Pantheistic fusion still presupposes a pure negation making the world present as world
Evidence
But we must define more precisely what we understand by this original negation. Actually we should distinguish two types of negation: external negation and internal negation. The first appears as a purely external bond established between two beings by a witness. When I say, for example, “A cup is not an inkwell,” it is very evident that the foundation of this negation is neither in the cup nor in the inkwell. Both of these objects are what they are, and that is all. The negation stands as a categorical and ideal connection which I establish between them without modifying them in any way whatsoever, without enriching them or impoverishing them with the slightest quality; they are not even ever so slightly grazed by this negative synthesis. As it serves neither to enrich them nor to constitute them, it remains strictly external. But we can already guess the meaning of the other type of negation if we consider such expressions as “I am not rich” or “I am not handsome.” Pronounced with a certain melancholy, they do not mean only that the speaker is denied a certain quality but that the denial itself comes to influence the inner structure of the positive being who has been denied the quality. When I say, “I am not handsome,” I do not limit myself to denying with respect to myself taken as wholly concrete, a certain virtue which due to this fact passes into nothingness while I keep intact the positive totality of my being (as when I say, “The vase is not white, it is gray”—“The inkwell is not on the table, it is on the mantelpiece”). I intend to indicate that “not being handsome” is a certain negative virtue of my being. It characterizes me within; as negative it is a real quality of myself—that of not being handsome—and this negative quality will explain my melancholy as well as, for example, my failures in the world. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 573 (
#expands, via linked claim)
Categorization
- XREF: connects to: The for-itself constitutes the world’s totality through radical negation; Nothingness is expelled from being yet gives the world its outlines; Human reality becomes a totality only by surpassing each concrete negation (+2 more)
Broader Connections
- Nothingness is expelled from being yet gives the world its outlines
#expands(0.82) - Human reality becomes a totality only by surpassing each concrete negation
#expands(0.75) - External negations leave beings untouched while internal negations constitute the self
#expands(0.75) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 573 - The present as pure being is an infinitesimal instant that reduces to nothingness
#expands(0.75)