although existentialism proper began with the Danish philosopher sain kirkgard it was the French philosopher Jean Paul sarda who truly popularized the use of the term mostly by way of his most famous work a big thick dense tone called being in nothingness according to its subtitle being in nothingness is an essay on phenomenological ontology ontology of course is the traditional philosophical study of being and phenomenology basically has to do with systematically reflecting Upon Our everyday experiences of life with an eye toward Illuminating their underlying structures coherencies and meaning for SRA one of the first realizations that emerge in that kind of reflective activity is that we find ourselves alive in the world first and only on that basis do we come to some sense for what that means sra's epigrammatic way of saying this is that existence precedes essence in other words existence itself is the primary reality upon which all of our other ideas of essence are implicitly based one such other idea of essence would be the kind of understanding generated by science and especially the idea that reality operates according to scientifically verifiable principles question how do we ever become convinced of the validity of scientific principles if not by way of observing phenomena and isn't observing phenomena really nothing more than a particular way of perceiving a particular way of experiencing existence as we know it consequently for SRA the realm of experiencing existence turns out to be more primary than the objective validity of scientific principles because it's only on the basis of experiencing our existence in a certain way that we end up construing reality in terms of scientific princip principles in the first place but the same could equally be said of believing in God as the creator of reality it's only on the basis of experiencing our existence as we do that believing in God can become compelling and sensible to us in the first place for SRA things like science and religion are consequently secondary derivative expressions of the more primary reality of Our Lives which is that we exist first and only then do we end up trying to make sense of things by way of science or religion or political ideologies or philosophies or anything else one upshot of all of this is that for sarta phenomenological inquiry into the nature of existence must be an irreducibly atheistic undertaking otherwise one's answer to the question what is existence is inevitably pre-ordained by one's aiori idea of God which means that one's question is basically not not a question at all as we've mentioned the title of sra's work is being in nothingness nothingness here ends up being a somewhat counterintuitive way of talking about Consciousness that's because sart phenomenology indicates that Consciousness functions by making ongoing distinctions between things which includes distinguishing between itself and everything else but making the distinctions that make things appear as they do in our experience also involves their continuing to not appear to be other things basically making perceptual distinctions or any other kind involves a process of negation something like a figure ground relation for instance a coffee cup continues to be a coffee cup in our experience by virtue of its continuing not to be a rhinoceros not an airplane not an abstract mathematical equation Etc in other words things are what they are by their continuing to not be what they are not over time perception is basically a negative process Consciousness affects this negative process by continually annihilating engaging in the ongoing activity of nothing this annihilating activity is what makes Consciousness which he also calls the for itself different from inanimate objects which he also calls the in itself Consciousness is no thing nothing first because it's unlike a physical object but also because it operates by a process of nihilation that permits perceptual distinctions to be made which ultimately coales into the world as we experience it another realization that SRA comes to early in his phenomenological inquiry is that human existence is about being in a fundamentally free and responsible predicament we are as he puts it condemned to freedom in a way this is because our existence precedes our Essence since this means that there is no Essence that somehow predetermines what we are in his treatment of Freedom sarta basically takes the idea of facticity from Martin haiger another existential phenomenological thinker facticity is the idea that there are certain Givens in our lives that we can't simply change by deciding otherwise for instance we in Abit certain physical bodies and not other ones we were born to certain parents and not other ones and we were born at certain points in history and not other ones for SRA all of these factical realities may be inescapable parts of our lives but at the end of the day we're always free to decide our posture attitudes and responses to them in fact facticity and our practice of Freedom toward it are so tightly interwoven that there really is no such thing as a bare fact in our lives a facticity that would somehow be separable from our ongoing choice of attitude and response to it our freedom and our facticity are basically always bound up together we have factical freedom rather than absolute freedom however CRA contends that the main thing that we do with our freedom is to try to run away from it into what he calls bad faith bad faith is a way of denying the fundamental nature of our freedom and respon responsibility of pretending as though our decisions are somehow made for us basically a way of making excuses for ourselves bad faith runs to the level of the emotions we feel and even to our personalities themselves for SRA no one ever makes us feel happy or sad or angry because at any and all points we could choose a different emotional response to whatever the other person's doing or we could just decide to forget about the situation altogether similarly our personalities are usually nothing more than exercises in bad faith because the truth is that we could decide to adopt a very different characteristic way of Behaving at any and all points even the preferences that would somehow seem to make our decisions for us or at least provide guidance are mostly about bad faith for instance most people would say that they would choose pepperoni pizza simply because they like spicy things on their pizza but the reality is that one could choose to like other things at least by acquiring a taste for them over time so it's not the case that we choose things just because we like them because we could always choose to like other things our freedom turns out to be much wider and much deeper than we're comfortable with in essence our freedom is completely without direction or guidance not even by our desires or our preferences or social conventions because to regard anything thing is a source of guidance one must choose to regard it as such and one could always choose otherwise this directionless produces an unpleasant sense of dizziness and nausea when we realize how free we actually are this sensation together with the onerousness of our responsibility for our choices is what motivates bad faith it's also why SRA regards Freedom as a kind of condemnation rather than as a nice sunny picnic finally in addition to the for itself that is consciousness and the in itself that is objects SRA posits a third category of being being for others this is where SRA takes up the social realm and he analyzes it in terms of the phenomenology of the Gaze the experience of gazing directly at someone for SRA gazing at someone else always involves a two-sided Dynamic on one hand we look at each other as we would in animate objects mostly because we see each other by way of each other's physical bodies which have an object like aspect so when someone gazes at us part of us feels a sense of threat because the other person's gaze can't help but objectify us at least in part in response to that objectifying threat we gaze at the other in an objectifying way too partly as an attempt to reclaim and reassert our own sense of subjectivity over and against that threat the other person person in turn does the same with us consequently for SRA the entire social realm is based upon dynamics that are irreducibly adversarial and our relationships with each other we're caught in the ongoing tension between feeling objectified and trying to recover our own subjectivity by objectifying others in turn as he puts it morly in another work hell is other people and that's SRA in 10 minutes