Sartre's Phenomenological Anthropology between Psychoanalysis and "'Daseinsanalysis'"

Author(s): ALAIN FLAJOLIET

Source: Sartre Studies International , 2010, Vol. 16, No. 1 (2010), pp. 40-59
Published by: Berghahn Books

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/23512852

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 Sartre's Phenomenological
Anthropology between
Psychoanalysis and cDaseinsanalysis5
ALAIN FLAJOLIET

The aim of this article is to study the complex relationships between

what Sartre calls in Being and Nothingness 'psychanalyse
existentielle' ('existential psychoanalysis'),1 Freud's psychoanalysis, and
'Daseinsanalyse ', that is to say the anthropological analysis of existence
founded on Heidegger's 'existential analysis of Dasein' developed in
Being and Time.1 This requires clarification of three points.
Firstly, what is the meaning of the French word 'existentieV in the
expression 'psychanalyse existentielle? Basically, 'existentiel' and
'existential' are in French two distinct adjectives, the difference
originating in Being and Time3 'Existentiel' translates the German
adjective 'existenzieW while 'existential' is a translation of the German
adjective 'existenziaV. In English, it is possible to distinguish between
'existentiell' and 'existential'.4 Let us consider first Heidegger's
distinction. The interpretation of the existence of the human being
can bring out general ontological structures called 'existential', but in
addition, each human being can understand himself concretely in his
'existentiell' truth. It is the task of a technical area of study with its
specific method to lay bare the existential structures of the 'entity'
('Seiendes') that one is: the 'existential analysis of Dase in'5 On the
contrary, everybody has an immediate, proximally and for the most
part, inauthentic 'existentielP understanding of his/her concrete
existence, which does not presuppose any knowledge of existence in
its ontological structures. In Being and Nothingness, there is a similar
distinction, but it is not formulated in the rigorous Heideggerian
way. In fact, Sartre clearly distinguishes a study of the ontological
structures of the 'pour soi' ('for-itself ') and the immediate
understanding of the particular and concrete existence (that is to say,
of the 'person'). The former is a true knowledge, the latter is either

Sartre Studies International Volume 16, Issue 1, 2010: 40-59

doi:10.3167/ssi.2010.160103 ISSN 1357-1559 (Print), ISSN 1558-5476 (Online)

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 Sartre's Phenomenological Anthropology between Psychoanalysis and 'Daseinsanalysis'

prereflective, or reflective in a 'pure' reflection that does not objectify,

and so is not a genuine knowledge.
Secondly, 'Daseinsanalyse\ literally 'analysis of Dasein\ that is to say
an analysis of the being of that entity that we, living in the world, are.
More precisely, it refers to an anthropology that was developed by the
psychiatrist Ludwig Binswanger, on the basis of the ontology
contained in Being and Time in particular. Now, in the fourth part of
Being and Nothingness, Sartre also plans to work out an anthropology
founded in an ontology of existence inspired by Heidegger's 'analysis
of Dasein' ^DaseinsanalytHC). I shall explain why, actually, the
Sartrean and the Hedeggerian anthropological projects definitively
diverge. To simplify matters, it could be said that Sartre's phenome
nological anthropology is influenced by metaphysical hypotheses
such as the assumption that individuals originally choose their way of
existing and that they are absolutely free in this choice for themselves.
On the other hand, the 'Daseinsanalyse' of Binswanger is a non
metaphysical anthropology that does not accept at all the idea of
man's absolute freedom.
Thirdly, Sartre's 'psychanalyse existentielle' is an obvious reference
to Freud, but the paradox is that the two kinds of psychoanalysis
diverge sharply6 as far as the methods, the aims and the fields of
research are concerned. For Sartre's phenomenological anthropology,
the Freudian way, despite some fruitful suggestions, is eventually
blocked. The first reason is that, from Sartre's ontological point of
view, the human subject cannot be a stranger to his/her own truth:
ontologically, man is founded in the 'selfness' ('ipséité') as an
immanence of the 'for-itself ' ('pour sop) to itself. The second reason is
that Freud approaches the interpretation of some life histories (like
Dora, President Schreber, the rat man), and he mistakes the global
meaning that the subject chooses to be, for a symbolization that the
subject receives from the outside.
On the whole, concerning the task of building up a new anthro
pology, Sartre is forced to invent his own way, neither following the
way of Freud's psychoanalysis, nor the way of 'Daseinsanalyse\ although
borrowing from them some elements of their interpretation of man.
This article falls into two parts: (1) Phenomenological anthropology
and Freudian psychoanalysis in Being and Nothingness; (2) Existential
psychoanalysis and 'Daseinsanalyse'.

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 Alain Flajoliet

Phenomenological Anthropology and Freud's

Psychoanalysis in Being and Nothingness

Three remarks to begin with. Firstly, I shall compare Sartre and Freud
from the point of view of their ontological interpretations of human
reality, but I shall not deal with the question of therapy (as B.
Cannon does in her excellent book, Sartre and Psychoanalysis).7
Secondly, Sartre's analysis in Being and Nothingness is elaborated at
two distinct levels, which are the ontology of 'selfness' and the
anthropology of the 'person'. In other words, Freud is criticized either
for his misconception of the ontological structures of the 'pour-soi' -
chiefly 'selfness' (H'ipséité'), or for his misinterpretation of human
reality as free choice for oneself. Thirdly, the discussion of Freud's
psychoanalysis appears in two different parts of the book: at the
beginning, in the context of the analysis of bad faith (Part I), and at
the end, in the context of the outline of an 'existential psychoanalysis'
(Part IV). Each time the place is significant. The first criticism is
initially ontological and secondarily anthropological, and is chiefly
aimed at Freud's metapsychology. The second criticism is initially
anthropological and secondarily ontological, and is chiefly aimed at
Freud's clinical methodology.

The Ontological Point of View: Selfless Versus Strangeness to Oneself in the

Human Being
From an onto-phenomenological point of view, the concept of bad
faith, in Being and Nothingness, describes a set of human conducts
characterized by a specific way of living without coinciding with
oneself. This does not imply an explicit negation of oneself, as in the
lie (which implies that the lie is transcendent to the experience of the
liar). On the contrary, bad faith ontologically presupposes an inner
negation of consciousness, a kind of self-destruction typical of 'a
being which is what it is not, and which is not what it is'8 in the
instantaneity of the pre-reflective cogito. The ontological structure
here required by the phenomenological description of the conducts of
bad faith is 'metastable'.9 This term refers to a unity that disintegrates
into a duality, and to a duality that is suppressed into a unity - that is
to say to an 'evanescent phenomenon':10 consciousness itself which,
in one instantaneous single act, believes and does not believe.
In this context, Freud appears as a determined opponent to
Sartre's phenomenological anthropology, a thinker who defends a
totally different interpretation of the subject's relationship to the
truth about his own existence. For Freud, this truth definitively eludes

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 Sartre's Phenomcnolojjical Anthropology between Psychoanalysis and 'Daseinsanalysis'

the subject, who consequently becomes a radical stranger to himself.

