Customer Reviews

A Commentary on Jean-Paul Sartre's Being and Nothingness (Midway Reprint)

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If you find yourself extremely frustrated in your attempt to plow through Sartre's massive BEING AND NOTHINGNESS, there is simply no better guide than Catalano's commentary. No first time reader of Sartre's book should be without this guide. Catalano does not shy away from the difficult and abstruse points of BEING AND NOTHINGNESS, but helps the reader understand Sartre's rather peculiar style of phenomenology. If one wants to understand one of the landmark works of 20th century Continental philosphy, one needs to read the original text. However, most nonacademic readers, and even most professional American philosophers, lack the crucial background to truly grasp what Sartre is attemtping to accomplish. Before reading BEING AND NOTHINGNESS, I recomend reading several of Sartre's literary works, and two shorter philosophical texts, THE TRANSCENDENCE OF THE EGO and THEORY OF THE EMOTIONS. Then expect to spend several months (at least if you have to work for a living) with Sartre's treatise. Be sure to have Catalano's book by your side. It will give you both the necessary background for understanding the text, as well as lucid commentary on some very difficult passages of Sartre's work. In the end, do not shy away from the original text. Even if you find yourself unsympathetic to Sartre's ideas and style of philosophy, I believe you will find that Sartre has some rather vivid insights about human existence.

Sartre's philosophy reduces to a radical dichotomy of por soi and en soi. The logic for this radical dichotomy is his ontological argument. The ontological argument is the springboard for all of Sartre's later deductions. He is quite faithful to his principle, derived from the ontological argument. In this book, the author gives an excellent and lucid exposition of Sartre's reasoning on the ontological argument and shows how his entire corpus is derived from it. He shows that Sartre's lack of an ethic is grounded in Hume's understanding of personal identity, that is found in Hume's book, A Treatise of Human Nature. If experience is as radically discontinuous as Hume states it, then we cannot generalize from experience and therefore cannot formulate ethical norms. One can see the philosophical basis for Satre's Nausea when one understands the ontological argument. In fact, it is a precursor of deconstructionist understanding of words and language. Sartre ultimately resorts to a utilitarian ethical theory which, quite frankly, cannot be reconciled with his overall work. Although I adamantly disagree with Sartre, this book operates as a perfect solution for those who have difficulty understanding him.

This is the best commentary on Sartre's book I've seen. In fact, you should probably read this book before Being and Nothingness, and then tackle that forbiddingly ponderous and dense volume afterwards. Many people start, but never finish the book, and this book may help you get "over the hump" in that sense, since it'll simplify things considerably and give you a leg up on some of the more difficult points. Anyway, since this is an excellent commentary on Sartre's book, I just wanted to add a few comments myself, especially about one particular existential idea that I find odd.

I should warn you ahead of time that this is a very dark book review, just as Being and Nothingness itself can be, that being my point of departure. But a lot of it is black humor or satire and not meant to be taken seriously.

Sartre wrote in this book that "Life is a useless passion." He and other existential philosophers have maintained that life is "absurd,"--an idea that became a major tenet of existential thought.

Well, as the memory of the 20th century fades behind us, let us consider how absurd or useless life may truly be. Although existential philosophy traces its roots back to Kierkegard in the last half of the 19th century, it was the 20th century in which existentialism really came to prominence, as philosophers attempted to create a philosophy of being to cope with the devastation of a century that saw not only the greatest scientific and medical advances, but also the greatest conflagrations of mass death and destruction in man's history--and which, ironically enough--were mostly made possible by man's own new-found technological capabilities. With these awesome new powers at his command, mankind unflichingly, even enthusiastically, embarked on a new era of unabashed and uninhibited mass death and destruction unprecedented in human history.

It was indeed a century to remember, made all the more memorable by the millions of people caught in its deadly milieu. Millions died in World War I; 20 million more died during the Spanish Flu epidemic immediately afterward, and made worse by the weakened condition of state infrastructures and medical facilities after the war.

In World War II, millions more died, including 20 million dead in Russia alone either directly from war casualties or indirectly through starvation, disease, and privation. Six million Jews, 1 million Russians--and even a quarter million Gypsies--were rounded up and systematically exterminated in the death camps ("better living through chemistry"), and tens of millions more died of starvation in India because the price of rice went through the roof.

