Far from being an internal, passive container for our thoughts and experiences, human consciousness is constantly projecting itself to the outside world and imbuing it with meaning. In a new, more accessible translation, this foundational text argues that we alone create our values and our existence is characterized by freedom and the inescapability of choice. A brilliant and radical account of the human condition, Being and Nothingness explores what gives our lives significance. In 1943, Jean-Paul Sartre published his masterpiece, Being and Nothingness, and laid the foundation of his legacy as one of the greatest twentieth century philosophers. “This is a philosophy to be reckoned with, both for its own intrinsic power and as a profound symptom of our time” ( The New York Times). However, the book has been criticized for its abstruseness and for its treatment of Freud.Revisit one of the most important pillars in modern philosophy with this new English translation-the first in more than 60 years-of Jean-Paul Sartre’s seminal treatise on existentialism. Many have praised the book's central notion that " existence precedes essence", its introduction of the concept of bad faith, and its exploration of "nothingness", as well as its novel contributions to the philosophy of sex. On these grounds, Sartre goes on to offer a philosophical critique of Sigmund Freud's theories, based on the claim that consciousness is essentially self-conscious.īeing and Nothingness is regarded as both the most important non-fiction expression of Sartre's existentialism and his most influential philosophical work, original despite its debt to Heidegger. In accordance with Husserl's notion that consciousness can only exist as consciousness of something, Sartre develops the idea that there can be no form of self that is "hidden" inside consciousness. Born into the material reality of one's body, in a material universe, one finds oneself inserted into being. In Sartre's account, man is a creature haunted by a vision of "completion" (what Sartre calls the ens causa sui, meaning literally "a being that causes itself"), which many religions and philosophers identify as God. Though influenced by Heidegger, Sartre was profoundly skeptical of any measure by which humanity could achieve a kind of personal state of fulfillment comparable to the hypothetical Heideggerian "re-encounter with Being". Sartre attributed the course of his own philosophical inquiries to his exposure to this work. While a prisoner of war in 19, Sartre read Martin Heidegger's Being and Time (1927), which uses the method of Husserlian phenomenology as a lens for examining ontology.
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