Nausea

Having worked on concepts of Nothingness and Potential-to-Be in the studio recently, I’ve been thinking back to Existentialism. Existence and Existence as… Existence and Essence…

It’s not Nothing, it exists, it occupies space and has physical properties - but what (and at what point in time) does it exist as… a piece of paper and some lemon juice? An ironed piece of paper and some lemon juice? A letter? Some writing? A picture? A piece of art? A potential piece of art?

I’ve been thinking a lot about when we categorise and label things, compartmentalise them - and in what context and to what people their meaning can be different. Dependence on time, on history…

This made me think about a book I read a few years ago now, Nausea, by Sartre. Sartre was a philosopher, but he also used his philosophy in his art as a writer. The first couple of times I tried to read Nausea I didn’t get past the first 20 or 30 pages as it begans mundanely (although this comes to be its core), and it wasn’t until I read Existentialism and Humanism (or, to stick to the original French, Existentialism is a Humanism) that I went back to it. On this reading I was so inspired, it sticks in my mind as one of the most eye-opening, liberating, inspiring books I have ever read.

Both Nausea and Existentialism and Humanism are based on Sartre’s opus Being and Nothingness - his philosophy of existentialism - which I have never had the time to tackle as a whole. Existentialism and Humanism is a transcript of a lecture on it, given by Sartre in Paris on 29 October 1945. As it is short and explained in lecture terms, it is an accessible entry to existentialism (although it has been claimed Sartre later regretted publishing it, feeling that it led people to misunderstand existentialism due to it being only a superficial overview).

Nausea again is a way into the subject for the public, described as “a manifesto of existentialism“. It is a novel written in 1938 which allowed Sartre to explain his philosophy in simplified terms, as well as allowing a dry wit to carry the reader through. It focuses on the difference between existence and essence; being and nothingness which links in with my concepts in the studio of SNothing, and otential to Be - the impossibility of Nothing yet the concepts we have of it in our minds - expectations, absences, voids

Nausea

Nausea is a novel written as a journal, belonging to 30-year old Antoine Roquentin. As a preliminary dose of humour, the first page is as follows:

Editors’ Note

THESE notebooks were found among Antoine Roquentin’s papers. We are publishing them without any alteration.

The first page is undated, but we have good reason to believe that it was written a few weeks before the diary itself was started. In that case it would have been written about the beginning of January 1932, at the latest.

At that time, Antoine Roquentin, after travelling in Central Europe, North Africa and the Far East, had been living for three years at Bouville, where he was completing his historical research on the Marquis de Rollebon

THE EDITORS

Antoine Roquentin is a dejected historian who, following several years of travel, has become rooted in the fictional seaport of Bouville. It is here that he begins to experience ‘the Nausea’ - becoming convinced that inanimate objects and situations are forcing him to doubt his identity and his freedom. The nausea is a strange combination of disgust, wonder and contempt - occuring randomly and stimulated by encounters with mundane objects such as a crumpled piece of paper in the gutter, or a rock on the beach. He searches for meaning in himself and the objects around him, approaches insanity, self-hatred and doubs his own existence.

The nausea increases in frequency, but Roquentin does not understand what it signifies. One day in a park he encounters a tree and finally comes to a revelation into the nature of his being. He realises that the nausea is existence itself - existence being Something rather than Nothing was slowly driving him mad. He finally realises the meaning and limitation of existencewhen he comes to realise objects have no ‘qualities’; no color or shape, no categories or identity - no meaning. All words are separated from the ‘thing’ itself, and Roquentin is at last confronted with pure Being. This isn’t ‘a tree’ - it is pure Being, pure Existence - it IS - it is ‘Being’.

Eventually he comes to accept this and see it not as a limitation but as an opportunity. Towards the end of the book he finally learns to accept the indifference of the physical world to his human aspirations, and moves from disappointment and regret to seeing it as an opportunity. People are free to create their own meanings, but this freedom brings with it a responsibility - without this there can be no meaning.

The philosophy

The metaphor is that there are no rules, no categories, no determinism, no meaning - all that you are is a Thing That Exists. You are not a baker, a philosopher, a dustbinman, a professor. You have no definition or identity, you are Nothing. Objects do not have meaning or identity in themselves and nor do people. Try to imagine the world without language - there is nothing but Stuff - there is no categorisation, no meaning. There are no laws, no rules, no morals. But you are free - you are condemned to be free. The world is meaningless, bleak and frustrating - until you give it meaning. It does not exist. It is. Meaningless material exists. Once you give it meaning it is; it has essence, identity, purpose. It is.

There is no ‘Nothing’ - Nothingness is a state of mind in which we can become anything, in reference to our situation, that we desire.

You are condemned to be free because you did not create yourself, but you are here - any decision you make, any action you perform is your decision, and yours alone. You are responsible for your choices. You may live in ‘bad faith’ believing you have to be an office worker because of the situations you find yourself in, paste events in your life, but any choice you make is yours and yours alone. If you seek advice you ask it of those of whom you can already predict the outcome - and you still have the choice whether or not to follow that advice. In bad faith you merely exist and are no different to a stone - to be, to have essence, you have to give life meaning and purpose.

