JeanPaul_Sartre_JeanPaul_Sartre_Basic_Writing
JeanPaul_Sartre_JeanPaul_Sartre_Basic_Writing JeanPaul_Sartre_JeanPaul_Sartre_Basic_Writing
Being129they will offer us of unifying the givens of ontology. This unification naturally mustnot be constituted in the perspective of an historical becoming since temporalitycomes into being through the for-itself. There would be therefore no sense in askingwhat being was before the appearance of the for-itself. But metaphysics mustnevertheless attempt to determine the nature and the meaning of this prehistoricprocess, the source of all history, which is the articulation of the individual venture (orexistence of the in-itself) with the absolute event (or up-surge of the for-itself). Inparticular the task belongs to the metaphysician of deciding whether the movement isor is not a first “attempt” on the part of the in-itself to found itself and to determinewhat are the relations of motion as a “malady of being” with the for-itself as a moreprofound malady pushed to nihilation.It remains for us to consider the second problem which we formulated in ourIntroduction: If the in-itself and the for-itself are two modalities of being, is there notan hiatus at the very core of the idea of being? And is its comprehension not severedinto two incommunicable parts by the very fact that its extension is constituted bytwo radically heterogenous classes? What is there in common between the being whichis what it is, and the being which is what it is not and which is not what it is? What canhelp us here, however, is the conclusion of our preceding inquiry. We have just shownin fact that the in-itself and the for-itself are not juxtaposed. Quite the contrary, thefor-itself without the in-itself is a kind of abstraction; it could not exist any more thana color could exist without form or a sound without pitch and without timbre. Aconsciousness which would be consciousness of nothing would be an absolute nothing.But if consciousness is bound to the in-itself by an internal relation, doesn’t this meanthat it is articulated with the in-itself so as to constitute a totality, and is it not thistotality which would be given the name being or reality? Doubtless the for-itself is anihilation, but as a nihilation it is; and it is in a priori unity with the in-itself. Thus theGreeks were accustomed to distinguish cosmic reality, which they called Tò pa??,from the totality constituted by this and by the infinite void which surrounded it—atotality which they called Tò o???. To be sure, we have been able to call the for-itselfa nothing and to declare that there is “outside of the in-itself” nothing except areflection of this nothing which is itself polarized and defined by the in-itself—inasmuch as the for-itself is precisely the nothingness of this in-itself. But here as inGreek philosophy a question is raised: which shall we call real? To which shall weattribute being? To the cosmos or to what we called Tò o???? To the pure in-itself orto the in-itself surrounded by that shell of nothingness which we have designated bythe name of the for-itself?
130Jean-Paul Sartre: Basic WritingsBut if we are to consider total being as constituted by the synthetic organization ofthe in-itself and of the for-itself, are we not going to encounter again the difficultywhich we wished to avoid? And as for that hiatus which we revealed in the concept ofbeing, are we not going to meet it at present in the existent itself? What definitionindeed are we to give to an existent which as in-itself would be what it is and as foritselfwould be what it is not?If we wish to resolve these difficulties, we must take into account what is requiredof an existent if it is to be considered as a totality: it is necessary that the diversity ofits structures be held within a unitary synthesis in such a way that each of themconsidered apart is only an abstraction. And certainly consciousness considered apartis only an abstraction; but the in-itself has no need of the for-itself in order to be; the“passion” of the for-itself only causes there to be in-itself. The phenomenon of initselfis an abstraction without consciousness but its being is not an abstraction.If we wish to conceive of a synthetic organization such that the for-itself is inseparablefrom the in-itself and conversely such that the in-itself is indissolubly bound to thefor-itself, we must conceive of this synthesis in such a way that the in-itself wouldreceive its existence from the nihilation which caused there to be consciousness of it.What does this mean if not that the indissoluble totality of in-itself and for-itself isconceivable only in the form of a being which is its own “self-use”? It is this being andno other which could be valid absolutely as that o??? of which we spoke earlier. Andif we can raise the question of the being of the for-itself articulated in the in-itself, it isbecause we define ourselves a priori by means of a pre-ontological comprehension ofthe ens causa sui. Of course this ens causa sui is impossible, and the concept of it, aswe have seen, includes a contradiction. Nevertheless the fact remains that since weraise the question of the being of the o??? by adopting the point of view of the enscausa sui, it is from this point of view that we must set about examining the credentialsof this o???. Has it not appeared due to the mere fact of the upsurge of the for-itself,and is not the for-itself originally a project of being its own self-use? Thus we begin tograsp the nature of total reality. Total being, the concept of which would not be cleftby an hiatus and which would nevertheless not exclude the nihilating-nihilated being ofthe for-itself, that being whose existence would be a unitary synthesis of the in-itselfand of consciousness—this ideal being would be the in-itself founded by the for-itselfand identical with the for-itself which founds it—i.e., the ens causa sui. But preciselybecause we adopt the point of view of this ideal being in order to judge the real beingwhich we call o???, we must establish that the real is an abortive effort to attain to thedignity of the self-cause. Everything happens as if the world, man, and man-in-the-
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Being129they will offer us of unifying the givens of ontology. This unification naturally mustnot be constituted in the perspective of an historical becoming since temporalitycomes into being through the for-itself. There would be therefore no sense in askingwhat being was before the appearance of the for-itself. But metaphysics mustnevertheless attempt to determine the nature and the meaning of this prehistoricprocess, the source of all history, which is the articulation of the individual venture (orexistence of the in-itself) with the absolute event (or up-surge of the for-itself). Inparticular the task belongs to the metaphysician of deciding whether the movement isor is not a first “attempt” on the part of the in-itself to found itself and to determinewhat are the relations of motion as a “malady of being” with the for-itself as a moreprofound malady pushed to nihilation.It remains for us to consider the second problem which we formulated in ourIntroduction: If the in-itself and the for-itself are two modalities of being, is there notan hiatus at the very core of the idea of being? And is its comprehension not severedinto two incommunicable parts by the very fact that its extension is constituted bytwo radically heterogenous classes? What is there in common between the being whichis what it is, and the being which is what it is not and which is not what it is? What canhelp us here, however, is the conclusion of our preceding inquiry. We have just shownin fact that the in-itself and the for-itself are not juxtaposed. Quite the contrary, thefor-itself without the in-itself is a kind of abstraction; it could not exist any more thana color could exist without form or a sound without pitch and without timbre. Aconsciousness which would be consciousness of nothing would be an absolute nothing.But if consciousness is bound to the in-itself by an internal relation, doesn’t this meanthat it is articulated with the in-itself so as to constitute a totality, and is it not thistotality which would be given the name being or reality? Doubtless the for-itself is anihilation, but as a nihilation it is; and it is in a priori unity with the in-itself. Thus theGreeks were accustomed to distinguish cosmic reality, which they called Tò pa??,from the totality constituted by this and by the infinite void which surrounded it—atotality which they called Tò o???. To be sure, we have been able to call the for-itselfa nothing and to declare that there is “outside of the in-itself” nothing except areflection of this nothing which is itself polarized and defined by the in-itself—inasmuch as the for-itself is precisely the nothingness of this in-itself. But here as inGreek philosophy a question is raised: which shall we call real? To which shall weattribute being? To the cosmos or to what we called Tò o???? To the pure in-itself orto the in-itself surrounded by that shell of nothingness which we have designated bythe name of the for-itself?
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