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 An Essay on the Philosophy of

Wilfrid Desan GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY REVISED EDITION

HARPER TORCHBOOKS THE ACADEMY LIBRARY

HARPER & BROTHERS NEW YORK
 HARPER TORCHBOOKS/The Academy Library
Advisory Editor in The Humanities and Social Sciences: Benjamin Nelson

THE TRAGIC FINALE: An Essay on the Philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre

Copyright 1954 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College

Copyright 1960 by Wilfrid Desan

Printed in the United States of America

First
published in the United States in 1954 by the Harvard
University Press and reprinted by arrangement.
First HARPER TORCHBOOK edition published 1960.
TO MY MOTHER

CfTt (MO.)

6308123
CONTENTS
Foreword to the Torchbook Edition xiii

Foreword xxi

PART I EXPOSITION OF SARTRE'S

ONTOLOGY
1 METHOD AND STARTING POINT 3

I. From Phenomenology to Existentialism 3

1
II. Sartre' s Epistemological Position 7

2 THE FOR-ITSELF 15

I. The For-ltself as Origin of Negation 15

I. INTERROGATION. DESTRUCTION. 3. NEGATIVE JUDGMENT.
2.
1
II. The For-ltself and Bad Faith 23
III. The Structures of the For-ltself 27
I. THE FOR-ITSELF AS IMPERSONAL. 2. THE FOR-ITSELF AS NON-

SUBSTANTIAL. 3. THE FOR-ITSELF AS LACK AND DESIRE. 4. THE

FOR-ITSELF AS HAUNTED BY VALUES AND POSSIBLES.
IV. The For-ltself and Time 35
I. THREE DIMENSIONAL TEMPORALITY. 2. TIME AS ORGANIC
UNITY.
V, Reflection or Psychic Temporality 43
I. PURE REFLECTION. 2. IMPURE REFLECTION.

3. THE IN-ITSELF 47
I.
Knowledge: The Bridge Between For-ltself and In-hself /Jg\
II. The Structures of the In-Itself 52 ^--^
I. QUALITY. 2. POTENTIALITY. 3. "UTENSILITY/'
III. The In-Itself and Time 57

4 THE OTHER 61

I. The Problem and its Solutions 61

I. HUSSERL. 2* HEGEL, 3. HEIDEGGER. 4. SARTRE.

XI
Xll CONTENTS
II. The Body 74
I. THE BODY AS BEING-FOR-ITSELF. 2. THE BODY AS BEING-FOR-

THE-OTHER. 3. MY BODY AS BODY-KNOWN-BY-THE-OTHER.

III. Concrete Relations 'with the Other 84
I. FIRST ATTITUDE TOWARD THE OTHER: LOVE, MASOCHISM. 2.

SEXUAL DESIRE, SADISM, HATE.

IV. Social Implications of Sartre's Vie<w 9 i
i. THE "US-OBJECT." 2. THE "WE-SUBJECT."

5 FREEDOM AND ACTION 96

/*
I. The Theory of Absolute Freedom 96
"

II. Freedom, and "Facticity" 107

I. MY PLACE. 2. MY
PAST. 3. MY
SURROUNDINGS. 4. MY FEL-
LOW-BRETHREN. 5. MY DEATH.
III. Acting, Having, Being 121

PART II CRITICISM AND COMMENTS

6 SARTRE'S EPISTEMOLOGICAL APPROACH 129

7 THE CONTRADICTIONS OF THE FOR-ITSELF 139

I. Sartre's
Negations 140
II. The Repudiation of the Ego 144

8 CRITIQUE OF SARTRE'S EXTREME FORM OF

FREEDOM 160

9 THE CONFLICT WITH METAPHYSICS 174

I. The Origin of the In-ltself 174
II. The Origin of the For-hself iSi

10 THE CHOICE OF SARTRE, OR EXISTENTIAL

SUBJECTIVISM 185

APPENDIX: EXISTENTIAL PSYCHOANALYSIS, SARTRE AND

FREUD 199

BIBLIOGRAPHY 211

COMPARATIVE TABLE OF REFERENCES IN UEtre 6t le

AND Being and Nothingness 217

INDEX 225
 FOREWORD TO THE
TORCHBOOK EDITION

The main purpose to point out where

of this second preface is

Sartre's book, UEtre et le Neant belongs in the successive phases

1

of his growth. In so doing, I hope as a secondary purpose to

show that the title of this book The Tragic Fmale, which to some
of my may appear to be too negative, is warranted.
readers

J.-P. Sartre was born in Paris on June 21, 1905, from a family
of the French middle-class. His mother was Protestant, his father
Andre Gide, he can be called a child of both
Catholic, so that like
denominations. At the age of two he lost his father, a Naval officer
who died in French Indochina. He was subsequently brought up
by his mother and his maternal grandparents. His grandfather
Schweitzer was a professor of Modern Languages at the Sorbonne.
Jean Paul was a weak and extremely sensitive child and as most
children of that type, lived much of the time in a world of fancy
and imagination. When he was eleven years old, his mother re-
married and the family went to live in La Rochelle. It is there
that he spent most of his lycee years. His professors thought of
him as being intelligent and unusually anxious to learn.
Schoolmates were bigger and stronger in La Rochelle and the
milieu seems to have been a little hard on the
young Sartre. The
family moved back to Paris, where he started preparing for the
Baccalaureat. He passed this double examination in 1920 and 1921
with the average grade: assez bien* The French assez bien might
be compared to the American C+, except for the fact that in

many American colleges the C+

has been unduly devaluated.
Sartre passed the French Licence (equivalent to the M.A.) and

together with the well-known Mounier, prepared for the very

1
Paris: Gallimard, 1953.

xui
XIV FOREWORD TO THE TORCHBOOK EDITION
stiffagregation. Agregation originally meant "admission to a cer-
tain group," in this case, to the body of French professors who
teach in the lycees and universities. Admission can only be granted

through an examination, which is itself now 7

called "I agregation"
It is
important to note that the number of candidates who pass
is limited to the of openings available. From the agreges,
number
teaching in the lycees, future university professors are chosen.
Sartre failed the agregation in 1928 but passed as first of his class in

1929.
After his military service as an Army nurse his defective vision

placed him outside the regular he was appointed pro-

service
fessor of Philosophy at the lycee of Le Havre. Le Havre was
later to become Bouville in his first novel, Nausea. After two

years in Le Havre (1931-33), he was offered a grant to study

under Husserl in Berlin. It was there that he learned the phe-

nomenological method, which will be discussed later in our book

and which for Sartre will be the method par excellence for all
his
philosophical discoveries. He came back to Le Havre for two
more years (193436), went from there to Laon and finally to
the Lycee Pasteur in Paris (1937-39). He was drafted in 1939
and taken prisoner in Lorraine on June 21, 1940. Since he was
not a member of the regular corps, he was liberated a year later.
Back in Paris (1941), he taught at the Lycee Pasteur and at the
Lycee Condorcet (1942-44). The end of the war marked also
the end of his teaching career. Since then Sartre has been living in
Paris except for several long trips abroad.
Sartre started writing as a child. Between the ages of eight and
ten he started writing "novels," which were his own rewritten
versions of stories he had heard or read. In the milieu of his

family, culture was highly respected and literature itself was con-
sidered to be something sacred, far more important than money.

Writing was a salvation and as Saore will tell us later a "justifica-

tion," of Ife.
He pi$>If$fed far the first time when he was eighteen, in a little

Rewe sans titre a piece called VAnge du M or bide.

FOREWORD TO THE TORCHBOOK EDITION XV

already contained some of

As is evident from the title it the
features of the older Sartre. These characteristics, unfortunately
for our young were not exactly what the publishers of
writer,
those days were looking for. Sartre kept on writing nonetheless
and soon was ready with a collection of Essais, which neither
Gallimard nor Aubier found interesting enough for publication.
Some part of it was later published in a periodical called Eifur
(June 1931). From then on the pace was set. And if the literary
world showed little interest, philosophers seemed to have been
more liberal and opened their doors to his innovations. His book
"UImagination" was published by the Presses Universitaires in
1936, and his long and at present well known article La Tran-
scendance de UEgo was accepted by Recherches Philosophiques. 1
In 1938 Gallimard published his Nausea. To the great surprise of
Gallimard himself, it became a best seller. Sartre's name was made.
would be useless to enumerate here the list of his further
It

publications, which are both abundant and diverse. This is avail-

able at the end of this book. But it is interesting to observe the
curve of Sartre's writing and thought. As a young man, the future
leader of French existentialism had mainly literary ambitions.

