That is, I can ask myself, "Why am I thirsty? Why am I conscious of this glass? Of this Me?" But as scon as I consider this totality in in-itself, it nihilates itself under my regard. It is not; it is in order not to be, and I return to the for itself apprehended in its suggestion of duality as the foundation of it self. I am angry because I produce myself as consciousness of anger. Sup press this self-<:ausation which constitutes the being of the for-itself, and you will no longer find anything, not even "anger-in-itself;" for anger exists by nature as for-itself. Thus the for-itself is sustained by a perpetual con tingency for which it assumes the responsibility and which it assimilates without ever being able to suppress it. This perpetually evanescent con

8 Sartre says "annihilated" here, but I feel that he must have meant "nihilated" since be has told us earlier that being cannot be annihilated. Tr. . IMMEDIATE STRUCTURE OF THE FOR-ITSELF tingency of the in-itself which, without ever allowing itself to be appre hended, haunts the for-itself and reattaches it to being-in-itself-this con tingency is what we shall call the facticity of the for-itself. It is this facticity which permits us to say that the for-itself is, that it exists, al though we can never realize the facticity and although we always appre hend it through the for-itself.

We indicated earlier that we can be nothing without playing at bcing.9 "If I am a cafe waiter," we said, "this can be only in the mode of not being one." And that is true. If I could be a cafe waiter, I should suddenly con stitute myself as a contingent block of identity. And that I am not. This contingent being in-itself always escapes me. But in order that I may freely give a meaning to the obligations which my state involves, then in one sense at the heart of the for-itself, as a perpetually evanescent totality, be ing-in-itself must be given as the evanescent contingency of my situation. This is the result of the fact that while I must play at being a cafe waiter in order to be one, still it would be in vain for me to play at being a diplo. mat or a sailor, for 1 would not be one. This inapprehensible fact of my condition, this impalpable difference which distinguishes this drama of realization from drama pure and simple is what causes the foritself, while choosing the meaning of i

This part of my condition is what causes me to apprehend myself simultaneously as totally responsible for my being-inasmuch as I am its foundation-and yet as totally unjustifiable. Without facticity consciousness could choose its attachments to the world in the same way as the soulsin Plato's Re public choose their condition. I could determine myself to "be born a worker" or to "be born a bourgeois." But on the other hand facticity can not constitute me as being a bourgeois or being a workcr. It is not even strictly speaking a resistance of fact since it is only by recovering it in the substructure of the pre-reflective cogito that I confer on it its meaning and its resistance. Facticity is only one indication which I give myself of the being to which I must reunite myself in order to be what I am.