Total being’s unity risks transferring the being-hiatus into each existent

Evidence

The original presence of the for-itself is presence to being. Shall we say then that it is presence to all being? That would be to fall back into our former error. For totality can come to being only by the for-itself. A totality indeed supposes an internal relation of being between the terms of a quasi-multiplicity in the same way that a multiplicity supposes—in order to be this multiplicity—an inner totalizing relation among its elements. In this sense addition itself is a synthetic act. Totality can come to beings only by a being which has to be its own totality in their presence. This is precisely the case with the for-itself, a detotalized totality which temporalizes itself in a perpetual incompleteness. It is the for-itself in its presence to being which causes there to be an all of being. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 585 (#qualifies, via linked claim)

“Totalizing” does not imply a belief in the possibility of access to the totality, but rather a playing with the boundary itself, like a loose tooth, the comparison of notes and measurements that finally allows you to deduce the sound barrier itself, which, like the line between the analytic and the dialectic in Kant, can never be transgressed and somehow itself transcends experience. … Too many people begin to cancel my own existence with their ontological weight; my personal life — the unique form of private property remaining to me — grows pate and dim like the Homeric ghosts, or like a piece of real estate whose value has been driven down to a worthless handful of crumpled bills. — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 775 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Totality of being arises only through the detotalized for-itself — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 585; A perpetual failed synthesis keeps the in-itself and for-itself inseparable yet independent; Lack presupposes a totality that the existing and the lacking jointly compose (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Totality of being arises only through the detotalized for-itself #qualifies (0.85) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 585
• A perpetual failed synthesis keeps the in-itself and for-itself inseparable yet independent #complicates (0.80)
• Totalizing approaches a boundary it can never actually cross #expands (0.80) — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 775
• Lack presupposes a totality that the existing and the lacking jointly compose #expands (0.78)