iranitea, Sartre's being for itself reminds me of CC and yes it is somehow
incomplete. So the journey to GC begins, the journey in which the object comes
to be known in first its most glorious or divine aspect and then in UC in its
infinite aspect.
So beautiful how he defines God, the project by which humanity attempts to
unite matter, Being in itself and consciousness, Being of itself.
BUT...what of the personal God? Sartre's definition brings to mind the
impersonal God. And perhaps that is enough. At least for a gyana yogi. Maybe
only the bhaktis need a personal God.
Ha! and you said you didn't understand this, only posted it for those who would
(-:
thank you, iranitea, I so much enjoyed reading your explanation and thinking
about it.
Okay, Share, since the word Koan seems to be overused here, in contexts it
wasn't really intended to be, I will give you some explanation, that is
necessarily limited, as I didn't really read and study whole books of these
authors. I will try to explain, using some TM speak, for easy understanding.
Here is the quote again:
"At the end of Being and Nothingness...[,] Being in-itself and Being for-itself
were of Being; and this totality of beings, in which they were effected, itself
was linked up to itself, relating and appearing to itself, by means of the
essential project of human-reality. What was named in this way, in an allegedly
neutral and undetermined way, was nothing other than the metaphysical unity of
man and God, the relation of man to God, the project of becoming God as the
project constituting human-reality. Atheism changes nothing in this fundamental
structure."
Being and Nothingness: A book by Jean Paul Sartre, who was a friend of Derrida.
I have never read that book in full, just some excerpts in a small booklet by
Reclam (a German publisher who makes small booklets about great authors).
Being in-itself: As a TMer you might think that Being in-itself is just pure
self-aware Being, but according to Sartre it is inanimate Matter. For him
Matter is just there, it simply IS, it is not conscious OF something. So it is
Being in-itself.
Being for-itself: This is consciousness, as we know it. Being for-itself refers
to the self-conscious aspect of consciosuness. Consciousness is always
self-conscious, but this Being of consciousness is always related in some kind
of subject-object relationship. It is always related TO something, that
something could also be itself.
This subject object relationship is also described in TM and the vedic
literature, as the Knower, the Known, and the process of knowledge. This is
even there in consciousness being aware of itself, and according to TM
philosophy it is the first starting of duality.
With Sartre, he feels that the Being for-itself always feels somehow
incomplete, because it can never really reach Being in-itself, which is
actually ultimately matter, the object. For Being in-itself, there is no
division, as there is no self-awareness, but Being of-itself, there is the
devision between subject and object, even within self-awareness, and, according
to Sartre, Being of-itself can not really overcome this gap.
Now here, Derrida points out, that at the end of his book, Sartre found/ or
came close to a solution, or suggested a solution, which was that both, these
modes of Being, where OF BEING, like two modes of the same Being, and he says:
"and this totality of beings, in which they were effected, itself was linked up
to itself, relating and appearing to itself, by means of the essential project
of human-reality."
So he feels, that through human life, through our conscious endeavor, these two
modes of being were linked, and that would be "nothing other than the
metaphysical unity of man and God, the relation of man to God, the project of
becoming God as the project constituting human-reality."
So he defines God this way, as the human project of uniting this fundamental
division in Being, and Derrida, himself an Atheist, says this about Sartre, an
Atheist as well: Atheism changes nothing in this fundamental structure. And
this is remarkable, I think.
