consciousness is its negative power, by which we
Jean Paul Sartre:
Existentialism
The
philosophical career of Jean Paul Sartre (1905-
1980) focuses, in its first phase, upon the
construction of a philosophy of existence known
as existentialism. Sartre's early works are
characterized by a development of
classic phenomenology, but his reflection
diverges from Husserl’s on methodology, the
conception of the self, and an interest in ethics.
These points of divergence are the cornerstones
of Sartre’s existential phenomenology, whose
purpose is to understand human existence
rather than the world as such. Adopting and
adapting the methods of phenomenology, Sartre
sets out to develop an ontological account of
what it is to be human. The main features of this
ontology are the groundlessness and radical
freedom which characterize the human
condition. These are contrasted with the
unproblematic being of the world of things.
Sartre’s substantial literary output adds
dramatic expression to the always unstable co-
existence of facts and freedom in an indifferent
world.
Sartre’s ontology is explained in his
philosophical masterpiece, Being and
Nothingness, where he defines two types of
reality which lie beyond our conscious
experience: the being of the object of
consciousness and that of consciousness itself.
The object of consciousness exists as "in-itself,"
that is, in an independent and non-relational
way. However, consciousness is always
consciousness “of something,” so it is defined in
relation to something else, and it is not possible
to grasp it within a conscious experience: it
exists as "for-itself." An essential feature of
can experience "nothingness." This power is
also at work within the self, where it creates an
intrinsic lack of self-identity. So the unity of the
self is understood as a task for the for-itself
rather than as a given.
In order to ground itself, the self needs projects,
which can be viewed as aspects of an
individual’s fundamental project and motivated
by a desire for "being" lying within the
individual's consciousness. The source of this
project is a spontaneous original choice that
depends on the individual's freedom. However,
self’s choice may lead to a project of self-
deception such as bad faith, where one’s own
real nature as for-itself is discarded to adopt
that of the in-itself. Our only way to escape self-
deception is authenticity, that is, choosing in a
way which reveals the existence of the for-itself
as both factual and transcendent. For Sartre, my
proper exercise of freedom creates values that
any other human being placed in my situation
could experience, therefore each authentic
project expresses a universal dimension in the
singularity of a human life.
After a brief summary of Sartre’s life, this article
looks at the main themes characterizing Sartre’s
early philosophical works. The ontology
developed in Sartre’s main existential
work, Being and Nothingness, will then be
analysed. Finally, an overview is provided of the
further development of existentialist themes in
his later works.
Table of Contents
1. Sartre's Life
2. Early Works
a. Methodology
b. The Ego
c. Ethics
d. Existential Phenomenology
3. The Ontology of Being and Nothingness
. The Being of the Phenomenon and
Consciousness
a. Two Types of Being
b. Nothingness
4. The For-Itself in Being and Nothingness
. A Lack of Self-Identity
a. The Project of Bad Faith
b. The Fundamental Project
 c. Desire
5. Relations with Others in Being and Nothingness
. The Problem of Other Minds
a. Human Relationships
6. Authenticity
. Freedom
a. Authenticity
b. An Ethical Dimension
7. Other Contributions to Existential
Phenomenology
. Critique of Dialectical Reason
a. The Problem of Method
8. Conclusion
9. References
. Sartre's works
a. Commentaries
1. Sartre's Life
Sartre was born in 1905 in Paris. After a
childhood marked by the early death of his
father, the important role played by his
grandfather, and some rather unhappy
experiences at school, Sartre finished High
School at the Lycée Henri IV in Paris. After two
years of preparation, he gained entrance to the
prestigious Ecole Normale Supérieure, where,
from 1924 to 1929 he came into contact with
Raymond Aron, Simone de Beauvoir, Maurice
Merleau-Ponty and other notables. He passed the
'Agrégation' on his second attempt, by adapting
the content and style of his writing to the rather
traditional requirements of the examiners. This
was his passport to a teaching career. After
teaching philosophy in a lycée in Le Havre, he
obtained a grant to study at the French Institute
in Berlin where he discovered phenomenology
in 1933 and wrote The Transcendence of the Ego.
His phenomenological investigation into the
imagination was published in 1936 and
his Theory of Emotions two years later. During
the Second World War, Sartre wrote his
existentialist magnum opus Being and
Nothingness and taught the work of Heidegger in
a war camp. He was briefly involved in a
Resistance group and taught in a lycée until the
end of the war. Being and Nothingness was
published in 1943 and Existentialism and
Humanism in 1946. His study of Baudelaire was
published in 1947 and that of the actor Jean
Genet in 1952. Throughout the Thirties and
Forties, Sartre also had an abundant literary
output with such novels as Nausea and plays
like Intimacy (The wall), The flies, Huis Clos, Les
Mains Sales. In 1960, after three years working
on it, Sartre published the Critique of Dialectical
Reason. In the Fifties and Sixties, Sartre
travelled to the USSR, Cuba, and was involved
in turn in promoting Marxist ideas, condemning
the USSR's invasion of Hungary and
Czechoslovakia, and speaking up against
France's policies in Algeria. He was a high
profile figure in the Peace Movement. In 1964,
he turned down the Nobel prize for literature.
He was actively involved in the May 1968
uprising. His study of Flaubert, L'Idiot de la
Famille, was published in 1971. In 1977, he
claimed no longer to be a Marxist, but his
political activity continued until his death in
1980.
