 In 1935, Levinas was convinced that through sensation and states of mind we also discover the futility of getting out of existence. In the physical torment of nausea, we experience being in its simplest, most burdensome neutrality. To this, Levinas adds three provocative themes. First, if being is disclosed only through the being that we are, then any being that seeks to escape itself because it feels trapped in its own facticity, is a “creature”, carrying “the stigmatum of [finite] existence” (OE: §8). Second, nausea is not simply a physiological event. It shows us dramatically how existence can encircle us on all sides, to the point of submerging us. As Rolland observes, in that case social and political life may also nauseate us. Third, if being is experienced in its pure form as weighty indeterminacy, then we can neither bypass it (following the “aspirations of Idealism” [OE: §8]), nor even simply accept it as passive subjects. Being is existence, and it is firstly our existence. The mark of creaturely existence is need and, by extension, a struggle with being. Levinas concludes polemically, 