[Jean-Paul Sartre]], whose ideas in his book ''[[Being and Nothingness]]'' (''L'être et le néant'') are heavily influenced by ''[[Being and Time]]'' (''Sein und Zeit'') of [[Martin Heidegger]], although Heidegger later stated that he was misunderstood by Sartre.<ref>Heidegger, "Letter on 'Humanism'", ''Pathmarks'' (Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 250–251.</ref> Sartre defines two kinds of "being" (être). One kind is ''être-en-soi'', the brute existence of things such as a tree. The other kind is ''être-pour-soi'' which is consciousness. Sartre claims that this second kind of being is "nothing" since consciousness cannot be an object of consciousness and can possess no essence.<ref>Robert C. Solomon, ''From Hegel to Existentialism'', pp. 286–287, Oxford University Press US, 1989, {{ISBN|0-19-506182-9}}.</ref> Sartre, and even more so, [[Jaques Lacan]], use this conception of nothing as the foundation of their atheist philosophy. Equating nothingness with being leads to creation from nothing and hence God is no longer needed for there to be existence.<ref>Conor Cunningham, ''A Genealogy of Nihilism: Philosophies of Nothing and the Difference of Theology'', pp. 251–255, Routledge, 2002 {{ISBN|0-415-27694-2}}.</ref>