Lack is the deepest internal negation and appears only with human reality.
Evidence
Of all internal negations, the one which penetrates most deeply into being, the one which constitutes in its being the being concerning which it makes the denial along with the being which it denies—this negation is lack. This lack does not belong to the nature of the in-itself, which is all positivity. It appears in the world only with the upsurge of human reality. It is only in the human world that there can be lacks. A lack presupposes a trinity: that which is missing or “the lacking,” that which misses what is lacking or “the existing,” and a totality which has been broken by the lacking and which would be restored by the synthesis of “the lacking” and “the existing”—this is “the lacked.” — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 352
Categorization
- DEFINE: Defines the lacked/lacking/existing trinity — the core machinery of the foundational ontology.
- XREF: Provisions need/desire concepts for Beauvoir’s later ethics of freedom. — connects to: Negation enters being only through human reality, not through being’s own dialectic.; Only a being that makes itself its own lack can introduce lack. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 353; Human reality arises as a lack of an impossible self-totality — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 362 (+2 more)
Broader Connections
- Negation enters being only through human reality, not through being’s own dialectic.
#corroborates(0.95) - Only a being that makes itself its own lack can introduce lack.
#expands(0.92) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 353 - Human reality arises as a lack of an impossible self-totality
#expands(0.90) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 362 - Human reality is constituted as the unique foundation of nothingness within being.
#corroborates(0.88) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 336 - Desire proves human reality is constituted as a lack
#corroborates(0.85) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 354