Liquidity and solids mask an ontological polarity within the in-itself

Evidence

It remains for us to consider the second problem which we formulated in our Introduction: If the in-itself and the for-itself are two modalities of being, is there not an hiatus at the very core of the idea of being? And is its comprehension not severed into two incommunicable parts by the very fact that its extension is constituted by two radically heterogenous classes? What is there in common between the being which is what it is, and the being which is what it is not and which is not what it is? What can help us here, however, is the conclusion of our preceding inquiry. We have just shown in fact that the in-itself and the for-itself are not juxtaposed. Quite the contrary, the for-itself without the in-itself is a kind of abstraction; it could not exist any more than a color could exist without form or a sound without pitch and without timbre. A consciousness which would be consciousness of nothing would be an absolute nothing. But if consciousness is bound to the in-itself by an internal relation, doesn’t this mean that it is articulated with the in-itself so as to constitute a totality, and is it not this totality which would be given the name being or reality? — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1437 (#expands, via linked claim)

Ontology has revealed to us, in fact, the origin and the nature of value; we have seen that value is the lack in relation to which the for-itself determines its being as a lack. By the very fact that the for-itself exists, as we have seen, value arises to haunt its being-for-itself. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1445 (#expands, via linked claim)

For Bauman, online dating was “liquid love” par excellence—­that is, a relational manifestation of the social condition he termed “liquid modernity.” I do not wish to pres­ ent in detail Bauman’s broader account of liquid modernity (the transformation from a modern to a liquid modern world), but it is important to note the association with the financialization thesis (a move from solid rational-­bureaucratic values to an irrational, formless, and ambivalent social order) that are plain to see in his work. — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 669 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Value arises from the for-itself’s constitutive lack — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 1445; Bauman’s liquid modernity parallels the financialization thesis — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities: Living with…, 669; The for-itself depends on the in-itself through an internal relation — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 1437

Broader Connections

• The for-itself depends on the in-itself through an internal relation #expands (0.80) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1437
• Value arises from the for-itself’s constitutive lack #expands (0.75) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1445
• Bauman’s liquid modernity parallels the financialization thesis #complicates (0.70) — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 669