Quality reveals itself as absolute proximity that nevertheless refers us to our own emptiness
Evidence
We shall best account for the original phenomenon of perception by insisting on the fact that the relation of the quality to us is that of absolute proximity (it “is there,” it haunts us) without either giving or refusing itself, but we must add that this proximity implies a distance. It is what is immediately out of reach, what by definition refers us to ourselves as to an emptiness. Contemplation of it can only increase our thirst for being as the sight of the food out of reach added to Tantalus’ hunger. Quality is the indication of what we are not and of the mode of being which is denied to us. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 596
Categorization
- DEFINE: Sartre defines quality’s paradoxical relation to consciousness: absolute proximity coexisting with insurmountable distance.
- XREF: Connects to the ontological distinction here and to Beauvoir’s later account of how desire experienced as lack shapes embodied freedom. — connects to: Quality reveals being only to a nothingness that negates it; A quality’s being is radically distinct from the for-itself’s mode; The nothingness separating self and Other precedes and founds all relation — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 675 (+3 more)
- QUESTION: The Tantalus image recurs across Sartre — worth tracing whether the thirst-for-being motif is fully articulated or left suggestive.
Broader Connections
- Qualities’ meaning requires the for-itself’s nihilating mediation to exist
#expands(0.88) - A quality’s being is radically distinct from the for-itself’s mode
#expands(0.85) - Every quality symbolically expresses a being that escapes us entirely
#expands(0.82) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1394 - The nothingness separating self and Other precedes and founds all relation
#qualifies(0.78) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 675 - Existence precedes essence and carries a subjective quality in human reality.
#expands(0.75)