Yeah. Actually, what made him abandon his project was the thought, "The past does not exist." He was working from epistolary evidence to reconstruct a dead man's life. But he suddenly saw the evidence merely as stuff that exists here and now. Papers that a man had once made marks on, one by one, and leaned on to prevent from turning under his pen, were now nothing but a bunch of pages that he, Roquentin, now clasped in his hands. What had once been a man had become "nothing more than a little phosphate and calcium carbonate with salts and water." Only the present exists, and it is fading quickly. I should have returned to that issue of his transformation and connected it with the meaningless self-sufficiency of non-conscious things.
Glad you enjoyed it. I got Jeri to read the draft and point out anything that didn't make sense. By 2:00am I had finally worn her down.
One of the greatest disappointments in my education was that none of my teachers took Sartre's philosophy seriously. Heidegger was all the rage, but I still think there is a poignancy to Sartre's struggle with the human condition that other writers lack. All three times I read Being and Nothingness, I did so in defiance of my philosophical training.
You write that Roquentin has a major insight that leads him to abandon his biographical work and head for Paris. Presumably, that insight involves the disconnect between an individual's body and mind, and the disconnect between my mind and the mind of any other. Interesting that the novel ends with Roquentin's impression that he *has* a momentary connection to another's mind.
Thank you for making Nausea's abstruse subject matter and writing accessible to me. That's not an easy trick. I particularly like that you personalized your post by recounting your youthful resistance to social pressure and the existential lesson that set you on your way to be a philosopher. As long as there are human beings we will probably always wrestle with our enigmatic and inate mind and body dualism and futilely strive to join a transendent oneness with complete understanding. We cannot know the body without the mind and vice versa. Who says God doesn't have a sense of humor? It is what it is.
Yeah. Actually, what made him abandon his project was the thought, "The past does not exist." He was working from epistolary evidence to reconstruct a dead man's life. But he suddenly saw the evidence merely as stuff that exists here and now. Papers that a man had once made marks on, one by one, and leaned on to prevent from turning under his pen, were now nothing but a bunch of pages that he, Roquentin, now clasped in his hands. What had once been a man had become "nothing more than a little phosphate and calcium carbonate with salts and water." Only the present exists, and it is fading quickly. I should have returned to that issue of his transformation and connected it with the meaningless self-sufficiency of non-conscious things.
I look forward to your reading of Kafka as I'll be in Prague when you publish your insights. Perhaps the place will lend additional insight.
Glad you enjoyed it. I got Jeri to read the draft and point out anything that didn't make sense. By 2:00am I had finally worn her down.
One of the greatest disappointments in my education was that none of my teachers took Sartre's philosophy seriously. Heidegger was all the rage, but I still think there is a poignancy to Sartre's struggle with the human condition that other writers lack. All three times I read Being and Nothingness, I did so in defiance of my philosophical training.
You write that Roquentin has a major insight that leads him to abandon his biographical work and head for Paris. Presumably, that insight involves the disconnect between an individual's body and mind, and the disconnect between my mind and the mind of any other. Interesting that the novel ends with Roquentin's impression that he *has* a momentary connection to another's mind.
Thank you for making Nausea's abstruse subject matter and writing accessible to me. That's not an easy trick. I particularly like that you personalized your post by recounting your youthful resistance to social pressure and the existential lesson that set you on your way to be a philosopher. As long as there are human beings we will probably always wrestle with our enigmatic and inate mind and body dualism and futilely strive to join a transendent oneness with complete understanding. We cannot know the body without the mind and vice versa. Who says God doesn't have a sense of humor? It is what it is.