❤️Something about Philosophy - Sartre's Being and Nothing - Part 1
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The fourth Thursday of the month is our time to get together for camaraderie, a fun meal, and of course a discussion, regarding something about Philosophy.
Sartre's Being and Nothing - Part 1
Our discussion group has been tracing a deliberate arc through phenomenology, beginning with Husserl’s rigorous turn toward lived experience, moving through Heidegger’s reorientation of being-in-the-world, and approaching Merleau-Ponty’s rich account of embodiment and perception. Each step has loosened the grip of abstraction and drawn us closer to the textures of existence as it is actually lived.
Now, we arrive at Sartre’s Being and Nothingness, a work that both inherits and unsettles this trajectory. If Husserl sought clarity and Heidegger disclosed our thrown condition, Sartre confronts us with the stark freedom and responsibility that emerge when consciousness is understood as nothingness—always beyond itself, never fixed, and perpetually in question. His analysis of bad faith, the look, and the tension between facticity and transcendence pushes phenomenology into an existential register that is at once unsettling and deeply familiar.
This next phase of our conversations invites both continuity and rupture: continuity in method, as we remain attentive to experience as it presents itself, and rupture in tone, as Sartre strips away comforting structures and forces us to reckon with freedom in its most demanding sense. Whether you’ve followed the arc from the beginning or are joining us here, you’re stepping into a moment where phenomenology becomes inseparable from the question of how one lives.
Part I: The Problem of Nothingness
We begin our engagement with Sartre at the point where phenomenology takes a decisive and unsettling turn. In Being and Nothingness, consciousness is no longer simply intentional—it is defined by its capacity to negate, to introduce absence into the world. This opening section lays the groundwork for everything that follows, challenging us to rethink what it means to encounter being at all. As we move through these pages, we are invited to sit with disorientation: how can nothingness be real, and what does it reveal about us? Whether you are continuing from our earlier readings or joining us fresh, this first part sets the stakes for Sartre’s entire project.