and the future), the present would collapse into an atemporal instant the
way a line collapses into a point if viewed on end. This leads Sartre to
argue that in the present we discover “that indissoluble dyad, Being and
Nothingness” (BN 120 ). Phenomenologically, he describes presence as
“presence-to.” In other words, it is opposed to absence as well as to the
past. The for-itself is presence to all of being-in-itself or, better, “the
presence of the for-itself is what brings it about that there is (il y a)a
totality of being-in-itself ” (BN 121 ;F 166 ). Being present for the for-
itself is not simply being there. The latter merely locates the for-itself
spatially and perspectivally. But the presence-to of the for-itself is an
internal negation of that to which it is present. As we have come to
suspect, “the structure at the basis of intentionality and of selfness is the
negation, which is the internal relation of the For-itself to the thing”
(BN 123 ). As he often does, Sartre appeals to metaphor to capture the
particularity of the phenomenon of consciousness when he remarks that
“the For-itself is present to being in the form of flight; the Present is a
perpetual flight in the face of being...The present is not; it makes itself
present in the form of flight” (BN 123 ). Where Heidegger famously
employed the concept of care (Sorge) to capture the temporal expanse of
Dasein(Sartre’s “human reality”), Sartre opts for the image of flight
from/toward. This expresses the no-thingness that is consciousness as
temporality: at present it is not what it is (past) and it is what it is not
(future).
Turning his phenomenological attention toward the future, Sartre
relates to both the possible and to lack. The possible is seen as that
which the For-itself lacks to be itself. Again, we face the question of
the possible as limit – an issue that will be faced directly as Sartre turns
to social constraints and “concrete” freedom in the coming years. But at
this stage and throughoutBN, he gingerly skirts the matter. The concept
of project (pro-ject, as Heidegger will say) enters the scene and joins the
notions of possibility and freedom.
The future constitutes the meaning (sens) of my present for-itself as the project of its
possibility, but that it in no way predetermines my For-itself which is to-come, since
the For-itself is always abandoned to the nihilating obligation of being the foundation
of its nothingness. The Future can only effecta pre-outline of the limits within which
the For-itself will make itself be as a flight making itself present to being in the
direction of another future.
(BN 128 , emphasis added)
Temporality: the phenomenology 197