Negative judgments require surpassing the given toward an a priori ideal

Evidence

This means that from the moment of the first conception of the act, consciousness has been able to withdraw itself from the full world of which it is consciousness and to leave the level of being in order frankly to approach that of non-being. Consciousness in so far as it is considered exclusively in its being, is perpetually referred from being to being and can not find in being any motive for revealing non-being. … The imperial system with Rome as its capital functions positively and in a certain real way which can be easily discovered. Will someone say that the taxes are collected badly, that Rome is not secure from invasions, that it does not have the geographical location which is suitable for the capital of a Mediterranean empire which is threatened by barbarians, that its corrupt morals make the spread of the Christian religion difficult? How can anyone fail to see that all these considerations are negative; that is, that they aim at what is not, not at what is. To say that sixty per cent of the anticipated taxes have been collected can pass, if need be for a positive appreciation of the situation such as it is. To say that they are badly collected is to consider the situation across a situation which is posited as an absolute end but which precisely is not. To say that the corrupt morals at Rome hinder the spread of Christianity is not to consider this diffusion for what it is; that is, for a propagation at a rate which the reports of the clergy can enable us to determine. It is to posit the diffusion in itself as insufficient; that is, as suffering from a secret nothingness. But it appears as such only if it is surpassed toward a limiting-situation posited a priori as a value (for example, toward a certain rate of religious conversions, toward a certain mass morality). This limiting-situation can not be conceived in terms of the simple consideration of the real state of things; for the most beautiful girl in the world can offer only what she has, and in the same way the most miserable situation can by itself be designated only as it is without any reference to an ideal nothingness. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1067

Categorization

• XREF: Sets up the systematic backdrop to Beauvoir’s Ethics of Ambiguity — the structure of surpassing and the posited ideal. — connects to: Formal logic purges the negative, is-ought tension from thought. — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the…, 531
• DEEPTHINKING: The example crystallizes how all negative appreciation (‘taxes badly collected’, ‘morals hinder Christianity’) secretly presupposes an a priori value-standard impossible to derive from the situation alone.

Broader Connections

• Formal logic purges the negative, is-ought tension from thought. #qualifies (0.80) — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 531