The Philosophy of Sartre

Being and Nothingness holds pride of place in Sartre’s philosophical corpus. It is the culmination of a decade’s involvement with phenomenological thought and sets the background for the moral, psychoanalytic, aesthetic and political propositions Sartre will articulate in the rest of his writing career. In between the methodological c oncerns that inform his early work, and the applied research that characterizes most of his later projects, there lies a text of substantial claims about the nature of being. The Greek word for “being” is on and the philosophical “discourse” or logos about being is ontology. Sartre conducts his ontological enquiry by adopting the standpoint of phenomenology, that is, by enquiring about being as it manifests itself. His analysis is closely attentive to the experience of what there is, providing a meticulous description of our encounter with being in perception, thought, feeling and action. That description purports to identify the basic structure of what there is, to analyse the grounds as well as the limits of our ability to affect how things are, and to illuminate the meaning of human conduct towards the world, towards oneself and towards others.

Given the foundational nature of an enquiry into being, and the wide scope of the Sartrean description of major types of experience of what there is, Being and Nothingness is a rich source of important ideas that pertain to most fields of philosophical research. Summarizing the results of the Sartrean enquiry would be no substitute for the study of a text whose main virtue lies not in the slogans that one might extract from it, but in the presentation of a detailed and thorough exploration of various philosophical paths towards an adequate understanding of reality. I shall, accordingly, focus on the part that presents some of the major difficulties for the reader who is unfamiliar with the basic aspects of Sartrean ontology. The fact that this part happens to be the “Introduction” to the whole book can often result in discouraging the further study of a work that begins with a chapter that is densely written in technical jargon, and which reads more like the conclusion to a long treatise than an invitation to a new philosophical project. It is hoped that the following sections will remove some of these difficulties by illuminating obscure points and by explicating certain lines of reasoning deployed in the “Introduction”.

Our discussion will attend, rather closely, to particular points of Sartre’s texts. It is my contention that those points do not necessarily express a neat philosophical doctrine. Sartre’s governing aim in the opening part of the book is to convince the reader that some philosophical issues that are taken as settled are not really that happily resolved, and need to be reopened. Hence, instead of listing comprehensive answers, Sartre wishes to impress on the reader the need to reconsider some fundamental questions. Accordingly, his style is more aporetic than usual, and that will be reflected in our presentation, which will highlight some of the puzzles generated by a close reading of the Sartrean text.

Sartre introduces his ontological enquiry by posing a series of questions about being. His first question is about the extent to which contemporary philosophy has managed to rid itself of dualism. A dualistic approach is usually characterized by the division of reality into two regions of being, such as mental, abstract or spiritual, on t he one hand, and bodily, concrete or material on the other. That is not the way “dualism” is understood in the present context. Sartre is interested not in the stuff of reality – what the world is made of – but in whether we can have a direct apprehension of reality for what it is, whether and how we can be aware of the world as it really is, whatever its stuff might be. The dualism under consideration is thus a doctrine about the nature of phenomena, and it contrasts the “exterior” appearance of objects to an “interior” essence that is forever hidden from view. At the time of writing Being and Nothingness, that dualism is considered defunct, and Sartre is happy to acknowledge the philosophical progress that has been made towards a non-dualistic, that is “monistic”, view of appearances. Note, though, that Sartre does not argue for that view, but from it. He takes the monistic view of phenomena as given, clarifies its claims and probes its limitations for an adequate understanding of what there is. Let us see first what the monistic view states.

An appearance is nothing but a being appearing itself to the subject of experience. The being unfolds itself in a series of appearances, each of which forms part of a sequence of events whereby the being manifests itself to us. No single appearance can exhaust all aspects of a being, yet each of its appearances points not to something behind or above that being, but to the rest of its (past, contemporaneous and future) manifestations that form the series of its appearances. The concatenation of those appearances shows what something is and, in that sense, it reveals the thing’s essence (BN 2; EN 5).¹

The first thing to note about this account is that the identification of being with appearing is given from the standpoint of the latter. Sartre does not state that if something is a being then it appears; he asserts that if something appears then it is a being. This basic point is crucial for blocking a common misreading of the “Introduction” to Being and Nothingness; according to that reading, Sartre simply ventures some critical remarks with a view to elaborate or improve on the notion of phenomenon employed by previous phenomenologists. However, there is a sharp difference between Sartre and his predecessors on what we might call the ontological point of entry to phenomena; whereas they identify the real with what is in principle able to appear to us, Sartre is keen to emphasize the irreducibility of what there is to what is perceived or otherwise intended by us. Thus, his monistic view of the phenomenon affirms that that to which consciousness is directed is the being itself, and not “a superficial covering which hides from sight the true nature of the object” (BN 1). Yet, the identification of being with appearing is limited on two fronts. On the one hand, Sartre nowhere states that unless something appears, it does not exist. On the other hand, even when his discussion is limited to beings that do appear, his theory requires that “the being of that which appears does not exist only in so far as it appears” (BN 18; EN 29).

