Consciousness is necessarily directed at a being other than itself

Evidence

Consciousness is consciousness of something. This means that transcendence is the constitutive structure of consciousness; that is, that consciousness is born supported by a being which is not itself. This is what we call the ontological proof. … Not only does pure subjectivity, if initially given, fail to transcend itself to posit the objective; a “pure” subjectivity disappears. What can properly be called subjectivity is consciousness (of) consciousness. But this consciousness (of being) consciousness must be qualified in some way, and it can be qualified only as revealing intuition or it is nothing. Now a revealing intuition implies something revealed. Absolute subjectivity can be established only in the face of something revealed; immanence can be defined only within the apprehension of a transcendent. … It is not a question of showing that the phenomena of inner sense imply the existence of objective spatial phenomena, but that consciousness implies in its being a non-conscious and transphenomenal being. … To say that consciousness is consciousness of something is to say that it must produce itself as a revealed-revelation of a being which is not it and which gives itself as already existing when consciousness reveals it. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 151

Thus we have left pure appearance and have arrived at full being. Consciousness is a being whose existence posits its essence, and inversely it is consciousness of a being, whose essence implies its existence; that is, in which appearance lays claim to being. Being is everywhere. Certainly we could apply to consciousness the definition which Heidegger reserves for Dasein and say that it is a being such that in its being, its being is in question. But it would be necessary to complete the definition and formulate it more like this: consciousness is a being such that in its being, its being is in question in so far as this being implies a being other than itself. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 152

Categorization

• DEFINE: The ontological proof is defined: consciousness’s transcendence entails a transphenomenal being. Also defines what Sartre means by ‘revealed-revelation’.
• XREF: Directly sets up Beauvoir’s framework — the for-itself’s directedness at being is the backdrop to her ethics of ambiguity. — connects to: Consciousness defines itself by internal negation of its own objects; Consciousness of self is identical with consciousness of the object, not a separate act — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 134; The perceived object is irreducible to the consciousness that perceives it. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 142 (+18 more)
• QUESTION: Sartre distinguishes his transcendental argument from Kant’s refutation of problematical idealism — worth chasing how exactly he positions it.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 151; Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 152

Broader Connections

• Consciousness freely chooses itself as not being the Other. #contradicts (0.80) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 775
• Exteriority-to-self can be revealed only to a being that is consciousness #expands (0.75) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 643