Appropriation

Appropriation, as developed in Sartre's Being and Nothingness, names the fundamental ontological structure through which the for-itself (consciousness, as pure lack and freedom) attempts to overcome its own insufficiency by uniting with the in-itself (the dense, self-coincident being of things). Desire is not, for Sartre, a contingent psychological craving but the original project of a being that is defined by its want-to-be: the for-itself desires to become the in-itself-for-itself — a self-grounding totality that would be both conscious and fully real. Appropriation is the mode of this project: to appropriate an object is not merely to take possession of it externally but to enter into an internal, ontological bond with it, such that the totality of one's possessions comes to reflect and, in a meaningful sense, constitute the totality of one's being. To have is, in this structure, to create — and to wish to possess is to wish to be united to an object in a relation that would resolve the for-itself's constitutive lack.

Activities such as art, science, play, and sport are therefore not mere diversions but modes of appropriation whose ultimate aim is being itself — the absolute being of the in-itself. Each of these activities reaches beyond its immediate, concrete object toward the same impossible goal: to coincide with the fullness of being that the for-itself perpetually fails to be. This makes appropriation the existential-ontological foundation that Sartre's existential psychoanalysis requires: any concrete desire or project can only be properly interpreted when referred back to this originary desire of being that underlies and motivates it.

Within the source jean-paul-sartre-hazel-barnes-being-and-nothingness-an-essay-on-phenomenological, appropriation appears at the junction of Sartre's phenomenological ontology and his project of existential psychoanalysis. It extends the concept of Desire by giving it a concrete ontological mechanism: desire is not merely a structural lack (as in the Lacanian account) but a directed project of unification with the in-itself, and appropriation names the form that project takes in actual human activities. It also specifies the concept of Lack: where Lacanian lack is a permanent structural effect of signification — irreducible and productive — Sartre's lack is equally irreducible but is experienced as a freedom-in-insufficiency that motivates concrete projects of acquisition and creation. Appropriation thus functions as Sartre's specification of how lack is "lived out" in the world.

Appropriation also intersects with Sublimation and the In-itself-for-itself. Like sublimation, appropriation designates how drive-like energy is redirected toward cultural and creative activities (art, science, play); unlike sublimation, it does not pass through the mechanism of raising an object to the dignity of das Ding, but rather aims at a full ontological merger that would dissolve the gap between consciousness and being — a merger Lacan would regard as structurally impossible and ideologically dangerous. In relation to Phenomenology, Sartre's appropriation remains within the phenomenological-ontological framework: it is grounded in the lived project of consciousness, not in the pre-subjective structural determinations (the gaze, the signifier, the Real) that Lacanian theory insists must be taken into account. Appropriation therefore marks both the proximity and the limit of Sartre's existential psychoanalysis with respect to the Lacanian corpus.

Being and Nothingness: An Essay on Phenomenological OntologyJean-Paul Sartre · 1943 (p.585)

Art, science, play are activities of appropriation, either wholly or in part, and what they want to appropriate beyond the concrete object of their quest is being itself, the absolute being of the in-itself.

The phrase "beyond the concrete object of their quest" is theoretically decisive: it establishes that no actual, empirical object is the real target of these activities, but rather "being itself, the absolute being of the in-itself" — making appropriation structurally analogous to desire's circular relation to the lost object, and grounding Sartre's claim that all human projects are, at their deepest level, ontological rather than merely practical or aesthetic.