Another issue that arises with the way Sartre introduces his monistic view of phenomenon is that he seems to waver between the claim that the essence is given through the appearances and the claim that the essence is an appearance. The latter view seems the natural successor of Sartre’s earlier discussions of perceptual objects as made out of the totality of their manifestations: “the object itself is the synthesis of all [its] appearances” (IPPI 8). However, that approach is quite problematic. First, it renders everything, even ordinary middle-sized material objects, as being forever beyond our grasp; if an object really were the synthesis of all its appearances to all possible observers occupying all possible points of view, then we would never be able to see, for example, a coffee cup as what it is. The problem with that approach is not that we cannot in principle see a cup from all possible viewpoints in the universe (that is of course true), but that unless we are able to do so we do not (and we should not) try to tell whether what we see is a cup or not: and that, to say the least, is a highly counter-intuitive conclusion.²

Second, that approach appears now to be resisted by Sartre himself. He writes that a physical reality is the synthetic unity of its manifestations, and that that unity is not the mere sum of all possible appearances, but a series governed by a “law”, or a “principle”, awareness of which equips us with the ability to know what an object is. That “law”, or “principle”, is that in virtue of which something is (appearing to be as) what it is and, in that sense, marks the essence of the perceived object (BN 2; EN 12).³

The new approach conceives of essence as different from, yet intimately related to, the appearances of a concrete object. However, in the same section Sartre also states that essence “is the concatenation of appearances; that is, itself an appearance” (BN 2; EN 12). If the claim simply reiterates the view that an appearance of the object shows the object itself, then it is consistent with the rest of the Sartrean doctrines. However, if the claim entails that the essence is one among the various aspects, sides or qualities of the object manifested in perception, then it is not clear to me that the claim coheres with Sartre’s considered views on this matter. One way to achieve that coherence would be to think of “appearance” as a generic term for anything that stands before, or presents itself to, consciousness. Thus, a being manifests itself, through its various aspects, to our sense perception, while its essence appears to our intuition, understood as the activity in which an intentional object (be it abstract or concrete) is itself presented to consciousness. Sartre, in other words, is happy to subscribe to the possibility of Wesenschau, of the intuition of essence (BN 2; EN 12).⁴

In an important paragraph, Sartre notes that the appearing qualities of an object imply its essence, in the same way that “a sign implies its meaning” (BN 5; EN 15). Sartre is rather cryptic on the exact sense of “meaning” involved in this passage, but I suggest that we reconstruct his reasoning as follows. By showing (an aspect of) the object, each appearance reveals (part of the story of) what the object is. An appearance is a moment of an organized whole that presents itself to the subject as a particular kind of object, for example a coffee cup. However, that something is presented as a cup (as opposed to as a saucer or as a mug) depends on the subject’s ability to see the series of appearances as appearances of the kind of object we think of as “cup”. The appearances of the object point the subject in the direction of apprehending that object as being the particular object it is, that is, a cup. The appearances of the object refer (the subject) to the essence of the object. The essence is given to the subject through perception, in that from the appearances of the object the subject can determine what the essence of that object is. We can still talk of the “intuition of the essences” (BN 2; EN 12), albeit as an act grounded on the perception of the facing sides, aspects and qualities of the object, rather as an immediate perceptual grasp of the principle that unifies the appearances into one particular series. Indeed, it is not clear how a principle can be an object of perception, and Sartre does not provide a defence of such a claim. What he writes instead is that out of the qualities distinguished in the perceived object the subject may proceed to “determine an essence which [those qualities] imply” (BN 5; EN 15). Hence, the essence is not among the appearing sides or perceived qualities of the object but something implied by them. Admittedly, that implication does not constitute a passage from one kind of substance to another. Essence is not some other substance set beside or inside the perceived object. There is only one substance under consideration, namely the particular entity whose appearances “disclose” its essence as the “principle” of their series: or, in our terms, as that in virtue of which the object is the way it manifests itself as being.

