A Commentary on Jean-Paul Sartre's "Being and Nothingness"

by Catalano, Joseph S.

• ISBN13: 9780226096995
• ISBN10: 0226096998
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1985-09-15
• Publisher: Univ of Chicago Pr

Summary

"[A Commentary on Jean-Paul Sartre's Being and Nothingness] represents, I believe, a very important beginning of a deservingly serious effort to make the whole of Being and Nothingness more readily understandable and readable. . . . In his systematic interpretations of Sartre's book, [Catalano] demonstrates a determination to confront many of the most demanding issues and concepts of Being and Nothingness. He does not shrink--as do so many interpreters of Sartre--from such issues as the varied meanings of 'being,' the meaning of 'internal negation' and 'absolute event,' the idiosyncratic senses of transcendence, the meaning of the 'upsurge' in its different contexts, what it means to say that we 'exist our body,' the connotation of such concepts as quality, quantity, potentiality, and instrumentality (in respect to Sartre's world of 'things'), or the origin of negation. . . . Catalano offers what is doubtless one of the most probing, original, and illuminating interpretations of Sartre's crucial concept of nothingness to appear in the Sartrean literature."--Ronald E. Santoni, International Philosophical Quarterly

Table of Contents

Preface to the Phoenix Edition	ix
Preface	xv
Acknowledgments	xvi
Background	1	(13)
The Title: Being and Nothingness	14	(1)
The Subtitle: An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology	15	(2)
The Introduction: The Pursuit of Being	17	(3)
The Phenomenon	20	(5)
The Phenomenon of Being and the Being of the Phenomenon	25	(5)
The Pre-Reflective Cogito and the Being of the Percipere	30	(5)
The Being of the Percipi	35	(4)
The Ontological Proof	39	(2)
Being-in-Itself	41	(8)
PART ONE: THE PROBLEM OF NOTHINGNESS	49	(44)
The Origin of Negation	53	(25)
The Question	53	(2)
Negations	55	(3)
The Dialectical Concept of Nothingness	58	(3)
The Phenomenological Concept of Nothingness	61	(2)
The Origin of Nothingness	63	(15)
Bad Faith	78	(15)
Bad Faith and Falsehood	78	(3)
Patterns of Bad Faith	81	(5)
The ``Faith'' of Bad Faith	86	(7)
PART TWO: BEING-FOR-ITSELF	93	(56)
The Immediate Structures of the For-Itself	96	(15)
Presence to Self	96	(4)
The Facticity of the For-Itself	100	(3)
The For-Itself and the Being of Value	103	(3)
The For-Itself and the Being of Possibilities	106	(3)
The Self and the Circuit of Selfness	109	(2)
Temporality	111	(21)
Phenomenology of the three Temporal Dimensions	111	(8)
The Ontology of Temporality	119	(6)
Original Temporality and Psychic Temporality: Reflection	125	(7)
Transcendence	132	(17)
Knowledge as a type of Relation Between the For-Itself and the In-Itself	132	(3)
Determination as Negation	135	(2)
Quality and Quantity, Potentiality, Instrumentality	137	(6)
The Time of the World	143	(3)
Knowledge	146	(3)
PART THREE: BEING-FOR-OTHERS	149	(44)
The Existence of Others	152	(17)
The Problem	152	(3)
The Reef of Solipsism
Husserl, Hegel, Heidegger	155	(4)
The Look	159	(10)
The Body	169	(11)
The Body as Being-For-Itself: Facticity	170	(5)
The Body-For-Others	175	(2)
The Third Ontological Dimension of the Body	177	(3)
Concrete Relations with Others	180	(13)
First Attitude Toward Others: Love, Language, Masochism	181	(2)
Second Attitude Toward Others: Indifference, Desire, Hate, Sadism	183	(5)
``Being-With'' (Mitsein) and the ``We''	188	(5)
PART FOUR: HAVING, DOING, AND BEING	193	(32)
Being and Doing: Freedom	196	(18)
Freedom: The First Condition of Action	196	(7)
Freedom and Facticity: The Situation	203	(9)
Freedom and Responsibility	212	(2)
Doing and Having	214	(11)
Existential Psychoanalysis	214	(4)
``Doing'' and ``Having'': Possession	218	(4)
Quality As a Revelation of Being	222	(3)
CONCLUSION	225	(8)
In-Itself and For-Itself: Metaphysical Implications	227	(3)
Ethical Implications	230	(3)
Index	233