Being itself is neither active nor passive, since both require being first.

Evidence

This is equivalent to saying that being is uncreated. But we need not conclude that being creates itself, which would suppose that it is prior to itself. Being can not be causa sui in the manner of consciousness. Being is itself. This means that it is neither passivity nor activity. Both of these notions are human and designate human conduct or the instruments of human conduct. There is activity when a conscious being uses means with an end in view. And we call those objects passive on which our activity is exercised, in as much as they do not spontaneously aim at the end which we make them serve. In a word, man is active and the means which he employs are called passive. These concepts, put absolutely, lose all meaning. In particular, being is not active; in order for there to be an end and means, there must be being. For an even stronger reason it can not be passive, for in order to be passive, it must be. The self-consistency of being is beyond the active as it is beyond the passive. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 161

Categorization

• DEFINE: Activity and passivity are defined as human categories dependent on ends and means, inapplicable to being-in-itself.
• XREF: Sets up the eventual contrast with the for-itself (consciousness), which is genuinely active as a nihilation; the ‘being is itself’ formula prefigures Heideggerian Selbstheit. — connects to: Being-in-itself can found its nothingness but never its being — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 346; Relative and passive properties describe modes of being, never being itself

Broader Connections

• Relative and passive properties describe modes of being, never being itself #corroborates (0.90)
• Being-in-itself can found its nothingness but never its being #complicates (0.75) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 346