Being And Nothingness (Paperback)

~ (Author), Hazel E. Barnes (Author) "MODERN thought has realized considerable progress by reducing the existent to the series of appearances which manifest it..." (more)
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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Jean-Paul Sartre, the seminal smarty-pants of mid-century thinking, launched the existentialist fleet with the publication of Being and Nothingness in 1943. Though the book is thick, dense, and unfriendly to careless readers, it is indispensable to those interested in the philosophy of consciousness and free will. Some of his arguments are fallacious, others are unclear, but for the most part Sartre's thoughts penetrate deeply into fundamental philosophical territory. Basing his conception of self-consciousness loosely on Heidegger's "being," Sartre proceeds to sharply delineate between conscious actions ("for themselves") and unconscious ("in themselves"). It is a conscious choice, he claims, to live one's life "authentically" and in a unified fashion, or not--this is the fundamental freedom of our lives.

Drawing on history and his own rich imagination for examples, Sartre offers compelling supplements to his more formal arguments. The waiter who detaches himself from his job-role sticks in the reader's memory with greater tenacity than the lengthy discussion of inauthentic life and serves to bring the full force of the argument to life. Even if you're not an angst-addicted poet from North Beach, Being and Nothingness offers you a deep conversation with a brilliant mind--unfortunately, a rare find these days. --Rob Lightner

Review

A fascinating and intriguing work providing a full-blown metaphysic backed by, and at the same time providing the basis for, a complete theory of man - Times Literary Supplement

Full of fascinating and profound analyses of human devices and desires. It is an extremely interesting book very well translated by Hazel Barnes. - Iris Murdoch --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 864 pages
• Publisher: Washington Square Press (August 1, 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0671867806
• ISBN-13: 978-0671867805
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.3 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (58 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #35,742 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

38 of 38 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Buy the ugly white cover, not the orange one., July 10, 2004

By	J. Gamber (Baltimore, MD, USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Being And Nothingness: An Essay in Phenomenological Ontology (Paperback)

Not because the white one is better. They are the same translation. The orange one is ABRIDGED, which is mentioned nowhere on this website, as if the two books are the same.

They don't even have the same publisher.

Trust me: unless you can find the 1956 edition from the Philosophical Library, buy the white version from Washington Square Press. The Citadel Press edition is abridged and more expensive. Even if it has a nicer looking cover, don't buy it.

24 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Review from a layman, June 30, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Being and Nothingness (Hardcover)

If you are just getting your feet wet in ontology then this book will be very challenging and often frustrating. As you slowly become accustomed to the terminology and basic ontological concepts, the book becomes more and more readable and enjoyable. If you ever felt you were all alone in your existential dilemmas, then this book will provide great comfort. Everything is here in this book if you are willing to take the time. Contrary to an earlier review, this book makes perfect sence and every concept is backed up with logical analysis. Sartre is very good about providing clear and concise examples to all of his concepts. This is not a philosphical treatise on ethics so it is hard to understand why an earlier review labeled it as dogmatic (that person must be referring to a different work by Sartre). A dogma based on nothingness is hardly any kind of dogma.

51 of 58 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Sartre: one of the last of the system builders...., March 30, 2002

By	Dr. Lee D. Carlson (Baltimore, Maryland USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

One of the most influential books of 20th-century philosophy, Being and Nothingness, and others by Sartre, has probably been read by more beginning students of philosophy than any other. Sartre's approach to philosophy is eclectic, but he has unique solutions to some of the problems he is attempting to solve, particularly his treatment of the problem of how to handle the negation, a problem of great interest to Hegel, and carried over to a phenomenological setting by Sartre. His discussion of the "experiencing" of negation has to rank as one of the most interesting in contemporary philosophy. It is a topic also that Sartre apparently thought so important that he included it in the first chapter of the book. He does however prepare the reader for the analysis in an introduction to the book. Therein, he argues for the dissolving of the distinction between being and appearance, and to reject (in Nietzschean terms), "the illusion of worlds-behind-the-scene". This discussion also shows Satre's training in the phenomenology of Husserl and Heidegger. The move away from the dualism of appearance and essence, and appearance and being has its consequences of course, and it is these consequences that Sartre expounds upon briliantly in the rest of the book. One of these, interestingly, is the existence of an infinite series. The dualism of being and appearance is replaced by Sartre with the new dualism of finite and infinite. The appearance is finite, but to be grasped as an appearance of that which appears, says Sartre, it requires the series of appearances as infinite.

In addition, Sartre also discusses his reasoning behind his rejection of the idealism of Berkeley. Having reduced reality to the phenomenon, namely that the phenomenon is at is appears, he discusses why the Berkeley move to equate being with appearance is not a tenable one, in spite of the simplicity of such a move. His discussion expands on the famous Husserlian axiom that consciousness is always directed toward something. But Sartre goes beyond Husserl, and this is because he feels he needs to answer those who state that the requirement of consciouusness does not imply that the requirement is satisfied. He takes Husserl's notion of intentionality, and asserts that consciousness of consciousness of something is equated with intentionality, but that the object is what he terms a "revealed-revelation": it reveals itself as already existing when consciousness reveals it.

It is very interesting that for students of philosophy, this book is one of the first large treatises they read on philosophy, interesting because the hyphenated definitions that Sartre employs throughout the book can be opaque at times. But Sartre was one of the last "system-builders" of philosophy, and also one of the few philosophers who permitted himself to propagate his philosophy into novels and short stories. One can disagree with his politics, his anti-Americanism, and his Marxism, but he was a brilliant thinker and novelist, and philosophy in the 21st century is definitely experiencing-his-absence......