1

Shadows without Light: A Partial Summary of Being and Nothingness

Ich will, dass du verstehst, ich existier‘ nicht ohne dich

So wie Schatten ohne Licht
Madeline Juno

In the following, I explicate the introduction and chapter one of Jean-Paul Sartre’s 1943
L’être et le néant or Being and Nothingness (1956).1 Sartre introduces his text by way of a
critical description of the state of contemporary ontology as having been successful in reducing
various dualisms the series of appearances, of phenomena.2 After establishing his reading of
contemporary discussions, Sartre describes his own argument regarding the question of the being
of phenomena (l’être du phénomène) and the phenomenon of being (le phénomène d’être) and
that which founds and exceeds (déborder) the bounds of consciousness. In the end of these
sections, Sartre will argue that what is at stake, despite advances made to this point in
phenomenology, is being, and that the question of being is bound to the question of non-being. I
proceed by first explicating how Sartre arrives as his argument regarding the state of
contemporary ontology, the question of the relation between being and phenomena, and the
implications of this question for consciousness. I then turn to his conclusion regarding …
According to Sartre at this point in time, the contemporary moment is one characterized
by the acceptance of a monistic ontology.3 The acceptance of this ontology is exemplified by
several developments in philosophy and physics. What is exemplified? The examples Sartre uses
illustrate that there is no longer, prima facie, any idea of separation between appearance and
being.4 From here Sartre describes the rejection of various dualisms that correspond to this
disavowal of the distinction between being and existence. Rather than an
internal-external/essence-existence distinction when thinking of a substantive, a noun, there is
now a sense of instantaneity and sheerness that defines how we think of being and appearance.
This simultaneity is visible, for example, in Sartre’s assertive description of Husserl and
Heidegger’s notion of phenomenality, of a relative absolute (relative-absolu).5 The phenomenon
is relative to one to whom it appears, yet “That which is, is absolutely, because it is unveiled (se
1
Jean-Paul Sartre. L’être et le néant : essai d’ontologie phénoménologique. Paris : Gallimard, 1943/ Being and
Nothingness : A Phenomenological Essay on Ontology. New York: Washington Square Press, 1956.
2
Ibid. p. 11.
3
Ibid. p. 12-14/ p. 3-7.
4
Ibid. p. 11 / p. 3.
5
Ibid. p. 11-12 / p. 3-5.
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dévoile) as it is. The phenomenon can be studied and described as it is because it is absolutely
indicative of itself.”6
The problem arises therein. A new dualism has arisen, now between the finitude of the
appearance and infinitude.7 What seemed like a matter of simply collapsing essence and
appearance gives way to the question of how to understand the totality of this equivocation. The
simultaneity that characterizes the appearance as such is revealed, paradoxically, in terms of a
series.8 To know something in-itself is to know it through a particular instantiation. Due to this
finite relativity of what is known, the subject comes to equivocate the totality of the series of
appearances with the thing. “Thus, the apparition that is finite is indicated in its finitude, but is
expressed, in order to be known as the apparition-of-that-which-appears, as exceeding toward the
infinite,” the infinite raison d’être of the series.9 Thus, we have arrived back to a division
between essence as the infinite, which is really the language of unconditionality or grounding,
and existence as contingent finitude. Sartre will note the seeming inappropriateness of this idea
of being in section III.10 The question that will guide the rest of the text is “If the essence of the
appearance is an “appearing” which is no longer opposed to a being, there arises a legitimate
problem concerning the being of this appearing.”11
The Phenomenon of Being and the Being of the Phenomenon
The question is reposed thusly, “is the being that reveals itself to me, which appears to
me, is this the same nature as the being of beings that appears to me?”12 The question that must
be resolved is the relation between the being of phenomena and the phenomenon of being.13 Here
again, Sartre employs two words that seem to indicate the same, namely, unconcealment and
appearance. Both seem important to note as each word may express one side of the event in
question, that which reveals itself, the appearance which I see. In fact, as I note in my questions,
6
Ibid. p. 12/ p. 4. The language of disclosure is interesting to note as Sartre preserves what Husserl and Heidegger
both refer to as the apophantic constitution of the phenomenon, a theme that philosophers of religion will pick up on
and run with throughout the 20th century. This idea goes back further, however to apophatic and mystical theologies
across various traditions and communities. See the work of Elliot R. Wolfson including Through a Speculum that
Shines: Vision and Imagination in Medieval Judaism. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994; Giving Beyond
the Gift: Apophasis and Overcoming Theomania. New York: Fordham University Press, 2014; Not Yet Now:
Speaking of the End and the End of Speaking. Poetic Thinking. Leiden: Brill, 2015.
7
Ibid. p. 13 / p. 5.
8
Ibid. p. 13 / p. 6.
9
Ibid. p. 13, 15 / p. 6, 8.
10
Ibid. p. 16 / p. 9.
11
Ibid. p. 14 / p. 7
12
Ibid. p. 14 / p. 7.
13
Ibid. p. 15-16 / p. 8-9.
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the language is crucial here because there is a slippage that occurs between the condition for
transitivity, or the condition for the possibility of disclosure, and the hypostatization of this
transitivity into another entity that appears, and thus, seems to indicate “a being on the basis of
which it can reveal itself.”14 Thus, Sartre concludes, “the being of the phenomenon, while
coextensive with the phenomenon, must escape the condition of phenomenality – which is to
exist only in so far as it reveals itself – and that consequently it overflows and founds the
knowledge we have of it.”15
The Cogito “Pre-reflexive” and the Being of the Percipere
It is at this point that Sartre anticipates the objection that the notion of being so described
above is incompatible with the appeal to appearance, the general monism of the phenomenon
that Sartre described at the beginning of the text.16 Why not simply stop at the phenomenological
reduction of reality, wherein the phenomenon includes all that is said ‘to be’ vis-à-vis said
phenomenon? The answer has to do with the relation between knowledge, phenomenality, and
consciousness. The inquiry into the being of a phenomenon is limited to the parameters of
perception and conceptuality that occurs in the relativity of the appearance vis-à-vis the one to
whom it appears. Yet, Sartre notes, a guarantee of knowledge has to be given because every
theory of knowledge presupposes a metaphysics and vice-versa. To say that the being of an
appearance just is the appearing is to attempt to describe the ground of something on the basis of
that same something, a circular act that is not satisfying logically.17 Thus, the ground or being of
what is perceived must exceed the boundaries of perceptuality, it must be “transphenomenal.”
Sartre refers to this as the being of the subject, insofar as what occurs in the perceived-perceiving
relation is an activity called consciousness.18 “Consciousness is not a mode of particular
knowing…but rather is the transphenomenal dimension of the being of the subject.”19
This transphenomenal activity occurs at the level of the encounter with the world. What
is secured is that, for me, things are there because I am conscious of things and conscious of the
fact that I am conscious of things.20 This is the cogito, the activity of consciousness that is able to
14
Ibid. p.15 / p. 8.
15
Ibid. p. 16 / p. 9.
16
Ibid. p. 11 / p. 3.
17
Ibid. p. 17/ p. 10.
18
Ibid. p. 17/ p. 10.
19
Ibid. p. 17/ p. 10.
20
Ibid. p. 18/ p. 11. “La première démarche d’une philosophie doit donc être pour expulser les choses de la
conscience et pour rétablir le vrai rapport de celle-ci avec le monde, à savoir que la conscience est conscience
positionnelle du monde.”
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affirm for me that I am conscious of the world, it is immediacy, simultaneity, non-positional