2. Early Works
Sartre's early work is characterised by
phenomenological analyses involving his own
interpretation of Husserl's method. Sartre's
methodology is Husserlian (as demonstrated in
his paper "Intentionality: a fundamental ideal of
Husserl's phenomenology") insofar as it is a
form of intentional and eidetic analysis. This
means that the acts by which consciousness
assigns meaning to objects are what is analysed,
and that what is sought in the particular
examples under examination is their essential
structure. At the core of this methodology is a
conception of consciousness as intentional, that
is, as 'about' something, a conception inherited
from Brentano and Husserl. Sartre puts his own
mark on this view by presenting consciousness
as being transparent, i.e. having no 'inside', but
rather as being a 'fleeing' towards the world.
The distinctiveness of Sartre's development of
Husserl's phenomenology can be characterised
in terms of Sartre's methodology, of his view of
the self and of his ultimate ethical interests.
a. Methodology
Sartre's methodology differs from Husserl's in
two essential ways. Although he thinks of his
analyses as eidetic, he has no real interest in
Husserl's understanding of his method as
uncovering the Essence of things. For Husserl,
eidetic analysis is a clarification which brings
out the higher level of the essence that is hidden
in 'fluid unclarity' (Husserl, Ideas, I). For Sartre,
the task of an eidetic analysis does not deliver
something fixed immanent to the phenomenon.
It still claims to uncover that which is essential,
but thereby recognizes that phenomenal
experience is essentially fluid.
In Sketch for a Theory of the Emotions, Sartre
replaces the traditional picture of the passivity
of our emotional nature with one of the subject's
active participation in her emotional
experiences. Emotion originates in a
degradation of consciousness faced with a
certain situation. The spontaneous conscious
grasp of the situation which characterizes an
emotion, involves what Sartre describes as a
'magical' transformation of the situation. Faced
with an object which poses an insurmountable
problem, the subject attempts to view it
differently, as though it were magically
transformed. Thus an imminent extreme danger
may cause me to faint so that the object of my
fear is no longer in my conscious grasp. Or, in
the case of wrath against an unmovable
obstacle, I may hit it as though the world were
such that this action could lead to its removal.
The essence of an emotional state is thus not an
immanent feature of the mental world, but
rather a transformation of the subject's
perspective upon the world. In The Psychology of
the Imagination, Sartre demonstrates his
phenomenological method by using it to take on
the traditional view that to imagine something
is to have a picture of it in mind. Sartre's account
of imagining does away with representations
and potentially allows for a direct access to that
which is imagined; when this object does not
exist, there is still an intention (albeit
unsuccessful) to become conscious of it through
the imagination. So there is no internal
structure to the imagination. It is rather a form
of directedness upon the imagined object.
Imagining a heffalump is thus of the same
nature as perceiving an elephant. Both are
spontaneous intentional (or directed) acts, each
with its own type of intentionality.
b. The Ego
Sartre's view also diverges from Husserl's on the
important issue of the ego. For Sartre, Husserl
adopted the view that the subject is a substance
with attributes, as a result of his interpretation
of Kant's unity of apperception. Husserl
endorsed the Kantian claim that the 'I think'
must be able to accompany any representation
of which I am conscious, but reified this 'I' into
a transcendental ego. Such a move is not
warranted for Sartre, as he explains in The
Transcendence of the Ego. Moreover, it leads to
the following problems for our
phenomenological analysis of consciousness.
The ego would have to feature as an object in all
states of consciousness. This would result in its
obstructing our conscious access to the world.
But this would conflict with the direct nature of
this conscious access. Correlatively,
consciousness would be divided into
consciousness of ego and consciousness of the
world. This would however be at odds with the
simple, and thus undivided, nature of our access
to the world through conscious experience. In
other words, when I am conscious of a tree, I am
directly conscious of it, and am not myself an
object of consciousness. Sartre proposes
therefore to view the ego as a unity produced by
consciousness. In other words, he adds to the
Humean picture of the self as a bundle of
perceptions, an account of its unity. This unity
of the ego is a product of conscious activity. As a
result, the traditional Cartesian view that self-
consciousness is the consciousness the ego has
of itself no longer holds, since the ego is not
given but created by consciousness. What model
does Sartre propose for our understanding of
self-consciousness and the production of the
ego through conscious activity? The key to
answering the first part of the question lies in
Sartre's introduction of a pre-reflective level,
while the second can then be addressed by
examining conscious activity at the other level,
i.e. that of reflection. An example of pre-
reflective consciousness is the seeing of a house.
This type of consciousness is directed to a
transcendent object, but this does not involve
my focussing upon it, i.e. it does not require that
an ego be involved in a conscious relation to the
object. For Sartre, this pre-reflective
consciousness is thus impersonal: there is no
place for an 'I' at this level. Importantly, Sartre
insists that self-consciousness is involved in any
such state of consciousness: it is the
consciousness this state has of itself. This
accounts for the phenomenology of 'seeing',
which is such that the subject is clearly aware of
her pre-reflective consciousness of the house.