It is not only a freedom and a responsibility for the individual but for the whole of mankind. It is implicit in choosing the ‘best‘ decision that in being ‘the best’ it cannot be ‘best’ unless it is better for everyone. This freedom transcends individual circumstances and gives you the responsibility to make decisions on behalf of all humanity. The only universe we have is a human universe and the only laws we make are human laws - we have the responsibility to make these decisions for the benefit of the whole of mankind.

Nothingness is a state of mind in which we can become anything, in reference to our situation, that we desire.

Bad faith

There are points where you look at the inevitability of everything - you look at time - you predict it, and you watch it go by and see your absolute lack of control - you listen note by note to music and you can predict what note will come next and its inevitable death - despite being prepared years in advance ‘ every note dies so that it might be born‘. You see how you are Nothing and you have no control in this life, everything is inevitable. You cannot control your existence, you cannot prevent yourself from thinking, you are out of control. You are a disgusting lump of matter, dumped on this earth only to inevitably, predictably, slowly die.

But to Sartre this is where people mistake existentialism - this is ‘bad faith’. You do have control. The very fact that there is nothing - no meaning, no point to life - means that the only meaning is what you give it - you have the freedom to interpret the world in any way you wish, you have the freedom to make every decision you make. There is no escape, everything you do, every action you take, you choose to take. You are condemned to be free. The fact is you cannot not choose - everything you do is a decision. If faced with two choices, neither of which you like, if you back away and ignore both, that in itself is a decision. You cannot escape choosing - you cannot escape thinking, you cannot escape existing.

Key points

The points addressed are those in Being and Nothingness and Existentialism and Humanism - firstly that the existence of a person comes before their essence. In simple terms, this means that, although that person exists, there is nothing to dictate that who or what they are - their character, goals in life etc. “Man first of all exists, encounters himself, surges up in the world - and defines himself afterwards” - We write our own history, we define ourselves by our choices in life. A stone would be thought of as an ‘in-itself’ and someone who is living in bad faith, as Roquentin does in the first half of the book as he hides his own freedom from himself, is equal to the stone. Only when he recognises and accepts the limits of existence, and takes the opportunity to make choices and take responsibility for himself, can he become a thing ‘for-itself’. In the process Roquentin goes through ‘Anguish’ as he realises there are no definitions, values or meanings written into objects or things. This will be associated with ‘Abandonment’ as he realises his total desertion - there is nobody there to look out for him, no rules or values to follow and that he has to make his own choices and take full responsibility for them. He finally recognises his own freedom and is fearful of it. Following this he experiences ‘Despair’ - that there is no guarantee of success in anything - he should act without hope.

Inspiration

Nausea inspires me more than all because it is philosophy presented as a novel - philosophy for the people, instead of philosophy for the philosopher; (art for the artist). It stresses more than ever existentialism as a humanism. Philosophy for the people, not for the bourgeoisie. It is presented with wit and flows easily, presenting a topic as a novel that wouldn’t be considered in its context of a philosophical text. It is also liberating and constructive - philosophy requiring action, not philosophy with its end point as just another idea in another mind, another cul-de-sac. The philosophy of freedom, but of responsibility for that freedom.

Although in many places it seems very idealistic and there are many arguments against Sartre’s ideas, it is still inspiring and enlightening to come to the realisation that nothing is what it is defined as. All definitions are manmade, fundamentally all that there is is being. It is liberating to consider the difference between existence and Being. Every choice you make is yours and yours alone and you are responsible for those choices

It also inspired me to look further at philosophers such as Heidegger, Husserl and Foucault.

Snippets

Looking over the book again, I found it interesting the pieces I’d underlined or highlighted from the first time I read it:

- For the moment it’s the jazz that’s playing; there’s no melody, only notes, a host of little jolts. They know no rest, an unchanging order gives birth to them, without ever giving them time to recover, to exist for themselves. They run, they hurry, they strike me with a sharp blow in passing and are obliterated. I should quite like to hold them back, but I know that if I managed to stop one, nothing would remain between my fingers but a vulgar, doleful sound. I must accept their death; I must even will it; I know few harsher or stronger impressions

- I am here, I am living in the same second as these card players.

- I am won over by the purity of my surroundings; nothing is alive; the wind whistles, straight lines flee into the darkness.

- Behind him, before him, there is a universe. And the day approaches when, closing the last book on the last shelf on the far left, he will say to himself: ‘And now what?’

- I can see the future. It is there, stationed in the street, hardly any paler than the present.

