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🪵 The Threshold

Every human being fundamentally desires to be God, a desire that is inherently self-contradictory.

Properties2
tagsja-picks, define, xref, question, definitional_content, trade, singleton, category/definitional-content
aliases@sartre_being_1943, loc. 57

3 min read

Every human being fundamentally desires to be God, a desire that is inherently self-contradictory.

Evidence

There seems to me to be a slight difficulty here. For on the one hand Sartre seems to say that we can grasp the individuality of the human being by tracking down this irreducible choice. On the other hand, he says that every For-itself (with the possible exception of one which has effected an existentialist type of katharsis) basically desires to be one with the In-itself (thus gaining an absolute security and certainty, by being a self, a fullness of being) without, however, ceasing to be freely responsible for this self and without ceasing to be aware of thus founding one’s own being. Clearly this desire, as Sartre says, is irrational; one can not both be beyond the need of self-foundation and be responsible for achieving it. It is both the desire of being caused (hence absolute, justified ) and the desire of being the cause. In short, the ideal desired is that Causa Sui which we call God. Man desires to be God! … At most there would seem to be but a few basic types. The answer seems to lie in the kinds of objects by which the individual chooses to work out this basic choice. In this way there is created an infinite variety of possibilities for people as we know them. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 57

Categorization

  • DEFINE: Defines the foundational Sartrean desire: the For-itself’s irrational goal of being both cause and caused, i.e., being God (Causa Sui).
  • XREF: This is the exact notion Beauvoir builds her ethics on — the desire for Being that she reworks into the project of existing freedom. Essential backdrop for the stated reading purpose. — connects to: The human ideal of God is a self-contradictory synthesis of the in-itself and for-itself — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 67; Human desire fundamentally aims at being one’s own foundation, a state called God. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 1330; Human reality is the pure effort to become God, desire being its expression — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 1348 (+4 more)
  • QUESTION: Worth chasing: does this universal desire-for-God make individual personality a mere variation on one basic type, or does Sartre’s answer (objects chosen to work out the choice) genuinely preserve individuality?

Broader Connections

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