A lost treasure
It was during his first year at Le Havre that Sartre jotted down some
thoughts in a notebook now known as theCarnet Dupuis( 1932 ), after his
former student who discovered and donated these pages to the Bib-
liothe`que Nationale. Of its two parts, the second orders Sartre’s reflec-
tions on themes covered in his three previous “novels,” but especially
treats topics that will figure in his “factum” on contingency, which he is
in the process of writing. Examples of the former are additional thoughts
on the difference between historical fact and sociological fact, Waterloo
once again being analyzed as an example of the former. But of particular
interest to his “factum” on contingency, as the manuscript forNausea
was then called, is his rather extended discussion of the nature of the
possible, of its relation to contingency and to comprehension.^6
The possible, he insists, is not a modality (in the Spinozistic sense);
only being and existence count as modalities for Sartre. “The possible
does not exist in itself. It exists in a thought...The possible charac-
terizes nothing but the independence of thought with regard to the real.”
It is a psychological category. Sartre concludes: “That is what I would
call thecontingent.”
Heidegger and Sartre and reports having discussed Husserl and Heidegger with Sartre (see
Stephen Light, foreword by Michel Rybalka,Shu ̄zōKuki and Jean-Paul Sartre[Carbondale
and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1987 ]). Though each of these claims is
disputed, Rybalka’s assessment of the situation seems balanced:
It is obvious today that the discovery of phenomenology by Sartre is not the simple affair
related by Simone de Beauvoir in her memoirs. Much before the famous meeting (in
1932 ) with Raymond Aron in front of a peach cocktail, Sartre displayed in several of his
early writings a strong predisposition for phenomenology and an acute sensitiveness to
what will be defined later as “existentialist” themes. (foreword, xi)(^6) It was the custom at the E ́cole to refer to a work in progress as a “factum.” As Rhiannon
Goldthorpe points out (supported by the Collins-Robert French dictionary), the term has two
senses “which seem to pull against each other. In legal terminology, it is a setting out of the
facts of the case, something stated or presented as certain. But it also signifies a polemical or
even scurrilous pamphlet.” Rhiannon Goldthorpe (La Nause ́e[London: HarperCollins, 2001 ]
2 ; hereafterNG). The use was common among Sartre, Nizan and their fellow collegians.
Sartre had begun the first version ofNauseain 1931 (seeOR 1678 – 1680 ). The text of the first
part of theCarnet Dupuisis reproduced inOR 1680 – 1686. The second part appears in
Recherches interdisciplinaires sur les textes modernes 24 ,ESno. 8 , 13 – 21 , with an introduction by
Vincent de Coorebyter, 7 – 1. On the first version of Sartre’s “factum” on contingency, see
SaP.
A lost treasure 51