That doesn't take into consideration the myriad smaller conflicts, genocides, pogroms, famines, and other disasters in which thousands to millions of people died. Unfortunately, there was no shortage of them to grace and adorn each ill-fated decade of the 20th century, as more and more people were caught in its inimitable and seemingly inexorable machines of death.

In addition to WWI in the teens and WWII in the 40's, respectively, there was the genocide of Armenians in the 1920's (1,000,000 people dead), the Rape of Nanking (300,000 dead), the Great Purges in Russia in the 30's (3,000,000 people executed or dead in the labor camps) the Korean War in the 50's, the famines in Biafra in the 60's and Ethiopia in the 80's, and America's geopolitical debacle, the Vietnam war of the 60's and early 70's.

And there's more fun yet to come. Let's not forget the ever-lovin' Idi Amin in Uganda during the 70's (if you can say one good thing about Amin, it's that he was content to stay within his own borders and slaughter his own, instead of starting wars with everybody else, like most dictators). Africans, knowing a good thing when they see one, followed Amin with the internal massacres and tribal conflicts in Rwanda, Burundi, Sierra Leone, and Sudan in the 90's (to mention the most important ones), with untold millions of innocent people slaughtered, maimed, dead from disease and starvation, or displaced in refugee camps.

Lest you think I'm unjustly singling out Africa, there was the recent genocide and atrocities committed in the former Yugoslavia, the recent terrorism in the U.S. and elsewhere in the world, and the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians (which has been going on for about 4,000 years--give 'em time--they'll figure out that they really hate each other eventually).

Not to mention the spectre of nuclear annihilation, which somehow, humans have managed to avoid--at least for the time being. (No doubt the human race will screw that up, too). And last but not least--we now have the spectre of mass annihilation through bioweapons. (Isn't it great being part of such a technologically advanced race? We come up with such clever and fun little toys.)

Yeah, you have to hand it to the human race. We know how to make progress. We've gone from sacrificing virgins (what genius invented that idea?) to being able to kill millions of people at a time with a single nuclear blast in only about 2,000 years. When the first two atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, 200,000 people (including, presumably some virgins, which made it okay, I guess) vanished in less than a second. And now we have bombs that are up to 5,000 times more powerful than these.

But getting back to my main point. Given the above, describing life as "absurd" seems pretty lame, to say the least. Sartre was even awarded a Nobel Prize in Literature. When the news of the prize came out, Life magazine called him "The wall-eyed little man who figured it all out." (Maybe Sartre should have just gotten corrective lenses for his eye problem and called it a day). But really, is this the best they can do?

Don't get me wrong, I like much of what Sartre says and I might even go so far as to say he was a brilliant philosopher, but some people have been upset by what they see as Sartre's and other existential philosophers' overly "pessimistic" view of life. Given how things have generally turned out for the human race, however, especially in the 20th century, saying life is "absurd" seems itself an absurdly naive and over-optimistic understatement, and hardly anything for people to get upset about.

Given the above, I don't think it is possible to be overly pessimistic about individual human existence, and perhaps more importantly, about the prospects for human society as a whole.

There is always the possibility (it does occasionally happen) that an individual human being will become more enlightened. You can always tell when someone has become "enlightened." His friends all start avoiding him like the plague and think he's gone totally nuts. At the social level, however, this never happens--since there are no, and never have been, any truly enlightened human societies--and probably never will be.

Not to beat a dead horse or anything (another sadistic human custom, no doubt), but I'll mention one more social criticism of contemporary society that I happen to agree with. Especially in the west, adult life is mostly concerned with the accumulation of wealth and power--neither of which, as Arthur C. Clarke once wrote--should be the main concern, much less the only concern, of full-grown, mature men. It goes without saying that a society based on such consumerist ideals will never become truly advanced or enlightened. No wonder S-F writers dream of getting off the planet--they may not know where they're going in the universe either--but they sure as hell know it's a cosmic cluster-f_ck down here.

I haven't even touched on the problem of individual crime, since I've been more concerned here with the broader social and historical issues. Suffice it to say that a society in which the mass media glorifies and makes heroes of serial murderers just to sell more magazines, newspapers, and advertising can't be all bad. After all, they'll probably make more money that way, which will be good for the stock--and in this market--that's nothing to shake a stick at.

