Summary: Being and Nothingness

Sartre begins by recalling an essential contribution of phenomenology: the latter, by reducing the existent to the series of apparitions that manifest it ¹, makes it possible to get rid of the dualisms that embarrassed philosophy (being/appearance, thing-in-itself/phenomenon, interior/exterior, subject/object), replacing them with the monism of the phenomenon.

Now all appearances are equal. For example, force is nothing other than the totality of its effects. Thus the dualism of being and appearing can no longer find a place in philosophy. Appearance refers to the total series of appearances and not to a hidden real ².

No longer is there a power/act dualism: Everything is in act ³. Thus, for example, all of Proust's genius consists in his work itself, not in a supposed power to produce works.

The starting point of Being and Nothingness lies precisely in this question: what is the being of this seeming, insofar as it is no longer opposed to being? Or: what is being?

In fact, the being of the phenomenon escapes the phenomenal condition, it is transphenomenal. This is therefore a real question. How can we answer it?

To do this, we must look at consciousness. Indeed, if, as Sartre defines it, consciousness is the transphenomenal dimension of being of the subject and not a particular mode of knowledge, called intimate sense or self-knowledge ⁴, then we must grasp the nature of consciousness, this transphenomenal being, in order to grasp being, insofar as it is also transphenomenal.

The question thus becomes: what is consciousness?

Sartre recalls the essential contribution of Husserl's work:

All consciousness, Husserl showed, is consciousness of something. This means that there is no consciousness that is not the position of a transcendent object; or if we prefer, that consciousness has no content ⁵.

So a table is not in consciousness, even as a representation. A table is in space, next to the window ⁶.

The first step of a philosophy must be to expel things from consciousness and re-establish the latter's true relationship with the world: Consciousness transcends itself in order to reach an object ⁷. This is why Sartre's doctrine is not idealism: if all consciousness is consciousness of something, then subjectivity does not constitute the objective. To be conscious of something is to be faced with a concrete and full presence that is not consciousness ⁸, which is why a pure subjectivity would vanish ⁹.

In this perspective, we always have, as Heidegger pointed out, a pre-ontological, immediate understanding of being: The phenomenon of being, like any primary phenomenon, is immediately revealed to consciousness ¹⁰.

However, the phenomenon of being must be examined in order to elucidate its meaning.

Sartre proposes an essential distinction, pointing out that being is scattered into two incommunicable ¹¹ regions: being-in-itself and being-for-itself.

Being-in-itself designates the mode of being of things, which are content to be, without having any return on themselves, in other words consciousness: Being is not relation to itself, it is itself. It is an assertion that cannot assert itself, because it has impregnated itself with itself [...] we will sum this up by saying that being is in itself [...] this means that it does not refer to itself as self-consciousness: this self, it is ¹². It obeys the principle of identity: Being is what it is ¹³. A door is a door, and nothing more.

Being-for-itself designates man's mode of being, insofar as he has consciousness: the latter, because of the return on himself that he can operate, defines himself as being what is not and not being what he is ¹⁴. By becoming aware of himself, man distances himself from himself. Thus, he splits himself, is both the one who examines, and the one who is examined.

¹ L’Etre et le Néant, Gallimard, Paris, 1943, Introduction, I, p.11
² ibid.
³ ibid, III, p.17
⁴ ibid.
⁵ ibid.
⁶ ibid.
⁷ ibid., p.18
⁸ ibid, V, p.27
⁹ ibid., p.28
¹⁰ ibid, VI, p.30
¹¹ ibid.
¹² ibid., p.32
¹³ ibid.
¹⁴ ibid.