Connoisseur

Nausea – Jean Paul Sartre

“Every existent is born without reason, prolongs itself out of weakness and dies by chance”

This book is about a 30 year old man called Antoine Roquentin, living alone in the fictional town of Bouville (thought to be based on Le Havre) who after acquiring a handsome fortune and after traveling the world, moves to Bouville to write a historical book about an 18th century French aristocrat. The book is not divided into chapters as such, but rather is presented as a series of diary entries all of greatly differing lengths.

Throughout the novel the protagonist suffers from intermittent feelings of nausea in relation to everyday objects such a pebble he holds in his hand, buildings as he walks down streets and trees he observes in parks. The naseua is brought about by difficulty in understanding the relationship of his own existence with the existence of these objects/his perception of them. He feels that the physical characteristics of objects and people are just a comforting facade to mask the ‘nothingness’ of existence. Such things are therefore ‘superfluous’ and unnecessary so their presence is unexplained/unjustified which leads to nausea, the feeling of the need to vomit (metaphorically).

While sitting in a park one day the protagonist he notices the root of a chestnut tree but fails to describe it adequately to himself as being ‘black’, its actual existence is not connected with names which describe it. This is an example of Sartre’s theory about existence preceding essence of things, things exist independently and before our interpretation of them. So existence of objects is primary and raw and detached from us, and there is an uneasy relationship between this fact and our experience of them.

The philosophical conclusion to be reached in all of this is that since there is no God for which existence derives direct/definite meaning then human existence is contingent. However, we remain ‘condemned to be free’ to create our own essence and take full responsibility for this.

The book ends somewhat unspectacularly by the protagonist moving to Paris in order to write another book (the subject of which he is unsure) in the hope that it will be a book which inspires people, and will be the beginning/defining point of his search for authenticity.

I have very mixed feelings about this book. There were brief moment of brilliance within it, when the protagonist describes his fleeting feelings of nausea while in the cafe and during his conversation with an acquaintance during lunch. However, the book was actually tedious to read mostly. I believe existentialism and philosophy generally are better served by writing in the traditional format i.e. almost scientifically setting out arguments and theories with brief aphorisms which may contain concise and succinct stories as examples. There is a lot of descriptive waffle in the book and very little pure philosophy as such.

The underlying philosophical concept is brilliant and very interesting, but I feel one is better off reading this summary or another summary about the book rather than drudging through the novel.

Confidence – Rob Yeung

There’s often a bit of a stigma with confidence books. I eventually bought one not because I lack confidence, quite the contrary. However, nobody can say that they don’t require any improvement in confidence at all. Also as I will be starting my career in 2012 I was interested in reading about confidence in the work place.

This is a decent book, it’s easy to understand and has quite a few practical taks to carry out while reading. It’s more like a PD book in general. I’d recommend it.

The Conquest of Happiness – Bertrand Russel

Russel starts by commenting that in the modern world there has been an obsession with fixating on only that which will bring pecuniary gain, in order to outshine friends, at the expense of developing genuine tastes and interests in art, music and study. This can lead to envy of others where you gain a hollow and temporary satisfaction out of others failing. Eventually envy only inhibits personal growth/happiness, the key is to be only concerned with your own happiness/achievements.

People should follow their own spontaneous and natural interests, provided these are not anti social. He says that the greatest source of happiness is experienced by him who is genuinely happy in himself and who then finds it easy to like many people simultaneously without effort. The more interests one has in life then the happier one can be, especially since this prevents overindulgence in one interest (i.e. overeating and not exercising enough). The more confidence one has in one’s self the more one can pursue more thrilling interests, especially adventurous ones not available to the diffident. He ultimately puts happiness down to being dependent on seeing one’s self as part of society collectively than as an isolated individual and being a bit more resigned.

This book was written many decades ago, I felt that it took perhaps an antiquated view. I agree with the notion of having many outside interests and being more extrovert with people. However, I think life is too short to be resigned and less ambitious. However, one of its charms of being written at this time is the numerous new vocabulary I picked up.