On Freedom and Death in Sartre’s Being and Nothingness

Jorge G. Arocha

"I am afraid that other people do not realize that the one aim of those who practice philosophy in the
proper manner is to practice for dying and death."
Plato, Phaedo, 64a

At the end of his masterpiece Being and nothingness Sartre says that:

“…to die is to be condemned no matter what ephemeral victory one has won over
the Other; even if one has made use of the Other to “sculpture one’s own statue”,
to die is to exist only through the Other, and to owe to him one’s meaning and the
very meaning of one’s victory.”1

Many things can come into our minds, but there are two specific ideas that immediately
appear to be important according to Sartre. First, it seems that when we cease our
existence our life becomes in the Other's life, therefor there is a certain contradiction
between us and the Other. And in second place, one is forced to think that death is not
part of our life as an important source of meaning. So, what should we understand as
death? Is it important for our lives in front of the Other or not? Does it have any
meaning, or it is simply something that does not belong to our experience as human
reality?

These are very general questions that cannot be answered briefly. Many thinkers have
talked or discussed about them, from general perspectives to more specific scopes.
Just to mention some, Socrates, Plato, Epicurus, Saint Augustine, Martin Heidegger,
Jean-Paul Sartre, Emmanuel Levinas or Jacques Derrida. Though, in the next pages it
is not my purpose to define what exactly death is. Instead, a less pretentious path is
taken. In order to do so, the sartrean notion of death is discussed.

1
Sartre, Jean-Paul, Being and Nothingness. Trans. Hazel Barnes. New York: Washington Square Press, 1972, p. 696.

1
Regarding this topic and according to Schumacher: “Sartre is the first well-known
philosopher who, while proposing an ontology different from Heidegger’s, elaborates his
own concept of death in contrast to Being-towards-death – which he describes in Being
and Nothingness as a “sleight of hand”.”2

Having said this, in the first part of this paper is presented in general terms what can be
understood as contemporary French philosophy as the immediate philosophical context
on which Jean-Paul Sartre will discuss. In the second section, the main ideas of Sartre’s
Being and nothingness are exposed. And finally, I would like to show the weakness of
the sartrean thesis that assume death is not a structure of the being for-itself. If that is
the case, it is established as a contradiction in his existentialist way of thinking due to
the very definition of freedom as absolute and in contradiction with the Other.

1. The moment of philosophical adventure

Philosophy today offers a diverse conceptual map where it is difficult to find a

categorical definition of subject, as it was a few centuries ago. Briefly outlined, this
concept was defined as an epistemological and methodological category during the
Modern Philosophy period, being expression of different processes, from the individual
will to the freedom of man, from the philosophical systems to the notion of God.
However, various changes since the nineteenth century caused this category to be
questioned. Transformations such as the development of the particular sciences, the
influence of critical works such as those of F. Nietzsche, K. Marx and S. Freud. The
rapid development of technique with the subsequent expansion of industry. The
increase of warlike, cultural and socio-economic conflicts as well as the emergence of
discourses defined as postmodern.
Thus, the twentieth century has more than one thinker known for his criticism to the
"subject" from the European classical modernity. On this specific character it would be

2
Schumacher, Bernard N. Death and Mortality in Contemporary Philosophy. Cambridge University Press: Kindle
Edition, 2010, p.91.

2
worth mentioning some examples: the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl, Martin
Heidegger with his criticism to the classical metaphysics or Jean-Paul Sartre with his
phenomenological ontology and his reflections on freedom.
Jean-Paul Sartre would be known for his extensive reflections on concepts such as
freedom, intellectual, anguish, existence, among others. From the French postwar
environment and even from the more general context of contemporary philosophy
Sartre is a complex exponent that synthesizes the spirit of a classical world with airs
closer to the human existence.
In his work, there is a very seductive mixture of political activism and literary creation,
ontology and ethics, novel and philosophical essay. And, finally, to this prolific career
the fact that he is a faithful exponent of his time is added. One can say that his freedom
has been created in the trenches of the postwar period together with the anguish and
his notion of intellectual.
In resume, one should believe, as Marcuse did, that the time in which Sartre emerged
was “that of the totalitarian terror: the Nazi regime is at the height of its power; France is
occupied by the German armies. The values and standards of the western civilization
are coordinated and superseded by the reality of the fascist system.”3
So, Sartre becomes an important piece in the XX century puzzle, being one of the few
that insisted in both, death and freedom. Especially due to his ethical and political
concern, derived from his ontological interpretation of the being for-itself in his major
work Being and nothingness.