Freud's psychoanalysis, Sartre says, 'places me in the same relation to
myself that the Other is in respect to me'.11 For Sartre this statement
is absurd. I am originally the mediator between me and myself, not
indeed in the transparency of a pure reflective consciousness, but in
the half-light of a pre-reflective cogito from which the 'self' ('soi')
stems. In Being and Nothingness the for-itself as 'selfness' (Hpséité') is
first described as an existent, which transcends itself from itself to
itself across the world ('circuit of selfness'), and this project does not
presuppose at all the existence of the Other. 'The world by nature is mine
... in so far as it is the necessary obstacle beyond which I find myself
as that which I am in the form of having to be it'.12 Ontologically, the
very structure of selfness rules out the possibility that the 'for-itself'
could be originally alienated.13
So, if we adopt Freud's position, the question is: what can make
the unity of the subject's broken existence? From the point of view of
Sartre, Freud is forced to state that the subject recovers its unity out of
itself in the psychoanalyst's interpretation. 'The psychoanalyst appears
... as the mediator between my unconscious drives and my conscious
life'.14 This is another absurdity because firstly, the self is a unity
which unites itself and not an existent which receives its unity from
the outside and, secondly, phenomenological anthropology cannot be
an explanation from the outside (like science) but through a
comprehension from the inside (which Karl Jaspers has grasped in his
General Psychopathology).15
Then, Sartre develops another criticism of the Freudian theory,
based on the concepts of 'repression' and 'resistance'. He asks, who
resists? Oversimplifying a complex theory, he answers: 'censorship'
resists by repressing.16 This statement is not far from identifying
'repression' and 'resistance', which, according to Sartre, raises
insuperable problems and so provides a harsh criticism of Freud's
thought. If repression comes close to resistance, it becomes an
intentional act arising from censorship.17 But the concept of
intentional repression leads to an impossible position, because Freud
simultaneously states that repression is unconscious. In a word, Freud
cannot resist magical thinking in asserting simultaneously the spontaneity
(intentionality) and the inertia (non intentionality) of the phenomenon of
repression. In his Sketch for a Theory of the Emotions, Sartre refers to this
concept of magical thinking in this way. 'The profound contradiction
in all psychoanalysis is that it presents at the same time a bond of
causality and a bond of understanding between the phenomena that
it studies'.18

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 Alain Flajolkt

As a rule, in Sartre's opinion, the concept of magical thinking,

which he borrowed from the anthropologist Lévy-Bruhl and used
systematically from 1927 onwards,19 designates a way of denying the
essential difference between psyche, which is necessarily conscious of
itself, and thing, which is 'in itself'. Things receive features originally
belonging to the psychic world (intentions, for example), and
consciousness receives features originally belonging to the material
world (like passivity). But Freud's theory of censorship - unless we
try to reduce it to a doctrine of 'bad faith' that is no longer genuinely
Freudian20 - precisely interprets the act of censorship which represses, with
the help of those contradictory categories. Actually, this spontaneous act
receives traits of passivity and inertia for the reason that, in order to
repress, it is necessarily in contact with the unconscious (which,
according to Sartre, is totally inert and passive). On the other hand
and conversely, the unconscious loses its characteristics of total inertia
and passivity for the reason that it is involved in a spontaneous
psychic act. This means a fundamental misunderstanding of human
reality, which exists as a conscious choice of itself all the time,
especially in those acts (like imagination) where it expresses itself as
pure spontaneity and not at all as passivity and inertia.
Let us now consider the second place in Being and Nothingness
where a discussion of Freud appears, that is to say in the sketch of
'existential psychoanalysis'.

Existential Psychoanalysis and Freud's Psychoanalysis: the Anthropological

Point of View

When Sartre gives an outline of his phenomenological anthropology

(Being and Nothingness, Part IV, Chapter 2), he asserts that there is,
up to a point, an analogy between this anthropology and Freud's
psychoanalysis, and that is why he decides to call his anthropology
'psychanalyse existentielle' ('existential psychoanalysis'), as a tribute to
Freud. This is rather surprising as it seems in contradiction with the
definitive criticism of Freud, which had been put forward in the
analysis of bad faith (Being and Nothingness, Part I). But now, Sartre
seems to have discovered a new point of view on Freud's
psychoanalysis: it consists not only of a 'metapsychology', but also of'case
histories' ('Krankengeschichten') which refer to clinical methodology.21
We must now take into account the fact that between 1905 and
1928, Freud published five 'case histories' exhibiting and interpreting
the concrete lives of Dora, Schreber, 'little Hans', 'the rat man' and
'the wolf man'. Sartre's criticism is changing too, as he analyses Freud
from the point of view of his phenomenological anthropology and

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 Sartre's Phenomenolqgical Anthropology between Psychoanalysis and 'Daseinsanalysis'

not from the point of view of his ontological phenomenology. In this

connection, the issue at stake is to know whether Freud, according to
Sartre, rightly understood the principles of an interpretation of
particular individuals, that is to say, of 'persons'.
The analogy between the two anthropologies is mainly due to the
fact that both are theories which interpret the meaning of human life;
we can also say that both fall under the category of hermeneutical
knowledge. However, the hermeneutical method of phenomenological
anthropology in Being and Nothingness is very different from Freud's
iDeutung\ so that it seems rather artificial to bring them together, as
Sartre himself admits.
I would like to sketch out a brief analysis in two parts. In Sartre's
reading of Freud, the latter appears as a genius who simultaneously
discovered and obscured the truth of the human being. Thus Freud
paved the way for a psychopathology based on the interpretation of
individual persons, a psychopathology of life histories, which is his
outstanding discovery.
However, he failed to notice that a fundamental and conscious
choice is present in the life of each person. That is the major failure of
his anthropological project, which does not allow the founding of
any kind of anthropology on the model of Freud's psychoanalysis.
So, first of all, Freud, as an anthropologist, proved to be a brilliant
discoverer. It should be noted that this judgement is at odds with the
previous statement according to which Freud was completely wrong
from the point of view of his ontology of human reality and of his
metapsychology. It is certainly true, Sartre writes in his Sketch for a Theory
of the Emotions, that psychoanalytic psychology was the first to lay the
emphasis upon the significance of psychic facts: that is, 'it was the first
to insist upon the fact that every state of consciousness stands for
something other than itself'.22 In other words, the great merit of Freud's
psychoanalysis is that it is a kind of 'hermeneutics',23 that is to say an
interpretation of the meaning of human reality. That is the reason why,
in Freud's psychoanalysis, the human being is thought of (rightly
according to Sartre), as a concrete and particular history. Indeed, Being
and Nothingness argues that each individual is characterized by an
entirely singular choice for himself/herself. According to Sartre, Freud
discovered an essential truth concerning anthropology, namely that it is
not a science which states general laws for every conceivable person, but
an interpretation of concrete and individual existences.24
This point can be expanded by giving an outline of some of
the fundamental principles of hermeneutics which are similar in
Sartre and in Freud (leaving aside the basic doctrines of Freud's
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 Alain Flajoliet