This awareness does not have an ego as its
object, but it is rather the awareness that there
is an act of 'seeing'. Reflective consciousness is
the type of state of consciousness involved in my
looking at a house. For Sartre, the cogito
emerges as a result of consciousness's being
directed upon the pre-reflectively conscious. In
so doing, reflective consciousness takes the pre-
reflectively conscious as being mine. It thus
reveals an ego insofar as an 'I' is brought into
focus: the pre-reflective consciousness which is
objectified is viewed as mine. This 'I' is the
correlate of the unity that I impose upon the
pre-reflective states of consciousness through
my reflection upon them. To account for the
prevalence of the Cartesian picture, Sartre
argues that we are prone to the illusion that this
'I' was in fact already present prior to the
reflective conscious act, i.e. present at the pre-
reflective level. By substituting his model of a
two-tiered consciousness for this traditional
picture, Sartre provides an account of self-
consciousness that does not rely upon a pre-
existing ego, and shows how an ego is
constructed in reflection.
c. Ethics
An important feature of Sartre's
phenomenological work is that his ultimate
interest in carrying out phenomenological
analyses is an ethical one. Through them, he
opposes the view, which is for instance that of
the Freudian theory of the unconscious, that
there are psychological factors that are beyond
the grasp of our consciousness and thus are
potential excuses for certain forms of behaviour.
Starting with Sartre's account of the ego, this is
characterised by the claim that it is produced by,
rather than prior to consciousness. As a result,
accounts of agency cannot appeal to a pre-
existing ego to explain certain forms of
behaviour. Rather, conscious acts are
spontaneous, and since all pre-reflective
consciousness is transparent to itself, the agent
is fully responsible for them (and a fortiori for
his ego). In Sartre's analysis of emotions,
affective consciousness is a form of pre-
reflective consciousness, and is therefore
spontaneous and self-conscious. Against
traditional views of the emotions as involving
the subject's passivity, Sartre can therefore
claim that the agent is responsible for the pre-
reflective transformation of his consciousness
through emotion. In the case of the imaginary,
the traditional view of the power of fancy to
overcome rational thought is replaced by one of
imaginary consciousness as a form of pre-
reflective consciousness. As such, it is therefore
again the result of the spontaneity of
consciousness and involves self-conscious
states of mind. An individual is therefore fully
responsible for his imaginations's activity. In all
three cases, a key factor in Sartre's account is his
notion of the spontaneity of consciousness. To
dispel the apparent counter-intuitiveness of the
claims that emotional states and flights of
imagination are active, and thus to provide an
account that does justice to the phenomenology
of these states, spontaneity must be clearly
distinguished from a voluntary act. A voluntary
act involves reflective consciousness that is
connected with the will; spontaneity is a feature
of pre-reflective consciousness.
d. Existential Phenomenology
Is there a common thread to these specific
features of Sartre's phenomenological
approach? Sartre's choice of topics for
phenomenological analysis suggests an interest
in the phenomenology of what it is to be human,
rather than in the world as such. This privileging
of the human dimension has parallels with
Heidegger's focus upon Dasein in tackling the
question of Being. This aspect of Heidegger's
work is that which can properly be called
existential insofar as Dasein's way of being is
essentially distinct from that of any other being.
This characterisation is particularly apt for
Sartre's work, in that his phenomenological
analyses do not serve a deeper ontological
purpose as they do for Heidegger who distanced
himself from any existential labelling. Thus, in
his "Letter on Humanism", Heidegger reminds
us that the analysis of Dasein is only one chapter
in the enquiry into the question of Being. For
Heidegger, Sartre's humanism is one more
metaphysical perspective which does not return
to the deeper issue of the meaning of Being.
Sartre sets up his own picture of the individual
human being by first getting rid of its grounding
in a stable ego. As Sartre later puts it
in Existentialism is a Humanism, to be human is
characterised by an existence that precedes its
essence. As such, existence is problematic, and
it is towards the development of a full
existentialist theory of what it is to be human
that Sartre's work logically evolves. In relation
to what will become Being and Nothingness,
Sartre's early works can be seen as providing
important preparatory material for an
existential account of being human. But the
distinctiveness of Sartre's approach to
understanding human existence is ultimately
guided by his ethical interest. In particular, this
accounts for his privileging of a strong notion of
freedom which we shall see to be fundamentally
at odds with Heidegger's analysis. Thus the
nature of Sartre's topics of analysis, his theory of
the ego and his ethical aims all characterise the
development of an existential phenomenology.
Let us now examine the central themes of this
theory as they are presented in Being and
Nothingness.
3. The Ontology of Being and Nothingness
Being and Nothingness can be characterized as a
phenomenological investigation into the nature
of what it is to be human, and thus be seen as a
continuation of, and expansion upon, themes
characterising the early works. In contrast with
these however, an ontology is presented at the
outset and guides the whole development of the
investigation.
One of the main features of this system, which
Sartre presents in the introduction and the first
chapter of Part One, is a distinction between two
kinds of transcendence of the phenomenon of
being. The first is the transcendence of being
and the second that of consciousness. This
means that, starting with the phenomenon (that
which is our conscious experience), there are
two types of reality which lie beyond it, and are
thus trans-phenomenal. On the one hand, there
is the being of the object of consciousness, and
on the other, that of consciousness itself. These
define two types of being, the in-itself and the
for-itself. To bring out that which keeps them
apart, involves understanding the
phenomenology of nothingness. This reveals
consciousness as essentially characterisable
through its power of negation, a power which
plays a key role in our existential condition. Let
us examine these points in more detail.
a. The Being of the Phenomenon
and Consciousness
In Being and Time, Heidegger presents the
phenomenon as involving both a covering and a
disclosing of being. For Sartre, the phenomenon
reveals, rather than conceals, reality. What is
the status of this reality? Sartre considers the
phenomenalist option of viewing the world as a
construct based upon the series of appearances.