Having said that, it is necessary first to define the specific context where his theoretical
conceptions were developed and where his methodological presuppositions were
created. That context was the contemporary French philosophy.
For Alain Badiou, this “French moment” begins with the work of Jean-Paul Sartre Being
and Nothingness (1943) and concludes with the text of Gilles Deleuze What is
philosophy? (1991). According to the same author this current started with a decisive

3
Marcuse, Hebert, “Existentialism: remarks on Jean Paul Sartre’s L’etre et le néant”, Phylosophy and
Phenomenological research, Vol. VIII, No.3, March, 1948, p. 309.

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methodological-conceptual split. The one that occurs between the metaphysics of Henri
L. Bergson and the epistemology of L. Brunschvicg. 4

Besides that, the most important Germans thinkers for this generation were Edmund
Husserl and Martin Heidegger. In the case of the first one, one is in front of the founder
of a new methodology that allows to speak and think in a different way of the relation
between the subject and the object.
Husserl stands that there is no subject separate from the object, an idea very common
among the most important representatives of the Modern period. Instead of that, and
briefly explained, Husserl thinks that the knowledge should take as reference his
concept of intentionality, that explains how the consciousness is in correlation with the
things, and how every consciousness is consciousness of something. In this instance
philosophy is far from a dualistic methodology or an epistemology inherited from
Descartes.
The second one –Heidegger-, due to his devastating criticism to the western
metaphysics states a set of differences that will influence in the French moment as a
response to the classical way of thinking. In Heidegger one can find the most complete
reflections on death at that moment, an effort to constitute an analysis about the being,
and finally an attempt to save the elements that had been stalled in the phenomenology.
Even the sartrean view on being and nothingness can be seen as a great discussion on
the same presuppositions of the German thinker.
In short, it can be easily argued that the French philosophical generation rethinks the
concern for the subject under the problematic double meaning that it entails. That is, the
subject as a concept and life, as freedom and necessity, as subject subjected and
autonomous subject. On this aspect, Alain Badiou stresses: “A first definition of the
French philosophical moment would therefore be in terms of the conflict over the human

4
In 1911, Bergson gave two lectures at Oxford, which appeared in his collection La pensée et le mouvement. In
1912, on the other hand, L. Brunschvicg published Les étapes de la philosophie mathématique. So, at the beginning
of the Great War, these interventions confirmed the existence of two completely different orientations within the
French context, defined by Badiou as a “philosophy of life”, in the case of the line that begins with Bergson, and a
“philosophy of the concept” with neo-Kantian orientation, for those who assumed Brunschvicg. This dialogue
between philosophy of life and philosophy of concept is a hallmark that will never be abandoned by later thinkers,
Sartre among them.

4
subject, since the fundamental issue at stake in this conflict is that of the relationship
between life and concept.”5

In the very definition of contemporary French philosophy there would be something

more to point out. First, the apparent philosophical production in French language; and
second, the geographical context that dictates certain issues by cultural and ideological
obligation. Although we can accept that, to some extent, the language is something that
unifies them, it is not a necessary condition, especially when the repercussion of this
movement has extended beyond the French borders towards Latin America, United
States and Asia.6
Finally, the contemporary French philosophy should be understood as more than a
generation of thinkers, as a general concern on modern themes that gravitate around
the problem of the legitimacy of the subject with the desire to free philosophy from the
modern and classical model of knowledge. Or in Badiou words: “Yet adventurers of the
concept might be a formula that could unite us all; and thus I would argue that what took
place in late 20th century France was ultimately a moment of philosophical adventure.”7
Thus, Sartre's philosophy is not aside from this context, defining not only what is well
known as existentialism, but also addressing in a new way the concept of freedom.

