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śramaņa, Vol 59, No. 4/October-December 2008
reflection on the relations between Being In-itself and Being Foritself encounters nothingness at every turn. To confront X as an intentional object is to be conscious of not being X. The world appears full of nothingness such as unrealized but realizable possibilities. According to Sartre's developed account of being For It-self, consciousness is separated from its past and future by nothingness. More, to be so separated from past and future is to be free, according to Sartre. Freedom is the source of all nothingness. 9
In Being and Nothingness, Sartre explains of nothingness as though it were quite short of real thing, though (we must always remember) by 'real' Sartre usually means phenomenological real, if it figures in experience. It is the characteristic, which consists in the way things appears to be a conscious act. Consciousness is separated from its intentional object by nothingness which means consciousness consists in its forever going beyond itself. The structure at the basis of intentionality and selfness is negation, which is the internal relation of the For-itself to the thing. That it is not a thing. A thing is what it is, but consciousness is what it is not, The For-itself constitutes itself outside in terms of the thing as the negation of that thing, thus the first step in relation with being-in- itself is negation."
The real according to Jaina philosophy is a variable constant. It is being and non-being. The theory of Syādvāda implies this possibility of both positive and negative predications as is explained in the text Āpta Mimāṁsā of Samantabhadra (4th century) that
"sadeva sarvar ko necchet svarūpādicatuştayāt / asadeva viparyāsānna cenna vyavatisthate //
Who does not hold everything to exist from the four aspects, (sva-dravya, sva-kşetra, sva-kāla, sva bhāva)? On the contrary, who does not hold non-existence (with reference to alien rūpa, kşetra, kāla, bhāva)? If this be not accepted, nothing can exist."
Sartre finds no enduring “I think” or no transcendence ego. No synthesizing activity beyond the intentional objects. There is only
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