Jean-Paul Sartre, L'Être et le néant [Being and Nothingness]

Roy Elveton (Carleton College)

Ed. by Gerhard P. Knapp, University of Utah
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.5.2.07: French Writing and Culture: Postwar and Contemporary, 1945-present.
Vol. editors: Kate Averis (University of Western Australia), Hugo Azerad (University of Cambridge), Patrick ffrench (King's College London), Edward Forman (University of Bristol), Akane Kawakami (Birkbeck, University of London), Siobhán McIlvanney (King's College London), Sinan Richards (King's College London), Tim Unwin (University of Bristol), David Williams (University of Sheffield)

Domains

Philosophy (any)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1943

Places

France (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Treatise

Resources

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Sartre's

L' être et le néant

, a monumental work of twentieth-century philosophy, offers a sustained analysis of human existence. We begin the discussion of this text with a consideration of the primary philosophical sources that influenced Sartre's theory of human existence and freedom.

Sources

Being and Nothingness draws upon the dialectical method of G. W. F. Hegel, the phenomenological philosophy of Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger's Being and Time (1927). The very title Being and Nothingness recalls a central motif in Hegel's philosophy: Hegel argued that antithetically related concepts, such as being and nothingness, self and other, individual agency and society, could be defined only in reference to each other. A proper philosophical analysis of one concept would

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3351 words

Citation: Elveton, Roy. "L'Être et le néant". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 21 October 2005 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=11102, accessed 23 November 2024.]