2. The ontological moment in Sartre’s philosophy

Now, it is important to clarify the character of the sartrean existentialism, which is not
purely ontological. On the contrary, it can be defined from the union of an ethical and an
ontological intention.
The ethical character is given by the recurring presence of the concept of freedom in all
his work, from Transcendence of the Ego to Critique of the Dialectic Reason. However,

5
Badiou, Alain, “The adventure of French Philosophy”, New Left Review, 35, sept-oct, 2005, p.69.
6
Just as an example of the above it can be mentioned the importance of the cultural studies, psychoanalysis,
anthropology and novel biopolitical approaches in Latin America where it is used the theoretical frameworks
extracted from the contemporary French philosophical context in order to rethink in a critical way the
contemporary societies.
7
Badiou, Ob. Cit. p. 77.

5
at the same time, as he has defined in Being and nothingness, freedom founds also the
ontological analysis on the being for-itself or the consciousness:
“Freedom is not a being; it is the being of man –i.e. his nothingness of being. If we
start by conceiving of man as a plenum, it is absurd to try and find in him
afterwards moments or psychic regions in which he would be free (…) Man cannot
be sometimes slave and sometimes free; he is wholly and forever or he is not free
at all.”8
After this, it is possible to enumerate and understand the fundamental elements of his
existentialism in order to understand the difference compared to other thinkers and his
alternative interpretation on death in Being and nothingness:
 Firstly, the pre-eminence of the existence over the essence.
 Secondly, that existence presupposes the notion of transcendence.
 Thirdly, the transcendence is identified with the freedom.
Having defined this, it is possible to outline three specific moments in his philosophical
thinking, namely: the ontological, the anthropological and the historical moments.
The first one is determined by his appropriation of Edmund Husserl's phenomenological
method, Martin Heidegger's ontology and various concerns that lie within the broad
spectrum of contemporary philosophical thought ranging from Nietzsche to Bergson,
though without ignoring Descartes, Kant, Hegel or Marx, just to cite a few examples. To
this moment belong works such as The Transcendence of the Ego (1938), The
Emotions. Outlines of a Theory (1939), The Psychology of Imagination (1940) and
Being and Nothingness (1943).
The second moment (the anthropological), is characterized by a less ontological
intention though freedom remains a central motif, now complemented with the
responsibility and his notion of intellectual. The essay Existentialism is a humanism
(1946) constitutes the fundamental work to understand the presence of freedom in this
stage and the concept of human reality.
Finally, taking the year 1960 as reference, his intellectual activity focuses on the Third
World, the decolonization, the Marxism, among other topics closer to more historical
and social themes. Belonging to this stage is the continuation of the essays published

8
Sartre, Jean-Paul, Being and Nothingness. Trans. Hazel Barnes. New York: Washington Square Press, 1972, p. 569.

6
under the title Situations from IV to X (1964-1976) and the philosophical text Critique of
Dialectical Reason (1960) with its introduction Search for a Method.
Here, humanism and responsibility are conjugated in an existentialism that seeks to be
more social and preoccupied with its historical background, which attempts to give an
outlet to the most political problems of the moment. In fact, according to Critique of
Dialectical Reason, existentialism will no longer be considered as a philosophy but
rather an ideology.
Thus, it is only in the first moment where can be found a profound reflection on death
and a relation between death and freedom. In this instance, one should go again to
Husserl and Heidegger in order to understand Sartre’s criticism to death.
In the case of Edmund Husserl, the concept of intentionality is very important. From the
very beginning of Being and nothingness Sartre emphasizes the outstanding role of this
concept, defining it as his “ontological proof”: “Consciousness is consciousness of
something. This means that transcendence is the constitutive structure of
consciousness; that is, that consciousness is born supported by a being which is not
itself. This is what we call the ontological proof.”9
As explained above, his existentialism is based on the reinterpretation of transcendence
and freedom. That means that further analysis on his work should follow the idea that
his ontology, close to Heidegger’s intention, will start expelling out all sort of content
from the consciousness. That is why: “The first procedure of a philosophy ought to be to
expel things from consciousness and to reestablish its true connection with the world, to
know that consciousness is a positional consciousness of the world.” 10
What he understood about Heidegger at that moment is unclear, however at least one
can say that his definition of human reality is close to Heidegger’s Dasein despite the
notable differences between both concepts.11 Like Heidegger, he also distinguished
ontology from metaphysics. And both of them, they use phenomenology as a
descriptive method in order to understand the being in-the-world or, in Sartre’s words,
the relation between the being in-itself and the for-itself.