But returning to my earlier point, failing to achieve "true enlightenment" is the least of our worries, however, because if we were even close, that in itself would be quite an achievement. If human societies were just "advanced" as opposed to truly enlightened, we'd probably be 10 times better off than we are now.

Well, we're about as far away from true enlightenment as you can get. In fact, the really tragic thing is that the human societies of the 20th century brought most of the above disasters down on themselves--tragedies which a less violent and more reasonable, socially intelligent, and responsible race would have been able to avoid. Or to put it another way, in another unfortunate and bizarre twist of human psychology, despite humans being the most intelligent and "evolved" species on the planet, it would seem we are also the only social species that is less intelligent as a group than we are individually. Or, as Mark Twain once said, "A committee is the only critter with 10 bellies and no brain."

Not that I'm a total nihilist. There is always the slim hope humans will change. I truly hope the human race will come to its senses before time runs out. It seems unlikely, however. Humans are too quarrelsome, violent, warlike, greedy, selfish, intolerant, bigotted, venal, petty, vain, neurotic, irrational, illogical, ignorant, short-sighted, and just generally vicious, mean-spirited and uncivilized a species (I could go on but one has to stop somewhere), and there just aren't enough truly good humans out there to make a difference. There are a few good people out there, I admit--but let's face it--we all know that in this life "nice guys finish last." Similarly, the lessons of human history make it abundantly clear that unless good is very, very careful, evil usually wins out.

Oh well. It's sad to say, since it's my own species I'm talking about, but the earth, and probably the universe as well, will probably be better off without us.

I realize I've painted a pretty dim, dark, and ultimately depressing view (a 3D view?) of humanity and of humanity's future prospects. I hope I am wrong. Unfortunately, the history of the human race doesn't give one much cause for optimism. If we can screw it up, the human race probably will--even our own future. After all, we've screwed up 99% of our past history--and the future is just history that hasn't happened yet.

Speaking of which, I don't want to give you the impression that there's no room for optimism in my life. In fact, I'm about the most "optimistic" guy out there--I'm just optimistic that the human race will Bite the Big One some day through its own habitual and perverse self-destructiveness and figure out some creative and fun way to wipe itself off the surface of the planet in one fell swoop. Although our history may be nothing to be proud of--I have every expectation and confidence that our ending will be a truly monumental and awe-inspiring achievement. I just hope I live long enough to see it; it would be a real bummer to miss out on humanity's glorious, universal, and final holocaust of mass death and destruction. Given humanity's talent for careening from disaster to disaster throughout its history, I'm sure it will be sooner rather than later--after all why delay the fun? Just think of the 20th century as the dress rehearsal for humanity's last curtain call.

Come to think of it, why we're called "humanity" I don't really understand. We should be called "inhumanity." "Humanity" has to be the only one-word oxymoron in the English language. (For those of you who weren't paying attention in your English class, an "oxymoron" is a rhetorical figure of speech in which incongruous or contradictory words are combined, as in "thunderous silence", or "mournful optimist," or "a just society," or "a kind and wise human being.")

I know some people will say it'll never happen--that the human race will become wise before it's too late and somehow turn back from the brink of disaster. Obviously these people have never stuck their noses inside a single history book for more than five minutes. But the ultimate problem, and the ultimate reality--is that we humans, both individually and as a species--would rather live down to our lowest impulses and desires rather than the reverse. After all, that takes genuine discipline and real moral fiber--which is no fun at all for a snarling, primitive, vicious ground monkey with a brain too big for his Johnson (among other things--such as the 40,000 nuclear missiles and bombs still in existence).

But there is always hope, and the future is as good place for our hopes to reside as any--because if there's going to be any hope for the human race, it will have to be there--since there obviously isn't any hope for humanity based on our past.

And maybe what I've said here is what Sartre and the other existentialists really meant to say? Perhaps being civilized philosophers and academic-types, they were just trying to be polite and soft-pedal it a bit.

Well, I'm not a philosopher, I'm not an academic (not anymore, anyway)--and maybe I'm not even civilized! So does that mean I'm telling it like it is?

We'll see. In the meantime, I'm sure the geopolitical gladiatorial games that is human civilization will continue to provide all the sadistic and voyeuristic "bread and circuses" action (coming to you live on the 6 o'clock news!) you could want.