TO BE AN·a :

NOT TO BE Jacques Salvan

an analysis ol..lean-Paul
Sartre's ontology
 To Be and
Not To Be
.An Analysis 0/ Jean-Paul Sartre's Ontology

by
Jacques Salvan

Detroit Wayne State University Press 1962

To Be and Not To Be
Copyright © 1962 by Wayne State University Press,
Detroit 2, Michigan
All rights reserved
Published simultaneously in Canada by Ambassador Books,
Limited, Toronto, Olltario, Canada
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 61-12269
WaYllebook Number 6
 To
Florence
 Bestriding the positive
solid reality to which it is
attached, this phantom
objectifies itself.
HENRI BERGSON
 Contents
INTRODUCTION Xl

/ / BEING-IN-ITSELF 1
1. To be is to be perceived 1
2. To be is to be perceived by a perceiver who
is: the pre-reflective cogito 3
3. Being in itself 6
II BEING-FOR-ITSELF 10
__1. Negation and non-being 10
2. Non-being and liberty 15
3. Liberty and anguish 18
4. From anguish to bad faith: to be in order not
m~ n
5. Consciousness is not what it is; it is presence
to self 25
6. Consciousness is what it is not; that is its
facti city 27
/r.Being-in-itself-for-itself as the ideal value 29
8. From value to possibilities 31
9. Temporality 33
.-!if. Reflection 41
III BEING IN THE WORLD 46
1. Knowledge 46
2. Determination as negation 50
IX
 CONTENTS

3. Quality and quantity 52

4. Potentiality and utensility 54
5. World time 56
~Knowledge of the world 60
IV BEING FOR OTHERS 62
I.-The problem of the other's existence 62
...--2. Concrete realization of the other as con-
SCIOusness 67
3. The other as object 75
4. Metaphysical aspect of the question 77
? The three ontological dimensions of the body 80
6. Concrete relations with others 86
V BEING-IN-ITSELF-FOR-ITSELF IG4
1. Doing and being: liberty 104
2. Man's fundamental project-the individual
project--existential psychoanalysis 125
3. Doing and having 128
CONCLUSION 138
1. Metaphysical perspectives 138
2. Moral perspectives l-tI
3. The social problem 144
NOTES 150
INDEX 153

x
 Introduction

Existentialism is the philosophy of the Here and Now.

If, for a moment, as I reflect upon the fact of my existence,
I refrain from considering myself as a man among other men,
participating of the abstract character of mortal Man and
sharing the essence of mortal Man, if I turn my attention to
the actuality of my existence and come to wonder why I exist
as a man, why I was born, let us say, at the turn of the century
in a family of up-state New York Republicans belonging to
the Episcopalian Church, why I am meditating here and now
upon that fact, I can hardly fail to realize, probably with
some sort of awe and wonder, that the question cannot be
answered, that I just happen to have been born in such cir-
cumstances, that, in other words, my existence is entirely con-
tingent.
Presently, as I become aware that I cannot account for my
concrete existence, that there is no reason for it, at least none
that I can relate to my awareness of it, it will strike me as
being absurd. This awareness which I have of my existence
Xl
 INTRODUCTION

in such or such a place, at such or such a time, seems merely to

reflect a state of affairs which it cannot justify. This is what exis-
tentialist philosophers mean when they say Existence precedes
Essence. I may try to dismiss this painful realization by con-
sidering myself from the outside, as others see me, as a
human being among other human beings, as a link in the
chain of life, as a person exercising certain social functions, as
a person existing for others, and assume that in some way
the justification of my existence lies in their consciousness.
By so doing, I simply evade the question; my awareness of
being the center of reference of my world will continue to
reassert itself.
But if I reflect upon this awareness, it will no doubt appear
to me as the ultimate and most anguishing problem, to be
solved in solitude, and I will experience the feeling Pascal
tried to convey by the celebrated sentence: "The eternal silence
of these infinite spaces awes me."
This awe, this anguish, will be accompanied by an aware-
ness of the necessity of commitment, since, after all, to quote
Pascal again, I am "embarked" in this adventure of life with-
out any directions, any sense of its meaning which might be
grounded in the consciousness I have of my own existence.
How could a mere reflection be made the basis of that which
it merely reflects? In fact, how can this consciousness I have
of my own ex.istence be related to my existence, since it obvi-
ously is not my existence? No sooner do I reflect on the fact
that I exist than I am seized with a curious feeling of not
being that which I reflect upon. And yet, the necessity of
justifying in some way that existence of mine is still with me.
At once I have realized in anguish my non-being, and my
liberty, together with the contingency and the absurdity of
existence. Anguish, non-being and liberty are inseparable
xu
 INTRODUCTION

from the existential plane of thought. They generate a sense

of guilt since, no matter what I do, I cannot find the justifica-
tion of my existence in my awareness of it. There is a sense
of guilt connected, not with some libido or Oedipus complex,
but with existence itself.
While most of us recognize these data of the human situ-
ation for having experienced them at some time, few of us
will seek in them the ultimate truth about our existence; the
existentialists tell us that they give its true image and that any
other viewpoint is an escape into inauthentic existence and a
form of self-alienation. The average philosopher will reject
the existential plane of thought as too subjective and too
personal to provide a starting-point for the quest of the abso-
lute or, for that matter, for any form of serious thinking. But
the existentialist will claim that, through certain revealing
moods, he is trying to define a human condition which is
universal and of the utmost concern to everyone. When he
says "I," which he does a great deal, he implies: "and you as
well."
To that extent, existentialism is a philosophy, which moves
on a plane generally reserved for religion, and embodies a
certain attitude which those whom William James calls the
"healthy-minded" may see no reason to adopt as more authen-
tic than their own. There is, no doubt, an existentialist tem-
perament and some critics have gone so far as to define the
"existentialist man" as a distinct human type-an interesting
but altogether unimportant discovery. The real question is
why, at certain moments of history, the existentialist man's
popularity singles him out as the representative man of his
age. This has led to the common view that existentialism is a
philosophy of crisis. This is true, no doubt, of the modern
French and German schools and the case of Kierkegaard
Xlll
 INTRODUCTION

might be considered as the exception that confirms the rule,

since the Danish philosopher did not become popular until
the times were ripe for him. The case of Pascal, however,
testifies to the persistence, within the Christian religion, of a
certain existentialist trend which may be traced back to Saint
Augustine, who also influenced such independent thinkers
as Luther, Calvin and Descartes. Emmanuel Mounier has
pointed out that through Saint Augustine the existentialist
tradition goes back to Plato. Indeed the debate which has
been waged around existentialism was not merely between
the Christian and the non-Christian views of life, but also,
within Christianity, between the tradition of Saint Thomas
and the tradition of Saint Augustine, between the Aristotelian
and the Platonic trends. This would seem to involve a para-
dox since Platonism, in which the things of this world are
considered as the shadows of immortal Ideas, or essences,
appears, at first glance, to be the very antithesis of existential-
ism. The problem raised by this paradox cannot be examined
here. Let us note, however, that, through Hegel, the Heracli-
tean philosophy of flux, the notion that there is nothing in
this world which does not contain at once being and non-
being, have also cast their shadow on a philosophy which was
given at first as a reaction against Hegelianism, and that
Kierkegaard perhaps, Heidegger and Sartre certainly, have
brought back to the Augustinian tradition important elements
of pre-Socratic thought.
Existentialism is then at once one of the few possible basic
attitudes toward re::dity and a philosophy with a lon~ tr:ldi-
tion. It is better understood as the modern form of that tradi-
tion, which has never ceased to enrich and clarify itself ,,·hile
contending with other philosophical traditions.
As Augustine, bishop of Hippo, was writing his Con/u-
XIV
 INTRODUCTION

sions and his City of God, the barbarians were invading his
native North Africa and the ancient world was crumbling
around him; the times could not have been more favorable
for the birth of a philosophy of crisis. That philosophy was
elaborated indeed in the anguish of the famous: "lrrequietum
est cor nostrum donee requieseat in Te": "Restless is our
heart until it may rest in Thee." The God that haunts human
consciousness, like Sartre's absolute value, is of course more
than a value; it is the most intimate part of myself: intimior
intimo mea ... , an absolute Thou, strictly the God of all
religious existentialists. Reconsidered in the light of existen-
tialism, Saint Augustine's is a most subjective philosophy
which takes its point of departure in the fact that while I may
doubt the ultimate reality of the world, I have to recognize
that I exist as doubt, therefore as thought (Descartes' eogito);
further, and this is of particular interest to us, that this con-
sciousness of existing as a thinking self is always with me,
even when my consciousness is completely absorbed by its
object (Sartre's pre-reflective eogito). It is this eogito, situ-
ated in the Here and Now, which brings together the dis-
persed elements of reality and, in a way, creates the W orId
(Heidegger's Dasein). Finally, the Augustinian notion of a
fundamental guilt attached to existence itself is a basic element
of modern existentialism, particularly in Heidegger and Sartre.

Descartes' merit was to break with the authority of the

Aristotelian school and by returning, through methodical
doubt, to the strict evidence of the eogito: "I think, therefore
I am," to lay the basis of rational thinking a.~ applied to the
external world. Of course, he had only established his exist-
ence as a "thinking substance" and had to reach through the
idea of perfection the existence of a God who would guarantee
xv
 INTRODUCTION

that of the world around him. Nevertheless, having discon-

nected his thinking substance from the world of extension,
he could now proceed to translate extension into geometry,
algebra, and mathematics through the use of his coordinates.
He could also proceed to seek the liberty of mind within the
unity of a thinking substance divorced from extension. But
the hypothetical observer involved, as a center of reference,
by his coordinates, had little to do with the thinking self
which had produced the cogito.
It was up to Pascal to re-establish the cogito within the
Here and Now. Before thought can think itself as a pure
abstraction, it discovers itself in awe as the center of reference
determined by the existence of a body situated between the
two infinites of greatness and smallness, infinitely removed
from the beginning and the end of things which alone would
permit him to understand his situation, unable to understand
the absurd contingency of his existence here rather than there,
seeking in meaningless activities the diversion which will
permit him to forget his human condition, so miserable that
he could not be happy alone in a room, where he would have
to face that condition, so vain that it is enough for him to
push a billiard ball or chase a hare to forget it, guilty through
his very nature, which forces him to make his ego the center
of the world.
Yet, to Pascal, the misery of man is the sign of his great-
ness. The very fact that his existence appears to him con-
tingent and absurd is a proof that there is in him an element
that is neither contingent nor absurd. His misery is that of a
dispossessed king. Alone of all the beings of creation, he
knows that he is going to die. While he is comprised among
them within the world, he comprises the world in some way
within his thought. The importance which he attaches to the
XVl
 INTRODUCTION

consideration of others, the fact that he wants to live an

imaginary life in their minds, testifies to his recognition of the
same element of infinity in them. It is no use for man to try
to be either an angel or a beast; he is neither angel nor beast
but an incomprehensible monster and the dogma of the Fall
alone can explain that dual nature. This being recognized,
the only rational thing to do is to take the leap into the irra-
tionality of revelation. This brief outline does not do justice
to the wealth of a thought from which none of the existential-
ist themes is missing, but it shows how, in opposition to
Descartes, Pascal replaces the cogito within the Here and
Now as a living center of reference.

Kierkegaard is to Hegel what Pascal is to Descartes. But

Hegel in his turn can only be understood in relation to Ger-
man romantic philosophy and its notion of Uldentitiit": iden-
tity of the self with the soul of the world, with the cosmos
itself. Reflecting upon this notion, Hegel thought that some
logic had to be introduced into this mysticism. The notion
of "Identitiit" had to be corrected and rendered articulate
through that of UNegatitlitat": I can consider myself as the
ultimate product in the evolution of an absolute Being which
has finally become conscious through me but my conscious-
ness never coincides with what I am. As I reflect upon the
present moment, it is already past. My life is in process of
becoming. Hegel's philosophy is a logical elaboration of the
old Heraclitean philosophy of change. Within the W orId
Mind, Being generates its opposite Non-Being and the two
combined produce Becoming. It must be that our finite minds
are only parts of the World Mind actualizing itself. Being all
parts of reality, the World Mind can mediate between them.
Opposites participate in the same organic totality, and, in
xvii
 INTRODUCTJO;-<

some way, they are the totality. Truth is Totality in the same
way as the truth of the paragraph is the book itself.
Kierkegaard claims that one cannot adopt the viewpoint
of the totality in this sort of objective idealism, because one
would have to be completely outside of it to do so. Hegel
appears to him as a self-appointed secretary of the absolute,
living in a shack while building his metaphysical palace. The
individual self is the real center of reference; truth is not
totality, truth is subjective intensity and absolute belief in the
absurd is better than lukewarm belief in the proven. In other
words, Truth is Faith, a communication between the believer
and God. God is not an object, a supreme Being, he is an
alter ego, a Thou, an absolute subject. When we consider our-
selves as part of a totality, we see ourselves as objects, and,
to Kierkegaard, there is no objective truth. Each subjectivity
is unique, closed upon itself, becoming itself through deeds,
and martyrdom is the supreme message, because it awakens
others to their subjectivity. The instant, which does not exist
in Heraclitean time, is our chance to become free, the inser-
tion of eternity within our becoming, our chance to make a
choice before God and to answer every alternative with "yes"
or "no." To choose is to choose oneself face to God. But,
before God, one can only feel guilty: guilty of standing, finite
and contingent, before the Infinite. Our finitude is our meta-
physical sin and we experience it in various kinds of anguish.
It is assumed in dread by the real Christian, who faces Jesus
Christ as his contemporary, not once for all but in an act of
faith constantly repeated. Of course, the average Christian is
satisfied with mere conformity to the practices of his religion;
but then he has no Self. Kierkegaard defines a hierarchy of
three planes of existence, corresponding, it seems, to the
beautiful, the good, and the true, and probably suggested by
xviii
 INTRODUCTION

Plato: the aesthetic plane, the ethical plane (which may be

religious after a fashion), and the plane of faith which in-
volves the acceptance of the scandal of God made man. One
has to leap from one plane to the next but irony and humor
may constitute between them two landings which constitute
negations of the preceding plane. One should be careful not
to remain there indefinitely.
Kierkegaard's call remained unheeded for a century for the
trend was definitely toward scientific objectivity, and the very
conception of free-will was completely discredited by serious
thinkers. With Darwin, the romantic vision of a world in the
process of becoming had turned into objective study of the
effect of surroundings on living organisms. The reaction came
in the late 19th Century with various forms of Idealism, but
mostly through a new concept of evolution introduced by the
prophets of life and intuition, with whom the prophet of the
Superman may be loosely classified.

It is customary, in retracing the history of existentialism,

to pass from the Kierkegaardian epigram to the Nietzschean
rhapsody. Nietzsche borrowed from Schopenhauer his defini-
tion of the World as Will. The ultimate reality behind appear-
ances, being-in-itself, was nothing else than the wild strife of
life. Knowledge, abstract ideals, are only means to an end,
which is power, and should be treated as such. God is dead,
and Christian values appear to Nietzsche to be those of slave
morality, the values of the herd and of democracy. The time
has come for the Superman to arise and create a new table of
values. The realization of the new liberty will come with
anguish and nausea but it can be turned into joyous will. This
is not a call to licentiousness: the Dionysian intoxication with
life must be disciplined by the Apollonian sense of balance
xix
 INTRODUCTION

and harmony. But life must be accepted with the enthusiasm

of the amor tati, for life repeats itself in eternal recurrence
and our fundamental dilemma is to say "Yes" or "No" to life.
It must be noted that Nietzsche's ideas had a considerable
influence on the western world long before they came to be
associated with those of modern existentialism.
The influence of Bergson and James, while not so well
recognized to-day, was no less profound, in a less disquieting
way. It is doubtful whether the philosophies of existence could
have been born if they had not been preceded by Bergson's
philosophy of life, and the latter is certainly due for a re-
evaluation. Thanks to his scientific training, Bergson could
meet the prophets of scientific determinism on their own
ground. He discovered that duration did not play any part in
scientific calculation, and that scientific time is really made
up of simultaneities. Duration was the stuff of our psychic
life, which consists in a constant interpenetration of all our
"states of consciousness." Our whole past would always be
with us if memory did not-paradoxically-screen from our
consciousness whatever data are useless for action in a gi\'en
situation. The reason why we cannot prove liberty is because
the human intellect acts primarily through inorganic matter
and can think only in terms of extension, multiplicity, ex-
teriority and causation. On the biological plane, this means
that With. man, the vital upsurge (!'ela11 vital). of creati\'e
evolution took a very radical turn when it began to act
through inorganic matter. Through this process, man man-
aged to disconnect himself, to a certain extent, from the flux
of life, retaining only as a sort of indistinct fringe. the intui-
tive privilege of direct intuition. This is his original sin. Only
through intelligence can he formulate certain questions; only
intuition could answer them. A closer contact with the world
xx
 INTRODUCTION

of intuition would free homo faber from his tendency to think

of life, the mind, and duration in terms of inanimate matter
and spatial time.
The resemblance of James' pragmatism to Bergson's vital-
ism is quite obvious, particularly in their formulation of the
genesis of the free act. James goes further than Bergson in
affirming that the truth of a statement is that it can be proved
to work. Their critique of objective knowledge led both of
them to the praise of the mystical fusion between subject and
object which we find in James' Varieties of Religious Experi-
ence and in Bergson's The Two Sources of Morality and
Religion. The last chapter of James' work might constitute an
excellent introduction to existentialism on the psychological
plane. Bergson's may elucidate the relation between religious
and atheistic existentialism through his distinction between
the god of the city, defined as the custodian of public morality,
and the god of the mystic, defined as the spirit of creation
recaptured through a sort of intuitive receptivity. It is not by
mere chance that the publication of The Two Sources coin-
cided with the new wave of mysticism sponsored by Romain
Rolland, Aldous Huxley, and Somerset Maugham, and the
triumph of the irrational in surrealism.

Meanwhile, as an implicit protest against the vogue of this

new mysticism and the persistent popularity of naturalism, the
philosophy of existence was born in Germany. As early as 1923,
Martin Buber had defined its core in the three words: land
Thou and It. Buber distinguished between two planes of exist-
ence: the I-Thou and the I-It planes; the I-Thou plane is the
plane of realization. The Thou may be God, the other, or the
world. The I-It plane is the plane of orientation, or utilization,
a plane of tools, on which we treat not only things, but others
XXI
 IKTRODUCTION

and even God as things; the It, indeed, is the original third
person. The I-Thou and the I-It are structures; through the
Thou a man becomes I. Buber's distinction between these two
planes will remain valid in all forms of modern existential-
ism. We might add, at this point, to our definition of this
movement that it is first and foremost a protest against objecti-
fication of the self and of the Other.

Karl Jaspers, whose philosophy appeared in 1932, distin-

guishes three planes of being. The Dasein (being-there) is the
plane of objective and scientific knowledge as applied to the
world and to man as an element of the world. Existenz con-
cerns man as subject, i.e., as a being that is not, but can and
must be, and transcends the world as possibility and liberty.
Transcendence is the mysterious background of everything.
neither the God of revelation, nor Descartes' perfect being.
nor anything conceivable, because it cannot be the object of
thought but can only be encountered in extreme, or limiting.
situations. Each plane leads to failure, for reasons which can-
not be developed here, and the rest is silence. Nevertheless, we
realize oursel ves, through that very failure, as we move from
one pbnc to the next. and recognize that our sin is to be free
and finite. Yet our liberty is the truth of our being, 3nd what
I W3nt of the other, through whom I realize that I am myself,
is his liberty. My relation with the other is therefore a love
conflict.

The name of G3briel M3rcel is often linked with th:1t of

Jaspers, for reasons which are not completely obvious. They
evolved their philosophy at about the same time. since 1hr-
eel's Metaphysical IOllrnal was published in 1927. and his
Having and Being in 1935. At first under the influence of
XXJ1
 INTRODUCTION

Bergson, he turned to existentialism, III fact invented the

word, under the influence of Royce's concept of "fidelity,"
which detail ought to make us reconsider the accepted notion
that existentialism is completely foreign to American phi-
losophy. Like most existentialists, Marcel criticized Descartes
for starting from the reflective moment when consciousness
withdraws from life, and tried to replace the cogito within
concrete existence-Within the Here and Now. When I say
that something exists, 1 always connect it, no matter how
indirectly, with my body. As in Pascal, my body is my center
of reference, but as participation in the life of the world,
rather than for contemplation. There is therefore no problem
of the existence of the world; it belongs to the same structure
as my body. But I may experience my participation on the two
different planes of Having and Being.
Because my body permits me to act on things, I consider
them as objects distinct from me. Those on which I can act
without restriction, I consider as mine. My body appears to
me as a tool which I have. So do other people, and for that
matter, my own convictions, or the questions which I raise
when I say that I have problems. Marcel's plane of Having
corresponds to Buber's I-It plane.
To the plane of Having, Marcel opposes the plane of Being.
Being is not a problem that I have, it is a mystery which I am.
The I is not a "thinking substance," nor a succession of "states
of consciousness," it is consciousness itself: commitment and
fidelity. The self as fidelity is, of course, a mystery and the
trouble with mysteries is that you cannot consider them with-
out turning them into problems. Questioning this mystery of
the self as fidelity, Marcel finds that it is basically commit-
ment to that which transcends time; fidelity assumes the past,
faces the present and builds up the future through continued
xxiii
 INTRODUCTION

creation. Joy is the feeling of inexhaustibility and is turned

toward the future, while pleasure is connected with Having
(to have a good time), which in some way is always related
with the past. Between these two planes, we are placed in an
alternative which forces us to choose between hope and de-
spair. Like Buber, Marcel considers the I as always related
to a Thou. God is the absolute Thou, and it is to Him that
I am primarily committed. The god thought of in the third
person is the god the atheist denies. "To thine own self be
true" implies the recognition of some other Self. The We
expresses that recognition. This, of course, raises the question
of the I as a center of reference. Marcel, at this point, uses the
Bergsonian distinction between open and closed religion and
applies it to our relation to others. I am open to the other
insofar as he ceases to form with myself a sort of circle inside
of which I lodge him, or the idea of him.

The religious existentialisms we have considered so far

insist on delineating the limits of the objective world but do
not deny that it is a very real world. They protest against the
objectification of the human person but stay clear of the
pantheistic ideal of complete fusion with the world or with
God, whom they consider as the absolute Thou.
With Nicolas Berdyaev, the outstanding member of the
Paris personalist group, a Russian emigre who is also the
prophet of Russian emigres, the protest against objectification
goes as far as to reject the objective world altogether, either as
too remote from its transcendent source to have any reality,
or as being the exclusive domain of the Prince of the \Vorld
whose reign is singularly successful. His sources indeed are
not only Kierkegaard and Bergson but also John, the Gnostics,
the German mystics and German romantic philosophy.
XXIV
 INTRODUCTION

To him, the material world, the world of physical laws

and of necessity, this dead residue of a cooling divine fire
tottering to its end, is largely an illusion of our consciousness.
To the objectified world belong all moral and social laws, as
well as the objectified figure of a God thirsting for power
and domination. This God, created to the image of primitive
man, is precisely the God denied by atheism. Atheism is like
the dialectical cleansing of the idea of God, and is a necessary
moment in the knowledge of the true God who is Spirit,
Liberty and Love. This Spirit, in the cosmic process, has become
conscious in the human person and has attained absolute
embodiment in the man-God Jesus Christ. It can be found in
any creative act leading to liberty and love. The person (as
opposed to the Ego), shares with God a liberty which origi-
nates in the Non-Being anterior to Creation. The spirit of
God is immanent in the person as the values of Liberty, Love,
Truth, Justice and Beauty. It is present to evil, not as a judge
but as an evaluating consciousness. It is preparing the new
religion, which will be that of the kingdom of the spirit. It
also leads to the end of the world and to the last judgment,
which is the voice of God within conscience. What Berdyaev
preaches is a direct and intimate union between the human
spirit and the transcendent spirituality, the beginning and the
end of all things, present in the world only in the form of a
mystical human participation. It is difficult to condense the
loosely related intuitive flashes which constitute Berdyaev's
developments with the absolute certainty of remaining faith-
ful to his thought. What seems to distinguish him from the
other existentialists is a rejection of the objective world which
recalls the Gnostics, and a metaphysical presentation of the
apocalyptic vision so prevalent on the modern stage and in
modern art.
xxv
 INTRODUCTION

Marcel and Berdyaev have, to a certain extent, clarified for

us the relations between the religious and the atheistic kinds
of existentialism. The latter, by reason of its method, is also
defined as "phenomenological," which calls for a brief de-
scription of Husserl's "phenomenological reduction."

Edmund Husserl, born in 1859, is not an existentialist, but

like most of them, he starts with a critique of Descartes'
cogito. The cogito is valid, but Descartes should have said:
"cogito cogitatum": "I think whatever I think," for to be
conscious is to be conscious of something, were it only, as in
Descartes' case, consciousness itself. Consciousness aims at
things and is primarily intentional; but Husserl had learnt
from Kant that we know only phenomena, i.e., appearances.
To study the various intentions of consciousness and establish
a true science of the mind, Husserl goes back to that moment
of universal and methodical doubt which precedes Descartes'
cogito) and decides to stay there. To doubt is not to negate but
to leave in suspense. This is what he calls "bracketing the
world." The object is there only insofar as it is other than
the subject. Husserl can now go about his business, which is
to study the structures of consciousness, as securely as Des-
cartes to his, which was the study of extension, when God
had restored the world to him. By bracketing the world,
Husserl is able to describe the intentionality of consciousness
turned toward itself or toward the object. Perceiving, imagin-
ing, etc., are described as the intentions of consciousness.
The practice of this method, which excludes hypotheses and
metaphysical speculation, may perhaps explain why Hei-
degger and Sartre seem to have access to a plane of immediate
consciousness which is closed to us, although we recognize
perfectly well the experiences described, once they have been
XXVI
 INTRODUCTION

pointed out to us. Both believe that since consciousness is mere

empty intention, all one has to do to reach the truth of things
is to let them be what they are, which is not as easy as it
seems. Truth is not the adequation of the thing to the idea;
truth is unveiling. Bergson had taught us that consciousness
merely allows us to turn our attention from that which we do
not need to know in order to act, which amounts somehow
to the same thing. Consciousness is like a veil that we draw
or withdraw at will. If we can be naive enough, all we have
to do is to retain a certain openness and the truth will appear
as it is. There is no problem of knowledge; communication,
no doubt, is something else. Fundamentally it is Being, the
ultimate reality behind all the various modes of being, that
Heidegger wants to reach, in his main work, Sein und Zeit
(1927), but he thinks that this can only be done through a
study of existential planes of being, which makes him an
existentialist in spite of himself.
To simplify matters, we might consider successively the
three planes of being which Heidegger discovers in his quest
of Being: brute being (das Seiende), existence (Ek-sistence),
and Pure Being (Sein).
Das Seiende is what simply is, the being of things: opaque,
contingent, and absurd. As a present participle, das Seiende
seems to indicate something in the process of becoming, but,
since it is the present participle of to be used as a noun, a
becoming which has become, perhaps something like Berg-
son's frozen life, or Berdyaev's cooling creation. Indeed it is
made up of being and non-being. I shall refer to it as "brute
being" rather than "brute existence," as is customary, to stress
the very special meaning Heidegger attaches to the word
existence.
Ek-sistence is reserved for man, or, as Heidegger prefers
XXVll
 INTRODUCTION

to call him: "the human reality." It is an "ek-static" mode of

being, which means that the human reality, as it tears itself
away from the contingency of brute being, is always, in some
way, beyond itself. It realizes itself in a triple movement of
transcendence in space, in time, and toward others; or rather,
it is this movement of transcendence which creates the W orid,
Temporality, and Humanity. These movements of transcend-
ence are not mere abstractions which in some way qualify
existence; they are authentic existence as possibility. In au-
thentic existence, I realize at once my non-being and the
contingency of what is.
There is, however, an inauthentic as well as an authentic
existence. In everyday life, I tend to identify myself with the
impersonal abstraction which we call "one," "they," "people,"
and which Heidegger calls "das Man." I tend to think that I
am in the world like any other being. I forget my possibilities
in inauthentic time, which is merely a succession of "nows,"
and I skip from one to the other, or escape from the present
into a future which is not my future because it is not my
possibility. My relations with others are made up of small talk,
equivocal attitudes, and the search for novelties. There is even
an inauthentic conscience, which is the call of "das klan"
within me.
I experience the inauthenticity of my existence through
various revealing moods. A certain anxiety, inseparable from
existence (Sorge) awakens me to my situation in the world as
being-there (Dasein), cast in the world without reason, and I
experience my dereliction (Geworfenheit). At the same time.
man-made objects point to the task of organizing the world
with others (Afitsein). Existence appears to me as a project
which concerns me, or rather which I am. My being is outside
of me, in the distance, in the future, with others. But my
XXVlll
 INTRODUCTION

supreme possibility is death, which is already present to me

as the possibility of there being no more possibilities for me,
as my own impossibility, as a non-being. Between birth and
death, my existence appears to me in its finitude, yet sur-
rounded by an infinity of possibilities that I shall never real-
ize, and for this sea of non-being which I cause to be, I feel
a secret anguish which invites me to recognize myself guilty
of having caused a lack of being. My finitude is my sin~ Hav-
ing accepted existing in finitude, I have to assume my guilt
in resolved existence as being-for-death.
Being-for-death is authentic existence. I cannot give mean-
ing to my birth, which is factual and contingent, but I can
give sense to my death. My death is like the last note of the
symphony, which rebounds on all the preceding· notes, in
which it was already present. It is not waiting for me outside,
it is present in all moments of my existence as their supreme
meaning. I am for death and Non-Being. As in Kierkegaar-
dian repetition, I must experience this again and again to
realize authentic temporality. Authentic temporality is not
clock-time. Starting from the future, which is my project, it
assumes the past and acts in the present as resolved existence.
Heidegger's quest of Being has led him only to describe
various regions, or fields, of being. His originality consists
in inflecting, so to speak, the verb to be, by making the prepo-
sition a part of it. Being-there, being-with, being-for, are not
Being; these modes of being suggest a lack, the Non-Being
which is the end and the meaning of existence. Heidegger's
definition of Non-Being is one of his most startling contribu-
tions to existentialism and one which Sartre used to the
utmost. Non-Being, of course, is not; Non-Being nihilates
it~elf (Das Nichts selbst nichtet). It is therefore a sort of active
force, and not an abstraction resulting from the negation of
xxix
 INTRODUCTION

everything conceivable; it is negation which springs from

Non-Being, and negation is only one of the various ways in
which negative behavior expresses itself. Heidegger's un-
pursued quest of Being seems to have brought him closer to
Non-Being than to Being. He lately has come to believe that
perhaps they are the same, thereby drawing nearer to Hegel
or, maybe, to the negative theology of German mysticism.

I should strictly have reserved for Jean-Paul Sartre the

name of existentialist, which no other philosopher of exist-
ence, not even Marcel, who coined the word, seems anxious
to share with him. Through Sartre, indeed, existentialism
attained overnight a popularity paid for with much mis-
understanding. This popularity was due largely to his novels
and plays. Through these, he had endowed with a philosophy
the "literature of commitment" which, since around 1930, was
trying to evolve a new kind of humanism.
This literature had its roots in the French humanistic
tradition of Montaigne and Pascal but it had also been in-
fluenced by the prophets at life and irrationalism. Nietzsche
had proclaimed: "God is dead." Malraux answered "and so is
Man." The new image of man had to be, not found in the
image of God, but created by man himself with his flesh :lnd
blood, and the writer was to commit himself personally to this
task. Malraux developed into a novel Pascal's parable of a
group of prisoners waiting for death as the most fitting image
of the human condition; but he made one of the prisoners rise
above that condition by giving to two weaker fellow-prisoners
the cyanide pellet which would have saved him from a horri-
ble death. Saint-Exupery's aviators seek a value that would
transcend human life while they open the new trails that will
xxx
 INTRODUCTION

establish the unity of llama faber's world Camus depicts man

as a stranger in a world of absurd contingency.
Sartre makes use of similar themes to illustrate his phi-
losophy, but his novels, in my opinion, can only be fully
understood in the light of that philosophy. If the reader un-
derstands Sartre's conception of man's fundamental project
and of its variations, he will have no difficulty identifying the
particular project represented by each character. He may even
be able to identify, to a certain extent, the author's own indi-
vidual project, for Sartre appears in his novels, sometimes in
transparent guise, as Roquentin, for example, in Nausea, and
as Mathieu in The Age of Reason. In Mathieu, we encounter a
character who, early in life, discovered that his existence would
be dedicated to liberty because he had just broken a precious
vase. An obscure intuition had revealed liberty to him as
negative behavior. Reaching the age of reason he was to dis-
cover the barren character of liberty for liberty's sake. But,
as Sartre himself tells us, man can hardly know himself.
SartreTs disciple, Simone de Beauvoir, allows us in her
memoirs a glimpse at the tireless energy and intellectual
honesty with which Sartre turned his negativity into con-
structivity in the slow and laborious elaboration of a coherent
system.
Born in 1905, he had the advantage of finding in the litera-
ture of commitment and in the works of his predecessors
most of the elements of the system he wanted to create. As a
student of philosophy at the Ecole Normale Sttpbieure, he
could apply his critical sense against any system tending
toward self-delusion or objectification on the subjective plane.
His drawings of imaginary metaphysical animals showed that
he had already reached that stage of self-satisfied negativity,
which Kierkegaard sees in humor, and which, according t'O
XXXI
 INTRODUCTION

him, may precede the leap to the irrational. At the same time,
Simone de Beauvoir tells us, he disliked society but did not
dislike disliking it. As a professor in provinciallycees, he had
a difficult time fitting himself into the academic hierarchy. At
the French Institute in Berlin, where he had been sent on a
scholarship to study Husserl, it was a great relief for him to
be able to recapture the liberty of student life and forget
adult responsibility. Back in France, and already applying
Husserl's methods to various works, he was for a while dis-
turbed in his intellectual detachment by the Spanish Civil
War, but it was not until the Second World 'Var, while serv~
ing in the Army Weather Service near Strasbourg, that a
sense of responsibility toward the next generation dawned
upon him, together with the conception of a system of ethics
consisting in "assuming situations" and surpassing them in
action. The few months he spent in a prison camp confirmed
him in this resolution. Repatriated in 1941, he resumed his
teaching in Paris lycees for a while, then resigned to dedicate
himself to writing and political activities. The times were only
too favorable for a literature of crisis. The "extreme situ-
ations" imagined by Jaspers had become daily realities. Sartre
has described them in an often quoted passage of The Repub-
lic of Silence:
Exile, captivity, and especially death (which we usually
shrInk from facing at all in happier days) became for us the
habitual objects of our concern. We learnt that they were
neither inevitable accidents, nor even constant and inevitable
dangers, but that they must be considered as our lot itself,
our destiny, the profound source of our reality as men. At
every instant we lived up to the full sense of this common-
place little phrase: "Man is mortal!" And the choice that
each of us made of his life was an authentic choice because
it was made face to face with death, because it could always
XXXll
 INTRODUCTION

have been expressed in these terms: "Rather death than ...."

