Abstract: The Chant de la Contingence is read here in light of the exitus/reditus movement and the difference between production (of Being), distinction (between beings), ornament (a creature’s way of being), and the conservation of the Summa Theologiae by Thomas Aquinas. These categories are revisited and radically subverted—a subversion whose scope will be questioned by taking into consideration what shapes contingency later in Sartre’s work.
