Specific lacks are perceived as definite negative presences

Evidence

Sartre also offers a more lightweight example: I look in my wallet and see 1,300 francs inside. That seems positive. But if I expected to find 1,500 francs, what looms up at me from the wallet is the non-being of 200 francs. A nice joke, adapted from an old one told in the Ernst Lubitsch film Ninotchka, illustrates the point. (Apologies to the adaptor, whom I haven’t been able to trace.) Jean-Paul Sartre walks into a café, and the waiter asks what he’d like to order. Sartre replies, ‘I’d like a cup of coffee with sugar, but no cream.’ The waiter goes off, but comes back apologising. ‘I’m sorry, Monsieur Sartre, we are all out of cream. How about with no milk?’ The joke hinges on the notion that the Absence of Cream and the Absence of Milk are two definite negativities, just as Cream and Milk are two definite positivities. — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 499

Categorization

• CANDY: The Sartre ordering coffee ‘with no milk’ joke is a great light anecdote for conversations.
• XREF: The wallet missing 200 francs pairs naturally with the Pierre-in-the-café example as companion illustrations of the same point. — connects to: Lack presupposes a totality that the existing and the lacking jointly compose; Absence is perceived as vividly as presence against a background field — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 498; Absence is not given by objects but posited by a consciousness that negates (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Absence is not given by objects but posited by a consciousness that negates #expands (0.82)
• Expectation constitutes real absence while gratuitous negation stays merely abstract #expands (0.78)
• The nihilist errs by treating existence as a lack rather than a positive lack #qualifies (0.75) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Ethics of Ambiguity, 56