Being Too Much

For Sartre, the relation between Being and Nothingness is, for the most part, an intrusion of a vacuum into a plenum. However, early in Being and Nothingness, he characterizes Being as, not a plenum, but as "de trop", a reference to his previous treatment of it in Nausea. The contrast between 'de trop', literally 'too much', which he uses in the latter work to connote the superfluity and absurdity of Being, while seemingly minor, significantly alters the meanings of not only both Being and Nothingness, but the relation between them, as well. For, 'too much' implies a deviation from some pre-condition which is 'just right', in which case Nothingness is no longer a violation of Being, but a correction to that deviation. Now, there are two main candidates for the primordial condition of stability with respect to which Being is de trop--Nothingness and Unity. In the first case, if Being is an excess with respect to Nothingness, then nihilating Consciousness is the dissolution of Being, haunted by an ideal of a God with negative attributes. In the second case, if Being is, more accurately, a plurality of Beings that disrupts a primordial Unity, then Consciousnes is a re-synthesizing process, guided by the ideal of a Totality in which the particularity of its constituents is preserved. There is textual support for both interpretations, especially for the latter, e. g. in Sartre's eventual transition to Marxism. Furthermore, the former would plainly qualify as 'Nihilism' according to Nietzsche, a Philosopher that Sartre respects. In either case, Consciousness is no longer the superfluous intruder, but a correction, much as it is in Formaterialism, in which, as has been previously explained, its organic function is primarily homeostatic.