Being and Nothingness

Overview

About eight hundred and fifty pages, Jean-Paul Sartre’s systematic existentialism, written in occupied Paris and published in 1943. He divides reality into being-in-itself, the solid given world, and being-for-itself, consciousness, which is nothing in itself and exists only as the negation of what it is not.

Because consciousness is not a thing, it is condemned to be free, and the elaborate ways people deny this are what Sartre calls bad faith. Long middle sections analyse the body, the look of other people, shame, love, sadism and masochism as failed attempts to become an object for another, and the book closes on existential psychoanalysis and the useless passion of wanting to be God.

What happens

Being-in-itself and being-for-itself. Sartre divides reality into being-in-itself, the solid given world of mere objects, and being-for-itself, consciousness, establishing the foundational ontological distinction his entire subsequent analysis will build upon.

Consciousness as negation. Sartre argues that consciousness is nothing in itself and exists only as the negation of what it is not, a genuinely distinctive account of subjective experience’s peculiar mode of being.

Condemned to be free. Because consciousness is not a thing, Sartre argues, it is condemned to be free, freedom emerging as inescapable structural consequence rather than achievement people might or might not attain.

Bad faith. Sartre identifies bad faith as the elaborate ways people deny their own inescapable freedom, diagnosing a specific form of self-deception unique to consciousness’s own peculiar relationship to itself.

The body and the look of others. Long middle sections analyse the body and the look of other people, examining how encountering another consciousness transforms one’s own experience of embodied existence and selfhood.

Shame, love, sadism and masochism. Sartre extends this analysis to shame, love, sadism and masochism as failed attempts to become an object for another, before closing on existential psychoanalysis and the useless passion of wanting to be God.

How to read it

Read Sartre’s division of reality into being-in-itself and being-for-itself as giving existentialism its most systematic and rigorous ontological foundation, consciousness defined as nothing in itself and existing only as negation of what it is not.

Pay close attention to how the claim that consciousness, because it is not a thing, is condemned to be free stages freedom as inescapable burden rather than desired achievement, radically inverting how freedom usually gets discussed and pursued.

Notice how the concept of bad faith, the elaborate ways people deny their own inescapable freedom, diagnoses self-deception with unusual philosophical precision, showing how consciousness can lie to itself in ways ordinary lying to others cannot fully explain.

Consider how the extended analyses of the body, the look of other people, shame, love, sadism and masochism give abstract ontological categories concrete phenomenological application across intimate human relationships throughout the treatise’s considerable middle sections.

Read this treatise alongside Sartre’s own earlier novel Nausea to see how the abstract ontological analysis developed here systematically works out concerns, existence’s gratuitous character, freedom’s burden, that the novel had already explored through Roquentin’s own fictional experience.

Questions it raises

• Does Sartre’s division of reality into being-in-itself and being-for-itself successfully capture consciousness’s genuinely distinctive mode of being, or does this ontological framework risk overstating consciousness’s separation from the physical world it inhabits and depends upon?
• How persuasive is the claim that consciousness, because it is not a thing, is condemned to be free? Does this argument successfully establish freedom as genuinely inescapable, or does it depend on contestable assumptions about consciousness’s actual relationship to causal physical processes?
• What does the concept of bad faith accomplish that more ordinary accounts of self-deception could not? Does treating this specifically as denial of inescapable freedom offer genuine insight into how people actually avoid confronting their own situation?
• How do the extended analyses of shame, love, sadism and masochism as failed attempts to become an object for another shape your understanding of interpersonal relationships more broadly? Does this framework adequately capture love’s actual complexity, or does it reduce it excessively?
• Given that Sartre wrote this treatise in occupied Paris during genuine historical crisis, how does this specific circumstance shape the book’s sustained meditation on freedom under constraint? Does this context add urgency, or does the abstract philosophical content transcend its particular historical moment?
• What does the closing discussion of the useless passion of wanting to be God suggest about Sartre’s ultimate assessment of human aspiration and desire? Does this provocative formulation represent genuine philosophical conclusion, or rhetorical flourish exceeding what the preceding analysis actually establishes?