And here I am not speaking of the elite among us who
were real Resistants, but of all Frenchmen who, at every
hour of night and day throughout four years answered
NO.... All those among us .•. who knew any details
cQncerning the Resistance asked themselves anxiously "If
they torture me, shall I be able to keep silent?"
Thus the basic question of liberty was posed, and we
were brought to the verge of the deepest knowledge that
man can have of himself. For the secret oj man is not his
Oedipus complex or his inferiority complex: it is the limit
of his own liberty, his capacity for resisting torture and
death. 1 .

This passage clearly reveals, in Heideggerian terms, how

definitely liberty was associated in his mind with negation. It
is this close association which permitted him to write the
sentence which puzzled so many of his readers: "We were
never so free as under the occupation." A trick of fate had
allowed him to live his negativity on the plane of heroism.
Saying "no" to evil was not mere rhetoric with him, for he
could manage, so Simone de Beauvoir tells us, to discover "a
core of non-being" in the acute suffering of the most severe
illness. Unfortunately, if he was singularly successful in his
affirmation of human liberty through negativity, both in his
life and in his works, he was less so in his constructive politi-
cal program. His first group, "Socialism and Liberty" found
few sponsors, his "Rally for Revolutionary Democracy" had
few adherents. Fewer still are those who are willing to follow
him in his recent attempts to reform Marxism from inside
while modestly claiming tbat his existentialism is merely an
ideology derived from Marx. Many of bis admirers will no
doubt feel that, in regard to a system which he once pursued
with his sarcasm, the philosopher is entirely too respectful.
xxxiii
 INTRODUCTIO:-;

Sartre bas been called the philosopher of negativity and it

is as such, in my opinion, that he made his greatest contribu-
tion to philosophy. He succeeded in formulating an episte-
mology. If he did not manage to do away with the mystery of
Being, he offered a solution to the most irritating problem of
knowing. His definition of knowledge as "identity denied"
should be welcome by those who are satisfied neither by
"objective knowledge" nor by "mystical intuition." In this
respect, his philosophy of existence marks a progress on the
philosophy of Life. Bergson's phantom of Non-Being, striding
the solid positive reality to which it is attached, is a very real
phantom, since while the solid positive reality could be with-
out him, he still manages to ride and govern it.
It is as the philosopher of negativity that Sartre should be
studied.2 The concept of negativity, made articulate by Hegel
on the plane of the absolute, stretched like a bridge between
Heaven and earth in Berdyaev's mystical vision, made active
on the plane of existence by Heidegger, is the very basis of
Sartre's system. Sartre starts where Heidegger ends, with the
discovery of a nihilating Non-Being. I prefer to translate
Sartre's neant as non-being, rather than nothingness, so as
to preserve a present participle that may suggest in some way
this nihilating action. As early as 1936, Sartre had identified
this nihilating non-being with the pre-reflective cogito in his
essay: La Transcendance de l'ego. In The Emotions (1939),
he studied the relations of this pre-reflective cogito with the
world, and tried to prove that emotions do not determine our
actions but constitute a certain way in which we choose to live
these relations. In The Psychology of the Imagination (19-m),
he rejected the conception of images as faded perceptions,
stored in the mind like discolored photographs in the family
album, to establish the theory that imagination is merely COIl-
XXXIV
 INTRODUCTION

sciousness aiming at an absent or non-existent object on the

background of a non-existent world.
In Being and Nothingness (L'Etre et Ie neant, 1943),
detailed presentation of which is the object of this book, Sartre
starts by establishing the presence of a pre-reflective cogito
in the very act of perception. He defines this primary con-
sciousness as simply not being the object, and as being-for-
itself. The object of perception is defined as being-in-itself,
identical with itself, in fact as being itself.
Sartre proceeds with the analysis of consciousness as being-
for-itself. Questioning the being of the for-itself, he derives, in
Cartesian fashion, the answer from the question. Questioning
involves the possibility of a negation, and negation the possi-
bility of a non-being. Sartre tries to prove that negation derives
from non-being, which is already in the heart of being. Con-
sciousness is the irruption of non-being into the positive world.
Consciousness, then, is an absolute non-being, which negates
its identity with the world, itself, and other consciousnesses.
These three forms of negation constitute what Sartre calls
the three "ek-stasies" of the for-itself.
The first ek-stasy is that of the in-itself modifying itself
into the for-itself by secreting its own non-being. The reader
should note that, from an absolute non-being, consciousness
turns into a qualified non-being by isolating the "this" or the
"that" from its background through external negation, but
negates at the same time its identity with the "this" or "that."
As in Bergson and Heidegger, the world appears as a tool-
complex, and consciousness as an absolute center of reference
for its organization. The non-being of consciousness is the
source of its liberty inasmuch as it breaks the chain of causality.
Liberty is directly experienced in anguish; we may experience
it before a past to be assumed or before the future as possi-
xxxv
 INTRODUCTION

bility. Temporality is also an ek-static structure through which

the for-itself, as a mere presence to that which it is not, negates
its in-itself which becomes the past, and projects itself as a
future presence to that which is not yet in existence. We run
away from liberty in such self-objectifications as determinism,
the spirit of seriousness, psychologism, Bergsonism, and bad
faith generally. Bad faith consists in trying to objectify the
various movements of the for-itself as if they had an existence
of their own. Bad faith, as a possibility, throws light on the
reflecti ve process.
Reflection is the second ek-stasy of the for-itself. In its
purified form, the for-itself would have to admit its non-
being, -its liberty and its transcendence; it would have to as-
sume the total situation in the light of its project, and would
not be very different from Heidegger's resolved existence.
Most of the time, it appears as an attempt to consider the
various movements of the for-itself as if they were in them-
selves, with a life of their own. It is the basis of psychology
and, to a great extent it is an attempt to see ourselves as others
see us. Since our primary consciousness and our reflective
consciousness are really one, it is a precarious plane of being
which already implies being-far-others.
Being-for-others is the third ek-stasy of consciousness. Since
any attempt to become an object for myself is bound to fail, I
may try to be at once object and subject for the Other. As I
discover my objectivity for him (as transcended-transcendence)
in his glance, I may be tempted to retain it by becoming for
him a limiting, or fascinating, object, with the ultimate end
of forcing him to recognize me also as subject. The realiza-
tion of this project is made precarious by the fact that, if I
become a subject for him, the Other in his turn will become
for me an object eager for my recognition of his subjectivity .
. XXXVI
 INTRODUCTION

bility. Temporality is also an ek-static structure through which

the for-itself, as a mere presence to that which it is not, negates
its in-itself which becomes the past, and projects itself as a
future presence to that which is not yet in existence. We run
away from liberty in such self-objectifications as determinism,
the spirit of seriousness, psychologism, Bergsonism, and bad
faith generally. Bad faith consists in trying to objectify the
various movements of the for-itself as if they had an existence
of their own. Bad faith, as a possibility, throws light on the
reflective process.
Reflection is the second ek-stasy of the for-itself. In its
purified form, the for-itself would have to admit its non-
being, its liberty and its transcendence; it would have to as-
sume the total situation in the light of its project, and would
not be very different from Heidegger's resolved existence.
Most of the time, it appears as an attempt to consider the
various movements of the for-itself as if they were in them-
selves, with a life of their own. It is the basis of psychology
and, to a great extent it is an attempt to see ourselves as others
see us. Since our primary consciousness and our reflective
consciousness are really one, it is a precarious plane of being
which already implies being-for-others.
Being-for-others is the third ek-stasy of consciousness. Since
any attempt to become an object for myself is bound to fail, I
may try to be at once object and subject for the Other. As I
discover my objectivity for him (as transcended-transcendence)
in his glance, I may be tempted to retain it by becoming for
him a limiting, or fascinating, object, with the ultimate end
of forcing him to recognize me also as subject. The realiza-
tion of this project is made precarious by the fact that, if I
become a subject for him, the Other in his turn will become
for me an object eager for my recognition of his subjectivity.
XXXVl
 INTRODUCTION

liberty. All human activities can be reduced to this funda-

mental project: we basically make things to have them;
having is an extension of my being, inasmuch as I can act on
the thing possessed or destroy it. In politics, I either try to
retain the world I have made mine, or to be the origin of a
new world. Within this fundamental human project, there
are many variations which constitute individual projects. It
is difficult for me to know what my individual project is,
because I am that project. It could be discovered by exis-
tential psychoanalysis through my reactions to the qualities
of things. While these have the same meaning for all, they
may be values or anti-values for us. Appropriation of things.
or of the qualities of things, can only take place on a symbolic
plane. The ideal value of being-in-itselMor-itsel£, which
corresponds to the notion of God, cannot be realized. As the
being who wants to be God, man is a useless passion.
Sartre has been called a romantic rationalist,S and rightly
so, insofar as his philosophy of negativity is that of Hegel
transferred to the plane of the cogito. He has called himself,
and he has been called, a humanist/ and with good reasons.
While he does not believe in a human "nature';' the French
humanistic conception of a "human condition," which is the
same for all, confers upon his judgments a certain universality,
and provides him with a general background for his study of
the structures of consciousness. While he does not believe in
psychology, his descriptions of various patterns of behavior are
of prodigious interest to the reader. Whether the reader uses
the criteria of coherence or of workability, he cannot fail to
find in them a great deal of truth and of novelty. The human-
istic character of Sartre's existentialism is, for most readers,
its most interesting feature and its greatest weakness.
xxxviii
 INTRODUCTION

Sartre's humanism severs man at once from the world of

elementary life and from the metaphysical world. Of course,
this is the unavoidable result of a phenomenological method
which merely claims to describe existential modes of being.
The trouble is that this method cannot function without
some hypotheses concerning the ultimate nature of being-in-
itself. Sartre hesitates between being-in-itself as known: com-
pact, opaque and identical with itself, in fact Being itself,
and a being-in-itself posited by an as-if philosophy as already
containing non-being, coiled in its core like a worm. Sartre's
Being, already full of holes, is, to start with, a synthesis of Be-
ing and Non-Being, which involves a Hegelian, or Bergsonian,
presupposition. The confusion may be due in part in the diffi-
culty of retaining in French Heidegger's distinction between
das Seiende and Sein, but only in part, for Sartre dismisses the
world of life together with the world of things, as merely per-
sisting in being, without any regard for whatever suggestions
might be offered by the spectacle of the striving toward in-
determinancy implied in the evolution of species.
In the same way, Sartre dismisses the transcendental world
by placing his transcendence within immanence. Yet, again,
in order to explain movement, he has to have recourse to the
Heraditean postulate that movement is a "lesser being," and,
in order to explain the structure of being-for-others as "de-
totalized totality," to postulate, on the metaphysical plane, a
Hegelian totality of mind. This brings us to the question of
his well-known atheism.
Sartre's existentialism has been called postulatory atheism,5
altogether wrongly, as should be obvious by now. There is
nothing postulatory about his atheism in L'2tre et Ie neant.
He would not deny the possibility of a divine subjectivity fused
with the world. The God whom Sartre denies is the same
xxxix
 INTRODUCTION

objectified and separate third person God whom all religious

existentialists reject; but the singular aggressivity of his personal
feud with that God had led some critics to think that the phi-
losopher protested too much, and to interpret his protest either
as implicit recognition leading to conversion, or as diabolical
perversity. Sartre does not deny the possibility of establishing
a system of metaphysics which would investigate Being from
the data of his ontology but he does not in any way suggest
its desirability. Yet, such a system might help to formulate the
ethics of liberty which he promised but never completed.
All in all, the limitations which we have made bold to point
out in Sartre's system are due to the very negativity which
is the source of his greatness insofar as this negativity is
compatible with the passionate intellectual detachment whose
ultimate aim is to unveil the truth. On the humanistic plane
which extends between the world of Life and the world of
metaphysics, he has managed to give us a freer access to the
structures of our consciousness. Even if one finds that his
for-itself is rather active, as an absolute non-being, for all the
operations it has to perform, one still has to admit that his
descriptions throw much light on the mystery of knowledge.
We must accept Sartre for what he has to offer, and what he
has to offer is a great deal, as psychoanalysts and even theolo-
gians have found out. He will no more convert believers to his
atheism than Pascal converted atheists to Christianity, but may
help them and for that matter, all his readers, to see more
clearly into themselves. When we consider that Sartre fits into
a coherent and original system elements from Descartes,
Spinoza, Hegel, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Bergson, Jaspers,
Heidegger of course, the Gestaltists, Freudian psychoanalysis,
and even behaviorism, not to mention a wealth of concrete
personal experience, we may well wonder whether that system
xl
 INTRODUCTION

does not constitute a sort of modern "sum" of whatever philo-

sophical knowledge is consistent with the existential outlook
on the humanistic plane. It is, to say the least, an imposing
structure, and one that deserves to be rendered more accessible
to the fairly wide English-speaking public still interested in
answering the challenge of existentialism.

The present work was undertaken, and its first draft com-
pleted, before the publication of Hazel Barnes' translation,
(Being and Nothingness) at a time when the public had no
access to Sartre's philosophy other than through a few super-
ficial, erroneous, prejudiced, or incomplete reviews, technical
accounts incomprehensible to the layman, or the sort of vul-
garization that does away with philosophical problems by
ignoring them. Since then, many studies have come out which,
even when fundamentally adverse, have managed to maintain
a high level of intellectual honesty. Full justification for the
present work no longer lies in the fact that it fulfils a recog-
nized need, but in the somewhat different way in which it
fulfils that need.
My presentation aims at allowing the reader to follow
Sartre's thought on three levels. The lines in italics indicate
the sequence of arguments on the philosophical plane. The
text embodies the development of these arguments on a some-
what more familiar plane of thought, and supplies their con-
crete illustration, either directly borrowed from Sartre, or
boldly supplemented by me. Furthermore, since we are deal-
ing with a sort of descriptive ontology, it seemed to me that
the reader might find it a little easier to follow a development
in which the very concept of being would figure as a sort of
guiding line. I, therefore, slightly modified the headings of
L'Etre et Ie neant, to conform to a general scheme which,
xli
 INTRODUCTION

I believe, accords with the fundamental structure of that work.

As M. Same told me, when I submitted to him the project
of this study, there is no definitive formulation of ideas. My
presentation, through somewhat modified headings, addition
of concrete examples, and the use of a vocabulary intended
less, at times, for rigorous demonstrations than for the com-
munication of an intention, was undertaken in good faith to
help the reader share with me the profit which I believe I have
derived from the wealth of Sartre's thought.
This work, therefore, is expository rather than critical. In
another book, I intend to present a study of Sartre's literary
treatment of certain themes, and to attempt to situate existen-
tialism further in modern thought by examining its relations
to humanism, vitalism, and mysticism.
Mr. Everett Knight, formerly of Glasgow University, was
kind enough to read my manuscript and ofter suggestions as to
the best English rendering of some ideas; to him, to Professor
Henri Peyre for his most precious encouragement, and to Ita
Kanter for many suggestions concerning the present edition,
the author's thanks are due.
J. s.

xlii
 I Being-in-Itself

1. To be is to be perceived.

The phenomenal world consists in many series of connected

appearances.

Perhaps the most helpful statement one can make in the

way of introducing existentialist philosophy is that it is a
manner of thinking which tries to account at once for the
observer and for the world observed. In this, existentialism
accomplishes in philosophy a reform similar to that accom-
plished in science through the theory of relativity. For the
existentialist philosopher as for the modern scientist, no reality
can be known except within the frame of reference deter-
mined by the existence of the observer. To the observer, the
world is made up of series of connected appearances.

Yet the totality of possible appearances within each serzes IS

inexhaustible; it constitutes the essence of the object.
1
 TO BE AND NOT TO BE

Let us notice, however, that each appearance points to other

appearances within a series. The chair may appear to me,
the observer, in a certain perspective, but the particular aspect
which the chair assumes in that perspective refers to innumer-
able other aspects of the chair, or reappearances of the same
aspect. We may do away with the notion that there is an
inside and an outside of reality, a noumenon hiding behind
a phenomenon, but we have to replace that opposition by
the opposition between the finitude of a single appearance and
the infinity of possible appearances within the same series. It
is to that series of all the possible appearances of the object that
I refer when I speak of the idea or of the essence of that
object.
r
It points to tile objectivity of the phenomenon, outside of con-
sciousness, but tile being of the phenomenon remains distinct
from the phenomenon of being. Yet, the being of the phenom-
enon demands tile transphenomenality of being, tIIhiclt appears
to consciousness as the phenomenon of being.

This essence does not constitute the ultimate reality of the

object, as do Platonic Ideas. About the reality of the object, I
know nothing. I can only be sure of its objectivity: it is outside
of my consciousness and I am not the object. The object
still is a connected series of appearances. But how can that
which merely 'appears be said to be? What do I mean when I
say that reality is appearance? What is the being of appearance,
r
the being of the phenomenon When I try to think. for in-
stance, of the ultimate reality of the chair, of its being. is it
the being of the chair which now appears to me? Not at all.
I cannot question myself about the being of the chair without
passing to the idea of being in general and forgetting the
2
 BEING-IN-ITSELF

chair. Being as such, being per se, appears to me, not the
being of the chair. Somehow, then, the appearance of the
object-which is the being of the phenomenon-refers to being
per se, which appears to me as the phenomenon of being, yet
is not identical with the being of the phenomenon(The chair
is because I perceive it. It seems as if I, as perceiver, conferred
being upon the chair. Does this mean that, as Berkeley claims,
to be is to be perceive.f!j

2. To be is to be perceived by a perceiver who is: the pre-reflec-

tive cogito. -

Being per se would seem to be conferred by consciousness,

which is "the transphenomenal dimension of being of t¥..
subject." 1 ~''jy
~ ~"<
.Ifr
Like m~~t~xistentialists, -Bartre- believes-that-being is -r6·)'
veareato us .-directly-iILSuch-expe-r-iences--as--ennui,-nausea,etc.
A~istinguishecLfrollLknowledge--of-being=-the--6fif6Iogical
p"';.oof-such experiences are kQO.WJ1-3s~ont-i.c-re-velatiorrs:"
COUld this being, whkh_I~p-erien(:e_direct1y,--and-which ap-
p~ consciousness as the phenomeE.o_n ofj:>ei!lg,__ be the
foun~lOn required-by-theappeara~bject I._Could

r-
-----
this foundation be merely the conSClOusness of the subject? Is
it true that esse est percipi, that to be is to be p~d?
----
.consciousness is as intention. It has no contents and merely
aims at thinV
..
LIn a way yes, but not because consciousness knows the ob-
ject and knows itself at the same time; in that case we would
have to explain what knowledge~. The being of knowledge
, ,~' 3
 TO BE AND NOT TO BE

must be established before the knowledge of being. The ob-

ject perceived must, as appearance, be perceived by a perceiver
who is. This perceiver is consciousness not inasmuch as it
knows but inasmuch as it is. What is the being of conscious-
ness? Consciousness is intention. Every consciousness, as Hus-
sed showed and as introspection will confirm, is consciousness
of something. Consciousness has no contents, it merely aims
at things. "A table is not in consciousness, even as a representa-
tion." 2

Yet, "every positional consciousness of an object is at the same

time non-positional consciousness of itself." 3

Consciousness is intention but at the same time it is

consciousness of sel£. It exists by itself: "the necessary and
sufficient condition for a knowing consciousness to be knowl-
edge of its object is that it be conscious of itself as being that
consciousness" :

It is a necessary condition: If my consciousness were not con-

scious of being consciousness of the table, it would then be
consciousness of that table without having any consciousness
of being so ... , an unconscious consciousness-which is
absurd. This is a sufficient condition: it is enough for me
to be conscious of having consciousness of that table for me
to have in fact this consciousness. It certainly does not permit
to affirm that that table exists in itself-but that it exists for
me. 4
In other words, I cannot be conscious of the table in front of
me without being simultaneously conscious of the fact that I
am not the table. This is what led philosophers to say that in
the act of perception I am aware at once of the self and of
the non-self, or that, as subject, I relate myself to, and distin-
4
 BEING-IN-ITSELF

guish myself from, the object. As Sartre states it: "every

positional consciousness of an object is at the same time non~
positional consciousness of itself."

This must be true of pre-reflective consciousness as well as of

reflective consciousness.

What can this consciousness of consciousness be ? We

might be tempted at first to make of it another sort of posi-
tional consciousness, the idea of an idea, which could only be
conceived through our having the idea of an idea of idea, and
thus lead us into infinite regress. My being conscious of the
existence of the table does not mean that I know I am con~
scious of that existence and that I am that knowledge. Con~
sciousness is not to be confused with knowledge; knowledge
is reflective consciousness but there is also a pre-reflective
consciousness. In pre-reflective, or immediate consciousness,
no doubt, 1 must be conscious at once of the object perceived
and of myself as perceiving that object, but while 1 perceive
the object, I do not take a position in regard to my conscious~
ness of it. 1 may count the cigarettes left in my case without
knowing that I am counting. My attention is turned outside,
toward the cigarettes. If someone asks me: "What are you
doing?" 1 answer: "1 am counting my cigarettes," and I know
myself counting. Pre~reflective consciousness is the condition
which makes reflective consciousness possible. Reflective con-
sciousness may react to pre-reflective consciousness and make
me ashamed, proud, or afraid of what I have just perceived.

Descartes' "l think, therefore 1 am" should be applied to pre~

reflective consciousness.
5
 TO BE AND NOT TO BE

We should not think, therefore, that pre-reflective con-

sciousness is primarily knowled~. a "thinking substance,"
like Descartes' cogito. In it we reach being and find an abso-
lute, beyond which it is impossible to go. Since this absolute
is an absolute of existence, not of knowledge, "it escapes that
famous objection, according to which an absolute known is no
longer an absolute because it becomes relative to the knowledge
you take of it." 5 It appears to us as a total vacuum since the
whole world is outside of it, yet "it is on account of that
identity in it of appearance and existence that it may be
considered as an absolute." 6 Descartes is right in saying: "I
think, therefore I am," but everything capsizes when he
defines his being as a "thinking substance." His mistake con-
sists in not having distinguished between reflective and pre-
reflective consciousness.

3. Being in itself.

The transphenomenality of the being of consciousness demands

that of the being of the phenomenon.

Having found being in the pre-reflective consciousness of

the observer (or percipiens), Sartre wonders whether the fact
that the observer is could not In some way testify to the reality
of the world of appearances which surrounds him. He rejects
the idealistic view that a thing is merely because it is perceived
(esse est percipi), for this would give it a passive existence,
relative to consciousness. Even as an appearance, the object
perceived stands outside of consciousness. To say that every
consciousness is consciousness of something does not mean that
it creates what it is conscious of, nor that its being is identical
with the being of the thing perceived. "To be conscious of
6
 BEING-IN-ITSELF

something is to be facing a full and concrete presence which

is not consciousness." 7

The absence of most of the possible appearances within a given

series constitutes the transphenomenal be':ng of the phenome-
non.

Now, of course, we can be conscious of an absence, but

that absence appears necessarily on a background of presence: a
person, for instance, can only be absent from actual surround-
ings where his presence could have been expected. Even in the
perception of a present object, consciousness cannot fuse with
the object of its intentionality because, as we have seen, no
given series of appearances can ever be exhausted. Most of
them must remain absent from the field of perception. Para-
doxically, it is the absence of all the possible appearances of the
object except one which gives the object its reality and con-
stitutes the "transphenomenal being of the phenomenon." 8

Consciousness questions its own being inasmuch as that being

implies a being other than itself.

Consciousness has no being outside of its intentionality. To

say that consciousness is consciousness of something is to say
that it must reveal a being other than itself, already existing
as it is revealed. We might apply to consciousness Heidegger's
definition of the Dasein: "Consciousness is a being for which
there is a question of its being in its being," but we should
add: "inasmuch as that being implies a being other than it-
self." 9 This being is the trans phenomenal being of the phe-
nomenon. It is not a mysterious essence or noumenon hiding
the phenomenon: it is the being of this or that object, of the
7
 TO BE AND NOT TO BE

world generally, implied by our consciousness of them as we

have seen. It is being-in-itself.

Sartre rejects both realism and idealism. Consciousness, as be-

ing-for-itself, and its object, as being-in-itself, constitute a
structure. Yet, these two modes of being are in some way
irreducible. Being-in-itself, to Sartl"e, means being as such.

Sartre's quest of being thus leads him to reject both the

idealist's and the realist's position: he discards realism by
showing that the self-awareness of consciousness is distinct
from awareness of the object and is implied by that awareness;
he discards idealism by disclaiming that this self-awareness
precedes and constitutes awareness of the object. His own
position is therefore neither idealism nor realism. It is the
position of common sense, insofar as it leads him to the
common sense view concerning the ultimate reality of the
outside world, as distinct from our awareness of it. We do not
need to ground the reality of the world in a divine subjectivi%
as Descartes does. Even if the world had been created, it
would still have to fuse with that subjectivity or have its
support in itself. We can, however, apply to being a reasoning
somewhat similar to Descartes' proof of the existence of God
through the idea of perfection. Just as Descartes uses the idea
of a perfection which is not in tiS to prove that this idea must
necessarily come from a being which has perfection, we can
derive being from our awareness of being, since the reality
of the world which surrounds us cannot be reduced to our
awareness of it. What can be the relation between being and
our awareness of it? This question remains to be answered
and can only be answered through a further examination of
the structure of consciousness. All we can do at this stage is
8
 BEING-IN-ITSELF

distinguish between being as such, being-in-itself, and this

awareness of ourself as consciousness which we found to be
distinct from our awareness of the object. How does being-
in-itself appear to us if we distinguish it from the self-question-
ing being of consciousness?

Being is, being is in itself, being is what it is.

First of all, being-in-itself is. The principle of non-contra-

diction strictly applies to it. It is what it is, and the principle
of identity also is valid here. It has no inside and no outside,
it is massive. It has no becoming. It does not know of other-
ness. Having neither past nor future, it escapes temporality.
Finally, it escapes both possibility and necessity: it simply is
and will for that reason appear to consciousness as contingent.
Being is, being is in itself, being is what it is, concludes Sartre,
"these are the three characters which a preliminary examina-
tion of the phenomenon of being permits us to assign to the
being of phenomena." 10 Thus having divested being-in-itself
of all the characters which properly belong to consciousness,
or being-for-itself, Sartre is now ready for a close examination
of the latter. His manner of proceeding is not essentially dif-
ferent from that of Descartes doubting the reality of all things
and discovering in this very doubt the reality of his existence,
nor is it different from Husserl's "bracketing" of the world in
order to study the operation of consciousness. His determina-
tion to remain on the plane of being has led him, however,
to discover two distinct ways of being: being as such, or being-
in-itself, and consciousness, or being-for-itself.

9
 II Being-For-Itself

1. Negation and non-being.

The relation between being-in-itself and being-for-itself may

be defined as questioning; I question my presence in the world
as consciousness..

Sartre's quest has led him so far to discover two irreducible

aspects of being: being-in-itself and being-for-itself: roughly
the reality of the world of consciousness outside and the ab-
solute character of consciousness, another reality beyond which
it is impossible to go; but he has not yet connected these two
forms of being, although he has given us more than one hint
concerning the rapport between them. What is the relationshit>
between man-as-consciousness and the world which surrounds
him? The answer must be sought within the question. 1£ I am
able to question the nature of my presence in the world,
no doubt the relationship may already be defined as inter-
rogation. What am I, for me to be able to question my
existence?
10
 BEING-FOR-ITSELF

Interrogation implies the possibility of a negation; negation

involves the idea of non-being.

Any questioning process implies the possibility of a nega-

tive answer, were it only: "There is no answer to the ques-
tion." It also implies the ignorance of the questioner; ques-
tioning is like a bridge thrown between two non-beings. Even
if the answer is positive: "It is that way and not otherwise,"
it implies a non-being of limitation. Interrogation, then,
implies the possibility of a negation; negation implies the
existence, if one may say so, of a non-being.

Yet, non-being is not merely the product of negation.

Where does non-being come from? At first sight it could

not come from being as such since this is full positivity. In
other words, you could not find in the world something which
is not there. Should we say that non-being is a pseudo-idea
derived from negation and resting upon negative judgments?
Shall we conclude that non-being is merdy the negation of
being, and therefore pure subjectivity?

"There is a transphenomenality of non-being, as of being." 11

Sartre's answer could hardly be overstressed since it pro-

vides us with the key to his philosophy. The questioning at-
titude, whether manifested in words or not, expresses a rap-
port between being-in-itself and consciousness and is a purdy
human form of behavior. When I have engine trouble, "if I
question the carburetor, it is because I consider it possible that
'there is nothing' the matter with the carburetor. Thus my
questioning involves by nature a certain prejudicative com-
11
 TO BE AND NOT TO BE

prehension of non-being; it is in itself a relation of being with

non-being, on the background of the original transcendence,
i.e., of a relation of being with being." 12 We should not be
misled by the fact that we mostly formulate our questioning,
or negating, when talking to others. Destruction is a way of
negating being, and only man destroys. Nature merely re-
arranges. Only man conceives of things as destructible, or as
fragile, i.e., easily destroyed, turned into the non-being which
is one of their possibilities. And yet, non-being is not a human
invention. "It is indeed within the being of that vase that its
fragility has been imprinted, and its destruction would be
an irreversible and absolute event which I could merely
observe." 13
It is not true that negation can be reduced, as Bergson
claims, to persistence of attention given an object which has
been replaced by another; it is, rather, this persisting attention
which contains a series of negations: 1) implicit negation of
everything that is not its object, (Sanre borrows from Hegel
and Spinoza the principle that every determination is a
negation); 2) negation of the existence of that object in the
image retained by consciousness (in his treatise on Imagina-
tion, Sartre explains that what distinguishes an image from
a perception is the absence of its object); 3) negation of con-
sciousness itself as being only that image. How can all these
negations be related to the idea of non-being? Sartre takes
as an illustration the feelings one experiences on not finding
one's friend in the cafe where he has agreed to meet you.
Upon arriving in the cafe, I look into the room, I see tables
and people and I say: "He is not here." Has there been intui-
tion of an absence or did the negation intervene only with
my judgment? Certainly the cafe itself is a plenum of life.
with its tables, mirrors, smoky atmosphere, the noises of
12
 BEING-FOR-ITSELF

people going and coming, the sound of conversations, the

reflected lights, etc. But in perceiving, says Sartre, one isolates
a form against a background. The cafe has become for me a
background against which the image of my absent friend
should stand out. I have questioned every face, looked into
every corner, and thought: "That is not he," or: "He is not
there." He is not absent from a definite spot, but from the
whole cafe which has become half unreal, evanescent like
the misty background with which some painters surround
their portraits. In this case, the portrait itself is missing. The
process by which I become aware of my friend's absence is a
superposition of negations. I negate the cafe as I make it a
background for my expectation; I negate the reality of the
image evoked by that expectation; I negate my own con-
sciousness which is that image.

Negation is somehow related to non-being.

Yet, I am responsible for this whole structure of negations.

