JeanPaul_Sartre_JeanPaul_Sartre_Basic_Writing

12Jean-Paul Sartre: Basic Writingsscrutinised by introspection. 7 Mental images are mental acts directed toobjects in the world that may or may not exist. We see here already a departurefrom the phenomenological description of the interiority of consciousnessand an endorsement of the neo-Heideggerian existentialist thesis that ourbeing, including our psychological being, is ‘being-in-the world’.Like the early philosophical writings, the novel Nausea published in April1938 is a work of both existentialism and phenomenology. The centralcharacter, Antoine Roquentin, confronts the brute contingency andmeaninglessness of his own existence in a way that produces existentialangst and the nausea of the novel’s title. The thesis that existence, includingone’s own existence, is contingent rather than necessary is essential toexistentialism. There are also many passages in Nausea when Roquentinconfronts the world as it would appear if it were subjected to neo-Husserlianphenomenological description. On the bus, on the sea shore, looking at achesnut tree, objects are reduced to phenomena. What is is what appearsto be.Nausea is an overtly philosophical novel. To the extent that Sartre’sportrayals of Roquentin’s experiences are internally consistent, credibility islent to existential phenomenology. Roquentin confronts philosophicalproblems as problems in life. The problems of induction, universals andparticulars, how language refers to the world, objective truth, and what it isfor something to be are all sources of profound anxiety and discomfort tohim.Although Nausea is a strongly didactic novel, it has one strength lackingin, say, Albert Camus’ The Plague (La Peste, 1948) or Tolstoy’s War andPeace (1868–9). Although Tolstoy is a stronger artist than Sartre, he paintsin more detail, he constructs mentality with at once a greater economy anda greater plausibility, his grasp of history is less naive, Tolstoy can onlyinclude philosophy in War and Peace by addressing the reader directly.Tolstoy has to lecture us for many pages to convince us of his atomistichistorical determinism. With slightly more subtlety, Camus in The Plaguephilosophises about the confrontation with death and meaninglessnessthrough conversations between Dr. Rieux (who turns out to be the narrator)and his humanistic neighbour, Tarrou. The reader is allowed to eavesdropon their profoundity. Sartre has the better of both these writers in weavingexistentialism and phenomenology into the experience of his character.Although the experience is necessarily thereby unusual, Sartre himself doesnot have to intervene to tell us about philosophy, nor does Roquentin.Sartre’s second significant work of fiction is the collection of short storiesLe Mur (The Wall), published in 1939. In each story at least one centralexistential problem is lived from the inside by a fictional character. Notably,the condemned Republican volunteer Pablo Ibieta contemplates being shot