He points out that the being of the phenomenon
is not like its essence, i.e. is not something which
is apprehended on the basis of this series. In this
way, Sartre moves away from Husserl's
conception of the essence as that which
underpins the unity of the appearances of an
object, to a Heideggerian notion of the being of
the phenomenon as providing this grounding.
Just as the being of the phenomenon transcends
the phenomenon of being, consciousness also
transcends it. Sartre thus establishes that if
there is perceiving, there must be a
consciousness doing the perceiving.
How are these two transphenomenal forms of
being related? As opposed to a conceptualising
consciousness in a relation of knowledge to an
object, as in Husserl and the epistemological
tradition he inherits, Sartre introduces a
relation of being: consciousness (in a pre-
reflective form) is directly related to the being of
the phenomenon. This is Sartre's version of
Heidegger's ontological relation of being-in-the-
world. It differs from the latter in two essential
respects. First, it is not a practical relation, and
thus distinct from a relation to the ready-to-
hand. Rather, it is simply given by
consciousness. Second, it does not lead to any
further question of Being. For Sartre, all there is
to being is given in the transphenomenality of
existing objects, and there is no further issue of
the Being of all beings as for Heidegger.
b. Two Types of Being
As we have seen, both consciousness and the
being of the phenomenon transcend the
phenomenon of being. As a result, there are two
types of being which Sartre, using Hegel's
terminology, calls the for-itself ('pour-soi') and
the in-itself ('en-soi').
Sartre presents the in-itself as existing without
justification independently of the for-itself, and
thus constituting an absolute 'plenitude'. It
exists in a fully determinate and non-relational
way. This fully characterizes its transcendence
of the conscious experience. In contrast with the
in-itself, the for-itself is mainly characterised by
a lack of identity with itself. This is a
consequence of the following. Consciousness is
always 'of something', and therefore defined in
relation to something else. It has no nature
beyond this and is thus completely translucent.
Insofar as the for-itself always transcends the
particular conscious experience (because of the
spontaneity of consciousness), any attempt to
grasp it within a conscious experience is
doomed to failure. Indeed, as we have already
seen in the distinction between pre-reflective
and reflective consciousness, a conscious grasp
of the first transforms it. This means that it is
not possible to identify the for-itself, since the
most basic form of identification, i.e. with itself,
fails. This picture is clearly one in which the
problematic region of being is that of the for-
itself, and that is what Being and Nothingness will
focus upon. But at the same time, another
important question arises. Indeed, insofar
Sartre has rejected the notion of a grounding of
all beings in Being, one may ask how something
like a relation of being between consciousness
and the world is possible. This issue translates
in terms of understanding the meaning of the
totality formed by the for-itself and the in-itself
and its division into these two regions of being.
By addressing this latter issue, Sartre finds the
key concept that enables him to investigate the
nature of the for-itself.
c. Nothingness
One of the most original contributions of
Sartre's metaphysics lies in his analysis of the
notion of nothingness and the claim that it plays
a central role at the heart of being (chapter 1,
Part One).
Sartre (BN, 9-10) discusses the example of
entering a café to meet Pierre and discovering
his absence from his usual place. Sartre talks of
this absence as 'haunting' the café. Importantly,
this is not just a psychological state, because a
'nothingness' is really experienced. The
nothingness in question is also not simply the
result of applying a logical operator, negation, to
a proposition. For it is not the same to say that
there is no rhinoceros in the café, and to say that
Pierre is not there. The first is a purely logical
construction that reveals nothing about the
world, while the second does. Sartre says it
points to an objective fact. However, this
objective fact is not simply given independently
of human beings. Rather, it is produced by
consciousness. Thus Sartre considers the
phenomenon of destruction. When an
earthquake brings about a landslide, it modifies
the terrain. If, however, a town is thereby
annihilated, the earthquake is viewed as having
destroyed it. For Sartre, there is only
destruction insofar as humans have identified
the town as 'fragile'. This means that it is the
very negation involved in characterising
something as destructible which makes
destruction possible. How is such a negation
possible? The answer lies in the claim that the
power of negation is an intrinsic feature of the
intentionality of consciousness. To further
identify this power of negation, let us look at
Sartre's treatment of the phenomenon of
questioning. When I question something, I posit
the possibility of a negative reply. For Sartre,
this means that I operate a nihilation of that
which is given: the latter is thus 'fluctuating
between being and nothingness' (BN, 23).
Sartre then notes that this requires that the
questioner be able to detach himself from the
causal series of being. And, by nihilating the
given, he detaches himself from any
deterministic constraints. And Sartre says that
'the name (...) [of] this possibility which every
human being has to secrete a nothingness which
isolates it (...) is freedom' (BN, 24-25). Our
power to negate is thus the clue which reveals
our nature as free. Below, we shall return to the
nature of Sartre's notion of freedom.
