Nausea

In his famous lecture “Existentialism Is a Humanism,” Sartre defines existentialism:

What do we mean by saying that existence precedes essence? We mean that man first of all exists, encounters himself, surges up in the world—and defines himself afterwards. If man as the existentialist sees him is not definable, it is because to begin with he is nothing. He will not be anything until later, and then he will be what he makes of himself. Thus, there is no human nature, because there is no God to have a conception of it. Man simply is. Not that he is simply what he conceives himself to be, but he is what he wills, and as he conceives himself after already existing—as he wills to be after that leap towards existence. Man is nothing else but that which he makes of himself (Sartre, Jean-Paul. Existentialism Is a Humanism, translated by Carol Macomber, Yale University Press, 2007).

This is Sartre’s “first principle” of existentialism. For the existentialist, creatures and objects simply exist. Deciding that we, collectively, are humans is an essence that we place on our existence afterward. We are each subjective creatures that exist in the world individually first and as a collective group of humans second. For Sartre, the idea of a “human nature” is a wholly fictitious essence that restrains the radical freedom of our existence. Most of the time, we assume that essence is part of existence: Each of us carries around the essence of human nature, or each bird has the essence of bird-hood.

Nausea is a novel that explores Antoine’s experience of radical contingency—in the words of the essay above, the idea that “man simply is” or “to begin with he is nothing.” Sartre was heavily influenced by phenomenology and devoted much of the novel to phenomenological description of experience under the sign, or in the mood, of nausea—the famous passage about the tree roots in the park is the classic example. Antoine’s nausea recognizes that the relationship between essence and existence is the opposite of the traditional account: Sheer existence comes first, and essence comes afterward.

An important manifestation of this disconnect is in Antoine’s distrust in words that establish the meanings of things. Antoine believes that the color black, circles, and tree roots don’t truly exist (129). Things we call circles exist in the world, and things that are tree roots also exist, but the concepts and names do not exist: Sartre argues that the concept that links all things together called “circles” is a fiction of essence that intrudes on the existence of unrelated objects, and the same applies to tree roots or the color black. When Antoine realizes this, the categorization of objects stops working: He can no longer locate higher-level concepts in the objects he observes in the world (129). Each object is its own existence, free of any categorization or meaning. Antoine’s nausea is an anxiety over the relationship between meaning and the existence of objects and creatures.

In “Existentialism Is a Humanism,” Sartre calls existentialism the only “optimistic” theory that gives humans “dignity.” This dignity and optimism contradict Antoine’s experience, full of repulsive imagery and an inability to relate to other human beings. Antoine’s stumbling into nausea allows Sartre to explore the ramifications of developing into an authentic person. Antoine’s first contact with the nature of things is terrifying and isolating, segregating him from the rest of Bouville because he cannot relate to anybody else’s experiences any longer. Antoine struggles to accept responsibility for creating meaning in a meaningless world. The struggle is terrifying and isolating. Nausea is Sartre’s attempt to portray what it means to exist and to encounter the world before one has attained the optimism and dignity that Sartre asserts in “Existentialism Is a Humanism” is the outcome.