Dread, therefore, is not fear in the face of a specific danger. It is rather the emotive understanding of the nullity of the possible, or, as Karl Jaspers says, of the possibility of Nothingness. It has, therefore, a therapeutic function in that it leads human existence to its authenticity. From the fall into factuality into which every project plunges him, man can save himself only by projecting not to project; i.e., either by abandoning himself decisively to the situation in which he finds himself or by being indifferent to any possible project--with regard to which Jean Paul Sartre says, "Thus it amounts to the same thing whether one gets drunk alone or is a leader of nations."The pivotal point of that conclusion--the conclusion most widely held among the Existentialists and the one in fact often identified with Existentialism --is the antithesis between possibility and reality. On the one hand, existence is interpreted in terms of possibilities that are not purely logical possibilities or manifestations of a man's ignorance of what exists but are, rather, effective, or ontic, possibilities that constitute man as such; on the other hand, contrasted to possibilities in this sense is a reality, a for-itself, a world, a transcendence that is a factual presence, insurmountable and oppressive, with respect to which possibility is a pure Nothingness. The contradiction to which this antithesis leads becomes clear when the same reality is interpreted in terms of possibility: when the being of things, for example, is reduced to their possibility of being utilized; when the being of other men is reduced to the possibility of anonymous or personal relationships that the individual can have with them; and when the being of transcendence, or of God, is reduced to the possibility of the relationship, although ineffable and mysterious, between transcendence, or God, and man.