I caused them to surge between reality as it is given to me
and myself:
If anterior judgments are statements of fact ... negation
must be a sort of free invention; it must tear us away from
this wall of positivity which hems us in: It is a sudden
break in continuity which can in no case result from anterior
affirmations, an original and irreducible event. But we are
in the domain of consciousness. And consciousness can
produce negation only under the form of consciousness of
negation ... The no, as a sudden intuitive discovery, ap-
pears as consciousness (of being), consciousness of the no.
In a word, if there is being everywhere, it is not Non-being
alone, as Bergson claims, which is inconceivable: from
being, one will never derive negation. The necessary condi-
13
 TO BE AND NOT TO BE

tion for it being possible to say no is that non-being be a

perpetual presence in us and outside of us; it is that non-
being should haunt being. 14
Non-being haunts being, it emanates from our being, it is
part of its very structure; the possibility of voiding, negating,
nihilating is always with us. Our very perception of things
consists in making a "form" stand against a "background,"
thereby attributing a sort of lesser existence to the background.
It is a fact of daily experience that we freely confer non-being
to facts, to things, to people, and even to fragments of our
own experience, in the most arbitrary fashion. Belonging to
"Society" consists, according to Proust, in ignoring the exist-
ence of that which is not "Society." Non-being, therefore, can-
not be a pseudo-idea resulting from frustrated expectation, as
Bergson would have us believe; nor could it be, as in Hegel,
a pure abstraction which, joined with being also considered
as a pure abstraction, would constitute becoming. Pure being
is not a pure and transcendental abstraction for Sartre: it is,
while non-being is not. Heidegger's conception of being and
non-being as two antagonistic forces, producing a tension
which is the basis of concrete realities, advances beyond Hege1.
At least, Heidegger refrains from attributing to non-being the
sort of reality which constitutes being. He does not say that
non-being is, he merely states that "nothing nihilates." Noth-
ingness, for him, is a sort ~f negating force, supported and
conditioned by '3. movement of transcendence. This means that.
in order to view his own contingency, his limitations, his fini-
tude as a human being in the world, man has, so to speak, to
leap into nothingness, into non-being. Daily experience testi-
fies to our sense of nothingness, this nothingness which is the
source of anguish. This conception, however~ represents the
world as being suspended within nothingness. Now, according
14
 BEING-FOR-ITSELF

to Sartre, if man can have the power to emerge into non-

being, it is because he has first denied that he is the world
and that he is himself. In this sense Hegel is right in affirming
that Mind is the negative, but he does not explain how nega-
tivityoperates as an essential structure of the human mind. To
Sartre, as we have seen, non-being is implicit in every form
of negation. It is also implicit in interrogation, since by inter-
rogating we place the object of our query in a neutral state
between being and non-being. It is implicit in determination,
since, Ck-limiting ~ object, we assign non-being to that
object as its contour [Moreover, between absolute negativity and
absolute positivity there is a whole gradation of intermediary
states which Sartre calls "negatites." Let us note, in passing,
that Sartre's study of these "negatites" throws an interesting
light on human behavior. It is quite certain that some people
affirm themselves mainly through negative behavior, that is,
through direct, modified, or implicit negation.

2. Non-being and liberty.

Liberty comes from non-being because non-being escapes

causality.

If non-being can be conceived neither from being nor out-

side of it, how does the notion of non-being originate? Sartre
seeks the answer to this question in the questioning process.
itself:
Being could only engender being and, if man is completely
involved (englobe) in this generating process, nothing but
being will issue from him. For him to be able to ask himself
a question about this process, i.e., to question it, he must be
able to survey it as a totality, i.e., to place himself outside-
15
 TO BE AND NOT TO BE

of being and in so doing weaken the structure of being

within being. Yet, it is not given to "human reality" to re-
duce to naught, even temporarily, the mass of being which
confronts it. What it can modify is its rapport with that
being. For "human reality," to place out of circuit a particu-
lar existant is to place itself out of circuit in relation to that
existant. In this case, it escapes from the existant, gets out
of reach, ... withdraws beyond a non-being. Descartes,
following the Stoics, gave a name to this possibility for
human reality to secrete a non-being which isolates it: it is
liberty.us
Liberty is not a property belonging to the essence of the
human being: "There is no difference between the being of
man and his 'being free.''' 16 To tear himself from the world
and its causality, man must tear himself from himself first,
and it is, so to speak, his very nature to do so. As soon as you
disintegrate consciousness into a causal sequence, you reinte-
grate it within the "unlimited totality of being" as shown by
"the vain efforts of psychological determinism to dissociate
itself from universal determinism and to constitute a series
apart." 17 Negation can neither come from perception, since
we do not perceive non-being; nor from the missing being,
unless we admit that this image involves a triple negation:
negation of the world to which the object belongs as it vanishes
into a background, negation of the presence of the object on
that background, and implicit negation of any present reality
<:orresponding to its image. Although he admits Husserl's
intentional consciousness, Sartre does not accept his distinction
between "full" and "empty" intentions. Both types of percep-
tions require, to become conscious, "a negative moment
through which consciousness, in the absence of any anterior
,determination, constitutes itself into a negation":
16
 BIUNG-FOR-ITSELF

In conceiving, from my conception of the room in which

he lived, the one who is no longer in the room, I am quite
necessarily brought to do an act of thought which no ante-
rior state can determine nor motivate, to operate, in short,
within myself, a rupture with being. And, inasmuch as I
continually make use of "negatites" to isolate and determine
the existants, i.e., to think them, the succession of my
"consciousnesses" is a perpetual unhinging (decrochage) of
the effect from the cause, since every negating process re-
quires drawing its source from itself alone. . . . Any psy-
chic process of negating implies therefore a split between
the immediate psychic past and the present. This split is
precisely non-being.1s
It is useless to try finding determination within the negating
process itself. The negating process escapes the cause-to-effect
relationship, but cannot motivate a second negating: "A being
can negate itself perpetually, but insofar as it negates itself,
it renounces being the origin of another phenomenon, were
it even a second negating." 19
We now have to define further this sudden interruption,
this separation between our "states of consciousness," which
is the condition of negation. It is neither a break of continuity
in the temporal flux, nor an opaque element which severs the
anterior moment from the posterior, as the blade of a knife
splits a fruit in two, nor is it a weakening of the motivating
force of our consciousness. It strictly is nothing. The anterior
consciousness is still there, modified by its past character, but
it has been "bracketed," to use the expression of the phenome-
nologists. The nothingness which separates the present from
the past is human consciousness, which is also consciousness
of non-being:
It must be that the conscious being constitutes himself in
relation to his past as separated from this past by a non-
17
 TO BE AND NOT TO BE

being; it must be that he is consciousness of that split of

being, but not as a phenomenon which he undergoes: rather
as a structure of consciousness which he is.20
If consciousness is a kind of negating force, it must be con-
sciousness of negation and of non-being. "We should be able
to define and describe a perpetual mode of consciousness,
present as consciousness, which would be consciousness of
negating." And if liberty is the being of consciousness, con-
sciousness must involve a consciousness of liberty. There must
be "a certain way to stand before one's past and one's future
as being, at once, that past and that future, and of not being
them." 21 There is indeed and it is anguish.

3. Liberty and anguish.

Anguish is awareness of our liberty and of the non-being

which makes it possible.

Kierkegaard derives anguish from liberty, Heidegger from

consciousness of non-being. There is no contradiction between
these definitions: they imply each other. Fear is my apprehen-
sion of the beings in this world; anguish is my apprehension
of self. Dizziness before a precipice is anguish insofar as I
fear, not to fall over the precipice, but to throw myself over
it. Dizziness is an example of anguish before the future. It
may start with fear: fear of an unpredictable incident which
will make me fall. Fear will make me envisage various pos-
sibilities of behavior which will reduce the possibilities of my
fall. But these possibilities of behavior are not determined by
any anterior conduct, otherwise they would cease being possi-
bilities. So long as they remain mere possibilities the other
possibility also remains: that of letting myself fall over the
18
 BEING-FOR-ITSELF

precipice. No doubt, I tend toward my own safety, away from

it, in the near future; but I am separated from that near future
by a non-being. I feel that nothing can prevent me from jump-
ing over the precipice. Fortunately, the possibility of doing
so is going to suggest to me determining reasons why I should
do so and the very fact that these reasons appear as motives
will permit me to reject them as ineffective.
There is another sort of anguish which is anguish before
the past. It is that of the gambler who has decided never to
gamble any more, and who realizes, as he approaches the
gambling table, that he is as desperately free to do so as ever.
The resolution not to play is still there, but it is inefficient
because the gambler is aware of it as being:

"sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought."

He has to refuse himself the possibility of playing again
through a new decision, "ex nihilo."

Consciousness stands before the Ego's past and future as

being neither, and yet as having to assume them.

Consciousness then "is not its own motive since it is empty

of all contents. This sends us back to a nihiIating structure
of the pre-reflective cogita"; furthermore, "consciousness is
before its past and its future as before a self which it is on
the mode of not being it. This sends us back to a nihilating
structure of temporality." 22 The liberty which anguish reveals
to us "is characterized by a perpetually renewed obligation
to make over again the Ego which designates the free be-
ing." 23 The Ego, with its given and historical contents, must
be recreated with each situation. It is the essence of man; but
19
 TO BE AND NOT TO BE

man is always separated from his essence by a non-being.

"Essence is what has been .... But the act is always beyond
that essence ... because everything which Can be designated
in man by the formula: this is, by that very fact has been.2 !
Hegel is right in saying: "Wesen ist was gewesen L.t."

We flee anguish through the spirit of serioltsness, psychologi-

cal determinism, belief in a deeper Ego which produces our
action as father begets son, or bad faith, which consists ttl
making ottrself conscious of anguish to get rid of it.

How is it that :lllguish is so seldom felt in all its acuity?

Recause we often learn our possibilities as we make them
realities. They are subordinated to a wider project to which
we have committed ourselves, and which we prefer not to
question. Moreover, we accept social values and taboos as we
accept life itself. As soon as circumstances cause us to be left
entirely to ourselves, we realize that we make values and we
cease finding moral support in the "spirit of seriousness," which
consists in seeking reasons in the nature of things for action.
in believing that values are somehow attached to them. as a
"How to Use" leaflet instructs us in the use of a newly bought
piece of merchandise. Anguish is the sense we have of our
freedom to accept or reject values. Our main line of conduct
toward anguish is flight. The spirit of seriousness, by which
we ask the things of this world to dictate us our behavior, is
only the most elementary and spontaneous form of flight
from anguish. Psychological determinism is a somewhat more
sophisticated form of escape on the reflective plane. It recog-
nizes within us the presence of antagonistic forces comparable
to physical forces. It does away with the feeling of conscious-
ness as non-being. \Ve just witness the interplay within us
20
 BEING-FOR-ITSELF

of various forces comparable to those which move things

around us, and find it reassuring to share the existence of
things, without inquiring what privileged gallery has been
assigned OUr consciousness for the enjoyment of the spectacle.
The Bergsonian sense of liberty is an even more refined form
of escape. It consists in conceiving of liberty as a continuous
and harmonious development of the Ego. The deeper and
subconscious self, as it organizes itself through homogeneous
duration, produces our actions as a father engenders his prog-
eny. They become the natural manifestation of our historically
constituted selves, of all that we have been in the past, without
any break in the continuity of our psychic life. This kind
of liberty, Sartre asserts, is not the liberty we feel within us, it
is the liberty we grant others. It is conceived not on the exis-
tential, out on the biological plane. It is "a projection of the
liberty-which we feel in us-into a psychic object which is
the Ego." 25 The two objections, then, which Sartre presents
to the Bergsonian conception of liberty are that, in it, the
free act is a natural outcome of psychic duration, therefore
springing from the past, and that it eliminates the break in
continuity, the negative moment through which we have to
pass in our transcendence toward the future. Finally, there
is another means of escape which consists in becoming con-
scious of our anguish, so that the nihilating character of con-
sciousness may permit us to take a more detached attitude
toward it, to view it, as it were, from outside, as one gets rid
of one's inhibitions. But, of course, "I must think of it con-
stantly in order to take care not to think of it" 26 as I take
to flight toward the "reassuring myths." This is what Sartre
calls "bad faith." In bad faith we are anguish in order to flee
anguish. In this peculiar behavior, we seem to find within a
single consciousness the unity of being and non-being. The
21
 TO BE AND NOT TO BE

study of bad faith gives precious indications about the prob-

lem of non-being and the part it plays in human consciousness.

4. From anguish to bad faith: to be in order not to be.

By making ourselves conscious of our states of mind, we ob-

jectify tltem and dissociate ourselves from them.

We have seen already that in our first movement of

transcendence toward the object, we at once affirm the existence
of the thing aimed at and deny that we are that thing:
consciousness appears to itself as not being its object. We
found "non-being as the condition of transcendence toward
being." 27 In bad faith, on the contrary, we find that we are
anguish in order not to be anguish, as if we had a pre-reflec-
tive intuition that on the plane of consciousness we are not
what we are. What can consciousness be to allow the existence
of bad faith?

In so doing, we are lying to ourselves. We establish a duality

where there is none. The theory of the subconscious stresses
that duality, but experience shotus that tile censor and the
censored are one.

We should first of all distinguish bad faith from lying.

Lying implies the existence of others. Bad faith is lying to
oneself. The liar and the person lied to are the same person.
Various explanations, one being the theory of the subcon-
scious, have been offered to establish the duality of deceiyer
and deceived. In psychoanalysis, the subconscious is censored
by consciousness; but the censor, in spite of its willingness
to consider objectively the facts submitted to it, often shows
22
 BEING-FOR-ITSELF

a resistance to accept them which proves that the censor and

the censored are one. The inhibited tendency could not dis-
guise itself under a symbolic form if it did not involve: 1)
the consciousness of being inhibited, 2) the consciousness of
having been rejected because it is what it is, 3) a project of
disguise." 28 To Sartre, the gratification of suppressed desires
through symbols involves "an obscure comprehension of the
aim to be reached, inasmuch as it is simultaneously desired
and forbidden." 29 The subconscious does not explain bad
raith.

Confession of guilt is another attempt to find duality in our-

selves.

The man who says: "I hate myself for acting the way I
do," and considers this admission as a sort of justification, is
asking you to consider only his transcendent self, the self he
hopes to be some day, the self he is not; he is trying to con-
vince himself that he is not his present self: 1, the subject, a
pure and innocent consciousness, deny that I am myself, the
object of my contempt, through that very objectivation. I am
not what I am, and am what I am not, and I depend on you,
as a fellow human being, to grasp this mystery without effort.
To the extent to which I deceive myself in this process, I am
in bad faith. I disavow my actual behavior and ask to be
considered as a mere spectator of that behavior; but where is
that invisible gallery from which I have the privilege of
beholding my misbehavior?

Playing at being what we really are tS another attempt to

find duality in ,ourselves.
23
 TO BE AKD NOT TO BE

To take another example, very entertainingly presented

by Sartre himself, let us consider the way in which this cafe
waiter plies his trade, the neat and precise automatism of all
his gestures, the ease of his obsequious politeness, the way in
which he links an action to the next as if in emulation of a
smooth-running piece of machinery, the slight stylization he
seems to impart to his every action. He seems to be playing
a part and to be amused by that part as if it were a game. What
sort of a game is he playing? Obviously, he is playing at be-
ing a cafe waiter, which is what he is, and what others want
him to be. He plays the waiter as the actor plays Hamlet; he
represents a waiter, to others and to himself. By the mere fact
that he is trying to play a part, he places himself beyond that
part, he confers on it a sort of unreality, a sort of non-being.
Should we conclude, as does one critic, that it is not the waiter
but Sartre himself who is entertaining himself at our expense?
Not if we consider the peculiar delight human nature experi-
ences in standing on the borderline between being and non-
being, between reality and make-believe. Anyone may find
an infinite number of examples bearing on this fact within
his own experience; and the spectacle of long lines of human
beings waiting for the privilege of devouring shadows in a
cinema as a fitting reward for the week's labor, is a gross but
striking image of our capacity for self-delusion.
To realize absolute sincerity toward oneself seems an im-
possible task to Sartre. To be sincere is to be what one is;
which presupposes that one generally is not what one is, but
should and could be. But the very structure of consciousness
makes it impossible for us to form a definite idea of ourselves
from past experience and to conform to that idea since, by
becoming conscious of what we are, we transcend that knowl-
edge, not towards another way of being but towards nothing-
24
 BEING-FOR-ITSELF

ness. Anyone can experience the intuition of this fact through

the uneasiness one experiences in trying to be "true to one-
self." By recognizing "the facts about ourselves," (what Sartre
would call our "facticity"), we refuse to be defined by such
facts. This is why "a sin confessed is half forgiven." By
cutting himself from his past behavior, through a kind of ob-
jectification of himself, the sinner ceases to be what he con-
fesses to be. We consider the negative character Sartre attri-
butes to consciousness as a sort of paradox; yet its neutralizing
force is so well recognized by all forms of mental or spiritual
disciplines, extending from Freudianism to Christian Science,
that this point should not need stressing. Sincerity, inasmuch
as it tries to make me appear at once as what I am and as what
i am not, pursues the same aims as bad faith. Both imply that
"human reality," even before it becomes reflective, is what
it is not, and is not what it is.

5. Consciousness is not what it is; it is presence to self.

Even as immediate awareness, consciousness involves self·

awareness, but denies being that immediate awareness. It is a
reflecting reflection.

How can consciousness at once be and not be? Why does

it seem to be running away from itself? "It has often been
said that the reflective look alters the fact of consciousness on
which it is directed." 30 Sartre accepts neither Spinoza's re·
course to the infinite regress of the idea of an idea, nor Hegel's
introduction of infinity within consciousness; he seeks reflec-
tivity within immediate awareness. From its origin, conscious·
ness escapes from itself. Consciousness is reflection, but as a
reflection it is.also reflecting. How can we explain this strange
25
 TO BE AND NOT TO BE

duality of being for itself? First of all, what is the "self"?

The self marks an ideal distance within the immanence of the
subject, in relation to itself, a way of not being itself, of escap-
ing identity while positing it as unity, of not coinciding with
itself, "of being in a perpetually unstable equilibrium between
identity as absolute cohesion . . . and unity as the synthesis
of a multiplicity." 31 Again, we may think of the man who
says: "I hate myself for acting that way," as illustrating this
definition of the self, although his case may involve a form
of social consciousness with which we are not yet familiar.
Generally, it discloses the way reflective consciousness has of
standing before itself as not being itself.

It is merely present to itself. The principles of identity and of

non-contradiction do not apply to it.

This is what Sartre calls the "presence to the self" of con-

sciousness. To be present to something implies that you are
not that something. Consciousness exists as presence to itself
at an ideal distance from itself, as not bein~ itself, as its own
negation. The principle of identity does not apply to con-
sciousness. "It can only denote the rapports of being with the
exterior, since precisely it rules the rapports of being with
what it (being) is not." The principle of non-contradictioll
deals with "external ,'elations, such as they may appear to a
human reality present to being-in-itself and engaged in the
world; it does not concern the internal rapports of being. . . .
The principle of identity is the negation of any sort of relation
within being-in-itself. On the contrary, presence to self implies
that an imperceptible fissure has crept into being. If it is
present to itself, it is not quite itself. Presence is an immediate
degradation of coincidence, for it presupposes separation." 3!!
26
 BEING-FOR-ITSELF

What separates consciousness from being is strictly nothing,

or rather it is a self-nihilation.

What separates being from being may be time or space

or some sort of qualified difference. In this case, if we wonder
what separates the subject from itself, we have to admit that
it is nothing. Between a belief and the consciousness of a
belief, there is nothing else but that consciousness. If you try
to grasp the separation, it vanishes, and you are referred to
pure belief; if you try to grasp the belief as such, the fissure
is there again. That fissure is a pure negative. It is nothing,
yet it can nihilate. It is non-being. But again, you can hardly
say that non-being "is." If the verb "to be" could be used
passively, you should rather say that it "is been" (qu'il est
etC.) In other words, the non-being of consciousness is borne
by being. The belief which degrades itself into consciousness
of belief denies that it is that belief.

6. Consciousness is what it is not: that is its factidty.

Consciousness has its facticity and it is the contingency of the

being in itself.

Yet consciousness is. It is as an event, it is:

" ... in the same sense as I may say that Philip II has
been, that my friend Pierre is; it is inasmuch as it appears
in a condition which it has not chosen, inasmuch as Pierre
is a French bourgeois of 1942, as Schmidt was a Berliner
and a workman of 1870; it is inasmuch as it is thrown into
a world, abandoned in a situation; it is inasmuch as it is
pure contingency, inasmuch as for him, as for the things
of the world, as for that wall, that tree, that cup, the original
question may arise: 'Why is this being such and not other-
27
 TO BE AND NOT TO BE

wise?' It is, inasmuch as there is in it something the founda-

tion of which it is not: its presence to the world." 33

Consciousness has to assume the contingency of being-in-itself,

since it has no foundation of its own.

This discovery of one's contingency is in any cogito.

Descartes implies it in the realization of his imperfection:
"I think, therefore I am." What am I? I am a being which is
not its own foundation since it has the idea of perfection,
perfection which is nowhere to be found. But this does not
mean that its contingency is grounded in another being who
is necessary and perfect. It means that being-in-itself, which
is contingent, can only become its own foundation by becom-
ing for-itself. "The for-itself is the in-itself losing itself as in-
itself in order to found itself as consciousness." 34 Since, how-
ever, the for-itself has no other reality, no other being than
that of the in-itself which it reflects, it has to assume the con-
tingency of the in-itself. It can only exist on the foundation
of a given situation. To this situation, the for-itself (my
consciousness), can give a sense; it cannot create this situa-
tion, being merely present to it. The situation is out of reach;
yet, since consciousness, to be at all, has to assume it, con-
sciousness is responsible for it. It represents what Sartre calls
its "facti city ." Although the cafe waiter may play at being
a cafe waiter, he is still a cafe waiter. If he were playing at
being a diplomat, that would not make him a diplomat.

The in-itself becomes the for-itself so as to become its own

foundation, but retains its contingency.

Thus, "the for-itself is conscious of its facticity, it has the

sentiment of its entire gratuitousness, it apprehends itself as
28
 BEING-FOR-ITSELF

being there for nothing, as being in excess (de trop)." 35 In

short, "Being-in-itself may ground its non-being, but not its
being; in its decompression, it nihilates itself into a for-itself
which becomes, as for-itself, its own foundation; but its
contingency of being~in~itsel£ remains out of reach." 36

7. Being~in~itself~for~itse1f as the ideal value•

.Being40r~itself
is a lack of being. If the for~itself could acquire
the concreteness of the in~itself, it would realize the ideal
value of being at once in itself and for itself·

Being-for-itself could not at once negate and assume its

contingency if it did not constitute itself as lack of being. The
for~itself is a lack; the lack of that which would make it a
complete self. Sartre's reasoning on this point somewhat re-
sembles both that of Descartes arguing that man, who only
knows of imperfect beings, yet tends toward a perfect being,
or that of Pascal who derives the existence of an element of
infinity within man from man's dissatisfaction with his rela-
tivity. For Sartre, the lack felt by consciousness is the lack of
being; consciousness aims at a complete manner of being
which would be at once in and for itself.

It would retain its lucidity and give to being a free foundation.

This is impossible, yet such an ideal haunts human conscious-
ness in the guise of the concept of God.

Consciousness, indeed, does not want to return to the iden-

tity of the pure but contingent in-itself, since then it would
cease to be as consciousness. It tends toward coinciding with
the in~itself without losing its lucidity. Its aim is to cease being
29
 TO BE AND NOT TO BE

a pure negation, a nothing, and to acquire the substance of the

in-itself without ceasing to be for itself. Being-in-itself would
then receive a free instead of a contingent foundation, and the
being-in-itself-for-itself would realize the totality of the self
This totality is impossible through the very nature of being-
in-itself and of being-for-itself. It is hypostatized in meditation
under the concept of God. It haunts consciousness and is the
origin of the unhappiness of consciousness.
We should not think, however, that this ideal value haunts
consciousness merely as a pure abstraction. Concrete con-
sciousness always emerges with a situation. A feeling, a pleas-
ure, a pain, are, according to Sartre, felt as lack of being. We
like the expression of suffering on a bronze mask because, to
us, it is suffering solidified and concrete. When we manifest
some sort of suffering, it is because we can only act that suf-
fering, attempting to transform ourselves for others into
statues of pain. Thus the disorderly gestures of a man in
pain would not point to a desperate flight away from pain,
but to a feeling of inadequacy on the part of consciousness to
espouse the real pain which is its object. The ideal value to-
ward which it tends is pain in itself and for itself.

Our sense of value constitutes an obligation to assume ottr con-

tingency, but merely as a ground for consciousness and liberty.

Value, therefore, does not point to something transcen-

dental, but merely to the absolute self, in and for itself; it is a
sense of being, a thirst for being, but for being grounded in
consciousness and in liberty. Consciousness has to assume the
contingency of being in itself, but only as the foundation of
its being in itself.
30
 BEING-FOR-ITSELF

8. From value to possibilities.

Thcrc arc po.rsibilitic.r only for con.rciouInc.r.r.

"Being for itself cannot appear without being haunted by

values and projected towards its particular possibilities." 37
What does Sartre mean by "possibilities"? "The surging of
being-for-itself as negation of being-in-itself and as decompres-
sion of being, causes the possible to surge as one of the aspects
of that decompression of being, i.e., as a manner of being what
one is at a distance from oneself." 38 We sometimes project
the idea of possibility into things. For instance, we say, after
looking at the clouds: "It may rain," in which case we merely
state our ignorance concerning certain data. There are pos-
sibilities only for a being, man, "who is to himself his own
possibilities." 39 Only consciousness has possibilities, and it is
these possibilities which disjoin it from its contingency. Even as
I am reading this book, I am conscious not of reading letters,
words, and paragraphs, but of reading the whole book. To
reach the end of the book is my possibility, as it is to drop it
if I come to feel that I am "getting nowhere" in reading it.
My consciousness of reading the book dqes not merely refer
to the pages already read, but also to the pages which I still
must read.

Con.rciouInc.r.r conIidcr.r a.r its po.r.ribility it.r presence to an

cvent it anticipatc.r.

Consciousness, therefore, does not merely function as a

sort of instantaneous witness. As presence to self, it anticipates
its presence to a self which is not yet in being. As I become
conscious that I am getting thirsty, I feel my thirst as a lack:
31
 TO BE AND NOT TO BE

a lack of the drink which would quench my thirst. In satisfied

thirst, the consciousness of thirst tends to realize its comple-
tion. The man who thirsts, according to Sartre, does not want
the cessation of thirst, except on a purely reflective plane, i.e.,
on second thought; he wants to become conscious of satiated
thirst. No consciousness wants its suppression. Love, even if it
is unhappy, does not aim at the end of love. "What desire
wants is a void filled, informing its repletion as the mold in·
forms the bronze which has been cast in it." 40

Consciousness does not tend merely toward coincidence with

a particular this or that, but with the whole of being.

The coincidence of consciousness with being can, of course,

never be complete. Consciousness is condemned to remain a
mere presence to being, since it is negation of being. Moreover,
consciousness does not aim merely at a particular being, but
at the totality of being, the world, which it negates. In this
sense, consciousness, as an absolute of negation, is separated
from its full possibility by the whole world, and projects its
coincidence with the whole world. This is what Sartre calls
the "circuit of ipseity."

Consciousness transcends itself toward its possibilities without

ceasing being itself, as an "ipseity," which unifies the world
as the sum total of its possibilities. The sense of t!lis move-
ment is found in temporality.

Ipseity, or selfness, is not the Ego: the Ego is my self ob·

jectified. It is not consciousness, it appears as having been
there before consciousness. This is not the case of the "1."
Again, the case of the man who says: "I hate myself" might
32
 BEING-FOR-ITSELF

roughly illustrate this point. The first movement of conscious-

ness as presence to itself brings along a second movement, ip-
seity, which involves consciousness of my possibilities. It is
not a mere reflection of the being-in-itself, nor of the being-
for-itself. It refers to the presence of the self beyond all its
possibilities; a presence which is also an absence. "What I
seek as I face the world is coincidence with a being for itself
which I am and which is consciousness of the world." 41 The
world is filled with possibilities which are my possibilities, and
it is these possibilities which give it its unity and its meaning
as world. It is, however, in time that my possibilities appear
at the horizon of the world which they make mine. It is in
temporality that I must seek the sense of my transcendence
toward my possibilities, as my consciousness, which rejects
instantaneity, invites me to do.

.9. Temporality.

Past, present, and future are parts of a single structure.

Temporality is obviously an organized structure, and these

three so-called elements of time: past, present, future, must
not be envisaged as a collection of 'data' to be added together
-for instance, as an infinite series of 'nows' some of which
are not yet, some of which are no more-but as the struc-
tured moments of an original synthesis. Otherwise we shall
immediately meet with this paradox: the past is no longer,
the future is not yet, as for the instantaneous present, every-
one knows that it is not at all: it is the limit of infinite
division, like the dimensionless point!2
The past is the in-itself which consciousness is not but has to
assume.
33
 TO BE AND NOT TO BE

THE PAST is not a mere nothing, but it exists only as a

function of the present, bound with it and with a certain fu-
ture. Any past is the past of something or of somebody. If I am
talking of the past of someone who is dead, quite obviously
such a past is past in relation to my own present. The rela-
tion of the present to the past is the relation of the for-itself
to the in-itself, of consciousness to being. The past is the
being which I am, inasmuch as I have passed beyond. It is
{acticity. It is that which I cannot change, although I can
give it a new meaning through my actions until the moment
of my death, at which time I shall be no more than a past,
i.e., a pure in-itself for the consciousness of others. Such is the
meaning of the line in which Mallarme sees Poe:

"Such as into himself eternity changes him."

The present is the presence of the for-itself to the in-itself

which it denies being. It is the flight of consciousness from
being.

If the past is in itself, THE PRESENT is for itself. It refers to

the presence of the for-itself to the in-itself, of consciousness
to being, the whole of being, i.e., the world. Presence to a
being implies that you are connected with that being by an
internal subjective bond which is not identity. The present,
then, is an ideal term; the present is not; it merely "pre-
sentifies" itself in the same way as Heidegger says that "noth-
ing nihilates." As has often been said, the moment I try to
grasp it, it sinks into the past. What really is is that being to
which I am present: the dial of the clock when I am looking-
at the time, for example. The present of consciousness is a
perpetual flight before being.
34
 BEING-FOR-ITSELF

Consciousness, in that flight, projects itself as present, with-

out loss of identity, toward a being which does not yet exist.

THE FUTURE is the meaning of that flight. There can be no

future except for the being which is its own future,
the being which makes itself exist as having its being out-
side of itself, in the future. Let us take a simple example:
this position which I quickly assume on the tennis court
has no meaning except through the movement which I
shall make afterwards with my racket to return the ball over
the net•••. It is the future gesture which ... turns back
on the positions which I adopt, to bring light upon them,
link them and modify them!8
Finality is then, literally, causality in reverse. My gestures
receive their meaning from the future. The for-itself makes
itself present to the in-itself as lack of something-a possi-
bility-which will make it a complete self. The for-itself and
its lack are given within the unity of a single surge which is
the consciousness of its future. There is no future outside of
that consciousness through which the for-itself constitutes itself
as not being what it is.

As it projects itself toward its possibilities (the future), con-

sciousness wants to remain consciousness, i.e., a mere presence,
and the same consciousness, identified by its past and by the
whole moving world which is its background.

Let us remember, however, that consciousness does not

wish to cease being for itself as it projects itself toward the
realization of the complete self. It wants to remain a presence
to being, and the same presence. The consciousness which
projects wants to be present to the accomplishment of the
35
 TO BE AND NOT TO BE

project. "I shall be happy" means: "My present being-for-itself

will be happy," with all the past that it drags behind. Thus
what is generally revealed to consciousness is not a future
way of being for itself, but a future world, and my project
has to take place on the background of a world of motion. I
may even attribute to this moving world the possibilities
which I feel within myself, and this is the basis of determin-
ism.

Consciousness aims at being simultaneously for itself and in

itself·

But the future is something else besides the presence of

the being-for-itself to a being situated beyond being. It is my
self, as we have seen. "The future is the ideal point where the
sudden and infinite compression of facticity (the past), of the
for-itself (the present) and of its possible (to come) would at
last cause the Self to surge as existence in itself of the for-
itself." 44 To apprehend that such a realization is indeed the
aim of consciousness, we need only try to imagine ourselves
occupying at some future date the position of someone we
envy; unless we can retain the identity which our past con-
fers on us, our imagination will reject the idea, not merely
because it seems absurd but also because it evokes spiritual
death.

The realization of this project is impossible. Any particular

project, once achieved, becomes a being-in-itself and slips back
into the past.

Yet, the for-itself cannot be at the same time in itself.

When a particular project which we have been aiming at in
36
 BEING-FOR-ITSELF

the future becomes a realized project, it slips back into the

past as a pure in-itself, and constitutes a foundation from
which the for-itself, realizing its nothingness, springs toward
a new project and a new future. The complete self is un-
attainable.

Yet consciousness is condemned to be free and to choose

among all possibilities those which it will make its possibili-
ties.