Gradually his attention shifted towards philosophical study,

though he continued at the same time with his literary work.
Within his philosophical accomplishment, the accent was, at first,
upon what may be called speculative analysis and description,
culminating in his voluminous philosophical work UEtre et le
Neant? which is the topic of our research in this book. At that
moment Sartre reached a summit. "I have the passion to under-
stand man," he had said. And in the 722 pages of UEtre et le
Neant, he set out to do just that. The outcome was, I believe, a
classic and the study of must for anyone who
his work is a at-
of literary work.
tempts a thorough understanding Sartre's
1
Paris, 1936. At present in English under the title The Trcmscendance
of The Ego, transL by Williams and Kirkpatrick. New York: Noonday
Press, 1957.
2
At present in English endear th?e title Being and Nothingness, transl. by
Hazel Barnes. New York: Ptiilosopijical library,
XVI FOREWORD TO THE TORCHBOOK EDITION
From then on, however, Sartre has been more and more dis-
tracted by and as a consequence has had
political considerations,
a growing preoccupation with ethical problems. And although
one might eventually build up an ethics which is completely di-
vorced from ontological speculations, in most cases one's 'Weltan-
schauung affects his morals, at least negatively. This is certainly
the case with Sartre. However, the contrary is true as well.
Sartre's contact with the world of postwar France is responsible
for some evolution in his speculative thought. A more mature
Sartre has become less extreme. This appeared clearly during a

long interview which I had with him in his Parisian apartment,

where he lives with his mother, in June 1956.
At that moment Sartre confessed that he had gradually moved
away from the extreme stand on freedom as defended in UEtre
et le Neant. He said: "I still believe that individual freedom is

ontologically speaking, but on the other hand I am more

total,
and more convinced that this freedom is conditioned and limited
by circumstances." The
implication was that limiting circum-
stances are always present and that as a consequence, individual
freedom is always limited. Herewith Sartre seems to have given
up former position and to have moved closer to Merleau-
his

Ponty's stand on the same topic.

Although Sartre is still an outspoken atheist, some of his as-
surance and aggressiveness appears to have left him. During the
same conversation, Sartre presented his thought in this way: "I
arn not concerned with God, I am concerned with man." And
he added: "I am neither materialist, nor spiritualist. I
part with
dialectical materialism, in this sense, that
according to my view
( i ) man has goals which matter does not have, ( 2 ) and man has a

possibilities which matter does not have/' The latter

choice of
assertions do not fundamentally differ from the views expressed
in his brilliant article: Materialisme et Revolution, published in
the Temps Moderns, wfeffe.be wrote: "When materialism dog-
matically asserts tipt the universe produces thought, it immeo!i-
_iiiiJ5 ^---
to Realist scepticism. It kys dwns the inalienable
FOREWORD TO THE TORCHBOOK EDITION XV11

rights of Reason with one hand and takes them away

with the
other. It destroys positivism with dogmatic rationalism. It de-

stroys both of them with the metaphysical affirmation that man

is and it destroys this affirmation by the radical
a material object,

negation of all
metaphysics. It sets science against metaphysics
and, unknowingly, a metaphysics against science. All that re-
mains is And a few pages further he added: "A state
ruins." 1
of the world will never be able to produce class consciousness.
And the marxists are so well aware of this that they rely upon
militants that is upon a conscious and concerted action in order
to activate the masses and awaken this consciousness within
them." 2 Sartre was never candid enough to alienate his freedom
of thought and to get caught in the web of dialectical materialism.
If his
sympathies have gone, at times, into that direction, it is
because of his insight into the fact that the Western world, stand-
ing at a critical turning-point of history, can only be helped by
a social philosophy of profound impact and that, for that purpose,
some of the marxistic views should be taken into consideration.

During my visit, Iwas very much struck by Sartre's involve-

ment in the politics of France and of the world as a whole. As a
philosopher, he does not live in an ivory tower, nor does he keep
himself aloof from the political forum: he is very much the
thinker among the crowd, although not always so visible. The
truth of the matter is that Sartre wants to be and considers him-
self to be very much "engage" coun-
in the social service of his

try, of Europe and of the world. This idea of engagement has

for Sartre an ontological foundation, as will appear in this book,
for every man is a revelation of the world. He believes not only
that human consciousness implies a universe as its
necessary com-
pletion, but also that every act of man has a relational impact upon
the others, so much so that its contrary to live en vase closis

1
From the English translation in Literary and Philosophical Essays,
transl. by A. Michelson. New York: Criterion Books, Inc., 1955, p. 190.
2
Ibid. p. 220.
Xviii FOREWORD TO THE TORCHBOOK EDITION
unthinkable. "Every philosopher," Sartre told me, "is a man who
is 'involved' and who must attempt to offer a solution." In the

working out of his own brand of moral political solutions, how-

ever, he confessed himself to be very hesitant and not to have
found dogmatical slogans as a cure all of evils. "The
any global
moralist is driving his car he watches the curves
like a driver, in

of the roafl," he added. This metaphor should not be understood

as if ethics were a question of opportunism, nor is the
merely
phrase by itself
an expression of relativism, but it implies that
the position of the moralist is a serious one and cannot be held
without anxiety. "The first task of the moralist," commented our
Author, "is to observe. We
period of great mutations.
live in a

It is the of the to observe the happenings of

duty philosopher
his time. As for my own book on Ethics it will take me ten more

years to finish it."

Actually there is in Sartre, I believe, a double trend: a con-
stant obsessionwith ethical problemsno play should be written
without an ethical messageor content and at the same time a
constant fear of freezing his data into definite conclusions. In

acting in this manner he is once more witness of his own projected

world, which is, as our book will abundantly demonstrate, one of

freedom. Freedom, however, cannot be convincingly defended

without its core of responsibility. Hence, Sartre, the responsible
man!
Yet the same person in
attempting his "essai de solution", faces
intricate problems, as will
appear by the end of this book. His
UEtre et le Neant results in what I consider to be a Tragic Finale.
Sartre himself has no smooth the rugged road leading
desire to
towards this tragic However, the examination of man,
ending.
undertaken in UEtre et le Neant is only the first leg of his long

journey. Sartre's ultimate ambition is to examine the total man,

man in his conscious and unconscious structure, man in his in-

tellectual, volitional and emotional status, man in his ethical

per-
formance no less than in his ontological dimensions. This
picture
FOREWORD TO THE TORCHBOOK EDITION XIX

of man, UEtre et le Neant, however thorough and penetrating,

does not claim to give, for the ethical aspect is omitted. There-
fore the book can be said to be incom-plete although completely

tragic in
its
ending. The title which I have chosen for my book
must be understood in that light: it is not an epithet for the
whole of a Sartrian Weltanschauung but a commentary upon
its
ontological conclusions.
Of
the ultimate synthesis of Sartre's thought I am, of course,

ignorant. I have not asked him that question, for which he ob-
viously was not prepared. But I did ask him: Do you believe it
advisable to keep the contradiction in the heart of man under
the form of thesis and antithesis? Sartre's immediate answer was:
"One must always tend towards the synthesis!" What the latter

was, he did not claim as

yet to know.

Wilfrid Desan

Georgetown University
August i, 1960
 NOTE TO THE TORCHBOOK EDITION

In the editing of this reprint, I have taken the remarks of the

critics intoconsideration where this was possible. Hence a few

changes have been introduced. The bibliography of Sartre him-

selfand of other authors has been completed. Since in the mean-
time an excellent translation of UEtre et le Neant has appeared
in English under the title Being and Nothingness (tr. Hazel

Barnes. New York: Philosophical Library, 1956), we have added

at the end of comparative table containing all the
this reprint a
references of our book French and the English edi-
to both the
tions. It is of course understood that the English translations
within the text of The Tragic Finale are my own.
 FOREWORD

This real estimate, the only true one, is Hable to be super-

seded, if we are not watchful, by two other kinds of esti-
mate, the historic estimate and the personal estimate, both
of which are fallacious. The course of development
. .

of a nation's language, thought, and poetry, is profoundly

interesting; and by regarding a poet's work as a stage in
this course of development we may easily bring our-
selves to make it of more importance as poetry than in
itself it
really is, we may come to use a language of quite
exaggerated praise in criticising it. . Then,
.
again, a
poet or poem may count to us on grounds personal to
ourselves. Our personal affinities, likings and circum-
stances, have great power to sway our estimate of this
or that poet's work, and to make us attach more im-
portance to it as poetry than in itself it really possesses,
because to us it is, or has been, of high importance.
MATTHEW ARNOLD, "The Study of Poetry," 1880

