Consciousness grounds itself and precedes all nothingness

Evidence

The existence of consciousness comes from consciousness itself. By that we need not understand that consciousness “derives from nothingness.” There can not be “nothingness of consciousness” before consciousness. “Before” consciousness one can conceive only of a plenum of being of which no element can refer to an absent consciousness. If there is to be nothingness of consciousness, there must be a consciousness which has been and which is no more and a witnessing consciousness which poses the nothingness of the first consciousness for a synthesis of recognition. Consciousness is prior to nothingness and “is derived” from being. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 138

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines what it means for consciousness to be self-caused — not genesis, not act, but a plenum whose existence comes from itself, prior to any nothingness.
• XREF: Directly sets up Beauvoir’s ethics of ambiguity and the account of freedom as self-originating; also contrastable with Heidegger’s Geworfenheit (thrownness). — connects to: Self-consciousness is the sole mode of existence for any consciousness of something — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 135; For consciousness, existence precedes and grounds any essence — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 137; Nothingness is a supported recoil from Being that enables consciousness to exist (+7 more)

Broader Connections

• Consciousness is a being that is conscious of the nothingness of its own being. #expands (0.82) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 277
• Nothingness is a supported recoil from Being that enables consciousness to exist #qualifies (0.80)
• Nothingness is an act of being putting itself into question, unique to consciousness. #complicates (0.78) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 336
• Nothingness is expelled from being yet gives the world its outlines #contradicts (0.75)