4. The For-Itself in Being and Nothingness
The structure and characteristics of the for-itself
are the main focal point of the
phenomenological analyses of Being and
Nothingness. Here, the theme of consciousness's
power of negation is explored in its different
ramifications. These bring out the core claims of
Sartre's existential account of the human
condition.
a. A Lack of Self-Identity
The analysis of nothingness provides the key to
the phenomenological understanding of the for-
itself (chapter 1, Part Two). For the negating
power of consciousness is at work within the self
(BN, 85). By applying the account of this
negating power to the case of reflection, Sartre
shows how reflective consciousness negates the
pre-reflective consciousness it takes as its
object. This creates an instability within the self
which emerges in reflection: it is torn between
being posited as a unity and being reflexively
grasped as a duality. This lack of self-identity is
given another twist by Sartre: it is posited as a
task. That means that the unity of the self is a
task for the for-itself, a task which amounts to
the self's seeking to ground itself.
This dimension of task ushers in a temporal
component that is fully justified by Sartre's
analysis of temporality (BN, 107). The lack of
coincidence of the for-itself with itself is at the
heart of what it is to be a for-itself. Indeed, the
for-itself is not identical with its past nor its
future. It is already no longer what it was, and it
is not yet what it will be. Thus, when I make who
I am the object of my reflection, I can take that
which now lies in my past as my object, while I
have actually moved beyond this. Sartre says
that I am therefore no longer who I am.
Similarly with the future: I never coincide with
that which I shall be. Temporality constitutes
another aspect of the way in which negation is at
work within the for-itself. These temporal
ecstases also map onto fundamental features of
the for-itself. First, the past corresponds to the
facticity of a human life that cannot choose what
is already given about itself. Second, the future
opens up possibilities for the freedom of the for-
itself. The coordination of freedom and facticity
is however generally incoherent, and thus
represents another aspect of the essential
instability at the heart of the for-itself.
b. The Project of Bad Faith
The way in which the incoherence of the
dichotomy of facticity and freedom is
manifested, is through the project of bad faith
(chapter 2, Part One). Let us first clarify Sartre's
notion of project. The fact that the self-identity
of the for-itself is set as a task for the for-itself,
amounts to defining projects for the for-itself.
Insofar as they contribute to this task, they can
be seen as aspects of the individual's
fundamental project. This specifies the way in
which the for-itself understands itself and
defines herself as this, rather than another,
individual. We shall return to the issue of the
fundamental project below.
Among the different types of project, that of bad
faith is of generic importance for an existential
understanding of what it is to be human. This
importance derives ultimately from its ethical
relevance. Sartre's analysis of the project of bad
faith is grounded in vivid examples. Thus Sartre
describes the precise and mannered movements
of a café waiter (BN, 59). In thus behaving, the
waiter is identifying himself with his role as
waiter in the mode of being in-itself. In other
words, the waiter is discarding his real nature as
for-itself, i.e. as free facticity, to adopt that of the
in-itself. He is thus denying his transcendence
as for-itself in favour of the kind of
transcendence characterising the in-itself. In
this way, the burden of his freedom, i.e. the
requirement to decide for himself what to do, is
lifted from his shoulders since his behaviour is
as though set in stone by the definition of the
role he has adopted. The mechanism involved in
such a project involves an inherent
contradiction. Indeed, the very identification at
the heart of bad faith is only possible because
the waiter is a for-itself, and can indeed choose
to adopt such a project. So the freedom of the
for-itself is a pre-condition for the project of bad
faith which denies it. The agent's defining his
being as an in-itself is the result of the way in
which he represents himself to himself. This
misrepresentation is however one the agent is
responsible for. Ultimately, nothing is hidden,
since consciousness is transparent and
therefore the project of bad faith is pursued
while the agent is fully aware of how things are
in pre-reflective consciousness. Insofar as bad
faith is self-deceit, it raises the problem of
accounting for contradictory beliefs. The
examples of bad faith which Sartre gives, serve
to underline how this conception of self-deceit
in fact involves a project based upon inadequate
representations of what one is. There is
therefore no need to have recourse to a notion of
unconscious to explain such phenomena. They
can be accounted for using the dichotomy for-
itself/in-itself, as projects freely adopted by
individual agents. A first consequence is that
this represents an alternative to
psychoanalytical accounts of self-deceit. Sartre
was particularly keen to provide alternatives to
Freud's theory of self-deceit, with its appeal to
censorship mechanisms accounting for
repression, all of which are beyond the subject's
awareness as they are unconscious (BN, 54-55).
The reason is that Freud's theory diminishes the
agent's responsibility. On the contrary, and this
is the second consequence of Sartre's account of
bad faith, Sartre's theory makes the individual
responsible for what is a widespread form of
behaviour, one that accounts for many of the
evils that Sartre sought to describe in his plays.
To explain how existential psychoanalysis works
requires that we first examine the notion of
fundamental project (BN, 561).
c. The Fundamental Project
If the project of bad faith involves a
misrepresentation of what it is to be a for-itself,
and thus provides a powerful account of certain
types of self-deceit, we have, as yet, no account
of the motivation that lies behind the adoption
of such a project.