anthropology which Sartre rejects). The existence of each individual,

Sartre writes in his Sketch for a Theory of the Emotions, is 'significant'.25
The empirical behaviours of the singular subject always have an
intelligible 'signification'26 given in the behaviours, and all these
significations express a whole thing signified which is never given but
only required.27 According to Sartre, Freud is the first to have
understood that every anthropology must be founded on these
principles, which implies that this truth escaped all the non
psychoanalytical psychopathology (with the noticeable exception of
Jaspers). In Being and Nothingness, Sartre asserts in the same way that
each singular human being is 'a complex symbolic structure'
consisting of three levels: first of all, a 'myriad of empirical desires';
secondly, a 'fundamental concrete desire'; and thirdly, an 'abstract
meaningful structure' (the desire to be God).28
Moreover, the two psychoanalyses reject any identification of the
psyche with an object or a substance and, on the contrary, interpret the
human being 'as a perpetual, searching, historization. Rather than
uncovering static, constant givens, they discover the meaning and
adventures of this history'.29 Sartre adds that, on both sides, this
historization takes upon itself a 'situation' out of which it simultaneously
arises. A 'traumatic' childhood event (Freud) or 'crucial' one (Sartre)
paradoxically acquires both its meaning and its future influence in the
historization which originates in if.30
But, for Sartre, Freud is totally wrong when he interprets the
statement which says that human existence is meaningful. He fails to see
that the history of an individual person receives its meaning from an
absolutely free and conscious choice for himself/herself.31 The ultimate
meaning is constituted by this choice of the individual. By contrast,
according to Freud's psychoanalysis, meaning comes to the person from
outside as, so to speak, an effect of the changes in the unconscious. For
Sartre, the human subject is a continuing process of symbolization of
oneself by oneself. The coming of the theme of the 'original choice' in
the fourth part of Being and Nothingness raises major problems in
Sartre's thought, but I shall leave them aside. It is sufficient to note that
a head-on opposition arises between Sartre's anthropological project and
Freud's psychoanalysis as soon as this concept of absolute choice, which
had been bracketed in order to pay tribute to the Freudian discovery of
the totally meaningful character of human reality, reoccurs. I shall now
examine briefly the way Sartre criticizes Freud's anthropology by
assuming the thesis of an 'original choice'.
First, as the choice is conscious, 'existential psychoanalysis rejects
the hypothesis of the unconscious; it makes the psychic act coextensive

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 Sartre's Phenomenolqgical Anthropology between Psychoanalysis and 'Daseinsanalysis'

with consciousness'.32 Of course, this does not mean that the person
knows the original choice. It is first apprehended in a pre-reflective
consciousness, which is not at all a knowledge, and then the 'pure
reflection' can reveal it in a kind of 'lightning intuition without
relief',33 which, once more, is not a knowledge. Finally, a genuine
objective knowledge can possibly be developed by the psychoanalyst
but not by the patient himself/herself.
The other point of divergence concerns freedom. The task of
existential psychoanalysis is to decipher the particular choices of
persons, to describe individuals choosing their 'ultimate ends'.34 For
human reality, 'there is no difference between existing and choosing
for itself'.35 The concept of 'fundamental choice'36 means that for
each individual, his/her whole life is the result of a free unconditioned
act. The idea of human freedom is, for Freud, much more problematic,
given that he accepts the principle of determinism in the area of
psychic phenomena (cf. Five Lectures on Psychoanalysis, third lecture37).
As a consequence, he cannot accept Sartre's idea of choice as an
absolute beginning and a first foundation. However, in some texts, he
concedes that the patient makes a choice in a certain way, because he
evokes a 'choice of neurosis',38 but it is a relative choice in a given
situation, which includes frustration, fixation, regression of libido,
and the increase of the quantity of libido.39

'Existential Psychoanalysis' and iDaseinsanalyse'

Similarities in the Two Anthropologies

From the point of view of Sartre and Binswanger, an individual cannot

be interpreted as a thing in the world, but as a being which transcends
himself/herself towards the world and towards himself/herself. Thus,
the two anthropologies are founded on an ontology inspired by
Heidegger's Being and Time and while the 'existential analysis' of Being
and Time is surely not an anthropology, it cm found an anthropology.
The situation is similar in Being and Nothingness. At the end of the third
part of the book, the phenomenological ontology of being-for-itself, of
being-in-the-world and of being-for-others, is achieved and it is
possible to go flirther by laying the foundations of an anthropology.
There is a certain similarity in this transition from ontology to
anthropology in Being and Nothingness and in Being and Time.
In Heidegger's book, the transition implies leaving the interpretation
of the being of this entity ('Seiendes') that we are, that is to say, the

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 Alain Flajoliet

interpretation of Dasein, to start the analysis of this entity itself (man).

