Treating motion as an accident of being makes rest and motion indistinguishable

Evidence

The arrow, they tell us, when it passes by the position AB “is” there, exactly as if it were an arrow at rest, with the tip of its head on A and the tip of its tail on B. This appears evident if we admit that motion is superimposed on being and that consequently nothing comes to decide whether being is in motion or at rest. In a world, if motion is an accident of being, motion and rest are indistinguishable. The arguments which are usually opposed to the most famous of the Eleatic paradoxes, that of Achilles and the Tortoise, have no bearing here. What good is it to object that the Eleatics have reckoned on the infinite division of space without equally taking into account that of time? The question here concerns neither position nor the instant, but being. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 639

Categorization

• DEFINE: Sartre reframes the arrow paradox: the real issue is ontology of motion, not infinite divisibility of space or time.
• XREF: Central backdrop for Sartre’s later claim that motion belongs to the for-itself’s mode of being, not the in-itself. — connects to: Motion is the least-being that never fully is; Motion cannot be understood while preserving the in-itself’s static identity — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 640
• DEEPTHINKING: The move of relocating the Eleatic paradox from space/time to being itself is a paradigm-shifting reformulation of a 2500-year-old problem.

Broader Connections

• Motion is the least-being that never fully is #corroborates (0.75)
• Motion cannot be understood while preserving the in-itself’s static identity #corroborates (0.72) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 640