Quotation
Last reviewed:
“Man is a useless passion.”
Jean-Paul Sartre · Existentialism · Modern · 1943
What does it mean?
Man is a useless passion. The desire, in the last pages, is to be a foundation of oneself, a for-itself that would coincide with being, which is his definition of the project of being God. The project fails. That failure is the uselessness. A rival reading hears 'human effort is pointless', a nihilism the sentence seems to wear. He means a specific project is structurally vain, not that action, politics, or other people are worthless. Another reading, theological, argues with the vanity of the God-project and misses that he is diagnosing a structure of consciousness.
Did Jean-Paul Sartre really say this?
The library’s label is Paraphrase or translation. Hazel Barnes's English, at the end of the book. The passion is the desire to be God, a for-itself that would also be an in-itself, a combination he thinks is impossible. 'Useless' names that impossibility, not a mood of pointlessness.
Where it comes from
Being and Nothingness, part 4, in Hazel Barnes's translation
Approximate date: 1943.
How to use it
Someone in a creative job in London is exhausted by the demand to be complete, self-made, and justified. The sentence names that demand as a passion that cannot succeed. It does not say the job is worthless, and it does not say to stop. It says the hunger to be a finished thing is the hunger that consciousness, on his account, cannot satisfy. That can be a relief. It can also be a pose of despair. The pose is not the last page.
A mindset reading
Useless is a technical insult. If you need it to mean 'give up', you have the wrong page. The book ends by asking whether freedom can take itself as a value. That question is still open when the passion is called useless.
Understand the philosophy
Being and Nothingness, 1943, part 4, is the place. Hazel Barnes is the English this library names for the treatise. The sentence is a conclusion of an ontology, not a line from the play, and not a mood from the novel, though the novel's contingency is its ancestor.
- self
- meaning
- mind
FAQ
What does it mean?
Man is a useless passion. The desire, in the last pages, is to be a foundation of oneself, a for-itself that would coincide with being, which is his definition of the project of being God. The project fails. That failure is the uselessness. A rival reading hears 'human effort is pointless', a nihilism the sentence seems to wear. He means a specific project is structurally vain, not that action, politics, or other people are worthless. Another reading, theological, argues with the vanity of the God-project and misses that he is diagnosing a structure of consciousness.
Did Jean-Paul Sartre really say this?
Paraphrase or translation. Hazel Barnes's English, at the end of the book. The passion is the desire to be God, a for-itself that would also be an in-itself, a combination he thinks is impossible. 'Useless' names that impossibility, not a mood of pointlessness.
Which work is it in?
Being and Nothingness, part 4, in Hazel Barnes's translation Approximate date: 1943.