9
Ibid., p.23.
10
Ibid., p. 11.
11
For more information about the difference between both concepts see Derrida, Jacques: “The Ends of Man” in
Margins of Philosophy.

7
Regarding this, The Transcendence of the Ego can be considered as an outset of Being
and nothingness. Since the very beginning, the title reveals a thinker who hope to
explain the transcendental character of consciousness and its implications in the
knowledge of the world and the Ego. The aim of this short essay is to demonstrate that “the
ego is neither formally nor materially in consciousness: it is outside, in the world. It is a being of
the world, like the ego of another”12
In the following pages he will explain his differences mostly with Husserl in order to
clarify his notion of Ego: “Like Husserl, we are persuaded that our psychic and psycho-
physical me is a transcendent object which must fall before the epojé. But we raise the
following question: is not this psychic and psycho-physical me enough? Need one
double it with a transcendental I, a structure of absolute consciousness?”13
Sartre will structure his initial criticism in two senses. First, he will address the formal
presence of the I in Husserl's phenomenology; and then, he will proceed to examine the
material presence of the same concept in psychology. These analyzes are followed by
his disquisitions on the Ego, its actions, states and qualities. Thus, the Ego will be, “the
unity of states and of actions —optionally, of qualities. It is the unity of transcendent
unities, and itself transcendent. It is a transcendent pole of synthetic unity, like the
object-pole of the unreflected attitude, except that this pole appears solely in the world
of reflection.”14
All this means for Sartre is that there is no unity as an essence that explains and
motivates the consciousness, its being is outside, with the world. In fact, he will consider
that this kind of transcendental I “is the death of the consciousness”, it is “opaque” and
without any sort of relation with the world. Moreover, the Ego (including both the I and
the me) is not in consciousness, which is utterly translucent, but in the world; and like
the world it is also the object of consciousness.
As a result of his analysis, one should think that Sartre’s words represent a step forward
because he found a way to refute the solipsism and the idealism in which can fall the
phenomenology in defending a personal I, internal and absolute. As he states,

12
Sartre, Jean-Paul, The transcendence of the Ego. Trans. Forrest Williams and Robert Kirkpatrick. New York: Hill
and Wang, 1991, p.31.
13
Ibid., p. 36.
14
Ibid., p. 61.

8
“phenomenologists have plunged man back into the world” but “as long as the / remains
a structure of absolute consciousness” phenomenology will continue being an “escapist
doctrine”, that is to say, not authentic.15
So, the thing is to make the me an existent “strictly contemporaneous with the world”.
More clear: “The World has not created the me: the me has not created the
World.”16And as a conclusion he says: “No more is needed in the way of a philosophical
foundation for an ethics and a politics which are absolutely positive.”17
However, defining an unstructured, unreflective and autonomous consciousness he
advanced also in the direction of reinforcing an ontological individualism that leads to a
moral abandon. Thus, the text introduces a contradiction that exceeds his intentions. In
attempting to ground the freedom of consciousness by defining an Ego that is devoid of
the transcendental I, he has introduced the possibility for an absolute freedom that is
not ethically functional. This problem, from this moment on, will be one of the most
controversial points of his existentialism, which at the same time inaugurates a new
scope on human reality that leaves the man alone in the world.

