When I had started reading Sartre, I became very quickly involved when I read in the first paragraph, “Consciousness is a being, the nature of which is to be conscious of the nothingness of its being”. This was a very difficult concept for me to understand and it seemed that I would read it and perfectly understand what Sartre means and then after reading a few pages, I would get lost again and forget what it meant.
It was indeed a very interesting reading, Sartre sees the world and our being and consciousness in a very different way and it really makes a person think about their own conscious being and how it is actually nothing. I feel that even in the absence of anything, it is still something because even in the nothingness is something.
I was having difficulty understanding this at first and then I read the lie and truth example, and it all made sense. A person cannot lie of something that he is not conscious of, so if I am lying without knowing something that is not a lie, it is just the missing of truth and reality, but if I know I am lying, and I am consciously hiding the truth, then it is a lie. Even then, the liar is in complete possession of the truth, so the liar intends to deceive and does knows to keep the truth for himself.
So the liar lies for the outside world but does not deceive the consciousness. Sartre’s theory reminded me of the id, ego and superego of psychology terms, that I had learned a few years ago. I am not sure if they are comparable but it seems that consciousness as defined by Sartre seems like a mix of superego and id, and how they are subconciousness and ego is conscious mind but when they are communicating within themselves sometimes the superego is so much hidden that the conscious mind sees nothing and it is so deep that one needs to get onto another level to understand if one is actually lying or is conscious that he is lying.
Overall an interesting reading, although I had to read this a few times to understand, I am sure if I read a few more times, I would find things which I never saw in the first few times I saw.