I appreciate this series so much. It is SO helpful to listen to your lectures while reading the book. Thank you for putting in this work and allowing everyone to access it for free. You explain these concepts better than many professors I have had.
Merleau Ponty (M.P). states that our past is always with us. The only options we have are to accept or refuse to acknowledge this past. If we were to apply the same criteria to the future with the self same options of either acceptance or refusal to acknowledge this future, then the source of Sartre's 'Anguish' is the feeling of being torn between these two freedoms, the freedom to either accept or reject this past or future. Just an idea. Thank you, Nathan.
"Anguish as a mode of consciousness of annihilation" sometimes compared to an eyelash stuck in the eye, causing discomfort, as opposed to feeling of the same eyelash on a palm of one's hand (in the case of a person not sensitive to this constant change, which is a milder way to say "annihilation"). Some would say that even this is too much and nothing really came into existence, nothing being annihilated. It's a sort of a constant projection of space into space. Then the whole thing is promised to feel extremely sweet, smooth. It's from "Space, Time and Knowledge" by Thartang Tulku
So, Being can only be what Being is in relation to what it is not. Hence Non-Being is inherent in Being itself. A necessary relationship between Being And Nothingness in which we cannot have one without the other. Thank you, Nathan. Good to see you again.
Hi again, Frank. There is definitely a close relationship between being and nothingness. Don't forget though that being-in-itself for Sartre is independent _(Selbstandigkeit)_ in a way that being-for-itself isn't. Being-in-itself doesn't need the for-itself to exist - it just is what it is. But the opposite isn't true - being-for-itself needs the in-itself to exist, because the for-itself, on its own, is (literally) nothingness.
One of the things I took from this, is the idea that in a materialistic/predetermined universe, there would only be the affirmative; there would be no negation. Sartre, therefore, not believing in a predetermined/materialistic universe? Excuse my newbieness, I have never studied philosophy, and struggle to get my head around some of the very complex ideas!
Hey, thank you for making this incredibly difficult book significantly easier to chew on. Love & appreciate the videos. Maybe I'll make it to the end eventually... :)
Thanks a lot liam! I'm actually working on a series for Martin Heidegger's Being and Time at the moment which I hope to start uploading in a couple of weeks. Also... glad you like my accent :-)
Absolutely - cover to cover. Pretty much the same kind of thing I have done for B&N here. Btw - you're close but my accent is Kiwi - a rose by any other name...
Thanks for the great question. Sorry it’s taken me so long to reply. In reviewing my video, I see I may not have done a particularly good job explaining this. (As I recall, I was still struggling with this myself at the time.) The short answer to your question: Negation _is_ produced by the mind. So is nothingness. It’s just that nothingness is prior to negation. The long answer: Sartre notes we are surrounded by non-being. Although (1) Pierre’s absence from the café is ‘in my head’ as the result of an unrealised expectation (i.e. Pierre’s absence isn't a real event), (2) it’s not _just_ in my head (Pierre’s absence is a real, concrete event which haunts the café). (1) is a judgement. As such, it’s purely ‘mental’, lacking any concrete, real-world existence. Sartre calls this ‘negation’. (2), however, is a real event that is happening in the world, _my_ world. This is ‘nothingness’, the _experience_ of non-being. Sartre’s question in this section is; does negation come from nothingness, or does nothingness come from negation? In other words, which one is more foundational? So can nothingness come from being itself? No. This is impossible. If being is all there is, nothingness is an impossibility. Does it come from negation then? Is it just derivative of mental judgments, therefore not foundational? No again, because our experience of non-being isn’t confined to ‘mental’ or ‘analytic’ propositions. Human existence is “encompassed with nothingness”. Pierre’s absence isn’t just a mental judgement I overlay on a real café; rather, his absence is a real feature of the café. The café _is_ ‘the café from which Pierre is absent’. Does nothingness come from consciousness (the for-itself)? Yes. Somehow, in a world of pure being, consciousness manages to refuse being. Conclusion: Nothingness (or non-being) is a real, concrete feature in the world, and negation is derived from this as a kind of secondary feature. Basically, Sartre needs to show that nothingness is real or else his whole theory of the for-itself can be written off as an illusion, something that is just ‘in my head’; i.e. not real. Sorry for the long-winded explanation. Hope it helps though.
