The Philosophical Library Existentialism Collection

Freedom has to come from a purifying reflection or a total disappearance of the affecting situation.

emotion of active sadness in this case is therefore a magical comedy of impotence; the sick person resembles servants who, having brought thieves into their master’s home, have themselves tied up so that it can be clearly seen that they could not have prevented the theft

oman has a phobia of bay-trees. As soon as she sees a cluster of bay-trees, she faints. The psychoanalyst discovers in her childhood a painful sexual incident connected with a laurel bush. Therefore, what will the emotion be in such a case? A phenomenon of refusal, of censure. Not of refusal of the bay-tree. A refusal to re-live the memory connected with the bay-tree.

phenomenon of derivation is nothing more than a change of path for freed nervous energy.

example, the physiological modifications which correspond to anger differ only in intensity from those which correspond to joy (slightly accelerated respiratory rhythm, slight increase in muscular tonicity, extension of bio-chemical changes, arterial tension, etc.), yet anger is not more intense joy; it is something else, at least insofar as it presents itself to consciousness

The idiot who is angry is not “ultra joyful.

Something else: in effect, even if emotion perceived objectively presents itself as a physiological disorder, insofar as it is a fact it is not at all a disorder or an utter chaos. It has a meaning; it signifies something.

They are, in their essential structure, man’s reactions against the world.

The existant which we must analyze,” writes Heidegger, “is our self. The being of this existant is mine.”1

Thus, the idea of man can be only the sum of the established facts which it allows us to unite.