In the case of Being and nothingness he will start analyzing two distinct kinds of being:
the being in-itself (en-soi) and the being for-itself (pour-soi). The former, is understood
as the reality as such, as pure facticity, without relation to anything but himself. It is
incapable of action, something dense, compact, identical to itself, absolute. According to
his definition the being is; the being is in-itself; and is what it is. Thus, the immediate
conclusion is that we are not able to continue the ontological analysis of this sort of
being because we cannot say anything more than that.
Instead, Sartre postulates that the course of ontology must continue in the trajectory of
a type of being that has the capacity to address itself, and at the same time can open
itself to phenomena. This only happens with the for-itself.
How can we understand the relationship between being in-itself and being for-itself
without falling into the same errors posed by the realism and the idealism? In this
sense, Being and nothingness, Sartre's masterpiece, is nothing more than a

15
Ibid., p. 105.
16
Ibid., pp. 105-106.
17
Ibid., p. 106.

9
phenomenological examination of the various structures of knowledge, presupposing an
indestructible but simultaneously alienating relationship between consciousness (being
for-itself) and the world (being in-itself).
As the interrogation for the being is unbearable, the only possible way to describe the
relation between man and the world is to start with the simple inquire on our situation in-
the-world. That lead him to the idea that man, as a being-in-the-world, is already in a
certain position regarding the being. This stance is nothing more than the interrogation.
In the interrogation are taken for granted a being that interrogates and a being that is
interrogated. The questioner does so because he is in a position to know, or rather, to
want to know what he does not know. What is questioned, on the other hand, is also to
some extent a non-being, fundamentally because it has not yet been given in an
answer. This leads to the conclusion that the question itself is surrounded by negations.
In addition, the interrogation seeks a truth that discriminates eventually the rest of
possible answers. Therefore, to the above-mentioned negations another one is added
that implies the answer. This triple negation that surrounds every question about being,
represents in a certain way the nothingness that is in the heart of the being that
interrogates, that is, the consciousness.
As the being in it-self is full positivity cannot create nothingness outside of itself, and
“the Being by which Nothingness arrives in the world is a being such that in its Being,
the Nothingness of its Being is in question. The Being by which Nothingness comes to
the world must be its own Nothingness.”18
So, at the same time, this being appears as freedom. If man is able to inquire, to
assume the attitude of the question, his being must be such that he can put himself
outside of being. This placing of himself “outside of” the state of being and the casual
order of the world, is freedom.
As no essence defines man, the only way to understand him is through the nothingness:
“consciousness is not what it is and is what it is not”19. Without the consciousness,
according to Sartre, everything will fall into being in-itself, but due to its presences in the
world, everything comes to be in relation to consciousness.

18
Sartre, Jean-Paul, Being and Nothingness. Trans. Hazel Barnes. New York: Washington Square Press, 1972, pp.
57-58.
19
Ibid., p. 67.

10
At the same time, consciousness does not have any essence or “opaque” core as was
explained before, and the immediate conclusion is, the for-itself ought to be the only
possible being that freely introduces the difference into the world: “What we call
freedom is impossible to distinguish from the being of “human reality”. Man does not
exist first in order to be free subsequently; there is no difference between the being of
man and his being-free.”20
Moreover, by freedom the human reality is its own past and future in “the form of
nihilation”. As the for-itself introduces the nothingness into the world and does not have
any essence, no past facts or future intentions determine us to be what we are in the
world. But that, carries a new characteristic of the for-itself, concealed until now by the
ontological analysis. And it is the anguish, which “is the mode of being of freedom as
consciousness of being; it is in anguish that freedom is, in its being, in question for
itself.”21
Anguish means that man is always distant from his apparent essence. It also separates
us from our past and future, considered both as essence of our behavior, and this
because it reveals the very being of the man explained above as nothingness.
The other thing the man learns in his relation with the world, is how to avoid the
anguish, plungering himself into a world of bad faith (mauvaise foi), which is a flight from
our freedom in order to apprehend the self as “an Other” or as “a thing”. Instead of
maintaining a duality of being and non-being in the human reality as a synthesis, with
the bad faith, the man attempts to cancel the fundamental difference: that the
“consciousness is not what it is and is what it is not”. Thus:
“Bad faith seeks to flee the in-itself by means of the inner disintegration of my being.
But it denies this very disintegration as it denies that it is itself bad faith. Bad faith
seeks by means of “not-being-what-one-is” to escape from the in-itself which I am
not in the mode of being what one is not. It denies itself as bad faith and aims at the
in-itself which I am not in the mode of “not-being-what-one-is-not” …The origin of

20
Ibid., p. 60.
21
Ibid., p. 65.

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 this risk is the fact that the nature of consciousness simultaneously is to be what it is
not and not to be what it is.”22
Once he deduces the for-itself as the only being capable to be in relation with the world,
Sartre analyzes the different structures of the consciousness: the presence to self, the
facticity, the being of value, the being of possibilities and the Selfness.
In any case, one can see that in all these sections of this work the most important
element will be the freedom that we, human reality, are. As we are alone, nor God or
Reason justify our existence, we are able to go into the world, transform it and create it.
All the structures that characterize the for-itself will reinforce that interpretation of the
fundamental being.

