Possession is a continuous creation that grants objects their functional being.

Evidence

Thus through a continuous degradation, the bond of creation is maintained between subject and object. To have is first to create. And the bond of ownership which is established then is a bond of continuous creation; the object possessed is inserted by me into the total form of my environment; its existence is determined by my situation and by its integration in that same situation. My lamp is not only that electric bulb, that shade, that wrought iron stand; it is a certain power of lighting this desk, these books, this table; it is a certain luminous nuance of my work at night in connection with my habits of reading or writing late; it is animated, colored, defined by the use which I make of it; it is that use and exists only through it. If isolated from my desk, from my work, and placed in a lot of objects on the floor of a salesroom, my lamp is radically extinguished; it is no longer my lamp; instead, merely a member of the class of lamps, it has returned to its original matter. Thus I am responsible for the existence of my possessions in the human order. Through ownership I raise them up to a certain type of functional being; and my simple life appears to me as creative exactly because by its continuity it perpetuates the quality of being possessed in each of the objects in my possession. I draw the collection of my surroundings into being along with myself. If they are taken from me, they die as my arm would die if it were severed from me. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1371

Categorization

• XREF: This connects to the ontology of the for-itself sustaining objects through use — a theme that carries into Beauvoir’s ethics around freedom and situation. — connects to: An object’s objectivity rests on a principle binding its infinite appearances; Possession is an internal bond of being, not an external relation — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 1366; Possession is an ideal symbolic relation that no concrete act can fully realize — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 1375 (+4 more)
• SEED: Angles: ‘I am what I have’ as a phenomenology of minimalism/decluttering — why disposing of objects feels like self-mutilation.

Broader Connections

• The desire to possess aims at unity with the object #expands (0.85)
• Possession is a lived, non-thetic relation rather than a known one. #expands (0.80) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1379