This book represents an attempt at a systematic pres-

entation and interpretation of Jean-Paul Sartre's ontology. It is
not an historical introduction, nor a search for the origins of
Existentialism. I take Matthew Arnold's observations on the study
of poetry to be true also for the study of philosophy: philosophy,
too, ought to have "a power of forming, sustaining, and delight-
ing us," and it
ought to offer, "in an eminent jdegree, truth and
seriousness." Where
these attributes exist, a particular philosophy
will be found to be superior to history even to that history to
which its own mode of discourse belongs. Furthermore, in the
case of Sartre, the by now traditional progression from Augus-
tine through Pascal, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Heidegger to
XXli FOREWORD
Sartre himself has been examined so often and so
excellently by
other writers that it be saluted and then, for the
can, one hopes,
most part, set aside. Though the work needed to be done, it is a
kind of irony, perhaps, that Sartre's philosophy of being should
so often be submerged in the details of its
becoming. Neverthe-
having said so much, I must add that in presenting Sartre's
less,

brand of Existentialism, I shall occasionally contrast or compare it

with the findings of other writers of the past or present, espe-
cially when such a method seems to illuminate Sartre's position
more clearly.
I am not concerned in these
pages with the author of Nausea,
Ways of Freedom, The Flies, and No Exit, though there is a cur-
rent and fallacious opinion that Sartre's novels and plays give his
whole philosophy. None of his literary works, it must be insisted,
is a treatise, although each of them is a more or less successful

vulgarization and an exploration of a specific aspect of his philos-

ophy. Nor am I concerned with the Sartre of The Psychology
of Imagination and Emotions. I am concerned with Sartre the
philosopher, pure and not-so-simple, the author of VEtre et le

NeantJ- and I
restrictingam investigation entirely to his phe-
my
nomenological ontology, as it
appears principally in this book.
Wherever some idea dealt with in Sartre's literary and psycho-
logical workquoted in these pages, it will be in order to show
is

its connection with his basic ontological view.

A
sojourn of five years in the United States has taught me,
better than I could have learned by any other method, the

strengths and weaknesses of

continental philosophy. Without

wishing to imply the slightest disregard for its creative values,

I must observe that philosophy south of the Channel does not
always exhibit the sobriety of Anglo-Saxon thought. The con-
tinental philosopher tends all too frequently to lose the sequence
of his argument in a flood of tropology. The result is often ad-

1
(Paris: Galimard, 1948). For further references to this book die abbre-
viation EN will be used.
FOREWORD XX111

mirable and moving, but a paraphrase or an explication of it is

almost as impossible as it is of some modern poetry. Such is not
the case with Sartre, and I
hope that own exposition will
my
sufficiently analytical mode. In this
present his
thought in a
search for clarity, however, it is necessary to understand that

phenomenology has a characteristic approach, one quite different

from that of other schools of thought. UEtre et le Neant is a
book, demanding as painstaking an examination as any
difficult

Hegelian work, but it must be examined on its own terms. In

my exposition have reduced the technical vocabulary to a
I

minimum and sought to translate it, where translation did not

seem to do violence to some carefully delimited meaning, into a
more accessible language. Nevertheless, in order to save certain
features peculiar to Sartre's doctrine, I have been driven to some
unusual grammatical constructions: for instance, the use of the
verb "to exist" in a transitive form. It is perhaps advisable to note
here that, for the most part, I have used the system of references
rather than that of quotations not only in order to avoid dis-

rupting the continuity of the text but, more significantly, to in-

crease the clarity of the exposition.
Sartre has been the object of bitter attacks: from the Marxists
because of his basic subjectivism, and from the Scholastics be-
cause of his pessimistic and atheistic position. My
statement in-
dicates, I think, how often this criticism has been partisan, con-
itself principally with merits and demerits which are
cerning
quite extrinsic to Sartre's doctrine. It has been asked whether
atheistic Existentialism is encouraging or discouraging to the
"men of good will," whether it is useful for a revolution, with-
out inquiring sufficiently what its metaphysical and ontological
content really is. Unfortunately, it often seems as though, for all
these disputants, the question of truth or error Is not very impor-
tant in itself.
They perhaps forget that the immediate task of the
philosopher is not to bring people to paradise (whatever its na-
ture may be), but to inquire honestly for truth. Sartre's doctrine
XXIV FOREWORD
deserves an objective study, and any criticism which comes be-

diligently made is,

fore the effort to understand has been I think,

unfair. This is assuredly not to suggest that an exposition of a

doctrine should be an apology in our modern use of the
word for that doctrine. Even in the early pages of this book
the reader will detect gaps and weaknesses which, in a later sec-
tion, will be the object of my criticism. In the first part I shall
do no more than attempt to put the reader into the way of Sar-
tre's
thinking, imitating his attitude, so far as possible, and seeing
things as he claims they should be seen.
It
may appear at the end that Sartre's approach is a failure.
As G. Varet writes in his Ontologie de Sartre: "His merit may lie
in just this failure, for it is the result of an enterprise that had
to be attempted. The more radical his endeavor, the more evident
will appear the conclusion that phenomenology alone is inade-

quate to solve the problems of ontology. Jaspers, Heidegger,

Sartre all these men
offer attempts to solve the problem of being
on a phenomenological basis. Sartre's system constitutes perhaps
the most complete and coherent approach. But each case is in-

showing us once more what phenomenology by itself

structive in
its founder, Edmund Husserl:
could not give, even to namely, an
objective, complete, and general philosophy." History has known
other defeats. Every student in philosophy knows that the Car-
tesian Cogito never did give to the master of seventeenth-century
rationalism what he strove for during his whole life. No one will
for that reason doubt the usefulness of Descartes' attempt. Sartre's
failure may prove an equally interesting and instructive one.

I wish to
express my gratitude to the members of the Depart-
ment of Philosophy of Harvard University for the generous en-
copragement and aid that they have given me during the writing
of this book. Thanks are especially due td Professors John Wild
and D. G. Wi&tes^ Dr. PhiEp Khinelander, and W. H. Werk-
of Nebraska, visiting professor at Har-
FOREWORD XXV
vard during the academic year 1950-51.
They have made a diffi-
cult task easier because of their constant interest and advice.
I am very grateful, also, to the Harvard University Press, which
has made this
publication possible. And I am very pleased to ac-
knowledge my indebtedness to Harold Martin of Harvard's
General Education Program, to Frances
Schipani of Harvard's
Language Research, Inc., and to George Lanning of Kenyon
College, who made valuable suggestions on style while this manu-
script was in progress.
Any surviving Gallicisms are, of course,
the responsibility of the author.

W.D.
Kenyon College, April 14, 1954
 PART ONE
EXPOSITION OF SARTRE'S ONTOLOGY
The weight we must obey,
of this sad time

Speak what we not what we ought to say.

feel,

The oldest hath borne most: we that are young

Shall never see so much, nor live so long.
SING LEAR
The human species will disappear. Little by little the small
star which is our sun will lose its lightening and warming
force. Then, of all this human and superhuman civilization,
these discoveries, philosophies, ideals, religions, nothing
-will subsist. In this minuscule corner of the universe, the

pale adventure of the protoplasm will be eliminated for-

ever the adventure which perhaps is finished already in
other worlds and may be renewed in another world,
which is everywhere supported by the same illusions,
creating the same tortures, everywhere equally absurd
and vain, everywhere promised final failure and infinite
darkness from the start.
- ROSTAND
 METHOD AND STARTING POINT

"It seems very pretty," she said . . ."but it's rather hard
to understand! . . . Somehow it seems to fill my head
with ideas only I don't exactly know what they are!"
LEWIS CARROLL, Through the Looking-Glass

1. FROM PHENOMENOLOGY TO EXISTENTIALISM

There no
confusion in our day concerning
is little

the often-used terms Phenomenology and Existentialism. Like

Alice's experience with the Jabberwocky poem, these two words
seem to fill our heads with ideas, but we "don't exactly know what
they are." I
hopetheir meaning will be clearer at the end of this

book, but it seems useful to define at once, if briefly, what one

generally understands by these denominations. I say "generally
understands," for it is unlikely that the Existential philosophers
will unanimously clasp a commentator to their bosom and cry, as

does the speaker in the poem from Alice-.

And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?

Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!

