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Title: Being and Nothingness: An essay on phenomenological ontology

Author: Jean-Paul Sartre

Translator: Hazel E. Barnes

Publisher: Routledge Classics

Place: London and New York

Year: 2003

Edition: 1st Routledge Classics

ISBN13: 978-0-415-27848-5

"Consciousness is consciousness of something. This means that transcendence is the constitutive structure of consciousness; that is, that consciousness arises oriented towards a being which is not itself. This is what we call the ontological proof." (Sartre 2003:17)

"What is present to me is what is not me. We should note furthermore that this "non-being" is implied a priori in every theory of knowledge. It is impossible to construct the notion of an object if we do not have originally a negative relation designating the object as that which is not consciousness." (Sartre 2003:196)

It can be said that because truths relate to things outside of consciousness the non-being of self relates to the being relating to truth. On the other hand when a lie is told there is no being outside of self, which represents the words of the lie. The being of the lie is only in consciousness of the liar and listeners who heard the lie. There is thus with regard to lies not the non-being and being, which is inherent to knowledge.

6 June 2016

"At the origin of the problem of the existence of others, there is a fundamental presupposition: others are the Other, that is the self which is not myself. Therefore we grasp here a negation as the constitutive structure of the being-of-others." (Sartre 2003:254) Later, Sartre argues against the presupposition.

7 June 2016

Sartre prefers to emphasize singularity of "the Other" with references to "him" (Sartre 2003:274-275). "In my own inmost depths I must find not reasons for believing that the Other exists but the Other himself as not being me" (Sartre 2003:275). Sartre seems to reject ideas about the existence of "God" and "a God" and replace the ideas with ideas about existence of "the Other" (Sartre 2003:256)

"The Other is in no way given to us as an object. The objectivation of the Other would be the collapse of his being-as-a-look." (Sartre 2003:292)

Sartre seems to wrote one thing, then another. To quote him asks to be contradicted by another quote.

"In fact in the structure which expresses the experience 'I am ashamed of myself,' shame supposes a me-as-object of the Other but also a selfness which is ashamed and which is imperfectly expressed by the 'I' of the formula. Thus shame is a unitary apprehension with three dimensions: 'I am ashamed of myself before the Other.' If any of these dimensions disappears, the shame disappears as well. If, however, I conceive of the 'they' as a subject before whom I am ashamed, as he can not become an object without being scattered into a plurality of Others, if I posit it as the absolute unity of the subject which can in no way become an object, I thereby posit the eternity of my being-as-object and so perpetuate my shame. This is shame before God; that is, the recognition of my being-an-object before a subject which can never become an object." (Sartre 2003:313)

13 July 2016

"Thus the best way to conceive of the fundamental project of human reality is to say that man is the being whose project is to be God. Whatever may be the myths and rites of the religion considered, God is first "sensible to the heart" of man as the one who identifies and defines him in his ultimate and fundamental project. If man possesses a pre-ontological comprehension of the being of God, it is not the great wonders of nature not the power of society which have conferred it upon him. God, value and supreme end of transcendence, represents the permanent limit in terms of which man makes known to himself what he is. To be man means to reach towards being God. Or if you prefer, man fundamentally is the desire to be God." (Sartre 2003:587)

19 July 2016

"The "stealing of thoughts" found in the psychosis of influence gives us the best image of this horrible condition." (Sartre 2003:631)

"Every human reality is a passion in that it projects losing itself so as to found being and by the same stroke to constitute the In-itself which escapes contingency by being its own foundation, the Enscausa sui, which religions call God. Thus the passion of man is the reverse of that of Christ, for man loses himself as man in order that God may be born. But the idea of God is contradictory and we lose ourselves in vain. Man is a useless passion." (Sartre 2003:636)

"Doubtless the for-itself is a nihilation, but as a nihilation it is; and it is in a priori unity with the in-itself. Thus the Greeks were accustomed to distinguish cosmic reality [actualities - own insert], which they called Tò παν, from the totality constituted by this and by the infinite void which surrounded it--a totality which they called Tò ολον." (Sartre 2003:641)

παν was translated as "Pan" on 19 July 2016 by Google Translate. From: https://translate.google.co.za/ - el/en/παν

ολον was translated as "Around" on 19 July 2016 by Google Translate. From: https://translate.google.co.za/ - el/en/ολον

References

Sartre; J-P. 2003. Being and Nothingness: An essay on phenomenological ontology. London: Routledge Classics.