We shall revisit the issue of essence later in the chapter. For the time being it suffices to bear in mind Sartre’s fundamental commitment to the view that an appearance is not a substitute for a being, but the being itself appearing to us. Sartre employs the term “phenomenon” to capture the double character of appearance as both relative to a subject to whom it appears, and absolute in its appearance, since what a phenomenon is showing is not something beyond or behind it, but the being itself: “a phenomenon is … absolutely indicative of itself” (BN 2; EN 12).

We might think at this stage that an appeal to phenomena should enable us to build a secure ontological theory that would deliver us from the problems besetting dualism. Sartre, however, goes on to raise some doubts about the success of that project. He shows that dualism dies hard; a doctrine that we seem to have left behind us in metaphysics is to make a comeback in the analysis of experience. Let us look at how Sartre argues for that view.

III

The perception of an object by a subject takes place at a particular point in space and time. In principle, as in practice, the same object can be perceived by the same subject from a different distance, or from a different angle, or at different times. The same applies for any point in time and space from which the object can be perceived by a ny subject suitably equipped by the relevant sense faculties. Each instance of perceiving an aspect of the object is finite, experienced by a particular subject at a specific spatiotemporal point; yet the very fact of perceiving an object implies the existence of a multiplicity of perceptual takes on that thing by the same or by other subjects, from that or different standpoints. Hence, the finite experience of looking at a cup goes hand in hand with the possibility of an infinite number of different perceivings of that cup, some of which might of course be actual when other people look simultaneously at different aspects of the cup, or when the same subject looks at the cup from a different angle, touches it in a different way, or hears the sound of its sides touched by a stirring teaspoon at different moments in time.

The duality of finite and infinite is not a contingent accompaniment of human experience; it constitutes one of its fundamental presuppositions. In ordinary circumstances, when I perceive a material object, for example a cup, I perceive it as real. The reality of that cup involves awareness that the cup “is there”, and that “it is not me”. How should we interpret the latter claim? By stating that how the object is, and has been, does not depend on what I think, fancy or dream about it. Even though the appearing cup is “relative to” me as a perceiver while one of its numerous aspects appears to me, the sequence of appearances of that cup is subject to a number of factors (such as the cup’s material constitution and the role of physical, chemical, gravitational and other forces that determine the object’s history), none of which “depends on my whim” (BN 2; EN 13). This point is not offered as a conclusion of a scientific theory, and does not require that the subject believes, or even that she is aware of, any such theory. Sartre’s point is made exclusively on phenomenological grounds: what the cup I see looks like now is not experienced by me as being dependent on my likes or dislikes.⁵ This important claim can be explored in a variety of ways. What is relevant for the present discussion is that the independence from the subject of the grounds that determine how something (is and, thus, how it) appears to the subject, implies that a finite perception of an aspect of the object from a particular spatiotemporal standpoint cannot fix the past, present and future appearances of the object whose number extends to infinity.

To appreciate the force of the above considerations, try to abstract from an actual perception of a cup and think of an appearance frozen in time: a complex of shapes and colours that now fills your visual field. If that appearance is to be anything more than a subjective plenitude in which your being is fully absorbed, your experience should move beyond the instantaneous presence of shapes and colours towards all those moments that make up the series of the cup’s manifestations. To put it differently, if your finite experience is to be a perception of a transcendent natural object (i.e. an object that is encountered rather than made up by the experience), your experience has to transcend itself towards the series of appearances of that object at any one time and through time.

The appeal to phenomena enabled contemporary philosophy to shed away the metaphysical dualism of what is actually presenting itself to a subject and what is supposedly lurking behind the appearances as a mysterious power with the potential to run the life of a phenomenon behind the scenes. There are no real yet unrealized entities: everything there is, is actual.⁶ However, the dualism of finite and infinite in the experience of objects brings with it a new version of traditional ontological distinctions. The object appears itself in each appearance as you are looking at a particular aspect of it from a particular point in space and time. Yet that appearance does not exhaust what the object is. To find that out you would have to grasp at once the total series of the object’s appearances; but no experience can present to you simultaneously all aspects of an object for all possible manifestations of that object in time. What the object really is (its essence) lies constantly outside any one instant where the object presents itself to you (in its appearance). Hence, we recover a dualism of the particular appearance, as opposed to the total series of appearances that is already there, in each appearance, as the potentiality of transcending that appearance towards the total series of the manifestations of that object, that is, of the object’s essence.

