JeanPaul_Sartre_JeanPaul_Sartre_Basic_Writing

Being131world succeeded in realizing only a missing God. Everything happens therefore as ifthe in-itself and the for-itself were presented in a state of disintegration in relation toan ideal synthesis. Not that the integration has ever taken place but on the contraryprecisely because it is always indicated and always impossible.It is this perpetual failure which explains both the indissolubility of the in-itselfand of the for-itself and at the same time their relative independence. Similarly whenthe unity of the cerebral functions is shattered, phenomena are produced whichsimultaneously present a relative autonomy and which at the same time can bemanifested only on the ground of the disintegration of a totality. It is this failure whichexplains the hiatus which we encounter both in the concept of being and in theexistent. If it is impossible to pass from the notion of being-in-itself to that of beingfor-itselfand to reunite them in a common genus, this is because the passage in factfrom the one to the other and their reuniting can not be effected. We know that forSpinoza and for Hegel, for example, if a synthesis is arrested before its completion andthe terms fixed in a relative dependence and at the same time in a relative independence,then the synthesis is constituted suddenly as an error. For example, it is in the notionof a sphere that for Spinoza the rotation of a semicircle around its diameter finds itsjustification and its meaning. But if we imagine that the notion of a sphere is onprinciple out of reach, then the phenomenon of the rotation of the semicircle becomesfalse. It has been decapitated; the idea of rotation and the idea of a circle are heldtogether without being able to be united in a synthesis which surpasses them andjustifies them; the one remains irreducible to the other. This is precisely what happenshere. We shall say therefore that the o??? we are considering is like a decapitatednotion in perpetual disintegration. And it is in the form of a disintegrated ensemblethat it presents itself to us in its ambiguity—that is, so that one can ad libitum insiston the dependence of the beings under consideration or on their independence. Thereis here a passage which is not completed, a short circuit.On this level we find again that notion of a detotalized totality which we havealready met in connection with the for-itself itself and in connection with theconsciousnesses of others. But this is a third type of detotalization. In the simplydetotalized totality of reflection the reflective had to be reflected-on, and the reflectedonhad to be the reflected. The double negation remained evanescent. In the case of thefor-others the (reflection-reflecting) reflected was distinguished from the (reflectionreflecting)reflecting in that each one had to not-be the other. Thus the for-itself andthe-other-for-itself constitute a being in which each one confers the being-other on theother by making himself other. As for the totality of the for-itself and the in-itself, this