logo

50 pages 1 hour read

Jean-Paul Sartre

Being and Nothingness

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1943

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.

Part 4Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 4: “To Have, To Do, and To Be”

Part 4, Chapter 1 Summary and Analysis: “Being and Doing: Freedom”

Sartre begins Part 4 by establishing that having, doing, and being are the fundamental practices of human reality. These actions can only take place when the human experiences freedom. Sartre describes freedom as having no essence. Freedom is an action or the ability to act. Freedom does not always correlate with the action of the will. Many choose to act based upon principles independent of the will, and this is still categorized as freedom.

Sartre presents an ontological summary of freedom. First, he argues that “being can be reduced to doing” (622). Action is a fundamental principle which constitutes the self. Second, deciding which action to take is also a form of action. Third, any actions that do not require movement can be described as actions of intention. Fourth, the choices one makes determine how the world presents itself to the individual. Fifth, actions are always aspirational; they always have a goal in mind that may be in separation from the human-reality. Sixth, this previous idea is connected to negation. Human-reality offers options as well as non-options to the individual. Seventh, this choice may be absurd. Eighth, free will is a fundamental part of human existence.

The text then reveals the various dimensions of the situation—the idea that humans have freedom to act within a world that is fundamentally absurd. The first is “my place.” All humans have the freedom to move and to choose a place in the world, and all humans must occupy a place. However, their experiences differ because each is born in a different space and situations alter their movement.

The second is “my past.” All humans have a past. Sartre reminds the reader the past is not independent from the future or the present, nor does it have any bearing on the other two components of time. However, freedom is unable to alter the past—this is one of its greatest limitations.

The third is “my surroundings.” This means that all humans have things that are around them. However, although they can make choices about movement, they cannot always inflict their will upon what surrounds them. This idea is similar to the fourth, “my fellow man”: Other people may have conceptions about meaning that they impose upon the individual.

Finally, the fifth is “my death.” Humans can make choices about living safely and taking care of themselves but they cannot be responsible for when and how their death takes place.

It is important to note that Sartre does not view free will or even freedom as the ideas relating to personal power. He recognizes that there are many instances in which the individual does not have power to act in the exact manner one may choose—the situation of powerlessness described in the second section of the chapter. In the text, Sartre establishes that the choices are often absurd, which connects to the theme The Importance of Authenticity. Sartre suggests that any decision that is made outside of authenticity or is based upon some external force or end goal represents absurdism. The meaninglessness of life predicates that all choices do not have a real purpose or aim, so to believe that the choices one makes contribute to meaning is to live absurdly and in bad faith. As Sartre presents the five elements of the situation of freedom, he reveals that free will has limitations: Because consciousness is all-encompassing, it cannot escape the influence of all other beings.

Part 4, Chapter 2 Summary and Analysis: “To Do and to Have”

To do and to have represent the final actions of being. The reality of human existence is that all humans—regardless of position—make choices about how they want to live their lives and what they want their futures to look like. Sartre devotes his final chapter to the end toward which all people aim. The philosopher considers psychological principles which suggest that all humans act in submission to their desires. Sartre proposes that, rather than desires independent of the self, all desires are part of consciousness. The object the person desires is a fundamental component of the being-for-itself. Sartre cautions against thinking about people as smaller building blocks of self, just as he rejects dualities in previous chapters. Instead, the philosopher advocates for considering the being-for-itself in its totality, arguing that this is the best way to understand freedom of action and the desires of the individual.

One of these desires, Sartre argues, is the yearning to be God. Sartre’s argument in this section of the chapter is predicated upon the idea of negation which is further illustrated in the theme Ways of Being. All humans are constituted by the realization of what they are not. As humans encounter and understand the absurdity of the world and their own limitations of freedom, they develop a longing to be God. They want a total freedom of power. Sartre suggests that this is true of any individual in any religion, and that this is illustrated through the end aim of all people, which Sartre suggests is transcendence. All humans want to achieve something more—they want to move beyond the restrictive nature of their own existence.

The text suggests that phenomenology presents a problem when trying to understand and categorize the desires of humans. Therefore, Sartre provides a disclaimer to his own study of desire and suggests that it is necessary to interrogate all desires for the points of consciousness that may be driving them. The philosopher turns once more to the concept of possession. Sartre relates possession and desire to negation. Humans want something because they recognize a lack; there is negation in their lives. One of these negations is the human as God. Therefore, desire is a part of consciousness, which Sartre describes as the “in-itself that is its own cause” (747).

In this final chapter, Sartre argues that all qualities are absorbed into consciousness. His critique of psychoanalysis is predicated upon the idea that humans cannot be separated from their qualities, as it is all part of their being. Human desire is simply one more aspect of the being-for-itself. It is what makes a person a person. Sartre recognizes that even this claim is representative of absurdism. Humans are both limited by their own desires and made free by them, an idea which corresponds to Sartre’s continuous claim that dualities do not and cannot exist because all are a part of being.

Conclusion Summary and Analysis

Sartre closes with a summation of the points he makes throughout Being and Nothingness. First, he establishes that consciousness is a mode of all-encompassing being. He rejects the pre-reflective cogito and the existence of preconceived essences which emerge at the same time as being. Instead, he proposes that humans create essences through action. He proposes that dualism is a threat to being and to the understanding of the being-for-itself. Duality is too limiting and fails to acknowledge the ways in which everything contributes to human existence.

Being encompasses the being-in-itself. It is intrinsically connected to the external and to surrounding objects. Humans constitute themselves through their understanding of what they are not based upon what they can perceive. He describes this process as a form of “tiny nihilation” which leads to “upheaval,” and that upheaval makes up the world (799). Ontology presents two ideas that are central to Sartre’s argument: first, the in-itself cannot turn itself into consciousness; second, consciousness is the point and aim of human life. Sartre then addresses one of the major criticisms of ontology and existentialism, which is that they lack a focus on morality. Sartre argues that ontology cannot create moral prescriptions because it is only concerned with the human-reality, not ideas that can only be experienced through the theoretical rather than the phenomenological.

Sartre’s rejection of connecting existentialism to morality is reflective of the theme The Importance of Authenticity. Existentialism promotes the idea of absurdism. Life is inherently meaningless. Concepts like morals and truth are predicated upon a goal and, more often, upon the idea of a divine power. Humans argue over the ways to be in good so they may reflect the goodness of a god. Sartre is not concerned with goodness. Morality does not exist in a nihilistic and absurdist world, nor does it have a bearing on being. In fact, to commit action based upon morality is to live in bad faith. It is the absurdist act of attempting to make sense in a senseless world. Many have attributed this philosophy to a reaction to the atrocities and brutality of World War II as witnessed by Sartre and other philosophers of his period. It is difficult to reconcile morality and God with a religious justification for violence and the seemingly unending oppression of millions of people.

Instead of focusing on morality, Sartre is interested in how being manifests. Sartre’s thesis argues that human consciousness is everything: desire, negation, awareness, perception, appearance, object, possession, etc. There is no distinction between the self and everything else. Although he rejects the idea of meaning or purpose, his treatment of consciousness is his understanding of meaning: The purpose of life is to exist.

blurred text
blurred text
blurred text
blurred text