Sartre deliberately manufactured nausea to study it philosophically

Evidence

In a TV interview of 1972, he admitted that he had never spontaneously experienced nausea in the face of contingency himself. Another interviewee was sceptical, saying that he once saw Sartre staring at fronds of algae in water with a disgusted expression. Wasn’t that ‘nausea’? Perhaps the truth was that Sartre was staring at the algae precisely so as to whip up the feeling and observe what it was like. — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 347

Categorization

• CANDY: A light, fun anecdote: Sartre faking disgust at algae to feel nausea he never spontaneously had.
• XREF: connects to: Sartre’s mescaline trip produced lasting hallucinations of lobsters and staring facades — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 332; Sartre’s nausea insight came from mescaline-tinged visions of contingency — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 333