This is all based on the idea that if I am not conscious of something then it doesn't exist. If I am not conscious of the cafe then it isn't there. Because I am conscious of Pierre not being there, he exiists. I actually agree with this. If a tree falls in the forest and I don't see it then it never happened. Despite what I may BELIEVE, I do not KNOW. The important point here then proceeds to: am I only what I am conscious of? The answer is no because there is the 'transcendent' function, which allows us to transcend the tension between consciousness and being. That is how I see it so far. The question then becomes what enables us to transcend this tension. I wonder what Sartre will use. Pierre haunts the cafe because his 'ghost' is there. He is not there in physical form but that other part of him is. Not spirit or soul. But ghost. Nietzsche talks about this. He also calls it the ghost of someone. Also it is also possible to go into the rituals of some South American tribes here, where they leave food for the people that are not there. There is a lot to this statement in terms of rituals / witch craft / magic or whatever you want to call it. I can buy 'secreting nothingness' but the view is limited. The unconscious still is not in the equation. We are not only consciously secreting nothingness. There is a lot more going on inside us. Additionally, just because we can secrete nothingness doesn't mean that we are free. I am not liking how Sartre concentrates on one aspect of the human psyche, creates a premise and then makes all these random jumps around the place. I think that 'motive' and 'drive' are the same thing. It seems like Sartre just made another big jump like 'we are above our motives'? Are we really? Because I think we just have to ask that gambler.. Actually, everything that makes us HUMAN is in those motives. Does he also think that we are above our emotions? I guess so. He basically thinks that we are above being human. That we are limitless in this realm of the all powerful consciousness. The exercise is an example of the weakness of consciousness. I am conscious of the motive yet I still fail to go for a run. So the conscious is not in control. The gambler isn't bound but anyone who argues that the gambler is free is making a mistake. This is like an argument against freedom..
Thanks Rob. I haven't made those notes available because they're very abbreviated. The longer summaries I prepare those notes from are all on my website though which you are more than welcome to download: www.absurdbeing.com
Remember that Sartre concluded in the prior chapter that Being itself (what I called 'ontological bedrock' in the last video) is comprised of two transphenomenal aspects - being-in-itself (or just 'being') and being-for-itself (which is actually non-being). Those two "Beings" in your question are actually different. The first one is being-in-itself, but the second one is Being _itself._
Hey! first of all thanks for making videos on this difficult book. You really worked hard for this. I am actually reading this book as well,just going to finish part 2. Would you please tell me how did you approach this book?
Hi Sajid - bit of a late reply. I only just saw your comment, but briefly, I read through the book once, slowly and carefully, underlining important passages. Then I went through it again, writing out my own summary, including as many quotes as I could. This took ages, but if I hadn't done this, I never could have made this series.
@@absurdbeing2219 I finished the book 20 days ago. After reading almost half of the book, it really became easier for me to finish the book comfortably and your videos made it much more easier to understand(i watched all the videos you made on this book). And i truly believe this book really deserves to be called a masterpiece. Besides,it influenced me to try Heidegger's Being and time(and gonna watch your videos on that as well). And thanks again for replying.
@@sajidahmed4332 Congratulations. Yes, definitely deserves its place in any list of essential philosophy reading, doesn't it. And Heidegger next... what can I say... that's exactly the existential trajectory I followed. Looking forward to seeing you over in the Heidegger playlist!
Hello 👋 loving your work so far! I’m fairly new to this philosophy train, but I’m enjoying the ride. Around the 40 minute mark you say something along the lines of “our prior decisions and our reasons for making them are always there, they never disappear, but they’re always surpassed by the fact that I am consciousness of them.” And you mention being consciousness of them a few other times after. Isn’t that what Sartre was trying to get away from in the intro? This Cartesian idea of being conscious of vs having consciousness of. Shouldn’t this be worded as “they’re surpassed by the fact that there is consciousness of them” instead of “I am consciousness of them”? If no, then I don’t understand the distinction between being conscious of something and being consciousness of something. Thank you for your work! 🙏
@@TheBeauyHome Hi, thanks. Welcome aboard, and great question. I think we might be circling the same insight from slightly diff semantic perspectives. If I clarify what I meant, I think it will clear it up. The Cartesian break here is from the notion that I am a pure, transcendent Mind-substance (the cogito) that _has_ psychic phenomena which are different from it. To say then that "I _have_ consciousness of X" is to see myself as a discrete entity over and above the 'consciousness of'; an entity that can _have_ or _possess_ psychic pheneomena that attach to it like incidental qualities or features. "There is consciousness of X" would be a depersonalisation of consciousness; as if consciousness existed detached from any specific individual's experience. What we normally say is "I am _conscious_ of X" which is also misleading in a Cartesian way because it again implies "I", as a separate Mind-substance, am different from the 'conscious of' experience. The change to "I am _consciousness_ of X" is meant to capture the idea that there is no transcendent, substantial "I" over and above the "consciousness of" experience. There is consciousness of X then, and I am that 'consciousness of', and nothing more besides.
