Sartre is giving account of the person who attempts a removal of meaning to them, to arrive an account of existence itself.

Roquentin, who is searching of the meaning of existence, cannot find anything because any meaningful connection he experiences is of him. He is assaulted by Nausea in finding all the things he expects to be meaningful are not. In removing what he put with existence as it appears to him, he finds an empty world. Since he removed various meanings with existence to his consciousness, he has nothing to see, hear, taste, touch, smell, etc. He has nothing to possess or seek. He has no-one to laugh with or love. He doesn't even have a sky too look at. In existence itself, there is no ocean and green, white spec or seagull. Positively sickening.

The Nausea is in coming a realisation the meaning of the object to oneself is located within one's own consciousness experience, rather than in the object--that one will never be able to find the meaning of the existence itself. The existence itself is empty of these human meanings and so cannot amount to a discovery of how the things "really work" or what they "essentially are."

Sartre is drawing a sort of similar point to Kant, only about meaning instead of epistemology. Since the meaning we experience is our experience, the meaning of things cannot be given to us otherwise in any case. Just as what we know must be of experience for Kant, Sartre is pointing out the meaning we feel or encounter must be of our experience.

It seems as though Roquentin is having a kind of illumination, a positive revelation of the reality of the universe, whereas prior to his communion with the Nausea, he existed in a state of dull unreality.

Indeed so, existence itself has been illuminated to him. He now realises it is not merely equivalent to the various meanings which appear to him (e.g. green, ocean, white specs, sea gulls), but is instead something else which exceeds and is other to them. He learnt, for example, that there is more going on than just ocean [that] is green.

"Ocean is green" is merely one account of meaning which appears to him. Existence itself is much more. Not only a fact not mentioned in "Ocean is green," but a fact of consequence to existence--who knows what other meanings existence might be with? No longer can we say existence must necessarily be limited to the concepts of ocean in green. Someone else might come along and notice a purple ocean. Someone else a desert. And so on.

:up:

Roquentin, who is searching of the meaning of existence, cannot find anything because any meaningful connection he experiences is of him. He is assaulted by Nausea in finding all the things he expects to be meaningful are not. In removing what he put with existence as it appears to him, he finds an empty world. — TheWillowOfDarkness

Sartre's notion of the absurd springs from what to his view was a revelation of existence, a revelation of "the absolute" - a deeper contact with reality - in some sense linked to the mystical quest for enlightenment - at times also formulated as "the absolute." — ZzzoneiroCosm

I take it as basically a form of nihilism. In the distant past, it was supposed by philosophers that everything possessed an essential nature, which originated with the ‘participation in the Ideas’ of Platonic or Aristotelian thought. With the abandonment of classical philosophy and theism, the world is then seen as empty of any intrinsic nature or meaning, save what the observer chooses to see in it. So the reference to ‘the absolute’ is ironic, because in Sartre’s view, this is precisely what doesn’t exist, or holds no significance or reality; the quest for enlightenment must always end in disappointment, because there is none to be had.

At least that’s how I read it.

Ridding oneself of nausea by listening to jazz is not at all unreasonable, although I find blues and folk rock more agreeable.

Ridding oneself of nausea by listening to jazz is not at all unreasonable, although I find blues and folk rock more agreeable — Banno

Even better - playing it.





Meditation - and it's power to permanently alter brain wave patterns - is a more responsible solution. One can't always listen to jazz.

I take it as basically a form of nihilism. — Wayfarer

Yeah, definitely an existential nihilism in the Nausea.

. So the reference to ‘the absolute’ is ironic, because in Sartre’s view, this is precisely what doesn’t exist, or holds no significance or reality; the quest for enlightenment must always end in disappointment, because there is none to be had. — Wayfarer

It is. It's a little silly of Sartre. But I think it works well in the context of an upside-down hero myth.

A Holy Grail to vomit in.

I dredged up that quote from Colin Wilson - actually, it turns out, De Beauvoir:

About a year before the writing of Nausea, Sartre took mescalin. Mlle de Beauvoir says: 'He had not exactly had hallucinations, but the objects he looked at changed their appearance in the most horrifying manner; umbrellas had become vultures, shoes turned into skeletons, and faces acquired monstrous characteristics, while behind him, just past the corners of his eye, swarmed crabs and polyps and grimacing Things...His visual faculties became distorted; houses had leering faces, all eyes, jaws...'...[contrasted with what Huxley saw, as described in The Doors of Perception]...'what Adam saw on the morning of his first creation - the miracle, moment by moment, of naked existence.' — Colin Wilson - Beyond the Outsider, p. 104

Both had a sense of an encounter with "naked existence" - but the contrast is striking.

The distinction between (let's say) Illumination and the Nausea may well mirror the distinction between a good trip and a bad trip. That both are "trips" of one kind or another in part excuses Sartre's - sadly ironyless - deployment of the expression "the Absolute."

It also says here that Sartre had been coping with a fear of impending psychosis at this time in his life. So the link of mysticism to psychosis is corroborated as well.