JeanPaul_Sartre_JeanPaul_Sartre_Basic_Writing

Nothingness145intuition since to be exact there could not be an intuition of nothing and since theabsence of Pierre is this nothing. Popular consciousness, however, bears witness tothis intuition. Do we not say, for example, “I suddenly saw that he was not there.” Isthis just a matter of misplacing the negation? Let us look a little closer.It is certain that the café by itself with its patrons, its tables, its booths, its mirrors,its light, its smoky atmosphere, and the sounds of voices, rattling saucers, and footstepswhich fill it—the café is a fullness of being. And all the intuitions of detail which I canhave are filled by these odors, these sounds, these colors, all phenomena which havea transphenomenal being. Similarly Pierre’s actual presence in a place which I do notknow is also a plenitude of being. We seem to have found fullness everywhere. But wemust observe that in perception there is always the construction of a figure on aground. No one object, no group of objects is especially designed to be organized asspecifically either ground or figure; all depends on the direction of my attention. WhenI enter this café to search for Pierre, there is formed a synthetic organization of all theobjects in the café on the ground of which Pierre is given as about to appear. Thisorganization of the café as the ground is an original nihilation. Each element of thesetting, a person, a table, a chair, attempts to isolate itself, to lift itself upon the groundconstituted by the totality of the other objects, only to fall back once more into theundifferentiation of this ground; it melts into the ground. For the ground is that whichis seen only in addition, that which is the object of a purely marginal attention. Thusthe original nihilation of all the figures which appear and are swallowed up in the totalneutrality of a ground is the necessary condition for the appearance of the principlefigure, which is here the person of Pierre. This nihilation is given to my intuition; I amwitness to the successive disappearance of all the objects which I look at—in particularof the faces, which detain me for an instant (Could this be Pierre?) and which asquickly decompose precisely because they “are not” the face of Pierre. Neverthelessif I should finally discover Pierre, my intuition would be filled by a solid element, Ishould be suddenly arrested by his face and the whole café would organize itselfaround him as a discrete presence.But now Pierre is not here. This does not mean that I discover his absence in someprecise spot in the establishment. In fact Pierre is absent from the whole café; hisabsence fixes the café in its evanescence; the café remains ground; it persists inoffering itself as an undifferentiated totality to my only marginal attention; it slipsinto the background; it pursues its nihilation. Only it makes itself ground for a determinedfigure; it carries the figure everywhere in front of it, presents the figure everywhere tome. This figure which slips constantly between my look and the solid, real objects of