The future is the sense of the for-itself. It is not, but merely

makes itself possible without end. It remains problematical,
since between consciousness and its possibilities there is the
liberty consciousness derives from its non-being. As a con-
scious being, I am condemned to be free. Among all possibili-
ties, I choose those which are my possibilities, even if, in order
to come closer to them, I have to adopt, for purely rational
reasons, some other possibilities which are merely means to
an end. To pay a visit to a friend is my possibility, but
whether I go by taxi or subway will depend merely on cir-
cumstances .

.Temporality represents the dispersion of consciousness within

a unifying act.

Therefore, the three dimensions of temporality: past, pres-

ent and future, belong to the structure of consciousness. Their
study constitutes the phenomenology of temporality. If we
now try to ascertain what relations these dimensions, which
are imposed by consciousness upon being, have with being, to
define them in terms of being and non-being, we discover
that they represent at once a dispersion and a unifying act of
37
 TO BE AND NOT TO BE

consciousness. Each dimension corresponds to a kind of pro-

jection toward the mirage of the self. In its first dimension,
consciousness negates itself, insofar as it is facticity, or factual-
ity, and that facticity is left behind, objectified into a past
being-in-itself. Being-in-itself is what being-for-itself (con-
sciousness) was before. We now understand why the mo-
ments of temporality should appear to us as irreversible and
distinct: as negation of the in-itself (being), the for-itself
(non-being) must necessarily follow. It affirms itself through
this separation somewhat in the same manner as it becomes
aware of itself through negating that it is the object: my
consciousness of the chair is aware of itself as consciousness
through negation of the possibility that it is the chair . Yet
there is a difference, because, in this case, the negation is
internal, and because I have to assume my past at the same
time that I make it my past, since my consciousness of self is
borne by my past. In its second dimension, consciousness
apprehends itself as a certain lack. The present never refers
to a completed action: I drink is equivalent to I am drinking.
So long as I am conscious of accomplishing a certain act, I
cannot identify myself with that act with the full density of
being; my consciousness is merely present to the accomplish-
ment of the act. In its third dimension, consciousness escapes
from that very presence by making itself present to a non-
existent accomplishment, or rather disperses itself in all direc-
tions, within the unity of a single Bight. Temporality, there-
fore, is simply a way of being particular to consciousness.

The for-itself is the permanent element throughout change.

Definition of temporality as a single structure does not.

however, eliminate the question of duration and becoming.
38
 BEING-FOR-ITSELF

Why does a new being-for-itself take its place as the present

of that past? What about the old Heraclitean problem of
change? What about the dynamics of temporality? Change
implies the permanence of that which changes, say Leibniz
and Kant. Certainly, says Sartre, but that permanence is
conferred from outside by a witness and is therefore in the
witness. Duration is in the being-for-itself. If we consider
what happens when the present becomes a past, we notice that
it immediately brings into existence a new present which
becomes the present of that past (a past is always related to
a present). The past of that past at once becomes its plu-
perfect; but past and pluperfect are really bound together
within the being-in-itself. Meanwhile, the future of the new
present either remains ahead if it is a distant future, or
becomes the present, in which case it remains future in rela-
tion to the past while becoming present. The reflection: "So,
this is what I was waiting for," expresses the feeling which
attends the realization of that change. If the future remains
distant, it still retains the character of given possibility, but
it is an objectified possibility which is no longer my possi-
bility; it is a possibility related to a lack felt by a past being,
which is now in itself. That future appears to me with the
character of a being-in-itself. It still has a character of ideality,
but that ideality is in itself. It would be a mistake to consider
the metamorphosis of present into past as the replacement of
a being-in-itself by another; the new present negates the
former present inasmuch as it has become in-itself. Being-for-
itself, then, is constantly absorbed by being. Its non-being is
expelled, or rather remains only as a quality of the being-in-
itself. A past sadness is no longer an appearance which con-
sciousness may reflect at will; it is an event to be accepted
objectively as belonging to a past world, lost in universal de-
39
 TO BE AND NOT TO BE

terminism. The present is like a vacuum of being constantly

refilled by being, a perpetual flight before the being-in-itself
which threatens to swamp, or suck in, the being-for-itself,
until death consecrates the ultimate triumph of being-in-itself.

The permanence of being-far-itself which can only be ex-

plained by its spontaneity, which is one of refusal, explains
the irreversibility of temporality: the order "positing-refusing"
cannot be reversed.

The conception of an organized temporality constitutes a

definite progress over that of the "instant" framed between a
past which is no more and a future which is not yet. The
instant now moves escorted by its present and its future; yet,
this very movement has not been explained. The "instant" has
simply been replaced by the totality of the structure: past,
present, future. And since Sartre has defined the present as
the mere presence of the being-for-itself, i.e., as non-being, time
still may be considered as a dream. The passage from one
instant to the next-since the instant is still the unreal pivot
of the whole structure-remains to be explained. It can only
be explained through the spontaneity of the being-for-itself; a
spontaneity which is at once the foundation of its non-being
and of its being:

And it is precisely its spontaneous character which con-

stitutes the very irreversibility of its escapes since, as soon
as it appears, it is a self-refusal, and since the order "positing-
refusing" cannot be reversed. 45

Once objectified, a past being-far-itself remains for conscious-

ness, but merely as a contingency.
40
 BEING-FOR-ITSELF

The spontaneity of the being-far-itself explains why it

should endure as the permanent witness of that which is:
The flight of the for-itself is a refusal of contingency through
the very act which constitutes it as being the foundation of
its non-being. But it is precisely that flight which con-
stitutes as contingency that which is fled: the for-itself which
has been fled (Ie pour-soi fui) is left on the spot. It could not
disappear completely (laneantir) since I am it, neither can
it but be the foundation of its own non-being since it can
be that only in flight: it is accomplished.46
And so, the time of consciousness is a human reality which
makes itself temporal as unachieved totality; and the whole of
temporality is a ne~ation of the instant.

10. Reflection.

Reflection is consciousness trying tv become aware of itself.

The relation between reflective consciousnesS and reflected
consciousness is the same as that between being-for-itself and
being-in-itself, but it is quite unstable and leads to being for
others..

Outside of the dimensions of time, I feel in myself the

unity I confer on a succession of events; I feel myself lasting;
I feel the flow of time. What connection is there between
time as a structure, the original temporality, and psychic dura-
tion? Obviously, when we think of duration as a succession
of events we are no longer dealing with immediate conscious-
ness, but with reflection. Reflection is the being-for-itself con-
scious of itself, the consciousness of consciousness. Yet, it is
not a new consciousness born out of nothing, the old idea of
an idea of Spinoza; reflective consciousness is one with rc-
41
 TO BE AND NOT TO BE

fleeted consciousness. Otherwise we could not understand its

intuitive privileges. The reflective must be the reflected, but
the relation between them must be a subject to object relation
of the same kind as the relation between being-in-itself and
being-for-itself, which means the separation implied by knowl-
edge. By this very separation, the being-far-itself should be-
come object for the reflective being. But the being-far-itself is
already a reflection; reflection of the being-far-itself upon itself,
which makes it for-itself-for-itself (being the reflection of a
reflection, the shadow of a shadow), is an unstable mode of
being leading directly to being-for-others.

Pure reflection preserves the dimensions of time; impure re-

flection forgets them in its attempt to objectify past conscious-
ness.

Reflection, in its relation with temporality, may be pure

or impure. To pure reflection, the three dimensions of time
should appear as they have been described above. The being-
for-itself is revealed to it as the quest of an unattainable self,
on the mode of a particular selfness, or ipseity, i.e., as a private
history, as historicity. In its impure form, reflection is "the
concrete weaving of psychic units of duration":47 a joy ap-
pears after a sadness coming after a humiliation. Of these we
make psychic objects stretched out along the canvas of our
time with mere exterior relations. Or else we admit their
relativity: a stroke of thunder heard after a long silence has
a peculiar quality which makes of it the "stroke-of-thunder-
heard-after-a-Iong-silence," but we do not thereby explain it.
Alone the being-far-itself can explain it: alone the being-for-
itself can yearn for itself in the future, dragging its past along.
42
 BEING-FOR-ITSELF

Impure reflection conceives the being-for-itself as the psyche.

Reflection appears to us primarily in its impure form, and

we have to work a catharsis to find it in its pure form. Im-
pure reflection tends to be the being-for-itself as in itself. It
tries to grasp the reflected as in itself, yet claims identity with
it, and is, to that extent, bad faith. Thus can we say: "Love,
anger, made. me act in such a way," as if love or anger were
entities exterior to our subjectivity. In that case, reflection is
first of all an effort to see ourselves as others see us, and leads
to. "being for others." What reflection perceives then is not an
authentic process of temporalization but the "psyche."

The psyche comprises the qualities, states, and acts of the

person. These constitute the objects of psychological researcM.

By psyche, Sartre means the Ego, its qualities, states, and

acts. The Ego, under the grammatical forms I and me, repre-
sents our person as distinct from other persons, but still re-
lated to them. Its qualities: ambition, courage, etc., are latent
ways of being. Its habits are qualities derived from personal
history: we may have acquired tastes, distastes, etc., through
circumstances. A state of being may become a quality: from
having become angry, I may retain a latent disposition to
get angry. The acts comprise the disposition of means toward
an end. These qualities, states, and acts are perceived as
objects by psychological research. Indeed, they may be called
objects since they stand before our reflective consciousness as
such: I may reflect on a past love and describe it, knowing
all along that I no longer feel that love.

The conception of the psyche as a succession or as an inter-

penetration of states of mind within the unity of the Ego
43
 TO BE ANI> NOT TO BE

involves a contradiction. In neither case is their interaction

explained. Psychic causality is a spurious concept resulting
from the projection of the being-for-itself into the being-in-
itself. Psychology should limit itself to the description of
psychic irrationality.

The psyche retains the three dimensions of past, present,

and future, but as a succession of "nows," given as successive
data within a single psyche. Hence a contradiction, since the
"nows" are considered as entities within the unity of a single
organism. The fact is that this unity is only that of the being-
for-itself hypostatized in the being-in-itself~ Bergson's "inter-
penetration of states of consciousness" refers to the psyche, not
to the being-for-itself. Bergsonian duration is passively and
unknowingly lived until intuition reveals it. The reproach of
considering states of consciousness as inert data, so often made
by Bergson to traditional psychology, is turned by Sartre
against Bergson himself. Not that Sartre denies entirely the
possibility of an interpenetration of "states of consciousness";
a friendship may have elements of love in it, but as long as it
does not make itself love it remains as an inert object for
which language has no name. The psychic process implies the
action of anterior states of mind on posterior states of mind,
an action which remains unexplained, either by interpenetra-
tion or by motivation. If there is penetration, we have a syn-
thesis of two states of mind, both of which remain unaltered;
if there is motivation, we have a kind of magical action exer-
cised at a distance by one state on another. Thus, in Proust.
the disappearance of jealousy makes room for the craving of
certain sensations which creates the need of a certain presence.
Various feelings, considered as objectified forces, act on each
other like chemical agents, but in a completely irrational way.
44
 BEING-FOR-ITSELF

There is no reason why one state of mind should bring about

the next unless we want to have it that way. The psychologist
should not try to establish the mechanics of psychic causality;
he should be satisfied to describe psychic irrationality. Psychic
causality is a spurious conception resulting from the projec-
tion of the being-for-itself, and of original temporality, into
the being-in-itself. Psychic causality disappears if the in-itself
remains on the non-reflective plane, or if reflection purifies
itself. How it can purify itself.. Sartre does not yet tell us.

The psyche is only in the same manner as a given situation

is; the liberty of the being-for-itself is always beyond, although
liberty can manifest itself only from a given situation. "In-
ternal" duration is an illusion.

For the time being, let us note that he does not deny the
reality of tbe 'psyche; my psyche is, since it reveals itself to
my consciousness. It is like my shadow: what I see of myself
when I want to see myself. But it is only as a situation, even
if that situation is quite real for the being-for-itself, which, in
fact, can take its free leap into a transcendent future only
from a given situation. Let us remember also that reflection
confers on the data of the psyche a kind of duration which is
the original temporality degraded into a sort of being-in-
itself: a sense of "internal" or "qualitative" duration. The
being-for-itself, through reflection, may seem to have reached
a fairly concrete form, which is like a first sketch of the por-
trait it will seek in the consciousness of others. But this is
only an illusion. The being-far-itself exists primarily as tran-
scendence.

45.
 III Being-In- The- World

1. Knowledge.

Every knowledge is intuitive; it is the presence of conscious-

ness to the thing. This implies that consciousness is not what
it is present to, and that knowledge is merely a negative mode
of being.

Before treating, under the heading of TRANSCE~DENCE, our

knowledge of the world, Sanre comes back to the definition
of knowledge, which, according to him, can be given only in
terms of being. Every knowledge, says Sartre, is intuitive;
deduction and discourse are means to reach an intuition. In-
tuition is defined by Husserl, and by most philosophers, as
the presence of the thing-in-itself to consciousness. But since
presence is an "ek-static" mode of heing. we have to reverse
the terms and say that intuition is the presence of conscious-
ness to being. To be present to something implies, as we have
seen, that one is not that something. The negation comes from
46
 BEING-IN-THE-WORLD

the being-for-itself. Knowledge, therefore, appears as a mode

of being. Or, if one prefers, it is a certain way of not being
a certain thing, which is at once posited as the non-self, or as
other. (Consciousness, declares Hegel, distinguishes itself
from something to which, at the same time, it relates itself.)

Knowledge is an internal negation.

We must, however, distinguish between external negation,

by which we merely establish the exteriority of one thing to
another-the tea cup is not the inkstand-and internal ne-
gation, in which the negated being qualifies the other by
its absence from it. Only the being-for-itself can be affected
thus by what it is not. The tea cup is not affected by the fact
that it is not the inkstand; the distinction is established from
outside and does not modify the nature of each. But when I
say: "I am not rich," or, "I am not beautiful," I determine
myself by these negative qualities which may explain part of
my behavior.

In knowledge, consciousness, which is absolute nothingness.

makes itself present to a particular object which it is not,
thereby becoming a particular, or qualified, nothingness. The
presence of consciousness to the object causes the object to
become present to consciousness and to stand out against the
nothingness 01 consciousness.

Fundamentally, knowledge is an internal negation. It

causes itself to be qualified by that which it is not. In a sense,
consciousness must be the object in order to deny that it is.
When I look at that picture on the wall, my consciousness is
there, with it, in fact it is nothing else than the picture. The
47
 TO BE AND NOT TO BE

picture is really there, but of my consciousness all I can say

is that it is not picture. As consciousness, I merely am the non-
being which brings itself to existence from the fullness-of-
being of the picture. As Husserl pointed out, consciousness has
no contents, even in a degraded form; it merely aims at
things, it is empty and intentional. Any consciousness must
be consciousness of something; that something is the concrete
pole of knowledge. In the rapport between the for-itself and
the in-itself, the other pole is the nothingness of consciousness
on which the object stands out. This nothingness, however,
is a nothingness particularized, a particular nothing; and if
we wonder how one nothing can differ from another, let us
remember that language has one word to express the nothing-
ness which results from the absence of things (nothing), and
another for the nothingness which results from the absence
of persons (nobody). Consciousness, as absolute nothingness,
becomes a particular nothingness as it makes itself present to
a particular object, and brings it to existence as being there,
i.e., as a presence.

This phenomenon appears in its purest form in fascination.

When the fascinating object is the world, we have an illusion
of pantheistic fusion with the world.

A psychological illustration of this phenomenon is found

in fascination. In fascination the knower fully realizes his abso-
lute nothingness as he faces the known. He does not identify
himself with the fascinating object, yet he realizes that he
is, literally, nothing else. The fascinating object is, so to speak,
like a gigantic object in a deserted world. If fascination is
exercised, not by a particular object, but by an intuition of
presence to the world, it may bring about the illusion of a
48
 BEING-IN-THE-WORLD

fusion of our consciousness with the world. This illusion is

the basis of the pantheistic intuitions described by Rousseau
and the romanticists. It did not mean fusion with the world,
as they believed, but presence to it in a generalized form. In
this presence to the world as a totality, consciousness is not
the world, it is absolute nothingness, absolute negation, and
it is this absolute negation of self which causes the world to
surge as a totality.

The relation between being-in-itself and being-for-itself is nei-

ther continuity nor discontinuity; it is "identity denied."

Sartre's ontology constitutes, therefore, an absolute denial

of the continuity which the romanticists, the Bergsonians,
establish between the self and the cosmos. If there is identity
between the two, it is an identity denied. To those who still
think in terms of "life force" or !'Clan vital, on the biological
plane, Sartre's position would seem dearer at times if they
were allowed to identify the being-in-itself with the uncon-
scious forces of life; but his method is strictly to remain on
the plane of phenomenology and to derive his ontology from
the very structure of consciousness. To explain how the pres-
ence of the for-itself to the in-itself can be defined neither as
continuity nor as discontinuity, he uses the image of two curbs
tangent to each other: at the point where they meet, nothing
separates them, they seem identical, but if we look at the two
curbs in their entirety and reconstitute in our mind the move-
ment which traced them, each one becomes, on the point
where they meet, the negation of the other. There is no dis-
tance, no discontinuity between the two curbs at that point,
yet they are distinct because the movement which traced one
negates, as it were, the movement which traced the other.
49
 TO BE AND NOT TO BE

Thus with the immediacy of the known in relation to the

knower. Knowledge, as pure negativity, adds nothing to the
known; it reveals it as being there. Conversely, while con-
sciousness reveals the objects as extended, it apprehends its
own non-extension, which is not a positive spiritual quality,
but the negation of extension. This internal negation, which
reveals being, is "ek-static" in character; it is what Sartre calls
"transcendence."

2. Determination as negation.

Internal negation is an absolute. As the whole of negation,

it is negation of the whole, and causes the world to surge as a
totality against a background of non-being.

The original negation is a radical negation,' as the whole

of negation, the for-itself is negation of the whole. As a totality
of negation, the for-itself confers totality on being and reveals
"the world," whiCh appears to consciousness as surrounded
by nothingness; but this nothingness is merely the non-being
of consciousness, which, through its transcendence, appears to
itself as outside of being, excluded from the world. It is that
non-being which limits the world and makes it a totality.

Consciousness is a totality, but it is a detotalized totality.

Through external negation, it isolates the this or the that from
the background of undifferentiated totality of wlliclz it is
internal negation. This passage from the continuity of the
background to the discontinuity of the this and that consti-
tutes space.

But if consciousness is, or has to be, its own totality as

negation, it can only be that totality in a detotalized form; on
50
 BEING-IN-TIlE-WORLD

the background of an undifferentiated totality of negation,

consciousness negates itself as partial structure of the whole
of being. "The being which I am not presently, inasmuch as it
appears on the background of the totality of being, is the
this." 48 The Gestalt theory brought to light this relation
between the part and the whole, between "form" and "back-
ground." The "this" always appears on a background, i.e.,
on an undifferentiated totality of being negated by conscious-
ness. As soon as another "this" appears, it may fuse with the
background again. We might wonder at this point how a
particular negation can stand out on the background of a
totality of negation. The "this" stands out from its back-
ground because it is isolated by external negation, as not being
the background. Since it is always possible to make a new
this from the background and merge into it again, the back-
ground has an evanescent quality: "It is precisely this per-
petual evanescence of the totality into a collection, of con-
tinuity into discontinuity, that one calls space." Space is a
rapport established between beings which have no rapport by
a being (consciousness) which is at once present to the totality
of being and to the this; it is pure exteriority. It is neither
the form nor the background; it is, rather, the possibility of
the background to disintegrate into a multiplicity of forms for
consciousness.

Determination springs from negation.

This pure exteriority is a non-being, a nothingness:

It is indeed because the inkstand is not the table-nor the
pipe, nor the glass, etc.-that we can seize it as an inkstand.
And yet, if I say: the inkstand is not the table, I think
nothing.49
51
 TO BE AND NOT TO BE

Determination, then, is indeed negation, according to the

celebrated statement of Spinoza, but it is an ideal negation,
patterned after the original negation.

3. Quality and quantity.

/ ust as consciousness stands before the object as not being the

object, it stands before a certain aspect of the object (quality)
as not being it.

To determine its non-being fully, consciousness not only

has to negate that it is Being as a totality, and tlll'S being in
particular, it also has to qualify itself as a certain way of not
being this being. This determination corresponds to the de-
termination of quality as a profile of the this, and belongs to
the liberty of the for-itself. Quality is not an exterior aspect
of being, it is being. The interpenetration of all the qualities
of the object constitutes the object. The acidity of the lemon,
its yellow color, are not merely superficial qualities of an
empty form which would be the lemon, they are the lemon.
To perceive the yellow color of the lemon is for consciousness
to reflect itself as not being that quality.

I may "abstract" quality, but only as a certain way of being,

which is for me a future possibility.

Quality, then, is being, but seen as one of its "profiles."

I may, it is true, make an abstraction out of a certain quality;
but as one of my future possibilities. How quality may suggest
a certain mode of being, Sartre does not explain at this point.
Suffice it to state that the abstract is, as one of my possibilities,
the thing to come. This implies, as we shall see, belief in a
52
 BEING-IN-THE-WORLD

sort of universal existential symbolism which causes' us to

seek in the qualities of things the suggestion of a future way
of being for ourselves; thus, for instance, the restlessness ,of the
sea may reveal to the future navigator the possibility of a
restless existence as his own possibility.

Quantity is the objectification of external negation. It ,is ideal,

insofar as it is a rapport established by consciousness; it is
in itself insofar as it expresses the indifference of being.

As to quantity, it is pure exteriority, ideal, yet objectified as

if it were a thing-in-itself. The separation I introduce between
things is ideal: I alone am conscious of it. Yet it is also in-
itself, inasmuch as it is expressive of the independence of
things. As I isolate my room from the rest of the world, which
vanishes into the background, as I make myself present to
that room, projecting upon it, as it were, a unity which is the
unity of my self in order to think of it as a room, the objects
in the room appear to me distinct and indifferent on the
background of that unity. They appear distinct because. I can
make myself present to each object in turn by directing my
attention upon them. My room is at once unity and multi-
plicity, but it could not be a multiplicity of objects ,if I had not
conferred unity on it in the first place. This table and that
chair belong to the same room. The conjunction "and" ex-
presses an external negation: the table is not the chair, it
merely expresses my realization that being~in-itself is what it
is and nothing else. In itself, the conjunction is nothing, it is
a nothing in itself, a nothing objectified by consciousness, it
is quantity. If I add up the objects I see in the room, the
number I obtain belongs neither to each individual object
nor to their totality. Thus, space and quantity fundamentally
53
 1'0 BE AND NOT TO BE

represent the same type of negation: "they merely indicate the

infinite diversity of the ways in which the liberty of the for-
itself can realize the indifference of being." 50

4. Potentiality and utensility.

In correlation with my possibilities, I confer on the things of

the world potentialities such as permanence, probabilities, etc.

Being-for-itself, as internal negation of being-in-itself, pro-

jects to realize itself as presence to a future being. This is why
the object reveals itself as endowed with potentialities varying
from permanence to probabilities. These potentialities have
their sense in the future and it is the for-itself which confers
them. This landscape, for instance, made upon me an impres-
sion of quiet or wild beauty, which made me conscious of the
fact that this sort of beauty was precisely what I lacked. I
plan to recapture that impression by coming back to it, and
in so doing I confer on the landscape either the character of
permanence or, at least, the probability that it will retain the
same character. This character, which I have abstracted from
the landscape, is now for me a theme, an essence: quiet or
wild beauty. When I face it again, in the same landscape, or
anywhere else, it will still be with the same yearning. but this
time it will be a gratified yearning. Essence will coincide with
existence instead of following existence. We all know how
fragile such a realization is outside of the level of art, which
is the domain of the imaginary. If I am an artist, I sh:lll try
to evoke at once my yearning and its gratification through a
painting and thus bring essence to coincide with existence.
The beautiful is this coincidence which haunts the world
as an unattainable value.
54
 BEING-IN-THE-WORLD

1 also confer on them utensility. The order of utensils in" tile

world is the image of my possibilities.

Unreflectively, I am not aware of the fact that I will al-

ways separate myself from what I am, but only of the incom-
pleteness of things. I must therefore keep trying to reach my
self through the world, and this is what Sartre calls "the cir-
cuit of ipseity." My own future is tied up with the future of
the world, which appears to me as a complex of things and
tools. Each thing of the world is at the same time a utensil
which indicates my possibilities, and "as I am my possibilities,
the order of utensils in the world is the image, projected into
the in-itself, of my possibilities, i.e., of what I am." 51 The
world, as complex of tool-things which reveals my possibili-
ties, between my past and my future self, within the "circuit
of ipseity," or selfness, is therefore a world of tasks in which
I find myself engaged through the fact that any future is the
future of a certain present and that, as consciousness, I am
present to the world. It is an image of my self, since I am my
possibilities, but that image is projected into the in-itself since
it appears to me as a future state of the world. Heidegger errs
when he states that the complex of tool~bjects merely points
to the realization of the for-itself.

The tool-objects of the world show the way to the realization

of the self, not as absolute negation. but as realization of a
self qualified by a past which it has to assume.

Why it should be so, why things appear as tools, indicating

tasks to be accomplished, why consciousness 'is not content to
remain as a mere negation of this and that, remains to be ex-
plained. Consciousness is not merely its future possibilities; it
55
 TO BE AND NOT TO BE

is also its past, 'or has to be its past. The self has to disperse
itself on its three temporal dimensions. It has to seek the
sense of its past in its future, but it also has to be its future
within the perspective' 'of a certain past. As I separate myself
from the past, I become not a pure negation, but the negation
of that past, a qualified negation. The sense of that negation
is in my past consciousness, which now stands out in bold
relief from among other things and other facts of the world.
This past which is now a mere datum, a thing-in-itself, and
as such my only concrete reality, I must save by grounding it
in consciousness, by giving it meaning:
The future is the past transcended (Ie passe depasse as a
given in-itself, toward an in-itself which would be its own
foundation, i.e., which would be insofar as I would have to
be it. My possible is the free resumption of that past insofar
as that resumption can save it by giving it a foundation. 52

5. World time.

The idea of universal time results from the projection of

temporality into being.

Throughout his analysis of "being-in-the-world" as tran-

scendence, Sartre made various allusions to past and future
states of the world. We should realize, however, that the idea
of a' universal time is a spurious idea resulting from the pro-
jection of original temporality, which is the very structure of
consciousness, on a static or moving world of being. Unreflec-
tively, I am not conscious of my temporality; I· discover it
outside of consciousness, reflected by the world. Hence, the
conception of a universal temporality, which is a sort of objec-
tive temporality.
56
 BEING-IN-THE-WORLD

Insofar as they appear to me as permanent, objects appear

with a fUlure and with a past. Change appears to me as
causality. As an object changes, I conceive of the change as
absolute dispersion of instants exterior to each other, within
the tmity of Time which is necessity. This conception contains
a contradiction.

As I perceive the things of the world, I confer on them at

once the three dimensions of my temporality. This inkstand
in front of me appears to me with a future and with a past.
i.e., with a character of permanence. In the future, it appears
to me as the idea of an inkstand, i.e., as an essence in the past.
as a co-presence to my own presence; and since my past
presence to the inkstand is now objectified and in itself, there
is really no difference between the past of the inkstand and
my own, except that I have to assume my past. If objects are
not perceived as permanent, but as coming into being and
being replaced by others, I establish between objects a cause
and effect relationship. Thus external temporality appears to
me as absolute dispersion within a unity which is Time. Each
"before" and each "after" appears as an instant exterior to
other instants, yet all these instants merge within the unity of
a single being which is Time. Time is dispersion conceived as
necessity.

This contradiction is due to the fact that world time appears

on the double foundation of consciousness and of being.

The contradictory nature of time, as it appears to us, i.e.,

a unity and multiplicity at once, is due to the fact that it ap-
pears on the double foundation of the for-itself and of the in-
itself, of consciousness and of being. Outside of consciousness,
57
 TO BE AND NOT TO BE

being is what it is. The idea of change, with a "before" and

an "after," comes from consciousness. What the foundation
of that idea is in being is a metaphysical question outside of
ontology, as Sartre understands it.

The present is presence of consciousness to being. Presence

of consciousness to a motionless object reveals the ek-static
movement by which consciousness makes itself present to
being.

The preceding considerations apply primarily to the past

of the world. The present reveals being to consciousness as
motionless or in motion. If the object revealed to the presence
of consciousness is motionless, it is simply perceived as being
and as having been in the past, identical with itself. It is more
difficult to point out what, in motion, comes from being and
what comes from consciousness. In motion, the object can no
longer be defined by its relations of pure exteriority with other
objects. If it becomes exterior to its exteriority, it is exterior to
itself. Its manner of being has changed. It remains in sus-
pense between abolishment and permanence. Through mo-
tion, consciousness discovers its own exteriority-to-itself. The
trajectory reveals that exteriority within the unity of a single
being. When the this is at rest, space is; when it is in motion,
space is engendered, and is engendered in time. Sartre's de-
scription of motion is not intended as a metaphysical explana-
tion. It merely points out how, through motion, consciousness
receives the revelation of its own exteriority to self, as a mere
presence to that which it is' not. Motion is a perfect symbol
of its perpetual flight. We ask motion for the realization of
universal time because the present of the mobile object an-
nounces to consciousness its own presence as exteriority to
58
 BEING-IN -THE-WORLD

self, with, of course, this difference: consciousness has to

assume the being to which it is exterior.

The original future is the gamut of my potentialities. These

are related by me to future states of the world.

The original future of consciousness is the possibility of its

presence to a being-in-itself beyond the real being-in-itself. My
future, therefore, implies a future world and is directly con-
nected with the real to which I am present, since it is only
my possibility to modify the present. Thus my future is made
up of a gamut of potentialities: permanence, essences, powers.
There is, then, a universal future. It appears to me in the
essences of things, because, as soon as I determine the essence
of something I am already in the future; thus, the permanence
and utensility of the table refer to my future use of the table.
A future of the world may be defined as a chance, a proha-
bility, etc. Each this has a future of this sort.

The universal future is an abstract frame containing all my

potentialities as reflected on the things of this world. Its cohe-
sion is a reflection of the unity of consciousness.

The universal future is obviously an abstract frame which

we conceive of as containing the whole hierarchy of all fu-
tures. We conceive these futures as exterior to each other
within a frame exterior to them. Closely considered, its cohe-
sion crumbles down into a multiplicity of instants which,
considered in turn, lose their temporal nature. That cohesion
is nothing but a reflection of the for-itself seeking its self.
Time has no being except in the act through which we give
it reality by extending it, like a bridge, toward the realization
59
 TO BE AND KOT TO BE

of a project. We conceive it mostly as lapse, and a lapse ot

time is the ideal distance which separates me from myself.
Within that lapse, I compress a series of possibilities related
to my major project, and so time appears to me as an objec-
tive temporal form which is like the trajectory of my act.

6. Knowledge of the world.

Knowledge can be defined in terms of being: it is only the

presence of the in-itself to the for-itselj.

Knowledge is only the presence of being to the for-itself.

and there is being only because the for-itself negates i~self. As
it negates itself, it becomes affirmation of the in-itscl'u There
is nothing outside of what I see, or could see. Space, time.
utensility are mere conditions of the realization of being
through internal negation by the for-itself. Yet space, time.
and utensility separate me radically from being. When the
for-itself affirms that it knows being "such as it is," it affirms
its non-being, it places itself outside of being. The for-itself
is immediate presence to being and at the same. time there
is an infinite distance between being-in-itself and being-for-
itself. That is because the ideal of knowledge is being-what-
one-knows, and its original structure, not-being-what-one-
knows:

..• knowledge, intermediary between being and nOI1-

being, refers me to absolute being if I want it (to be) sub-
jective, and refers me to myself when I think I am grasping
the absolute. The very sense of knowledge is what it is not
and is not what it is, for to know a being such as it is, one
would have to be that being, but there is a "such as it is"
only because I am not the being that I know, and if I be-
60
 BEING-IN-THE-WORLD

came that being, the "such as it is" would vanish and could
not even be thought ... Knowledge places us in the pres-
ence of the absolute, and there is a truth of knowledge. But
that truth, although it delivers us nothing more or less than
the absolute, remains strictly human.53

The body appears not as knowing but as known, and known

primarily by others.

No mention has been made so far of the senses and of the

part played by the body in the process of knowing. This is
because the body appears primarily as known, and not as
knowing. Furthermore, it is primarily known by others, and
what we know of our body, we know through our knowledge
of the other's body, and through his knowledge of our
body. As I discover my body, I discover another mode of
existence as fundamental as being-for-itself: being-for-others.

61
 IV Being-For-Others

1. The problem of the other's existence.

Both the realist and the idealist conceitle my relation with the
other as external negation.

