The human ideal of God is a self-contradictory synthesis of the in-itself and for-itself

Evidence

Finally all these concepts and Sartre’s objections to them are seen to involve the principle that man as for-itself lives with the constant ideal (projected in the form of God) of achieving a synthesis of In-itself-For-itself. This is an obviously self-contradictory ideal, for the essence of the For-itself is the power to secrete a Nothingness, to be always in the process of becoming, to be-about-to-be. If it is to exist fully, the For-itself must forever assert its lack of Being in order that it may reveal Being, so that there may be Being. For the For-itself to be one with the In-itself would necessitate an identification of fullness, of Being, and Non-being—an identification impossible because self-contradictory. The only way by which the For-itself could become In-itself would be to cease being For-itself, and this we have seen can happen only in death. There are reminiscences of this irrational pursuit in the Freudian longing for the security of the womb, in man’s nostalgic desire to regain the lost paradise of oneness with nature, in the mystic’s desire to be absorbed in the Absolute. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 67

Categorization

• DEFINE: Clarifies the central ontological tension between For-itself and In-itself and why their synthesis is the contradictory God-ideal.
• XREF: Connects directly to Beauvoir’s Ethics of Ambiguity, which builds on this very synthesis-ideal as the source of bad faith. — connects to: Every human being fundamentally desires to be God, a desire that is inherently self-contradictory. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 57; God is the hypostasized ideal of the impossible self-synthesis — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 363; The humanistic Us-object is an unattainable ideal demanding the correlative concept of God — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 1032 (+8 more)
• DEEPTHINKING: The paradox that Being’s revelation depends on For-itself perpetually asserting its own lack of Being is dense enough to reward months of re-reading.

Broader Connections

• God is the hypostasized ideal of the impossible self-synthesis #corroborates (0.95) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 363
• Narcissism attempts the impossible in-itself for-itself synthesis that defines divinity #exemplifies (0.80) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1793
• The humanistic Us-object is an unattainable ideal demanding the correlative concept of God #expands (0.75) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1032
• An atheism that deifies humanity ironically mirrors incarnational doctrine #complicates (0.72) — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 275