As an "essay in phenomenological ontology" ¹ Sartre L'Etre et le
néant is concerned with the structures of Being in so far as Being
presents itself, i.e., in so far as it is given in experience. As a phenome-
nology, Being and Nothingness deals only with presentations, and as a
descriptive enterprise, it cannot handle metaphysical problems. Thus
Sartre gives us extensive descriptive analyses of the self, the body, the
various concrete relations with the alter ego (love, language, desire,
etc.), but he does not attempt to analyze questions of the ultimate
origin, purpose, or meaning of reality. Since the character of his
investigation is descriptive, and since Sartre's method takes the
standpoint of the individual consciousness, the question of what is
within and outside our experience becomes transposed into the problem
of what is within and outside my experience, I as experiencing con-
sciousness. What is within the experience of my fellow man may be in
principle inaccessible to my direct experience and vice versa. A crucial
case in point is the problem of the experience of death. My experience of
death is always my experience of the death of the Other, the death of a
fellow man. The experience of my death as a phenomenon, Sartre
claims, can only be a phenomenon for the experience of the Other,
whether that Other is friend, relation, associate, stranger, or part of the
anonymous "public." If "my" death is thus outside my possible
experience, in what sense is my death a possible object for my pheno-
menological investigation?

In endeavouring to consider this question, I believe that an analysis
of Sartre's philosophy of death may be of interest and of value in
several ways: first, we may clarify a vital point of difference between

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