Sartre rejects both the idealist and the realist points of view
in regard to the existence of others:
At the origin of the problem of the existence of others, there
is a fundamental presupposition: my fellowman (autrui)
is the other, i.e., the Ego which is not my Ego, (le moi qui
n'est pas moi); we therefore detect a negation as the consti-
tutive structure of being-the-<:lther (l'hre-alltrui). The pre-
supposition common to idealism and realism is that the
constituting negation is one of exteriority.04
This is because the other appears to me through the perception
of a body. The realist sees himself separated from the other as
a chair is separated from the table: in space. The idealist may
reduce both his body and the body of the other to objective
62
 BEING-FOR-OTHERS

systems of representation, but in idealism each consciousness

remains exterior to the other consciousness, since each one is
a complete system of representation. Each subject is limited
by itself only: the world is my representation. This type of
separation is a kind of exteriority in space. Moreover, the
idealist is unaware that this conception presupposes a "third
man" to establish this relationship. This witness may take the
form of God, who at once is his creatures, since he creates
them, and is not his creatures since he is their witness; a
relationship expressed by the conception of creation. But this
conception raises new problems, as is shown by post-Cartesian
thought. If creation is continued, I am in suspense between a
distinct existence and pantheistic fusion with the creator. If
creation is an original act and if I have become a closed
system within my own consciousness, God knows me as
exterior to himself, in the way a sculptor knows his work:
as an object. The notion of God, while revealing interior
negation as the only possible connection between various con-
sciousness, remains ineffective.

In Husserl, the pre..sence of tool-things in the world refers to

the existence of th~ other. The existence of the other is as
sure as that of the world but no more.

Since the 18th century, philosophy has been trying to elimi-

nate the gap between my consciousness and the consciousness
of the other by considering them otherwise than two separate
substances. The connection has been sought in the very struc-
ture of consciousness; but by seeking that connection in
knowledge, modern philosophy still maintains exteriority-
external negation-as the link between my consciousness and
the other's. In Hussed, the objects of the world refer, as tools,
63
 TO BE AND NOT TO BE

to the existence of others. Whether I consider this table or

that tree in solitude or in company, the others are still there
with all the meanings which are attached to the table or to
the tree, which constitute the table or the tree. Their existence
is as sure as the existence of the world; the solipsist might
answer: "Yes, but no more." Husserl himself admitted that
when my consciousness aims at the other (the other's con-
sciousness), it discovers the other as an absence.

In Hegel, the existence of the other as consciousness is proven

by the fact that I need his recognition to establish the identity
of my own. A consciousness, however, cannot recognize an-
otlter as such except in an objectified form.

In his Phenomenology of the Mind, a work from which

Sartre seems to have derived more than one suggestion, Hegel
has offered a more satisfactory explanation. Self-consciousness
is identical with itself through the exclusion of every other
consciousness. That exclusion constitutes implicit recognition.
Hegel places himself on the plane of reciprocal relations be-
tween one consciousness and the other, which Descartes does
not, since by saying: "I think, therefore I am," he already
takes himself for granted. Through the· cogito, I appear to
myself as an individuality; I apprehend myself as an object,
on the reflective plane, as distinct from the other, whose exist-
ence I thereby imply. Hegel's merit is to have pointed out that
as a free consciousness I could not be an object for myself,
and had to seek recognition of myself, as subject and as object,
from a foreign consciousness. But I could not seek that recog-
nition if I did not first recognize the other as subject. This
is t~e basis of Hegel's famous explanation of the master to
slave relationship: as subject, the other sees me objectively,
64
 BEING-FOR-OTHERS

bound to a body and immersed in the flux of life. To be

recognized by the other as a free subject, as pure conscious-
ness, I must prove that I am not bound to my body, I must
risk my life, I must attack him. If the other is unwilling to
take the same risk, he proves himself to be more attached to
his body and to his life than I amJHegel's merit here is to
suggest that I am a being-for-itself which is for itself only for
the other.mut Hegel does not realize that if I become a subject
for the other, he will become an object for me, and will be
unable to recognize m..§J Hegel views all consciousness from
the viewpoint of totality. By so doing he makes of the plural-
ity of consciousnesses a plurality of objects, and of himself a
sort of transcendental subject. He is still on the plane of
knowledge. My relation with the other is a relation from
being to being, not of' knowledge to knowledge:
for I can, no doubt, transcend myself toward the All, but I
cannot establish myself within that All to contemplate my-
self and to contemplate others. No logical or epistemological
optimism then could bring an end to the scandal of plurality
of consciousnesses.55

To HeideggJ..~'0my relation with the other is being, not knowl-

edge, being with, not being for. My being with others in the
world is as certain as the. world, but no more. It neither makes
solipsism impossible nor explains the dialectics of concrete
relations betwe~n two individuals. The element of negation
is absent in Heidegger's Mitsein.

Heidegger, ~f he did not solve the problem, at least stated it

properly by pla~ing it, not on the plane of knowledge, but on
the plane of being. Heidegger defines "human reality" as
being in the w?rld with other human beings. These modes of
65
 TO BE AND NOT TO BE

being are inseparable from each other. For "human reality,"

being consists in finding itself in a finite world (Dasein)
with other human beings (Mitsein). We ask the world, as
the sum total of our possibilities, to reveal to us what we are;
if we live an authentic life, all our actions are subordinated
to the realization of our finitude between birth and death;
our birth, of course, is a contingent circumstance, but in a
movement of transcendence toward our authentic self, we
can give sense to our death, which is our most authentic possi-
bility. I am not alone in this movement of transcendence. I
am in it with others, and inasmuch as they share that move-
ment of transcendence through the world, they are in a
sense part of me. In my unauthentic life with others, I accept
the role of an interchangeable human being of the sort desig-
nated by the indefinite pronouns "one," "people," "they": to
go from Columbus Circle to Grand Central, one must change
trains at Times Square. This interchangeable human being is
an abstraction, a pure non-being, a convenient myth, the
impersonal entity aimed at by signs, taboos, and "How to
Use" leaflets, to insure common discipline, or to offer guid-
ance in the execution of impersonal tasks. Set up as an ideal,
it does away with anguish, and through social conformism,
small talk, curiosity and diversion, leads to the unauthentic
life. The authentic Mitsein might be symbolized by the effort
of the team to win the boat race. It is intimately felt in the
common rhythm of the rowers; each one of them feels within
himself the same movement of transcendence toward a com-
mon goal, on the horizon of a common world, and feels it
with the other rowers. In this conception, however, being
for others has been replaced by being with others. It reveals
the coexistence of consciousnesses without explaining it. If
you do away with the element of negation in the concept of
66
 BEING-FOR-OTHERS

the other, you identify individual consciousness with world

consciousness, and you slip back into idealism, taking others
along with you. You have not escaped solipsism.

To show that solipsism is impossible, I must show that my

being for others is part of the cogito, and is as certain as my
existence.

To escape from solipsism, I need no proof of the existence

of others, I simply must demonstrate that solipsism is impossi-
ble, as I implicitly and unreflectively acknowledge in daily
life. I must go back to the pre-reflective cogito, and see
whether it will not reveal me the existence of others in the
same concrete way as it has already revealed me the existence
of the thing-in-itself: through negation. If the other, however,
is to appear to me as a consciousness, the negation must be
internal, not external, since I also am a consciousness, and
in that case the multiplicity of consciousnesses must be a
totality, as Hegel claimed; but the nature of that totality must
be such as to make it impossible to adopt the point of view of
totality. It must be a detotalized totality, since each one is con-
scious of being himself insofar as he is not the other.

2. Concrete realization of the other as consciousness.

The existence of the other as subject is concretely revealed to

me when I feel myself becoming an object for him under his
glance.

1£ I am alone in the park, the landscape seems organized

around me; every distance can be measured from the place
where I stand, things have distinct qualities for me, I am
67
 TO BE AND NOT TO BE

the center of reference of the world about me. Other people

may appear in the distance. They figure as accessories, may
even add a picturesque note as do the characters which the
painter fits into his composition. If one of them becomes aware
of my presence, comes toward me and looks at me, the situa-
tion is suddenly altered. Another frame of reference has
surged within my own world, distances are now measured from
another person, another world has been superimposed on mine
and I figure in it, in my turn, as an accessory, as an object.
In a flash, my universe disintegrates and is flushed away from
me. I now exist in the universe of another, at a given distance
from the person who constitutes the center of that universe.
The change came through the fact that I am now being looked
at. When I am looked at, I no longer perceive the shape or
color of the eyes fixed on me, I am referred to my own self.
H I do see their shape or color, I cease perceiving the look.
This is so true that I do not even have to see eyes peering at
me to have the sensation of being looked at. In hostile ter-
ritory, human glances lurk behind every bush. Being seen,
then, primarily means that I no longer am the observer who
determines the frame of reference of my world. My being-in-
the-world and my being-for-myself are at once affected. Un-
der the look of the other, I realize that I figure in his world
as an object, occupying a certain amount of space, within a
given situation. Conversely, he is revealed to me as subject,
as consciousness. The ridicule or the shame of a certain
situation may be suddenly revealed to me as I discover that
someone is looking at me. I discover myself then as existing
for another, as object for his consciousness. Certain feelings
have no other origin than my being-for-others, and I cannot
think for a moment of denying them: I am this feeling of
ridicule or that feeling of shame. The other, then, appears to
68
 BEING-FOR-OTHERS

me, not as an object in the world, but as a pure transcendence,

as an intention, a transcendence and intention which are not
mine; it reveals to me that, while I cannot be an object
for myself, I can be an object for the other. The other separates
himself from me in the same way as I separate myself from
the in-itself, Yet there is a difference.

I become an object for the other inasmuch as I become for

him a transcended-transcendence.

The object that I become under the look of the other is not
of the type of the in-itself. I am still free, but my liberty has
been circumscribed. My transcendence has become a pure
datum. In the eyes of the other, I figure as limited transcen-
dence. My possibilities have been turned into probabilities.
My subjectivity has been objectified. In short, I am now a
transcended-transcendence. A somewhat forceful image of
what is meant here by "transcended transcendence" might
be suggested by the flight of a fugitive from justice, trapped
in a given area, darting in every possible direction toward
every possible issue and discovering at every move that his
space, as well as every possibility for escape, are thoroughly
covered. Even if he could not see his pursuers, he would
realize that their seeing him has alienated space for him: that
space he is standing in is no longer his own.

My transcendence in time as in space ts modified by the

simultaneity of another's transcendence.

Awareness of the other also alienates time by giving it a

new dimension: simultaneity. If I were alone in the world,
my consciousness would only be presence to the world. The
69
 TO BE AND NOT TO BE

look of others reveals to me a co-presence which throws me

into a universal present, and that universal present is an aliena-
tion of my own presence to the universe.

My objectivity for others stays with me, as part of me, in the

absence of the other, which means the possibility of his
presence. In an impersonal form, the presence of the other is
referred to, even in his absence by the tool-things of the warld.

The objectivity which the other confers on me is not, there-

fore, the being-in-itself which my consciousness at once negates
and has to assume. It is I, but given another dimension and
negated by another consciousness. Therefore, it escapes me.
The meanness or the cowardliness that the other sees in me
is not for me a full and complete intuition of what I am.
Yet, although I would not think of myself as mean or cow-
ardly but for the presence of others, I have to experience these
modes of being at a distance from myself, in the minds of
others. The other does not have to be present in person for me
to feel his presence as subject. Let us say, for instance, that I
am spying through a key-hole; I hear footsteps, think that I
have been detected, and experience shame. It was a false
alarm. I resume my position. Yet the shame may not dis-
appear. Although I am sure that no one is there, yet the
existence of the other as subject is still with me. A person
may be said to be absent from a place only when that person
might have been there. At the Cafe de Flore, known to be
patronized by Sartre, one might perhaps say: "M. Sartre is
absent," but one could not add; "and the Pope is absent.
too," without passing from sense to nonsense. Thus can we
say that there is "presence in absence." As a possible presence,
the other is ubiquitous presence, even in absence. Moreover,
70
 BEING-FaR-OTHERS

there are all around me signs of his presence far more im-
pressive than the human footprint on the sand of Robinson
Crusoe's island. All the tool-things of the world, and their
utensility, refer to that presence.

In that impersonal form, expressed by impersonal pronouns

like one, they, people, I conceive the consciousness of others
as a totality, corresponding to the notion of God.

If I try to abstractly construe this consciousness of others

which encompasses my own, I only reach the concept of an
omnipresent and infinite subject, corresponding to the notion
of God. It is only when I look at others, and objectify their
subjectivity, that they become a multiplicity. If I talk to an
audience, I experience the look of the audience as a look, even
though I am not conscious of dealing with an integrated col-
lective body. If I want to make sure that I am being under-
stood, I look in turn at the audience and see individual heads
and eyes appear. What I had experienced at first was an
anonymous look corresponding to the impersonal pronoun:
one. This impersonal one is always with me: It is my being-
for-others, quite distinct from my being-for-itself.

I objectify the other through internal negation, by denying

that I am the other.

The nature of that distinction is internal negation. It is

essentially the same as the distinction between being-for-itself
and being-in-itself. If there is another, it is because I am not
that other, because I distinguish myself from him. This nega-
tion at once affirms my being as an individual and the being
of the other, and I am that negation, spontaneously and con-
71
 TO BE AND NOT TO BE

tinuously. In fact, as self-consciousness, I am nothing more

than my negation of being the other, in the same way as my
consciousness of the chair apprehends itself as not being the
chair.

Conversely, the other is he for whom my for-itself is ob-

jectively, but I cannot retain this objectivity without losing
my own subjectivity. If I affirm my subjectivity, he, in turn,
becomes an object f01' me. As this process confirms our separa-
tion, I negate the negation by which the other made me an
object: I reject myself rejected. Through this limitation, my
consciousness becomes a detotalized totality.

Yet there is a difference. In this case the negation is recipro-

cal. The other is also a consciousness, with possibilities which
are not my own. His consciousness negates being my con-
sciousness and it must, therefore, recognize my being-for-itself
in order to refuse it. Thus my consciousness becomes object
for his consciousness, which it cannot be for mine. The other,
as subject, possesses a dimension of my being which is inac-
cessible to me. The other is he-for-whom-my-for-itself is. If,
however, I accept being an object in the other's subjectivity, I
lose my own subjectivity; I cease being a transcending-
transcendence and become a transcendent-transcende~ce. If,
on the other hand, I affirm my subjectivity by making the other
an object, a transcended-transcendence in his turn, I lose my
own objectivity. In order to retain my subjectivity, I finally
have to reject this objectivity which the other's consciousness
confers on my own by distinguishing itself from mine. I
reject myself rejected. But as I tear myself from the other,
leaving my alienated self in his hands, I recognize at once
the existence of the other and of my objective being-for-others.
72
 BEING-FOR-OTHERS

This acceptance, in refusal, of my alienated self is at once

my bond with others and the symbol of our absolute separa-
tion. It is not given once and for all, even though we may
try to consider it that way by saying: "Let the others think
of me what they like." It has to be freely and perpetually
reassumed, and this is the price we pay for not falling into
voluntary solipsism. It is a limitation, inasmuch as conscious-
ness can be limited only by consciousness. As consciousness, I
am a totality; as a consciousness limited by a foreign con-
sciousness, I am a detotalized totality. The other appears first
to me as a transcendence which limits my own. I grasp first
that negation for which I am not responsible, but as I grasp'
that negation of myself, I realize that I am responsible for a-
negation of the other which is my own possibility, I discover
my self as negation of the other. Thus by assuming the limita-
tion conferred on me by the other, I turn it into a mere datum
and confer on the other the limitation which defines him as
"other."

Shame is the sense of that limitation in its original form. One,

may experience shame either before the other individualized,
or before the other depersonalized. Posited as the subject which
cannot ke made object, the other depersonalized is conceived
as God.

The various attitudes we may assume toward the other

confirm this situation. Shame is the original recognition of
the limitation which the existence of the other imposes upon
my consciousness. It is the feeling of the original fall in its
purest form. I see myself fallen among the things of the
world, as a kind of object. The shame experienced on being
seen nude is its symbolic form. To dress is to daim the privi-
73
 TO BE AND 1'0T TO BE

lege of seeing without being seen, like a pure subject. Thus

did Adam and Eve, in the symbolic language of Genesis,
know after the fall that they were nude. The natural reaction
of defense against such a feeling is to consider the other as an
object in his turn. By so doing we do not deny his sub-
jectivity, but the other appears as having an outside as well
as an inside. He is like a camera which may register images
of me which I can modify. His transcendence has acquired a
character of "interiority." The other, however, may be per-
ceived in his depersonalized form as well as in his individ-
ualized form. In that case we refer to him as "one," "they,"
"people." If we posit the depersonalized other as the subject
which cannot be realized as object, this form becomes God
before whom I posit, in turn, the eternity of the object which
I am for his consciousness. Black magic represents an effort
to reverse the process and to confer on God the character of
an object. It is an attempt to transcend divine transcendence
by going directly against God's will; but such an attempt
implies recognition of God as the absolute subject which can-
not be made object, and contains implicit contradiction.

Self-respect means free assumption of that limitation Gnd a

sense of responsibility tOlllard the alienated self. Vanity is till
attempt to use the subjectivity of others to confer objectivity
to our qualities. Pride is the assumption of our subjectivity.

Self-respect, pride, vanity are variations on the theme of

shame. Self-respect acknowledges the objectivity of conscious-
ness for others, holds itself responsible for it, and assumes th:J.t
responsibility. The self-respecting man tries to affect the other
without ceasing to be an object for him; the object of his
respect. The same is true of vanity. In vanity, I try, through
74
 BEl~G-FOR-OTHERS

a foreign consciousness, to confer objectivity on some of my

qualities. In so doing, I use the other's consciousness as a
means to an end, as an object, which of course implies con-
tradiction and brings ridicule instead of admiration. Pride
is the sense of my subjectivity. Only shame and pride are
authentic feelings, being respectively the original sense of our
objectivity and the affirmation of our subjectivity before the
other.

3. The other as object.

The other as object is a transcended-transcendence. As tran-

scendence, he is committed to certain tasks but 1 do not
perceive him as committing himself; his subjectivity appears
as an absence.

Self-respect, vanity, pride are various ways of apprehending

one's subjectivity, thereby objectifying the other's in various
degrees. Becoming aware of my self, I cause the other to exist
as an object in my world. Not that I deny completely his
transcendence as "other." I recognize it, not as a transcending-
transcendence but as a transcended-transcendence. The other
still appears to me as committed to certain tasks, bu~ this
commitment assumes a character of passivity. He is committed
in the same way as a policy is committed to writing. His
commitment is, as it were, written on the surface of the
tool-things of the world, but his subjectivity appears to me
as an absence.

Objectified, the depersonalized Other appears as objective

totality. This totality is the background on which the other
75
 TO BE AND NOT TO BE

appears as a particular object. The other as object is an auton-

omous center of reference within my world.

If, in reaction to my intuition of the other-subject in deper-

sonalized form, as a totality, I try to objectify his subjectivity,
I apprehend him as objective totality coextensive with the
totality of the world. On the background of this objective
totality, the other appears as a form, just as an object of this
world appears as a this on the background of a totality of
objects. As I look at this angry man in the street, I perceive
a red face, cries, and threatening gestures; these signs do not
refer to subjective anger, they refer to other similar incidents.
Is the angry man going to strike? I can only judge this situation
and assess its probabilities in terms of other similar situa-
tions. This does not mean that the behaviorists are right in
interpreting man in terms of situations; the other is a tran-
scended-transcendence, which means that to understand him
we must understand his goals. But even if we reverse the be-
haviorist viewpoint, the objectivity of the other will remain
intact:
for what is primarily objective-whether we call it significa-
tion, after the style of French or British psychologists, in-
tention after the style of phenomenologists, transcendence
like Heidegger, or form like the Gestaltists-it is the fact
that the Other cannot be defined otherwise than by a
totalitarian organization of the world and that he is the
key to that organization.56
The Other objectified is an autonomous center of reference
within my world. Fear of the enemy, even objectified, does
not consist merely of a few gestures, of a fall on rocky ground.
It is a complete change in the organization of the world. The
deserting soldier, as he throws away his gun, and turns toward
76
 BEING-FOR-OTHERS

his rear lines, has seen his horizon closed by the enemy as by a
wall, and now his horizon opens up back of him as a refuge.
I can grasp the whole situation without ceasing to see the
soldier objectively.

My relations with the other tends primarily to make him

stay as ob;ect for me.

My apprehension of the other is then, first of all, that of a

subjective totality, then that of a concrete subject which I
cannot limit as particular subject, then, in defensive reaction,
of a particular object on the background of a degraded ob-
jective totality. But the other can always reassume his sub-
jectivity:
My constant care then is to contain the other within his
objectivity, and my relations with the other as object are
made up essentially of ruses intended to make him stay an
object.57
Since a single look from the other suffices to render all my
precautions useless, I am thrown back and forth from the
feeling of my subjectivity to that of my objectivity, without
ever being able to conciliate these two modes of being.

4. Metaphysical aspect of the question.

Being-for-others seems to be the third attempt of being to tear

itself from its contingency. Everything happens as if a totality
of for-itself was trying to ground itself in being.

Sartre, at this point, is tempted to raise the same question

as the hero of Huxley's Eyeless in Gaza: "Why are there
77
 TO BE AND NOT TO BE

others?" Everything happens, in a way, as if my consciousness

and the consciousness of the other were the same originally.
Summing up the foregoing, we realize that being-for-others
constitutes the third attempt of being-in-itself to tear itself
from its contingency, or, to use Sartre's expression, its third
Uek-stasy." The first was the three-dimensional project of
being-far-itself, negating its being-in-itself and assuming it at
the same time, in the light of the future. The second was that
of the reflective for-itself to he that negation as for-itself-in-
itself, and to confer on it a sort of objectivity. The third is that
of being-for-others. In this case, as in the other two, the nega-
tion is internal but this time it is reciprocal. For me to be
able to negate that I am the other, it must be that there is a
being which is at once my self and the other self. Hegel seems
to be right: "it is the point of view of the totality which is the
point of view of being, the true point of view":
Everything happens as if the others and myself were mark-
ing the vain effort of a totality of being-for-itself to get
hold of itself again and to envelop what it has to he on the
pure and simple mode of the in-itsel£.58

Yet, through simultaneous negation, conscioumesses affirm

themselves as incompatihle ahsolutes.

On the other hand, my negation of myself operates simul-

taneously with the other's negation that he is me, and without
these two negations, there could be no being-for-others. It
seems as if a pure non-being had slipped into a totality of
consciousness to break it up, "as non-being, in Leucippus'
atomism, slips into the Parmenidean totality of being to shatter
it into atoms." 59 Yet that non-being does not appear as the
foundation of the multiplicity of consciousnesses, for, again,
78
 BEIKG-FOR-OTHERS

if it were, there could be no being-for-others, except merely

as the expression of that multiplicity.

On the metaphysical plane, being-for-Qthers points to an orig-

inal totality of Mind. Starting from the fact of the plztrality
of consciotlsnesses, we must face it as pure contingency.

Thus we reach a contradictory conclusion: being-for-others

can be only through a totality which undoes itself so that it
may be. But, on the other hand, being-for-others can exist
only through a separateness which no totality, even the totality
of Mind, can produce. In a sense, the metaphysical sense.
the multiplicity of consciousnesses refers us to an original
totality of Mind tearing itself apart; in another sense, if we
start from the fact of plurality, the metaphysical question
loses all meaning, and that plurality appears as pure contin-
gency. It is so because it is so. "The ek-static totality of Mind
is not simply a detotalized totality, but it appears to us as a
broken-up being of which one can neither say that it exists
nor that it does not." 60 And so, adds Same, "the multiplicity
of consciousnesses appears to us as a synthesis and not as a
collection; but it is a synthesis the totality of which is incon-
ceivable." 61

The otller's objectivity is made manifest by his body.

We discovered that the existence of the other as subject

was made evident to us through the experience of our ob-
jectivity for him; that the reaction to that experience was our
apprehension of the other as object. Briefly, the other can exist
for us in two ways: if I experience his subjective being with
evidence, I fail to know him; if I know him and act on him,
79
 TO BE AND NOT TO BE

I reach only his objective being and the probability of his

existence. That object which the other is for me is made
manifest by his body.

5. The three ontological dimensions of the body.

As the other's objectivity is made manifest through his body, I

tend to know the human body as the other's body, even my
own.

When I think of the human body, I think primarily of

the body of others, objectively. I do so even when I am look-
ing at an X-ray of my own. It is a thing among the things of
the world. If I look at my hand, it is an object like any other
object, at a certain distance from my eyes, as is my type-
writer. But my body can also be, unreflectively, that which
reveals to me the things of the world, in which case I no
longer think of it nor see it. When my hand reveals to me
the surface and resistance of things, I am merely conscious
of the things my hand feels. There are, therefore, two ways
to experience the existence of our body;. objectively and
subjectively, as being-for-others and as being-for-itself. We
should, however, reverse this order if we wish to describe what
the body is for us on the unreflective plane before we define
its existence as known.

I experience the existence of my body zmrefiectedly eitl1er as

the condition of my transcendence or as pure contingence. As
the condition of my transcendence, it is tl1e unseen center of
reference toward which the tool-things of the world are point-
ing. As contingence, the existence of my body is revealed to me
directly through nausea.
80
 BEING-FOR-OTHERS

On the plane of the for-itself, the body could be defined as

the contingent form assumed by the necessity of my contin-
gency. It is not an in-itself within the for-itself; it is the for-
itself inasmuch as the for-itself is not its own foundation but
has to exist as a contingent being among other contingent
beings, here and now. As such, it cannot be distinguished from
the situation of the for-itself. In every perception, there is an
element of necessity, an element of contingency, and an ele-
ment of freedom: the book must appear to me either on the
right or on the left of the table, it is contingent on my position
that it should appear on the left rather than on the right, and
I am free to look at the book rather than at the table. My whole
field of vision refers to a center of reference which I am, and
cannot see. The orientation of things within that field of
vision refers to a certain order which I have introduced into
things through the mere contingent fact of my existence
among them. The world refers to my bodily presence as' a
center of reference. If I lose the sense of sight, objects still
exist for me but without the center of reference of a visible
totality. Thus, it is the surge of the for-itself in the world which
brings about at once the emergence of the world, as a totality
of things and of the senses. The body is my engagement indi-
vidualized, and Plato was not wrong to present the body as
that which individualizes the soul; but, on the other ha'~d, the
soul iS,the body inasmuch as the for-itself is its own individ_
ualization. We must conclude that the body is the primary
condition of my transcendence as well as the contingent struc-
ture of my being. As my contingency, my body is for me my
birth, my past, the necessity of a point of view. Yet my liberty
is inconceivable outside of that contingency. By the very fact
that I live, I have accepted my body and its infirmities, to-
gether with my finitude; but it is up to me to assume these
81
 TO BE AND NOT TO BE

infirmities as "to be proud of," "to be suppressed," or "to be

tolerated." When we say that the body is the condition of our
transcendence, we do not mean that it is just a tool among
other tools for consciousness; we mean consciousness tran-
scends the body as one transcends the sign toward its significa-
tion. In this process, the body becomes "the neglected one"
but consciousness still is the body inasmuch as it is nothing else
but a qualified internal negation. The contingency of which
the body is a sign is revealed to us in pain. When I read.
if I cease transcending letters, words and lines toward their
meaning, my eyes will begin to hurt as the characters become
blurred and dance before my eyes, and I will become conscious
of a certain pain which is in proportion to the degree my
attention is turned away from that which I am reading. As
pain progresses, I may try to view it objectively, on the re-
flective plane. I may even lend it a sort of magic life of its
own, speak of my sickness as of some familiar visitor. As I
project upon its variations the unity of original temporaliza-
tion, I reach the concept of an interpenetration of states of
consciousness which to Bergson is duration and liberty, and
which to Sartre is just psychic duration. When it is not
painful, non-positional consciousness of my contingency is
revealed to me under the form of a discreet and unbearable
nausea which is the root of physical nausea and is strictly
of the same nature. (fi1 conclusion, my body appears to my
consciousness either as the center of reference pointed to by
the tool-objects of the world, or as the contingency which
consciousness has to live down, and these two modes of being
are complementar¥J

[Lexperience the existence of the other's body as tllat of a nell!

center of reference which I can see and which is superimposed
82
 BEING-FaR-OTHERS

on mine. I transcend the other's transcendence through objec-

tive interpretation of his actions in a given situation; this
leads to knowledge of character, which is transcended-tran-
scendence. I may study objectively the reactions and structure
of his body. This leads to the abstract notion of "life.'

This is what my body is for me, unreflectively. The other's

body may also be apprehended unreflectively, as well as ob-
jectively known. The other is at first a new center of reference
superimposed on mine, a transcendence which I must tran-
scend; the tool-things of the world point to him as the new
center of reference. Yet, while my own center of reference
is a viewpoint on which there is no viewpoint, an empty
center of reference, I can view the other's viewpoint as his
body. I can even study that body objectively, merely as a body,
and understand my "facticity" through his. Such is the object
of physiology. The other's body, then, is primarily the facticity
of a transcended-transcendence, a facticity which refers to
my own. There are even moments when I lose sight of the
transcendence, and when the other's body appears to me as
pure contingency. It is then perceived by me as flesh and I
experience something similar to the nausea which is like the
taste of my own contingency. Generally, the other's body
appears to me within a situation, with a signification: I see
him walking, sitting down to read, working, etc. The totality
of these significations corresponds to the notion of life which
is therefore, in the abstract, transcended-transcendence, and life
appears as the background on which I perceive this body or
this organ. My perception of the other's body differs from my
perception of things insofar as I perceive it on the background
of a situation, and insofar as I do not perceive a particular
organ except in relation to ljfe. The meaning of gestures is
83
 TO BE AND NOT TO BE

somewhere outside, in space, and if Peter gets up suddenly,

I look around to see where he is going. I relate the movement
of the organ to the body as a whole. Hence the feeling of
horror before a hand sticking out from a cavity, or creeping
along the door frame. Character and temperament are other
indications of the existence of the other as transcended-tran-
scendence, We do not know our own character, and we know
the character of the other only through external manifesta-
tions. As a matter of fact, it is nothing else but these manifes-
tations. We grasp them as a synthetic ensemble before we
analyze their structure. This does not mean that we implicitly
believe in the fatality of character to the extent of denying
the other any form of liberty. The other's liberty is just ob-
jectified liberty: knowing the other's tendency to become
angry, I still consider him responsible for his anger, which is,
for me, equally a part of his transcendence; but it is a tran-
scendence which I can transcend and act upon in the present
as I calm or provoke that anger, and take it into account as I
project my own future.

I can also transfer the objectivity of the other's body to my

own. The abstraction of language favors that process.

The human body, then, appears with different dimensions

of being as my body and as the other's body; it appears with
a third ontological dimension as my body for others. Through
the look of the other, I am revealed to myself as object, insofar
as I have become for him a transcended-transcendence. I do
not know what kind of an object I have become for the other,
but I feel responsible for it. I am responsible for being there
and then, with a body. For the other, indeed, as we have seen,
I am not merely a transcended-transcendence I am my factual
84
 BEING-FOR-OTHERS

existence, my facticity. My body, that unknowable instru-

ment, is seen by the other, and, insofar as he transcends the
possibilities which I try to make my own, through interpre-
tation of my gestures, expressions, etc., that body appears to
me as one of the tool-things of the world, within a frame of
reference which is not mine. This is directly experienced in
shyness. The shy person is "embarrassed by his body," or
rather by the fact that while he simply experiences the exist-
ence of his body, the other sees it. His hands are there, limp
by his sides, for nothing, a mere contingency. He will try
to use them, like instruments, to convey the correct impression,
but this is like a sort of blind fire of which the results cannot
be verified. The existence of our body for others is as real to
us as its existence for us. In fact, the other fulfils a function
which we ourselves cannot fulfil: he sees us as we are. We
become resigned to see ourselves through his eyes. Language
permits us to do so on an abstract plane, and it is at that level
that the assimilation of my body with the other's body takes
place. The sick man knows his sickness through what the
doctor tells him about it. It is still his sickness since he feels
it, but it has an independent life of its own which the doctor
knows better than the patient. The doctor is responsible for it,
and the patient's body becomes an object for the doctor. It
is possible, therefore, to consider our body as existing for
others. But this fact should not be made the starting point of
a theory of knowledge concerning the body. Insofar as I can
see parts of my body through a mere anatomical contingency,
I may adopt, concerning them, the point of view of the other.
Primarily, the body is the instrument which I am.

85
 TO BE AND NOT TO BE

6. Concrete relations with others.

In dealing with others, we either try to confer objectivity on

them so as to retain our subjectivity, or else we allow them to
retain their subjectivity, and therefore their liberty, so as to
obtain their free recognition of our own subjectivity.

My concrete relations with others depend on the attitude

I adopt on discovering that I am an object for the other's
subjectivity:

I may ... attempt, insofar as I am fleeing the in-itself which

I am without grounding it, to deny that being which is
conferred on me from outside; which means that I may
turn to the other and confer objectivity on him in my turn,
since the objectivity of the other does away with my ob-
jectivity for the other. But, on the other hand, inasmuch
as the other as liberty is the foundation of my being-in-
itself, I may seek to recuperate this liberty and to get hold
of it without depriving it of its free character: if I could.
indeed, assimilate this liberty which is the foundation of
my being-in-itself, I should be, to myself, my own founda-
tion.62

These two basic attitudes are opposed to each other, but the
failure of one motivates the adoption of the other. The patterns
of behavior through which the for-itself attempts to assimilate
the other's liberty will, arbitrarily, be treated first.

