He defined human consciousness as being a nothingness in the sense of no-thingness, and placed it in opposition to being, that is thing-ness. In Being and Nothingness, Sartre drew on the philosophy laid out by Husserl but developed it further. We'll soon see how this is relevant to Sartre's existentialism. A fiercely logical methodology (whose name is regrettably awkward), it is based on the relation of conscious acts to meaningful objects. It was a method used to define the essence of conscious data ( eidos), and it investigated only those phenomena which could be seen, touched, verified, experienced directly by us and related in terms of our conscious experience. Phenomenology was originated by the Moravian philosopher Edmund Husserl, in the late nineteenth century. His reasoning was simple: Humanity is virtually unable to discover solutions to such problems, so why waste the time? Therefore, he abandoned the rational approach and opted for the phenomenological one.

He suggested, for example, that the arguments for and against the existence of God were equally balanced, and that no amount of rational argumentation would provide the final word. Sartre was not interested in traditional metaphysics since he felt that the age-old problems of these thinkers would never be solvable by humanity. Being and Nothingness is a study of the phenomenological ontology of humanity (the nature of being). It was in this frame of mind that he produced his massive philosophical study, Being and Nothingness, after having already written several important books on related subjects. He felt 'nauseated' by the vastness of this empty, pointless predicament, and he wrestled many hours for a meaningful solution. Death was the proverbially absurd icing on the cake, making life even more intolerable, more ridiculous. Existence was absurd and life had no sense, no purpose, no explanation. Sartre viewed the universe as an irrational, meaningless sphere. By the age of thirty-five, he had known more duress than many people experience in a lifetime, and his sentiment of the absurd grew in proportion to the circumstantial hardships. Add to this the fact that he was held prisoner-of-war in Germany and that he was forced to accept a lifestyle repugnant to human decency.

Recall that his father died when he was two years old, leaving him in an environment of emotional strain and pressure.

Recall his heavy dependence on a fantasy life as an escape from a world which he found hostile and offensive.

Recall for a moment the sadness of his childhood when no one wanted him for a friend. In learning about Sartrean existentialism, it is helpful to recall data about the climate in which Sartre grew up.

Sartre nausee