JeanPaul_Sartre_JeanPaul_Sartre_Basic_Writing

126Jean-Paul Sartre: Basic WritingsFor consciousness there is no being except for this precise obligation to be arevealing intuition of something. What does this mean except that consciousness is thePlatonic Other? We may recall the fine description which the Stranger in the Sophistgives of this “other, ”10 which can be apprehended only “as in a dream,” which has nobeing except its being-other (i.e., which enjoys only a borrowed being), which ifconsidered by itself disappears and which takes on a marginal existence only if onefixes his look on being, this other which is exhausted in being other than itself and otherthan being. It even seems that Plato perceived the dynamic character which the othernessof the other presented in relation to itself, for in certain passages he sees in this theorigin of motion. But he could have gone still further; he would have seen then that theother, or relative non-being, could have a semblance of existence only by virtue ofconsciousness. To be other than being is to be self-consiousness in the unity of thetemporalizing ekstases. Indeed what can the otherness be if not that game of musicalchairs played by the reflected and the reflecting which we described as at the heart ofthe for-itself? For the only way in which the other can exist as other is to beconsciousness (of) being other. Otherness is, in fact, an internal negation, and only aconsciousness can be constituted as an internal negation. Every other conception ofotherness will amount to positing it as an in-itself-that is, establishing between it andbeing an external relation which would necessitate the presence of a witness so as toestablish that the other is other than the in-itself. However the other can not be otherwithout emanating from being; in this respect it is relative to the in-itself. But neithercan it be other without making itself other; otherwise its otherness would become agiven and therefore a being capable of being considered in-itself. In so far as it isrelative to the in-itself, the other is affected with facticity; in so far as it makes itself,it is an absolute. This is what we pointed out when we said that the for-itself is not thefoundation of its being-as-nothingness-of-being but that it perpetually founds itsnothingness-of-being. Thus the for-itself is an absolute Unselbständig, what we havecalled a non-substantial absolute. Its reality is purely interrogative. If it can positquestions this is because it is itself always in question; its being is never given butinterrogated since it is always separated from itself by the nothingness of otherness.The for-itself is always in suspense because its being is a perpetual reprieve. If it couldever join with its being, then the otherness would by the same stroke disappear andalong with it possibles, knowledge, the world. Thus the ontological problem ofknowledge is resolved by the affirmation of the ontological primacy of the in-it-selfover the for-itself.