Desire proves human reality is constituted as a lack

Evidence

The existence of desire as a human fact is sufficient to prove that human reality is a lack. In fact how can we explain desire if we insist on viewing it as a psychic state; that is, as a being whose nature is to be what it is? A being which is what it is, to the degree that it is considered as being what it is, summons nothing to itself in order to complete itself. An incomplete circle does not call for completion unless it is surpassed by human transcendence. In itself it is complete and perfectly positive as an open curve. A psychic state which existed with the sufficiency of this curve could not possess in addition the slightest “appeal to” something else; it would be itself without any relation to what is not it. In order to constitute it as hunger or thirst, an external transcendence surpassing it toward the totality “satisfied hunger” would be necessary, just as the crescent moon is surpassed toward the full moon. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 354

Categorization

• DEFINE: Establishes the foundational definition of desire as lack, contrasting being-in-itself’s completeness with the for-itself’s deficiency.
• XREF: Directly sets up Beauvoir’s Second Sex, which builds her ethics of ambiguity on this Sartrean structure of lack and freedom. — connects to: Human reality arises as a lack of an impossible self-totality — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 362; Desire is consciousness troubled by its own inapprehensible facticity; Desire must be its own lack, not a merely physiological state — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 355 (+10 more)

Broader Connections

• Human reality arises as a lack of an impossible self-totality #expands (0.90) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 362
• Man is fundamentally the desire to be, a lack of being #corroborates (0.85) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1329
• Desire must be its own lack, not a merely physiological state #expands (0.82) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 355
• Desire is doomed to failure because coitus and pleasure are not its essential goal #expands (0.75) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 987
• Desire is consciousness troubled by its own inapprehensible facticity #expands (0.72)
• Ad-driven desires are false needs producing euphoria in unhappiness #qualifies (0.72) — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 114