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In-itself

Philosophy
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

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The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

The in-itself (en-soi) is Sartre’s term for non-conscious being—fully self-identical, without lack or possibility. It contrasts with for-itself (consciousness).

Detailed Definition
Poetry encounters the in-itself in objects, landscapes, or silence that resist human projection. Philosophically, it questions anthropocentrism, showing how things exist independently of meaning—yet the lyric often struggles to capture this brute presence, revealing the tension between being and interpretation.
Example
Example in poetry:
Wallace Stevens’s “The Snow Man” describes pine trees “crusted with snow” as in-itself, beyond human projection; William Carlos Williams’s “The Red Wheelbarrow” presents object without symbolic overlay; Elizabeth Bishop’s “The Fish” ends with rainbow on skin—thing revealing itself; Rainer Maria Rilke’s “Archaic Torso of Apollo” shows statue radiating presence beyond broken form; C.D. Wright’s “Short” presents man’s face without contextualization; Matsuo Bashō’s haiku capture frog, pond, and sound as brute givenness.
Additional Notes
In-itself (Sartre) is non-conscious being—self-identical, without lack. In poetry, it appears as brute presence: Williams’s wheelbarrow, Bashō’s frog. Students should note poems that present things beyond human meaning. Related to phenomenology, materiality, and enframing’s opposite. Professors can link it to object-oriented ontology.
Also Known As
En-soi In-itself-being
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