The interpretation of essence as the “principle” or “law” or “reason” of the series of manifestations of a being seems to limit, without however eliminating, the problem. A basic characteristic of imagined, or simply thought-of, objects is that they can be intuited for what they truly are with one mental act. To think of a cube, for instance, is to think of something defined by certain geometrical relations, but to acquire knowledge of a particular square object, on the other hand, we have – literally, no less than metaphorically – to make the tour of it: knowledge of its shape, size, colours or physical behaviour unfolds as we approach, handle and perceive that object in its different aspects from different perspectives. Hence, to know the principle that unifies the object we have to take on board a series of appearances so as to discover how and why the appearances form the particular series. Even if that series need not run to infinity, it might still extend beyond the finite takes on the object available to a particular subject. We are thus faced with a new version of the oppositions between the inside (the aspect in which the object is given) and the outside (the total series of the object’s manifestations is not, and cannot, appear in any one aspect): of the actuality (of each one occurring manifestation) and the potentiality (of the infinite series of possible appearances); of essence (as the principle that governs a potentially infinite number of appearings) and appearance (as the, variously limited, single manifestation of the object).

We might expect, now, that Sartre will move the dialectic forwards by explicating the philosophical significance of the recurrence of the above oppositions. At a minimum, we would like Sartre to provide a clear yes or no to the question with which he opened the “Introduction”: has modern thought’s attempt to overcome a certain number of dualisms been successful? Instead, Sartre cuts that discussion short, and switches to another major issue concerning “the being of appearing”. We shall see in a moment what that issue is. Let me suggest that the answer implied by Sartre’s discussion is in the negative: modern philosophy has not succeeded in explaining away those oppositions. Their reappearance is indicative of the ineliminability of the distinction between inside and outside, potency and actuality, essence and appearance. Hence, a monistic worldview has to accommodate those oppositions, and to illuminate their role for human experience, instead of trying to ignore them.

A few pages into the book, Sartre has – in my view – achieved some preliminary, yet very important, results. He has shown that a correct understanding of phenomena presents us with direct access to how things are, without, though, eliminating a number of fundamental distinctions that inform our experience of reality. We have addressed how these distinctions relate a thing’s essence. However, there we now need to examine the issue of “the being of” an object: not what it is, or why it is as it is, but the very fact that it is. In other words we have to talk about existence.⁷

“Being” has acquired a lofty status in theoretical debates, but in ordinary discourse the word is used as the present-tense participle of the verb “to be”: “being on holiday” means that one is on holiday, and “being around” means that one is around. If we remove the adjectives from the previous phrases, we are left with the meaning of “being” as “existing”. Adding the definite article “the” to the participle “being” turns the latter into a noun that can refer to the existence of something. “The being of a phenomenon” can refer to what a phenomenon is, or to the fact that a phenomenon exists. Sartre poses a preliminary question for his ontology, which exploits the meaning of “being” in a fruitful way; he enquires whether the being of phenomenon is the same as the phenomenon of being (BN 4; EN 14).

To answer that question properly, we need to understand first what it means. The “phenomenon of being” refers to the appearance of being to us, and, thus, to our experience of being, or, in other words, to our experience of existence. Existence appears to us, in the sense that we have an awareness of it that enables us to think or talk about it. That awareness does not necessarily amount to knowledge. Indeed, Sartre affirms that the ordinary awareness of existence is very different from the construction of theories, or the forming of judgements, about existence. What matters for Sartre, at this point, is the ordinary pre-reflective apprehension of existence: that is, the subjective pole of the appearance of existence. The “phenomenon of being” is the event whereby being, in the sense of existing, appears to us.

The “being of the phenomenon”, on the other hand, concerns what a phenomenon is. What defines something as a phenomenon is that it appears itself to a subject. The appearing of the object is what is essential about that object as a phenomenon. Hence, the initial way to understand Sartre’s question is as asking whether all there is to the existence of objects is that those objects appear to us. And his answer is a resounding no. The being of particular objects – their existing – is not equivalent to the fact that they appear to us – their being phenomena. Sartre employs the term “transphenomenal” in order to express the fact that being of an object is not exhausted in its appearing, and thus, that it “transcends” the “phenomenal”.

