Abstract

Nausea by Jean-Paul Sartre is often interpreted as an ideal textbook summarising the main points of Sartre’s quite technical argumentation in his academic writings; it illustrates his theoretical views on the nature of time, while it presents a philosophical justification of art through the adventures of the novel’s hero, who is none other than the author in disguise. I show that, despite its popularity, this interpretation is incorrect. I provide an alternative reading of the novel that would identify its core themes, in a way that illuminates the reflective distance between the fictional agent and the philosophical narrator.