Chris Falzon

At the philosophical level, Nausea is a text that purports to shake off all presuppositions in order to confront things as they really are - meaningless, contingent and nauseating. In this, Sartre not only enacts a kind of philosophical critique of ordinary presuppositions, but also seeks to distance himself from certain philosophical positions. However, Nausea's view of the world as meaningless arguably reflects certain philosophical presuppositions of its own, notably a very demanding standard for what would count as being meaningful. Nausea's meaningless world opens the way to Sartre's most important early philosophical statement, Being and Nothingness, but we my ask whether Sartre is entitled to strip the world of meaning in the first place