Being and Nothingness

Main ideas

• Consciousness as a lack that projects toward possibility.
• Bad faith as flight from freedom.

Important themes

Reading context

Written under German occupation and published in 1943, an attempt to work out what freedom means if consciousness has no fixed nature to fall back on.

How to approach it

This is a technical book. Start with the section on bad faith, then the passage on the look, and return to the introduction afterwards. Many readers find Existentialism is a Humanism a better entry point.