ible for what he is. Every man has possession of himself as he is, and the entire responsibility for his existence is placed squarely upon his own shoulders. This is where Sartre’s ideas of authenticity become relevant. We can judge a man by saying that he deceives himself. “Since we have defined the situation of man as one of free choice, without excuse and without help, any man who takes refuge behind the excuse of his passions, or by inventing some deterministic doctrine, is a self-deceiver.” Sartre asks why should man not choose to deceive himself.The character in Nausea is lamenting not so much his responsibility towards other men, but his freedom in the world of thrownness. This freedom, man’s inherent freedom, is a grave responsibility, he is “condemned to be free”. His passions are irrelevant (existentialism leaves no room for them), there are no directions or inherent sighs that influence their actions toward good or evil. We create our own essence. “Every man, without support of help whatever, is condemned at every instant to invent man” (Choice in a World without God, 837). Man’s existence precedes his essence because God is not the diviner of our being. Total freedom is a source of dread, but it is the foundation for out being and the source of man’s authenticity. Sartre’s anti-novel Nausea details the innermost thoughts and musings of a French artist. Mostly, it describes his disgust for his own being, and his acceptance and actualization of the idea that he creates himself at every moment. For Roquentin, life is agony. He is sickened by himself, and equally so by others. His reflections are negative, always filled with disillusioned bitterness toward the life he leads. A perfect day to turn back to one’s self: these cold clarities which the sun projects like a judgement shorn of pity…I am illuminated within by a diminishing light. I am sure that ...
