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Absential Locations and the Figureless Ground

Mac Cumhaill, Clare

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Abstract

When Sartre arrives late to meet Pierre at a local establishment, he discovers not merely that Pierre is absent, but also Pierre’s absence, where this depends, or so Sartre notoriously supposes, on a frustrated expectation that Pierre would be seen at that place. Many philosophers have railed against this view, taking it to entail a treatment of the ontology of absence that Richard Gale describes as ‘attitudinal’ – one whereby absences are thought to ontologically depend on psychological attitudes. In this article, I aim to make Sartre’s intuition respectable. What Sartre perceives is an ‘absential location’, only the ‘boundaries’ of which are circumscribed by what Sartre is doing at that place: meeting Pierre. I explain how this Sartrean view, though not specifically attributable to Sartre, nonetheless honours some of the phenomenological data described, if a little opaquely, in Being and Nothingness.

Citation

Mac Cumhaill, C. (2018). Absential Locations and the Figureless Ground. Sartre Studies International, 24(1), 34-47. https://doi.org/10.3167/ssi.2018.240104

Journal Article Type Article
Online Publication Date Jun 1, 2018
Publication Date 2018-06
Deposit Date Mar 22, 2017
Publicly Available Date Mar 29, 2024
Journal Sartre Studies International: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Existentialism and Contemporary Culture
Print ISSN 1357-1559
Electronic ISSN 1558-5476
Publisher Berghahn Journals
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 24
Issue 1
Pages 34-47
DOI https://doi.org/10.3167/ssi.2018.240104

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Copyright Statement
This is a post-peer-review, pre-copyedited version of an article published in Sartre studies international. The definitive publisher-authenticated version Mac Cumhaill, Clare (2018). Absential Locations and the Figureless Ground. Sartre Studies International 24(1): 34-47 is available online at: https://doi.org/10.3167/ssi.2018.240104





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