Sartre grounds consciousness emergence in an unfounded as-if founding act

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 (#expands, via linked claim)

For without consciousness, Being does not exist either as a totality (in the sense of “the world,” “the universe”) or with differentiated parts. It is a fullness of existence, a plenitude which can not possibly isolate one part so as to contrast it with another, or posit a whole over against its parts, or conceive a “nothing” in opposition to which it is “everything.” It is simply undifferentiated, meaningless massivity. Without consciousness there would not be a world, mountains, rivers, tables, chairs, etc.; there would be only Being. In this sense there is no thing without consciousness, but there is not nothing. Consciousness causes there to be things because it is itself nothing. Only through consciousness is there differentiation, meaning, and plurality for Being. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 40 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Sartre divides being into free for-itself consciousness and inert in-itself matter — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 496; The In-itself’s full being makes the emergence of consciousness inexplicable; Consciousness introduces differentiation, meaning, and plurality into undifferentiated Being — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 40

Broader Connections

• Sartre divides being into free for-itself consciousness and inert in-itself matter #expands (0.85) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 496
• The In-itself’s full being makes the emergence of consciousness inexplicable #corroborates (0.80)
• Consciousness introduces differentiation, meaning, and plurality into undifferentiated Being #expands (0.80) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 40