Editing Being and Nothingness (section)

====Nothingness====
Sartre contends that human existence is a conundrum whereby each of us exists, for as long as we live, within an overall condition of nothingness (''no thing-ness'')—that ultimately allows for free consciousness. Yet simultaneously, within our ''being'' (in the physical world), we are constrained to make continuous, conscious choices.

It is this dichotomy that causes anguish, because choice (subjectivity) represents a limit on freedom within an otherwise unbridled range of thoughts. Subsequently, humans seek to flee our anguish through action-oriented constructs such as escapes, visualizations, or visions (such as dreams) designed to lead us toward some meaningful end, such as necessity, destiny, determinism (God), etc. Thus, in living our lives, we often become unconscious ''actors''—Bourgeois, Feminist, Worker, Party Member, Frenchman, Canadian or American—each doing as we must to fulfill our chosen characters' destinies.

However, Sartre contends our conscious choices (leading to often unconscious actions) run counter to our intellectual freedom. Yet we are bound to the conditioned and physical world—in which some form of action is always required. This leads to ''failed dreams of completion'', as Sartre described them, because inevitably we are unable to bridge the void between the purity and spontaneity of thought and all-too constraining action; between the ''being'' and the ''nothingness'' that inherently coincide in our ''self''.

Sartre's recipe for ''fulfillment'' is to escape all quests by ''completing'' them. This is accomplished by rigorously forcing order onto nothingness, employing the "spirit (or consciousness of mind) of seriousness" and describing the failure to do so in terms such as "[[Sartre and bad faith|bad faith]]" and "[[false consciousness]]". Though Sartre's conclusion seems to be that being diminishes before nothingness since consciousness is probably based more on spontaneity than on stable seriousness, he contends that any person of a serious nature is ''obliged'' to continuous struggle between two things:

:a) The conscious desire for peaceful self-fulfillment through physical actions and social roles—as if living within a portrait that one actively paints of oneself

:b) The more pure and raging spontaneity of ''no thing'' consciousness, of being instantaneously free to overturn one's roles, pull up stakes, and strike out on new paths