As we saw above, all projects can be viewed as
parts of the fundamental project, and we shall
therefore focus upon the motivation for the
latter (chapter 2, Part Four). That a for-itself is
defined by such a project arises as a
consequence of the for-itself's setting itself self-
identity as a task. This in turn is the result of the
for-itself's experiencing the cleavages
introduced by reflection and temporality as
amounting to a lack of self-identity. Sartre
describes this as defining the `desire for being~
(BN, 565). This desire is universal, and it can
take on one of three forms. First, it may be
aimed at a direct transformation of the for-itself
into an in-itself. Second, the for-itself may
affirm its freedom that distinguishes it from an
in-itself, so that it seeks through this to become
its own foundation (i.e. to become God). The
conjunction of these two moments results,
third, in the for-itself's aiming for another mode
of being, the for-itself-in-itself. None of the aims
described in these three moments are realisable.
Moreover, the triad of these three moments is,
unlike a Hegelian thesis-antithesis-synthesis
triad, inherently instable: if the for-itself
attempts to achieve one of them, it will conflict
with the others. Since all human lives are
characterised by such a desire (albeit in
different individuated forms), Sartre has thus
provided a description of the human condition
which is dominated by the irrationality of
particular projects. This picture is in particular
illustrated in Being and Nothingness by an
account of the projects of love, sadism and
masochism, and in other works, by biographical
accounts of the lives of Baudelaire, Flaubert and
Jean Genet. With this notion of desire for being,
the motivation for the fundamental project is
ultimately accounted for in terms of the
metaphysical nature of the for-itself. This means
that the source of motivation for the
fundamental project lies within consciousness.
Thus, in particular, bad faith, as a type of
project, is motivated in this way. The individual
choice of fundamental project is an original
choice (BN, 564). Consequently, an
understanding of what it is to be Flaubert for
instance, must involve an attempt to decipher
his original choice. This hermeneutic exercise
aims to reveal what makes an individual a unity.
This provides existential psychoanalysis with its
principle. Its method involves an analysis of all
the empirical behaviour of the subject, aimed at
grasping the nature of this unity.
d. Desire
The fundamental project has been presented as
motivated by a desire for being. How does this enable
Sartre to provide an account of desires as in fact
directed towards being although they are generally
thought to be rather aimed at having? Sartre
discusses desire in chapter I of Part One and then
again in chapter II of Part Four, after presenting the
notion of fundamental project.
In the first short discussion of desire, Sartre presents
it as seeking a coincidence with itself that is not
possible (BN, 87, 203). Thus, in thirst, there is a lack
that seeks to be satisfied. But the satisfaction of thirst
is not the suppression of thirst, but rather the aim of
a plenitude of being in which desire and satisfaction
are united in an impossible synthesis. As Sartre
points out, humans cling on to their desires. Mere
satisfaction through suppression of the desire is
indeed always disappointing. Another example of
this structure of desire (BN, 379) is that of love. For
Sartre, the lover seeks to possess the loved one and
thus integrate her into his being: this is the
satisfaction of desire. He simultaneously wishes the
loved one nevertheless remain beyond his being as
the other he desires, i.e. he wishes to remain in the
state of desiring. These are incompatible aspects of
desire: the being of desire is therefore incompatible
with its satisfaction. In the lengthier discussion on
the topic "Being and Having," Sartre differentiates
between three relations to an object that can be
projected in desiring. These are being, doing and
having. Sartre argues that relations of desire aimed at
doing are reducible to one of the other two types. His
examination of these two types can be summarised
as follows. Desiring expressed in terms of being is
aimed at the self. And desiring expressed in terms of
having is aimed at possession. But an object is
possessed insofar as it is related to me by an internal
ontological bond, Sartre argues. Through that bond,
the object is represented as my creation. The
possessed object is represented both as part of me
and as my creation. With respect to this object, I am
therefore viewed both as an in-itself and as endowed
with freedom. The object is thus a symbol of the
subject's being, which presents it in a way that
conforms with the aims of the fundamental project.
Sartre can therefore subsume the case of desiring to
have under that of desiring to be, and we are thus left
with a single type of desire, that for being.
5. Relations with Others in Being and
Nothingness
So far, we have presented the analysis of the for-itself
without investigating how different individual for-
itself's interact. Far from neglecting the issue of inter-
subjectivity, this represents an important part of
Sartre's phenomenological analysis in which the
main themes discussed above receive their
confirmation in, and extension to the inter-personal
realm.
a. The Problem of Other Minds
In chapter 1, Part Three, Sartre recognizes there is a
problem of other minds: how I can be conscious of
the other (BN 221-222)? Sartre examines many
existing approaches to the problem of other minds.
Looking at realism, Sartre claims that no access to
other minds is ever possible, and that for a realist
approach the existence of the other is a mere
hypothesis. As for idealism, it can only ever view the
other in terms of sets of appearances. But the
transphenomenality of the other cannot be deduced
from them.
Sartre also looks at his phenomenologist
predecessors, Husserl and Heidegger. Husserl's
account is based upon the perception of another body
from which, by analogy, I can consider the other as a
distinct conscious perspective upon the world. But
the attempt to derive the other's subjectivity from my
own never really leaves the orbit of my own
transcendental ego, and thus fails to come to terms
with the other as a distinct transcendental ego. Sartre
praises Heidegger for understanding that the relation
to the other is a relation of being, not an
epistemological one. However, Heidegger does not
provide any grounds for taking the co-existence of
Daseins ('being-with') as an ontological structure.
What is, for Sartre, the nature of my consciousness
of the other? Sartre provides a phenomenological
analysis of shame and how the other features in it.