@@absurdbeing2219 Oh okay, so the distinction of having or possessing psychic phenomena vs being the psychic phenomena, right? And to be clear, if someone says “I am conscious of X” would you say they are really saying “I have consciousness of X”? And by saying “I am consciousness of X” it eliminates the implication of this extra entity of “I” that is (in the Cartesian view) somehow removed from psychic phenomena?
Started to read the book again soon, listening to this first. Great work you’re doing! Have you read Nausea or No Exit/his other literary works? I just read Nausea and it was great.
Fantastic. Love hearing that people find these vids helpful! I have read _Nausea_ and _No Exit_ actually. I found those two works in particular to be good reads for showing aspects of Sartre's philosophy.
I appreciate this series so much. It is SO helpful to listen to your lectures while reading the book. Thank you for putting in this work and allowing everyone to access it for free. You explain these concepts better than many professors I have had.
Thanks a lot, Lila. Good to have you on board!
Merleau Ponty (M.P). states that our past is always with us. The only options we have are to accept or refuse to acknowledge this past. If we were to apply the same criteria to the future with the self same options of either acceptance or refusal to acknowledge this future, then the source of Sartre's 'Anguish' is the feeling of being torn between these two freedoms, the freedom to either accept or reject this past or future. Just an idea. Thank you, Nathan.
Hey! Really love the videos! Please complete your project, you're awesome and I'm learning!!
Hey - thanks Brtoitk! Great to hear my vid helps!
"Anguish as a mode of consciousness of annihilation" sometimes compared to an eyelash stuck in the eye, causing discomfort, as opposed to feeling of the same eyelash on a palm of one's hand (in the case of a person not sensitive to this constant change, which is a milder way to say "annihilation"). Some would say that even this is too much and nothing really came into existence, nothing being annihilated. It's a sort of a constant projection of space into space. Then the whole thing is promised to feel extremely sweet, smooth. It's from "Space, Time and Knowledge" by Thartang Tulku
I love this lecture series, I am watching these after every chapter and it really clarifies the text, thank you!
You're welcome. That is exactly how I imagined people using these videos!
So, Being can only be what Being is in relation to what it is not. Hence Non-Being is inherent in Being itself.
A necessary relationship between Being And Nothingness in which we cannot have one without the other. Thank you, Nathan. Good to see you again.
Hi again, Frank. There is definitely a close relationship between being and nothingness. Don't forget though that being-in-itself for Sartre is independent _(Selbstandigkeit)_ in a way that being-for-itself isn't. Being-in-itself doesn't need the for-itself to exist - it just is what it is. But the opposite isn't true - being-for-itself needs the in-itself to exist, because the for-itself, on its own, is (literally) nothingness.
@@absurdbeing2219 Nice. Thanks, Nathan. I'll keep watching to learn more. Again, thank you for doing this. Much appreciated.
One of the things I took from this, is the idea that in a materialistic/predetermined universe, there would only be the affirmative; there would be no negation. Sartre, therefore, not believing in a predetermined/materialistic universe?
Excuse my newbieness, I have never studied philosophy, and struggle to get my head around some of the very complex ideas!
No excuses necessary, and that is exactly right. Sartre most definitely does not believe in determinism or materialism.
@@absurdbeing2219 Thanks for the feedback. Great channel, looking forward to watching more of your videos.
Amazing! Your explanations are absolutely top-notch!
Thank you! Good luck with your reading.
The polo shirt is so hectic. Its almost a symbol of surrender. I don't believe meaning can be found from within a polo shirt. Good luck brother.
very helpful thank you for the explanations and insight!! made it much easier to comprehend
Thanks a lot Jayda. It's always encouraging to hear when people get something from these videos.
Thank you for this series... It's great! And the website is amazing!
Thanks again Atma! Glad you enjoy them. Good luck with the rest of B&N.
Hey, thank you for making this incredibly difficult book significantly easier to chew on. Love & appreciate the videos. Maybe I'll make it to the end eventually... :)
Hey Niels, thanks for tuning in and commenting! Keep at it. It's a tough read for sure but so worth it.
This was a great video. I had to watch it in sections to get the most out of it. Really enjoying being on the Sartre experience! haha
Brilliant! Thanks Moss. I like that - the Sartre Experience. If I should repackage these videos one day, that'll be what I call the set!
@@absurdbeing2219 Oh that is an awesome idea! glad you like the name. Great work on your channel. You are a great philosophy teacher. Moss
This helped me very much with my Philosophy class!!!!! super helpful
Awesome!! Thanks for the kind feedback, Jessica!