The 'analytics of Dasein' necessarily precede and found the
anthropology which possibly follows.40 As Heidegger says, there is 'an
ontological priority of the question of being3.41 Indeed, for every science
in general, and for anthropology in particular, all the 'basic concepts3
('Grundbegriffiè3), which constitute the proximate 'clues3 (Teitfdden') in
order to discover the 'areas of subject matters3 ('Sachgebiete3), are
established by ontology.41 Because the analytics of Dasein lay bare 'that a
priori basis which must be visible before the question of "what is man"
can be discussed philosophically3,43 the constitution of a scientific
anthropology is made possible by these ontological investigations.
Simultaneously, these analytics develop a radical criticism of the false
traditional knowledge of the individual; Heidegger criticizes in
particular the tendency to determine the human being as a present-at
hand subject, understood as zôon logon ekhon, or animal rationale, or
creatura Dei, or Ego cogito.
In a very similar way, in Being and Nothingness, once Sartre has
interpreted the for-itself in its being, he lays the foundations of a
knowledge of 'human reality3, that is to say he outlines a
phenomenological anthropology called 'psychanalyse existentielle3
('existential psychoanalysis'). He clearly distinguishes the two tasks.
Firstly, the ontology of the for-itself. This ontology establishes those
general significant structures such as factical 'presence to self3, factical
and finite 'selfness3, factical and finite 'transcendence' which constitutes
the world, and 'being-for-others'. Secondly, anthropology ('existential
psychoanalysis') is the study of concrete and real individuals originally
choosing their existence. Ontology and anthropology work in distinct
areas, but the former gives guiding principles to the latter and indeed,
one of the essential tasks of anthropology is to 'establish and classify
fundamental desires of individual persons3.44 Now this presupposes
some guiding principles, which only ontology can provide. In order to
establish and classify the empirical desires of the person, the
anthropologist needs to know what kind of desire is fundamental for
this person and consequently s/he has to understand what a person is,
generally speaking, that is to say ontologically. It is precisely the task
of ontology to tell him/her, for example, that an essential character of
the human being in general is that the sense of one's whole existence is
a desire to be God. This method comes directly from Being and Time,
where it is said in explicit terms that ontology gives anthropology its
guiding principles.45
Moreover, according to Sartre, there is something extremely
positive in Heidegger's way of sketching a phenomenological anthro

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 Sartre's Pbcnomenolocfkal Anthropology between Psychoanalysis anil 'Daseinsanalysis'

pology. Being and Time gives the foundations for a bermeneutical

knowledge of man, and correlatively makes impossible all objective
science of man considered as a thing in the world. Turning again to
the Introduction of Being and Time, we find that Dasein 'exists' means
two things. Firstly, 'the "essence" of this entity lies in its "to be'".
Secondly, 'that Being which is an issue for this entity in its very Being,
is in each case mine'.46 In other words, for Dasein, its being is
necessarily at stake and it exists as this being at stake of its own being.
In this connection it is throughout meaningful, its existence is
essentially intelligible but, as we can see, intelligible in itself and by
itself. Heidegger discusses this thesis at two successive moments of his
analytics of Dasein. Firstly, at the level of'Being-in-the-world' (Sein
und Zeit, Division 1), then at the level of'Being towards death' (Sein
und Zeit, Division 2). Being-in-the-world is, from end to end,
meaningful. Being towards death is, from end to end, meaningful;
Dasein bestows meaning on itself by existing, firstly as a project
('Entwurf ') towards the world, then as a project towards itself.47 In
Heidegger's opinion, this characterization of Dasein as meaningful is
an essential basis for building a hermeneutical anthropology. We find a
similar position in Sartre's anthropology where the interpretation of
'the synthetic human entirety in its integrity'48 is the basis for
empirical anthropology. Moreover, in his Sketch for a Theory of the
Emotions, Sartre pays tribute to Being and Time. 'This "assumption" of
itself', he writes, 'which characterizes the human reality implies an
understanding of the human reality by itself, however obscure an
understanding this may be'.49
In the context of the interpretation of Being-in-the-world, the
thesis that Dasein is originally meaningful expresses the fact that it
simultaneously understands the world, and its own existence as
transcendence towards the world. As transcendence, the meaning of
the world happens in its existence, and its existence is interpretable as
a project towards the world. 'Meaning is an existentiale of Dasein ....
Dasein only "has" meaning, so far as the disclosedness of Being-in
the-world can be "filled in" by the entities discoverable in this
disclosedness. Hence only Dasein can be meaningful or
meaningless'.50 Sartre in Being and Nothingness adopts this statement,
which is transferred to the for-itself in its relation to the world as
totalization of transcendent being. The for-itself as (unachieved)
totalization of itself constitutes the world as meaning of the in-itself.
'The achieved totality of the world', Sartre writes, 'is revealed as
constitutive of the being of the unachieved totality by which the
being of totality comes into being. It is through the world that the

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 Alain Flajoliet

for-itself makes itself known to itself as a totality detotalized'.51 In the

second Division of Being and Time, Heidegger points out that Dasein
is a project not only towards the world but also towards itself, that is
to say towards the possibility of its impossibility, death. In this new
context, Dasein appears for the second time as meaningful, at least in
the existentiell attitude of authenticity, that is to say in 'anticipator)'
resoluteness'.52 Death is not an absurd fact, but 'a possibility of Being
which Dasein itself has to take over in every case'.53 And authentic
Being-towards-death means that Dasein is able to understand itself as
anticipation of this possibility. Dasein's ontological 'meaning' is now
'temporality' which 'makes possible the totality of the articulated
structural whole of care, in the unity of its articulation'.54
Binswanger's 'Daseinsanalyse' is intimately related to Being and
Time. In fact, mental illness in the human being is ontologically
interpreted by Binswanger as an alteration of temporalization in the
relation of Dasein to itself and to the world. Up to a point, and
despite evident differences, the phenomenological ontology of the
for-itself in Being and Nothingness is also inspired by Being and Time,
so that some similarities can also be seen in the two anthropologies.
According to Sartre, the anthropology outlined in Being and Time is
perfectly right to take as its guiding principle the ontological concept
of an existent signifying through and through (totally meaningful: 'it is
strictly to the degree that it signifies).55 Consequently, Heidegger has
good reasons to criticize all the studies of man which are founded on
a completely different and inadequate ontological concept,
particularly the concept of 'presence-at-hand' or of 'substance'.
Binswanger would certainly agree with this statement. The example,
in Being and Nothingness, of a possible study of Flaubert's literary
vocation can be taken as an illustration of the proximity of Sartre's
existential psychoanalysis to 'Daseinsanalyse'.
In order to be correcdy carried out, Sartre explains, this study should
be founded on 'a pre-ontological comprehension of human reality and
on the related refusal to consider an individual as being capable of being
analysed and reduced to original givens'.56 'Pre-ontological
comprehension' is an expression which comes directly from Being and
Time and refers to a prerequisite apprehension of the whole meaning of
a phenomenon we have to study, a phenomenon which must be
thereafter 'explicated' in order to obtain a correct 'interpretation'.57 In
other words, the Flaubert outlined here is a hermeneutical study of
Gustave's existence. It is not at all a scientific study, that is to say a
knowledge which objectifies the existence of the individual by
mobilizing the resources of psychology, sociology or psychoanalysis.

