L’inépuisable et la fatigue

Based on the example of the walk in the mountains in L’Être et le Néant, this article formulates a distinction between fatigue and exhaustion, phenomena that are not separated by a difference of degree but of nature. Fatigue involves a consciousness that takes part in the world from the perspective of an “I.” Exhaustion involves a consciousness that frees itself from the ego in which it was gathered. And this “I” feels overwhelmed by the consciousness that, out of exhaustion, does without it.