Abstract

MACIAS FLORES, Alejandro. The Experience of Nausea and Artwork as Escape: Levinas and Sartre. Rev. filos.open insight [online]. 2017, vol.8, n.14, pp.69-89. ISSN 2395-8936.

Lévinas and Sartre make a phenomenological analysis of the experience of «nausea» that lead them to the experience of escaping as a constitutive element of the former experience. Escaping is also constitutive of artwork’s function for both phenomenologists, in the period between 1935 to 1945. I will argue that the three phenomena -nausea, escape and artwork- are closely related according to both philosophers. In first place, it presents Sartre’s proposal on Literature and Philosophy in relation to nausea. Then, it punctually reelaborates Levina’s thought on thought, as Sartre’s contemporary, but not as his imitator and, sometimes, even contrary. Sartre promoted, back then, Art as a superation of Philosophy, offered as salvation from his suggestion of art as social compromise. Levinas thinks of nausea in relation to shame: nudity either is related to intimacy, and then provokes shame, or it is indifferent to intimacy, but then it is intimacy that which is object of shame. For both authors, nevertheless, the experience of nausea is that of nudity of our own self, our contingency, whether it places us «above» or «under» thought.

Keywords : artwork; scape; Lévinas; nausea; Phenomenological analysis; Sartre.