Traditionally, philosophers would jump from a claim of non-coincidence between existence and appearance to a doctrine of radical separation of things as they appear to our senses from things as they really are. Sartre’s move is very different. It is because he believes that a phenomenon is the object appearing itself for what it is that he denies that existence reveals itself as one among the object’s features. Try to consider the opposite view that, pace Sartre, existence could appear as one among the features of the object, for example as a quality, a part, a relation or a signification of the object. Existence is not a perceptible quality of the object next to its size or volume: to be sure, if a chest of drawers exists, it exists as an object of a certain height, depth, weight or colour and its existence is the existence of all those qualities equally. However, existence is not among the dimensions of the object but a presupposition for the object having any dimensions in the first place. Existence is not a part that belongs to, or is possessed by, the object: it is not like one of the drawers that belongs to a piece of furniture. And to be informed that there is a chest of drawers next door is not like being told that a chest of drawers that had three drawers has now acquired a fourth. Existence is not, cannot be reduced to, a relation of the object to something else. It might be true of an existing object that is a certain distance from the door and adjacent to the wall. However, it is because it exists that it lies, for example, half a metre from the door, and not because there is a “half a metre distance” from the door that an object exists. Finally, Sartre asserts that existence is not something “signified” by the object. We may interpret that claim as pointing to a sharp distinction between the existential and the predicative senses of the verb “to be”. Sartre rejects the view that the existential sense of “being” can be reduced to a predicative sense, because for any predicate chosen its opposite is equally implying existence, rather than the opposite of existence. Sartre considers and rejects the (seemingly plausible, but ultimately misleading) identification of “being” with “presence”, on the grounds that “absence” is equally revealing of the object’s existence (BN 5; EN 15); learning that Peter is absent from the meeting does not entail that there is no such being as Peter, since you cannot “be absent” without “being” in the first place. One might retort that, regarding existence, “absence” is on a par with “presence” only if the absent entity is present somewhere else; one might thus claim that to exist is just to be present somewhere. In response, we should accept the claim that, in certain contexts, “being” and “being present” are coextensive. However, even if that claim were correct, the objection takes things the wrong way round: something is (present) at a particular place because (among other things) it exists, but it does not exist because it is (present) in that particular place.⁸

There is a further way, though, to interpret the Sartrean statement that “the [perceived] object does not refer to being as to a signification” (BN 5; EN 15). A signification is what is signified, or meant by an object. But an object cannot mean or signify its existence, since it would be futile to address myself to the object in order to apprehend its being.⁹ The Sartrean approach to this issue is markedly different from an ontological project that would purport to effect a revelation of being by interrogating the existence of particular objects by positing, for instance, about a coffee cup, the question of what it means to exist.¹⁰ The phenomenological problem with such a project is twofold. First, the moment we focus on what it is (or even, on what it means) to be, the concrete object vanishes from view, swallowed by the overarching puzzle of the meaning of “the being of beings”. Thus, contrary to its proclaimed method, that approach undermines the primacy of the phenomenology of the experience of concrete objects, for an intellectualist, or, at least, reflective apprehension of existence that should allegedly ground our ordinary awareness of existents. Second, by positing being as something revealed to us, our relation to it becomes subject to the rules pertaining to the experience of phenomena. Hence, being is rendered to an appearance that “as such, needs in turn a being on the basis of which it can reveal itself” (BN 5; EN 15).¹¹

All in all, existence does not appear as a quality, a possession or a signification of the object. Should we, then, conclude that existence is hidden by the object? Sartre says not: the object does not hide existence, “for it would be futile to try to push aside certain qualities of the existent” in order to find the existence behind them (BN 5; EN 15). Furthermore, Sartre affirms that there is something that the object signifies, but this is not its “being” in the sense of its existence, but its “being” in the sense of (that in virtue of which the object is) “what it is”: the object points to its essence as the “meaning” of its various manifestations.

We are thus faced with the following puzzle. We are aware of existence (there is a phenomenon of being), yet the objects we encounter manifest to us what they are, but not that they are (they do not refer to their existence in the way they refer to their essence). For Sartre, the solution to the puzzle lies in the fact that existence is not an item revealed by the object, but the condition of the revelation of the object (BN 5; EN 15). The key to that solution is offered by the contrast drawn between conceptual understanding, on the hand, and immediate access, on the other. Conceptual understanding aspires to knowledge of what something really is: it focuses on the various aspects, properties or relations of the object, and it purports to identify, explain and characterize an object for what it is – its essence. Existence, on the other hand, appears to us without conceptual intermediaries, as it can make its presence felt directly, in moments of boredom (ennui) or nausea. The narration of how the world is lived by the subject in those moments becomes an important part of ontological enquiry; and, as we know, such a narration has been undertaken by Sartre in the form of the novel – the only discursive form that can do justice to the elusive yet overwhelming character of the relevant experiences (BN 4; EN 14).

