Sartre divides being into free for-itself consciousness and inert in-itself matter

Evidence

To make this point, he begins by dividing all of being into two realms. One is that of the pour-soi (‘for-itself’), defined only by the fact that it is free. This is us: it is where we find human consciousness. The other realm, that of the en-soi (‘in-itself’), is where we find everything else: rocks, penknives, bullets, cars, tree roots. (Sartre does not say much about other animals, but they too, from sponges to chimpanzees, seem mostly to be in this group.) These entities have no decisions to make: all they have to do is to be themselves. — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 496

Categorization

• DEFINE: The core Sartrean distinction of pour-soi and en-soi explained in clean, accessible terms.
• XREF: connects to: Sartre’s For-itself is a radicalized version of Plato’s Other.; For Sartre, the For-itself is constituted by desire, so annihilating desire destroys consciousness itself. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 59; Sartre grounds consciousness emergence in an unfounded as-if founding act (+12 more)

Broader Connections

• The In-itself’s full being makes the emergence of consciousness inexplicable #expands (0.82)
• Sartre holds that being-for-others remains derivative of being-for-itself #expands (0.80) — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 260