The incommunicable diversity of times resists unifying two consciousnesses
Evidence
Even if a preestablished harmony (which is, however, incomprehensible in a Kantian perspective) could effect a correspondence of instant with instant in the two times considered, they would still remain two times unrelated since for each of them the unifying synthesis of moments is an act of the subject. The universality of time with Kant is only the universality of a concept; it means only that each temporality must possess a definite structure, that the conditions of possibility for a temporal experience are valid for all temporalities. But this identity of temporal essence does not prevent the incommunicable diversity of times any more than the identity of the essence of man prevents the incommunicable diversity of human consciousnesses. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 669
Categorization
- DEFINE: Distinguishes the universal essence of temporality from the incommunicable diversity of actual times — a precise conceptual distinction.
- XREF: Sets up the backdrop to Beauvoir: this isolation of times/consciousnesses is the Kantian position existentialism overturns through concrete encounter with the Other. — connects to: Conceiving consciousness as in-itself makes past and present unreconnectable; Distinct traditions run on heterogeneous temporalities that secular time cannot contain; Consciousness intertwines with the world like crossed hands — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 742 (+1 more)