The body is a permanent structure of being, not a contingent addition.

Evidence

It is therefore in no way a contingent addition to my soul; on the contrary it is a permanent structure of my being and the permanent condition of possibility for my consciousness as consciousness of the world and as a transcendent project toward my future. From this point of view we must recognize both that it is altogether contingent and absurd that I am a cripple, the son of a civil servant or of a laborer, irritable and lazy, and that it is nevertheless necessary that I be that or else something else, French or German or English, etc., a proletarian or bourgeois or aristocrat, etc., weak and sickly or vigorous, irritable or of amiable disposition—precisely because I can not survey the world without the world disappearing. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 870

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The necessity-of-contingency paradox — that some determinate contingent fact is strictly required because otherwise the world vanishes — is a dense, sit-with-it claim about the structure of facticity.
• XREF: Foundation for Beauvoir’s ‘ambiguity’ — the coexistence of contingency and necessity in human embodiment; also echoes Heidegger’s Geworfenheit. — connects to: The human body remains contingent and superfluous even in decomposition.; The body is a self-developable means, not passive imprint or natural expression — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular:…, 1210; One’s own body is lived as self, not experienced as an object. — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 733 (+9 more)

Broader Connections

• The body is a self-developable means, not passive imprint or natural expression #contradicts (0.85) — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 1210
• The body is necessary to the for-itself yet manifests its contingency #complicates (0.85) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 839
• Bodies are historically constructed objects, not fixed essences #contradicts (0.85)
• Bodies are historically constructed, so bodily difference cannot index essential difference. #contradicts (0.85) — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 730
• One’s own body is lived as self, not experienced as an object. #expands (0.80) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 733
• Being embodied is essential to existence, but no particular body structure is. #qualifies (0.80) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 80
• The body is the contingent form assumed by the necessity of one’s contingency. #contradicts (0.80) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 838
• Consciousness is a temporary fold in being, not separate from it #expands (0.75) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 739