The Jabberwock of these two terms has a Hydra's head, and the

"vorpal blade" of commentary goes "snicker-snack" in the hope

not of slaying the monster, but rather of bringing back a couple
of the bigger heads for some kind of inspection.
In order to come to a definition of phenomenology which
will be both acceptable and applicable to most of its adherents,
let us look for a moment at the founder of the school, Edmund
4 EXPOSITION OF SARTRE'S ONTOLOGY
Husserl. Husserl began his career as a mathematician, and like
other mathematicians before and after him he soon found him-
concerned with the foundations of mathematics. Obviously,
self

some such inquiry was necessary if he was to convince himself,

as he was more than ready to do, that the mathematician could
give all the answers to the riddle of the universe. What he dis-
covered, however, was that the mathematician had to come to
the philosopher for the understanding of knowledge itself and
of several of the most elementary notions, such as space, time,
and number. In short, his investigation into the foundations
of mathematical knowledge led him into a new and, as it may
have seemed, alien field. And here he was to make the same mis-
take, and to experience the same disillusion, that he had known
before; for he assumed that philosophy would have the answers

ready-made for him, and that his problems would be settled

once and forever. Instead, he found a field bristling with thorns,
scarred with rock formations, soggy with the quagmires of two
thousand years of philosophical perplexities. Philosophy offered
him no clear-cut answer. With the optimism of comparative

youth, Husserl set himself the task of bringing order into this
philosophical wilderness.
We
see him now, in retrospect, as an-
other Descartes, with the same faith in reason, the same trust
in the mathematical approach. His purpose was to build up

philosophyso that eventually it would exhibit the rigorous think-

ing that characterized science, and the same meticulous preci-

sion. He wanted a return "zu den Sachen selbst," from which,

in his belief, philosophy had unknowingly divorced itself. In

order to acquire this strict objectivity, the philosopher, he said,
must turn his whole attention to the exact and careful descrip-
tion of that 'which appears to our consciousness; i.e., the so-called

phenomenon. To know is jiotjoact, or. to produce, but onljr to

1
see.

The "phenomenon" being that which manifests itself in what-

(Halle: Niemeyer, 191 3), pp. lolf.

METHOD AND STARTING POINT 5
ever 'way it manifests itself, will not be restricted to the sen-
2
sible appearance alone. Feelings, desires, aversions, political in-
stitutions, philosophical doctrines "appear" and "manifest them-
selves" as "really" as a color does, but in a different way. My
inner feelings, for instance, "manifest" themselves to me. In fact,

they are even more than public phenomena something

which appears.
When we add to the term "phenomenon" the term "legein"
(to examine, to describe), we shall be able to understand that
"phenomenology" is a method which wants to describe all that
manifests 3
manifests itself as it itself.

This precise description of what appears is a phenomeno-

logical description. It must be entirely free of all apriority and
4
prejudice. Consequently, no postulate of practical or theoretical
reason, no criterion of revelation or tradition, may be admitted.

Phenomenology rejects deductive method, whether Hegelian

all

or Scholastic. In phenomenology it is the Self which analyzes

"phenomena"; i.e., human consciousness which analyzes that
which appears in its sphere.
Husserl, Heidegger, and Sartre would agree, I believe, with
the foregoing remarks. This does not mean, however, that a defi-
nition of phenomenology as Husserl understood it is complete.
As the readermay know, the famous "reductions" constitute
in Husserl's mind an essential part of phenomenology, whereas

Heidegger and Sartre have abolished them. Although space pro-

hibits a detailed discussion, it may be well to point at Husserl's
curious solution of the epistemological problem by means of his
so-called "Phenomenological Reduction." For an important ques-

*This aspect of the Husserlian phenomenology is clearly illustrated by

Heidegger in Sein imd Zeit (Halle: Niemeyer, 1929), p. 28.
*
"Das was sich zeigt, so wie es sich vom ihm selbst her zeigt, von ihm
selbst her sehen lassen" Sem und Zett9 p. 34.
*"Wir lassen uns durch keine Autoritat das Recht verkiimmern, alle
Anschauungsarten als gleichswertige Rechtsquellen der Erkenntnis anzuer-
kennen auch nicht durch die Autoritat der 'Modernen Naturwissen-
schaft*" Ideen^ p. 38. (Cdnsequendy, the phenomenologists claim to be
the real posMvists "die echte Positivisten.")
 EXPOSITION OF SARTRE'S ONTOLOGY
tion arises: what about the world which "ap-
existence of this

pears" to us and which has been so carefully described? Hus-

serFs reply to this question
may seem to some extremely cava-
lier. He does not
precisely doubt the existence of the world;
neither does he affirm it; he
simply places it inside "brackets." He
calls it the "einHammerung" (or, in Greek, "egoche]'), and he
refuses to judge it. His
argument is that since knowledge and
meaning have nothing to gain through the existence of the world,
we can as well forget about it.
Heidegger and Sartre vigorously reject this phenomenological
5
reduction, and could hardly do otherwise, since their purpose
is to
analyze the very existence which Husserl tosses aside. Hus-
serl's
philosophy is one of meanings and not sufficiently one of
existence. This is, therefore, a basic difference between the found-
er of the school and his disciples. Another difference is that for
Husserl phenomenology represents a complete philosophical

system, constructed in a strict intellectualistic and rationalistic

6
way, and including a completely autonomous metaphysics; for
Heidegger and Sartre, on the other hand, phenomenology is
merely zmetKod wmch enables them to build upja ontological
s"ysf
em around what they judge most worthy of description and
namelyjhuman e^dstence.^ In their respec-
^retailed examination^
tive books, thsy. want _tp detect or to "reveal" by means of the
8

phenomenological method the "being" of^the existent himself.

And by "existence" thg]jdojiot mean the abstract notion of the
Aristotelian Thomists, but concrete human experience of Ex-
istence. An authoritaS^InC^^
gives us this account:
5
In fact, they reject all reduction or "einklammerung." See Landgrebe:
"Husserl's Phanomenologie und die Motive zu ihrer Umbildung," in Revue
Internationale de Philosophic, January 15, 1939, p. 305.
*For Husserl, phenomenology is "die einzige absolut eigenstandige
Wissenschaft" memen Ideen, p. 561.
Nachioort zu
T
Hence tfae name
Existentialism.
s

8
Heidegger m
Sem tend Zett, and Sartre in UEtre et le Nlant. (Heideg-
ger's twx>k^ril hereafter
be referred to as SZ.)
METHOD AND STARTING POINT 7
There two ways of seizing and explaining metaphysical reality.
are
One can attempt to elucidate the universal signification in an abstract
language. In this case the theory takes a universal and tuneless form.
Subjectivity and historicity are utterly excluded. Or one can incor-
porate into the doctrine the concrete and dramatic aspect of experi-
'

ence and propose not some sort of abstract truth, but my

truth, as I
realize it in my own life. Thisthe existentialistic way. And this also
is

explains why existentialism often chooses to express itself through

fiction,novel and play (e.g. Marcel, Sartre, Camus). The purpose is to
grasp existence in the act itself, in which it fulfills itself. 9

It would appear that this definition suits the

positions of Kier-
kegaard and Jaspers, but does not fit in so easily with Heidegger's
and Sartre's point of view, for both the latter attempt to "sys-
tematize" their experience and to build out of their subjective
view some kind of objective and universal ontology. How far
this innovation threatens the whole structure will be examined

in the second part of this book.

At any rate, it_seerns that we may define Heidegger's and
Sartre's attempt as the^j^encmeli^^ ex-
istence, or, more precisely,
of human consciousness
facing the
world. Sartre puts it in these terms: the For~itjel$jQnm&a&- con-

sciousness)" .before the Bmg-in^&J^_^i^l^ct^^ no Jmman

consciousness; the massive or fuU^ being, as he calls it). This di-
vision is very important for the understanding of Sartre's system
and will shortly be elaborated further. Chapter Two is, indeed,
entirely devoted to a detailed examination of the For-itself, while
Chapter Three will examine the notion of Being-in-itself .

n. SARTRE'S EPISTEMOLOGICAL POSITION

The problem, however, which for Sartre and Heidegger is

unsolved, and must be answered, is: how do they and others
still

(for instance, Merleau-Ponty) who have taken over Husserl's

n
'Simone de Beanvoir^ "Litterature et Metaphysiqtte, Les Temps Mod-
ernes% pp. 159-160 (avril
8 EXPOSITION OF SARTRE'S ONTOLOGY
method, but have refused to adopt his Phenomenological Reduc-
tion, prove the existence of the world? The main answer is that

Heidegger and Sartre do not consider this existential backbone of

the world as something that needs
proof. This "backbone" is there
before all reflection. therefore, has never claimed
Phenomenology,
to give more than meaning or significance; it is not even sup-
posed to do more. The existence of the world is
"toujours-deja-
donne" always-already-given.
10 A
Phenomenological Reduc-
tion is absurd. Existence is there as a background in its brutal
f
acticity; it ought not either to be proved or put between brack-
ets, but simply clothed with meaning and signification.