It appears to me that, despite its undeniable appeal, the above analysis bequeaths to Sartrean ontology a few problems. A first problem concerns the notion of being as the “condition of every revelation”. Conditions, in contrast to the phenomenon or the event that they condition, are not immediately available to the perceiving subject; rather, they need to be somehow extracted, or inferred, through appropriate analysis of the phenomenon that they make possible. One problem, therefore, is how this inferential status of being is related to the alleged immediacy of the experience of being that we noted at the end of the previous section. Furthermore, given Sartre’s well-motivated preference for thinking of conditions as “transcendental”, it becomes even harder to see how being as the “condition of every revelation” can be offered to the “revealing intuition of the phenomenon of being” (BN 5; EN 15). A transcendental condition is just not the kind of thing that can be the object of immediate, lived experience, not least because, as Sartre himself had convincingly shown in The Transcendence of the Ego, a transcendental condition is not a thing (TE 2–3).

The need to address the above worry might partly explain an otherwise arbitrary move in Sartre’s argumentation. In the paragraph where he talks about being as the condition of every revelation, Sartre notes that as soon as I pass beyond a particular entity toward its being, being becomes “an appearance which as such, needs in turn a being on the basis of which it can reveal itself” (BN 5; EN 15). That claim might sound right, but Sartre offers here no reason in its support. What makes the appearing of being (in the sense of existence) dependent on a being (an existent)?

A similar move occurs later in the chapter where Sartre affirms that securing the being of any attitude requires that we ground that attitude on a being; he writes, for instance, that “the known [should refer us] to the knowledge and knowledge to the being that knows” (BN 7; EN 17). Once more, I believe Sartre to be right on this point, but his being right does not release him from the obligation to argue for it. The question is: why is connaître dependent on un être connaissant? What makes an activity or a process dependent on a being, that is, on something that belongs to a different ontological category? And, more generally but closer to our concerns: why is être dependent for its revelation on un être?

The paragraph in which the above phrases appear comes from the final section of the “Introduction”, entitled “The Being-in-itself”. Sartre employs that expression by way of contrast to the mode of being that is necessarily and wholly presence to itself, called “being-for-itself”, that is the mode of being of consciousness.¹³ Recall consciousness’s “duty” to be a “revealing revealed”: revealed to itself as the revealing intuition of the appearing objects (BN 9).¹⁴ On the contrary, the being of object is open neither to itself nor to consciousness; at least, it is not wholly available to consciousness, even while the object manifests itself in its perceptible aspects (BN 18).¹⁵ The being of that which appears is not exhausted in its appearing. The being of a phenomenon (of an object in its appearing) is “transphenomenal”: it transcends the phenomenal condition, because “it does not exist only in so far as it appears” (BN 18; EN 29).

Given the contrastive way in which the notion of being-in-itself is introduced, it is common for most scholars to proceed with their interpretation by focusing on the particulars of the distinction drawn by Sartre between being-in-itself and being-for-itself. Weighing the pros and cons of the wealth of interpretations offered for the final section of the “Introduction” eventually requires debating on the argumentative coherence of Being and Nothingness, and that is beyond the scope of this chapter.¹⁶

Instead, I should like to close this discussion by addressing an issue that somehow precedes that of assessing the exact relation between being-in-itself and being-for-itself. The issue is rather simple but, to my mind, quite puzzling: what could a mode of being possibly be?

Before we venture an answer, it is important to appreciate the source of the puzzle. The expression “modes of being” purports to signify different ways of existing. Sartre asserts that there are two major ways of existing. What he fails to explicate is how existence can come in different ways, or manners, or modes. Perhaps Sartre felt no need to proffer such an explication, given that the doctrine of the multiplicity of modes of being is shared by a few major philosophers of the recent and the distant past, including some who had a significant presence in his thinking. However, that explication is, I think, outstanding, since the doctrine in question is, to my mind, false. Moreover, it is false for reasons that can be derived from Sartre’s own discussion. Let me explain.

