Knowing aims to coincide with being yet is structured as not being it

Evidence

Let us look more closely at this dimension of being. We said that consciousness is the knowing being in his capacity as being and not as being known. This means that we must abandon the primacy of knowledge if we wish to establish that knowledge. Of course consciousness can know and know itself. But it is in itself something other than a knowledge turned back upon itself. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 128 (#contradicts, via linked claim)

Consciousness is the revealed-revelation of existents, and existents appear before consciousness on the foundation of their being. Nevertheless the primary characteristic of the being of an existent is never to reveal itself completely to consciousness. An existent can not be stripped of its being; being is the ever present foundation of the existent; it is everywhere in it and nowhere. There is no being which is not the being of a certain mode of being, none which can not be apprehended through the mode of being which manifests being and veils it at the same time. Consciousness can always pass beyond the existent, not toward its being, but toward the meaning of this being. That is why we call it ontic-ontological, since a fundamental characteristic of its transcendence is to transcend the ontic toward the ontological. The meaning of the being of the existent in so far as it reveals itself to consciousness is the phenomenon of being. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 154 (#complicates, via linked claim)

For Merleau-Ponty, consciousness can never be a ‘nothingness’ radically divided from being, as Sartre had proposed in Being and Nothingness. He does not even see it as a ‘clearing’, like Heidegger. When he looks for his own metaphor to describe how he sees consciousness, he comes up with a beautiful one: consciousness, he suggests, is like a ‘fold’ in the world, as though someone had crumpled a piece of cloth to make a little nest or hollow. It stays for a while, before eventually being unfolded and smoothed away. — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 739 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Heidegger’s pre-ontological comprehension of being escapes the vicious circle — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 155; Knowing is realizing being through an inner negating transcendence; Knowing is the very being of the for-itself, not a relation — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 572 (+14 more)

Broader Connections

• Consciousness is being, not merely self-knowledge, so knowledge’s primacy must be abandoned #contradicts (0.78) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 128
• Consciousness transcends toward the meaning of being, not being itself #complicates (0.75) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 154
• Transcendental imagination holds being and non-being in co-implication as relative non-being #expands (0.72) — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel, 897
• Consciousness is a temporary fold in being, not separate from it #complicates (0.72) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 739