Every quality symbolically expresses a being that escapes us entirely

Evidence

In each apprehension of quality, there is in this sense a metaphysical effort to escape from our condition so as to pierce through the shell of nothingness about the “there is” and to penetrate to the pure in-itself. But obviously we can apprehend quality only as a symbol of a being which totally escapes us, even though it is totally there before us; in short, we can only make revealed being function as a symbol of being-in-itself. This means that a new structure of the “there is” is constituted which is the meaningful level although this level is revealed in the absolute unity of one and the same fundamental project. This structure we shall call the metaphysical purport of all intuitive revelation of being; and this is precisely what we ought to achieve and disclose by psychoanalysis. What is the metaphysical purport of yellow, of red, of polished, of wrinkled? And after these elementary questions, what is the metaphysical coefficient of lemon, of water, of oil, etc.? Psychoanalysis must resolve all these problems if it wants to understand someday why Pierre likes oranges and has a horror of water, why he gladly eats tomatoes and refuses to eat beans, why he vomits if he is forced to swallow oysters or raw eggs. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1394

Categorization

• DEFINE: Introduces ‘metaphysical purport’ as the meaningful structure of the ‘there is’ and positions it as the goal of psychoanalysis.
• XREF: Sets up the existential psychoanalysis that grounds Sartre’s method and anticipates Beauvoir’s situated ethics. — connects to: Quality reveals itself as absolute proximity that nevertheless refers us to our own emptiness — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 596
• SEED: The concrete food aversions (oranges, oysters, boiled eggs) as existential symbols could seed an essay on taste as metaphysical disclosure.