Semaj Richard

Jean-Paul Sarte’s novel Nausea finds the hero of the novel moving through life on the basis of an unquestioned acceptance of a certain life outlook; however, his dissatisfaction with events forces him to ask whether this is, indeed, the proper outlook. The quest for some justification for his way of life brings about its disintegration into pure nausea, as the arbitrary framework into which he has previously organized his world disappears. All that he is left with is the complete confusion of his inescapable existence, and the realization that it has no meaningful order. Only when he becomes aware that he, and he alone, must make decisions and organize a means and a way of life for himself is it that he becomes overwhelmed with the predicament that confronts him. He must choose some arbitrary outlook in order to make sense out of his world. His thorough nausea can be transformed into what I consider the majority of today’s students, secondary through undergraduate, as complete alienation from what Educational Reconstruction philosopher Theodore Brameld has labeled as social self-realization (Education as Power, 1965, p. 59). The educational pursuits that occur within the “commune/community” is the logical locale where social self-realization can flourish, in past examples and in the future.