Since the human reality is not identical to itself, it will be defined as well as a constant
presence to it-self. But also the values that we pretend are constant guides in our lives,
are a sort of being that, at the same time we desire them, they lack us. And they only
come into existence thanks to the human reality. In third place, the possible is the
absent for-itself which the for-itself lacks and desires as value in order to attempt to
constitute the self. And finally, the circuit of the selfness which is no more than the
complex of things, attitudes, actions, processes of the world united by my own
possibles: “The world is mine because it is haunted by possibles, and the
consciousness of each of these is a possible self-consciousness which I am; it is these
possibles as such which give the world its unity and its meaning as the world.” 23

Later on, he will analyze the relation between the for-itself and the temporality, and the
relation between the for-itself and the transcendence. The first one is only
understandable as an expression of the transcendence of the for-itself. In fact, past,
present and future, are not three different unities aside from the for-itself which
determines our existence. There is no such a thing like “a collection of “givens” for us to
sum”.24 There is no time as a substance behind our possibles or actions. Instead of

22
Ibid., p. 116.
23
Ibid., p. 158.
24
Ibid., p. 159.

12
that, the three of them are different ways to understand the same action toward world,
“as the structured moments of an original synthesis.”25

“Thus Temporality is not a universal time containing all beings and in particular
human realities. Neither is it a law of development which is imposed on being from
without. Nor is it being. But it is the intra-structure of the being which is its own
nihilation –that is, the mode of being peculiar to being-for-itself. The For-itself is the
being which has to be its being in the diasporatic form of Temporality.” 26

Having explained that human reality is the for-itself and its structures, it is time for
another kind of structure: the relation with the Other.

In the very beginning the Other appears to us as an object, but one that is a thinking
substance separate from us. Moreover, the common presupposition between the
idealistic view on the Other an the realistic one, is that the Other implies a fundamental
negation: “The Other is the one who is not me and the one who I am not.”27

The nothingness that separate us from the Other, is not the one that lies in the for-itself,
but a “primary absence of relation”. This lack of relation means that the only way I can
consider the Other is through my knowledge: “Consequently, since the Other can not
act on my being by means of his being, the only way that he can reveal himself to me is
by appearing as an object to my knowledge.”28 And the same in the opposite way, the
for-itself is a thought object for the Other.

Besides that, he is not only capable of appearing in front of me, but also he steals my
world. He is not simply the one we see as object and who sees the same objects which
we can see, he also looks at us, and organize the world according to his needs and will.
So, the Other refer us to an original contingency: “In short, the Other can exist for us in
two forms: if I experience him with evidence, I fail to know him; if I know him, if I act
upon him I only reach his being-as-object and his probable existence in the midst of the

25
Ibid., p. 159.
26
Ibid., p. 202.
27
Ibid., p. 312.
28
Ibid., p. 314.

13
world. No synthesis of these two forms is possible.”29 In later analysis in the same
section Sartre will characterize the relation as a conflict: “Conflict is the original meaning
of being-for-others.”30 That is to say that each of them always places the other in
constant danger, stealing the freedom and the project attained by the self.

This is not the moment to describe all the relations Sartre considers in his book, but it is
worth remembering that after the relation he defines as “the look”, he will examine in the
following order: the body, the first attitude of concrete relations with the Others (Love,
Language and Masochism), and the second attitude (Indifference, Desire, Hate and
Sadism).

Finally, he will maintain that negation that lies in the being-for-Other. His conclusion
about the Other is quite explicit. While the only way to understand freedom is with the
for-itself, the Other represents only a conflictive, violent and alienated relation. Saying at
the end of this section and in dialogue with Heidegger that: “The essence of the
relations between consciousness is not the Mitsein; it is conflict.”31

3. The death of the being-for-itself

Is after all these lines, exactly in the relation situation-freedom that Sartre inserts the
problem of death, because it, along with other cases constitutes a typical situation of the
facticity.

