Abstraction is the for-itself’s original mode of being, not a mental act

Evidence

Thus the pure green comes to the “green-roughness-light” on the ground of the future as its meaning. We apprehend here the meaning of what we have called abstraction. The existent does not possess its essence as a present quality. It is even the negation of essence; the green never is green. But the essence comes from the ground of the future to the existent, as a meaning which is never given and which forever haunts it. It is the pure correlate of the pure ideality of my negation. In this sense there is no such thing as an operation of abstraction if we mean by that a psychological affirmative act of selection effected by a constituted mind. Far from abstracting certain qualities in terms of things, we must on the contrary view abstraction as the original mode of being of the for-itself, necessary in order that there may be, in general, things and a world. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 607

Categorization

• DEFINE: Reverses the ordinary psychological reading of abstraction: it is ontological, productive of the world itself, not a selection operation by a constituted mind.
• XREF: Connects to the systematic backdrop for Beauvoir: abstraction as negating transcendence is the ground of the for-itself’s world-positing. — connects to: Lack is not accidental to human reality but constitutes its original mode of being. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 360; Abstraction is constitutive of the this, not a separate act added to it; Permanence is identical with abstractness, both rooted in the for-itself’s negation (+1 more)
• DEEPTHINKING: The claim that the abstract is prior to the concrete, that abstraction is what renders concretion possible, is a dense reversal of empiricist epistemology that sits with the reader.

Broader Connections

• Permanence is identical with abstractness, both rooted in the for-itself’s negation #corroborates (0.85)
• Conceptual abstraction is itself a metaphorical act because it posits resemblance among distinct existents #expands (0.82) — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 507