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Being and Nothingness Jean-Paul Sartre’s Being and Nothingness Class Lecture Notes Professor Spade Spring 2010 “Jean-Paul Sartre’s Being and Nothingness: Class Lecture Notes, Spring 2010,” by Paul Vincent Spade is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. ii Table of Contents Procedures and Business Matters............................................................................ 1 Graded Work ....................................................................................................... 2 Plan of Attack ..................................................................................................... 4 Sartre: Life and Writings ........................................................................................ 6 Life ...................................................................................................................... 6 Writings............................................................................................................... 7 Juvenilia (to 1936) .......................................................................................... 7 The Phenomenological Period (1936-40) ....................................................... 8 The Existential Period (1943-1952) .............................................................. 10 The Marxist Period (1960-1980) .................................................................. 11 Program of Events ................................................................................................. 12 Two Main Influences on Sartre ............................................................................. 13 The Reactionary Stream .................................................................................... 13 The Phenomenological Stream ......................................................................... 15 Husserl: Life and Works ....................................................................................... 15 The Idea of Phenomenology ................................................................................. 16 Kant ....................................................................................................................... 21 Review .................................................................................................................. 30 The Two Stages of Husserl’s Philosophy ............................................................. 31 The Idea of Phenomenology (Again) .................................................................... 32 The Phenomenological Reduction ........................................................................ 37 The Eidetic Reduction ........................................................................................... 48 1. Importance of the Eidetic Reduction ............................................................ 50 2. Are We Arguing After All? .......................................................................... 51 3. What Is “Genuinely” Immanent in the End? ................................................ 51 4. The Phenomenological Reduction Is Still in Force ...................................... 53 5. How Do Universals Get Us Outside the Mind? ............................................ 55 6. The Role of Universals in All This ............................................................... 56 The Theory of Intentionality ................................................................................. 57 Constitution ........................................................................................................... 65 Sartre ..................................................................................................................... 69 Three Kinds of Consciousness of an Object ..................................................... 70 Perception ..................................................................................................... 71 Imagination ................................................................................................... 75 Conception .................................................................................................... 77 Sartre’s Reaction to Husserl.................................................................................. 78 The Emphasis on the Individual ....................................................................... 79 Human Freedom................................................................................................ 81 iii Levels of Constitution ....................................................................................... 84 Sartre’s Metaphysics ............................................................................................. 88 Being-In-Itself and Its Characteristics .............................................................. 90 Being Is in Itself ............................................................................................ 90 Being Is ......................................................................................................... 91 Being Is What It Is ........................................................................................ 93 Being-For-Itself and Its Characteristics ............................................................ 98 Being (for itself) Is Not in Itself .................................................................... 98 Being for Itself Is ............................................................................................ 101 Being for Itself Is not What It Is ................................................................. 101 Positional & Non-positional Consciousness, Reflective & Non-Reflective Consciousness ..................................................................................................... 106 The Self-Love Theory ......................................................................................... 113 The Constitution of the Ego ................................................................................ 117 The Magical .................................................................................................... 126 The Problem of Other Minds .......................................................................... 138 The Origin of Negation ....................................................................................... 140 Hegel and Heidegger ....................................................................................... 150 The Origin of Nothingness .............................................................................. 152 The Gambler ................................................................................................... 155 Vertigo ............................................................................................................ 158 Bad Faith (Self-Deception) ................................................................................. 162 The Waiter ...................................................................................................... 169 Belief ............................................................................................................... 173 The Emotions ...................................................................................................... 184 The Peripheric Theories .................................................................................. 188 The Intellectual Theories ................................................................................ 193 Sartre’s Own Theory ....................................................................................... 195 The Magical World ......................................................................................... 199 False Emotions and the Physiology of The Emotions .................................... 202 Part II: Being-For-Itself ....................................................................................... 203 Presence to Self ............................................................................................... 208 Facticity........................................................................................................... 210 Lack................................................................................................................. 213 Value (= Ethics) .............................................................................................. 216 Possibility ........................................................................................................ 221 Time .................................................................................................................... 223 Pure and Impure Reflection ................................................................................ 232 The Existence of Others ...................................................................................... 240 Husserl ............................................................................................................ 251 Hegel ............................................................................................................... 254 iv Heidegger ........................................................................................................ 255 Summary (in Reverse Order) .......................................................................... 256 The Look ............................................................................................................
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