Being and Nothingness
First published 1965 · English · 362 pages
- Novels
- Historical fiction
- Philosophy
Being and Nothingness is Sartre's major philosophical work, first published in French in 1943. It sets out his existentialist account of human consciousness, freedom and responsibility. He explores how people relate to the world, to their own past and to other people, and discusses ideas such as anxiety, bad faith and the gaze of others. The book is dense and demanding, but it has been very influential in philosophy, psychology and literature. It is best approached as a long, searching inquiry into what it means to be a free human being.
Quotes
Nothingness haunts being.
Generosity is nothing else than a craze to possess. All which I abandon, all which I give, I enjoy in a higher manner through the fact that I give it away.... To give is to enjoy possessively the object which one gives.
To eat is to appropriate by destruction.
In order to make myself recognized by the Other, I must risk my own life. To risk one's life, in fact, is to reveal oneself as not-bound to the objective form or to any determined existence — as not-bound to life.