This last resolve is the basis of love, language, and masochism.

Througlz them, I respect the subjectivity of others so as to
obtain recognition of my own. Bllt the 0111y way to preserve
the subjectivity of others is to remain an object for them.
86
 BEING-FaR-OTHERS

In 10tle, through language, and finally in masochism, con-

sciousness tries to absorb the other's liberty without destroying
it. The other, in a sense, possesses my being as I shall never
possess it. He gives me form, color, concreteness; and he does
so freely, simply by seeing me as I am. This concrete existence,
which the other confers on me, is the indication of what I
should like to ground in liberty so as to be my own founda-
tion. If I project the realization of unity with the other, this
does not mean that I want him to lose his alterity, or "other-
ness," for if he ceased being the other he would cease being
free. I want the other's liberty to become my own possibility.
I want to assimilate the other as a free consciousness, i.e.,
as a subject, not as an object, i.e., as a transcended-transcend-
ence. In order to preserve the other's subjectivity, I must first
of all remain an object for him. I preciously preserve this
image of myself which he has built up, in order to use it as
an instrument by which I shall be able to reach his con-
sciousness and his liberty.

In lotle, for instance, 1 want to remain the object of another's

consciousness, but, as such, 1 want to be a limiting, or fascinat-
ing, object. Moreotler the other must freely accept this limita-
tion through constantly renewed allegiance.

Thus, in love, I want to remain an object for the other,

but at the same time I want to be a limiting object, an object
which the other will accept, not once for all, but again and
again, as limiting his transcendence. The lover wants to be
"the whole world" for the loved one. Neither the determinism
of passion nor the detached attitude of elective affinity can
satisfy the lover. He wants to be the occasion, not the cause
of a passion. He would like to be, and to have been always,
87
 TO BE AND NOT TO BE

the object which the other was waiting to meet and to accept
as the constant limit of any form of transcendence. He ex-
pects the loved one to become that self-limitation freely and
constantly. But, at the same time, he wants the other to retain
alterity, i.e., the negation by which the other refuses to be
him. If the lover could succeed in his design, he would be-
come, in his factual existence, the supreme value, the absolute
frame of reference, his organization of the tool-things of the
world would become that of the other: he would give the
loved one the "stars above" together with his love; he would
be a totality without losing objective concreteness. To become
a limiting object, the lover has, of course, to appear as a plenum
of being, to represent as much of the world as possible to the
loved one, in depth, in width, in power, so that the loved one
may the more easily realize the non-being of consciousness.
This latter experience has already been described as fascina-
tion. Seduction aims at arousing fascination. There is no love
without some form of seduction.

The use of language also implies some sort of initial sel/-

objectification since it means adoption of the other's view-
point concerning ourselves, even though we may aim ulti-
mately at changing that viewpoint.

Language obviously plays an important part in love; the

use we make of language is not essentially different from
seduction:

... it is originally the test that a being-for-itself can make

of its being-for-others, and ultimately going beyond that
test and using it for possibilities which are my possibilities,
i.e., for possibilities of my being this and that for the other.63
88
 BEING-FOR-OTHERS

To use language is to refer to my world as if it were the

other's world, and to refer to myself as if I figured in that
world objectively, as the others see me, in order to benefit
from the contact I have established with others by changing
their views to my advantage. In that respect, Shakespeare's
Mark Antony is a seducer, and his speech to the Romans
exemplifies the general philosophy of language. Sartre does
not restrict this interpretation to the articulate word. Any
form of expression has the same end. Language is not always
a form of seduction, but it is always an appeal to the other's
subjectivity and liberty since the other's consciousness alone
can objectify my word. As an appeal to a transcendence, the
use of words and signs is like the use of sacred objects which
will have, at a distance, certain indefinite magical effects if
I can obtain the other's freely given collaboration.

If, however, the other decides to recognize me as a free con-

sciousness, it will be with the same purpose. He, in his turn,
will try to receive recognition from my consciousness by turn-
ing into a limiting, or fascinating object. As an object, he
can no longer see me objectively.

Fascination does not necessarily create love. An orator or

an acrobat may fascinate one, but the general background
against which they appear is only temporarily forgotten· and
cannot be assimilated to them. Fascination can produce love
only with the loved one's consent, and that consent is given
only when the loved one in his turn projects himself to be
loved, i.e., to sink into objectivity before the other's subjec-
tivity, thereby surrendering his own subjectivity. Love ends
in frustration as the lovers face each other trying to be the
limiting object of the other's consciousness. They had failed
89
 TO BE AND NOT TO BE

to realize that to love is to want to be loved, i.e., to be the

object of the other's love. Each one remains isolated in his
subjectivity, as the objectivity of one destroys the objectivity
of the other. Love can only subsist as a play of reflections,
each consciousness in turn reflecting the other as object, "under
the ideal sign of the 'love' value, i.e., of a fusion of conscious-
nesses in which each one would retain its otherness to found
the other." 64 To the extent that this situation implies recog-
nition of each other's subjectivity, it may constitute a gain
for both, but not the gain sought. Besides, the situation is
quite unstable, as each one may suddenly use this recognition
of his subjectivity to treat the other as a non-limiting object,
as a tool. Moreover, it suffices that the lovers be seen together
by a third person for each one to feel not only his own
objectivity, but the objectivity of the other as well. This is
the true reason why lovers seek solitude, and is the sense of
the "deserted island" theme.

Since the subjectivity of one is exclusive of the objectivity of

the other, the attempt to gain recognition as a free conscious-
ness from another's consciousness is doomed to failure. In
despair, one may decide to remain an object for the other. This
is masochism.

The attempt to find, through love, the foundation of our

objectivity in the subjectivity of the other by becoming a
limiting object (the whole world) for that subjectivity, is
doomed to failure. Realization of this fact may motivate the
attempt to lose one's subjectivity altogether in the other's
subjectivity, without hope of retrieving it, by becoming for
the other a non-limiting object, a mere tool. This is known
as masochism. Shame is the sign of one's success in this en-
90
 BEING-FaR-OTHERS

terprise. What I am trying to do is no longer to capture a

subjectivity by making of myself a fascinating object, but
to allow myself to become fascinated by my own objectivity,
such as it will appear to me reflected in the other's conscious-
ness: insofar as the liberty which has absorbed my own has
become the foundation of my objectivity, my being (in-itself)
will be grounded in liberty and justified. This project is also
doomed to failure. I cannot become fascinated by my own
objectivity as reflected by the other's consciousness because
I am not the other, and cannot know what sort of an object
I am for him. I can simply guess, from outside, through the
interpretation of various signs. Furthermore, in this attempt
to surrender my liberty, I am using it, inasmuch as I am
treating the other as a tool, i.e., as an object, which practice
affirms my own subjectivity. All I can do is to experience
shame, i.e., the sense of my objectivity for others. Masochism,
like sadism, is assumption of guilt. I am guilty by the mere
fact that I am an object for the other, and I am also guilty for
having given occasion to the other for making me an object.

But one may also decide to retain one's subjectivity by forc-

ing the other to recognize his objectivity freely; and this is
;adism. Desire, hatred, and even indifference are related to
this second attitude.

The second attitude toward the other is exemplified in in-

difference, desire, hatred, sadism. This attitude, in anyone of
these forms, may be brought about by the failure of the first
attitude. Failing to capture a subjectivity through my objec-
tivity, I may, in desperation, boldly affirm my own subjec-
tivity and try to force the other to recognize it, which I do,
first of all, by looking at him and facing his look. But you can-
91
 TO BE AND NOT TO BE

not face a look, at least you cannot look at a look, or, if you
do, you only see eyes. So long as I succeed in being a subject
for him, he apprehends himself as an object in my world,
and, as such, is not in a condition freely to recognize my
liberty, although he may feel its effects. The subsequent at-
tempts I may make to force that recognition are doomed. It
may be also that facing the glance of others is my original
reaction to his existence, and that I chose from the first con-
tact with him to build up my subjectivity on the collapse of
the other's.

The indifferent man treats others as objects and uses them. In

order to use them, he has to foresee their reactions objectively,
and to use psychology. This attitude gives rise to insecurity and
frustration.

This attitude is called by Sartre: indifference to others.

The indifferent man defines people by their functions or by
the use he can make of them. A whole system of psychology
has been built up on the art of using people by foreseeing the
reaction of the average human being, transcending his tran-
scendence, making him an object and a tool. Such an attitude
is frustrating in more ways than one. It is a kind of voluntary
solipsism and blindness entailing the discomfort of losing
the objectivity which alone the other can confer; it summons
a sense of danger due to the fact that the other may always
refuse to conform to one's calculations; it gives rise to the
uneasiness which accompanies bad faith (and it is bad faith
to "ignore" people whose transcendence you implicitly recog-
nize in order to transcend it), and, finally, the few "brief and
terrifying flashes," 65 signalling revelation of what the other
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 BEING-FOR-OTHERS

really is, illuminate even he who has adopted indifference

as a way of life.

Sexual desire is also related to sadism: it is an attempt to in-

carnate the consciousness of the other (to make him body-
conscious) through the incarnation of our own consciousness.

Sexual desire is related to this attitude as my original at-

tempt to get hold of the other's free subjectivity through his
objectivity for me. Sexual desire and its opposite, the horror
of sex, are fundamental structures of the being-for-others. Man
is not sexual because he has a sex; it is the other way around.
Sexuality may precede or follow (as in children and old
people) its physical manifestations, and desire may not coin-
cide with them. Let us note that desire does not aim at the
end of desire, except on second thought; nor does it, except
as a result of experience or hearsay, aim at the fulfilment of
an act and at the pleasure derived from the fulfilment. Sexual
desire is the desire for a transcendent object, but that object
is a form in a situation. A part of the other's body arouses
desire insofar as it refers to the totality of the body. The latter,
in turn, refers to an attitude and to a situation in the world,
an autonomous frame of reference of the world, and to the
world itself. Thus, sexual desire conforms exactly to our
perception of the other's body in the world. The part of my
being which experiences desire is obviously my consciousness,
since desire can be only as consciousness of desire. It is one
with consciousness, but the relations that desire may entertain
with its object are varied, as are the levels on which desire
is experienced. Sexual desire is characterized by its "troubled"
nature. "Troubled" water has all the fluidity of water, but its
translucency is darkened by the presence of an invisible foreign
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 TO BE AND NOT TO BE

body. In the same way, sexual desire differs by its opacity

from other physiological desires, which allow consciousness
to retain its lucidity. Sexual desire involves a certain complicity
of consciousness with the body, a certain submission to the
facticity of existence which consciousness ordinarily negates
as extraneous to itself. Sexual desire is said to "seize" and to
"submerge" you. One could hardly use such expressions in
regard to thirst or hunger. Sexual desire is consequent to
desire. It has some resemblance to sleep. In sexual desire the
human look dulls, gestures are slowed down as in heavy
somnolence. A sudden awakening of consciousness may make
sexual desire clear and bright, as are such wants as hunger
and thirst; in that case, sexual desire is viewed in itself by
consciousness on the reflective plane, and is merely felt as a
heavy head and a beating heart. These indications reveal
sexual desire as a willingness on the part of consciousness to
let itself be fascinated by the pure facticity of the body as such,
and to identify itself with the body-not as expressing tran-
scendence toward some realization, but as expressing merely
the necessity of being here and now within a situation, i.e.,
contingent. Desire attempts to divest the other of his tran-
scendence and to make him exist as pure flesh. It is an attempt
to incarnate the consciousness of the other. To accomplish
this, the other's consciousness must be compelled to reflect
a being who is already incarnated: I try to make myself
flesh in order to bring about the incarnation of the other.
This is the only possible explanation for the practice of ca-
resses. The caress, this ceremonial of incarnation, reveals the
pure contingence of the flesh by isolating it from its tran-
scendent possibilities; and since the person who caresses must
incarnate himself in order to bring about communion in the
flesh, possession is "a double reciprocal incarnation." 66 The
94
 BEING-FOR-QTHERS

ultimate motive of desire is not, of course, possession of the

other's body as such, but possession of a consciousness, which
it represents, "possessed" by its facticity, or contingency. That
is to say, through the other's contingency I want to reach
his transcendence toward the world, and, in order to reach
it, must temporarily give up mine. Thus, young Proust seeing
Albertine play on the beach desires the whole perspective of
the beach in the person of Albertine. The ideal of desire is
to possess the other as transcendence and as contingency at
once, and of course desire must fall. Pleasure finds its limit
in the very consciousness of pleasure. It tends to become ob-
jectified (to become pleasure in itself) under the look or
through the consciousness of the other. Either I become a
passive object, or else, more likely, my consciousness resumes
its full lucidity and I am frustrated by the fact that the other's
body has become, within my hands, a mere instrument to
capture a consciousness. I no longer am the free and empty
reflection of a facti city which is not mine. I am frustra~ed
without knowing why, because I cannot conceive the oth~r's
transcendence, which was the sense of my quest. Yet I may
persist in that unavailing quest, and this situation is the
origin of sadism.

Sadism also tries to incarnate the other's consciousness, to

make him, with the use of tools, conscious of his body through
pain and to oblige him freely to recognize his own objectivity.
This attempt leads to frustration since the other as object loses
his subjectivity. It may even happen that the sadist becomes
the living consciousness of the other's suffering.

In sadism, consciousness is still seeking incarnation but

merely through the other. It wants to enjoy the incarnation
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 TO BE AND ~OT TO BE

of the other's consciousness in the lucidity of its own non-

incarnation. It wants the other's consciousness to be entirely
absorbed and fascinated by body-consciousness through pain.
And that pain must be produced by instruments, even were
the sadist to inflict pain through the use of his own hody. The
type of incarnation he wants to realize is the obscene. In
opposition to the graceful, which reveals a transcendence
related to a past situation yet perfectly adapted to its end, the
obscene is disgraceful in that it reveals a freedom ill-adapted
to a situation, allowing us to glimpse the other's contingency.
The obscene does away with any relation of the body to the
situation; it reveals the pure contingency of the flesh and its
passive obedience to the law of gravitation. In the last analy-
sis, however, what the sadist wants is the other's liberty. He
does not want to destroy that liberty; he wants to appropriate
it: he is waiting for the moment when the other will decide
to identify himself with his tortured flesh, to yield, confess,
implore. A confession made under duress is still a free con-
fession since the victim alone decides ''IIhen pain becomes
unendurable. The sadist enjoys the spectacle of a struggling
liberty which he knows will, sooner or later, have to admit
defeat. Sadism contains the principle of its failure. As the
sadist is about to reach his aim, i.e., when the victim's liberty
capitulates, he faces a mere flesh object which, since his aim
is to capture a liberty, he can no longer utilize. The only
flesh he can incarnate is his own. Moreover, the liberty he
wanted to capture was the victim's transcendent liberty, and
that liberty remains in principle out of reach. The more he
treats the other as an object, the more that liberty eSC:1pes
him. It is a transcended-transcendence. A single look of the
victim may reaffirm that transcendent liberty and the tormen-
96
 BEING-FOR-oTHERS

tor will see himself in that look as a psychic automaton, a thing

among other things ill the victim's world.

These basic attitudes do not reveal a mysterious "libido."

They are various ways of facing the fact of our being-for-
others. The fact that consciousness is an absolute center of
reference, that we cannot face tIle other without becoming an
object in his world for his consciousness, or else look at him
as at an object within the world of our consciousness, is the
fundamental basis of the sense of guilt.

These basic forms of sexual behavior are not due to a

certain "libido" which creeps everywhere. They result from
general attitudes which are "the fundamental projects by
which the for-itself realizes its being-for-others and attempts
to transcend that factual situation." 67 We are tossed back
and forth between the other as subject and the other as object,
without ever being able to apprehend him as both. Therefore,
"we can never place ourselves concretely on a plane of equality,
i.e., on the plane where recognition of the Other's liberty
would entail recognition by the Other of our liberty." 68 Even
if, as in Kantian ethics, I make the liberty of others my
ultimate end, I transcend that liberty by the very fact that
I have made it my aim. If I adopt the democratic definition of
my liberty as a liberty which ends where the other's begins
(any other, therefore, necessarily viewing my liberty as a
limit to his), I make myself the limit of the other's liberty,
and, if tolerance is my ideal, the other is forced to live in a
tolerant world. In education, whether I adopt liberal values
or not, I am still imposing a code of values on the child,
and it may happen that, by imposing upon him absolute values
which he has not chosen, I may develop his sense of liberty
97
 TO BE AND NOT TO BE

better than by letting him do what he pleases. Moreover, even

in the realization of a liberal ideal, I may be in a position
such as to oblige me to use other human beings, or even whole
generati~ns, as means to an end; this happens when a respon-
sible leader decides whether or not to go into a war for the
sake of liberty. No one governs innocently. Whatever I do.
I have to do it in a world where the other also exists, and
where I seem to be in excess (de trop).
It i~ from that peculiar situation that the notion of culpa-
bility and sin seems to draw its origin. It is facing the other
that I feel guilty. Guilty first when under his look I ex-
perience my alienation and my nudity as a fall which I
must assume; this is the meaning of the famous: "They
knew that they were nude" of the Scripture. Guilty more-
over, when in mY,turn, I look at the other, because, by the
very fact of my affirming my self, I constitute him an object
and an instrument, and bring about for him the alienation
which he will have to assume. Thus, the original sin is my
surging into a world where there is the other, and, whatever
my ulterior relations with the other may be, they will be
variations on the original theme of my culpability.69
All I can do, then, is give the other occasions to manifest
his liberty. It may happen that, in the light of my experience
or private history, I may become resigned to give up any
form of being-for-others, and simply aim at their destruction.
This attitude is known as hatred. Hatred wants to do away
with the other as transcendence, and, to do so, it must first
recognize his transcendence. This is why any manifestation
of liberty may arouse hatred, even a generous act. Hatred is a
fundamental attitude aiming at the others in general through
the other in particular, which explains why it is held in gen-
eral disrepute. Hatred also fails to reach its aim; as I suppress
the other, I become the living memory of his existence, his
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 BEING-FOR-OTHERS

reflection, his consciousness. From tben on, he is part of me,

a part which I can neither obliterate nor modify.

Being with others is distinct from being for others.

The preceding descriptions do not account for being with

others, i.e., the feeling of harmony we may experience at be-
longing to a community. This mode of being, referred to by
Heidegger as the "Mitsein" (being together), is expressed by
the pronouns "we" and "us." The subject form "we," how-
ever, as we shall see later, refers to a common action which
is expressed by the verb. It expresses doing-with rather than
being-with. As an audience, for instance, we are together only
insofar as we react together to the play. The original sense of
being together is revealed to us, as objects.

This mode of being-Heidegger's Mitsein-basically cor-

responds to the sense of being objectified along with others.
Only in self-defense does a group assume common subjectivity
which in the eyes of the dictator constitutes a form of mass
masochism. Reference to the whole of humanity does not elim-
inate the notion of the other carried to its conceptual limit: God.

Us refers to the experience of human beings who are ob-

jectified together. This experience may be illustrated by the
now familiar experience of the human looked at by one person.
If I am being looked at by two persons, I still view the others
as subjects, but I tend to depersonalize that subjectivity and
to feel that someone is looking at me. If the third person looks
at the second person, who is looking at me, the third tran-
scendence transcends the transcendence which transcends
mine, thereby contributing to disarm it. I may then ally myself
99
 TO BE AND NOT TO BE

with the third party and look at the second, who will become
our common object, or I may look at the third, who is looking
at the second, who is looking at me; or else I may look at both
the second and the third, disarm the look of the third party
and make them both objects for me. In this case, I may ex-
perience, through the second, the look of the third party
which is fixed upon him; he still appears as an object, but
not as an object for me. He may resent the fact that I look at
him while he is being looked at. The second and the third
parties may then look at me again to affirm in common their
subjectivity. It is, in any case, the presence of the third party
as subject which determines the consciousness of the "us."
"Us" refers to a common objectification, to a sentiment of
solidarity within that objectification. It expresses a factual
situation which has to be assumed and which corresponds
to the vanishing of the "we": "We were engaged in a conflict
when he came upon us." It is, of course, a humiliating experi-
ence, one which is particularly felt by any group conscious of
being used by somebody or by another group. And since, to
be felt, consciousness of the other requires neither the ex-
perience of his look, nor of his actual presence, some plurality
of individuals is always bound to feel that it is being used, or
objectified, by some other group or by the whole of humanity.
Hence class or nation consciousness. Class consciousness is due
neither to a feeling of common misery nor to oppression. It is
the feeling of existing for and through the liberty of the
other. "Thus the oppressed class finds its class unity in the
cognizance which the oppressing class takes of it, and the
appearance in the oppressed of class-consciousness corresponds
to the assumption, in shame, of an 'us.''' 70 The oppressed
class will react by the project of transforming the "us" into
a "we" through the affirmation of its subjectivity and of its
100
 BEING-FOR-OTHERS

transcendence. It will try, in self-defense, to objectify the ruling

class, simply by treating it as a class: "They." Unless, however,
it decides on the opposite attitude which is to prefer forgetting
its subjectivity in the fascination exercised by the look, the
voice, and the person of some dictator. In this case, and, we
presume, in some other cases, the "we" may express an as-
sumed objectivity: "You fascinate us,· we worship you, 0
Master!" In aU such cases, a section of humanity could refer
to itself as "us" (or as a "we" objectified). When we refer
to the whole of humanity in this manner, we still retain the
notion of the other carried to its conceptual limit, i.e., the
notion of God.

We do experience a sort of collective subjectivity when we use

signs, instructions and fabricated objects to reach ends which
we share with others. But signs, instructions, etc., are meant
for an interchangeable and inexistent human being. It is what
Heidegger calls the "unauthentic Mitsein." The team spirit
corresponds to a more authentic sense of transcendence toward
a common aim; in this case, however, being with others can
be reduced to doing with others.

The world, however, and the presence of manufactured ob-

jects within the world, proclaim that we also belong to a
community of subjects. These artifacts have been wrought for
undifferentiated and absent transcendent subjects; the tin
can was prepared so that someone might open it, and the open-
ing of a tin can is a manifestation of the way in which we
transcend inert matter to make it instrumental to our ends. As
I open the tin can, I am a transcendent "someone." The sort
of transcendence I experience is depersonalized. It was fore-
seen by the manufacturer who formulated the instructions on
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 TO BE AND NOT TO BE

the can. In the same way, when I follow the signs to find my
way in the subway, I forget the individual purpose of my
trip; I am one of the other travellers; I am, as far as the
instructions given by the signs concern me, an interchangeable
human being of the type Heidegger refers to as "one," "they,"
"people." This is a form of Mitsein. If, on the other hand, I
am proceeding with others toward a common aim, as, for
instance, in an attack, or am simply working with them to-
ward the realization of a common enterprise, I experience a
different sort of collective feeling. I am then engaged in a
project which I have made mine, a project which is present
to me in the very rhythm of common action with its future
and its past. It would seem that such a form of transcendence
is at once collective and subjective. Let us not, however, forget
that, in such a case, I experience the transcendence of others
alongside of my own, as a transcendence which has the same
object as mine. It is felt neither objectively nor quite subjec-
tively. It is felt rather as a common rhythm of action. It is
properly speaking, the team-spirit; not a real Mitsein, but a
Mitmachen; not a being-togetlzer, but a doing-together:
And, no doubt, this experience may be sought as the symbol
of an absolute and metaphysical unity of all transcendences;
it seems, indeed, that it suppresses the original conflict
of transcendences by making them converge toward the
world; in this sense, the ideal we (nous-sujet) would be the
we of a humanity which would be making itself master of
the world. But the experience of the tile remains on the
ground of individual psychology and remains a simple sym-
bol of the desirable unity of transcendences; it is in no way.
indeed, a lateral and real apprehension of subjectivities as
such by a single subjectivity; the subjectivities remain out
of reach and radically separated.7l
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 BEING-FOR-OTHERS

We should, however, not pass too lightly over this important

concession from Sartre. It would seem, according to this
passage, that the world might, on the plane of action, if not
on that of pure being, serve as a mediator between otherwise
irreconcilable subjectivities: "I learn that I am a part of a we
through the world." 72 It is true that such an experience does
not imply that others experience it with me. As to the fact
that I am surrounded by the objects of man's industry, it does
not constitute my primordial revelation of the existence of
others; that revelation, as we have seen, comes to me from
different sources. It merely refers to my undifferentiated tran-
scendence. The existence of the we constitutes a provisional
appeasement in the midst of conflict, not a definite solution of
the conflict. The conflict of transcendence is the original state
of being for others. This is why there is no class-consciousness
among the privileged. As subjects, they consider themselves
mere individuals. The "bourgeois" does not recognize himself
as such, and, in fact, defines himself as an individual con-
sciousness which denies the existence of classes; to him they
seem the artificial creation of a few leaders. It is only when he
is the object of his employees' resentment that he discovers
kinship with others of the same social standing, and is tempted
to say : "We, the employers." In our existence for others we
discover ourselves primarily as subjects. The essence of the
rapports between consciousnesses is conflict, not Mitsein.

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 V Being-In-Itself-For-Itself

1. Doing and being: liberty.

Having and doing are existential categoriu which can be

explained in terms of being: tlzis is the ontological reduction.

We just saw that what applies to being may not always be

true on the plane of doing. The existential categories of do-
ing and having can, in the last analysis, be explained in terms
of being, and this analysis Sanre calls ontological reduction.
But this reduction can be made only under the sign of the
ideal value of being-in-itself-for-itself, which has been men-
tioned so far only incidentally, although it is implied in many
passages. We shall therefore place the description of doing
and having under that ideal sign, although Sartre treats it
separately.
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 BEING-IN-ITSELF-FOR-ITSELF

Action is intentional, whether we choose to act emotionally or

deliberately. It manifests the liberty of the for-itself and its non-
being. The for-itself is not, but has to make itselj.

The first condition of action is liberty. Any action is inten-

tional, although its results may extend beyond the intention.
Blowing up a powder-house by absent-mindedly throwing
away a burning cigarette is not acting. Any intention involves
a double negating process. On the one hand, an ideal and non-
existing situation must be posited as a present non-being, and
on the other the actual situation must be considered as a non-
being in relation to the ideal situation. No purely factual state
of affairs can by itself motivate an action. Historians have often
noticed that revolutions spring out of new hopes, not out of
present miseries. It is only when a hope is born that present
conditions, transcended toward that hope, appear as intoler-
able. There must be rupture with the present; consciousness
must cancel it by dissociating itself from it. In this sense,
Hegel correctly stated that "mind is the negative." Motivation,
the act, and the end surge together as the expression of free-
dom. The surge of liberty is an existential phenomenon which
remains undefinable if I persist in considering liberty as an
essence. I cannot describe liberty in general, the liberty of the
other, or of all men; I can only describe my liberty. Its con-
crete experience is given to my consciousness in the negating
process. It is through this negating process that the for-itself
escapes from its being as from its essence:
it is through it that ... (the for-itself) is at least that
which escapes that very denomination, that which is already
beyond the name which one gives it, the property which
one recognizes in it. To say that the for-itself has to be
what it is, to say that it is what it is not while not being
105
 TO BE AND NOT TO BE

what it is, to say that in its existence precedes and conditions

essence, or inversely, following Hegel's formula, that for it
"Wesen ist was gewesen ist/' is to say one and the same
thing, i.e., that man is free, From the very fact, indeed, that
I am conscious of the motives which solicit my action, these
motives are already transcendent objects for my conscious-
ness, they are outside; in vain shall I seek to cling to them:
I escape from them through my very existence. I am con-
demned to exist forever beyond my essence, beyond the
affective and rational motives of my act: I am condemned to
be free. 73
Determinism is the attempt to establish within us an un-
broken continuity of being-in-itself. Psychologically, it comes
back to trying to consider motives as things having a permanent
character, while, in reality, I confer them permanence, or
refuse to do so, from day to day. Or else the future ends of
my action may be offered as an explanation for my action,
but they will be taken as having been met by chance, or as
I came into the world: they came to me from God, nature,
"my" nature, society. At any rate, I have not elected them
freely. Such explanations collapse before the experience of
anguish wherein I find at once the non-being and the freedom
of the for-itself. The non-being in the heart of man compels
human reality to make itself instead of being. A rather com-
mon conception assimilates liberty with the will. But will is
merely a reflective attitude assumed in relation to certain
ends which liberty, and not the will, has chosen. Voluntary
deliberation is always faked anyway, says Sartre. In deliberat-
ing pros and cons, I am trying to treat motives as things that
may be weighed and possess permanent values. It is simply
a manner of proceeding, since I confer them these values; and
this manner of proceeding constitutes an attempt at self-
recuperation, i.e., the realization of my being-in-itself-and-for-
106
 BEING-IN-ITSELF-FOR-ITSELF

itself: "I did what I wanted to do." Often, as we all know,

deliberation produces opposite results, and our ends appear to
us vitiated by thought. Passion may pursue the same ends in a
different way. There are, as La Rochefoucauld once said, cer-
tain situations from which it takes a certain madness to escape.
Before the same danger, one may choose to obey the passion
of fear or decide to resist, without rejecting his allegiance to
the value of self-preservation. In fear, I seek symbolic fulfil-
ment by not facing the situation, by distancing myself from
the world together with my consciousness of it; in rational
behavior, I try to modify it through knowledge. But in both
cases, I have rejected it in the light of the same valu0rhis
does not mean our behavior is determined by values; it means
that we not only choose our values, but also the very manner
in which we choose to be free.

Our particular, or secondary, projects are related to a funda-

mental individual project.

Liberty is, however, related to an original project con-

cerning our being. It is not an irrational and purely contingent
whim. In a military march, one soldier will enjoy the very
feeling of fatigue. Through fatigue, he experiences at once
the factual existence of his body, the action of the world (the
roads, the hills to be climbed) on his body, and the transcend-
ent movement of his march onwards. He is at once for-himself,
in the sentiment of his progression toward an aim, and in-
himself, through the feeling of bodily fatigue which permeates
his consciousness. He is at least aiming at this equilibrium
which has a symbolic value for him. His behavior may refer
to an attitude elected earlier in his life: the athletic attitude;
this in turn may refer to an earlier attitude leading to a funda-
107
 TO BE AND NOT TO BE

mental project concerning the relations of the for-itself to the

in-itself, beyond which there is no possible regress. Another
man will drop on the side of the road because, to him, the
feeling of fatigue is intolerable. This again may refer to an
attitude assumed at a younger age. He is "soft" because he
has chosen to experience the facticity of his body on the plane
of "abandonment," or indulgence. This attitude also refers to
a fundamental project concerning the relation of the for-itself
to the in-itself. Sartre's view is here confirmed by the fact
that a physical handicap is often an inducement and a chal-
lenge to athletic performance.

Our individual projects can be determined by existential psy-

choanalysis. Existential psychoanalysis differs from Freudian
psychoanalysis in that it seeks the motivation of our actions in
a pro;ect freely adopted at an early age, rather than in some
determining circumstance encountered at that early age.

This original pt'o;ect may be determined t/lrottgh existential

psychoanalysis. Like Freud, Sartre explains our actions through
a Weltanschattung, rather than through a cause and effect
relationship which relates one moment of our life to the next
011 the plane of psychic determinism: I knocked him down
because I felt insulted. Freud, however, re-establishes a sort of
vertical determinism through his "kobold in the cellar," the
subconscious libido, and the determination of complexes by
the libido at an early age. There is no future dimension for
Freudian psychoanalysis; it works from the present to the past
through an objective witness. Sartre rejects Freudian theory,
but he accepts the method of the objective witness provided
it be used in the opposite direction. I cannot knoUl what my
original project is because I am that project; but another
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 BEING-IN-ITSELF-FOR-ITSELF

person could find out what this project is through my reactions

to situations, things, and the qualities of things. The way I
succumb to fatigue is not due to some distant complex con-
tracted in the past, not even an Adlerian complex of inferiority;
or, rather, the complex of inferiority itself is a project of my
for-itse!f-in-the-world-for-the-other. It is still a transcendence
and must be explained in the Hght of the end it represents. It
is the solution I have adopted in regard to the existence of the
other, that insurmountable scandal. Psychoanalysis, then,
should consider the immediate possibility which is the end
of the action, and the possibilities which it leads to until the
ultimate possibility, which will define my manner of being,
is reached. Through regressive analysis, it should return to
the action in question to grasp its "integration within the total
form." To understand what Sartre means by "the total form,"
we must go back to his definition of the world-as-background.
We do not discover the world as we pass within the world
from one object to the next. On the contrary, the world is at
first perceived by consciousness as totaHty. On the background
of that totality, which is the sum total of its possibilities, con-
sciousness detaches objects one by one. As I come from the
world to a particular "this," I come to a singled-out possibility
of mine, and, just as I cannot grasp a "this" except on world-
background, I cannot project myself beyond the "this" to-
ward such or such a possibility except on the background of
my ultimate and total possibility. Thus, the world sends me
back an image of myself which I can only decipher through
action, but which someone else may decipher objectively as
the outline of a solution to the problem of being. It is, how-
ever, to be deciphered not only on the plane of doing, but on
the plane of having as well, through interpretation of the
symboHc appropriation of things and of the qualities of things.
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 TO BE AND NOT TO BE

Not only do I choose a fundamental project concerning my

existence, but I also choose among the various possibilities
which are offered me to live according to that project.

