Negation is the cement unifying spatial objects into Gestalt wholes

Evidence

Take for example the notion of distance, which conditions the determination of a location, the localization of a point. It is easy to see that it possesses a negative moment. Two points are distant when they are separated by a certain length. The length, a positive attribute of a segment of a straight line, intervenes here by virtue of the negation of an absolute, undifferentiated proximity … Thus the total form consituted by the segment and its two limits with its inner structure of negation is capable of letting itself be apprehended in two ways. Rather there are two forms, and the condition of the appearance of the one is the disintegration of the other, exactly as in perception we constitute a particular object as a figure by rejecting another so as to make of it a ground, and conversely. In both instances we find the same quantity of negation which at one time passes into the notion of limits and at another into the notion of distance, but which in each case can not be suppressed. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 218 (#expands, via linked claim)

There is an infinite number of realities which are not only objects of judgment, but which are experienced, opposed, feared, etc., by the human being and which in their inner structure are inhabited by negation, as by a necessary condition of their existence. We shall call them négatités. … Nothingness lies coiled in the heart of being—like a worm. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 219 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Negation is a constitutive structure of spatial distance itself — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 218; The for-itself unifies scattered negations into a detotalized polyvalent negation; Abstract essence arrives from the future as the meaning of present negation (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Negation is a constitutive structure of spatial distance itself #expands (0.82) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 218
• The for-itself unifies scattered negations into a detotalized polyvalent negation #expands (0.80)
• Negation structures many everyday realities, not just judgments #expands (0.78) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 219
• Abstract essence arrives from the future as the meaning of present negation #expands (0.75)
• Negation without a future-directed engagement loses all meaning #qualifies (0.72)
• The duality of negations grounding being-for-others is irreducible to any synthesis #qualifies (0.72)