This is a very good explanation of some very difficult concepts.
Great stuff!
Cheers Dominic! B&N is certainly difficult but I rank it as one of the most insightful books into the human condition I have ever read.
Great videos very well done, nicely explained...brillo accent. Hope you will do more
Thanks a lot liam! I'm actually working on a series for Martin Heidegger's Being and Time at the moment which I hope to start uploading in a couple of weeks.
Also... glad you like my accent :-)
Thanks man, you are doing a great job on Sartre and I shall look forward to Heidegger's work.... will you do the whole work? I love the Aussie accent!
Absolutely - cover to cover. Pretty much the same kind of thing I have done for B&N here.
Btw - you're close but my accent is Kiwi - a rose by any other name...
Thanks for an insightful breakdown of an extremely hard read. Subscribed. Keep making videos!
Thanks for the words of encouragement! I'm working towards a series on later Heidegger; still very much in the research phase at the moment.
These videos saved my life. Thank you for your hard work and generosity for making them public!
Why can't negation be produced by the mind? I can't wrap my head around the concept.
Thanks for the great question. Sorry it’s taken me so long to reply. In reviewing my video, I see I may not have done a particularly good job explaining this. (As I recall, I was still struggling with this myself at the time.)
The short answer to your question: Negation _is_ produced by the mind. So is nothingness. It’s just that nothingness is prior to negation.
The long answer:
Sartre notes we are surrounded by non-being. Although (1) Pierre’s absence from the café is ‘in my head’ as the result of an unrealised expectation (i.e. Pierre’s absence isn't a real event), (2) it’s not _just_ in my head (Pierre’s absence is a real, concrete event which haunts the café).
(1) is a judgement. As such, it’s purely ‘mental’, lacking any concrete, real-world existence. Sartre calls this ‘negation’. (2), however, is a real event that is happening in the world, _my_ world. This is ‘nothingness’, the _experience_ of non-being.
Sartre’s question in this section is; does negation come from nothingness, or does nothingness come from negation? In other words, which one is more foundational?
So can nothingness come from being itself? No. This is impossible. If being is all there is, nothingness is an impossibility.
Does it come from negation then? Is it just derivative of mental judgments, therefore not foundational? No again, because our experience of non-being isn’t confined to ‘mental’ or ‘analytic’ propositions. Human existence is “encompassed with nothingness”. Pierre’s absence isn’t just a mental judgement I overlay on a real café; rather, his absence is a real feature of the café. The café _is_ ‘the café from which Pierre is absent’.
Does nothingness come from consciousness (the for-itself)? Yes. Somehow, in a world of pure being, consciousness manages to refuse being.
Conclusion: Nothingness (or non-being) is a real, concrete feature in the world, and negation is derived from this as a kind of secondary feature.
Basically, Sartre needs to show that nothingness is real or else his whole theory of the for-itself can be written off as an illusion, something that is just ‘in my head’; i.e. not real.
Sorry for the long-winded explanation. Hope it helps though.
Thank you for answering my question.
This is all based on the idea that if I am not conscious of something then it doesn't exist. If I am not conscious of the cafe then it isn't there. Because I am conscious of Pierre not being there, he exiists. I actually agree with this. If a tree falls in the forest and I don't see it then it never happened. Despite what I may BELIEVE, I do not KNOW. The important point here then proceeds to: am I only what I am conscious of? The answer is no because there is the 'transcendent' function, which allows us to transcend the tension between consciousness and being. That is how I see it so far.
The question then becomes what enables us to transcend this tension. I wonder what Sartre will use.
Pierre haunts the cafe because his 'ghost' is there. He is not there in physical form but that other part of him is. Not spirit or soul. But ghost. Nietzsche talks about this. He also calls it the ghost of someone. Also it is also possible to go into the rituals of some South American tribes here, where they leave food for the people that are not there. There is a lot to this statement in terms of rituals / witch craft / magic or whatever you want to call it.
I can buy 'secreting nothingness' but the view is limited. The unconscious still is not in the equation. We are not only consciously secreting nothingness. There is a lot more going on inside us. Additionally, just because we can secrete nothingness doesn't mean that we are free. I am not liking how Sartre concentrates on one aspect of the human psyche, creates a premise and then makes all these random jumps around the place.
I think that 'motive' and 'drive' are the same thing. It seems like Sartre just made another big jump like 'we are above our motives'? Are we really? Because I think we just have to ask that gambler.. Actually, everything that makes us HUMAN is in those motives. Does he also think that we are above our emotions? I guess so. He basically thinks that we are above being human. That we are limitless in this realm of the all powerful consciousness.
