Sartre’s concepts change meaning across Being and Nothingness due to his Cartesian method
Evidence
Sartre’s methodological solipsism is explained by his employment of a Cartesian method that proceeds from the abstract and simple to the concrete and complex. For this reason, Sartre formally introduces the existence of Others only in Part III. Failure to take Sartre’s Cartesian method seriously makes accurate assessment of Being and Nothingness as a whole impossible, for the meanings of all of his basic concepts change over the course of the text. — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 212
Categorization
- XREF: Connects to the broader historiographical debate about how Beauvoir and interpreters have misread Sartre’s shifting technical vocabulary, relevant to the authorship/influence question. — connects to: Sartre’s philosophy forms a total system whose parts cannot be understood in isolation; Sartre rejects the Cartesian split of free will from determined passions — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 1078; The Cartesian cogito is the only absolute truth grounding all other knowledge. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism Is a Humanism, 21 (+5 more)
Broader Connections
- Sartre rejected Cartesian dualism by treating material givens as meaning-sedimented facticities
#qualifies(0.85) — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 63 - Sartre divides being into free for-itself consciousness and inert in-itself matter
#expands(0.80) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 496 - Sartre’s analysis of freedom is fragmented and internally inconsistent across Being and Nothingness
#corroborates(0.80) — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 212 - Colonial order and the Cartesian mind both rest on a spectator facing a world-show
#corroborates(0.72) — Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, 547