Being and Nothingness it has been suggested that it usually went unread by them. Sartre's reflections on slime ("le visqueux") have been described as celebrated. Sartre's existentialism shares its philosophical starting point with René Descartes: The first thing we can be aware of is our existence, even when doubting everything else (Cogito ergo sum). In "Nausea", the main character's feeling of dizziness towards his own existence is induced by things, not thinking. This dizziness occurs "in the face of one's freedom and responsibility for giving a meaning to reality". As an important break with Descartes, Sartre rejects the "primacy of knowledge", as summed
Cogito, ergo sum "Meditations", Descartes phrases the conclusion of the argument as "that the proposition, "I am, I exist," is necessarily true whenever it is put forward by me or conceived in my mind." ("Meditation" II) At the beginning of the second meditation, having reached what he considers to be the ultimate level of doubt—his argument from the existence of a deceiving god—Descartes examines his beliefs to see if any have survived the doubt. In his belief in his own existence, he finds that it is impossible to doubt that he exists. Even if there were a deceiving god (or an evil demon),