Relative and passive properties describe modes of being, never being itself

Evidence

Thus the two determinations of relativity and of passivity, which can concern modes of being, can on no account apply to being. The esse of the phenomenon can not be its percipi. The transphenomenal being of consciousness can not provide a basis for the transphenomenal being of the phenomenon. Here we see the error of the phenomenalists: having justifiably reduced the object to the connected series of its appearances, they believed they had reduced its being to the succession of its modes of being. That is why they have explained it by concepts which can be applied only to the modes of being, for they are pointing out the relations between a plurality of already existing beings. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 146

Categorization

• DEFINE: Clarifies the irreducible distinction between being qua being and modes of being.
• XREF: Sets up the contrast with empiricism/phenomenalism that grounds Sartre’s ontology of phenomena. — connects to: Being itself is neither active nor passive, since both require being first. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 161; Being defined as nature means being passive, non-agent, and claimable land — Val Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, 44; Representational thinking turns being and non-being from simultaneity into mere succession
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Being itself is neither active nor passive, since both require being first. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 161; Being defined as nature means being passive, non-agent, and claimable land — Val Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, 44; Representational thinking turns being and non-being from simultaneity into mere succession