JeanPaul_Sartre_JeanPaul_Sartre_Basic_Writing

132Jean-Paul Sartre: Basic Writingshas for its characteristic the fact that the for-itself makes itself other in relation to thein-itself but that the in-itself is in no way other than the for-itself in its being; the initselfpurely and simply is. If the relation of the in-itself to the for-itself were thereciprocal of the relation of the for-itself to the in-itself, we should fall into the case ofbeing-for-others. But this is definitely not the case, and it is this absence of reciprocitywhich characterizes the o??? of which we spoke earlier. To this extent it is not absurdto raise the question of the totality. In fact when we studied the for-others, weestablished that it was necessary that there be a being which was an “other-me” andwhich had to be the reflective scissiparity of the for-others. But at the same time thisbeing which is an other-me appeared to us as being able to exist only if it included aninapprehensible non-being of exteriority. We asked then if the paradoxical character ofthe totality was in itself an irreducible and if we could posit the mind as the beingwhich is and which is not. But we decided that the question of the synthetic unity ofconsciousnesses had no meaning, for it presupposed that it was possible for us toassume a point of view on the totality; actually we exist on the foundation of thistotality and as engaged in it.But if we can not “adopt a point of view on the totality,” this is because the Otheron principle denies that he is I as I deny that I am he. It is the reciprocity of the relationwhich prevents me from ever grasping it in its integrity. In the case of the internalnegation for-itself-in-itself, on the contrary, the relation is not reciprocal, and I amboth one of the terms of the relation and the relation itself. I apprehend being, I am theapprehension of being, I am only an apprehension of being. And the being which Iapprehend is not posited against me so as to apprehend me in turn; it is what isapprehended. Its being simply does not coincide in any way with its being-apprehended.In one sense therefore I can pose the question of the totality. To be sure, I exist here asengaged in this totality, but I can be an exhaustive consciousness of it since I am atonce consciousness of the being and self-consciousness. This question of the totality,however, does not belong to the province of ontology. For ontology the only regionsof being which can be elucidated are those of the in-itself, of the for-itself, and the idealregion of the “self-cause.” For ontology it makes no difference whether we considerthe for-itself articulated in the in-itself as a well marked duality or as a disintegratedbeing. It is up to metaphysics to decide which will be more profitable for knowledge(in particular for phenomenological psychology, for anthropology, etc.): will it dealwith a being which we shall call the phenomenon and which will be provided with twodimensions of being, the dimension in-itself and the dimension for-itself (from thispoint of view there would be only one phenomenon: the world), just as in the physics