The Theatrics of Existence

As consciousness, we “are” nothingness. But now we need to stress another related point: since nothingness is nothing, consciousness cannot be self-sufficient and consequently has to borrow its being. It is a lack of being and needs to be supported by being, but must not sink back into it, for it would then lose the freedom that defines it. Needless to say, these notions remain problematic, and Sartre will seek to clarify them throughout Being and Nothingness. How is it possible to be and to be free? How can we remain in authenticity when we could be carried away by an ever-resurgent freedom, by the impression that we are absent from everything and that nothing binds us? This is basically the same problem as that concerning the presence of the object in the image, the enigma of presence in absence and of absence in presence. Since existence is, according to Sartre, constructed like an image, and since the imaginary is nothingness, Being and Nothingness proceeds inevitably towards a pessimistic conclusion, one that Sartre will later seek to overcome in the ethical thinking that is announced in Being and Nothingness, but which seems to have set out on the wrong track.