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The Philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre
This unique selection presents the essential elements of Sartre's lifework -- organized systematically and made available in one volume for the first time in any language.
512 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1965
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
March 27, 2008
Read this for an existentialism class at Michigan State University. The professor made this book wonderful - explained meaning and gave great examples.
January 15, 2010
I'm pretty sure Sartre was on acid when he wrote his this, but it is very interesting, and he does make some good points.
September 3, 2025
His views on radical freedom, authenticity and the emptiness of life is what attracted me to this man (pause🙏🏾)and his philosophy but upon reading his book I realised it’s coming from a lot of political standpoints. Instead of embracing beauty,style or even symbolism which he all rejected/denied,this man linked existentialism with social activism and marxist ideas and continued ranting all his political views. Brilliant man ofcourse with an interesting philosophy but it is a bit all over the place
September 6, 2013
This book of excerpts, edited by my one-time professor, presents a widespread and representative selection of Sartre’s thought. Though I’ve read Sartre before, I felt driven to find out more about his view of the concept of freedom, which in the free-will-versus-determinism debate he articulates better than anyone else I know.
Most of the excepts are from Being and Nothingness, Sartre’s masterwork, in which he examines consciousness from a phenomenological point of view, that is, by describing what appears to first-hand experience without preconceptions.
Nothingness is an interesting concept for Sartre. It is neither the mathematical zero, nor the vacuum of outer space, rather it is the space for things in consciousness. If Being is that which we are conscious of as real, physical objects in the world, then the Nothingness is the space created in consciousness to take a detached view of those objects and to consider what they are not. What we want things to be, what we need things to be, what we can imagine things to be, are all what things are not, and therefore Nothingness. The past and the future are Nothingness, for they are not-yet and no-longer. Emotions are Nothingness, because they are not the Being about which we have the emotions. And most important, our projects for the future, our freedom, are Nothingness, because they are beyond Being, beyond what actually is.
This is heady stuff, and I have just given the merest thumbnail sketch. Sartre develops the idea in many fascinating ways, too many for me to summarize. I just read an article on “The 20 Big Questions in Science,” among which is “Why should anything be conscious in the first place?” The author says that “A good suggestion is that by integrating and processing lots of information, as well as focusing and blocking out rather than reacting to the sensory inputs bombarding us, we can distinguish between what's real and what's not and imagine multiple future scenarios that help us adapt and survive.” Looks like Sartre got there long before, and opened up a very interesting discussion of how consciousness is based on thinking about what is not, rather than about what is.
Most of the excepts are from Being and Nothingness, Sartre’s masterwork, in which he examines consciousness from a phenomenological point of view, that is, by describing what appears to first-hand experience without preconceptions.
Nothingness is an interesting concept for Sartre. It is neither the mathematical zero, nor the vacuum of outer space, rather it is the space for things in consciousness. If Being is that which we are conscious of as real, physical objects in the world, then the Nothingness is the space created in consciousness to take a detached view of those objects and to consider what they are not. What we want things to be, what we need things to be, what we can imagine things to be, are all what things are not, and therefore Nothingness. The past and the future are Nothingness, for they are not-yet and no-longer. Emotions are Nothingness, because they are not the Being about which we have the emotions. And most important, our projects for the future, our freedom, are Nothingness, because they are beyond Being, beyond what actually is.
This is heady stuff, and I have just given the merest thumbnail sketch. Sartre develops the idea in many fascinating ways, too many for me to summarize. I just read an article on “The 20 Big Questions in Science,” among which is “Why should anything be conscious in the first place?” The author says that “A good suggestion is that by integrating and processing lots of information, as well as focusing and blocking out rather than reacting to the sensory inputs bombarding us, we can distinguish between what's real and what's not and imagine multiple future scenarios that help us adapt and survive.” Looks like Sartre got there long before, and opened up a very interesting discussion of how consciousness is based on thinking about what is not, rather than about what is.
October 16, 2024
THE FRENCH EXISTENTIALIST LOOKS PHENOMENONOLOGICALLY AT THE EMOTIONS
Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980) was a French existentialist philosopher, playwright, novelist, and political activist, who wrote many other books such as 'Being and Nothingness,' 'The Transcendence of the Ego,' 'Search for a Method', 'Critique of Dialectical Reason,' 'The Psychology of the Imagination,' 'Between Existentialism and Marxism,' etc.
[NOTE: page numbers below refer to the 94-page hardcover edition.]
