Practical consciousness is non-reflective and discloses the world as instrumentality

Evidence

Even if the body makes its appearance in the treatise at a rather late stage, it is necessary from the outset that consciousness be embodied. Sartre’s phenomenological ontology leads him to distinguish between a being in-itself and a being for-itself. Th e for-itself is an embodied consciousness; that is, it is a consciousness that exists as conscious (of) the world. It can be conscious (of) insofar as it is anchored in the in-itself as an embodied being. Th e body allows consciousness to have experiences and thus to exist. As a result, the body is presented as being the condition of existence for consciousness. I am situated in the world, and my situation, my facticity, is my body. Th e body is “the contingent form which is assumed by the necessity of my contingency” (BN, 408). If I exist, it is necessary that I have a body and that I be in a situation. But it is contingent that I have this body and that I be in this situation. — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 97 (#expands, via linked claim)

Let us look more closely at this dimension of being. We said that consciousness is the knowing being in his capacity as being and not as being known. This means that we must abandon the primacy of knowledge if we wish to establish that knowledge. Of course consciousness can know and know itself. But it is in itself something other than a knowledge turned back upon itself. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 128 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: The world’s instrumental organization depends partly on constituting consciousness; Reflective consciousness discloses values as the meaning of what is lacked; Consciousness is being, not merely self-knowledge, so knowledge’s primacy must be abandoned — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 128 (+9 more)

Broader Connections

• Reflective consciousness discloses values as the meaning of what is lacked #expands (0.80)
• Embodiment is the necessary contingent condition anchoring consciousness in the world for Sartre #expands (0.78) — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 97
• Consciousness is being, not merely self-knowledge, so knowledge’s primacy must be abandoned #expands (0.75) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 128