intuition or it is nothing.”^36 Husserl’s “reduced” field that is satisfied
with “transcendence within immanence,” Sartre believes, has this intu-
ition backwards: “a revealing intuition implies something revealed.
Absolute subjectivity can be established only in the face of something
revealed; immanence can be defined only within the apprehension of
a transcendent.” Conceding that this may look like Kant’s famous
refutation of idealism in the firstCritique, Sartre insists, “we ought
rather to think of Descartes. We are here on the ground of being, not
knowledge” (BNlxii). Moreover, appealing to a temporal dimension of
the phenomenon yet to be discussed, he adds: the transphenomenal
being of the phenomenon “gives itself as already existing when con-
sciousness reveals it” (BNlxii). Sartre concludes his introduction with a
summary of the features of this being-in-itself.
In brief, being^37 or more precisely being-in-itself differs from being-
for-itself in the following ways: it is neither passivity nor activity; it is
beyond negation and affirmation; it is what it is, that is, it exhibits the
principle of identity (just as the for-itself, we saw, was the sole exception
to that principle). Accordingly, being-in-itself knows no otherness nor is
it subject to temporality in the sense of becoming, it is inert; finally
being-in-itself simply is: “it can never be derived from the possible nor
reduced to the necessary.” In sum: “Being is. Being is in-itself. Being is
what it is” (BNlxvi).^38
(^36) A claim he will repeat implicitly inWL 48.
(^37) It has commonly been overlooked that Sartre does insist that he “must explain how these two
regions of being [in-itself and for-itself] can be placed under the same heading. That will
necessitate the investigation of these two types of being, and it is evident that we can not
truly grasp the meaning of either until we can establish their true connection withthe notion
of being in generaland the relations which unite them” (BNlxiii). In effect, he never pursues
this quasi-Heideggerian project, but neither does he lose sight of it completely (seeBNlxvii
[“For what reasons do they both belong to being in general?”], 216 , 361 [a metaphysical
theory of being in general] and 617 [Being as a general category belonging to all existents]).
Gardner is one of the few scholars to have raised this topic explicitly. SeeSartre’s Being and
Nothingness,§ 7. On the other hand, both Sartre and Beauvoir imply the issue of being in
general when they speak of “unveiling” being, a typically Heideggerian expression (seeWL
37 and Beauvoir’sThe Ethics of Ambiguity, trans. Bernard Frechtman [Secaucus, NJ: Citadel
38 Press,^1948 ],^12 and^23 ).
“An existing phenomenon can never be derived from another existent qua existent. This is
what we shall call thecontingencyof being-in-itself.” Reminiscent ofNausea, he concedes:
“This is what consciousness expresses in anthropomorphic terms by saying that being is
superfluous (de trop) – that is, that consciousness absolutely cannot derive being from
anything, either from another being, or from a possibility, or from a necessary law.
Being and Nothingness 181