Sartre calls being-for-others characteristics unrealizables

Evidence

For-myself I am not a professor or a waiter in a café, nor am I handsome or ugly, Jew or Aryan, spiritual, vulgar, or distinguished. We shall call these characteristics unrealizables. We must be careful not to confuse them with the imaginary. We have to do with perfectly real existences; but those for which these characteristics are really given are not these characteristics, and I who am them can not realize them. If I am told that I am vulgar, for example, I have often grasped by intuition as regards others the nature of vulgarity; thus I can apply the word “vulgar” to my person. But I can not join the meaning of this word to my person. There is here exactly the indication of a connection to be effected but one which could be made only by an interiorization and a subjectivizing of the vulgarity or by the objectivizing of the person—two operations which involve the immediate collapse of the reality in question. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1235

Categorization

• DEFINE: Introduces the key term ‘unrealizables’ and distinguishes it from the imaginary — core ontological vocabulary.
• XREF: The waiter in a café is the classic bad-faith example; this passage formalizes why one cannot be a waiter for oneself. — connects to: Sartre offers no positive account of resources one provides to another’s freedom — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre: The Riddle of…, 656; Sartre holds that even capitulating to the Other expresses free subjectivity. — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre: The Riddle of…, 642; Sartre’s look-theory precludes a totalized we-object
• SEED: Essay angle: ‘unrealizables’ as a framework for understanding how identity labels (Jew, Aryan, ugly) are never self-possessed but always received from others.

Broader Connections

• Sartre offers no positive account of resources one provides to another’s freedom #expands (0.75) — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 656