in-itself-for-itself

The in-itself-for-itself is Sartre’s name for an impossible ideal: a being that would combine the self-grounding density of the in-itself with the self-consciousness and negation of the for-itself. It is not an attainable human state but the value toward which consciousness projects itself, a missing unity that gives shape to desire, beauty, and the effort to overcome contingency. Sartre ultimately identifies this ideal with God, while insisting that the project remains perpetually indicated and perpetually unrealized.

Definition and Structure

The in-itself-for-itself names the fusion of the one who lacks with what is lacking. The for-itself is not a complete substance but an existence marked by lack: it reaches beyond its present condition toward a being that would be its own foundation. The desired totality would preserve the in-itself’s complete self-identity while possessing the consciousness that can question and disclose being. Neither term alone provides that synthesis. The in-itself simply is; the for-itself is a flight beyond what it is. The ideal would make them one without erasing either.

This structure appears in the relation between an existing thing and its essence. A thing does not possess its essence as a finished quality in the present; essence comes toward it from the future as a meaning that is never fully given. The ideal fusion would make concrete existence itself its essence, while making essence a complete concretion. Form would be wholly its own matter, and matter absolute form. That reciprocal completion cannot be found as an accomplished feature of the world: it haunts the existent as an unrealizable unity.

Value, Beauty, and the World

Sartre calls the ideal fusion value. At the unreflective level, value is not necessarily an explicitly considered goal; it conditions existence as the indication of a totality that consciousness cannot achieve. Beauty gives this same aspiration a worldly and temporal form. It points toward an impossible synthesis of past, present, and future, in which the essence and existence of things would appear as identical and the one who apprehended them would be reconciled with itself.

Beauty is therefore not simply a potential property waiting inside an object. The world appears to lack beauty insofar as human reality experiences itself as lacking completion. In aesthetic intuition, the beautiful is apprehended through an imaginary object and an imaginary realization of the self as a complete totality. The ideal is present in the experience, but only as an absence and an unrealizable. Its force lies in this double character: it offers a figure of completion while revealing that ordinary existence does not possess it.

Human Desire and the Project of God

The for-itself’s basic movement is a flight from facticity toward the in-itself it would be if it could ground itself. It flees its given existence and pursues an impossible future in which it would be both its own foundation and what it is. Sartre calls this a pursued-pursuing structure: the for-itself is not first a settled being that later acquires an urge to escape, because this flight is its very mode of being.

The goal is not a return to a merely inert in-itself. The for-itself projects an in-itself that would be self-founded, retaining the in-itself’s fullness while containing consciousness. This is the fundamental value Sartre calls God. His formulation is direct: human reality is the being whose project is to be God. The claim does not mean that every person consciously adopts a religious aim. God names the ultimate structure of the project through which human reality seeks to become the foundation of its own being.

That fundamental direction does not dictate a single fixed set of choices. The desire’s ultimate meaning is not a ready-made essence that determines each person’s conduct; it is realized through particular ends pursued in particular situations. Everyday desires—for food, sleep, possessions, action, or artistic creation—express more concrete ways of wanting to be. Those concrete desires, in turn, can express the fundamental desire of being. A wish to create a work of art, for example, has a specific object and activity, yet desire as such also discloses a relation between the person and being.

Relations with Others and the Limits of Unity

The ideal also shapes the project of becoming other to oneself through another person. In the relation with the Other, the for-itself may wish to assimilate the Other not as a mere object but as the freedom that looks at it. It attempts to identify itself with its being-looked-at, treating its objecthood as a means of appropriating the Other’s freedom and making that freedom the foundation of its own being-in-itself. The desired state would be a self that is other to itself and an Other who is itself: a human echo of the self-grounding unity associated with God.

But the project of unity cannot succeed. The relation’s contingency cannot be overcome, and a single shared transcendence would eliminate the Other’s otherness—the very condition the project seeks to preserve. Moreover, while one consciousness tries to assimilate the freedom that looks at it, the Other apprehends it as an object and does not thereby undertake the same identification. The attempt to achieve unity thus becomes a source of conflict. The ideal gives the relation its direction, but the freedom and difference of the people involved prevent it from becoming a completed fusion.

Perpetual Failure and Significance

The in-itself-for-itself is impossible not because it is irrelevant to human reality, but because it is its persistent limit. Sartre describes total being as though it were an in-itself founded by the for-itself and identical with the consciousness that founds it: a being that would be its own cause. Yet the concept of such a self-cause is contradictory. It remains the point of view through which human reality understands its aspiration, not a state that reality has ever achieved.

The world, humanity, and humanity in the world consequently appear as an abortive effort to attain the dignity of self-cause—as though they realized only a missing God. This failure accounts for the separation and relative independence of the in-itself and the for-itself: their unity is continually indicated but never effected. The ideal therefore does not resolve the division of existence. It explains why the division matters, why human desire reaches beyond what is given, and why that reaching cannot finally provide the self-grounding completion it seeks.