Being and Nothingness: An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology

Author Jean-Paul Sartre · Publisher Minumsa · Publication Date 2024-08-30 · ISBN 9788937416392

About the Book

"To be free is
to be condemned to be free."
Sartre, the intellectual of his era,
lays the groundwork for engaging with reality
through the exploration of existence

The 20th century was a century of violence. In the 19th century, when human culture reached its peak, the 'modern age' seemed to shine. However, World War I broke out, followed by World War II, plunging humanity into its worst crisis ever. Sartre lived surrounded by wars and ideological clashes that reshaped the world. In Being and Nothingness, the object of inquiry is the isolated individual. The individual remains in the establishment of the 'I versus the Other' relationship. How can humans be so cruel to other humans? Have the greatness and dignity that humans praised themselves for disappeared? Are humans merely beings floundering in the abyss of inhumanity, rather than subjects of reason? Being and Nothingness is a grand ontology that delves into these questions.

"From man, only being can come." To escape this, humans must be able to place themselves outside of being, thereby weakening the structure of being. This is to nihilate being. Sartre thus rephrases Heidegger's 'Dasein,' which moves beyond phenomena to essence, as 'human reality.' There is "the possibility for human reality to secrete nothingness that isolates itself." "That is freedom (liberté)."

The exploration of human existence, which, as being-for-itself, cannot remain as being-in-itself and thus pursues freedom, is not merely speculative. The famous example from Being and Nothingness, where a café waiter, no matter how much he tries to act like a waiter, can never truly be a waiter, explains a truth we know. From the state of self-deception to the escape from anguish, emotions like sadness, jealousy, and shame, and the problems of love, sexuality, and masochism, all the themes this book addresses are the problems of life that we endure and transcend. Byun Gwang-bae of the Korean Sartre Society, who participated in the translation of Sartre's representative later work, Critique of Dialectical Reason, and has researched Sartre focusing on 'the gaze' and 'violence,' agonized over providing a precise translation of philosophical theory and literary narration in this new translation, released after five years. This is the first complete Korean translation, based on the 1994 new edition from Gallimard, France.

Table of Contents

Introduction The Quest for Being

Part One The Problem of Nothingness
Chapter 1 The Origin of Negation
Chapter 2 Bad Faith

Part Two Being-for-itself
Chapter 1 The Immediate Structures of the For-itself
Chapter 2 Temporality
Chapter 3 Transcendence

Part Three Being-for-others
Chapter 1 The Existence of Others
Chapter 2 The Body
Chapter 3 Concrete Relations with Others

Part Four Having, Doing, and Being
Chapter 1 Being and Doing: Freedom
Chapter 2 Doing and Having

Conclusion

Translator's Afterword
Index (Proper Nouns)
Index (Titles)