Néant

Néant is a French noun meaning nothingness, void, or emptiness. In everyday language it can express the absence of something, or the sense of emptiness in space, time, or experience. The word is widely used across disciplines to denote a state or quality of non-being.

In philosophy, the concept of néant has been especially influential in existentialism and phenomenology. Jean-Paul Sartre’s Being and Nothingness treats le néant as a constitutive aspect of consciousness that enables negation, possibility, and freedom by projecting nothingness onto objects and situations. In the broader phenomenological and ontological tradition, related notions of nothingness—often rendered as das Nichts in German—are used to explore how absence and negation shape meaning, existence, and perception. The term thus functions as a theoretical tool to examine the limits of representation and the conditions of experience.

Beyond strictly philosophical usage, néant appears as a motif in literature, art, and culture to express emptiness, abyss, or existential crisis. It is also employed to discuss nihilism, finitude, and the tension between absence and meaning in modern and contemporary French thought.

See also: nothingness, void, negation.