Embodiment is the necessary contingent condition anchoring consciousness in the world for Sartre

Evidence

Even if the body makes its appearance in the treatise at a rather late stage, it is necessary from the outset that consciousness be embodied. Sartre’s phenomenological ontology leads him to distinguish between a being in-itself and a being for-itself. Th e for-itself is an embodied consciousness; that is, it is a consciousness that exists as conscious (of) the world. It can be conscious (of) insofar as it is anchored in the in-itself as an embodied being. Th e body allows consciousness to have experiences and thus to exist. As a result, the body is presented as being the condition of existence for consciousness. I am situated in the world, and my situation, my facticity, is my body. Th e body is “the contingent form which is assumed by the necessity of my contingency” (BN, 408). If I exist, it is necessary that I have a body and that I be in a situation. But it is contingent that I have this body and that I be in this situation. — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 97

Categorization

• DEFINE: Shows how Sartre’s in-itself/for-itself split makes the body the ‘contingent form of necessity’ that grounds consciousness.
• XREF: connects to: Practical consciousness is non-reflective and discloses the world as instrumentality; Individual features are contingent forms of a necessary embodied existence; The body is apprehended non-thetically as fatigue while consciousness attends to the world (+8 more)

Broader Connections

• The body is necessary to the for-itself yet manifests its contingency #corroborates (0.90) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 839
• For Sartre the body is a willed instrument that consciousness commands #qualifies (0.80) — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 119