The world there before all reflection and it is completely arti-

is

ficial to make
the world derive from our synthesis. One believes . .

that reflection builds up a world out of some kind of invulnerable

subjectivity. But this is a naivete, or, if you prefer, an incomplete

reflection,which has forgotten its origin and its own beginning. As
a matter of fact, I have begun to think, my reflection was reflection on
something unreflected and it ought to recognize, besides its own
. . .

operation, the existence of the world, which is given to the subject,

because the subject is given to himself. Reality must be described and
* 1
not constructed, nor constituted.

This is
Heidegger, Sartre, and Merleau-Ponty accept,
the way
roughly speaking, the existential background of the world, a
world "toujours-deja-donne" the brute existence which hu-
man consciousness can explore and of which it can detect more
and more aspects. The existent world is, as it were, a never ex-
hausted "reservoir of meanings." 12
The authors differ, as we shall see, as to the amount of inter-
vention which human consciousness takes upon itself: whether
it is
merely a spectator or whether it
actively interferes, unroll-

10
De Waelhens, Le Choix, le Monde* ^Existence (Paris: Arthaud, 1947),
pp. 1156ff.
Merleau-Pohty, Phenovnenohgie de la Perception (Paris: Gallimard,
1945), prdraee, p. iv.
METHOD AND STARTING POINT 9
ing its own projects; but all of them agree in rejecting Husserl's

"einklammerung." .

Sartre himself 13 M UEtre

attempts, in his "Introduction" to et
le Neant, a more elaborate justification of this
epistemological
position, and he does this by means of an analysis of the term
"consciousness" itself. Consciousness is
always consciousness of
something which is not consciousness itself, or,to use Sartre's vo-

cabulary, the For-itself always implies the existence of the In-

itself, ercn^before^reflection^ in short, as I remarked earlier, the

world is there as soon as human consciousness is there: conscious-

ness knows without performing an authentic reflection. Sartre

even attempts a kind of "proof* of this, which he calls an onto-
in imitation of the Anselrnian
logical proof, proof, applied not
to God's existence, however, but to the existence of the
objec-
tive world. He starts from his consciousness, or, as he calls it,
15
from his
"prereflexive Cogito." This ontological argument may
be presented in the following terms: For anyone who examines
the notion of consciousness, it
appear that consciousness is con-
sciousness of something. This can be understood in two senses:

18
From this point on
I shall be
chiefly concerned with Sartre. Since, how-
ever, his connection with Heidegger is very close, I shall point in footnotes
to Heidegger's influence where it occurs, for it is a fact that the French Exis-
tentialist accepts several of the conclusions of the German one. In this sense
Sartre can be called a disciple of German Existentialism. Sartre, however,
extends Existential analysis beyond Heidegger's conclusions, as far as they
are presented in SZ. On this point we can, of course, only judge by what
Heidegger has published, and not by what he may have written of late
years and not yet made accessible. Sartre's ontology is more complete and
systematic than Heidegger's, which for the most part has remained in the
state of a project. Despite these remarks, Heidegger's significant infkience
and the profound originality of his position cannot be denied.
"EN, pp. i6ff.
Sartre makes a distinction between the prereflexive Cogito, wMch is
15

ordinary and immediate knowledge (eg^ I know a table, I know Peter)

and authentic reflection, which is the act by which we reflect on our actions
or on our knowledge (e.g., I know that I know the table) . Descartes' Cogito
is thus authentic reflection. The prereflexive Cogko is human consciousness
as non-reflecting knowledge. Even so, it is consciotts, for all knowledge, re-
flecting or otherwise, is conscious. See EN, p. 17.
 ?
10 EXPOSITION OF SARTRE S ONTOLOGY
Cither we assume that consciousness is constitutive of its
object
16
3r that
merely facing a transcendent object. The first hy-
it is

pothesis destroys itself, inasmuch as being conscious of something

means simply confronting with your consciousness something
which is not your consciousness. Otherwise we are presented
with a consciousness busily distinguishing itself from something
which is nothing. Being cannot arise out of nothing. "Objectivity
isnot founded on non-being: never will objective grow out of
subjective, nor transcendent out of immanent, nor being out of
17
non-being." So if consciousness is conscious of something, this

something is not consciousness itself, but an external object.

What is the result of all this? The most obvious result is that
Sartre considers himself as a realist. pretend that conscious-To
ness is always consciousness of something which is not conscious-
ness itself, excludes pure subjectivity. Consciousness implies es-

sentially the existence

of a non-conscious being, existing before
18
one's knowledge and independent of one's knowledge.
is of a
It is
readily apparent, however, that Sartre's realism
strange order. It will be the object of a more detailed study in a
following chapter, but it may be useful to state the fact now
19
that human reality
or human consciousness or the For-itself

(Sartre uses these terms indifferently) is divested of what tradi-

tionalphilosophy generally held to: the For-itself is not a person,
nor a substance, nor a thing; it is
merely the revelation of the
In-itself.

16
"Transcendent" here being used in the sense of objective: outside con-
sciousness.
1T
N, p. 28.
"Here appears once more the difference between Sartre's prereflexive
Cogito and Descartes' Cogito. The Cartesian Cogito was a stable starting
point, but
... it was only a starting point, and the famous seventeenth-
century rationalist had a very hard time reaching the external world via God
and His veracity. Sartre's Cogito, on the contrary, implies an immediate
knowledge of an external reality and a straight affirmation of the existence
of this reality. In this sense, Sartre is a realist. (See further discussion, p. 71)
Sartre rarely uses the term "human being"; his usual reference is instead
18
s

to "human reality."
METHOD AND STARTING POIN? I 1

As for the In-itself, Sartre's second region of being, the first

thing that we can affirm, as I have already suggested in epis- my

ternological analysis, is that "it is perceived," or, as Sartre would
put it, "phenomenon." This is not to say, how-
"it appears," it is

ever, that I can always know an external object completely as soon

as it appears. As soon as it
appears I know it, but I can know it
still better and better. The
Being-in-itself overflows its appear-
ance, so to speak. When
perceive Peter, for instance, I can
I

approach him closely enough to see the grain of his skin, to ob-
serve the enlarged pores, and there is even the theoretical possi-

bility my examining his microscopic cells, and so on to in-

of

finity.
This infinity
is
implicitly contained in my actual percep-
tion, which it overflows infinitely through everything I can

specify about him at each moment. It is this which constitutes the

"massiveness" of real objects. 20 Thus the result is that Being-in-
itself
"appears," i.e., is phenomenon, and yet has some sort of
transphenomenality^ as Sartre calls it, which can be explored
more and more. This transphenomenality, however, and this is
an important point, is nothing hidden^ the phenomenon may not
be considered as the sigmvm of some entity which is unable to
manifest no Kantian noumenon, no inside of
itself; there is

things concealed somewhere behind their surface, no meta-

physical force or "conatus" somewhere out of view but never-
21
theless
present. Sartre therefore is not Kantian. This may lead
us to ask if he
perhaps Aristotelian in his examination of the
is

ontological dimension of Reing-in-itself. He is not. Sartre is an

unshakable adversary of Aristotle's dualism of act and potency.
22
There is, for him, no potency before the act. All is act. There is