The exercise is an example of the weakness of consciousness. I am conscious of the motive yet I still fail to go for a run. So the conscious is not in control.
The gambler isn't bound but anyone who argues that the gambler is free is making a mistake. This is like an argument against freedom..
Excellent content! Do you offer the notes you're reading from?
Thanks Rob. I haven't made those notes available because they're very abbreviated. The longer summaries I prepare those notes from are all on my website though which you are more than welcome to download: www.absurdbeing.com
@@absurdbeing2219 thank you!
If Nothingness can't come from Being,how can it be consciousness, which is also Being?
Remember that Sartre concluded in the prior chapter that Being itself (what I called 'ontological bedrock' in the last video) is comprised of two transphenomenal aspects - being-in-itself (or just 'being') and being-for-itself (which is actually non-being). Those two "Beings" in your question are actually different. The first one is being-in-itself, but the second one is Being _itself._
Hello! Could u please add subs for this series of videos
Sorry. I have tried, but for some reason RUclips won't automatically generate subtitles for these videos.
Hey! first of all thanks for making videos on this difficult book. You really worked hard for this.
I am actually reading this book as well,just going to finish part 2. Would you please tell me how did you approach this book?
Hi Sajid - bit of a late reply. I only just saw your comment, but briefly, I read through the book once, slowly and carefully, underlining important passages. Then I went through it again, writing out my own summary, including as many quotes as I could. This took ages, but if I hadn't done this, I never could have made this series.
@@absurdbeing2219 I finished the book 20 days ago. After reading almost half of the book, it really became easier for me to finish the book comfortably and your videos made it much more easier to understand(i watched all the videos you made on this book). And i truly believe this book really deserves to be called a masterpiece. Besides,it influenced me to try Heidegger's Being and time(and gonna watch your videos on that as well).
And thanks again for replying.
@@sajidahmed4332 Congratulations. Yes, definitely deserves its place in any list of essential philosophy reading, doesn't it.
And Heidegger next... what can I say... that's exactly the existential trajectory I followed. Looking forward to seeing you over in the Heidegger playlist!
Hello 👋 loving your work so far! I’m fairly new to this philosophy train, but I’m enjoying the ride.
Around the 40 minute mark you say something along the lines of “our prior decisions and our reasons for making them are always there, they never disappear, but they’re always surpassed by the fact that I am consciousness of them.” And you mention being consciousness of them a few other times after.
Isn’t that what Sartre was trying to get away from in the intro? This Cartesian idea of being conscious of vs having consciousness of. Shouldn’t this be worded as “they’re surpassed by the fact that there is consciousness of them” instead of “I am consciousness of them”?
If no, then I don’t understand the distinction between being conscious of something and being consciousness of something.
Thank you for your work! 🙏
Or, I suppose, it could be worded as “by the fact that I have consciousness of them” vs “I am consciousness of them.”
@@TheBeauyHome Hi, thanks. Welcome aboard, and great question.
I think we might be circling the same insight from slightly diff semantic perspectives. If I clarify what I meant, I think it will clear it up.
The Cartesian break here is from the notion that I am a pure, transcendent Mind-substance (the cogito) that _has_ psychic phenomena which are different from it. To say then that "I _have_ consciousness of X" is to see myself as a discrete entity over and above the 'consciousness of'; an entity that can _have_ or _possess_ psychic pheneomena that attach to it like incidental qualities or features.
"There is consciousness of X" would be a depersonalisation of consciousness; as if consciousness existed detached from any specific individual's experience.
What we normally say is "I am _conscious_ of X" which is also misleading in a Cartesian way because it again implies "I", as a separate Mind-substance, am different from the 'conscious of' experience. The change to "I am _consciousness_ of X" is meant to capture the idea that there is no transcendent, substantial "I" over and above the "consciousness of" experience. There is consciousness of X then, and I am that 'consciousness of', and nothing more besides.
@@absurdbeing2219 Oh okay, so the distinction of having or possessing psychic phenomena vs being the psychic phenomena, right?
And to be clear, if someone says “I am conscious of X” would you say they are really saying “I have consciousness of X”?
And by saying “I am consciousness of X” it eliminates the implication of this extra entity of “I” that is (in the Cartesian view) somehow removed from psychic phenomena?
@@TheBeauyHome Exactly!
I hope you put a translation
Started to read the book again soon, listening to this first. Great work you’re doing! Have you read Nausea or No Exit/his other literary works? I just read Nausea and it was great.
Fantastic. Love hearing that people find these vids helpful!
I have read _Nausea_ and _No Exit_ actually. I found those two works in particular to be good reads for showing aspects of Sartre's philosophy.
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