We discussed Sartre’s view of the key concept of Husserlian
phenomenology, “intentionality,” as the defining feature of consciousness
that launches us into the world with its objective qualities. Because con-
sciousness is entirely “in the world,” it has no “inner life.” Sartre assures
us, we are “saved from Proust.”^27 So Roquentin is not in search of “lost
time,” despite his alleged pursuit of a biography of a prominent figure.
Indeed his time is focused decidedly on the present. Neither is he trapped
in some inner dialogue, though that may seem to be the case.^28 Rather, he is
in “dialogue” with the world: the world of the provincial sea port; the
world of the academic on whom the futility of his life is dawning. Not
unlike Camus’ Mersault inThe Stranger, Roquentin isl’homme seulwho
manages to be alone with others.^29 This sharpens his descriptive skills even
as it dulls his power to act. He seems struck by a kind of Kierkegaardian
boredom that afflicts the individual mired in the indecisiveness of the
“aesthetic” stage of existence.^30 But in Roquentin’s case, as we have just
witnessed, it is the aesthetic that promises deliverance.
As for the author himself, the tension remains. As Beauvoir observed:
“Sartre loved Stendhal as much as Spinoza and refused to separate
philosophy from literature.”^31 And despite Sartre’s hyperbolic claim that
Hussserlian intentionality has saved us from Proust, Contat and Rybalka
point out that “the Proustian oeuvre is probably the most profound
influence that one can discern inNausea”(OR 1663 ).
Art and life
In what he claims was the first interview he ever gave, Sartre remarks to
Claudine Chonez that, whereas he had originally intended to express his
philosophical views in a work of art, a novel, a short story, he came to
realize that this was impossible. “There are things which are so technical
(^27) Siti: 32. On the disputed date of composition of his essay on intentionality, seeChapter 2 ,
28 page^24 ,n.^34.
This is doubtless what Rhiannon Goldthorpe has in mind when she speaks of Sartre’s “scorn
29 of the inner life” (Goldthorpe,Nause ́e,^26 ).
See Sartre’s remarks on Camus’sMyth of SisyphusandThe StrangerinSiti92– 112 or
30 English trans. inEH^73 –^98.
Søren Kierkegaard,Either/Or: A Fragment of Life, abridged and trans. Alastair Hannay
31 (Harmondsworth: Penguin,^1992 ),^479 –^483 , on the loss of self through indecisiveness.
See Beauvoir,Me ́moires d’une jeune fille range ́e, 342 orOR 1161.
146 The necessity of contingency:Nausea