Desire has a double determination toward being and toward appropriating concrete objects

Evidence

Thus ontology teaches us that desire is originally a desire of being and that it is characterized as the free lack of being. But it teaches us also that desire is a relation with a concrete existent in the midst of the world and that this existent is conceived as a type of in-itself; it teaches us that the relation of the for-itself to this desired in-itself is appropriation. We are, then, in the presence of a double determination of desire: on the one hand, desire is determined as a desire to be a certain being, which is the in-itself-for-itself and whose existence is ideal; on the other hand, desire is determined in the vast majority of cases as a relation with a contingent and concrete in-itself which it has the project of appropriating. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1363

Categorization

• DEFINE: Crystallizes Sartre’s double determination of desire — the ontological lack of being and the concrete project of appropriation — and poses the compatibility question that drives the chapter.
• XREF: This is the systematic backdrop directly feeding Beauvoir’s account of desire and the ambiguity of the for-itself in The Second Sex. — connects to: Desire strips the Other’s body of movement and garb to reveal pure flesh; Possession in desire is a double reciprocal incarnation of both bodies — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 978; Each concrete desire expresses the whole of human reality. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 1347 (+8 more)

Broader Connections

• Desire to have and desire to be are inseparable routes to one goal #expands (0.90) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1385
• The desire to possess aims at unity with the object #expands (0.85)
• The desire to do ultimately reduces to a desire to be #qualifies (0.75)
• Both aesthetic mood and money-possession liberate the self from resistant reality #qualifies (0.70) — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 451