Activity

In reflective objectification consciousness is turned into a thing, but because consciousness is a nothingness that cannot be determined as a thing-like essence, the objectification of consciousness will always remain strained. It causes an insoluble tension, because it tries to determine something…

Despite the specificity of Sartre's view of consciousness, it fits the general existentialist view of the individual having to become a self, instead of having a self as some sort of inner core. For example, Kierkegaard--as we will see further on in this study--describes the self in similar terms.
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[...] Catalano formulates it as follows: 'the self is a product and not an a priori principle of activity'.

For Sartre, the consequence of consciousness existing as nothingness is that human being has two aspects: transcendence and facticity. As nothingness, the human being is characterized by 'transcendence,' the freedom to 'transcend' all the determinations of his existence: 'the condition on which hum…

In the existentialist view--the view that Kierkegaard, Sartre and Camus (and Wittgenstein also can be said to) share--, an individual is not automatically a self, but has to become one. A human being merely embodies the possibility of becoming a self. According to existentialism, there is no 'true …