A nihilating being cannot be the cause of further phenomena

Evidence

When Clovis appreciates the aid which the Church can furnish him, it is not certain that a group of prelates or even one particular priest has made any overtures to him, nor even that any member of the clergy has clearly thought of an alliance with a Catholic monarch. The only strictly objective facts, those which any for-itself whatsoever can establish, are the great power of the Church over the people of Gaul and the anxiety of the Church with regard to the Arian heresy. In order for these established facts to be organized into a cause for conversion, it is necessary to isolate them from the ensemble—and thereby to nihilate them—and it is necessary to transcend them toward a particular potentiality: the Church’s potentiality objectively apprehended by Clovis will be to give its support to a converted king. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1089 (#expands, via linked claim)

For the same reasons it is impossible to assign to a consciousness a motivation other than itself. Otherwise it would be necessary to conceive that consciousness to the degree to which it is an effect, is not conscious (of) itself. It would be necessary in some manner that it should be without being conscious (of) being. We should fall into that too common illusion which makes consciousness semi-conscious or a passivity. But consciousness is consciousness through and through. It can be limited only by itself. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 137 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Pure spontaneous consciousness can neither act upon nor be acted upon by things.; Causes require nihilation and transcendence toward a not-yet-existing potentiality — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 1089; Consciousness cannot be caused by any motivation external to itself — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 137 (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• Causes require nihilation and transcendence toward a not-yet-existing potentiality #expands (0.85) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1089
• Consciousness cannot be caused by any motivation external to itself #corroborates (0.80) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 137
• Psychic causality cannot be mechanical or constant-succession, only magic action at a distance #complicates (0.75) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 544
• The inactive past cannot reach the present except through an ekstatic being #corroborates (0.75)