Human reality becomes a totality only by surpassing each concrete negation

Evidence

The original presence of the for-itself is presence to being. Shall we say then that it is presence to all being? That would be to fall back into our former error. For totality can come to being only by the for-itself. A totality indeed supposes an internal relation of being between the terms of a quasi-multiplicity in the same way that a multiplicity supposes—in order to be this multiplicity—an inner totalizing relation among its elements. In this sense addition itself is a synthetic act. Totality can come to beings only by a being which has to be its own totality in their presence. This is precisely the case with the for-itself, a detotalized totality which temporalizes itself in a perpetual incompleteness. It is the for-itself in its presence to being which causes there to be an all of being. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 585 (#expands, via linked claim)

But where does “human reality” get its power of emerging thus in non-being? Without a doubt Heidegger is right in insisting on the fact that negation derives its foundation from nothingness. But if nothingness provides a ground for negation, it is because nothingness envelops the not within itself as its essential structure. In other words, it is not as undifferentiated emptiness or as a disguised otherness12 that nothingness provides the ground for negation. Nothingness stands at the origin of the negative judgment because it is itself negation. It founds the negation as an act because it is the negation as being. Nothingness can be nothingness only by nihilating itself expressly as nothingness of the world; that is, in its nihilation it must direct itself expressly toward this world in order to constitute itself as refusal of the world. Nothingness carries being in its heart. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 215 (#expands, via linked claim)

When everything is taken away, nothing is left. … The equation of everything and nothing, the subtraction of the remainder, is totally false. … It is not that there is no remainder. But this remainder never has an autonomous reality, nor its own place: it is what partition, circumscription, exclusion designate… what else? It is through the subtraction of the remainder that reality is founded and gathers strength… what else? — Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, 463 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Human reality arises as a lack of an impossible self-totality — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 362; Negation enters being only through human reality, not through being’s own dialectic.; Totality of being arises only through the detotalized for-itself — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 585 (+6 more)

Broader Connections

• Totality of being arises only through the detotalized for-itself #expands (0.95) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 585
• Nothingness grounds negation by being itself a negation, not an empty void #expands (0.82) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 215
• Reality is founded precisely by removing the remainder #expands (0.80) — Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, 463