Being and Animals

One fundamental problem with Sartre's Ontology is that either the distinction between Being-in-itself and Being-for-itself is unclearly drawn, or else the former category is too general. Of specific difficulty for his scheme is the classification of animals, especially chimps and dolphins. If Sartre is to attribute Consciousness to them, then where, and why, in the evolutionary scale the In-itself ends and the For-itself begins is uncertain. On the other hand, if only humans possess Consciousness, then his Ontology does not distinguish between animals and rocks. In contrast, Whitehead's System both agrees with Sartre that Consciousness is characterized by its capacity to negate factuality, and still manages to offer an account of the remainder of Being that accommodates a plurality of differing degrees of organic complexity. While Whitehead apparently gives no indication as to how he classifies animals, the nuance provided by his System underscores that Sartre overreaches in proposing that Conscious Being is one of the two main Ontological categories, not a minor, albeit significant mode of Being. At bottom, Sartre's oversimplification reflects the inadequacy of the phenomenological method to any project beyond the description of the relations between Consciousness and its phenomenal objects, and, hence, exposes the limitations of any phenomenological Ontology, including Heidegger's.