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 Sartre's Phenomenological Anthropology between Psychoanalysis and 'Daseinsanalysis'

This rules out two possibilities. Firstly, that the interpretation of

Flaubert's life could be an anthropology in which the project of
becoming a writer would be the property of a kind of psychical
substance and secondly, that this interpretation could be an analysis of
the project into simple components (ambition, feeling of power,
continual exaltation, etc.), followed by a reconstruction of the totality.
Concerning the second kind of mistake, Sartre mentions P. Bourget58
and with regard to the false reduction of human desire to the property
of a substance, he gives no example, but is probably thinking of Freud.
According to Sartre, desire is ontologically a way of transcending
oneself towards the possibility of an impossibility - to exist as a
synthesis of for-itself and in-itself. From this point of view, Freud's
concept of libido is ontologically inadequate, because it determines
human desire as an impulse (conatus), and not as an ecstatical
transcendence, that is to say, a totality never achieved, wrenching away
from itself, fleeing from itself towards the impossible possibility of
itself. Freud wrongly considers desire as a drive to re-establish an
experience of satisfaction in accordance with the rules of the primary
process, in a head-on opposition to Sartre's interpretation of desire as
a project towards a contradictory experience which has never existed
and cannot exist. The two mistakes refer to the same misinterpretation
of the existent that we are as an unintelligible and irreducible fact.
Why did Flaubert have a grandiose ambition? Why did he experience
the constant feeling of his power? Neither Freud nor P. Bourget can
answer, they can only observe contingent facts. That is exactly the
point of view of L. Binswanger's iDaseinsanalyse\
Let us take the example of an important article of Binswanger
published in 1926: 'Experiencing, Understanding, and Interpreting
in Psychoanalysis'.59 Binswanger argues that anthropology (including
Freud's psychoanalysis) must admit that the human being cannot be
experienced simply as a real thing, but must also be understood as a
meaningful life, for the reason that it is a subject who constantly
motivates himself to think and to act. Binswanger adopted the same
position the following year, in his lecture: 'Vital Functions and Inner
History of Life'.60 This title indicates a crucial alternative for
anthropology. Either it tries to study man as a simple living being,
according to the requirements of the natural sciences offering
explanations for phenomena - and it is doomed to failure - or it
attempts to understand the specific inner history of individuals -
which is the right approach. For example, Binswanger explains that
K. Holl, in his biography of Augustine (1923), was right to refer to
the external events which determined Augustine's life (disease, career

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 Alain Flajolict

problems), and to the saint's inner evolution, that is to say, to the

inner meaning these events received in Augustine's singular project of
existence. As a result, in this article Binswanger challenges the
psychiatrist D. Boenhoffer's anthropology, which, despite some
progress made in the interpretation of mental illness, does not clearly
see the essential difference between a meaningful (mental)
phenomenon and meaningless (bodily) phenomenon. A few years later,
Binswanger, in an analysis of a book by the psychiatrist E. Straus,
states more radically that every explanation of mental illness that does
not put into brackets the naturalistic attitude is absurd. For Straus, a
traumatizing event ('Geschehnis') may well produce a pathological
experience ('Erlebnisjf1 as when, for example, an event 'forces' the
subject to experience anguish or terror.62 But from Binswanger's point
of view, a psychical experience can precisely never be the effect of an
event belonging to the world, because psyche exists, that is to say does
not belong to the world, but transcends itself towards the world. In
case of a trauma, man experiences a terrifying or harrowing world, but
the psyche is by no means determined to transcend itself in that way.
As a consequence, it is meaningless to defend the thesis, as does E.
Straus, that a process of giving sense to the world could be
'constrained' by an event belonging to the world.63 Binswanger's
position on this problem is identical to Sartre's.
Nevertheless, despite the possibility of building up a phenomeno
logical anthropology - as Binswanger did - on the basis of Being and
Time, Sartre eventually chooses a way that moves away from Heidegger
and iDaseinsanalyse\ Let us come now to the last point of our
discussion.

Existential Psychoanalysis' Is Essentially Different from 'Daseinsanalyse'

It is the essential and problematical concept of 'fundamental choice'
that introduces an opposition between Sartre's ''psychanalyse existentielle'
and Binswanger's onto-phenomenological anthropology. 'Our being',
Sartre says, 'is ... our original choice'.64 By 'original' choice, he means
springing up without any motive, or rather creating its own motives
simultaneously with the act. Certainly, this choice is always made in a
situation, but it is not conditioned by the situation, so that it can be
characterized as free in the sense of a 'total and infinite' freedom.65 'We
shall never apprehend ourselves', Sartre writes, 'except as a choice in the
making. But freedom is simply the fact that this choice is always
unconditioned'.66 On the contrary, Binswanger, following Heidegger,
asserts that Dasein exists as anticipatory resoluteness towards its own
death, that is to say as finite and judical time.67 In Heidegger's opinion,

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 Sartre's Phetwmenological Anthropology between Psychoanalysis and 'Daseinsanalysis'

the concept of 'fundamental choice' implies that the anthropology

outlined in Being and Nothingness is nothing but a metaphysical
hermeneutics, and not an interpretation of man as existing in the light
of Being.68 Sartre's concept of freedom refers to theology - only God
possesses infinite freedom.69 But for Heidegger, in Being and Time, one
of the main tasks of phenomenological ontology is to criticize
metaphysics, in other words to 'destroy' the 'history of ontology',70
rather than to promote it. Actually, through its history, Heidegger
explains, metaphysics (onto-theology) has forgotten 'the question
about the meaning of being',71 which is the fundamental question in
Being and Time. Consequently, anthropology which must be founded
in onto-phenomenology as this radical criticism of metaphysics is not
right in determining man by predicates such as 'creation', 'spontaneity',
'absolute freedom', which belong entirely to metaphysical thinking. In
the same way, Binswanger's lDaseinsanalyse' refuses to credit the
psychotic with unlimited freedom. This point can be better understood
by briefly considering mania as analysed by Binswanger from the point
of view of the phenomenon of'the flight of ideas'.72
Binswanger tries to interpret mania anthropologically on the basis
of the 'analysis of Dasein'' developed in Being and Time, an analysis
which gives some ontological clues as to a correct understanding of
the clinical cases. Binswanger describes with great precision the
phenomenal characteristics of the world in which the maniac lives: it
is bright, joyful, cheerfully coloured, always changing in its aspect -
but the point is, and here there is a reference to Heidegger's concept
of 'thrownness' ('Geworfenheif), that the patient is thrown into this
world, he has never chosen it. Dasein is thrown into the world that it
simultaneously projects. Binswanger interprets this 'thrownness' as
'fall' - another fundamental concept of Being and Time (' Vet fallen') -
that is to say, as a real alienation. The maniac is lost and scattered in
the world; he has no steady existence, his life is a constant whirl, he
jumps from one present to another without any coherence, pouring
out meaningless words. In this totally disintegrated existence, it is
impossible to detect any kind of free choice.
To take another example, in 1965, Binswanger published a book
(Wahn) in which he interpreted various delirious states in schizo
phrenia, and analysed three history cases: Aline, S. Urban and A.
Strindberg. He used as a guiding ontological principle a conception of
freedom stemming directly from Heidegger's text, The Essence of
Ground.71 In the first pages of his book, Binswanger gave a brief
summary of Heidegger's thinking, which brings out that freedom is
transcendence towards the world,74 and that this transcendence is

