External negations leave beings untouched while internal negations constitute the self

Evidence

But we must define more precisely what we understand by this original negation. Actually we should distinguish two types of negation: external negation and internal negation. The first appears as a purely external bond established between two beings by a witness. When I say, for example, “A cup is not an inkwell,” it is very evident that the foundation of this negation is neither in the cup nor in the inkwell. Both of these objects are what they are, and that is all. The negation stands as a categorical and ideal connection which I establish between them without modifying them in any way whatsoever, without enriching them or impoverishing them with the slightest quality; they are not even ever so slightly grazed by this negative synthesis. As it serves neither to enrich them nor to constitute them, it remains strictly external. But we can already guess the meaning of the other type of negation if we consider such expressions as “I am not rich” or “I am not handsome.” Pronounced with a certain melancholy, they do not mean only that the speaker is denied a certain quality but that the denial itself comes to influence the inner structure of the positive being who has been denied the quality. When I say, “I am not handsome,” I do not limit myself to denying with respect to myself taken as wholly concrete, a certain virtue which due to this fact passes into nothingness while I keep intact the positive totality of my being (as when I say, “The vase is not white, it is gray”—“The inkwell is not on the table, it is on the mantelpiece”). I intend to indicate that “not being handsome” is a certain negative virtue of my being. It characterizes me within; as negative it is a real quality of myself—that of not being handsome—and this negative quality will explain my melancholy as well as, for example, my failures in the world. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 573

Categorization

• DEFINE: Distinguishes external negation (a witness-imposed bond that doesn’t modify either term) from internal negation (the denial qualifying the denied being at its heart).
• XREF: The melancholy of ‘I am not handsome’ anticipates existential themes Beauvoir will develop around the body as situation and the woman as the Other. — connects to: Consciousness defines itself by internal negation of its own objects; Intentions constitute themselves as empty through self-conscious negation — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 230; Expectation constitutes real absence while gratuitous negation stays merely abstract (+16 more)

Broader Connections

• The Other is constituted by negation as the self which is not myself #expands (0.95) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 675