inexistence

plural inexistences

1. uncountableusuallyThe state of not being, not existing, or not being perceptible.

   In order to prove the inexistence of God, he challenged Him to strike him down in five minutes while timing himself with a watch.

   1941, Giuseppe di Gioia, Swift are the Shadows, page 78

   2 more examples

   Our inexistence indeed was a condition, wherein nothing in us was capable of being a motive of God's love; but our enmity proceeded further, and made us worthy of his detestation; […]

   1648, Robert Boyle, Seraphic Love, Kessinger, published 1997, →ISBN, page 57

   Axiomatics (namely, that everything that will be used for the purposes of a demonstration is explained) does nothing more than formalizing this wiping clean — in other words, inexistence is posed as the condition for necessity to emerge.

   2007, Jacques-Alain Miller, “The Sinthome, A Mixture of Symptom and Fantasy”, in The Later Lacan, →ISBN, page 57

   Synonyms: nonexistence

2. uncountableusuallyThe state of existing in something

   that there is a mutual inexistence of one in all, and all in one; […]

   1663, Isaac Barrow, “A Defence of the Blessed Trinity”, in The Theological Works of Isaac Barrow, published 1830, page 188

   2 more examples

   She distinguished as to this, the inexistence in God from eternity, and the figurative manifestation in time.

   1854, Christopher Walton, Notes and Materials for an Adequate Biography of the Celebrated Divine and Theosopher: William Law, page 207

   Berkeley's theory of the creature's permanent inexistence in God evoked a suspicion of pantheism.

   2005, Louis Dupre, The Enlightenment and the Intellectual Foundations of Modern Culture, →ISBN, page 303

3. uncountableusuallyThat which exists within; a constituent.

   1768-1777, Abraham Tucker, The Light of Nature Pursued where could they find such receptacle for their inexistence

   Synonyms: inherence