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Sartre's Being and Nothingness

1943 · Paris (Paris, France)

In 1943, in occupied Paris, Sartre publishes Being and Nothingness, the movement's systematic summa: consciousness as nothingness at the heart of being, man condemned to be free, bad faith as the evasion of that freedom. The book, written in cafés between curfews, becomes postwar existentialism's scripture.

Tagged: Existentialism

The Event

Date
1943 (exact)
Era
The Paris Decade; Standard periodization of existentialist history
Location
Paris; today Paris, France
Traditions
Existentialism
Streams
Existentialism
Key figures
Jean-Paul Sartre
Key texts
Being and Nothingness

Connections

Illustration for Sartre's Nausea History Event Sartre's Nausea 1938 gives the novel's intuition its systematic philosophy

Primary Sources

  • Sartre, Jean-Paul. L'Être et le néant. Paris: Gallimard, 1943.

Secondary Sources

  • Gordon, Lewis R. Fanon and the Crisis of European Man. New York: Routledge, 1995.
  • Kaufmann, Walter, ed. Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre. New York: Meridian, 1956.
  • Solomon, Robert C. Existentialism. New York: Oxford University Press, second edition, 2005.

Provenance: HIST-1426; confidence 0.95; accessed 2026-10-30.

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