Possession is a lived, non-thetic relation rather than a known one.

Evidence

These observations aim only at bringing to light the ideal character of the appropriative tie and the symbolic function of all appropriative conduct. It is necessary to add that the symbol is not deciphered by the subject himself. It has not been prepared by a symbolic process in an unconscious but comes from the very structure of being-in-the-world. We have seen in the chapter devoted to transcendence that the order of instruments in the world is the result of my projecting into the in-itself the image of my possibilities—that is, of what I am—but that I could never decipher this worldly image since it would require nothing less than reflective scissiparity to enable me to consider myself in the pattern of an object. Thus since the circuit of selfness is non-thetic and consequently the identification of what I am remains non-thematic, this “being-in-itself” of myself which the world refers to as me is necessarily hidden from my knowledge. I can only adapt myself to it in and through the approximative action which gives it birth. Consequently to possess does not mean to know that one holds with the object possessed a relation identified as creation-destruction; rather to possess means to be in this relation or better yet to be this relation. … An instant earlier I was engaged in an ideal totality, and precisely because I was engaged in my being, I could not know it; an instant later the totality has been broken and I can not discover the meaning of it in the disconnected fragments which formerly composed it. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1379

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the appropriative tie as an unreflected mode of being rather than a known relation.
• XREF: The notion that reflection destroys the phenomenon it tries to contemplate echoes the non-thetic/thetic split foundational to Sartre and to Beauvoir’s ethics. — connects to: Having a past is not an external possession relation — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 420; Possession is an internal bond of being, not an external relation — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 1366; Possession is enjoyed only through use, never through contemplation. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 1373 (+6 more)

Broader Connections

• One’s own body is lived as self, not experienced as an object. #exemplifies (0.92) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 733
• Knowing is the very being of the for-itself, not a relation #expands (0.85) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 572
• Identity is constituted through representation, not expressed from lived experience. #contradicts (0.85) — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 291