Possession aims at appropriating being-in-itself and symbolically the whole world.
Evidence
In the first place it is easy to see abstractly that we originally aim at possessing not so much the mode of being of an object as the actual being of this particular object. In fact it is as a concrete representative of being-in-itself that I desire to appropriate it; that is, to apprehend that ideally I am the foundation of its being in so far as it is a part of myself and on the other hand to apprehend that empirically the appropriated object is never valid in itself alone nor for its individual use. No particular appropriation has any meaning outside its indefinite extensions: the pen which I possess is the same as all other pens; it is the class of pens which I possess in it. … With all possession there is made the crystallizing synthesis which Stendhal has described for the one case of love. Each possessed object which raises itself on the foundation of the world, manifests the entire world, just as a beloved woman manifests the sky, the shore, the sea which surrounded her when she appeared. To appropriate this object is then to appropriate the world symbolically. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1381
Categorization
- XREF: This crystallizing-synthesis account of possession as symbolic world-appropriation connects to the desire-to-be (manque) and facticity structure developed across the book; also evokes Stendhal’s theory of love in De l’amour. — connects to: The Other’s existence gives rise to collective ownership of world-appropriation techniques.; Possession is a magical relation projecting the ideal of the in-itself-for-itself; Possession is an ideal symbolic relation that no concrete act can fully realize — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 1375 (+7 more)
- SEED: Article angle: consumer acquisition as a failed ontological project — why buying things never satisfies because what we grasp is the class, not the being, of the object.
Broader Connections
- In possession the for-itself seeks to become its own foundation as in-itself
#corroborates(0.90) - Possession is a continuous creation that grants objects their functional being.
#corroborates(0.85) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1371 - The desire to possess aims at unity with the object
#corroborates(0.85) - Possession is an internal bond of being, not an external relation
#expands(0.80) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1366 - Moral authenticity requires renouncing possession and being, endlessly.
#complicates(0.80) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 317 - Even under total possession the enslaved refashion objects and bodies into self-making performance.
#complicates(0.75) — Achille Mbembe, Necropolitics, 67