^Sartre, Psychology of ImagtTiation (New York, 1948). See also JEN",

p. 13.
21
The sameidea is to be found in Heidegger, SZ, p. 31.
22
This important statement will be examined in more detail in Chapter
Two. The fallowing text, however, is a marvelous illustration of Sartre's
act and potency: "Of course a movement was some-
position concerning
thing different from a tree. But it was still an absolute. A thing. My eyes
encountered completion. The tips of the branches rusded with existence
I 2 EXPOSITION OF SARTRE'S ONTOLOGY
no potency whatsoever in things. Potency is a creation of the
human mind. Human beings put "possibility" into things;
this
23
things themselves are being, plain and full being.
As for the origin of Being-in-itself, Sartre stands in flat oppo-
sition to all Scholastic
explanations, i.e., he rejects creationalism.
There is no creation "ex nihilo." Creation is an anthropomor-
phism invented by human beings after observation of what hap-
24
pens in the fabrication of material tools. For if God creates a
thing, it belongs to His "intra-subjectivity" and lacks ipso facto

which incessantly renewed itself and which was never born. The existing
wind rested on the tree like a great bluebottle, and the tree shuddered. But
the shudder was not a nascent quality, a passing from power to action-, it was
a thing; a shudder thing flowed into the tree, took possession of it, shook
it and
suddenly abandoned it, going further on to spin about itself. All *was
fulness and all was active, there was no weakness in time, all, even the least
perceptible stirring, was made of existence. And all these existents which
bustled about this tree came from nowhere and were going nowhere. Exist-
ence everywhere, infinitely, in excess, for ever and everywhere: existence,
which is limited only by existence. I sank down on the bench, stupefied,
stunned by this profusion of beings without origin." Nausea (New York,
1949), p. 178. (Italics mine)
28
This is
why the world is called a never exhausted "reservoir of
meanings." See De Waelhens, p. 60.
24
Cf. Sartre, Existentialism (New York: Philosophical Library, 1947), p.
1 See also his play, The Flies (New York: Knopf, 1947): "What do I care
8.
for Zeus? Justice is a matter of men and I need no God to teach me it." And
Orestes, speaking to Zeus: "But you blundered, you should not have made
me free. Neither slave, nor master, I am freedom. No sooner had you
created me, than I ceased to be yours." (p. 157)
The most striking contradiction in the notion of creation, according to
Sartre, is the creation of free mortals prohibited from using their freedom.
Remorse (symbolized by the flies), following sin, is nonsense.
As for the ethical consequences of his atheism, Sartre notes: "The exis-
tentialist thinks it very distressing that God does not exist, because all pos-

sibility of finding
values in a heaven of ideas disappears along with him."
Existentialism, p. 26. Again, "If God does not exist, we find no values or
commands to turn to which legitimize our conduct. So in the bright realm
of values, we have no excuse behind us, nor justification before us." (Ibid^
p. 27)
Heidegger also rejects the idea of creation "ex nihilo" If the world is
created mMo %
Goa must in one way or another be related to nothing-
ness^ "Iki if God is (Jod he cannot know Nothing, assuming that the *Ab-
solaEtf excludes
,
Irom itself all nullity." ("What is Metaphysics?/* trausL by
In Existence and Being [Chicago: Regnery, 1949]* p. 376).
METHOD AND STARTING POINT I
3

25
all
"selbstandigkeit" whatsoever. If a thing exists independently
of God, however, it can stand, as it were, against God; it does
not need a creator. If Being-in-itself were created, it would
be inexplicable, for it would have taken back its independent ex-
istence in the meanwhile. Thus being fy, merely is in itself a defi- ,

nition which
implies neither passivity nor activity. Being-in-itself
does not return to itself as consciousness does; it is opaque, mas-
sive, and in complete identity with itself. Furthermore, being is
not becoming, 26 for becoming is itself only a form of being. Be-
ing, in addition, ignores all otherness or negation, is tenseless, and
has no be connected with any potential pre-
history. It cannot
existent form or with any Necessary Cause whatsoever. 27 The
possible itself is a structure of human consciousness (i.e., the
For-itself ) and does not exist in things.
Several of the notions and axioms condensed in these last lines
sound, in summary, dogmatic. Let us remember, however, that
they are provisional. It is the aim of Sartre's phenomenology to
describe this double region of being: Being-for-itself (or human

consciousness) and Being-in-itself to describe their character-

istics, their relations, and their interactions.

As
for Sartre's epistemological position, this too is not a set-
tled problem. In fact, the 722 pages of UEtre et le Neant are
a long and continuous proof of his strange realism; namely, that

35
With Sartre I am keeping to the German word; it is more expressive
than the French "substantialite" or the English "substantiality." It shows
more satisfactorily the existential independency. In presenting here Sartre's
view on God, I am avoiding all discussion, postponing it until Chapter Nine,
"The Qraflict with Metaphysics." The question whether Sartre rejects all
causality, however, can be raised
at once. The answer is afnrmative. In fact,
his phenomenological method (a description of what appears) does not
present him with causality. Causality is a metaphysical deduction, not a
phenomenological statement.
98
See the quotation from Nausea on pp. 1 1 f .

**
Here we have the reason why Sartre in his literary works, even more
than in his philosophical works, calls human reality something which is "too
much." In Sartre's view everything that lacks a metaphysical justification is
"too much" or "de trop." We
are unable to explain our origin. Consequently,
claims Sartre, we are HXK> much."
14 EXPOSITION OF SARTRE S ONTOLOGY
the whole weight of
being lies on the side of the In-itself and
that the For-itself, as soon as it emerges, is precisely a revelation
and nothing but a revelation in some way or other of this In-
itself.
 THE FOR-ITSELF

O the mind, mind has mountains; cliffs of fall

Frightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed. Hold them cheap
May who ne'er hung there.
GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS

I. THE FOR-ITSELF AS ORIGIN OF NEGATION

As we have seen already in Chapter One, Sartre's

main preoccupation with emptying the For-itself of most of its
is

being. In this first section we shall examine how he proceeds and

how he leads the reader through a curious but subtle dialectic to
the conclusion which, as such, is new in the philosophical world:
to the conclusion that the origin of all
non-being^ (in its
^

forms)Jjs none-.other. Aanjfae Fpr-itself .

Sartre begins by examining three notions:

struction^ and ordinary negative Judgmejzt.
(^Interrogation. When I ask: Is Peter in the library?, the ques-
tion (and questions like it) obviously presupposes an ignorance
on mypart. Sartre calls this ignorance a "nog-being" in con- my
sciousness. If the answer is
negative (Peter is not in the library ),
a new form of "non-being" is
implied. My question, then, is a
bridge between a double form of non-being. If the answer is af-
firmative (Peter is in the library), here too non-being appears,

although under another form. The knowledge completes itself

by some sort of elimination; Peter is known, that is, through the
stripping away of all which he is not; the library is known
through the elimination of all which it is not. Hence, even in the
1 6 EXPOSITION OF SARTRE'S ONTOLOGY
hypothesis of an affirmative answer, we find ourselves surrounded
by and immersed in non-being.
Qy Destruction. This prehension of non-being in its purest
form is present not only in interrogation, it is present also in the
notion of destruction. As a matter of fact, there is as much being
in the perishable
thing before as after the destruction. It is the
presence of a human witness that allows us to call this "change"
of form a "destruction."
This does not imply that, before the presence of human con-
sciousness, a planet to take an
example could not be de-

stroyed; it means rather that disorganization or destruction in

the strict sense supposes some sort of organization and order.
The latter are only possible when there is a human conscious-
ness viewing and organizing things. It is because a human test

or witness knew form A as that which was before form B, that

we can speak of destruction. Consequently, we may say that
destruction or annihilation of form is a form of A
non-being
1
which appears thanks to the presence of human reality.

(|>
Negative Judmte^ I have an appointment with Peter in a
cafe. I go to the cafe, walk in, and look around. I judge: Peter is

not there. By this claim that something is not: Peter

judgment I

is not there. I
expected him to be there. Again, a "non-being" is
introduced into the world.

Interrogation, destruction, negation: each of them introduces

a form of non-being into the world. The question now is: where
does this non-being come from? What is its origin?
In order to understand Sartre's answer to the problem, let
us first examine briefly solutions which he himself has rejected,
but which have brought him closer to his own answer namely,
the Hegelian and Heideggerian solutions.
For Hegel, being and non-being are two abstractions, the union
of which gives the concrete being. 2 Taking up the words of

, pp. 40, 46.

