Summary: Being and Nothingness (page 6)

Sartre now turns to the temporality of consciousness—specifically, the way in which time appears to consciousness.

The present, past, and future must be understood as structured moments within an original synthesis ¹.
This synthesis is crucial for grasping time as a whole: one must approach time as a totality that governs its secondary structures and gives them meaning ².
Without this perspective, if we isolate and consider each moment in the abstract, we fall into the well-known Aristotelian paradox: the past no longer exists, the present vanishes instantly, and the future is not yet—therefore, time does not exist.

However, it is incorrect to claim that the past no longer exists. The past is; it simply no longer acts. A past event remains eternally fixed in its place, at its moment in time ³.

I do not 'have' a past; rather, I am my past. At death, the human being is reduced to nothing but their past, which alone will define them.

Repentance at the last hour is a futile attempt to undo all that has gradually solidified into our being over time. But it is in vain; death freezes this final convulsion along with everything else ⁴.

In other words, through death, the for-itself is irrevocably transformed into the in-itself ⁵.

If, in the past, I am what I am ⁶, and if the past constitutes a substance ⁷, then the past is not merely a temporal moment. Above all, it is an ontological law of the for-itself: whatever the for-itself might be, its being always exceeds its grasp ⁸.

If the past corresponds to the in-itself, the present corresponds to the for-itself. As an infinitesimal, evanescent instant, the present is at once existent and non-existent.

The future, on the other hand, exists only for consciousness: The in-itself cannot have a future ⁹, whereas every moment of my consciousness is defined by an intrinsic relation to the future. Whether I am writing, smoking, or drinking, the meaning of my consciousness is always projected outward, beyond itself ¹⁰.

Thus, the future exists because the for-itself must always be in the process of becoming, rather than simply being what it is ¹¹.

Sartre uses the metaphor of diaspora to illustrate the mode of being of the for-itself. Just as the Jewish people have maintained their cohesion despite dispersion, the for-itself exists in a diasporic form of temporality ¹². It is dispersed across the three dimensions of time—past, present, and future—but this dispersion is precisely what constitutes it.

With this understanding of temporality, Sartre turns to examine the human being’s relationship with others—a mode of existence no less fundamental than being-for-itself: being-for-others.

Part III: Being-for-others

The question arises: do others truly exist? To answer this, Sartre first asks what separates one person from another:

The soul of the Other is separated from mine by all the distances that separate my soul from my body, my body from the body of the Other, and the body of the Other from their soul ¹³

.

Even if we were to assume the immediate presence of my soul in the body of the Other, I would still require the full ‘thickness’ of their body to access their soul ¹⁴.

The primary relationship to others is one of objectification: they are perceived as bodies, as mere objects. Similarly, others objectify me in turn.

Indeed, it is always possible to argue that others are merely bodies ¹⁵—or even machines, as philosophers like La Mettrie have suggested. After all, why not reduce all bodily reactions to simple or conditioned reflexes? ¹⁶

The Other, however, transforms me into an object because they cannot access my consciousness: The Other confronts me as the radical negation of my experience, for it is through them that I am not a subject but an object. Consequently, I, as a knowing subject, strive to objectify the very subject who denies my subjectivity and defines me as an object ¹⁷.

¹ II, 1, p.142
² ibid.
³ ibid., p.144
⁴ ibid., p.150
⁵ ibid.
⁶ ibid., p.153
⁷ ibid., p.154
⁸ ibid., p.155
⁹ ibid., p.159
¹⁰ ibid., p.160
¹¹ ibid., p.161
¹² II, 2, p.178
¹³ 3ème partie, I, 2, p.261
¹⁴ ibid.,
¹⁵ ibid., p.262
¹⁶ ibid.
¹⁷ ibid., p.267