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Possession is an internal bond of being, not an external relation

Properties2
tagsja-picks, xref, addendum, define, definitional_content, trade, singleton, category/definitional-content
aliases@sartre_being_1943, loc. 1366

4 min read

Possession is an internal bond of being, not an external relation

Evidence

If I consider the object which I possess, I see that the quality of being possessed does not indicate a purely external denomination marking the object’s external relation to me; on the contrary, this quality affects its very depths; it appears to me and it appears to others as making a part of the object’s being. This is why primitive societies say of certain individuals that they are “possessed”; the “possessed” are thought of as belonging to … This is also the significance of primitive funeral ceremonies where the dead are buried with the objects which belong to them. The rational explanation, “so that they can use the objects,” is evidently after the event. It is more probable that at the period when this kind of custom appeared spontaneously, no explanation seemed to be required. The objects had the specific quality belonging to the deceased. They formed a whole with him; there was no more question of burying the dead man without his usual objects than of burying him without one of his legs. The corpse, the cup from which the dead man drank, the knife which he used make a single dead person. … The custom of burning widows in Malabar can very well be included under this principle; the woman has been possessed; the dead man takes her along with him in his death. In the eyes of the community, by rights she is dead; the burning is only to help her pass from this death by right to death in fact. … We have seen moreover that the destruction of the possessor involves the destruction of the right of the possessed and inversely the survival of the possessed involves the survival of the right of the possessor. The bond of possession is an internal bond of being. I meet the possessor in and through the object which he possesses. This is evidently the explanation of the importance of relics; and we mean by this not only religious relics, but also and especially the totality of the property of a famous man in which we try to rediscover him, the souvenirs of the beloved dead which seem to “perpetuate” his memory. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1366

Categorization

  • XREF: The same theme of possession as internal bond and ‘to be for someone’ resonates strongly with Heidegger’s being-in-the-world and also with the handiness of tools (Zuhandenheit). Also connects causally to kula exchange / gift economies where objects carry persons, and to the ADDENDUM article on sacrifice (sati as ritual possession, burial goods). — connects to: Presence to being is a negative internal bond that negates what it confronts — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 444; Having a past is not an external possession relation — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 420; Possession in desire is a double reciprocal incarnation of both bodies — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 978 (+9 more)
  • ADDENDUM: The sati/burning widows passage directly extends ‘On Sacrifice: The Real Kind, with Corpses’ — Sartre explicitly interprets Malabar widow-burning under the principle of possession being an internal bond of being, which parallels how that article treats ritual death as a stabilizing social logic.
  • DEFINE: Establishes that ‘possession’ in Sartre’s system is an ontological, internal relation — a key definitional anchor for the for-itself’s relation to the world, and a precursor to the analysis of having.

Broader Connections

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