What-is-not determines what-is in the human world.

Evidence

Thus in the human world, the incomplete being which is released to intuition as lacking is constituted in its being by the lacked—that is, by what it is not. It is the full moon which confers on the crescent moon its being as crescent; what-is-not determines what-is. It is in the being of the existing, as the correlate of a human transcendence, to lead outside itself to the being which it is not—as to its meaning. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 352

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: ‘What-is-not determines what-is’ is a condensed, paradigm-level formulation of Sartre’s whole ontology of lack and meaning.
• XREF: Anticipates desire’s structure in the for-itself and grounds Beauvoir’s ethics where freedom pushes toward not-yet. — connects to: Being is necessarily defined against what it is not — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 183; Events and constancies are mutually exclusive yet mutually defining — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 117

Broader Connections

• Being is necessarily defined against what it is not #corroborates (0.95) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 183
• Events and constancies are mutually exclusive yet mutually defining #corroborates (0.78) — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 117