The slimy’s horror is the fear that facticity will absorb the For-itself
Evidence
But what is it then which is expressed by this fear on the ontological level if not exactly the flight of the For-itself before the In-itself of facticity; that is, exactly temporalization. The horror of the slimy is the horrible fear that time might become slimy, that facticity might progress continually and insensibly and absorb the For-itself which exists it. It is the fear not of death, not of the pure In-itself, not of nothingness, but of a particular type of being, which does not actually exist any more than the In-itself-For-itself and which is only represented by the slimy. It is an ideal being which I reject with all my strength and which haunts me as value haunts my being, an ideal being in which the foundationless In-itself has priority over the For-itself. We shall call it an Antivalue. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1406
Categorization
- DEFINE: Introduces the technical term ‘Antivalue’ — an ideal being rejected by consciousness where the In-itself has priority over the For-itself.
- XREF: This ‘Antivalue’ concept directly sets up Beauvoir’s treatment of ambiguity and the lure of quietism in ‘The Ethics of Ambiguity’. — connects to: The slimy haunts consciousness as its own feared dissolution into facticity; Sliminess symbolizes a possible fusion of for-itself and in-itself — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 1399; The slimy reverses possession so that the For-itself is possessed — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 1402 (+6 more)
Broader Connections
- Slime and femininity both symbolize consciousness’s threat of lapsing into in-itself
#corroborates(0.95) — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 378 - Sartre’s ontology of the slimy derived from personal disgust rather than pure insight
#responds-to(0.85) — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 392 - Desire is consciousness troubled by its own inapprehensible facticity
#expands(0.78) - Sartre’s concept of the slimy encodes a gendered fear of feminine appropriation
#expands(0.75) — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 133 - Unassimilated particularity that resists conceptual order arouses visceral disgust
#qualifies(0.72) — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 137