HegeX Logic, Wallace ed., No. 88.
THE FOR-ITSELF IJ
Spinoza: ommis deterrmnatio est negatlo, he claims that all being
receives its delimitation from nothingness, and consequently he

rejects the Hegelian

inserts nothingness into being itself. Sartre

explanation and asserts thatnon-being is outside

being. Being is
first, and non-being comes next. The latter can by no means
be considered as an ocean giving birth to being. How does this
happen?
Avoiding Hegel's extreme dialectical notion of
nothingness,
Heidegger seems to bring us a step nearer the Sartrian solution.
In a phenomenological approach 3 the German philosopher states
that being and non-being are two antagonistic forces, and that
the real is
nothing but the tension resulting from mutual repul-
sion. He analyzes several human attitudes, such as hate, defense,
regret, and comes to the conclusion that each of them includes
an apprehension, under one form or another, of nothingness.
There is even a more specific possibility of confronting nothing-
ness,namely dread. Dread is the feeling or revelation of our con-
tingency. We are only what we are by becoming aware in and
through dread of what we are not and of what we cannot.
Through dread our being emerges surrounded by non-being.
According to Heidegger, the world receiving its contingent di-
mension through human reality (ie., it is human reality which
discloses the fragility of the universe), the latter itself is sur-
rounded also by nothingness.
Sartre criticizes both Hegel and Heidegger for failing to ex-
amine the structure of the human mind. It is here, he claims,
that the origin of non-being in the world is to be found. Hei-

degger brings us a step nearer to the Sartrian view when lie ex-
plains the general
threat of nothingness through the feelings
of dread and anguish, but he does not, according to Sartre, ac-
count for all the small negations, which, like so many ripples of
foam, swim on the surface of our daily life: e.g., Peter is not
there, I have no cigarettes, the
centaur does not exist. Even die

'Heidegger, "What is
Metaphysics?,"
1 8 EXPOSITION OF SARTRE'S ONTOLOGY
simple notion of distance has its double aspect: a positive and a
4
negative. In fact, distance supposes limitation at its extremes.
5
"Negation is the cement" of distance and of many other no-
tions. And it is
altogether impossible to exclude from being those
different forms of negation, 6 for they are supported by being
and are intrinsic conditions of its reality -for the subject.

We are now very close to the Sartrian solution. Sincejnon-

being is
strictly not inL things (on this point Sartre rejoins Henri
7
Bergson ), but nevertheless appears continually and inevitably

against a background of being, we require a being the function

of which is to generate non-being and by 'which non-being hap-
pens to things. This can only be the For-itself (or human con-
sciousness). First of all, we notice that no reality whatsoever can

appear without human consciousness. The Being-in-itself does

not know. Furthermore, in knowing, the For-itself introduces

negation. The For-itself knows Peter by eliminating that which

is not Peter. The For-itself continually plays the "game" of
negation.
We now know the reason why, in the negative judgment
"Peter is not in the cafe," a sort of non-being is introduced into
the world. It is human consciousness which introduces this form
of non-being into things. More precisely, it is through human
consciousness (or the For-itself) that this non-being (Peter is
not there) "happens" to things.
The same thing is true concerning destruction. If the change
from form A into form B can be called a destruction, it is be-
cause of the presence of a human witness which considered form
A as form A. Without this human presence there would not be,
*Cf. Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, ed. Picavet, p. 223, foreseeing
confusedly those notions by his limitative concepts, some kind of synthesis
between negative and positive concepts, where negation is condition of
positivky; e.gM immortality.
*JBtf,p.57t
Sartre uses the new (!) French word, "negatites," including in this
vfl

way all sorts of negations: interrogation, destruction, negative judgment.

THE FOR-ITSELF I
9
strictly speaking, a destruction;i.e., only a human presence un-

derstands the annihilation of form A. Again and again non-being

"happens" to things through human consciousness.

Humanjreality conrinud^^j^es^J^mts, and organizes the
cosmos, and^ through its negations jnakes^the worl4 an_ organ-
ized world. Again, this does not imply that non-being as such
in things as such. In fact, as I
is
pointed out in Chapter One,
for Sartre all is fullness.

After this
important conclusion a new question immediately
arises: 'what is human
reality in its most intimate being so that
through it
nothingness emerges in the world?
As we have human
consciousness has a capacity for "gen-
seen,

erating non-being." This negating capacity takes place not only

in interrogation, destruction and negative judgment, but, claims
Sartre, in every act of knowledge whatsoever. As this will be
explained later in more detail, let me for the moment merely state

that even the simple act of knowing a table happens through a

negative approach: when I know this table, I state that con- my

sciousness is not this table and that this table is not the rest of the
world.

Every approach of human consciousness, being negative, is

called "neantisation." The term may be translated "annihila-
8 or "negation," or "nihilation."
tion,"
This "annihilation," the specific activity of the For-itself, is

possible only if the For-itself is

"out" of the Being-in-itself. If
human reality were a massive and full
being like Being-in-itself,
if it were
engulfed in the density of being, then all capacity for
negation (or annihilation) would be excluded. Only "what is
not" is able to understand "what is" Only what is not Being-in-
itself is able to understand "what is
Being-in-itself." Conse-
quently, the For-itself is not Being, "it is its own non-being."
9
i

*Kuhn uses "nooghtirig'' or "nihikting" in his book Encounter with

Nothingness (Chicago: Regnery, 1940).
*
EN, p. 59. This most important statement has given the title to his book.
20 EXPOSITION OF SARTRE ?
S ONTOLOGY
To be "outside" being, to be isolated from
being, to escape
being, to stay out of the causal order of the world, means to be
free. Human reality, then, is free. Human reality is Freedom.
Freedom is so essential to the notion of human reality that it

makes the formulation of all human essence in a static definition

10
impossible. Freedom, claims Sartre, breaks up all definition: hu-
man reality makes itself and invents itself continually. So it ap-
pears that "existence precedes essence." Essence (what we are)
is a result of what we make ourselves to be.
11

12
Sartre's freedom is absolute, as I shall
explain in detail later.

UEtre et le Neant-,
i.e., Being (Being-in-itself) and Non-being (the For-
itself). Only non-being (For-itself) is able to understand being. As will
presently appear more clearly, this non-being is notj'nihilum absolutum^r
afesehce as Same^S^Jt^^neg^tionj o^jsome
j>f^TSemg Jt Jgjabsence jpj^
.

"
,

concrete]jbeSgTAtcertain jmoments he refers to "un trou dans Fetre T a hole

jn EeJLn'gTThK approach Wiypically Sartrian, and owes nothing to Heideg-
ger. Heidegger does not emphasize the emptiness of the For-itself at all,
nor its tendency to be crushed down by the massiveness of the In-kself.
His Dasein is more indifferent to the brute existent; yet, like the For-itself,
the Dasein is ecstatic and present to the mundane realities.
10
Sartre, Existentialism, p. 37.
11
The axiom
"existence precedes essence" will be discussed later.
12
See Chapter Five. Sartre, in his Psychology of Imagination develops a
similar view. Speaking of the image, he states first of all that an image is
not in consciousness but is consciousness. He writes: "The very first re-
flective glimpse shows us that up to now we have been guilty of a double
error. We
believed without giving the matter any thought, that the image
was in consciousness and that the object of the image was in the image. We
pictured consciousness as a place peopled with small likenesses and these
likenesses were the images. No doubt this misconception arises from our
habit of thinking in space and in terms of space. This we shall call the
illusion of irmnanence. The clearest expression of this illusion is found in
Hume, where he draws a distinction between impressions and ideas {Treatise
of Human Nature [Oxford, 1941], p. i and p. 20). Careful reflection, how-
ever, shows us that the image is not in consciousness, that it is not a condi-
tion, a solid and opaque residue, but a consciousness, that it is a certain
type of consciousness. It is a consciousness sui generis, which in no way
forms a part of larger consciousness. There is no image in a consciousness
which contains it; in addition to the thought, signs, feelings and sensations."
(p. 20)
'The imaginative act HOW is creative of the image (i.e., it constitutes
the image), is Mating the image .from the background of the world, and
finally in anniEiiktiing (Le., constitutes an imaginary image, which is not
. Tills triple function cannot be formed by a consciousness, which is
THE FOR-ITSELF 2 I

No one motive can Influence or determine human consciousness

for the simple reason that consciousness carries within itself

"nothing," Is determined in no way, and lies completely outside

world determinism. "It is a generating of the past by means of
13
nothing," concludes Sartre in one of his paradoxical formulas,
which often sound more complicated than they are. An example
will make this clear: I decide to go to the movies. Why? There
isno determinative motive for me to go. Notto^car^determine
me, because_there is "nothing" in me which can be determined.
The relation between my past and my present is such, accord-
ing to Sartre, that what I was is not the -foundation of what I
am, any more than what I am is the foundation of what I shall
be. Once more he concludes with a paradox: I am the one whom
14
I shall be in a way of not being it. This simply means: I am the
one whom I shall be, without in any way being the foundation
of what I shall be.