Going again to Schumacher, we are allowed to say that Sartre:

“... constructs his thanatology on the foundation of his ontology of freedom and his
anthropology of Being-for-others, in which one for-itself (pour-soi) stands in a
relation of conflict with another for-itself: the goal of Being-for-others is to reduce the
other to an in-itself (en-soi).” 32

29
Ibid., p. 400.
30
Ibid., p. 475.
31
Ibid., p. 555.
32
Schumacher, Bernard N. Death and Mortality in Contemporary Philosophy. Cambridge University Press: Kindle
Edition, 2010, p. 91.

14
In accordance with this idea the main problem of Sartre’s interpretation lies in his
definition of being-for-other. But it should be seen that at the end, this is only a
consequence of his very definition of freedom as an absolute determination of the for-
itself and the way Sartre expelled death from the human reality.
Just at the very beginning of his analysis on death he will say that at first sight death
seems to be a boundary, “and every boundary is a Janus bifrons”.33In the sense that
death can be either, “the nothingness of being which limits the process” or “as adhesive
to the series which it terminates”.34
In this sense he distinguishes two important conceptions: a realistic and an idealistic
one. The realist puts death beyond, as an "absolute cessation of being," as an
"existence in the nonhuman form." Faced with this conception, an idealistic concept has
been erected putting death on this side of life, so "man can no longer encounter
anything but the human", there is nothing beyond life, that is why “death, for this view,
becomes the meaning of life”. It is in this context where Sartre mentions Heidegger as
the last important exponent of the idealistic interpretation on death with his definition of
being-for-death (Sein zum Tode).
However, according to the French philosopher, none of these perspectives, including
Heidegger’s, succeed in fully analyzing the problem of death. Given the above, it can be
mentioned that the most important points that for Sartre define death against the
idealistic, the realistic and Heidegger’s interpretation.
Starting from that assumption, the sartrean criticism focuses on three main objections
and two problems that he will define later. First, death is not the condition of the
possibilities of my individuality, that is, of the individuality of the for-itself. Second, it is
impossible that death can be expected as Heidegger has thought. And thirdly, it is
impossible death can confer any meaning to the existence of the for it-self. To these
three elements the following problems should be added. First, the one that concerns the
relation death-Other; and the one that concerns the relation death-finitude.

33
Sartre, Jean-Paul, Being and Nothingness. Trans. Hazel Barnes. New York: Washington Square Press, 1972, p.
680.
34
Ibid.

15
At the beginning of his argument Sartre believes that Heidegger has made a “sleight of
hand” consisting in inferring unjustifiably the individuality of the Dasein from the
particular death he must face. There is hidden, in the Heideggerian argument, a thought
of bad faith that assumes death with a unique and exclusive character that personalize
the for-itself. That is why Sartre responds to this saying that:
“In short there is no personalizing virtue which is peculiar to my death. Quite the
contrary, it becomes my death only if I place myself already in the perspective of
subjectivity; it is my subjectivity defined by the pre-reflective cogito which makes of
my death a subjective irreplaceable, and not death which would give an
irreplaceable selfness to my for-itself.”35

However, nothing permits us to conclude that this tending to the future that represents
death means an end for the subjectivity. Moreover, if one goes to the definition of the
same problem in Heidegger’s text it can easily be discovered that for the German
thinker there is not such a problem about the personality or the subjectivity. Mostly
because there is a notable difference between Heidegger’s Dasein and Sartre’s réalité
humaine. Following this idea Derrida says:

“As is well known, this is a translation of Heideggerian Dasein. A monstrous

translation in many respects, but so much the more significant. That this translation
proposed by Corbin was adopted at the time, and that by means of Sartre’s
authority it reigned, gives us much to think about the reading or the nonreading of
Heidegger during this period, and about what was at stake in reading or not reading
him this way.”36

But the problem also lies in the indetermination of human reality as a concept that
describes at the same time the man, the individual, the being-for-itself, etc…So, we are
facing two different views or scopes about the same problem, and it is likely difficult to
accuse Heidegger when it is clear that he is not interested in an existential analysis, but
only in a very particular ontological one.