act.21 At this level, the immediate act of consciousness is constitutive of positional perception,
perception that is located vis-à-vis an object of perception and itself.22 Thus, Sartre writes, “there
is a pre-reflexive cogito that is the condition of the cartesian cogito.23 It follows that what appears
at this level of consciousness is not representation, but described by Sartre as a “concrete event”
that avoids placing any priority beyond the event, either on the side of a ding an sich or a
knowing subject.24 Consciousness is, then, a “rising to the center of being. It creates and supports
its essence – that is, the synthetic order of its possibilities.”25
Chapter 1: The Origin of Negation
Having so described how there has come about the introduction of a new duality through
the reduction of previous binaries to the monism of the phenomenon, and, having described how
this leads us to a discussion of consciousness through the question of the being of the
appearance, Sartre now begins to work toward clarifying other aspects of this main problem.
That problem is again, being, the being of phenomena, being itself. At stake is being. More
precisely, at stake is human being in the world as a concrete fact, and the coincident question of
what humans and the world are to be so related,26 and these questions make sense if one follows
the description of pre-reflexive consciousness in the introduction.
Sartre notes that in posing these questions we arrive at a fundamental insight – namely,
that we are questioning and that this fact reveals to us possibility, of affirmation or negation, and
of a truth, which by definition, is a closing or limitation of possibility.27 The existence of the
possibility of negation shows that affirmation and negation are intimately related. Both at this

