Being and Nothingness (1943) is the most comprehensive and
far-reaching statement of Jean-Paul Sartre’s philosophy. It is
subtitled: “An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology.”
Phenomenology is the study of how phenomena present or appear in
consciousness. Ontology is the study of being. Thus, phenomenological
ontology can be defined as the study of the nature of being of phenomena
as they present in consciousness.
What is Being? What is Nothingness? How are they related? For
Sartre, Being is objective, it is what is. Being is in-itself.
Existence, on the other hand, has a subjective quality in relation to
human reality. Existence refers to the fact that some individual or
thing is present in the world.
Sartre distinguishes between two types of Being: “Being-in-itself”
(être-en-soi) and “Being-for-itself” (être-pour-soi). Being-in-itself
is non-conscious Being, the Being of existing things or objects of
consciousness. Being-for-itself is conscious Being, which is conscious
of what it is not.
Being-for-itself is conscious of itself. Indeed, consciousness can
exist only as engaged in a being conscious of itself. Being-for-itself
is consciousness of objects, and can be the object of its own
consciousness; i.e. it is conscious that it is conscious of objects.
Consciousness also includes self-consciousness.
Sartre emphasizes that “all consciousness is consciousness of
something.” This is an ontological proof of what appears in
consciousness. If consciousness can only be consciousness of something
other than itself, then what appears in consciousness must already
exist.
Sartre distinguishes between two type of consciousness: unreflective consciousness, and reflective consciousness.
Unreflective consciousness is seen in the pre-reflective cogito of
Descartes (i.e. the statement “I think, therefore I am” says that I
think, but not that I think about myself.) Unreflective consciousness
is conscious of its consciousness, but does not attempt to become its
own object.
Reflective consciousness, on the other hand, is conscious of its lack
in relation to Being other than itself. Reflective consciousness can
also be called moral consciousness, because it reveals values. Values
can be determined by the Being-for-itself, in that the Being-for-itself
sees what is lacking in relation to itself.
Because consciousness can conceive of a lack of Being,
Being-for-itself is also the nihilation of Being-in-itself.
Being-for-itself brings Nothingness into the world, because
Being-for-itself judges other beings by seeing what it is not.
Being-for-itself nihilates itself, and becomes its own Nothingness.
Nothingness is a state of non-being. Nothingness does not itself
have Being, but is sustained by Being. Sartre disagrees with Hegel that
Being and Nothingness are opposite, or are opposed as thesis and
antithesis respectively. Sartre says that Nothingness is the
contradiction, and not the opposite, of Being. Nothingness is logically
subsequent to Being.
Sartre notes that Kierkegaard described anguish in the face of what
the individual lacks as anguish in the face of freedom, and that
Heidegger considered anguish as the apprehension of Nothingness. For
Kierkegaard, anguish is consciousness of freedom, whereas fear is dread
of something in the world.
Sartre agrees with both Kierkegaard and Heidegger, that anguish is
the recogniton by the Self of the possibility of making choices, and
that anguish is the discovery of Nothingness as future possibility.
For Sartre, anguish is the discovery that the Self faces Nothingness in
the past and the future, that the Self may nihilate itself, because
nothing relieves the Self of the responsibility for making choices, and
nothing guarantees the validity of the values that are chosen by the
Self.
Flight from anguish toward reassuring myths is an attitude that
Sartre calls “bad faith.” Religious or psychological beliefs which try
to impose order or meaning on human existence, or which try to make us
the passive subject of external forces, are an example of “bad faith,”
because they are an attempt to escape the responsibility for making free
choices. Through bad faith, we may seek to deny the responsible
freedom of Being-for-itself. Bad faith consists in hiding the truth from
ourselves. Sincerity is the antithesis of bad faith.
How is Being related to Space and Time? For Sartre, geometrical
space, or the reciprocity of spatial relations, is Nothingness. The
statement that “I know where I am” means that “I know where I am not.”
Space is a Nothingness, and is seen in terms of the For-itself’s free
project to organize relations between external objects.
Temporality is the process by which Being-for-itself continuously
nihilates Being-in-itself. The Past is what is no longer. The Past is
not nothing, the Past is what the For-itself has been. The Past is no
longer for-itself, the Past is in-itself. The For-itself is sustained
in being by the In-itself. The Present is Being-for-itself. The
Future is revealed to the For-itself as that which the For-itself is
not yet. The Future is the Being projected by the For-itself, because
the For-itself is perpetually apprehending itself as unachieved in
relation to it.
Being and Nothingness is remarkable for Sartre’s willingness
to confront Nothingness as part of human reality. Nothingness for us is
non-existence, negation, nihilation. Sartre argues for accepting
personal responsibility, despite the absence of a determining principle
that would guarantee objective certainty. He also argues that
consciousness of Being means consciousness of Nothingness. For Sartre,
we are our own Nothingness, and we bring Nothingness into the world.
Sartre confronts Nothingness, and embraces it as part of human reality.