BEING AND NOTHINGNESS

III. ORIGINAL TEMPORALITY AND PSYCHIC TEMPORALITY: REFLECTION

But on the other hand, there can be no question here of a total identification of the reflective with
that reflected-on, for this would suddenly suppress the phenomenon of reflection by allowing only the
phantom dyad "the-reflection-reflecting" to subsist. Here once again we meet that type of being which
defines the for-itself: reflection-if it is to be apodictic evidence-demands that the reflective be that which
is reflected-on. But to the extent that reflection is knowledge, the reflected-on must necessarily be the
object for the reflective; and this implies a separation of being. Thus it is necessary that the reflective
simultaneously be and not be the reflected-on. We have already discovered this ontological structure at
the heart of the for-itself. But then it did not have at all the same meaning. In fact it supposed in the two
terms "reflected and reflecting" a radical Unselbstandigkeit on the part of the suggested duality; that is,
such an inability on the part of the terms to be posited separately that the duality remained perpetually
evanescent and each term, while positing itself for the other, became the other. But in the case of
reflection, the case is slightly different since "the reflection-reflecting," which is reflected-on exists for a
"reflection-reflecting" which is reflective. In other words, the reflected-on is an appearance for the
reflective without thereby ceasing to be witness (of) itself, and the reflective is witness of the reflected-on
without thereby ceasing to be an appearance to itself. It is even in so far as it is reflected in itself (se
reflete en soi) that the reflected-on is an appearance for the reflective, and the reflective can be witness
only in so far as it is consciousness (of) being so; that is, to the exact extent that this witness, which it is,
is a reflection (reflet) for a reflecting which it is also. Reflected-on and reflective therefore each tend to
the Selbstandigkeit, and the nothing which separates them divides them more profoundly than the
nothingness of the for-itself separates the reflection (reflet) from the reflecting.
Yet we must note two things: (1) Reflection (reflexion) as witness can have its being as witness
only in and through the appearance; that is, it is profoundly affected in its being by its reflectivity and
consequently can never achieve the Selbstandigkeit at which it aims, since it derives its being from its
function and its function from the for-itself reflected-on. (2) The reflected-on is profoundly altered by
reflection (reflexion) in this sense that it is self-consciousness as the consciousness reflected-on of this or
that transcendent phenomenon. The reflected-on knows itself observed. It may best be compared-to use a
concrete example-to a man who is writing, bent over a table, and who while writing knows that he is
observed by somebody who stands behind him. The reflected-on has then, in a way, already a
consciousness (of) itself as having an outside or rather the suggestion of an outside; that is, it makes
himself an object for_____, so that its meaning as reflected-on is inseparable from the reflective and
exists over there at a distance from itself in the consciousness which reflects on it. In this sense the
reflected-on does not possess Selbstandigkeit any more than the reflective itself.