Licence Work

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Jean-Paul Sartre’s
Being and Nothingness

Course materials

Paul Vincent Spade
Indiana University

Copyright © 1996 by Paul Vincent Spade. All rights reserved. Permission is hereby granted to copy this
document in whole or in part for any purpose whatever, provided only that acknowledgment of copyright is
given.

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Copyright © 1996 by Paul Vincent Spade. All rights reserved.Permission is hereby granted to copy this
document in whole or in part for any purpose whatever, provided only that acknowledgment of copyright is
given.

3

Table of Contents
Books You Should Know About.......................................................................................... 4
Outline of Husserl’s The Idea ofPhenomenology............................................................... 8
Outline of Sartre’s “Existentialism Is A Humanism” ........................................................ 11
Notes on Sartre’s “Existentialism Is A Humanism” .......................................................... 12
Notes on Sartre’s The Transcendence of the Ego ............................................................. 31
Outline of Sartre’s “Introduction” to Beingand Nothingness (pp. 3–30)......................... 38
Outline of Being and Nothingness, Part I, Ch. 1: “The Origin of Negation” (pp.
35–85)................................................................................................................................ 47
A Passage from Henri Bergson’s Creative Evolution, Ch. 4............................................. 49
Outline of Being andNothingness, Part I, Ch. 2, “Bad Faith” (pp. 86–116).................... 50
Some Selections from Freud, Illustrating the Theory Sartre Rejects in Being and
Nothingness, Part I, Ch. 2 (“Bad Faith”) .......................................................................... 52
Outline of Being and Nothingness, Part II, Ch. 1: “The Immediate Structures of
the For-Itself” (pp.119–158)............................................................................................. 54
Outline of Being and Nothingness, Part III, Ch. 1: “The Existence of Others” (pp.
301–400)............................................................................................................................ 58
Outline of Being and Nothingness, Part IV, Ch. 2, Section 1: “Existential
Psychoanalysis” (pp.712–734) ......................................................................................... 65
Outline of Sartre’s Imagination: A Psychological Critique................................................ 67
Outline of Sartre’s The Emotions ...................................................................................... 72

Copyright © 1996 by Paul Vincent Spade. All rights reserved.Permission is hereby granted to copy this
document in whole or in part for any purpose whatever, provided only that acknowledgment of copyright is
given.

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Books You Should Know About
The following are thing you should know about. I have included the call numbers in the
Indiana University main library, for your convenience.
Anderson, Thomas C. The Foundation and Structure of SartreanEthics, Lawrence, Kansas: The Regents Press of Kansas, 1979. (B2430 .S34 A75) (An outstanding book! This is
one of the best things I’ve read so far on Sartre’s ethics. Clear and cogent. Also not the
end of the story.)
Barnes, Hazel Estella. An Existentialist Ethics, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1967. (B819
.B245) (Barnes is the translator of Being and Nothingness and of Search for a Method.)Beauvoir, Simone de. The Ethics of Ambiguity, Bernard Frechtman, tr., New York: The
Philosophical Library, 1949. (BJ1063 .B386) (A classic study of existentialist ethics.)
Caws, Peter. Sartre, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1979. (B2430 .S34 C38) (A volume in “The Arguments of the Philosophers” series. In my opinion, it’s not a very good
book. But it does have a useful first chapter, “A...