Nothing separates past and present consciousness, yet that nothing is impassable

Evidence

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: Conceiving consciousness as in-itself makes past and present unreconnectable; Consciousness grounds itself and precedes all nothingness — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 138; Consciousness is a temporary fold in being, not separate from it — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 739 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Conceiving consciousness as in-itself makes past and present unreconnectable #expands (0.82)
• The present reveals being yet is itself pure nothingness alongside it. #expands (0.80)
• Consciousness is a temporary fold in being, not separate from it #complicates (0.78) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 739
• Consciousness grounds itself and precedes all nothingness #complicates (0.75) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 138