What one creates or owns remains always oneself, never genuinely other.

Evidence

But the original, radical relation of creation is a relation of emanation, and the difficulties encountered by the Cartesian theory of substance are there to help us discover this relation. What I create is still me—if by creating we mean to bring matter and form to existence. The tragedy of the absolute Creator, if he existed, would be the impossibility of getting out of himself, for whatever he created could be only himself. Where could my creation derive any objectivity and independence since its form and its matter are from me? Only a sort of inertia could close it off from my presence, but in order for this same inertia to function, I must sustain it in existence by a continuous creation. Thus to the extent that I appear to myself as creating objects by the sole relation of appropriation, these objects are myself. The pen and the pipe, the clothing, the desk, the house—are myself. The totality of my possessions reflects the totality of my being. I am what I have. It is I myself which I touch in this cup, in this trinket. This mountain which I climb is myself to the extent that I conquer it; and when I am at its summit, which I have “achieved” at the cost of this same effort, when I attain this magnificent view of the valley and the surrounding peaks, then I am the view; the panorama is myself dilated to the horizon, for it exists only through me, only for me. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1372

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The paradox that creation cannot escape the creator — a genuine limit on the for-itself’s ability to found anything objective — resonates well beyond the ownership chapter into Sartre’s whole account of freedom and the other.
• XREF: Links to the Cartesian substance problem and to the The Namesake/‘Jenny identity’ themes in this library; also the mountain-conquest image echoes the climbing metaphors in the reading list. — connects to: One is never identical with any of one’s own attitudes or actions — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 300; A genuinely created being must tear itself free and assume its own being
• DEFINE: Clarifies ‘creation’ as emanation — the impossibility of producing genuine objectivity from the for-itself.

Broader Connections

• A genuinely created being must tear itself free and assume its own being #contradicts (0.80)