To be is to exist. To claim of a table (or a concept, or a flying horse), that it is, is to claim of it that it exists (cf. “être (existentia)” [EN 21]). For Sartre, everything that is, “even as unreal it must exist” (BN 15).¹⁷ A particular table (or concept, or flying horse) does not exist “a little”, or “a lot” (existence is not a matter of quantity), nor “weakly” or “forcefully” (existence is not a matter of intensity): it either exists or it does not. Existence, as we have also seen, is not a quality, a part, a relation or a signification of the object (see BN 5). Most importantly, though, existence is not some kind of activity, something performed by an existent; but if it is not an activity, then it cannot enjoy a way, or a mode, or a manner in which it is supposedly performed. Indeed, existence is not any kind of event (a particular, datable occurrence consisting in changes in the properties or relations of a persisting existent); but if it is not an event it cannot enjoy a way, or a mode, or a manner in which it supposedly unfolds.¹⁸

I would suggest that talk of “ways, modes or manners of being” is something Sartre uncritically, but to my mind unnecessarily, inherited from philosophers he justly admired. His luminous discussion of being and of nothingness can proceed without a commitment to those particular turns of phrase. Moreover, Sartre’s alternative phrase of “regions of being” is more apposite, involves him in fewer conceptual problems, and is in harmony with his commitment to a notion of being as such, of “being in general” (BN 23; EN 33). However, we shall not pursue any of those constructive (a kinder word than “revisionary”) ideas here. Instead, it might be of more benefit to the reader to try to identify some possible objections to my interpretation.

I can think of three main challenges to my critique. The first is: granted, existence is not an activity – but it can be some kind of passivity which characterizes essentially being in itself. The response to that objection can be found in Sartre’s own masterful argumentation for the claim that the notion of passivity is misapplied not just to perceiving consciousness, but also, and primarily, to the being of the objects perceived (BN 13–15; EN 24–6). In a nutshell, Sartre’s point is that passivity requires the form of contact that enables the being of the item at the receiving end to be affected by the being of the item at the active end; but no such form of contact is available among a thing and the no-thing that consciousness is: “The perceived thing is in front of consciousness; consciousness cannot reach it, and it can not enter into consciousness; and as the perceived being is cut off from consciousness, it exists cut off from its own existence” (BN 15; EN 26).

The second objection is: being-for-itself is constantly engaging in a number of activities, such as negating, perceiving, imagining, thinking, nihilating and so on. Consciousness, after all, is necessarily always consciousness of something, and it would cease to exist the moment it stopped engaging in some form of intentional activity. Thus, when it comes to the being-for-itself of consciousness, it is all too reasonable to talk about modes, or ways, or manners.

In a sense, all those claims are correct, but they are beside the point. Sartre believes that a consciousness deprived of intentionality is an impossibility, and, hence, a consciousness that would cease intending anything would cease to exist. But he does not assert that among the various intentional activities in which consciousness engages is that of existing! I think that the closest he comes to considering that issue in the “Introduction”’ is in his discussion of the determination of consciousness by itself. Yet, even there he warns that such “self-determination” should not be mistaken for some kind of act or event, through which consciousness somehow is bringing itself into existence: “This determination of consciousness by itself must not be conceived as a genesis, as a becoming, … as an act” (BN 11; EN 21–2). To put the point in simpler terms, it might be true to claim of being-for-itself that it constantly does things, as it is true to assert that being-for-itself cannot do anything unless it exists; but that does not entail that one of the things it does is to exist.

A third objection would go as follows: talk of modes of being signifies a difference that pertains to what we might call the ontological order. All things are beings, but, depending on their ontological category, they enjoy or exemplify a different mode of being. Given the vast variety of things “on heaven and earth”, Sartre’s talk of different modes of being is a way to introduce the important distinction among things that are, things that subsist, and things that exist.

The response to that objection can be brief. Nowhere in the “Introduction” does Sartre draw such a distinction. There is nothing in his argumentation that invokes as a premise claims of the form “consciousness subsists, while what it is conscious of exists”, or “consciousness exists, while what its activity brings forth only is”, or, indeed, any claim that would employ such jargon. That is not a mere stylistic choice. Rather, it relates to Sartre’s conviction that it would be wrong to approach “the concrete, that is man within the world” (BN 27; EN 37–8) by assuming that any of its integral moments (e.g. the being-in-itself, the being-for-itself and the being-for-others), has lesser existence than the others.