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 Alain Flajolict

radically finite and factical. In The Essence of Ground, Heidegger explains

that transcendence, as a process of grounding, has three components,
'laying claim' fStiften'), 'taking possession' (fBoden nehmeri) and
'founding' (ibegründen,)75 On that basis, Binswanger, paying tribute to
Heidegger, states that freedom is neither infinite nor absolute76 'Laying
claim', Heidegger says, is immersed among the beings among which it
finds itself and beyond which it must pass in the project of
transcendence.77 This represents the 'facticity' of the transcendence.
Moreover, transcendence is 'finite'. 'That in any given case,' Heidegger
explains, 'the over-reaching project of the World becomes the power of
possession only by a withdrawal (of possibilities) is by this very fact a
transcendental document of the finitude of the (transcendence) of
Dasein \78 According to Binswanger, in mental illness, and particularly
in schizophrenia, those characteristics of freedom (facticity, finitude)
are more or less affected, but they never totally disappear, which proves
precisely that they define man in his ownmost being ('eigenst').
Finally, it may be noted that in Being and Nothingness, Sartre
criticizes Heidegger for the ethical implications, of his 'Daseinsanalytik\
In Being and Time, Sartre explains, the description of the 'call for
conscience' and the interpretation of 'guilt' are related to the attempt to
establish an ethics, even though Heidegger does not explicitly admit
it.79 He asserts that Heidegger's opposition between authentic and
inauthentic existence, that is to say between confronting and fleeing
death, is not correctly founded in the ontology of human reality. This
criticism never appears in Binswanger's works. An irreducible opposition
seems to separate Sartre's 'existential psychoanalysis' and Binswanger's
anthropology, strictly founded on Heidegger's 'analysis of Dasein\

In conclusion I will say that, in Being and Nothingness, Sartre's

anthropology was trying to find its own way between two dead ends.
Despite important similarities among his own anthropology, Freud's
thinking and any kind of anthropology founded on Being and Time
(such as 'Daseinsanalyse'), Sartre could follow neither Freud nor
Binswanger. He had to invent his own way of understanding man in
his being, namely as an original and absolutely free choice of himself
in a concrete situation. His Baudelaire applies this fundamental
principle of anthropology to the field of a writer's biography.
Moreover, the lecture 'Existentialism is a Humanism', delivered in
1945, proves that in the immediate post-war period, the problem of
man in a metaphysical sense began to prevail in Sartre's thinking:
'existentialism' is nothing but a metaphysically founded humanism.80
Let us notice that Sartre himself became aware of the problems

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 Sartre's Phenomenolqgical Anthropology between Psychoanalysis and 'Daseinsanalysis'

contained in his metaphysical statement of an absolute freedom in

man. I think that Saint Genetsl is an attempt to solve partly these
difficulties. Sartre keeps the concept of an original choice in man, but
in an entirely new perspective: from then on, he admits that an
original alienation of this choice is possible, as in Genet's life.

Notes

1. Jean-Paul Sartre, L'Être et le néant (Paris: Gallimard, [1943], 1973), 643. Trans.
Hazel Barnes, Being and Nothingness (London & New York: Routledge Classics,
2003), 578.
2. 'Daseinsanalyse' refers to Ludwig Binswanger (and M. Boss), who developed an
anthropology explicidy founded on Heidegger's 'existential analysis of Dasein'
('existentiale Analytik des Daseins'). Cf. Martin Heidegger, Sein und Zeit
(Tiibingen: Niemeyer, [1962], 1972), 12-13. Trans. John Macquarrie and
Edward Robinson, Being and Time (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1980). Sartre
(unlike Merleau-Ponty, in his Phénoménologie de la perception) does not refer
explicitly to this specific anthropological field of research, but a fruitful
comparison remains possible from an objective point of view.
3. Heidegger, Being and Time, 33.
4. Ibid.

5. Ibid., 34. Sein und Zeit, 13: 'die existenziale Analytik des Daseins'.
6. Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 592, 596.
7. Betty Cannon, Sartre and Psychoanalysis: an Existentialist Challenge to Clin
Metatheory (The University Press of Kansas, 1991).
8. Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 81. L'Être et le néant, 103: un être qui 'est ce q
n'est pas et n'est pas ce qu'il est'.
9. Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 81, 86. L'Etre et le néant, 97, 103: 'métastable'.
10. Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 73. L'Être et le néant, 88: un 'phénom
évanescent'.

11. Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 74. L'Être et le néant, 90: 'me place par rapport à
moi-même dans la situation d'autrui vis-à-vis de moi'.
12. Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 128. L'Être et le néant, 149: 'Le monde est... mien
en tant qu'il est ... l'obstacle nécessaire par delà quoi je me retrouve sous la forme
"d'avoir à l'être"'.

13. This thesis will be called into question in subsequent works like Saint Genet or
Cahiers pour une morale.
14. Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 74. L'Être et le néant, 89: 'Le psychanalyste ...
apparaît comme le médiateur de mes tendances inconscientes et de ma vie
consciente'.

15. Karl Jaspers, General Psychopathology, translated by J. Koenig and Marian W.

Hamilton (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1963).
16. 'The only level on which we can locate the refusal of the subject is that of the
censor' (Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 75). 'Le seul plan sur lequel nous pouvons
situer le refus du sujet, c'est celui de la censure' (Sartre, L'Être et le néant, 91). It is
a real issue to know if it is possible, from Freud's point of view, to conflate
'repression' by censorship and 'resistance'. In principle, the definitions of the two