He wrote in the Introduction to this 1939 book, “Applied to a particular example the study of the emotions, for example, what will the principles and the methods of the psychologist give us? First of all, our knowledge of the emotion will be added FROM WITHOUT to other knowledge about the physical being. The emotion will present itself as an irreducible novelty in relation to the phenomena of attention memory, perception, etc. You can, indeed, inspect these phenomena and the empirical notion of them we build following the psychologists; you can turn them about again and again as you please and you will not discover the slightest essential connection with emotion. All the same, the psychologist grants that man has emotions because experience teaches him so.” (Pg. 6-7)
He says, “The task of a phenomenologist, therefore, will be to study the signification of emotion. What are we to understand by that?... We shall not first lose ourselves in the study of physiological facts, precisely because, taken by themselves and in isolation, they signify almost nothing. They are---that’s all. But on the contrary, we shall try, by developing the signification of behavior and of the affected consciousness, to make explicit the thing which is signified.” (Pg. 16-17)
He summarizes, “We have now arrived… at a functional conception of anger. Anger is … an abrupt solution of a conflict… Being unable, in the state of high tension, the find the delicate and precise solution of a problem we act upon ourselves, we lower ourselves, and we transfer ourselves into the kind of being who is satisfied with crude and less well adapted solutions… Thus, anger appears here as an escape…” (Pg. 36-37) Later, he adds, “Therefore there is a single process, namely, transformation of form. But I cannot understand this transformation without first supposing consciousness, which, alone, by its synthetic activity, can break and reconstitute forms ceaselessly. It alone can account for the finality of emotion.” (Pg. 39-40)
He observes, “Insofar as consciousness MAKES ITSELF, it is never anything but what it appears to be. Therefore, if it possesses a signification it should contain it in itself as a structure of consciousness… we should not examine consciousness from without as one examines the traces of the fire or the encampment, but from within, that one should find signification IN IT. If the cogito is to be possible, consciousness is itself the FACT, the SIGNIFICATION, and the THING SIGNIFIED.” (Pg. 46) He continues, “a theory of emotions which insists on the signifying character of emotive facts should seek this signification in consciousness itself. In other words, it is consciousness which makes itself consciousness, being moved to do so by the needs of an inner signification.” (Pg. 48-49)
He says, “At present, we can conceive of what an emotion is. It is a transformation of the world. When the paths traced out become too difficult, or when we see no path, we can no longer live in so urgent and difficult a world. All the ways are barred. However, we must act. So we try to change the world, that is, to live as if the connection between things and their potentialities were not ruled by deterministic processes, but by magic… this attempt is not conscious of being such… Before anything else, it is the seizure of new connections and new exigencies. The seizure of an object being impossible or giving rise to a tension which cannot be sustained, consciousness simply seizes it or tries to seize it otherwise.” (Pg. 58-59) He continues, “In short, in emotion it is the body which, directed by consciousness, changes its relations with the world in order that the world may change its qualities.” (Pg. 61)
He contends, “Thus, the true meaning of fear is apparent; it is a consciousness which, through magical behavior, aims at denying an object of the external world, and which will go so far as to annihilate itself in order to annihilate the object with it… Sadness aims at eliminating the obligation to seek new ways, to transform the structure of the world by a totally undifferentiated structure… it is a question of making of the world an affectively neutral reality…” (Pg. 64-65)
He concludes, “the few examples we have just cited are far from exhausting the variety of emotions. There can be many other kinds of fear, many other kinds of sadness. We merely state that they all are tantamount to setting up a magical world by using the body as a means of incantation.” (Pg. 70)
He argues, “emotion is a phenomenon of belief. Consciousness does not limit itself to projecting affective signification upon the world around it. It LIVES the new world which it has just established… This signifies that when, with all paths blocked, consciousness precipitates itself into the magical world of emotion, it does so by degrading itself; it is a new consciousness facing the new world, and it establishes this new world with the deepest and most inward part of itself, with this point of view on the world present to itself without distance. The consciousness which is roused rather resembles the consciousness which is asleep… In other words, consciousness changes the body, or, if you like, the body---as a point of view on the universe immediately inherent in consciousness---puts itself on the level of behavior.” (Pg. 75-76)
He summarizes, “Thus the origin of emotion is a spontaneous and lived degradation of consciousness in the face of the world. What it cannot endure in one way it tries to grasp in another by going to sleep, by approaching the consciousness of sleep, dream, and hysteria. And the disturbance of the body is nothing other than the lived belief of consciousness, insofar as it is seen from the outside.” (Pg. 77) He concludes, “we hope that we have managed to show that a psychic fact like emotion, which is usually held to be a lawless disorder, has a proper signification and cannot be grasped in itself without the understanding of this signification.” (Pg. 92-93)
This relatively brief book is one of the studies which led up to Sartre’s major work, ‘Being and Nothingness.’ It will be of great interest to anyone studying Sartre and the development of his thought.
Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980) was a French existentialist philosopher, playwright, novelist, and political activist, who wrote many other books such as 'Being and Nothingness,' 'The Transcendence of the Ego,' 'Search for a Method', 'Critique of Dialectical Reason,' 'The Psychology of the Imagination,' 'Between Existentialism and Marxism,' etc.
[NOTE: page numbers below refer to the 94-page hardcover edition.]
He wrote in the Introduction to this 1939 book, “Applied to a particular example the study of the emotions, for example, what will the principles and the methods of the psychologist give us? First of all, our knowledge of the emotion will be added FROM WITHOUT to other knowledge about the physical being. The emotion will present itself as an irreducible novelty in relation to the phenomena of attention memory, perception, etc. You can, indeed, inspect these phenomena and the empirical notion of them we build following the psychologists; you can turn them about again and again as you please and you will not discover the slightest essential connection with emotion. All the same, the psychologist grants that man has emotions because experience teaches him so.” (Pg. 6-7)
He says, “The task of a phenomenologist, therefore, will be to study the signification of emotion. What are we to understand by that?... We shall not first lose ourselves in the study of physiological facts, precisely because, taken by themselves and in isolation, they signify almost nothing. They are---that’s all. But on the contrary, we shall try, by developing the signification of behavior and of the affected consciousness, to make explicit the thing which is signified.” (Pg. 16-17)
He summarizes, “We have now arrived… at a functional conception of anger. Anger is … an abrupt solution of a conflict… Being unable, in the state of high tension, the find the delicate and precise solution of a problem we act upon ourselves, we lower ourselves, and we transfer ourselves into the kind of being who is satisfied with crude and less well adapted solutions… Thus, anger appears here as an escape…” (Pg. 36-37) Later, he adds, “Therefore there is a single process, namely, transformation of form. But I cannot understand this transformation without first supposing consciousness, which, alone, by its synthetic activity, can break and reconstitute forms ceaselessly. It alone can account for the finality of emotion.” (Pg. 39-40)
He observes, “Insofar as consciousness MAKES ITSELF, it is never anything but what it appears to be. Therefore, if it possesses a signification it should contain it in itself as a structure of consciousness… we should not examine consciousness from without as one examines the traces of the fire or the encampment, but from within, that one should find signification IN IT. If the cogito is to be possible, consciousness is itself the FACT, the SIGNIFICATION, and the THING SIGNIFIED.” (Pg. 46) He continues, “a theory of emotions which insists on the signifying character of emotive facts should seek this signification in consciousness itself. In other words, it is consciousness which makes itself consciousness, being moved to do so by the needs of an inner signification.” (Pg. 48-49)
He says, “At present, we can conceive of what an emotion is. It is a transformation of the world. When the paths traced out become too difficult, or when we see no path, we can no longer live in so urgent and difficult a world. All the ways are barred. However, we must act. So we try to change the world, that is, to live as if the connection between things and their potentialities were not ruled by deterministic processes, but by magic… this attempt is not conscious of being such… Before anything else, it is the seizure of new connections and new exigencies. The seizure of an object being impossible or giving rise to a tension which cannot be sustained, consciousness simply seizes it or tries to seize it otherwise.” (Pg. 58-59) He continues, “In short, in emotion it is the body which, directed by consciousness, changes its relations with the world in order that the world may change its qualities.” (Pg. 61)
He contends, “Thus, the true meaning of fear is apparent; it is a consciousness which, through magical behavior, aims at denying an object of the external world, and which will go so far as to annihilate itself in order to annihilate the object with it… Sadness aims at eliminating the obligation to seek new ways, to transform the structure of the world by a totally undifferentiated structure… it is a question of making of the world an affectively neutral reality…” (Pg. 64-65)
He concludes, “the few examples we have just cited are far from exhausting the variety of emotions. There can be many other kinds of fear, many other kinds of sadness. We merely state that they all are tantamount to setting up a magical world by using the body as a means of incantation.” (Pg. 70)
He argues, “emotion is a phenomenon of belief. Consciousness does not limit itself to projecting affective signification upon the world around it. It LIVES the new world which it has just established… This signifies that when, with all paths blocked, consciousness precipitates itself into the magical world of emotion, it does so by degrading itself; it is a new consciousness facing the new world, and it establishes this new world with the deepest and most inward part of itself, with this point of view on the world present to itself without distance. The consciousness which is roused rather resembles the consciousness which is asleep… In other words, consciousness changes the body, or, if you like, the body---as a point of view on the universe immediately inherent in consciousness---puts itself on the level of behavior.” (Pg. 75-76)
He summarizes, “Thus the origin of emotion is a spontaneous and lived degradation of consciousness in the face of the world. What it cannot endure in one way it tries to grasp in another by going to sleep, by approaching the consciousness of sleep, dream, and hysteria. And the disturbance of the body is nothing other than the lived belief of consciousness, insofar as it is seen from the outside.” (Pg. 77) He concludes, “we hope that we have managed to show that a psychic fact like emotion, which is usually held to be a lawless disorder, has a proper signification and cannot be grasped in itself without the understanding of this signification.” (Pg. 92-93)
This relatively brief book is one of the studies which led up to Sartre’s major work, ‘Being and Nothingness.’ It will be of great interest to anyone studying Sartre and the development of his thought.
