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🪵 The Threshold

The in-itself cannot relate to its past because pure being excludes all negation

Properties2
tagsja-picks, define, xref, definitional_content, trade, singleton, category/definitional-content
aliases@sartre_being_1943, loc. 414

2 min read

The in-itself cannot relate to its past because pure being excludes all negation

Evidence

But the law of being of the intra-mundane instant, as we have seen, can be expressed by the simple words, “Being is,” which indicate a massive plenitude of positivities where nothing which is not can be represented in any way whatsoever, not even by an impression, an emptiness, an appeal, or an “hysteresis.” Being which is wholly exhausts itself in being; it has nothing to do with what is not, or with what is no longer. No negation, whether radical or subdued in a “no longer,” can find a place in this absolute density. Hence the past can exist in its own way, but the bridges are cut. Being has not even “forgotten” its past, for forgetting would still be a form of connection. The past has slipped away from it like a dream. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 414

Categorization

  • DEFINE: Defines the in-itself’s relation to time: being-in-itself excludes not-being, hence cuts all bridges to its past.
  • XREF: This is the systematic foundation for Beauvoir’s account of how the for-itself alone can temporalize — the in-itself has no internal relation to its past. — connects to: Internal negation belongs exclusively to the for-itself, never to being-in-itself — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 574; The For-itself’s being consists in internal negation rather than self-coincidence — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 445; The For-itself adds nothing to being except its own negation — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 652 (+4 more)

Broader Connections

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