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 Alain Flajoliet

terms are different, but in fact repression and resistance are forces which
contribute to the same effect: to prevent the return of the unconscious. Cf. for
example Sigmund Freud, Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis, in The Standard
Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, trans. James Strachey
(London: Vintage, 2001), Vol. XV 141 : 'The resistance to interpretation is only a
putting into effect of the dream-censorship'.
Resistance can easily be understood as an intentional act. When he contests the
technical rule of not holding back any idea from his psychoanalyst, the patient
'endeavours in every sort of way to extricate himself from its provisions' (Freud,
Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis, vol. XVI, 288) (my emphasis).
Jean-Paul Sartre, Sketch for a Theory of the Emotions, trans. Philip Marret (London
& New York: Routledge, 2006), 32-33. 'C'est la contradiction profonde de
toute psychanalyse que de présenter à la fois un lien de causalité et un lien de
compréhension entre les phénomènes qu'elle étudie'. Jean-Paul Sartre, Esquisse
d'une théorie des émotions (Paris: Hermann, 1939), 28.
Lucien Lévy-Bruhl, Les Fonctions mentales dans les sociétés inférieures (Paris: Alean,
1910). La Mentalité primitive (Paris: Alean, 1922). L'Ame primitive (Paris: Alean,
1927).
In this context, repression becomes an ambiguous refusal of a revelation that the
subject does not reject frankly. Cf. Sartre, Sketch for a Theory of the Emotions, 30:
censorship in emotion 'is a flight from the revelation to follow'. Sartre, Esquisse
d'une théorie de émotions, 26.
The distinction between Freud's metapsychology - too influenced by biological
sciences - and Freud's clinical methodology, which represents the major
contribution of psychoanalysis, is essential in the works of Ludwig Binswanger.
Cf. Binswanger, Freud uni die Verfassung der klinischen Psychiatrie (Schweiz.
Archiv ftir Neurologie und Psychologie, Band XXXVII-2: 1936).
Sartre, Sketch for a Theory of the Emotions, 29. Esquisse d'une théorie des émotions,
'La psychologie psychanalytique a été certainement la première à mettre l'accent
sur la signification des faits psychiques: c'est-à-dire que, la première, elle a insisté
sur ce fait que tout état de conscience vaut pour autre chose que lui-même.'
Anthropology, Sartre says, must be 'hermeneutics' (Being and Nothingness, 590).
L'Etre et le néant, 656: 'une herméneutique'.
For a similar analysis, cf. Georges Politzer, Critique des fondements de la psycholoaie
(Paris: Rieder, 1928).
Every individual, Sartre explains, is a whole and its meaning is necessarily total;
this statement is directly opposed to the attempt of science to analyse human
reality into elements and to build it together again afterwards. 'Man is a totality
and not a collection' (Being and Nothingness, 589). L'Être et le néant, 656:
'Lhomme est une totalité et non une collection'. Cf. Sartre, Sketch for a Theory of
the Emotions, 12: the human being is 'significant'; 'it is strictly to the degree that
it signifies; it 'is not a sum of facts'; 'it expresses under a definite aspect the
synthetic human entirety in its integrity'. Esquisse d'une théorie des émotions, 11: la
réalité humaine est 'signifiante d'abord'; elle 'est dans la stricte mesure où elle
signifie'; elle 'n'est pas une somme de faits'; elle 'exprime sous un aspect défini la
totalité synthétique humaine dans son intégrité'.
Sartre, Sketch for a Theory of the Emotions, 11, 31, 32. Esquisse d'une théorie des
émotions,, 11, 27.
Sartre, Sketch for a Theory of the Emotions, 32: 'the consciousness, if the cogito is to
be possible, is itself the fact, the signification and what is signifiedF. Esquisse d'une

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Sartre's Pbenomenological Anthropology between Psychoanalysis and 'Daseinsanalysis'

théorie des émotions, 27: 'La conscience, si le cogito doit être possible, est elle
même le fait, la signification et le signifie".
Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 588. L'Etre et le néant, 654.
Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 590. L'Être et le néant, 657: 'Les deux
psychanalyses considèrent l'être humain comme une historialisation perpétuelle
et cherchent, plus qu'à découvrir des données statiques et constantes, à déceler le
sens, l'orientation et les avatars de cette histoire'.
'The crucial event of infancy' (Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 590) 'is nothing in
itself. It operates only according to the way in which it is taken and this very
manner of taking it expresses symbolically the internal disposition of the
individual' (ibid.). 'L'événement crucial de l'enfance' (L'Être et le néant, 657) 'n'est
rien en lui-même, il n'agit que selon la façon dont il est pris et cette manière
même de le prendre traduit symboliquement la disposition interne de l'individu'
(ibid.).
'Since freedom is a being-without-support and without-a-springboard, the
project in order to be must be constantly renewed. I choose myself perpetually
and can never be merely by virtue of having-been-chosen; otherwise I should fall
into the pure and simple existence of the in-itself' (Sartre, Being and Nothingness,
502). 'We shall never apprehend ourselves except as a choice in the making. But
freedom is simply the fact that this choice is unconditioned' (Being and
Nothingness, 501).
Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 591. L'Être et le néant, 658: 'la psychanalyse
existentielle rejette le postulat de l'inconscient: le fait psychique est pour elle
coextensif à la conscience'.
Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 178. L'Être et le néant, 207: 'intuition fulgurante et
sans relief'.
Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 595. L'Être et le néant, 663: 'leurs fins dernières'.
Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 593. L'Être et le néant, 660: 'il n'y a pas de
différence entre exister et se choisir'.
Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 489. L'Être et le néant, 545: 'choix fondamental'.
Sigmund Freud, Five Lectures on Psychoanalysis, translated and edited by James
Strachey (New York: Norton, 1977).
Cf. for example Sigmund Freud, 'Letter to W Fliess', 14 November 1897; The
Standard Edition, Vol. I, 231-242. And Sigmund Freud, The Disposition to
Obsessional Neurosis. A Contribution to the Problem of the Option of Neurosis, in The
Standard Edition, Vol. XII, 312-326.
Cf. Sigmund Freud, Types of Onset of Neurosis, in The Standard Edition, vol. XII,
270-271. There is another signification - more or less implicit - of freedom in
Freud's works: cure would be meaningless if the patient were not fundamentally
free to begin, pursue, or even stop the treatment. Finally, throughout the cure,
s/he can either choose to make efforts to work through ('durcli-arbeiten') his/her
past (and so to free himself/herself from this past), or choose to fall into
compulsive repetition of his/her past (then the cure becomes impossible), or
even choose to stop the cure.
Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, § 10. The 'analytics of Dasein', Heidegger adds,
founds anthropology as well as biology and psychology.
Heidegger, Being and Time, 71.
'Grundbegrijfe': Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, 9, 10. 'Leitfàden': Sein und Zeit, 9.
'Sachgebiete': Sein und Zeit, 9, 10.
Heidegger, Being and Time, 71. Sein und Zeit, 45.

