Being and Nothingness Journal

Summary

In the first two chapters of Being and Nothingness, Sartre lays out some fundamental notions for
his investigation into the phenomenology of consciousness. He introduces his notion that
consciousness only exists by virtue by things that its not. There is only conscious reflection once
there is an ‘out there’, a thing, a form or appearance for consciousness to be aware that it is
aware. Now consciousness is not any of those forms, it seems rather, that consciousness
emerges from nothingness. This nothingness is also referred to as pre-reflective consciousness,
or the consciousness which is simply aware without any judgment. Sartre makes a distinction
between two types of being which are being-for-itself and being-in-itself. Being-for-itself refers to
the consciousness of a being which cannot be aware of itself and being-in-itself is the thing like
object that can be perceived by a conscious agent. He then introduces the notion of bad faith
which essentially comes down to the notion that people believe themselves to be constituent of
the facts of their life, i.e their ego. This practice of bad faith is one most (if not all) of us engage
in, though we might not be conscious of it. Lastly he introduces the notion of the look, which I’ve
understood as the fact that we only become aware of who we are (or at least think we are)
through the looks and judgments of other people. He notes that pride and shame are two
feelings that force us to be aware of ourselves, because they are directed at our ‘selfs’.

Reflection

I found this a very difficult text to read. It was a very slow read and I wasn’t sure whether I
understood the concepts he put forth which made it quite difficult to understand the text
considering that he would constantly refer back to those concepts as he went on. What I have
taken away from the text so far however is first of all an appreciation for the inquiry of
phenomenology- which takes direct experience in consciousness as the starting point of
philosophy. Rather than rely on inherited, abstract systems of thought, this methodology takes
direct experience as the basis for subsequent discourse and analysis. The same could be said
of contemplative and meditative traditions but I wonder what the major differences between the
two modes of inquiry (if they can even be separated) are. In that regard I wonder how mystical
Sartre’s philosophy gets and how much of it signifies concepts and ideas that are beyond the
rational mind. Whereas Sartre talks about nothingness in quite a rational manner as being the
logical conclusion in a line of inquiry, a mystic would speak of this nothingness in quite a
different manner. This nothingness or void, rather than conceptual, is said to be an experiential
reality.

Besides that, Sartre’s elucidation of ‘the look’ and his suggestion that we only become aware of
ourselves in relation to other people I found quite interesting. We have these personalities that
we carry around and so strongly believe in while most of us don’t understand how or why they
have emerged. We end up developing them and become so attached to them-bad faith. My
question though is, what can we do about this? Is the solution to disidentify from our
personalities or is the solution to aspire to construct the ideal personality?