JeanPaul_Sartre_JeanPaul_Sartre_Basic_Writing

Nothingness137sense because it is nothing over and above the arrangement of theremaining parts of the wall. An earthquake destroys a city and ontologicallythis is a distribution of beings that to human beings is disastrous. Sartresays after a storm there is no less than before, there is something else. It isthe presence of human reality in the world, being-for-itself, that makes theredistributions of beings called ‘storms’ and ‘earthquakes’ into cases ofdestruction.Nothingness depends upon consciousness. Consciousness dependsupon being-for-itself so nothingness is ultimately introduced into the worldby being-for-itself. In the café, we are aware of the absence of Pierre becausewe expect to see him there; as a figure against a background. Sartredistinguishes clearly between non-existence that depends onconsciousness and non-existence that does not. After all, many people areabsent from the café. The Duke of Wellington and Paul Valéry are absent.But they are only thought to be absent, in the abstract, or not even thought.Pierre’s absence is experienced. In these ways, according to Sartre,consciousness is prior to nothingness.Consciousness is defined by negation. This is partly the modal point thatits being and its being what it is depend upon its not being what it is not. It ispartly the psychological claim that its imaginative power to negate is one ofits essential properties. Unless we could think or imagine what is absentwe could not intuit that which is present.There is a more profound connection between consciousness andnothingness. I am my consciousness and my consciousness is a kind ofnothingness; a nothingness at the heart of being. The being ofconsciousness contrasts with the kind of being of Sartre calls ‘en-soi’ or ‘initself’.Being-in-itself is massive, opaque, full, dense and inert. It confrontsme and it surrounds me. If I try to locate myself as consciousness, in contrast,I am strangely absent. Phenomenologically, I seem to be a subjective regionof non-being within the plenitude of being. Consciousness is a kind ofemptiness or non being. Consciousness is certainly not one object amongstothers that I could encounter in the course of my experience. Sartre thinksnothingness distances me from being-in-itself and I am nothing butconsciousness of being.Sartre often speaks as though consciousness is a kind of nothingnessor emptiness. Sometimes he says consciousness is a prerequisite for