21
Ibid. p. 19/ p. 12.
22
Ibid. p. 19-20/ p. 12-13. “…il faut qu’il soit présent à lui-même, non comme une chose mais comme une intention
opératoire…” One is struck (an appropriate word) by the language here if one reflects upon a similar notion of
activity in various German idealisms. Sticking to Fichte and Schelling, one could synthesize the language and say
that Sartrean pre-reflective consciousness is the Tathandlung, or operative act, of cognition (Erkenntnis), a word
which carries the meaning not only of cognition but of recognition. So, we have the pre-reflective act of recognition
of, or the act of being engaged with (beschäftigte sein), an object, du monde.
23
Ibid. p. 19-21/ p. 13-15. “A law is a transcendent object of knowledge; there can be consciousness of a law, not a
law of consciousness.” Interestingly, this idea is almost verbatim the idea that Franz Rosenzweig describes in Part I
of The Star of Redemption more that 20 years prior. See: Franz Rosenzweig. Der Stern der Erlösung. Freiburg im
Breisgau: Universitätsbiliothek, 2004. p. 16 / The Star of Redemption. Tr. Barbara Galli. Madison: The University of
Wisconsin Press, 2005. p. 21. “Truth does not prove reality, but reality upholds truth. The essence of the world is
this upholding (not the proof) of truth.”
24
Ibid. p. 21/ p. 15.
25
Ibid. p. 21/ p. 15.
26
Ibid. p. 37-38/ p. 35-36.
27
Ibid. p. 37-39/ p. 35-36.
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level are facts but are non-existent.28 Thus, “it is non-being that is going to limit the reply. What
being will be must of necessity arise on the basis of what it is not. Whatever being is, it will
allow this formulation: “Being is that and outside of that, nothing.”29 “Thus, the problem of
being had referred us first to that of the question as a human attitude, and the problem of the
question now refers us to that of the being of negation.”30 But what doe Sartre mean by nothing
and what is negation?
Sartre anticipates the objection that he is incorrectly describing negation and nothingness
because negation and nothingness are relative to the synthetic act of judgement in a distorted
Kantian sense, because reducing negative judgements to the positive synthetic activity of
judgment.31 This depiction assumes too much, in that it assumes not only the power of judgement
as prior to negation, but that nothingness is a result of negation rather than the inverse.32 In short,
this is a reduction of the being of negation and nothingness to subjectivity. Sartre rejects this and
demonstrates that nothingness, of nihilation, precedes negation, and thus, judgement. The
example he gives is of Pierre’s absence from the café. What is Pierre’s absence? A negation? Or
a nihilation? The answer is the latter. By nihilation, Sartre’s intends the pre-reflective ground
(fond) from which individuation is formally recognizable.33 It serves as foundation for the
judgment – “Pierre is not here.”34 Moreover, the absence of Pierre “supposes an original relation
between me and the café,” and expectation, rather than abstract and arbitrary thoughts about
anything that is or could be present or absent from the café.35
Sartre concludes from this example that the origin of negation is non-being as a
“perpetual presence in us and outside of us, that nothingness haunt being.”36 It an intuitive fact
and negation is the event that corresponds to this fact as a breaking of coherence vis-à-vis
expectation.
28
Ibid. p. 37-39/ p. 35-36. Writing of the question “Is there any conduct which can reveal to me the relation of man
with the world,” Sartre writes, “This means that we admit to being faced with the transcendent fact of the non-
existence of such conduct…This triple non-being [affirmation, negation, truth] conditions every question and in
particular the metaphysical question, which is our question.”
29
Ibid. p. 40/ p. 36.
30
Ibid. p. 41 / p. 38.
31
Ibid. p. 40/ p. 37.
32
Ibid. p. 40/ p. 37.
33
Ibid. p. 44/ p. 41. “Ainsi cette néantisation première de toutes les formes, qui paraissent et s’engloutissent dans la
totale équivalence d’un fond, est la condition nécessaire pour l’apparition de la forme principale, qui est ici la
personne de Pierre.”
34
Ibid. p. 44/ p. 43.
35
Ibid. p. 44-45/ p. 42.
36
Ibid. p. 47/ p. 44.