The For-itself is what it is not and is not what it is

“The For-itself is what it is not and is not what it is” names a defining tension in Sartre’s account of consciousness: the For-itself is never a finished thing, because it distances itself from what it is and projects beyond what it has been. The formulation does not erase the past; it distinguishes the past’s settled being from the living present’s openness to possibilities.

Meaning of the Expression

The expression describes the For-itself as neither a self-contained substance nor an identity fully present to itself. Its present existence involves a distance from what it is: consciousness is not simply identical with a fixed set of properties, but exceeds them in the movement toward possibilities. The paired clauses hold this structure together. To be what one is not points to projection beyond the given; not to be what one is points to the absence of complete coincidence with oneself.

This is not a claim that the For-itself has no reality or continuity. Rather, its way of being differs from that of a completed object. A thing can be described as what it is; consciousness, by contrast, exists through this non-coincidence, relating to itself without becoming an inert substance.

Past and Present

The glossary’s account of the past clarifies the expression’s first limit: the For-itself has been what it has been. Its past becomes Being-in-itself, and in this respect functions as its essence, substance, and part of its facticity. What is past is not simply dissolved by present freedom; it remains the determinate record of what the For-itself has been.

The living present, however, cannot be reduced to that record. Its being is not exhausted by its past, because it can take up and surpass what has already occurred. The formula therefore sets settled past being against a present that is not a finished identity. Its force lies in holding both together: the past is real and determinate, while the For-itself’s present remains open beyond it.

Consciousness and the World

The expression belongs to an account of consciousness that begins from the pre-reflective cogito. The chapter on the immediate structures of the For-itself turns to this plane after tracing negation through freedom and bad faith to the being of consciousness. Its concern is not simply what consciousness knows, but how consciousness exists as consciousness.

That account also resists treating consciousness as a container of representations. All consciousness is consciousness of something: it is directed toward a transcendent object rather than filled with inner contents. A table, for example, is in space beside a window, not inside consciousness as a representation. Consciousness reaches beyond itself toward the world, and its relation to itself does not turn it into a fixed object.

The same orientation appears in the account of being-in-the-world. The For-itself and the world are not first two closed entities that must later be joined; the For-itself is a relation to the world. By denying that it is being and surpassing that negation toward its possibilities, consciousness makes a world appear in which things show up as instrumental objects. The expression’s emphasis on non-coincidence thus belongs to a broader description of consciousness as outwardly directed and situated, rather than sealed within a self-identical interior.

Philosophical Significance

The phrase distinguishes the For-itself from the solidity attributed to the past and to things. Its present cannot be understood as a substance with an already completed essence: consciousness relates to what it has been while exceeding that settled identity. This does not make past facts unreal; it makes their determinate being different from the For-itself’s ongoing mode of existence.

The expression consequently supplies a compact account of why Sartre’s description of the For-itself emphasizes negation and transcendence. The For-itself is not simply its established identity, yet neither is it detached from its history. It exists across that difference: bearing a past that has become Being-in-itself and surpassing it toward possibilities.