Being And Nothingness

Sartre wrote much of Being and Nothingness at Café de Flore in Paris during the Nazi occupation, finding freedom in thought while physically imprisoned. The café's famous hot chocolate kept him warm through 1942-43 winters as he developed ideas about radical freedom amid actual tyranny. This paradox—composing humanity's most expansive theory of freedom while living under fascism—gives the work its urgent, almost defiant quality.

Sartre's concept of "bad faith" explains that moment when you tell yourself "I had no choice" about your job, relationship, or life path—while knowing deep down you're lying to yourself. He illustrates this with a famous café waiter who over-performs his role, treating his identity as fixed rather than chosen moment-by-moment. Recognizing bad faith is uncomfortable because it strips away the comforting illusion that external forces control us, forcing us to own our complicity in our own lives.

Sartre describes being caught looking through a keyhole—suddenly hearing footsteps, you're transformed from subject to object by another's gaze. This "Look" (le regard) reveals how other people fundamentally threaten our freedom by turning us into things they perceive and judge. It's why we feel differently alone versus being watched, why stage fright exists, and why social media's perpetual gaze creates such anxiety—we're constantly frozen into objects of others' perception.

Sartre's radical claim is that consciousness is literally "nothingness"—it has no essence, no fixed nature, existing only as negation and absence. Unlike a rock that simply "is," human consciousness can imagine what isn't, question what is, and negate reality through imagination and choice. This "nothingness" isn't weakness but the source of human freedom: because we're not any fixed thing, we can become anything—a simultaneously terrifying and liberating insight.

Simone de Beauvoir, Sartre's lifelong partner, allegedly called Being and Nothingness his "breakup letter to God," systematically eliminating any external source of meaning or values. The book's exhausting length and density mirror its exhausting message: there's no cosmic instruction manual, no essential human nature, no predetermined purpose waiting to be discovered. You're reading 700 pages that all ultimately point to one vertiginous conclusion—you must invent yourself and your values from scratch, with no help coming.

Existential therapy directly applies Sartre's ideas, rejecting the notion that childhood or diagnosis determines who you are—you're radically free to change now. However, therapists struggle with his uncompromising stance that denies unconscious forces; Sartre argued even "unconscious" choices are choices we're hiding from ourselves. This creates therapeutic power (change is always possible) but also potential cruelty (no excuses, no escape from responsibility), making his philosophy both liberation and burden for those seeking healing.