The Sartrean notion of collective au-thenticity is both a development of and a reaction to his earlier thesis on individual authenticity. First, the fact that Sartre considers the Other as a threat to individual authenticity is de facto evidence that the assistance of the Other is necessitated in the realization of collective authenticity.

Second, Sartre argues that while the Other may obstruct the realization of individual authenticity, that same Other in fact helps in the realization of collective authenticity. A hermeneutical reading of Sartre's Nausea will reveal the concept of collective authenticity in the way Sartre presents the role of freedom both in adventures and in temporality.

The struggle towards authenticity, whether individual or collective, is a struggle towards freedom. Sartre tackles in the Nausea the existential notion of freedom when Roquentin starts to introspect about adventures.

The void brought about by a meaningless existence usually prompts man to long for freedom through adventures. An adventure does not happen to one's life; it is something one makes happen. As Roquentin states:

The privileged situation, slowly, majestically, comes into other people's lives. Then the question on whether you want to make a great moment out of it. Still, an adventure cannot be considered as one without reference to the Other.

Roquentin succinctly points it out: This is what I thought: for the most banal event to become an adventure, you must (and this is enough) begin to recount it.

This is what fools people: a man is always a teller of tales, he lives surrounded by his stories and the stories of others, he sees everything that happens to him through them; and he tries to live his own life as if he were telling a story.

But you have to choose: live or tell. An adventure then becomes itself an occasion for bad faith. For collective authenticity to happen, society must be restructured so much so that one need not live his life as if he were telling a story.

This happens when society favors the multiplicity of personalities by granting freedom to each member to actualize himself in the best possible way for that individual. Since the freedom of the individual is of utmost importance in such an endeavor, the attainment of this freedom through the avoidance of adventures thus becomes a necessity.

Still, Sartre falls back to his earlier thesis when he suggests that authenticity is achieved when one learns to turn against the tide. While doing so seems insignificant, Sartre asserts, "In your most insignificant actions, there is an enormous amount of heroism." In the case of temporality, freedom comes through the acceptance of the reality that all that exists is the present.

Sartrean thesis states that the past and the future do not exist and only the present does. This tenet is reiterated in Nausea when Roquentin says: The true nature of the present revealed itself: it was what exists, and all that was not present did not exist.

The past did not exist. Not at all. Not in things, not even in my thought. Roquentin believes that freedom consists not in the abandonment of the past, but in the acceptance of the fact that the past is no more, and that one must dare to live with the present:

The past is a landlord's luxury. Where shall I keep mine? You don't put your past in your pocket; you have to have a house. I have only my body: a man entirely alone, with his lonely body, cannot indulge in memories; they pass through him. I should not complain: all I wanted was to be free.

The concept of collectivity is found in the realization of the need to assist others in their dealings with their past. However, early Sartre remains pessimistic as to whether one is able to do so. As Roquentin laments, "How can I, who have not the strength to hold to my own past, hope to save the past of someone else?" Ironically, however, there is no vivid description of collective authenticity in Sartre's play No Exit. In this play Sartre laid down the foundations of his tenets on individual authenticity.

The possible explanation for this may be the fact that Sartre is concerned primarily in this play to portray how other people become one's hell, and as such, an affirmation of intersubjectivity would destroy the whole paradigm.

Still, it cannot be denied that the very negation of intersubjectivity is itself a support of his later tenet that in the absence of a society conducive for authenticity, such an ideal is in vain. Still, we cannot but be observant of what Garcin suggests in the middle of the play:

Why not? We might, anyhow, be natural… Do you know, I used to be mad about women? And some were fond of me. So we may as well stop posing, we've nothing to lose. Why trouble about politeness, and decorum, and the rest of it?