Sliminess symbolizes a possible fusion of for-itself and in-itself

Evidence

What mode of being is symbolized by the slimy? I see first that it is the homogeneity and the imitation of liquidity. A slimy substance like pitch is an aberrant fluid. At first, with the appearance of a fluid it manifests to us a being which is everywhere fleeing and yet everywhere similar to itself, which on all sides escapes yet on which one can float, a being without danger and without memory, which eternally is changed into itself, on which one leaves no mark and which could not leave a mark on us, a being which slides and on which one can slide, which can be possessed by something sliding (by a rowboat, a motor boat, or water ski), and which never possesses because it rolls over us, a being which is eternity and infinite temporality because it is a perpetual change without anything which changes, a being which best symbolizes in this synthesis of eternity and temporality, a possible fusion of the for-itself as pure temporality and the in-itself as pure eternity. But immediately the slimy reveals itself as essentially ambiguous because its fluidity exists in slow motion; there is a sticky thickness in its liquidity; it represents in itself a dawning triumph of the solid over the liquid—that is, a tendency of the indifferent in-itself, which is represented by the pure solid, to fix the liquidity, to absorb the for-itself which ought to dissolve it. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1399

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The slimy as the apex of Sartre’s ontology: it threatens to fuse pure temporality (for-itself) with pure eternity (in-itself), the exact annihilation the for-itself fears. This is the concentrated core of his existential psychoanalysis of matter.
• XREF: The slimy’s danger of absorbing the for-itself prefigures Beauvoir’s themes of ambiguity and the temptation to collapse into immanence. — connects to: The slimy haunts consciousness as its own feared dissolution into facticity; The slimy symbolizes the In-itself absorbing the For-itself — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 1403; Slime and femininity both symbolize consciousness’s threat of lapsing into in-itself — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre: The Riddle of…, 378 (+3 more)
• BMF: The slimy as a being that ‘is a perpetual change without anything which changes’ — a fusion where the for-itself is swallowed — evokes the mysterious alien monolith-world of 2001 where change is absent yet presence is total, a pure in-itself that threatens to absorb the observer.

Broader Connections

• The slimy symbolizes the In-itself absorbing the For-itself #corroborates (0.95) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1403
• Slime and femininity both symbolize consciousness’s threat of lapsing into in-itself #expands (0.85) — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 378
• The slimy reverses possession so that the For-itself is possessed #expands (0.85) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1402
• The slimy’s horror is the fear that facticity will absorb the For-itself #qualifies (0.85) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1406
• The slimy reveals itself only within the appropriative project as an opaque, dense meaning #expands (0.80)