- I don’t know where I am any more: am I seeing her movements or foreseeing them? I can no longer distinguish the present from the future…

- I can’t see anything anymore: however much I search the past I can only retrieve scraps of images and I am not sure what they represent, nor whether they are remembered or invented. Moreover there are many cases where even these scraps have disappeared: nothing is left but words: I could still tell the stories [...] but they are only skeletons. They tell about a fellow who does this or that, but it isn’t I, I have nothing in common with him.

- Something begins in order to end: an adventure doesn’t let itself be extended; it achieves significance only through its death. Towards this death, which may also be my own, I am drawn irrevocably. To each moment I cling with all my heart: I know that it is unique, irreplaceable - and yet I would not lift a finger to prevent it from being annihilated

- Nothing has changed and yet everything exists in a different way.

- I am full of anguish; the slightest gesture engages me. I can’t imagine what is required of me. Yet I must choose: I sacrifice the passage Gillet, I shall never know what it held for me.

- I gripped the volume I was reading tightly in my hands, but then strongest sensations were blunted. Nothing looked real; I felt surrounded by cardboard scenery which could suddenly be removed.

- His judgment pierced me like a sword and called into question my very right to exist. And it was true, I had always realised that; I hadn’t any right to exist. I had appeared by chance, I existed like a stone, a plant, a microbe. My life grew in a haphazard way and in all directions.

- If only I could prevent myself from thinking! I try, I succeed: it seems as if my head is filling with smoke…And now it starts again: ‘Smoke…Mustn’t think…I don’t want to think…I think that I don’t want to think. I mustn’t think that I don’t want to think. Because it is still a thought.’ Will there ever be an end to it? My thought is me: that is why I can’t stop. I exist by what I think…and I can’t prevent myself from thinking. At this very moment - this is terrible - if I exist, it is because I hate existing. It is I, it is I who pull myself from the nothingness to which I aspire: hatred and disgust for existence are just so many ways of making me exist, of thrusting me into existence.

- The spinning record exists, the air struck by the vibrating voice exists, the voice which made an impression on the record existed. I who am listening, I exist. Everything is full, existence everywhere, dense and heavy and sweet. But beyond all this sweetness, inaccessible, quite close, so far away alas, young, merciless, and serene, there is this…this rigour.

- Tuesday: Nothing. Existed.

- Before the war I was alone and I didn’t realise it; I lived with my parents, who were good people, but I didn’t get on with them. When I think of those years…but how could I have lived like that? I was dead Monsieur, and I never realised it; I had a collection of postage stamps.

- Things have broken free from their names. They are there, grotesque, stubborn, gigantic, and it seems ridiculous to call them seats or say anything at all about them: I am in the midst of Things, which cannot be given names. Alone, wordless, defenceless, thy surround me, under me, behind me, above me. they demand nothing, they don’t impose themselves, they are there.Under the cushion of the seat, next to the wood, there is a thin line of shadow, a thin black line which runs along the seat with a mysterious, mischievous air, almost a smile. I know perfectly well it isn’t a smile and yet it exists [...] it persists, like the vague memory of a smile, like a half-forgotten word of which you can remember only the first syllable and the best thing you can do is turn your eyes away and think of something else…

- Never until these last few days had I suspected what it meant to ‘exist’. [...] I was like the others…I used to say like them ‘The sea is green; that white speck up there is a seagull’, but I didn’t feel it existed, that the seagull was an ‘existing seagull’; usually existence hides itself. It is there, around us, in us, it is us, you can’t say a couple of words without speaking of it but, but finally you can’t touch it

- Existence had suddenly unveiled itself. It had lost its harmless appearance as an abstract category: it was the very stuff of things [...] the diversity of things, their individuality, was only an appearance, a veneer. This veneer had melted, leaving soft, monstrous masses, in disorder - naked, with a frightening, obscene nakedness

- It didn’t make sense, the world was present everywhere, in front, behind. There has been nothing before it. Nothing. There had been no moment at which it might not have existed. It was this which irritated me: naturally there was no reason for it to exist, that flowing larva. But it was not possible for it not to exist. That was unthinkable: in order to imagine nothingneess, you had to be there already, right in the world, with your eyes wide open and alive; nothingness was just an idea in my head, an existing idea floating in that immensity: this nothingness hadn’t come before existence, it was an existence like any other…

- I see it, that Nature, I see it…I know that its submissiveness is laziness, I know that it has no laws, that what they consider its constancy doesn’t exist. It has nothing but habits and it may change those tomorrow.

- It does not exist. It is even irritating in its non-existence; if I were to get up, if I were to snatch that record from the turn-table which is holding it and if I were to break it in two, I wouldn’t reach it. It is beyond - always beyond something, beyond a voice, beyond a violin note. Through layers and layers of existence, it unveils itself, slim and firm, and when you try to seize it you meet nothing but existents, you run up against existents devoid of meaning. It is behind them: I can’t even hear it, I hear sounds, vibrations in the air which unveil it. It does not exist, since it has nothing superfluous: it is all the rest which is superfluous in relation to it. It is.

(all quotes borrowed from Sartre, Nausea, Penguin Classics, 1965)