When I peep through the keyhole, I am completely
absorbed in what I am doing and my ego does not
feature as part of this pre-reflective state. However,
when I hear a floorboard creaking behind me, I
become aware of myself as an object of the other's
look. My ego appears on the scene of this reflective
consciousness, but it is as an object for the other.
Note that one may be empirically in error about the
presence of this other. But all that is required by
Sartre's thesis is that there be other human beings.
This objectification of my ego is only possible if the
other is given as a subject. For Sartre, this establishes
what needed to be proven: since other minds are
required to account for conscious states such as those
of shame, this establishes their existence a priori.
This does not refute the skeptic, but provides Sartre
with a place for the other as an a priori condition for
certain forms of consciousness which reveal a
relation of being to the other.
b. Human Relationships
In the experience of shame (BN, 259), the
objectification of my ego denies my existence as a
subject. I do, however, have a way of evading this.
This is through an objectification of the other. By
reacting against the look of the other, I can turn him
into an object for my look. But this is no stable
relation. In chapter 1, Part Three, of Being and
Nothingness, Sartre sees important implications of
this movement from object to subject and vice-versa,
insofar as it is through distinguishing oneself from
the other that a for-itself individuates itself. More
precisely, the objectification of the other corresponds
to an affirmation of my self by distinguishing myself
from the other. This affirmation is however a failure,
because through it, I deny the other's selfhood and
therefore deny that with respect to which I want to
affirm myself. So, the dependence upon the other
which characterises the individuation of a particular
ego is simultaneously denied. The resulting
instability is characteristic of the typically conflictual
state of our relations with others. Sartre examines
examples of such relationships as are involved in
sadism, masochism and love. Ultimately, Sartre
would argue that the instabilities that arise in human
relationships are a form of inter-subjective bad faith.
6. Authenticity
If the picture which emerges from Sartre's
examination of human relationships seems rather
hopeless, it is because bad faith is omnipresent and
inescapable. In fact, Sartre's philosophy has a very
positive message which is that we have infinite
freedom and that this enables us to make authentic
choices which escape from the grip of bad faith. To
understand Sartre's notion of authenticity therefore
requires that we first clarify his notion of freedom.
a. Freedom
For Sartre (chapter 1, Part Four), each agent is
endowed with unlimited freedom. This statement
may seem puzzling given the obvious limitations on
every individual's freedom of choice. Clearly,
physical and social constraints cannot be overlooked
in the way in which we make choices. This is
however a fact which Sartre accepts insofar as the
for-itself is facticity. And this does not lead to any
contradiction insofar as freedom is not defined by an
ability to act. Freedom is rather to be understood as
characteristic of the nature of consciousness, i.e. as
spontaneity. But there is more to freedom. For all that
Pierre's freedom is expressed in opting either for
looking after his ailing grandmother or joining the
French Resistance, choices for which there are
indeed no existing grounds, the decision to opt for
either of these courses of action is a meaningful one.
That is, opting for the one of the other is not just a
spontaneous decision, but has consequences for the
for-itself. To express this, Sartre presents his notion
of freedom as amounting to making choices, and
indeed not being able to avoid making choices.
Sartre's conception of choice can best be understood
by reference to an individual's original choice, as we
saw above. Sartre views the whole life of an
individual as expressing an original project that
unfolds throughout time. This is not a project which
the individual has proper knowledge of, but rather
one which she may interpret (an interpretation
constantly open to revision). Specific choices are
therefore always components in time of this time-
spanning original choice of project.
b. Authenticity
With this notion of freedom as spontaneous choice,
Sartre therefore has the elements required to define
what it is to be an authentic human being. This
consists in choosing in a way which reflects the
nature of the for-itself as both transcendence and
facticity. This notion of authenticity appears closely
related to Heidegger's, since it involves a mode of
being that exhibits a recognition that one is a Dasein.
However, unlike Heidegger's, Sartre's conception
has clear practical consequences.
For what is required of an authentic choice is that it
involve a proper coordination of transcendence and
facticity, and thus that it avoid the pitfalls of an
uncoordinated expression of the desire for being.
This amounts to not-grasping oneself as freedom and
facticity. Such a lack of proper coordination between
transcendence and facticity constitutes bad faith,
either at an individual or an inter-personal level.
Such a notion of authenticity is therefore quite
different from what is often popularly
misrepresented as a typically existentialist attitude,
namely an absolute prioritisation of individual
spontaneity. On the contrary, a recognition of how
our freedom interacts with our facticity exhibits the
responsibility which we have to make proper
choices. These are choices which are not trapped in
bad faith.
c. An Ethical Dimension
Through the practical consequences presented
above, an existentialist ethics can be discerned. We
pointed out that random expressions of one's
spontaneity are not what authenticity is about, and
Sartre emphasises this point in Existentialism and
Humanism. There, he explicitly states that there is an
ethical normativity about authenticity. If one ought
to act authentically, is there any way of further
specifying what this means for the nature of ethical
choices? There are in fact many statements in Being
and Nothingness which emphasise a universality
criterion not entirely dissimilar from Kant's. This
should come as no surprise since both Sartre and
Kant's approaches are based upon the ultimate value
of a strong notion of freedom. As Sartre points out,
by choosing, an individual commits not only himself,
but the whole of humanity (BN, 553). Although there
are no a priori values for Sartre, the agent's choice
creates values in the same way as the artist does in
the aesthetic realm. The values thus created by a
proper exercise of my freedom have a universal
dimension, in that any other human being could
make sense of them were he to be placed in my
situation. There is therefore a universality that is
expressed in particular forms in each authentic
project. This is a first manifestation of what Sartre
later refers to as the 'singular universal'.