The choice I can make of a certain possibility is part of my

fundamental project, but some possibilities are directly related
to it and some are indifferent. As in the Gestalt theory, the
choice of a "form" on a "background" may involve variations
in the secondary structure of that form. The fact that, being
tired of walking, I decide to sit a while on the side of the
road, rather than walk another mile and stop at the inn,
entails no difference in relation to my project, which is to
reach the next town. These "indifferent" possibilities merely
constitute new manifestations and enrichments of our freedom.
Alone, the subject can interpret the connections he establishes
between primary and secondary ends; he is even free to choose
actions which are contrary to his ultimate ends, but this only
happens on the reflective plane. Immediate consciousness can
never be deceived about its ends. If my project is to go through
life as inferior, my "complex of inferiority" may express itself
through stammering; I may decide on a purely reflective plane
to rid myself of that defect by technical means and succeed
in doing so. But my feeling of inferiority will only be dis-
placed to affirm itself in other ways. I may choose to be in-
ferior by selecting a field of action in which I cannot succeed.
I may decide, still on the reflective plane, to be a great artist
and struggle for recognition. This will not be, as Adler thinks,
a subconscious attempt of my frustrated will-to-power to com-
pensate for my sense of inferiority; it will be the means I
have chosen to maintain in myself the sense of inferiority. If
I do not recognize the fact, it is because my reflection inter-
poses between my spontaneous consciousness and my ultimate
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 BEING-IN -ITSELF-FOR-ITSELF

end the concepts of "art," "worship of beauty," and "glory."

There is no subconscious for Sartre, but there is a spontaneous
consciousness of one's ultimate end which may not know
itself, and the part played by inhibition in the Viennese school
may, in Sartre, be played by the bad faith inherent to reflec-
tion in its "impure" form.

My liberty even goes as far as to allow me to change my

fundamental project anytime. This can happen only in the
light of a new project which involves a breaking away from
my past and a full realization of my present situation.

This does not mean that I have to live my fundamental

project to the end. But in order to change it, I must first see
it objectively in its totality. The liberating instant which will
objectify this life-project and make it a past may arise sud-
denly in the light of a new project, heralded by anguish and
by the fear of becoming other than I am. Such conversions,
Sartre notes, have not been studied by philosophers but have
often inspired men of letters. They give us "the clearest and
most stirring image of our liberty." 74 Anyone can recall hav-
ing come across descriptions of such conversions in the works
of Huxley or of Sartre himself. The liberating instant is at
once a beginning and an end within the unity of a single act.
It belongs to the future as a beginning, and is related to the
past as an end. A converted atheist is not merely a Christian;
he is a Christian who negates his past atheism.

It is our liberty which brings the situation to light.

To sum up that part of the foregoing which concerns

action: Man finds his being only in the act. The existence of
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 TO BE AND NOT TO BE

the act implies its autonomy. To differ from pure movement,

the act must be defined by an intention. The intention reveals
itself through the world and the world is defined by the inten-
tion. The surge of an intention means rupture with the
datum, or situation, but it also brings the situation to light.
Being negation of its identity with the datum, consciousness
is not conditioned by it. The datum is, however, its founda-
tion and there could be no liberty without it. My fundamen-
tal project is my being; it can be modified by liberty alone in
the light of a new project, and it has to be objectified in its
totality to be transcended.

TIle situation is not an obstacle to liberty; or rather it is liberty

itself which defines it as an obstacle in the light of a particular
project. Liberty is inconceivable outside of a situation, and
there is no situation outside of liberty. My body, my position
in the world, and my past are all part of my situation.

The situation is the facticity of liberty. The argument of

common sense is that we cannot change the situation in which
we were born. I am born in a certain class, citizen of a certain
nation, with a certain heredity. The slightest modification of
these data takes years and I have first to conform to circum-
stances to change them. It would seem that I am what cir-
cumstances make me, and that I cannot control them. These
arguments have never succeeded in destroying our intimate
sense of liberty, nor in convincing the partisans of liberty.
The adversity of things appears only in regard to the end
pursued. A mountain appears as something to be climbed to
the Alpinist; to the traveller, it appears as :In obst:lcle to be
avoided. Moreover, to be free does not mean "obtaining what
one wishes" but "to determine oneself to wish." Liberty is
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 BEING-IN-ITSELF-FOR-ITSELF

autonom}' of choice. A captive is not free to leave his prison,

but he is free to attempt an escape. Obstacles are the very
proof of liberty; onl}' liberty meets obstacles. Liberty exists
onl}' in relation to time, space, and circumstances. The facts
that I have to be free (the lacticity of libert}'), am the par-
ticular being that I have to be (the contingency of liberty),
and the datum (the situation within which I find myself), are
one and the same thing; and that situation appears only in
the light of a liberty which refuses to identify itself with it
and faces a still non-existing end. This datum is, of course,
the being-in-itself negated by the for-itself, the body being its
center of reference, the past its essence. Liberty lights the
world in a philosophical sense since, in order to project itself
toward an end, it has to establish a system of relationships
between the things of the world, as background for the being
it has to attain. It is impossible to distinguish within a given
situation what belongs to the contingency of the in-itself and
what belongs to liberty. For instance, the mountain will ap-
pear to me impossible to climb only in the light of projecting
to climb it, which intention relates to the fundamental project
constituting my way of being in the world. Whether the
nature of the rock is such as to allow me to climb the moun-
tain is a different matter, but only within a situation created
by a would-be climber could there be resistance to climbing.
For a mere tourist in quest of aesthetic delight, the rock ap-
pears neither easy nor difficult to climb, but as having such a
shape or color. Moreover, my evaluation of the resistance to
be encountered in the execution of a project varies according
to the importance I attribute to its realization. The paradox of
liberty is then that there is no liberty outside of a situation
and no situation outside of liberty; not only my body but the
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 TO BE AND NOT TO BE

place I occupy in the world, my past and my position among

others are all part of my situation.

The fact that I live in a certain locality constitutes a situation

for me only inasmuch as I have projected to live elsewhere,
or inasmuch as I have adopted a certain manner of being con-
sisting in wishing to be where I am not.

The place I occupy in the world, in a certain country, at a

certain distance from certain objects, refers to my original
contingency. Even if I came there freely, I had to arrive from
another place, and, in retracing my steps, I find myself in the
place where I was quite unconditionally; a pure contingency.
At the same time, it is because I am free that I can say that I
occupy a certain place at a certain distance from other places.
"You are going quite far," said someone to an internationalist
about to leave for Argentina. "Far from what?" asked the
internationalist who had ceased to consider France his home.
To conceive myself as occupying a certain place, I have, in
a sense, to dissociate myself from that place, to transcend it
toward certain other places which permit me to locate my
own: 1 am so many hours away from Peter by train and have
to drive so many hours to see Anny. My ends create the situ-
ation; they are felt in the symbolic significance 1 give to the
locations. Having climbed the mountain, I am "on top of the
world," at sea I am "away from it all." Places have existential
meanings for me which recall the manner of being I have
chosen for myself through life. The restrictions imposed upon
my liberty by my location in space are proofs of my liberty;
it is because I want to live in New York that I feel so con-
scious of being located in Podunk. If my project is insincere,
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 BEING-IN-ITSELF-FOR-ITSELF

it IS just a way of perpetually negating my existence In

Podunk.

My past constitutes a situation for me merely in relation to

some project concerning the future.

Our past does not determine our future, nor does it con-
stitute our present. But neither can it be ignored by liberty,
for liberty exists only in relation to its past and in function
of its past. I have to recognize my past, were it only to revolt
against it, since it is my concrete being-in-itself. The present
is presence to a past, and my past follows me into the present:
Wesen ist was gewesen ist. The position I chose, the house I
built, the suit I bought are part of me, the being whom I
have to be. I cannot think of myself without thinking of my
past since I am that past; but if I can think the past and bring
it into being, that is because I survey it in the light of the
future. My transcendence would have no meaning if I did
not have a past to transcend. Yet, if it is true that conscious-
ness is always consciousness of something, it is also true that
whatever is in consciousness is there as being questioned,
which means that nothing appears to consciousness without
being chosen. No element of my past appears to my conscious-
ness without bearing some relation to my future projects. The
meaning I confer on past incidents varies according to the
nature of these projects. Outside of that constant evaluation,
my past, no doubt, is made up of raw data, constituting the
matter of Bergson's "pure memory," and I can explore that
past, as did Proust; but such exploration involves a project of
its kind.

As our fundamental project In life is confirmed or altered,

the meaning of our past actions changes accordingly.
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 TO BE AND NOT TO BE

The meaning of my past actions depends on my present

project, which is part of my life-project. I determine that
meaning not by deliberation, but by acting on my projects.
The mystical crisis through which I went at the age of fifteen
will acquire the meaning of a premonition if at twenty or
thirty I become converted. The force of the past is conferred
by my projects, i.e., by the future. Between full acceptance of
the past and its complete disavowal, there are ambiguous
states. I may reassume the conjugal bond daily because it is
part of my life-project to be a good husband and a good
father. I may just respect that bond, although my fundamen-
tal values have changed, because a settled way of life suits my
present purpose. I may reject it altogether, under the impulse
of a spiritual quest, like Mallory's Galahad, or of an aesthetic
quest, like Gauguin, in one of those rare instants where our
life-projects undergo a complete change. The past may be
living, half-alive, preserved in an ambiguous way, disavowed.

This is true of the history of nations, the past events of which

receive new meanings from events in the making.

This applies to the history of human societies. The partici-

pation of the United States in the first World War may have
been due to certain considerations bearing on the future of
that country. In the light of such considerations, it may have
been found expedient to remember that America had a debt
of honor to pay back to France, because such emotional moti-
vation is useful in obtaining the adhesion of the masses.
Nevertheless, the past, thus interpreted, assumed historical
force with the famous "Lafayette, we are here!" Through this
interpretation, a new past, so to speak, had been created, a
tradition inaugurated, which the discovery of actual affinities
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 BEJNG-JN-JTSELF-FOR-JTSELF

between two capitalistic democracies merely confirmed. Thus,

the past is always subject to a new interpretation. Was the
storming of the Bastille in 1789 a mere episode which the
Convention, for reasons of publicity, decided to consecrate as
a symbolic and glamorous intervention of the popular will
which, strengthened and confirmed by this action, gave a new
direction to the whole movement? The historian can only
decide on such points in the light of his own tendencies and
of those of his times: the historian is also historical. History
is a continuous "reprieve."

The fact that, instead of taking our surroundings for granted,

we consider them as obstacles to our liberty met'ely proves that
we are free.

My surroundings are made up of objects which may figure

in my projects as obstacles or as utensils. If they are obstacles,
they simply confirm the existence of liberty, which will have
to manifest itself against them. Any project of liberty is an
open project, which has to take into account the possible
adversity of things, and implies the possibility of its own
modifications. This is why the obstacles we encounter in the
realization of our plans so often bear a familiar look: "I could
have sworn this was going to happen!" Liberty confers ad-
versity on things and brings them to existence at the same
time.

Laws, customs, prejudices, beliefs, language, techniques may

seem to confer on my world, and the things of my world,
meanings which 1 have not chosen; they are the conditions
of my liberty; either 1 adopt them freely or 1 admit their
factual existence in order to modify or refute them.
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 TO BE AND NOT TO BE

My fellowman, however, obliges me to see in the objects

which surround me something more than obstacles or utensils.
To be concrete, my situation in the world must be considered
as related to objects which already have a signification: the
poster, the street, the station, have significations which are
already mine since they point to my race, my nationality, my
physique, and they also point to centers of reference which are
not my own, but those of the Other. Indeed my world is
made significant to me in numberless ways through the exist-
ence of the other. Whatever I do, my behavior is dictated to
me by signs, notices, roads, traffic lights, etc. This would seem
to limit my liberty, since any of my projects will have to
borrow means of execution which I have to accept as a matter
of fact. To express myself, I have to obey the technique of a
particular language without having had anything to do with
the elaboration of that technique. Through the fact of lan-
guage, it would seem that I am thrown into a system of
meanings, an interpretation of the riddle of the universe
which I have not chosen. The dialect I am using, the language
to which this dialect belongs, define, from outside, my exist-
ence insofar as I am part of a collective group. Yet, if the
truth of the dialect lies in the language to which it belongs,
the truth of that language belongs to language in general,
which in turn reflects even more universal structures of con-
sciousness. To that extent, it is not true that the use of a cer-
tain dialect necessarily confers a certain view of the world.
Linguists have pointed out that the word has no meaning
outside of the sentence, and that even groups of words or
cliches may change meaning in different paragraphs. If so,
neither words, nor syntax, nor even cliches have an existence
of their own before we make use of them:
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 BEING-IN-ITSELF-FOR-ITSELF

The verbal unity being the significant phrase, the latter is a

constructive act which may be understood only through a
transcendence which goes beyond, and negates, the datum
[as it projects itself] toward an end. To understand the
word in the light of the sentence is very exactly to under-
stand any datum from the situation, and to understand the
situation in the light of the original ends. To understand a
sentence of the man addressing me is indeed to understand
what he "means," i.e., ... to throw myself forward, with
him, toward possibilities, toward ends, and then to come
back to the ensemble of organized means to understand
them according to their function and their aim. 75

Words may seem to have a life of their own, because they

reflect some past trail of human thought, but they come to
life again only within the phrase, which is a project, and as
such can be interpreted only in the light of a project, which,
in its turn, can be understood only as the negation of a given
situation. Language has sometimes been understood as having
its own laws, a "nature" of its own, independent of the liberty
of the speaker; this is because it has been considered as once
spoken, without any regard to the fact that while it is being
spoken, it is borne on a human liberty. The error of linguists
has been to consider language as having a kind of magic life
of its own. "This is the error to be avoided in regard to lan-
guage, as in regard to any other technique." 76 The study of
techniques will never help us to discover the technician. If
words can be related to each other, it is because a certain sub-
jective unity has been projected into expression by the speaker.
Alone the listener can objectively break down the sentence
into its elements, analyse its structures and formulate its laws.
What is true of language is true of other aspects of social life:
government, laws, customs, prejudices, scientific notions, be-
liefs; they are the conditions of my liberty, and I have to
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 TO BE AND NOT TO BE

admit their factual existence in order to modify them or to

refute them.

The liberty of others, however, does limit my own insofar as

I exist objectively in their consciousness which defines me ac-
cording to race, trade, type, etc. All I can do in this respect is
to accept this limitation as an external limitation.

The only true limit to my liberty is the liberty of others, for

only liberty can limit liberty. I can give a personal meaning to
the things, tools, and techniques I find around me, but I can-
not give a meaning to that object which I am for the liberty
of the others. I cannot give it meaning, because I am objec-
tively for him alone. He possesses a dimension of my being-
which escapes me. To that extent, I am, for the other, some-
thing I have not chosen to be. I can neither reject this exist-
ence which is conferred on me from outside, for this would
amount to voluntary solipsism, nor conform to it as long as I
retain consciousness and freedom. All I can do is to recognize
the fact that I exist in the consciousness of others, as I recog-
nize their liberty; to make it part of the general situation
which I have to act upon. Thus, at least, the limitation con-
ferred on me by the notions others entertain about me will
remain external limitations; it is for the others that I am a
Jew, a worker, a Frenchman. I have to accept these limitations
conferred on me from outside by others, as they define me
according to race, nationality, and physical appearance; my
liberty will never coincide with them.

Death alone, as the end of my possibilities, can suppress my

liberty. It is not true that death gives to life a definite mean-
ing: it is the end of all meanings for me. If death comes from
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 BEING-IN -ITSELF-FOR-ITSELF

outside, it is a mere contingency; if it is voluntary, its mean-

ing is to bring about the end of all meanings for me, and it
is therefore absurd.

The only end ilt my possibilities is death. Attempts have

been made, particularly by Heidegger, to consider death, not
as a passage into non-being, but as a purely human event, the
last of the series and the most meaningful: the end of life.
Death considered thus would give its sense to existence, as its
supreme achievement in the same way as the last note of the
melody, rebounding, as it were, on all the preceding notes,
gives its definite sense to the melody. To Sartre, death .is as
contingent and as absurd as birth is. One may decide to give
a meaning 'to one's life through a glorious death of liberation,
and be run over on the way to the recruiting office. Besides,
one can prepare for a particular death, but not for one's death.
Heidegger says that to die is my most individual realization,
the only thing that no one can do for me, and that my whole
life should be oriented toward death; but even if my death
were not accidental, if I die of old age, it still is a biological
fact. Death is not my possibility, but a negation of my possi-
bilities which does not depend upon me. The meaning of
my life is always an expectation; if death is the end of all
expectations, how could it give a meaning to my life? No
meaning can be conferred from outside. A young man with
great literary ambition may die after producing his first book;
if it is good, he will be considered by posterity as a one-book
man, if it is bad, he will be completely forgotten. If Balzac
had died young, he would be considered by posterity as one
among many 19th century writers of mediocre "black" novels.
The whole meaning he wanted to impart to his existence
would have been lost. Death is not what gives life its meao-
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 TO BE AND NOT TO BE

ing; on the contrary, it is what takes away from life any

meaning. Suicide itself cannot be said to have meaning for me,
since alone the future can confer meaning, and since suicide,
being the last act of my life, rejects the future. If I "miss my-
self," I shall be able to confer meaning on that act, call it
cowardly, stupid, or courageous; otherwise, being without a
future, my suicide is also deprived of meaning and is properly
absurd.

It is only for the others that my death has any meaning, and
it is up to them to define that meaning. Death consecrates my
being for others in itself, i.e., as an object.

It is f0F::?thers that my life assumes with death a definite

character. ~hrough death, my life ceases to be a perpetual re-
prieve; it is achieved and completely in itself. If I am well-
known its character, in funerary oration, articles, biographies.
history, will be conferred on it by others; if I am not, by the
family tradition and by my friends, until I sink into oblivion
as a person and become lost for history in a collectivity desig-
nated as the middle-class or the proletariat of such or such an
age. For to be forgotten is not to be reduced to nothing, ac-
cording to Sartre; it is to lose one's personal existence and
assume a collective one for posterity. Part of our existence for
others consists in the position we take in regard to the dead.
As I live my projects, I have to adopt an attitude toward the
institutions and collectivities of the past; the Inquisition con-
firms me in my anti-Catholic stand, the excesses of the French
Revolution in my conservative convictions. My generation, as
a collectivity engaged in a certain effort, confers new mean-
ings on certain events and personalities of history, as the
America of 1917 did for Lafayette; but these transformations
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 BEING-IN-ITSELF-FOR-ITSELF

of the past occur, of course, only through and for the living,
from outside. For the dead, "the chips are down." Death is
the triumph of the Other. All in all, death is merely a certain
aspect of facticity and of being-for-others, i.e., nothing but a
datum.

The situation, in its universal and particular structures, is my

chance to exercise my liberty.

To sum up, then, what Sartre understands by situation: I

realize my position in the world only in the light of a project.
The situation exists only in correlation with the use of a
datum toward an end. There is no privileged situation in
regard to liberty; I am just as free in one as in another. The
situation contains abstract and universal structures, but it
must be understood as the single face which the world turns
upon us, as our unique and personal chance. As I project
myself toward my ends through the world, I encounter se-
quences and connected series; I establish laws to utilize them
and further my ends. The situation accounts for our substan-
tial permanence; our past, our character, the judgment of
others have the permanence of being in itself, which we may
easily confuse with our own permanence. In particular, the
character conferred on me by others has a concreteness which
I may, according to my life-project, accept in fascination or
reject through rebellion. I may use it to "build myself up," or
I may resent it inasmuch as it makes me feel "hemmed in."
Death is the consecration of the others' viewpoint.

I am responsible for the situation in its universal as well as in

its particular aspect: for myself, for the others (inasmuch as
I transcend their transcendence), for the world. I experience
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 TO BE AND NOT TO BE

this responsibility in anguish when I do not run away from

it in bad faith. Although my birth and the situation in which
I was born are contingent facts, I assume them by existing and
adopting a fundamental attitude toward them.

Man is responsible for himself and for the world. He

makes himself responsible for himself when he assumes his
fundamental manner of being; he is responsible for the world.
for situation is only one aspect of his liberty. I am as responsi-
ble for the war as if I had declared it myself. It is part of my
situation. I cannot ignore that situation, or rather, if I do
ignore it, I am merely manifesting my liberty by ignoring it,
as I might by endorsing it, or treating it as a vacation. As soon
as I am born, I become responsible for the world. This latter
responsibility is, however, of a particular type. I am born
responsible, which means that I am responsible for every-
thing except my very responsibility, for I am not the founda-
tiol). of my being. I am forsaken in the world, not as a piece
of wreckage, but as a free being to whom full responsibility
for this world has been committed. Whatever attitude I may
choose in regard to the event of my birth, this attitude in-
volves a project concerning my mode of being, which involves
my assumption of the fact that I was born. Since any event
of the world can only appear to me as an occasion or a chance,
i.e., as a way to the realization of that being which is ques-
tioned within my being, and since the others, as transcended
transcendences, are also occasions and chances for us to pursue
lhat realization, the responsibility' of the for -itself e).,:tends to
the whole of the populated world, and this is the reason why
our liberty is apprehended in anguish. Most of the time, how-
ever, we seek escape in bad' faith. '
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 BEING-IN-ITSELF-FOR-ITSELF

2. Man's fundamental project-the individual project-existential

psychoanalysis.

Liberty is not a whim. Consciousness aims at being, which

means that the end of the for-itself is the in-itself, but not the
contingent in-itself which is precisely what the for-itself nihil-
ates: "Nihilation, as we saw, can be assimilated to a revolt of
the in-itself which nihilates itself against its contingency." 77
The for-itself wants to acquire as consciousness the infinite
density of the in-itself:
the for-itself projects to be as for-itself a being which is
what it is; it is as a being which is what it is not and which
is not what it is that the for-itself projects to be what it is;
it is as consciousness that it wants to have the impermeability
and the infinite-density of the in-itself; it is as nihilation of
the in-itself and as perpetual escape from contingence and
facticity that it wants to be its own foundation. That is why
the possible is projected in general as what the for-itself
lacks to become in-itself-for-itself, and the fundamental
value which presides over this project is precisely the in-
itself-for-itself, i.e., the ideal of a consciousness which would
be the foundation of its own being-in-itself through the pure
consciousness which it would take of itself. It is this ideal
which one may call God.'8
We may say then that: "To be a man is to tend to be God; or,
if one prefers, man is fundamentally the desire to be God." 79

This does not mean that there is a Iwman ~ature, or an es-

sence of man, outside of man. Man's fundamental project is
merely an ideal value.

Does not this fundamental human project confer a "na-

ture" on man, and define his "essence" in such a way as to
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 TO BE AND NOT TO BE

limit his liberty? If there is only one end to all human activi-
ties, will it not become possible to tell what any man will
do in any given situation? Sartre's answer to this objection
is that if there is such an essence of man, it is merely an
abstraction which does not at all precede and determine his
existence, but merely gives the truth, or the meaning of indi-
vidual liberty. It is an ideal value which cannot be realized,
and, concretely, there are only individual projects which bear
on what to do with one's contingency. The individual has to
invent a particular manner of being; and to realize this man-
ner of being, he has to invent his ends and build up situations
out of contingent surroundings. Going from the particular
to the general, we find that empirical desire is the symbolic
form adopted in the fundamental and individual project
which defines the person; this individual project is a form of
the human project to realize being-in-itself-for-itself. But, of
course, this human project exists only in the form which we
can identify as the person.

The individual project constitutes the person, and because it

is the person, the subject does not, in general, know the nature
of the project. As in Freudian psychoanalysis, it would take
another person to objectify the subject's fundamental project.

How can we reach this individual life-project which might

give us the clue to the secondary projects, or desires, of a per-
son? Psychology may go as far as establishing a list of empiri-
cal desires, and even point out certain relations between them.
The understanding of the life-projects which diversify per-
sons, and constitute persons, is a different matter. It could be
reached only through an existential psychoanalysis. The prin-
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 BEING-IN-ITSELF-FOR-ITSELF

ciple of such psychoanalysis would be that every form of

behavior, to the most trifling gesture, is revealing. Its method
would consist in the comparison of the subject's patterns of
behavior in various circumstances, and in the detection of
the fundamental project which it symbolizes. Like Freud's
psychoanalysis, it would seek the origin of the individual's
fundamental attitude in a reaction to a certain situation en-
countered in an early past. It would not, however, try to detect
a fixation of the libido, but the original choice. As in Freud,
the analysis would have to be carried out by another person
than the subject, at least in most cases. Sartre does not believe
in the subconscious; but the fact that one is conscious of qne's
fundamental project does not mean that one knows that
project. So l.ong as we live a project which concerns our inner-
most mode of being, we lack the detachment required by
analysis. The reflective process may furnish data to the psycho-
analyst, but it does not disclose the subject's fundam~ntal
project. This project can only be objectified as a transcended-
transcendence, even if the subject is trying to psychoanalyze
himself. Definition of that project would account at once
for the situation and for the choice. No general and universal
motivation would be sought as applicable to all human be-
havior. Sexuality only expresses an effort at recuperation
of one's being alien~ted by the other; will-to-power has its
foundation in another project which is the assimilation 'of
the in-itself-for-itself with the being-for-others. The aim of
existential psychoanalysis would be the discovery of a first
choice and concomitant situation. Such a system would ex-
clude the use of a universal code of symbols after the F'reudian
pattern. Symbols would have to be interpreted according to
each particular case and particular occasion.
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 TO BE AND NOT TO BE

3. Doing and having.

Although man's fundamental project has being as an aIm

(being in itself and for itself), this project manifests itself
mostly through the existential categories of having and doing.
Having and doing are reducible to want of being: basically I
make an object in order to have it. Having represents an ex-
tension of being. As such, the object I own is my self yet it is
also in-itself. Possession is an attempt at realizing being-in-it-
self-for-itself·

Desire is lack of being; its ultimate aim is the realization of

the ideal value of being-in-itself-for-itself. That realization is
sought through the objects of the world. Although its pursuit
is reducible to desire for being, it appears also under the forms
of the creative and possessive urges. Doing, having, are the
great categories of human existence:

One makes the object to keep up a certain relationship with

it. This new relationship may be immediately reducible to
"having." For instance, 1 cut a cane out of a tree branch (I
"make" a cane with a branch) in order to have that cane.
"Making" is reducible to a means of having. This is the
most frequent case. But it may also happen that my activity
does not appear immediately reducible. It may seem gratui-
tous as in the case of scientific research, of sport, of aesthetic
creation. Yet, in these different cases, making is not irre-
ducible either. If 1 create a picture, a drama, a melody, it
is to be at the origin of a concrete existence. And this exist-
ence interests me only insofar as the bond of creation which
1 establish between it and myself gives me a particubr right
of property. The question is not that such a picture, the idea
of which I have [in mind], should exist; it should also exist
through me.80
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 BEING-IN-ITSELF-FOR-ITSELF

My work is mine, because I have created it and because it has

an existence in itself. It is one with my consciousness as repre-
senting an idea of mine, yet it is distinct from me as having
the opacity of being-in-itself. It realizes the synthesis of the
self and of the non-self.

The sense of appt'opriation extends to knowledge, to research,

to sexual possession.

Knowledge is another form of appropnatlOn. In knowl-

edge, I am, at once, a creator, since an aspect of the world is
revealed to me, and a possessor, since the aspect of the world
I have revealed really is, outside of me. The truth I have dis-
covered is independent from me and pursues an independent
existence, as the work of art does. There is a sense of appropri-
ation in research, as there is in discovery, as there is in parting
the veils of mystery in any circumstances whatsoever. Knowl-
edge is assimilation. It aims at identifying with the self some-
thing which remains the non-self. This is why sexual "posses-
sion" is referred to by the Bible as "knowledge." The known
object is my thought as thing. There is truly no disinterested
knowledge; knowing is one of the forms which having may
take.

Play activities involve both doing and having. The world of

games and sports is ~n artificial world governed by man-made
laws. In that respect, it is both in-itself and for-itself. Appro-
priation plays a part in it inasmuch as it represents the acquisi-
tion of a fine body, mastery over the elements. This appropri-
ation is merely a symbolic appropriation.

Play activity can be reduced to craving for being, both on

the plane of doing and on the plane of having. A game is a
129
 TO BE AND NOT TO BE

form of actlvtty the principles of which are established by

man himself; to that extent, it represents an effort to live in
an artificial world grounded in human consciousness, which is
conformance to the ideal value of the in-itself-for-itself. Ap-
propriation plays an important part in sports. Leaving aside the
desire to own a fine body, which is part of our being-for-others,
we seek in sports to assimilate our surroundings.' To a skier,
the snow represents pure exteriority, a sort of abstracted being-
in-itself, yet solid and permanent. A child would try to ap-
propriate this immaculate matter by fashioning a snow-man.
The skier appropriates, through movement, the pure space
suggested by the whiteness of the snow. Gliding adds a sym-
bolic value to this movement. It is the image of an appropri-
ation which does not interfere with the subject's transcend-
ence. It is the opposite of being swamped down. A certain
mode of being is revealed by skiing.
Political activities are also related to the quest of being
through appropriation. The "haves" are simply striving to
retain a world which they have made their world; the revolu-
tionists want to create a new world the basis of which they
will have established themselves.

Appropriation can exist only through the use I make of

the object; it is purely symbolic.

Appropriation appears as a sort of continued creation. This

is why having may be considered as an extension of being.
Emerson illustrated how difficult it is to delineate the limits
of the person: body, clothing, lodging-where is the line of
demarcation to be drawn? Inasmuch as I appear to myself as
creating objects by the mere rapport of appropriation, these
objects are my self. Yet appropriation of an object can only
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 BEING-IN-ITSELF-FOR-ITSELF

exist through the movement by which I transcend that object

toward its use. If I think of an object without regard to its
use, I see it as a thing in itself, and I am no longer anything
but my being-for-itself. What possession tries to achieve is the
symbolic realization of being-in-itself-for-itself. My possessions
represent my transcendence, i.e., my subjectivity, and at the
same time they confer on me that objectivity which I lack as
pure consciousness. Through my possessions, I affirm to the
other, and against the others, what I am. Yet, this relation
remains as symbolical as the Freudian gratification of the
libido. It cannot be realized, were it only because possession
is an enterprise which death always causes to remain un-
achieved. In other words: "You can't take it with you."

It is therefore frustrating and may lead to destruction which

is a form of appropriation.

On becoming aware of the symbolic character of posses-

sion, or if I am frustrated in my attempt to possess, I may be
seized with the urge to destroy; for destruction is an attempt
to realize appropriation. As I destroy, I impart to the being-in-
itself the characters of my being-for-itself: its non-being and
its translucidity. The object becomes mine as I have become
the cause of its non-b~ing. It has lost its irritating exteriority;
it has assumed a past character. Moreover, I do not destroy for
myself alone, but for the others as well. The satisfaction I
experience in wearing out an object is of the same nature. We
like the objects which bear the marks of the progressive de-
struction resulting from the use we make of them. The more
use we get out of them, the more it seems we have made
them ours, the more we are attached to them, provided they
'ltill fulfil their functions. Giving an object away is also a form
131
 TO BE AND NOT TO BE

of destruction. When I give away one of my possessions, I do

away with it in a sense since I reduce it to being for me no
more than an image; yet, at the same time, I oblige the new
proprietor to bring it to life again as part of himself. The
value I try to realize is my being-in-itself-for-itself-for-others.

When 1 appropriate an object, 1 am not merely trying to

appropriate its being (in itself), 1 am trying to approp,.iate
being as such and in general, because consciousness is lack of
being. Through appropriation of an object we want to appro-
priate the whole of being, i.e., the world.

When I appropriate an object, my consciousness is attempt-

ing to appropriate more than its being in itself. What it tries
to appropriate symbolically is being as such, the whole being
in itself, i.e., the world. Each object possessed stands out on
the background of the world it symbolizes. A yacht, for in-
stance, is unthinkable outside of a certain way of life, and
that certain way of life is a certain way of facing the world.
When we smoke, as we reduce tobacco to smoke, on the
rhythm of our respiration, the whole world of being is affected
in its permanence and solidity; it is symbolically consumed;
the taste of smoke, the warmth of the pipe-bowl are accessory
details.
Thus, what we fundamentally desire to appropriate in an
object is its being and it is the world. These two ends of
appropriation are one in reality. I seek, behind the phenome-
non, to possess the being of the phenomenon. But this being,
very different, as we saw, from the phenomenon of being,
is being-in-itself, and not merely the being of such or such
a particular thing. It is not that there is here passage to the
universal, but, rather, the being considered in its concrete
bareness thereby becomes the being of totality. Thus the
132
 BEING-IN-ITSELF-FOR-ITSELF

rapport of possession clearly appears to US: to possess is to

wish to possess the world through a particular object.s1
To wish to possess an object, and through that object the
world, is to aim at making of the being-for-itself the founda-
tion of the concrete totality of being-in-itself, i.e., the world:
"To-be-in-the-world is to project to possess the world, i.e., to
apprehend the total world as what the for-itself lacks to be-
come in-itself-for-itself." 82 The end of the being-for-itself is
being-in-itself, but not the contingent in-itself which it ne-
gates. The being-for-itself wants to acquire as consciousness
the infinite density of the in-itself. The desire for possession
may now be defined in terms of desire for being:
While the desire for being bears directly on the for-itself
and projects to confer on it without intermediary the dig-
nity of the in-itself-for-itself, the desire of having aims at
the for-itself on, in, and through the world. It is through the
appropriation of the world that the project of having aims
at realizing the same value as the desire for being.s3
Desire for being tends to confer being directly on the for-itself,
desire for having intercalates the world between the for-itself
and its being, establishing thereby the circuit of ipseity.

