JeanPaul_Sartre_JeanPaul_Sartre_Basic_Writing

Temporality169sort. Presence to —— is an internal relation between the being which is present andthe beings to which it is present. In any case it can not be a matter of a simple externalrelation of contiguity. Presence to —— indicates existence outside oneself near to ——. Anything which can be present to —— must be such in its being that there is in ita relation of being with other beings. I can be present to this chair only if I am unitedto it in an ontological relation of synthesis, only if I am there in the being of the chairas not being the chair. A being which is present to —— can not be at rest “in-itself;” thein-itself cannot be present any more than it can be Past. It simply is. There can be noquestion of any kind of simultaneity between one in-itself and another in-itself exceptfrom the point of view of a being which would be co-present with two in-itselfs andwhich would have in it the power of presence. The Present therefore can be only thepresence of the For-itself to being in-itself. And this presence can not be the effect ofan accident, of a concomitance: on the contrary it is presupposed by all concomitance,and it must be an ontological structure of the For-itself. This table must be present tothat chair in a world which human reality haunts as a presence. In other words onecannot conceive of a type of existent which would be first For-itself in order subsequentlyto be present to being. But the For-itself makes itself presence to being by makingitself be For-itself and it ceases to be presence by ceasing to be for-itself. The Foritselfis defined as presence to being.To what being does the For-itself make itself presence? The answer is clear: theFor-itself is presence to all of being-in-itself. Or rather the presence of the For-itself iswhat makes being-in-itself exist as a totality. For by this very mode of presence tobeing qua being, every possibility is removed whereby the For-itself might be morepresent to one privileged than to all other beings. Even though the facticity of itsexistence causes it to be there rather than elsewhere, being there is not the same asbeing present. Being there determines only the perspective by which presence to thetotality of the in-itself is realized. By means of the there the For-itself causes beingsto be for one and the same presence. Beings are revealed as co-present in a world wherethe For-itself unites them with its own blood by that total ekstatic sacrifice of the selfwhich is called presence. “Before” the sacrifice of the For-itself it would have beenimpossible to say that beings existed either together or separated. But the For-itself isthe being by which the present enters into the world; the beings of the world are copresent;in fact, just in so far as one and the same for-itself is at the same time presentto all of them. Thus for the in-itselfs what we ordinarily call Present is sharplydistinguished from their being although it is nothing more than their being. For theirPresent means only their co-presence in so far as a For-itself is present to them.