35
Ibid., p.684.
36
Derrida, Jacques, “The Ends of Man”, Margins of Philosophy. Trans. Alan Brass. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1972, p. 115.

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Probably the same confusion lead Sartre to the thinking, again contrary to Heidegger,
that death cannot be expected and that it represents the impossibility of my
possibilities37, “the nihilation of all my possibilities”, the “nihilation of my possibles which
is outside my possibilities.”38 That means that finally death is completely excluded from
the life of the for-itself. And if that is the case, it is also unattached to the freedom of the
being for-itself. Death cannot confer a meaning to life according to Sartre. First,
because “a meaning can come only from subjectivity”. Second, as freedom is the only
determination of this subjectivity, she is its own limit. In this respect he is more explicit:
“Freedom limits freedom”.39

That is why, when we died all our stories, testimonies, words, moments of life go to
Other that becomes the owner of my being. In this case to be dead is “to be a prey for
the living”. And mostly because the only source of meaning for all these experiences
disappear, it becomes in a past that can only be organized by Other’s life. “Thus the
very existence of death alienates us wholly in our life to the advantage of the Other. To
be dead is to be a prey for the living. This means therefor that the one who tries to
grasp the meaning of his future death must discover himself as the future prey of the
others.”40

Finally, Sartre asks from where many - including Heidegger - have taken the idea that
death can be an ontological structure of human reality, and he considers from the belief
that death is the cause of finitude. But for him, death and finitude are two different
things, in fact, death is not the cause of the finitude of the for-itself, but freedom.

It can be seen that for Sartre death is located completely out of our existence and
without any kind of influence in the being we are. At the same time, he addresses a very
polemic way to understand death, he also addresses a conflictive way to understand the
relation with the Other. Furthermore, the Other represents the society, with all its
political and ethical dimensions. So, we should bring a very important question on the

37
According to Heidegger: “…the possibility of the absolute impossibility of Dasein” (Heidegger, Martin, Being and
Time. Trans. John Macquarrie & Edward Robinson. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2001, p. 251)
38
Sartre, Jean-Paul, Being and Nothingness. Trans. Hazel Barnes. New York: Washington Square Press, 1972, p.
687.
39
Ibid., p. 688.
40
Ibid., p. 695.

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table; are we facing an individual existentialism that set the human reality as an
abstraction? Most probably the answer is yes. Unfortunately, we need more time and
farther reflections on thinkers like Derrida and Levinas in order to properly define what
human reality, freedom and death is in the contemporary world.

Sartre, who has tried to understand the being as in-itself and for-itself taking the totality
of human reality, has come to conceptualize a freedom that is in contradiction with
death ontologically speaking. All of which causes ethical questions that will never be
answered, at least not in his published works when he was alive.

A freedom without the acceptance of death, is only a false gesture, a plastic addition to
the existence. In front of the imposed politics, the absurdity of the economy, the crisis of
values, the destruction of being, the inauthenticity of our everyday lives and many other
figures of death, philosophy must be a dialog that teaches us to die next to and not
against the Other.

References:

Badiou, Alain, The adventure of French Philosophy. New Left Review, 35, Sept-Oct,
2005.

Derrida, Jacques, “The Ends of Man”, Margins of Philosophy. Trans. Alan Brass.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1972.

Heidegger, Martin, Being and Time. Trans. John Macquarrie & Edward Robinson.
Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2001.

Marcuse, Herbert, “Existentialism: Remarks on Jean-Paul Sartre’s L’Etre et le Neant”,

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. VIII, No.3, 1948.

Plato, Complete works. Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company, 1997.

Sartre, Jean-Paul, Being and Nothingness. Trans. Hazel Barnes. New York:
Washington Square Press, 1972.

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Sartre, Jean-Paul, The transcendence of the Ego. Trans. Forrest Williams and Robert
Kirkpatrick. New York: Hill and Wang, 1991.

Schumacher, Bernard N., Death and Mortality in Contemporary Philosophy. Cambridge

University Press: Kindle Edition, 2011.

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