Testing

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A student of existentialism might be surprised to find that the concept of "being" occupies a much more prominent position in Being and Nothingness than the concept of "existence". While this prominence fits the overal emphasis of phenomenological ontology on "what is" it is not immediately clear how it could be conducive for the aspired concreteness of existential analysis. Indeed, the word "being" in the sense of "whatever is" represents the most general meaning (like "thing") one can think of. But Sartre uses the term "being" predominantly in the distinctive sense of "what grounds" something (for instance, "the being of consciousness"). This is still a metaphysical usage (it is no coincidence that "being" has had such a long and rich metaphysical career), but Sartre had several good reasons to adopt this metaphysical terminology via German philosophy (Hegel and Heidegger). The most important one is that it was very helpul in avoiding the traditional Cartesian duality of subject and object. Once the ghost of dualism was averted it was possible to regard man as a concrete totality in the sense of "being-in-the-world".