The meaning death confers on a life stays suspended, awaiting history’s own meaning
Evidence
It is also the triumph of the point of view of the Other over the point of view which I am toward myself. This is doubtless what Malraux means when in l’Espoir he says of death that it “transforms life into destiny.” Death, in fact, is only on its negative side the nihilation of my possibilities; since indeed I am my possibilities only through the nihilation of being-in-itself which I have to be, death as the nihilation of a nihilation is a positing of my being as in-itself in the sense in which for Hegel the negation of a negation is an affirmation. So long as the for-itself is “in life” it surpasses its past toward its future, and the past is that which the for-itself has to be. When the for-itself “ceases to live,” this past is not thereby abolished. The disappearance of the nihilating being does not touch that part of its being which is of the type of the in-itself; it is engulfed in the in-itself. My whole life is. This means not that it is an harmonious totality but that it has ceased to be its own suspense and that it can no longer change itself by the simple consciousness which it has of itself. Quite the contrary, the meaning of any phenomenon whatsoever in that life is henceforth fixed not by itself but by this open totality which is the arrested life. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1259 (
#expands, via linked claim)
Categorization
- XREF: connects to: At death a life becomes an in-itself whose meaning only others sustain. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 63; The meaning of a person’s past stays in suspense until death; Death converts the for-itself into an in-itself that only others can interpret — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 1259 (+3 more)
Broader Connections
- Death converts the for-itself into an in-itself that only others can interpret
#expands(0.85) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1259 - Contemplating one’s death reveals oneself as the future prey of others.
#expands(0.80)