Being is. Being is in-itself. Being is what it is.

“Being is. Being is in-itself. Being is what it is” condenses the book’s account of being into three linked assertions: being exists, being-in-itself names its non-conscious mode, and being is what it is. The formula marks a contrast with consciousness, which is not a self-contained thing but a relation to being, capable of taking distance from it and disclosing a world.

Definition and Scope

The glossary presents being as all-embracing and objective, in contrast with existence as individual and subjective. Its first two clauses affirm being’s sheer presence and identify being-in-itself as one of its modes. The final clause states the in-itself’s defining self-identity: it is not separated from itself by consciousness or lack.

This formula does not exhaust being by describing its contents. Non-conscious being overflows what can be known of it; strictly speaking, the book says, one can say only that it is. Its plenitude contrasts with consciousness, which cannot be treated as a storehouse of things or representations.

Consciousness and the World

The account of intentionality clarifies why the formula’s self-identity is not a description of consciousness. Every consciousness is consciousness of something: it posits an object beyond itself rather than containing that object as an inner item. A table, for example, is in space beside a window, not inside consciousness, even as a representation. Its opacity means that no finite inventory could exhaust what the table is.

Knowing consciousness must also be conscious of itself as knowing its object. That self-awareness is sufficient for the object to exist for consciousness, but it does not establish that the object exists in itself. The distinction preserves the difference between being and its appearance or knowledge: the object exceeds the act by which it is encountered.

Being-in-itself and the For-itself

The glossary defines the for-itself as the nihilation of being-in-itself: consciousness brings nothingness into the world, stands out from being, and judges other beings through the distance it takes from them. Each for-itself is described as the nihilation of a particular being. The formula’s declaration of self-identity therefore supplies the contrast against which consciousness’s lack, negation, and relation become intelligible.

The discussion of being-in-the-world rejects the picture of the for-itself and world as two closed entities that must somehow be connected afterward. The for-itself is already a relation to the world; by denying that it is being and surpassing that negation toward its possibilities, it lets particular things appear as instrumental things. The expression thus names one pole of a relation, not a sealed reality standing outside every relation.

Spatial Relations and Particular Things

The world appears to consciousness as a multiplicity of reciprocal relations. A glass is to one person’s left of a decanter and to another’s right; a rug hidden by a table belongs to the same world through its relation to that table. These situated relations do not dissolve the things into consciousness. Instead, the passage argues that a thing wholly deprived of relations would fall back into indifferent self-identity, while lived space itself consists in relations that cannot be experienced all at once from a view nowhere.

Against this relational, situated disclosure of the world, the formula gives being-in-itself its stark character: it is, and it is what it is. Its force lies in the contrast. Consciousness reaches objects by transcending itself, while being-in-itself does not depend on that reaching for its existence. The expression is therefore a concise ontological baseline, not a claim that consciousness and the world are identical or that knowledge can fully contain what exists.