JeanPaul_Sartre_JeanPaul_Sartre_Basic_Writing

22Jean-Paul Sartre: Basic WritingsI murmur: ‘It’s a seat,’ rather like an exorcism. But the word remains onmy lips, it refuses to settle on the thing. It stays what it is, with its redplush, thousands of little red paws in the air, all stiff, little dead paws.This huge belly turns upwards, bleeding, puffed up – bloated with allits dead paws, this belly floating in this box, in this grey sky, is not aseat.(ibid., p. 180)Our customary, taken-for-granted, means-to-end thinking fails to find itsapplication. Typically our idea of what an artefact is is whatever that object isfor. Indeed, we usually only notice the aspects of objects necessary for us touse them as means to our ends. We take objects to be their functions andfor this reason barely attend to them. In Roquentin’s case these habitualpreconceptions are stripped away and instead he sees just what is directlygiven in perception: the empirical content of the present. In the tram seatexample Roquentin interprets what he experiences under grotesquesurrealistic descriptions but there is typically a further phase to a bad attackof nausea; the disclosure of existence becomes overwhelming:I’m suffocating: existence is penetrating me all over, through the eyes,through the nose, through the mouth . . .. And suddenly, all at once, theveil is torn away, I have understood, I have seen.(ibid., p. 181)The veil is essence. What is seen is existence.Most shattering of all, Roquentin realises that he himself exists. Hecontemplates his own hand:I see my hand spread out on the table. It is alive – it is me. It opens, thefingers unfold and point. It is lying on its back. It shows me its fatunder-belly. It looks like an animal upside down.(ibid., pp. 143–4)and a little later says, ‘I am. I am, I exist’ (ibid., p. 146).What disgusts Roquentin most about existence is its contingency. Inphilosophy contingency is contrasted with necessity. If something existscontingently then it exists but it is possible that it should not have existed: Itis but it might not have been. If something exists necessarily then it exists