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 Alain Flajoliet

Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 589. L'Être et le néant, 655: 'l'établissement et... la
classification des désirs fondamentaux ou personnes'.
Clearly, the ontological guiding principles are very different in Sartre and
Heidegger. For example the project towards death is totally different from the
desire to be God, but here only the otitological methods are being compared.
Heidegger, Being and Time, 67. Sein und Zeit, 42.
'Meaning is that wherein the intelligibility of something maintains itself'
(Heidegger, Being and Time, 193; Sein nnd Zeit, 151). Meaning 'signifies the
"upon-which" of a primary projection in terms of which something can be
conceived in its possibility as that which it is' (Heidegger, Being and Time, 371;
Sein nnd Zeit, 324).
Sartre, Sketch for a Theory of the Emotions, 12. Esquisse d'une théorie des émotions,
Sartre, Sketch for a Theory of the Emotions, 9. Esquisse d'une théorie des émotions, 9
Heidegger, Being and Time, 193. Sein und Zeit, 151.
Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 204. L'Être et le néant, 230.
Heidegger, Being and Time, § 62, title: 'Anticipary Resoluteness as the Way in
which Dasein's Potentiality-for-Being-a-whole has Existentiell Authenticity'.
Heidegger, Being and Time, 294. Sein und Zeit, 250.
Heidegger, Being and Time, 371. Sein und Zeit, 324.
Sartre, Sketch foi- a Theory of the Emotions, 12. Esquisse d'une théorie des émotions,
(My emphasis.)
Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 582. L'Être et le néant, 647: 'sur une
compréhension préontologique de la réalité humaine et sur le refus connexe de
considérer l'homme comme analysable et comme réductible à des données
premières'.
'To explicate' translates the German verb 'auslegen'; 'interpretation' translates the
German substantive Tnterpretation'.
Paul Bourget, Essais de psychologie contemporaine (Paris: Lemerre, 1883). (This
book contains studies of Renan, Flaubert, Baudelaire, Stendhal, and Taine.
Bourget's psychology comes from Taine. )
Ludwig Binswanger, Erfahren, Verstehen, Deuten in der Psychoanalyse (Imago,
Band XII, 1926).
Ludwig Binswanger, 'Lebensfunktion und innere Lebensgeschichte', in
Ausgewdhlte Vortrage undAufsdtze (Band I, Berne: Francke, 1946).
Erwin Straus, Geschehnis und Erlebnis zugleich eine historiologische Deutung des
psychischen Traumas und der Renten-Nenrose (Berlin: J. Springer, 1930). Cf. Henri
Maldiney, 'Événement et psychose', in Penser l'homme à la folie (Grenoble: Millón,
1997), ¿58-273.
Maldiney, 'Événement et psychose', 258-261, 264-267.
Straus speaks of íZwang zur Sinnentahme'. This is a phenomenon in which a
person's life is forced to receive one or other signification.
Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 484. L'Être et le néant, 539: 'Notre être est ...
notre choix originel'.
Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 552. L'Être et le néant, 614: 'La liberté est totale et
infinie'. (See also Being and Nothingness, 568. L'Être et le néant, 632). The
paradoxical situation is as follows (Being and Nothingness, 552). Either freedom
is really limited but it never encounters its limits (like death and social identity);
or it encounters its limits (past, environment, social situation), but these are
apparent limits because freedom imposes them on itself.

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Sartre's Phenomenological Anthropology between Psychoanalysis and 'Daseinsanaiysis'

Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 501. L'Être et le néant, 558: 'Nous ne nous
saisissons jamais que comme choix en train de se faire, mais la liberté est
seulement le fait que ce choix est inconditionné'.
'Primordial time is finite' (Heidegger, Being and Time, 379; Sein und Zeit, 331).
Martin Heidegger, Brief über den Hnmanismus, in Wegmarken (Frankfurt am
Main: Klostermann, 1978), 326-327.
'Continuous creation', the key concept of Descartes' theology, appears in La
Transcendance de l'Ego (Paris: Vrin, 1966), 61 and in iL'Être et le néant, 680, Cf.
Being and nothingness, 611. The theological concept of'creation ex nihib' appears
in La Transcendance de l'Ego, 60.
Heidegger, Being and Time, § 6, tide.
Heidegger, Being and Time, 21. Sein und Zeit, 42.
Ludwig Binswanger, Über Ideenflucht (Zürich: Orell-Fiissli, 1933; New York &
London: Garland Publishing, 1980). (This tide could be translated as: On the
Flight of Ideas.)
Ludwig Binswanger, Walm, Beitrdge zu seiner phanemenologischen Forschung
(Pfullingen: Neske, 1965). Heidegger, Vom Wesen des Grandes, in Wegmarken, op.
cit

Binswanger quotes Heidegger precisely: 'Der Überstieg zur Welt ist die Freiheit
sclbst' (Vom Wesen des Grandes, 161). That is to say: 'The transcendence to the
World is freedom itself '. Trans. William Richardson, Heidegger, from
Phenomenology to Thought (The Hague: M. Nijhoff, 1974), 180.
Heidegger, Vom Wesen des Grandes, 162-163.
As Sartre suggests in Part IV of Being and Nothingness, it is not easy to
understand why in Being and Nothingness, Sartre radically changes, in the fourth
part of his book, his theory of the for-itself, which loses its 'facticity' and its
'finimde'. My recent book, La premiere philosophie de Sartre (Genève: Champion,
2008), tries to solve this difficult problem. I argue that the concept of freedom,
which is the key concept of the fourth part of the book, is submitted to the
influence of metaphysical, that is to say, non-phenomemlogical, principles, so that
the for-itself tends to become infinite and absolute. There are three other
metaphysical attractors of the phenomenological field, besides infinite freedom:
the contingency of every real entity, the desire of human reality to be God, and
the upsurge of the for-itself.
Heidegger, Heidegger, from Phenomenology to Thought, 166.
Heidegger, Vom Wesen des Grandes, 165. Heidegger, from Phenomenology to
Thought, 167.
In truth Heidegger's description shows too clearly his anxiety to establish an
ontological foundation for an Ethics with which he claims not to be concerned,
as also to reconcile his humanism with the religious sense of the transcendenP
(Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 104. L'Être et le néant, 122). 'We cannot stop at
those classifications of "authentic project" and "unauthentic project" of the self
which Heidegger wishes to establish' (Being and Nothingness, 585. L'Être et le
néant, 651).
As a consequence, Heidegger sharply rejected Sartre's new philosophy in his
Lettre sur l'humanisme, which was sent to J. Beaufret and published in 1947,
reproduced in English in M. Heidegger, Pathmarks, edited and translated by
William McNeill (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).
J.-P. Sartre, Saint Genet (Paris: Gallimard, 1952).

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