April 1, 2023
Sartre has always stood in a very special position as an intellectual or intellectual, and has always been instrumental in conducting discussions on this intellectual position.What makes Sartre Sartre is not only the competence of his philosophical studies and the attractiveness of his specific existentialist theory,but also his active intellectual attitude.
One of Sartre's favorite experiments is the failed attempt of God...
I needed God, they gave me, I took him without knowing what I was looking for. because it did not take root in my heart, he lived with trouble in me for a while, and then he died. Tue. when she is mentioned to me today, I say with the sad Decrepitude of an old boy who has come across an old beauty, fifty years ago, if it hadn't been for that disagreement, that mistake, there might have been something between us.
One of Sartre's favorite experiments is the failed attempt of God...
I needed God, they gave me, I took him without knowing what I was looking for. because it did not take root in my heart, he lived with trouble in me for a while, and then he died. Tue. when she is mentioned to me today, I say with the sad Decrepitude of an old boy who has come across an old beauty, fifty years ago, if it hadn't been for that disagreement, that mistake, there might have been something between us.
December 13, 2012
This was an insanely dense read (as I think goes without saying) but it was edifying, and while I can't claim to have understood everything, I did come away with a few new ideas and a much better understanding of existentialism. The psychological applications of existentialism were particularly interesting and have helped me better understand myself and what it means "to be". The excerpts from "Being and Nothingness" were also interesting, and really force you to think outside the conventional structures of understanding. That said, it also left me realizing what a long way there is to go to really understand anything. But it was worth the year or so it took to make it through this.
April 27, 2015
"Constatei que estava vivendo uma verdadeira neurose desde que comecei a escrever, desde os 9 até os 50 anos. A neurose, tal como aconteceu com Flaubert, era considerar que nada era mais belo e superior do que escrever. Escrever era criar obras que permaneceriam e a vida de um escritor deveria ser compreendida a partir de suas obras".
February 13, 2026
Extremely dense read, with thought provoking aspects. Sartre does ramble a lot, but if you are willing to put in the work to try and understand him, its somewhat worth it. A majority of his viewpoints are somewhat outdated (in my opinion) but there are some good takes. The editor does a good job of layering Sartre's works in a more coherent manner. Though I do believe the best quote comes from the editor in the very beginning of the book. "At times it sounds as if Sartre were being elaborately metaphysical, when he is only being French."
June 26, 2017
I don't 100% get what is Sartre attempting to say to me through his book, but this is a piece of great philosopy.
May 24, 2020
Bought this in 1982, it's been sitting on my shelf ever since, with fits & starts of reading several pages then moving on to something else.
Currently involved in a program of (re-)reading my books on existentialists, focusing mainly on Sartre, and trying to stick with it (I have a very short attention span). Can't wait to dig in again!
Currently involved in a program of (re-)reading my books on existentialists, focusing mainly on Sartre, and trying to stick with it (I have a very short attention span). Can't wait to dig in again!
June 24, 2007
This is an excellent compilation of essays by Jean-Paul Sartre, indexed by topic and presented to make his philosophy more accessible. The book achieves some success on that front, but much of the material from Being and Nothingness is relentless and hard to follow.
February 22, 2008
Read it cover to cover and had no idea WHAT I'd read. Perhaps my fault (low IQ?) but did feel better when I read quote by Albert Camus in which he said he'd read the same book and had no idea what Sartre was attempting to say, and I KNOW Camus was bright. I am absolved!
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November 21, 2009None
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June 28, 2011There's an interview with Sartre at the beginning of this one.
February 5, 2018
Went through the usual college thing of questioning my existence and read philosophy books. Satre I could follow.
September 22, 2015
It was not an easy read. Very dense. I read "Existentialism Is a Humanism".
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