The contingency of being is that from out of which Sartre’s philosophy emerges, that through which it constantly passes. According to Sartre, the “for-itself” exists without ever finding the reason for its own existence and therefore it exists tragically. The “for-itself” has to endure that for which there is no why, that is, its own existence in the world. Hence, the “for-itself” exists contingently in a world of facticity.
In Being and Nothingness, Sartre says that facticity means that it is inevitable that we exist in the world, yet this inevitability lacks any justification and explanation: “while it is necessary that I be in the form of being-there, still it is altogether contingent that I be, for I am not the foundation of my being”.
There is no reason justifying and explaining either our existence in the world or our engagement in a specific situation rather than in another. Our whole existence and our all engagements lack their own why, that is, they are contingent and subject to chance.
The Contingency of Being in Nausea
In Nausea, Sartre speaks of, and describes, how the contingency of Being announces and shows itself to the human being and how the human being experiences it. Antoine Roquentin, the main fictional character in Nausea, experiences sudden and severe attacks of nausea.
When he encounters and suffers from such attacks, the meaning of the world disappears and the things of the world lose what links them together in their meaningful relations, that is, he glimpses the face of existence, he encounters the world as a “gross, absurd being”
Whilst sitting in the part and being completely absorbed in his fascination by the root of a tree, Antoine Roquentin experiences this contingency of Being. An experience that takes language away from him and leaves him amazed. In his journal, he describes what he has undergone and discovered in the park:
“The essential thing is contingency. I mean that one cannot define existence as necessity. To exist is simply to be there; those who exist let themselves be encountered, but you can never deduce anything from them. I believe there are people who have understood this. Only they tried to overcome this contingency by inventing a necessary, causal being. But no necessary being can explain existence: contingency is not a delusion, a probability which can be dissipated; it is the absolute, consequently, the perfect free gift. All is gratuitous, this park, this city and myself. When you realize that, it turns your heart upside down and everything begins to float”
Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea
One’s existence, the world, and even oneself are unjustified and groundless. There is no why explaining and justifying either oneself or one’s existence in the world. This unbearable groundlessness leads Roquentin to his attacks of nausea.
Groundlessness means existing without ever knowing what holds this existence in its existing in the world. Groundlessness means that the “for-itself” realizes that there is Being, that is, there is “being in-itself”, yet this realizing also acknowledges that Being, “being in-itself”, is hidden and hides itself from the “for-itself”. The “for-itself” suffers from this hiddenness, happening as self-concealment, of the “being in-itself”.
“I was not surprised, I knew it was the World, the naked World suddenly revealing itself, and I choked with rage at this gross, absurd being. You couldn’t even wonder where all that sprang from, or how it was that a world came into existence, rather than nothingness. It didn’t make sense, the World was everywhere, in front, behind. There had been nothing before it. Nothing. There had never been a moment in which it could not have existed. That was what worried me: of course there was no reason for this flowing lava to exist. But it was impossible for it not to exist. It was unthinkable: to imagine nothingness you had to be there already, in the midst of the World, eyes wide open and alive; nothingness was only an idea in my head, an existing idea floating in this immensity: this nothingness had not come before existence, it was an existence like any other and appeared after many others. I shouted “filth! what rotten filth!” and shook myself to get rid of this sticky filth, but it held fast and there was so much, tons and tons of existence, endless: I stifled at the depths of this immense weariness. And then suddenly the park emptied as through a great hole, the World disappeared as it had come, or else I woke up—in any case, I saw no more of it; nothing was left but the yellow earth around me, out of which dead branches rose upward”
Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea
Roquentin has discovered and experienced the contingency of being. There is no reason, justification, or explanation to be there in the world, there is no ground in which existence could be grounded. Being, “being in-itself”, is hidden and hides itself from us, it cannot be reached, glimpsed, or thought. “Being in-itself” turns away from us in its indifference to us, to our existence.
According to Sartre, this indifference of the “being in-itself”, which takes place as hiddenness, is what renders our existence unjustified and unfounded. Our existence is accidental, groundless, and subject to chance. This is why we always search for a reason to justify our groundlessness.
According to Sartre, this constant suffering from our continuous search for a justification for our existence will never end. There is no justification to be found; we must suffer from our groundlessness, from the infinite indifference of Being.
The Meaning of Existence
According to Sartre, this search for the meaning of our existence is itself the problem, for it assumes that there is a meaning in the world, awaiting there to be found and encountered. Meaning enters the world because of us. We are that through which meaning passes and hence arises and finds itself in the world in the first place.
There is no meaning in the “being in-itself”. “Being in-itself” is merely there; it merely is. It is only through the appearance of the “for-itself” in the world that meaning arises for the first time in the world. Meaning arises in the world as soon as consciousness becomes conscious of the world and interprets it. Meaning is thus human and belongs to us, to our specific existing in the world.
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