being+and+nothingness

BEING AND NOTHINGNESS CONTENT -INTRODUCTION -ANALYSIS -REFERENCES -BIOGRAPHY OF WRITER

INTRODUCTION:

Sartre details his rejection of Kant’s concept of noumenon. Kant was an idealist, believing that we have no direct way of perceiving the external world and that all we have access to is our ideas of the world, including what our senses tell us. Kant distinguished between phenomena, which are our perceptions of things or how things appear to us, and noumena, which are the things in themselves, which we have no knowledge of. Against Kant, Sartre argues that the appearance of a phenomenon is pure and absolute. The noumenon is not inaccessible—it simply isn’t there. Appearance is the only reality. From this starting point, Sartre contends that the world can be seen as an infinite series of finite appearances. Such a perspective eliminates a number of dualisms, notably the duality that contrasts the inside and outside of an object. What we see is what we get or, what appears is what we know.

ANALYSIS

From the beginning of Being and Nothingness, Sartre displays his debt to Nietzsche through his rejection of the notion of any transcendent reality or being that humans can know which might lie behind or beneath the appearances that make up reality. That is, the experience of appearances is reality. Although this does imply emptiness, Sartre does not see it as a negative truth. Freed of the search for some essential form being, we, as conscious beings (all beings-for-itself), are empowered in knowing that our personal, subjective experience of the world is all the truth there is. We are the ultimate judge of being and nonbeing, truth and falsity.

The key concepts of Sartre’s vision of the world are the being-in-itself and the being-for-itself. One way of understanding how they relate to each other is to think of being-in-itself as another word for object and the being-for-itself as another word for subject. The being-in-itself is something that is defined by its physical characteristics, whereas the subject is defined by consciousness, or nonphysical and nonessentializable attributes. These concepts overlap to a certain degree, since the being-for-itself, or subject, is also possessed of some of the physical self or some of the attributes of an object or being-in-itself. It thus follows that sometimes a being-for-itself can be harmfully and mistakenly regarded as a being-in-itself.

The interaction of beings possessed of consciousness is a major focus for Sartre, and as he describes a being-for-itself to interact with another being-for-itself, the key concepts are “the gaze” and “the other.” Without question, in Sartre’s view the gaze of the other is alienating. Our awareness of being perceived not only causes us to deny the consciousness and freedom inherent to us but also causes us to recognize those very qualities in our counterpart. Consequently, we are compelled to see the other who looks at us as superior, even if we recognize his gaze as ultimately dehumanizing and objectifying. In response to the gaze of the other, we will assert ourselves as free and conscious and attempt to objectify the individual who objectifies us, thus reversing the relationship. The pattern of relations Sartre describes appears frequently in society. The assertion of freedom and transcendence by one party often results in the repression of those conditions in another. Race-based slavery and the treatment of women by men in patriarchal societies are two obvious examples.

Sartre brings up the ethical implications of the ontological vision set forth in being in Nothingness only at the end of the work. In later works, notably the famous lecture “The Humanism of Existentialism,” Sartre attempts to outline a philosophy of ethics based on an existentialist study of the nature of being. In short, he argues that values are never objective, as they are created by the choices and actions of free individuals. Herein lays the room for hope that Sartre inserts into a work so full of nothingness and lack: freedom is humanity’s curse as well as its blessing, and what we make of that freedom is our own. In it lies great and indeterminate possibility.more about existentialism

References:

^ Jean-Paul Sartre (1943)"Being and Nothingness: A Phenomenological Essay on Ontology" ^ Levy, Neil (2002). Sartre. One World Publications. pp. 111. ^ Being and Nothingness, p. 2. ^ Ê&N, p. 45; Barnes, p. 9 ^ Ê&N, p. 41; Barnes, p. 7 ^ a b c Spade, Paul Vincent. "An analysis of "The look"". http://home.earthlink.net/~mazz747/id12.html. Retrieved 2006-07-02. ^ "Jean-Paul Sartre - Being and Nothingness". http://cbae.nmsu.edu/~dboje/teaching/503/sartre_links.htm. Retrieved 2006-07-02. ^ Sartre, Jean-Paul; translated by Hazel E. Barnes [1958] (2003). Being and Nothingness. London: Rout ledge. pp. 649–656. ISBN 0-415-27848-1. Sartre, Jean-Paul, Pg. 101-103, Being and Nothingness A Phenomenological Essay On Ontology. Gallimard, 1943

BIOGRAPHY OF THE WRITER

Name: Albert Camus Birth Date: November 7, 1913 Death Date: January 4, 1960 Place of Birth: Mondovi, Algeria Place of Death: Paris, France Nationality: French Gender: Male Occupations: novelist, essayist, playwright