Digital Mind 🧠

🪵 The Threshold

The self flees each negation toward a complementary negation whose fusion reveals the in-itself

Properties2
tagsja-picks, definitional_content, singleton, xref, category/definitional-content
aliases@sartre_being_1943, loc. 675

4 min read

The self flees each negation toward a complementary negation whose fusion reveals the in-itself

Evidence

At the origin of the problem of the existence of others, there is a fundamental presupposition: others are the Other, that is the self which is not myself. Therefore we grasp here a negation as the constitutive structure of the being-of-others. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 675 (#expands, via linked claim)

Concerning the For-itself as such we should never say, “It is” in the sense that we say, for example, “It is nine o’clock;” that is, in the sense of the total equivalence of being with itself which posits and suppresses the self and which gives the external aspect of passivity. For the For-itself has the existence of an appearance coupled with a witness of a reflection which refers to a reflecting without there being any object of which the reflection would be the reflection. The For-itself does not have being because its being is always at a distance: its being is there in the reflecting, if you consider appearance, which is appearance or reflection only for the reflecting; it is there in the reflection if you consider the reflecting, which is no longer in itself anything more than a pure function of reflecting this reflection. Furthermore in itself the For-itself is not being, for it makes itself be explicitly for-itself as not being being. It is consciousness of —— as the internal negation of ——. The structure at the basis of intentionality and of selfness is the negation, which is the internal relation of the For-itself to the thing. The For-itself constitutes itself outside in terms of the thing as the negation of that thing; thus its first relation with being-in-itself is negation. It “is” in the mode of the For-itself; that is, as a separated existent inasmuch as it reveals itself as not being being. It doubly escapes being, by an internal disintegration and by express negation. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 445 (#expands, via linked claim)

The Other must appear to the cogito as not being me. This negation can be conceived in two ways: either it is a pure, external negation, and it will separate the Other from myself as one substance from another substance—and in this case all apprehension of the Other is by definition impossible; or else it will be an internal negation, which means a synthetic, active connection of the two terms, each one of which constitutes itself by denying that it is the other. This negative relation will therefore be reciprocal and will possess a two fold interiority: This means first that the multiplicity of “Others” will not be a collection but a totality (in this sense we admit that Hegel is right) since each Other finds his being in the Other. It also means that this Totality is such that it is on principle impossible for us to adopt “the point of view of the whole.” In fact we have seen that no abstract concept of consciousness can result from the comparison of my being-for-myself with my object-state for the Other. Furthermore this totality—like that of the For-itself—is a detotalized totality; for since existence-for-others is a radical refusal of the Other, no totalitarian and unifying synthesis of “Others” is possible. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 712 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

  • XREF: connects to: Intentions constitute themselves as empty through self-conscious negation — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 230; The Other is constituted by negation as the self which is not myself — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 675; The For-itself’s being consists in internal negation rather than self-coincidence — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 445 (+4 more)

Broader Connections

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