Book · 1943
Being and Nothingness
by Jean-Paul Sartre
Sartre's 700-page argument that you are nothing until you choose what to be — and that terror is the correct response to that fact.
What does Reddit think of Being and Nothingness?
Forty-six mentions across r/askphilosophy and r/philosophy, sentiment broadly neutral. That flatness is structural: the book gets cited rather than loved. r/askphilosophy owns 41 of those mentions, mostly as reference material in threads about freedom, bad faith, and Sartre's relationship to Heidegger. The famous waiter example — reducing oneself entirely to a role — gets quoted more than once in r/philosophy when inauthenticity comes up. The ↑65 comment on 'the look' summarizes the intersubjective argument clearly enough that commenters just post it instead of explaining the concept themselves. The contested take: r/askphilosophy repeatedly warns that this is not where you start. One ↑61 comment says plainly that Existentialism Is a Humanism is the correct entry point and that Being and Nothingness 'draws on Heidegger's philosophy' in ways that require preparation. Nobody on Reddit calls it an easy book. Nobody pretends the 700 pages are proportional to what you get out of them.
Community feedback & reader fit
Themes
- · Radical freedom and responsibility
- · Bad faith and self-deception
- · The look — intersubjectivity and objectification
- · Existence precedes essence
- · Authenticity
- · Nothingness as constitutive of consciousness
Common praise
- + The bad faith chapter gives philosophers a vocabulary for self-deception that still circulates in r/askphilosophy threads decades later.
- + Sartre's waiter example does more work in two pages than most philosophers manage in a chapter.
- + The account of radical freedom holds up even where readers disagree with the conclusions.
- + The ↑145 thread on existence preceding essence shows the framework still reorients readers who haven't encountered it before.
Common criticism
- − r/askphilosophy commenters consistently steer newcomers away from it toward Existentialism Is a Humanism first.
- − The Heidegger dependency means you're effectively reading two difficult books to understand one.
- − At 46 mentions across 7 years it gets cited but rarely debated — suggesting most readers don't finish it.
- − The Lacan thread (↑63) surfaces real academic dissent about whether Sartre's treatment of the subject holds up.
Who it's for
Come here after you've read Existentialism Is a Humanism and at least some Heidegger — r/askphilosophy makes that sequencing clear in its most upvoted comments. If you want Sartre's complete phenomenological system, this is the primary source. Philosophy undergraduates working through the analytic-continental split will find it anchors a lot of arguments. Casual readers who just heard about 'existence precedes essence' should go elsewhere first.
Mentions over time
Top subreddits
Which Reddit comments matter for Being and Nothingness?
Top-upvoted quotes across the subreddits where this book is mentioned. Click through to read the full thread.
“Here are two perspectives from my favorite existential authors 1. Jean Paul Sartre says that meaning is created by the individual and their actions. "Existence preceeds essence". This means that first you exist, then meaning in your existence is created after that fact. According to him, the point …
“Except existentialism isn’t about the freedom to do whatever you want or to invent some identity out of thin air. It’s about taking radical responsibility for the meaning of what you already have to be, of what you have already chosen to be. So you might be stuck in a dead end job struggling to make…
“The German Idealists are basically all difficult, but there are actually some German universities that teach Fichte in the intro course (although I think they focus on some of his less confusing work like *The Vocation of Man*). In my opinion, Fichte is more confusing than Kant and Hegel. I also ag…
“Not sure if this is exactly what you're looking for, but Sartre wrote about something like this in Being and Nothingness. His work is a bit complicated, especially if you're not used to reading philosophy, so it might not be the best place to start. Basically, "the look" of another subject confronts…
“This is a bad take, most existentialists have not replaced God with something else. For instance, Sartre’s existential freedom is nowhere close to what God is. Sartre describes human-reality as “a being who can realize a nihilating rupture with the world and with himself” and claims that “the perm…
“**Excerpt of an interview with Jacques Lacan by Gilles Lapouge (my translation):** *Gilles Lapouge*: Sartre sends you some more specific criticisms: "in Lacan, the disappearance or 'decentering' of the subject is related to the discredit of history"... *Jacques Lacan*: That's it. All of Sartre's p…
“*Being and Nothingness* is likely more difficult, as it draws on Heidegger's philosophy. If you want a straightforward statement of Sartre's existentialism, you should probably look to *Existentialism Is a Humanism*.
“**Article summary** In his 1943 work *Being and Nothingness*, the French existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre offers his view of inauthenticity with his famous discussion of a waiter who takes his role too seriously. The problem is not serving as a waiter; the problem is *reducing one’s enti…
Convinced? Pick up Being and Nothingness
Readers also mention
Books that share discussion threads with Being and Nothingness — counted from the comments, not curated.
The Myth of Sisyphus
Albert Camus
A 1942 essay that opens with the question of whether life is worth living and ends by insisting Sisyphus is happy.
Being and Time
Martin Heidegger
Heidegger's argument that human existence only gets its meaning from death — 162 Reddit mentions, mostly from people explaining why it's so hard to read.
Critique of Pure Reason
Immanuel Kant
Kant's 1781 attempt to settle the limits of human knowledge — the book that split philosophy in two and still hasn't been fully digested.
Being and Nothingness — frequently asked
Is Being and Nothingness the right place to start with Sartre?+
No. The ↑61 r/askphilosophy comment is direct about it: Existentialism Is a Humanism is the right first text. Being and Nothingness draws on Heidegger's philosophy and will stall readers who haven't built the necessary background. The book accounts for 46 total mentions, nearly all of them in r/askphilosophy, where it is cited rather than recommended cold.
What does Reddit actually use Being and Nothingness for?+
Mostly as a reference. Of the 46 mentions, r/askphilosophy accounts for 41 — and those threads tend to quote specific sections (the waiter, 'the look', radical freedom) rather than reviewing the book as a whole. Nobody goes to Reddit to find out whether Being and Nothingness is good. They go to find the page where Sartre makes a specific argument.
How does Being and Nothingness relate to Heidegger's Being and Time?+
Directly. r/askphilosophy's ↑61 comment flags this dependency explicitly. Sartre builds his phenomenological ontology on Heidegger's groundwork, which is itself difficult reading. The two books share the question of what 'being' means but answer it differently — readers who approach Being and Nothingness cold often hit that Heidegger wall before they get to Sartre's actual arguments.
Has interest in Being and Nothingness held steady on Reddit?+
It peaked at 13 mentions in 2020 and has declined since — 7 in both 2022 and 2023, then 5 in 2024, and 3 in 2025.