A big part of Sartre's phenomenology is the fact that absence itself is perceived by us.. He gives an example about going to a cafe expecting to meet his friend Pierre there. He can't find Pierre, and he noticed that "not Pierre" appears everywhere to him in the cafe, in a visceral way. The chairs, tables, and people all take on an extra property in his perception, "not Pierre". Similar there is a classic joke about Sartre: he is at a cafe (pretty much everything about Sartre always happens at cafes, he was very French), and orders a coffee without cream. The waiter apologizes and says they don't have any cream, and asks if he would like his coffee without milk instead.

Like a suspicious amount of Sartre's thought experiments, it also sounds a bit like a drug trip, possible because it was.

A big part of Sartre's phenomenology is the fact that absence itself is perceived by us.. He gives an example about going to a cafe expecting to meet his friend Pierre there. He can't find Pierre, and he noticed that "not Pierre" appears everywhere to him in the cafe, in a visceral way. The chairs, tables, and people all take on an extra property in his perception, "not Pierre". Similar there is a classic joke about Sartre: he is at a cafe (pretty much everything about Sartre always happens at cafes, he was very French), and orders a coffee without cream. The waiter apologizes and says they don't have any cream, and asks if he would like his coffee without milk instead.

Like a suspicious amount of Sartre's thought experiments, it also sounds a bit like a drug trip, possible because it was.