7. Other Contributions to Existential
Phenomenology
If Being and Nothingness represents the culmination
of Sartre's purely existentialist work, existentialism
permeates later writings, albeit in a hybrid form. We
shall briefly indicate how these later writings extend
and transform his project of existential
phenomenology.
a. Critique of Dialectical Reason
The experience of the war and the encounter with
Merleau-Ponty contributed to awakening Sartre's
interest in the political dimension of human
existence: Sartre thus further developed his
existentialist understanding of human beings in a
way which is compatible with Marxism. A key
notion for this phase of his philosophical
development is the concept of praxis. This extends
and transforms that of project: man as a praxis is both
something that produces and is produced. Social
structures define a starting point for each individual.
But the individual then sets his own aims and thereby
goes beyond and negates what society had defined
him as. The range of possibilities which are available
for this expression of freedom is however dependent
upon the existing social structures. And it may be the
case that this range is very limited. In this way, the
infinite freedom of the earlier philosophy is now
narrowed down by the constraints of the political and
historical situation.
In Critique of Dialectical Reason, Sartre analyses
different dimensions of the praxis. In the first
volume, a theory of "practical ensembles" examines
the way in which a praxis is no longer opposed to an
in-itself, but to institutions which have become
rigidified and constitute what Sartre calls the
'practico-inert'. Human beings interiorise the
universal features of the situation in which they are
born, and this translates in terms of a particular way
of developing as a praxis. This is the sense Sartre
now gives to the notion of the 'singular universal'.
b. The Problem of Method
In this book Sartre redefines the focus of
existentialism as the individual understood as
belonging to a certain social situation, but not totally
determined by it. For the individual is always going
beyond what is given, with his own aims and
projects. In this way, Sartre develops a 'regressive-
progressive method' that views individual
development as explained in terms of a movement
from the universal expressed in historical
development, and the particular expressed in
individual projects. Thus, by combining a Marxist
understanding of history with the methods of
existential psychoanalysis which are first presented
in Being and Nothingness, Sartre proposes a method
for understanding a human life. This, he applies in
particular to the case of an analysis of Flaubert. It is
worth noting however that developing an account of
the intelligibility of history, is a project that Sartre
tackled in the second volume of the Critique of
Dialectical Reason, but which remained unfinished.
8. Conclusion
Sartre's existentialist understanding of what it is to be
human can be summarised in his view that the
underlying motivation for action is to be found in the
nature of consciousness which is a desire for being.
It is up to each agent to exercise his freedom in such
a way that he does not lose sight of his existence as a
facticity, as well as a free human being. In so doing,
he will come to understand more about the original
choice which his whole life represents, and thus
about the values that are thereby projected. Such an
understanding is only obtained through living this
particular life and avoiding the pitfalls of strategies
of self-deceit such as bad faith. This authentic option
for human life represents the realisation of a
universal in the singularity of a human life.
 9. References and Further Reading
a. Sartre's Works BROWSE BY TOPIC
 "Intentionality: a Fundamental Ideal of Husserl's
Phenomenology" (1970) transl. J.P.Fell, Journal of the Browse by
British Society for Phenomenology, 1 (2), 4-5. Topic
 Psychology of the Imagination (1972) transl. Bernard
Frechtman, Methuen, London.
 Sketch for a Theory of the Emotions (1971) transl. Philip © Copyright Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy and its Authors |
Mairet, Methuen, London. ISSN 2161-0002
 The Transcendence of the Ego: An Existentialist Theory of
Consciousness (1957) transl. and ed. Forrest Williams and
Robert Kirkpatrick, Noonday, New York.
 Being and Nothingness: An Essay on Phenomenological
Ontology (1958) transl. Hazel E. Barnes, intr. Mary
Warnock, Methuen, London (abbreviated as BN above).
 Existentialism and Humanism (1973) transl. Philip Mairet,
Methuen, London.
 Critique of Dialectical Reason 1: Theory of Practical
Ensembles (1982) transl. Alan Sheridan-Smith, ed.
Jonathan Rée, Verso, London.
 The Problem of Method (1964) transl. Hazel E. Barnes,
Methuen, London.
b. Commentaries
 Caws, P. (1979) Sartre, Routledge and Kegan Paul,
London.
 Danto, A. C. (1991) Sartre, Fontana, London.
 Howells, C. (1988) Sartre: The Necessity of Freedom,
Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
 Howells, C. ed. (1992) Cambridge Companion to Sartre,
Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
 Murdoch, I. (1987) Sartre: Romantic Rationalist, Chatto
and Windus, London.
 Natanson, M. (1972) A Critique of Jean-Paul Sartre's
Ontology, Haskell House Publishers, New York.
 Schilpp, P. A. ed. (1981) The Philosophy of Jean-Paul
Sartre, Open Court, La Salle.
 Silverman, H. J. and Elliston, F.A. eds. (1980) Jean-Paul
Sartre: Contemporary Approaches to his Philosophy,
Harvester Press, Brighton.

Author Information
Christian J. Onof
Email: c.onof@imperial.ac.uk
University College, London
United Kingdom
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