Antoine Roquentin, the main fictional character in Nausea, experiences sudden and severe attacks of 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. Our whole existence and our all engagements lack their own why, that is, they are contingent and subject to chance. There is no reason justifying and explaining either our existence in the world or our engagement in a specific situation rather than in another. 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”. Hence, the “for-itself” exists contingently in a world of facticity. The “for-itself” has to endure that for which there is no why, that is, its own existence in the world. According to Sartre, the “for-itself” exists without ever finding the reason for its own existence and therefore it exists tragically. The contingency of being is that from out of which Sartre’s philosophy emerges, that through which it constantly passes.
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