That object represents for us a certain manner of being which

is the quality of the "Object.

Why do we choose to possess the world symbolically

through a particular object rather than through another?
What we aim at through a particular object is its being
through a particular manner of being, which is its quality.
Quality represents to us symbolically a certain manner of
being; our very tastes symbolize our world outlook, our Welt-
133
 TO BE AND NOT TO BE

anschauung. The predilection of each poet for a certain ele-

ment: the geological element in Rimbaud, the fluidity of
water in Poe, indicates, rather than a certain form of sexuality,
the choice of a certain way of being.

The qualities of things represent for us values or anti-values,

according to our fundamental project in life.

Symbolic appropriation of the qualities of things is the

main clue to our life-project. The ultimate reality that existen-
tial psychoanalysis can reach, either directly or through appro-
priation, is neither a libido nor a will-to-power, but the choice
of a certain way of being. In this latter case, things are chosen
for the way in which they render being, and the way in which
they render being is their quality. This quality may appear to
us as value and also as an anti-value. According to our indi-
vidual life-project, the viscous, for example, may exercise on
us a certain fascination, or appear to us as repellent. The
viscous may be evoked by a look, an attitude, a handshake.
Common sense only sees in this evocation, a projection into
certain human patterns of behavior, of my sensory experience
of viscous matters. A purely material quality could not be
projected into a psychic quality unless that material quality
had first of all evoked an intrinsic quality similar to the
psychic quality in question. Sartre's existential symbolism
seems to agree with the Kantian definition of symbolism,
according to which a true symbol is that object through which
we see the same law operate as in the idea represented: e.g.,
the falling of leaves and old age. The viscous must appear
immediately significant to us; otherwise we would not detect
that significance in some human patterns of behavior. The
134
 BEING-IN-ITSELF-FOR-ITSELF

quality of viscosity, however, must have met with an appro-

priative project to acquire that significance for us. What is
this particular quality? It is an ambiguous quality which at
first evokes the fluidity of a liquid, flux and perpetual change,
as in the Herac1itean philosophy of becoming; as its fluidity is
slowed down by the liquid's tendency to turn to paste, it
represents an incipient triumph of the solid over the liquid.
Through the extraordinary description which Sartre gives us
of viscosity, we understand the importance he attributes to
this quality as anti-value; through it we understand that the
for-itself, symbolized by the fluidity of viscosity, may be ab-
sorbed by the in-itself, symbolized by its tendency to congeal,
in a sly, repulsive and fascinating sort of way. Through it,
we understand that our past may slowly suck in our future.
Our horror of viscous matters, glue, mire, quicksands, informs
us of the constant danger our consciousness and our freedom
run of being swamped, mired or absorbed by the contingency
of the in-itself. Yet, even in this discovery, the for-itself re-
mains free. It is the for-itself which brings this quality into
being as a value, or rather as an anti-value representing some-
thing to be fled, the triumph of facticity over consciousness,
the opposite of the in-itself-for-itself, such as Sartre found it
represented by the skier's glide on the snow. This does not
mean that viscosity in all forms is always an anti-value to all
people; some people may not dislike being "swamped" by
petty details whi<:h "allows them no time to think ahead." It
simply means that viscosity has the same sense for everybody,
although the evaluation of this sense varies according to the
nature of each person's individual project. Such values, or
anti-values, are formed early in life. Long before his sexuality
is born, the child is revealed certain modes of being through
135
 TO BE AND NOT TO BE

the qualities of form or matter. The "anal tendencies" of the

child do not spring from sexuality. They indicate his discovery
of a mode of being. In itself, the hole is a symbol of a lack of
being. It is a non-being to be filled with the being of one's
flesh, so that there may be a plenitude of being. This is the
true reason why the child presents the "anal" or "oral" tend-
encies detected by Freud. These tendencies may be related
later with sexual tendencies but, on their first appearance,
they certainly are pre-sexual.

Existential psychoanalysis should be able to detect our funda-

mental project through a study of our individual likes and
dislikes.

Existential psychoanalysis may derive precious indications

about the "human reality" in general from the behavior of the
child. But its main concern would be to discover the individ-
ual project of each human being from its relation with vari-
ous symbolical forms of being. Our likes and dislikes are
revealing, even in the matter of food, since by absorbing it we
assimilate its qualities: its taste, its texture, its color, its tem-
perature. (A strangely accurate form of psychoanalysis has
been developed lately in Switzerland out of the study of the
subject's reaction to shades of various colors; it also bears on
individual projects related with the problem of being in its
most general aspect.) In his novels, Sartre made use of this
existential symbolism. There is hardly any reaction of his
characters to the form, color, and texture of things that is not
related to the character's individual project. By way of illus-
tration, we might mention here Mathieu's liking for green,
for the sound of running water, for the fragrance of the pines;
these qualities objectively represent the indecision, the fluidity,
136
 BEING-IN-ITSELF-FOR-ITSELF

the expansion of a consciousness which wants to get out of

itself as such: liberty for liberty's sake and without commit-
ment. To him they are values. At various times, the contact
of viscous matters makes him realize that his past is catching
up with him, and that there cannot be liberty without com-
mitment. Daniel's project, from the beginning, has been to
seek his own objectivity in the look of others; he finds it
finally in the look of God. The density of stone, opacity, dark-
ness, black, remind him that his solution to the problem of
being is to seek the darkness of being-in-itself.

Man's fundamental project, which is to ground being in con-

sciousness, to realize the ideal value of being-in-itself and for-
itself, i.e., the value which corresponds to the notion of God
is doomed to failure.

These projects, however, and others, which we find em-

bodied in various characters throughout Sartre's literary
works, are mere variations, presumably failures, of the funda-
mental human project. Through the ontological reduction of
psychoanalysis, every human project and every form of hu-
man behavior can be reduced to an attempt to realize being-
in-itsel£-for-itself:
Every human reality is a passion, inasmuch as it projects
to lose itself to ground being and thereby constitute the
In-itself which escapes contingency by being its own foun-
dation, the ens causa sui which religions call God. Thus the
passion of man is the opposite of Christ's, for man loses
himself as man so that God may be born. But the idea of
God is contradictory and we lose ourselves in vain; man is
a useless passion.84

137
 Conclusion

1. Metaphysical perspectives.

Consciousness is internal negation emanating from being. It

constitutes an absolute of negation, an absolute witlzout sub-
stance.

The for-itself is merely the negation of a particular being-

in-itself. Having no autonomous substance outside of that
negation, it has to seek its being in the in-itself. Consciousness
is that Other described by Plato in The Sophist, which van-
ishes if you try to fix your attention upon him, and appears
in the margin of things if you try to forget him. "Otherness
is indeed internal negation and alone a consciousness can con-
stitute itself as internal negation." 85 Yet, otherness emanates
from being. Having no foundation of its own, it is relative to
being. But in its rejection of its identity with being, it is an
absolute, an absolute without substance.
138
 CONCLUSION

At this point, the metaphysical question arises: why does

the for-itself spring from the in-itself? Metaphysics, in its
attempts to solve this problem, must take into account what
ontology teaches us.
1) that if the in-itself had to ground itself, it could not even
attempt it except by making itself consciousness, i.e., that
the concept of causa sui entails in itself that of presence to
self, i.e., of the nihilating decompression of being; 2) that
consciousness is in fact the project to ground itself, i.e., of
reaching the dignity of being-in-itself-for-itself, or in-itself-
cause-of-itself.86
The teachings of ontology extend no further. As a matter
of fact, they confront us with a contradiction:
To be the project of grounding itself, the in-itself should
originally be presence to self, i.e., it should already be con-
sciousness. Ontology will then limit itself to declare that
everything happens as if the in-itself, in a project to ground
itself, modified itself into the for-itself. s7
It is now up to metaphysics to form hypotheses which will
unify the data of ontology. It is up to the metaphysician to
decide whether, before the appearance of consciousness, move-
ment is not a first attempt of the in-itself to be its own founda-
tion.

Metaphysics will have to form hypotheses concerning the

totality of being in itself and for itself; it can neither consti-
tute a dualism, since one is the internal negation of the other,
nor a totality proper, since the in-itself-for-itself is an ideal
value.

Metaphysics will have to consider a second problem. Do

being-in-itself and being-for-itself constitute a dualism? It
139
 TO BE AND NOT TO BE

would not seem so, since being-in-itself is connected to being-

for-itself by an internal relation, and is inconceivable without
being-in-itself. Do they constitute a totality? No doubt the
for-itself needs the in-itself to exist, but the in-itself only needs
the for-itself to assume phenomenal existence. As pure being,
it does not need the for-itself. The totality in-itself-for-itself
is conceivable only as a value: "Everything happens as if the
world, man, and man-in-the-world, appeared in a state of dis-
integration in relation to an ideal synthesis. Not that the
integration has ever taken place, but on the contrary, precisely
because it is always indicated and always impossible." 88 We
meet on the metaphysical plane the same sort of "detotalized
totality" as on the plane of phenomenology. On the plane of
pure reflection, the reflecting consciousness has to distinguish
itself from the being reflected, as the reflected object has to
distinguish itself from the reflecting consciousness. In the
same way, the for-itself and the for-itself-for-others constitute
a being in which each one confers otherness on the other by
making itself other. If we consider now the relation between
the totality of the in-itself and the for-itself, between con-
sciousness and the world, we realize that the for-itself creates
its otherness while the in-itself is not "other" in its being. It
would seem then that I can grasp the totality of being in itself
and myself, since I am at once exhaustive consciousness of
being and consciousness of self. Metaphysics will have to
choose whether to stop at the phenomenon with its two di-
mensions: for-itself and in-itself, or to retain the old dualism:
"consciousness-being." If it adopts the new notion of the
phenomenon as "disintegrated totality," it should be treated at
once in terms of immanence and of transcendence: "Imma-
nence will always be iimited by the in-itself dimension of the
140
 CONCLUSION

phenomenon, and transcendence by its for-itself dimen-

sion." 89

Metaphysics will then have to consider the problem of action.

After deciding the question of the origin of the for-itself

and of the nature of the world as phenomenon, metaphysics
will be able to approach the problem of action. Action does
not merely modify the phenomenal aspect of an object, since
it can go as far as to negate the object altogether; the problem
of action reveals to us a relation of being to being which is
neither pure exteriority nor immanence, but refers us to the
Gestaltist notion of form and background.

2. Moral perspectives.

Any system of ethics based on ontology should take into ac-

count the fact that man's ideal value is the realization of
being-in-itself-for-itself. He should realize that he himself
creates this value, as well as less fundamental values.

Ontology cannot formulate imperatives, but we can foresee

a system of ethics resting on its data. It has revealed to us that
value is a lack, and that all human projects point to the reali-
zation of being-in-itself-for-itself. Neither egoism, nor utility,
nor interest, can explain human attitudes, since this realization
transcends them all, and since one may say that "man makes
himself man to be God," 90 i.e., his own cause. In such a sys-
tem, the "spirit of seriousness" which consists in believing
that values are transcendental data, and that the nature of
things may furnish us rules of behavior, will have to be aban-
doned. Many men already know that the aim of their quest
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 TO BE AND NOT TO BE

is being. Many are reduced to despair for not being able to

discover around them signs pointing to the ideal value of
being-in-itself and for-itself. Man must realize that he is the
being through whom values exist.
What will become of his ideal value, the ens causa sui,
when man becomes conscious of it? Will he still retain it, and
will it remain as the value that cannot be transcended? Will
liberty adopt itself as the supreme value, being the source of
all values? But what could be the meaning of a liberty that
would itself constitute an end in itself? How could liberty,
taking liberty for its end, escape the situation? All these ques-
tions, to be considered on the plane of pure reflection, were
to be treated by Sartre in a separate treatise.

In existential ethics, the realization that my consciousness is

an absolute would involve a sense of reciprocity. Every indi-
vidual consciousness should, in principle, be considered as an
end, not as a means to an end.

This treatise has not yet appeared, but Sartre has already
given us a few hints about the general principles on which his
ethical system would rest. These were further developed and
illustrated in such plays as Huis-clos and Les MOllches. They
seem to fit in with the system delineated by Sartre's disciple,
Simone de Beauvoir, in Pour une morale de l'ambigliitC, and
we may take for granted that the disciple expresses the idea
of the master when she states that, each consciousness being
an absolute, "the other steals the world from me every in-
stant," 91 and that it is quite true as Hegel claims that "each
consciousness pursues the death of the other";9::! even though,
on the other hand, each consciousness finds its solidarity with
142
 CONCLUSION

the others in the very act by which it distinguishes itself from

them: "Each man needs the liberty of others, and, in a sense,
he always wants it, were he even a tyrant; he simply fails to
assume in good faith the consequences of such a want," 93
Existential ethics would make the liberty of man the end of all
our actions. Each consciousness, being an absolute, would have
to be treated as an end and not as a means to an end.

The fact that this ideal is unattaz'nable does not do away with
our responsibility.

Obviously, such an ideal is unattainable since the pursuit

of man's liberty may in some cases-for instance, in a war
of liberation-entail the sacrifices of certain individuals or
even of a whole generation. In existential ethics, however, no
situation would ever allow the responsible person to delegate
his responsibility to divine or "historical" powers. As in Hux-
ley, so in Simone de Beauvoir and in Sartre, ends and means
constitute a single movement and the means condition the
ends, Such a conclusion leaves us indeed with a certain im-
pression of ambiguity.

Sartre's political philosophy illustrates these principles.

One principle, however, seems to emerge plainly from the

general conception of existential ethics in both Simone de
Beauvoir and Sartre: the principle of reciprocity. Insofar as
my consciousness appears to me as an absolute, and basically
constitutes my center of reference, I must realize that the
other's consciousness is also an absolute for him. This princi-
ple is the basis of Sartre's political philosophy, which it may
not be inopportune to recall at this point.
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 TO BE AND NOT TO BE

3. The social problem.

Capitalism exploits the idealist myth; communism, the mate-

rialist myth: Sartre rejects both.

According to Sartre, the present world situation can be

defined as the struggle between Capitalism and Communism.
Capitalism, states Sartre somewhat sweepingly, exploits the
idealist myth and Communism the materialist myth. Follow-
ing the same line as in his philosophy, Same rejects both.
Capitalism means more or less the status quo. It allows the
individual to pass from one class to the other, but it maintains
the exploitation of the laboring class by the governing class.
Yet the liberty which the possessing class enjoys is a somewhat
barren kind of contemplative liberty, since it is condemned
by its very nature to remain conservative. The liberty left to
the laboring classes is that of choosing its masters. Yet, if it
does not constitute real democracy, it is, at least, excellent
democratic education.

Communism is a double imposture. As materialism, it reduces

the movements of the mind to those of matter, yet claims for
itself the privilege of contemplating the universe, thereby sub-
stituting itself, as pure objectifying look, for the God Wllich
it denies.

As to Communism, or dialectical materialism, it is an obvi-

ous imposture for the following reasons: Materialism, which
denies the existence of God and transcendental finality, re-
duces the movements of the mind to those of matter, and
eliminates subjectivity by reducing the world, with man in
it, to a system of objects bound by universal connections.
144
 CONCLUSION

Materialism is really a metaphysical system, yet Marxists

refuse to defend their position on metaphysical grounds, and
take refuge in a new kind of positivism. Their materialism,
they say, is the expression of a progressive discovery of the
interaction of the world, a discovery which is not passive but
implies the activity of the discoverer. Thus the materialist
denies subjectivity, becomes himself an object among others,
the matter for scientific knowledge. But once he has sup-
pressed subjectivity, instead of seeing himself as a thing
among things, he starts considering himself as a pure objec-
tive look and claims to contemplate the world as it is. Having
gone beyond all subjectivity and assimilated himself to pure
objective truth, he wanders in a world of objects inhabited by
man-objects. He abandons science together with subjectivity,
steps out of humanity, and substitutes himself for God, whom
he denies, to contemplate the spectacle of the universe. Back
from his trip, he tells us that everything that is real is rational,
which might make sense coming from a Kantian, but makes
none coming from a materialist. If reason is governed from
outside, how can it remain reason? "Consciousness," says
Lenin, "is only the reflection of being, approximately exact
in the best cases." But who will determine what the best cases
are without idealist criteria or values? In the end, the mate-
rialist destroys his metaphysics with his positivism, his posi-
tivism with his rationalism.

Opposition makes sense in Hegel's totality of Mind, bllt not

in a materialist philosophy.

That is not all; Marxism is dialectical materialism. These

two terms, says Sartre, cannot be reconciled. Dialectics can
145
 TO BE AND NOT TO BE

function only within a totality like Hegel's totality of Mind.

Matter is a sum, not a totality. (Even Einstein's relationships
remain quantitative and external.) Matter is expressed by
quantity and the scientific method is expressed by quantita-
tive measurements. There can be no opposition in matter.
Matter is inert, its energy comes from without. Still less can
there be a synthesis within matter in the Hegelian sense.

Communism may be successful, but only for the party In

power.

The cause of materialism remalOS then associated with

practical considerations. This is obvious in the attempts made
by Marxists to study social "superstructures." These are, for
the Marxists, the reflections of the systems of production. The
conditions of material life in society, says Stalin, determine its
ideas, its theories, its political opinions, its political institu-
tions; but he also states that "new ideas are brought about by
new tasks to be accomplished." How can we, says Sartre,
believe both affirmations? Is the idea determined by the social
conditions, or is it brought about, or suggested, by new tasks
to be accomplished? The last statement implies finality. Belief
in certain ideas is necessary to solve certain problems perhaps
-and there is no doubt that there is a connection between the
situation of an oppressed class and the materialistic expression
of that situation; but we cannot conclude that materialism is
a philosophy, still less that it is the truth. Materialists will
finally argue that, whether it is the truth or not, it has been
successful; but, concludes Sartre, it has been successful only
with the party in power which has become the sole proprietor
of the state.
146
 CONCLUSION

Sartre's own "Rally" would be democratic insofar as democ-

racy involves recognition of the other's liberty. It would be
revolutionary inasmuch as liberty has to be conquered from
a given situation.

We recognize in this criticism of idealism and of material-

ism in politics the general outline of Sartre's philosophy. Out
of this philosophy he has evolved the program which he advo-
cates: a rally for revolutionary Democracy. There must be a
rally because there is no room for a new party and because
parties belong to the past anyway. This rally would be made
up of all people dissatisfied with existing parties. It should
be democratic because men can insure their freedom only by
accepting the fact that they need the freedom of others as
foundation for their own. It must be revolutionary because
you have to conquer your own liberty in order to experience
freedom. The revolution must come from the oppressed since
they will experience liberty only in action. They must recog-
nize the elements which have given rise to the materialistic
outlook since, after all, work, fatigue and hunger are pressing
realities, but this recognition can only emerge in the light of a
situation to be transcended toward an entirely new situation.
Instead of trying to generalize, under the color of universal
materialism, the conditions from which they suffer, so that the
oppressors may in their turn feel the pressure of events, they
should recognize that in order to be free, one has to have his
own freedom recognized by other free beings.

A plurality of free consciousnesses is possible on the plane of

doing, within a common transcendence. Mastery of the uni-
verse might provide a common aim, and a common tran-
scendence, on the plane of work.
147
 TO BE AND NOT TO BE

One might, at this point, wonder what became of Sartre's

pessimism, how he can now admit that a free consciousness
may recognize another free consciousness, that a free subject
can recognize anything except objects. But the sort of recogni-
tion which he now recommends is merely the experience of
common transcendence which he has already described in
L'£tre et Ie neant; it takes place on the plane of doing, not
on the plane of being. The revolutionist sees human relations
from the point of view of work, and work implies as an end
common to all men the mastery of the universe. Thus, in this
clarified conception of Heidegger's Mitsein, as a kind of team
spirit, a multiplicity of subjects can coexist thanks to a com-
mon object to be acted upon: the universe.

Sartre's projected Rally was to allow a constant interchange

of views between the top and the bottom of the structure.

The Rally Sartre envisaged was to work partly through

unions and partly through sections representing local interests.
Collaboration between the basis and the top of the Rally's
structure was to become a permanent element in its operation
and, in time, the basis was to discover that each of its particu-
lar problems could be solved only as part of a general prob-
lem. According to him, this double movement is essential in
all democracies and is the mark of real emancipation.94
Having failed to organize his Rally, Sartre seems to have
drawn closer to Marxism, without disavowing his very lucid
criticism of the inconsistencies within that system.95 His view
seems to be that Marxism raised the questions most relevant
to the general situation of our modern society. Even though
they were formulated according to a faulty method of knowl-
148
 CONCLUSION

edge and solved in the wrong way, so long as these questions

are not practically solved Marxism will remain a most living
force.
Our purpose however, was to present in this study, not
Sartre's own ambiguous answers to the challenge of Marxism,
but the questions raised by his philosophy of negativity, in
such a way as to make it easier for the reader to formulate
his answer to them.

149
 Notes

Introduction
\. The Republic of Silence, tr. by 4. By Hazel A. Barnes in The
... J. Liebling. Harcourt, Brace, 1947. Literature of Possibility. Lincoln,
2. So he is called by F. H. Univ. of Nebraska Press, 1959.
i-Ieinemann in Existentialism and 5. By James Collins in The Ex-
the Modern Predicament. Harper istentialists, A Critical Study. Chi-
Torchbooks, 1958. cago, Henry Regnery, 1952.
3. Iris Murdoch, Sartl'e, Romantic
Rationalist. New Haven, Yale Univ.
Press, 1953.

TEXT
The references are to Jean·Paul Sartre's L'Etre et Ie neant (Paris, Galli-
mard, 1943), which will be cited as EN. Translations are by the author.
\. EN, p. 17. 8. EN, p. 28.
2. EN, p. 18. 9. EN, p. 29.
3. EN, p. 19. 10. EN, p. 34.
4. EN, p. 18. II. EN, p. 44.
5. EN, p. 23. 12. EN, p. 42.
6. EN, p. 23. 13. EN, p. 44.
7. EN, p. 27. 14. EN, pp. 46, 47.

ISO
 NOTES

15. EN, pp. 60, 61. 56.EN, p. 355-356.

16. EN, p. 61. 57.EN, p. 358.
17. EN, p. 62. 58.EN, p. 361.
18. EN, p. 64. 59.EN, p. 362.
19. EN, p. 65. 60.EN, p. 363.
20. EN, p. 65. 61.EN, Ihid.
21. EN, pp. 65, 66. 62.EN, p. 430.
22. EN, p. 72. 63.EN, p. 441.
23. EN, p. 72. 64.EN, p. 444.
24. EN, p. 72. 65.EN, p. 449.
25. EN, p. 81. 66.EN, p. 460.
26. EN, p. 82. 67.EN, p. 478.
27. EN, p. 83. 68.EN, p. 479.
28. EN, p. 92. 69.EN, p. 481.
29. EN, p. 92. 70.EN, p. 493.
30. EN, p.116. 71.EN, pp. 497-498.
31. EN, p. 119. 72.EN, p. 498.
32. EN, pp. 119, 120. 73.EN, p. 515.
33. EN, p. 122. 74.EN, p. 555.
34. EN, p. 124. 75.EN, p. 597.
35. EN, p. 126. 76.EN, p. 599.
36. EN, p. 127. 77. EN, p. 653.
37. EN, p. 140. 78. EN, p. 653.
38. EN, p. 140. 79. EN, pp. 653-654.
39. EN, p. 143. 80. EN, p. 665.
40. EN, p. 146. 81. EN, p. 687.
41. EN, p. 149. 82. EN, p. 688.
42. EN, p. 150. 83. EN, p. 689.
43. EN, p. 169. 84. EN, p. 708.
44. EN, p. 172. 85. EN, p. 712.
45. EN, p. 195. 86. EN, p. 715.
46. EN, pp. 195, 196. 87. EN, p. 715.
47. EN, p. 205. 88. EN, p. 717.
48. EN, p. 231. 89. EN, p. 719.
49. EN, p. 235. 90. EN, p. 720.
50. EN, p. 241. 91. Simone de Beauvoir, Pour
51. EN, p. 251. une morale de /'ambigtllte, Paris,
52. EN, p. 253. Gallimard, 1947, p. 99.
53. EN, p. 270. 92. Ibid.
54. EN, p. 285. 93. Simone de Beauvoir, op. cit.,
55. EN, p. 300. p. 100.

151
 TO BE AND NOT TO BE

94. The political views condensed Russia in 1949 but also bears on
above are from Situations, III, Paris, Marx's philosophical approach.
GalIimard. 1949. "Materialisme et 95. This criticism is reproduced
revo/tltion," pp. 135-225. Sartre's almost verbatim in Critique de /a
criticism of Communism applies raison dia/ectiqut:, Paris, Gallimard.
mostly to Marxism as practiced in 1960, pp. 30-31.

152
 Index
Aquinas, Thomas: his tradition, xiv Descartes: Augustine's inlluence on,
Aristotle: and christianity, xiv xiv; and existentialism, xv-xvi; his
Atheism: defined by Marcel, xxiv; de- cogito criticized by Marcel, xxiii,
fined by Berdyaev, xxv; Sartre's by Husserl, xxvi, by Sartre, 6; his
atheism, xxxix, xl "thinking substance" rejected by
Augustine: and existentialism, xiv-xv Sartre, 6; his argumentation com-
pared with Sartre's, 8; Cartesian
Beauvoir, S. de: on Sartre, xxxi, xxxii, doubt and Husserl's "bracketing,"
xxxiii, on ethics, 143 9; liberty, 16; the idea of perfection,
Heha viorism: Sartre's criticism, 76 29
Berdyaev: and existentialism, xxiv-
xxvi; on non-being, xxxiv Freud: Sartre's criticism of his sub·
Bergson: and existentialism, xx-xxi; conscious, 22-23; and psychoanaly-
source of Marcel, xxiv; source of sis, .25; Sartre rejects his theory,
Berdyaev, xxiv; compared with 108; Sartre adopts his method, 126:
Husserl, xxvii; on non-being, xxxiv, symbolic gratification, 131; Sanre
12-13; his notion of liberty criti- rejects Freudian sexuality, 136
cized by Sartre, 21; h,is "duration"
criticized by Sartre, 44, 82; his Gestalt: form and background, 51;
~.elan vital," 49; "pure memory," form, 76
115 Gnostics: source of Berdyaev, xxiv
Berkeley: esse est percipi, 3
Buber: and existentialism, xxi-xxii; Hegel: and existentialism, xiv; nega-
compared with Marcel, xxiii, xxiv tivity, xvii, 105, 106; his influence
on Heidegger's late works, xxx; on
Calvin: in Augustine's tradition, xiv non-being, xxxiv; determination as
Camus: and the school of commit- negation, 12; on essence, 20; on
ment, xxxi consciousness, 47; point of view of
Christian Science: and psychoanalysis, the totality criticized by Kierke·
25 gaard, xvii, commented on by

153
 TO BE AND NOT TO BE

Sartre, 78; existence of others, 64. Leucippus: atomism, 78

65; the Mind as totality, 67-79, Linguistic science: its limitations ac-
passim cording to Sartre, 118-119
Heidegger: and existentialism, xxvi- Luther: influenced by Augustine, xiv
XXX; on non-being, xxxiv, 14; his
"Daseill" and Sartre's "For-ItselE," Mallarme: essence and eternity, 34
7; anguish, 18; the world as tool- Malraux: and the school of commit-
complex, 55; transcendence, 76; ment, xxx
his "Mitsein," 99-101, passim, 148; Marcel, G.: and existentialism, xxii-
his "being-for-death" criticized by xxiv; and Jaspers, xxii; compared
Sartre, 121-122 with Buber, xxiii, xxiv
Heraclites: philosophy of change, 135 Marxism: Sartre's criticism of, 144-
Husser!: and existentialism, xxvi; 146; present attitude toward, xxxiii,
studied by Sartre, xxxii; on inten- 148-149
tional consciousness, 4, 16, 48; in- Maugham, 5.: and mysticism, xxi
tuition, 46; his argument against Montaigne: source of modern human-
solipsism rejected by Sartre, 63 ism, xxx
Huxley, A.: and mysticism, xxi; prob- Mounier, E.: Augustine, source of
lem of "the others," 77; the liber- existentialism, xiv
ating instant, 111; on ethics, 143
Nietzsche: and existentialism, xix-xx
Idealism: rejected by Sartre, 8, 62-63

Pascal: necessity of commitment, xii;

James, W.: and the healthy-minded,
xiii; and existentialism, xxi and the Augustinian tradition, xiv;
Jaspers: and existentialism, xxii and existentialism, xvi-xvii; and
Marcel, xiii; source of modern hu-
John, the Apostle: source of Berdyaev,
xxiv manism, xxx; his method of argu-
mentation, 29
Kant: permanence implied by change, Plato: source of Augustine, xiv; es-
39; definition of symbol, 134; sences, 2; the body, 81; conscious-
ethics, 97 ness as "the Other," 138
Kierkegaard: philosopher of crisis?, Poe: symbolism in, 134
xiii; and existentialism, xvii-xix; Proust: on negation, 14; the past ex-
source of Berdyaev, xxiv; anguish plored, 115
and liberty, 18
Realism: Sartre's rejection of, 1-2, 62-
La Rochefoucauld: irrational behavior, 63
107 Rimbaud: symbolism in. 134
Leibniz: permanence implied by Rolland, R.: and mysticism, xxi
change, 39 Royce, J.: influence on Marcel, xxiii

154
 INDEX

Saint-Exupery: and the school of tioned: Nallsea, xxxi; The Age of

commitment, xxx Reason, xxxi; The Repllblic of Si·
Saint Thomas: see Aquinas lellce, xxxii; Critique de la raison
Sanre: and the literature of commit- dialectiqlle, see note 95, 151.
ment, xxx-xxxi; and existentialism, Shakespeare: language as seduction,
xxx, xlii; life and personality, xxxi- 89
xxxiii. Works considered: The Emo- Schopenhauer: source of Nietzsche,
tiolls, xxxiv; The Psychology of tile xix
Imagination, xxxiv; Being and Spinoza: determination as negation,
Nothingness, xxxv-xxxviii, 1-143; 12, 52
Sitl/ations Ill, "Materialisme et rev- Symbolism: existential, 132-136
olution," 144-149. Works men·

155
 The manuscript was edited by Ita Kanter. The book was
designed by Richard Kinney and Richard Berube. The text type
face is Linotype Granjon, designed in 1924 by George W.
lones, based on a face originally cut by Claude Garamond in
the 16th Century. The display face is Weiss designed by E. R.
Weiss and cut by Bauer in 1926.
This book is printed on Warren's 1854 Text regular finish
paper. The soft cover edition of this book is bound in Warren's
Cameo Brillia11t Cover and the hard cover edition is bound
in Joanna Mills Natalin. This book was manufactured in the
United States of America.
 T-O BE AND
NOT TO BE
This book is a short, simplified explanation of Jean-Paul Sartre's
L'Etre et Ie neant. (BeLlg and Nothingness).
The persistent (""'lriosity of the reading public about a movement which
became popular some twenty years ago and is now affecting psychoanalysis
and theology, seems to indicate that our age is far from having exhausted
th e subject, or ';ven assimilated its basic elements.
Existentialism is at once the sternest and most helpful of philosophies.
"Man is nothing else but that which he makes of himself ... In fashioning
myself I fa shion man . . . , When a man commits himself to anything, fully
realizing that he is not only choosing what he will be, but is thereby at
the same time a legislator deciding for the whole of mankind-in such a
moment a man cannot ' escape from the sense of complete and profound
responsibility."
The import of our acts, whether casually littering a national park with
rubbish or actively defying a directive of the Supreme Court, measured by
existentialist philosophy assumes personal as well as global signi.ficance.
In an age which has not done with the throes of adjustment, whether la-
belled segregation or apartheid, some of the existentialist reverence for
man as the measure ought to be examined by thoughtful people of good
will everywhere.
Jacques Salvan is a graduate of the universities of Poi tiers, Paris, Kan-
sas, and Michigan. He has written articles on existentialism, symbolism,
and romanticism for The Dictionary oj World Literature, Symposium and The
French Review; his previous books include Le romantisme francais et I' Angleterre
victorienne (1949), The Scandalous ("lOst (1967) and various text books. Dr.
Salvan was born at Le Blanc, France, is an American citizen, and has taught
French at Washington U , and the U . of Kansas. He is professor emeritus
of French at Wayne State University in Detroit.

WAYNE STATE UNIVERSITY PRESS

Detroit, Michigan 48:l02
Cov r dt:signt:d by Richard Kirmt:y t