How does freedom manifest itself? How are we conscious of

it? We are conscious of our freedom through anguish. Anguish
is
nothing but the fear of ourselves or the painful hesitation be-
fore the possibles, my possibles, which only I can determine. 15
One could perhaps object that although anguish is an essential

engulfed in reality. Consciousness once more must escape from the world.
Each positing of an image is a form of negation of the world . ." "The .

unreal is produced outside of the world by a consciousness which stays in

the world and it is because he is transcendentally free that man can im-
agine." (p. 271)
EN, p. 65.
"EN, p. 69.
38
1 wprd "anguish," translating the French "angoisse" and the
use the
broader German word "Angst." Heidegger uses "Angst," which I have trans-
lated into English as "dread." There is a slight difference between the
Heideggerian and the Kierkegaardian significations of this ternt For Kierke-
gaard, "Angst" signifies my anguish when I face my own possibles. Sartre
comes close to this meaning. The Heideggerian "dread" or "Angst" is the
feeling which arises in me when I face my own fragility and the fragility of
the world. Cf. Jean Wahl, Etudes Kierkegaardieimes (1949), pp. 219 f.
W. H. Werkmeister uses "fear" for the German Heideggerian "Angst" (p.
 ?
22 EXPOSITION OF SARTRE S ONTOLOGY
characteristic of freedom, its manifestations are not frequent.
The answer is that most people do not reflect, they simply "act."
"The consciousness of an acting man is non-reflective." 16 Real

appears only when

anguish, what could be
called ethical anguish,
we have put ourselves in front of our responsibility. In ordinary
life, however, in the life of immediate consciousness (i.e., the life

where we reflect), the values appear under the form of a

do not
thousand taboos which are ready-made and to which we
little

are obedient: we must be at the office at nine o'clock, we must

keep to the right side of the road, we must not kiss the file clerk.
We reflect, we face our freedom and are overwhelmed by an-

guish. Our usual attitude before anguish, however, is

flight-
Even
philosophical determinism is an escape from anguish, for if it can
be proven that we are no longer responsible for our actions,
there is no more reason to be anguished. 17
Sartre even goes so far as to claim that Bergson is not anti-
deterministic. Bergson, claims Sartre, accepts the existence of the

Ego. (We
shall see later that Sartre's For-itself is impersonal.)

Through presence of the Ego, human essence loses its per-

this

fect translucidity is solidified, so to

speak. In considering our-
selves in this way as a "thing," we 18
try to escape anguish. For a
"thing" is no longer free, and has no reason to be "anguished."
In summary, then, we may
say that negation and non-being
under their different forms (interrogation, negative judgment,
and destruction) suppose a form of nothingness in the heart of
consciousness itself. It is in the absolute and pure subjectivity
of human consciousness that we discover the origin of the non-
being which we ascribe to things. The act by which the For-
itself (or human consciousness) continually generates non-being
into the world called nihilation, or negation: all judgment
is

is in one way or another a negation or nihilation. And since one

*
EN, p. 74
*kp.781. Cf.
18
,

La Pemee
EN, p. Bergson, et le Mouvant, pp. 145 ff, p. 190.
THE FOR-ITSELF 23

can only give what one has, human consciousness is its own non-
being, its own "nihilation." Furthermore, to be "outside" being
means also to be free. The For-itself is Freedom. It will be appar-
ent now that certain terms are evidently synonymous in Sartre's
doctrine. Human reality is For-itself, Freedom, Absolute Free-
dom Nothingness (compared to the massive being of the Be-
ing-in-itself ), or
even Nihilation.
Instead of the term "nihilation," i.e., the act by which the
For-itself contacts 20 the Being-in-itself, Sartre quite often uses

"ecstasy." Unfortunately, the word has a somewhat metaphori-

cal flavor, as do so many others in
his vocabulary.
Ecstasy is the
act by which the For-itself escapes from itself towards the Be-

ing-in-itself, in knowing, judging, desiring, and so on.

I must also note in this brief
summary how radical is the sep-
aration between the two main elements of Sartre's system. The
For-itself or human consciousness is
clearly on one side of the

fence, as were, and all the rest (the Being-in-itself)

it is on the
other. Further analysis will enlarge this opposition.
We come now to the examination of another notion, that of
bad faith, which will the more forcibly show how the For-itself
in its
very being is
permeated by nothingness.

H. THE FOR-ITSELF AND BAI> FAITH

Apart from the apodictic value of this theme, the following

exposition, much more detailed in Sartre's main book, 21
is an in-

teresting example of phenomenological analysis,

Inthe Jifc of_some people, negation is i

w It
may be useful to remember that our exploration of the Sartrian notion
of freedom not
finished.
is A
special chapter will be devoted to this task.
Further analysis at this stage,, however, is impossible, for a previous study
of the In-itself (Chapter Tnree) and of the Other (Chapter Four) is neces-
sary.
**I am using the word "contact" because of the manifold and diverse
relations between human consdocisiiess and Being-in-itself.
2 4 EXPOSITION OF SARTRE'S ONTOLOGY
^gQLwgjLlSL^ of for instance, or of a
aj>oliceman, pris-
oner). Some
attitudes, on the other hand, imply negation in their
definition
(irony is an example, inasmuch as it is an affirmation
given with the hope that it will be understood as a negation). 22
Another negative attitude is badJtmk. Bad faith is not a lie, for
a lie the
exploitation of the ontological duality between
is
you
and myself (I can mask something in myself from you). In bad
faith, 7 mask the truth fro?n myself, not in two different mo-
ments of temporality but in the
unity of the present instant.
This strange paradox cannot be explained
by Freud's famous
dualism of the Ego and the Id, for the reason that the
simple
dissimulation of bad faith
supposes the unity of one psychic
organism in which the same thing is known and veiled, recog-
nized and hidden,
accepted but nevertheless rejected. Freudian
dualism (or trinity: Ego, Id, and Superego) is altogether unable
to explain that which essentially supposes psychic unity in hu-
man reality. 23

A
typical example of bad faith is the attitude of a woman
who goes to a "rendez-vous" with the ambiguous feeling that
her partner desires more than her love, but who nevertheless tries
to forget his less noble desire. She unites in her mind two con-
tradictory sentiments; hence, she is in bad faithjjOn
the whole,
bad faith the art of retaining together an idea and its nega-
is

tion. And when we look at it carefully, we notice a subtle ex-

ploitation of a double sentiment: reality, and its
idealization^
An
example of "reality" in love would be the famous statement:
"I* amour de deux epidermes," or the Proustian de-
est le contact

scription of jealousy, or the Adlerian conception of the struggle

between the two sexes. Idealization takes form in Mauriac's
"fleuve de feu," in Plato's eros or in Lawrence's cosmic intuition.

**
Cf. Scheler, L'homme du Rewentiment, pp. 47, ior.
24
Sartre takes often an anti-Freudian
position.
The fundamental reason
his rejection of the Ego and his assertion of an
is
overwhelming freedom.
He concludes his phe&ofnenological
approach by proposing his o ium psycho-
analysis. See Appendix.
THE FOR-ITSELF 25
Bad faith
enjoys nothing so much
handy exploitation of as the
these opposite judgments,
tf^wh^lejdm JD^^
onc morejthat I^^^notjwhatJ^ am. The young lady who goes
to her appointment looks at the idealization and tries to forget
the facts of reality: bad faith.
Human duplicity appears in another way, which can be rough-
ly expressed by a distinction between to-be-for-itself and t^be-
for-the-others, i.e., to see ourselves as others see us. Unfortu-

nately, we
forget that we usually know more about ourselves
than others do.
Again and again there appears a form of duality in the unity
of consciousness, an identity which tries to escape from itself.
Once more, nothing else is at stake but a forming of human
reality which is not what it is and is what it is not.

Strangely enough, we find the same ambiguity in the oppo-

site of bad faith; namely, in the
concept of sincerity.. To be
sincere is to be what you are, i.e., to become (or to be) a thing
In-itself. That this is
radically excluded is manifest in the simple
fact that duplicity and bad faith are still
possible. Indeed, how
can I be what I am when I am not a Thing-in-itself, with its

massive and solid identity, but a "consciousness of being." The

fact that sincerity is
my ideal shows clearly that I am not this

plain adequation of being with itself: it is

permanent obligation.
But, if it is
obligation, what am I? Certainly not a massive thing.
The most that can be said is that I try to be what I am as a waiter
tries to be a waiter, although a careful look will show that a
waiter nothing more than a man who plays at being a waiter.
is

As a matter of fact, he is never a waiter in the sense that an ink-

stand is an inkstand. If he could be a waiter, he would constitute
himself suddenly as a block of identity.
As soon as there is a human consciousness there is some sort
of fluidity, an escape
from personal being and condition. are We
a n
always divmel%j||Mggi^ as Paul Valery puts it, and even in the
simplest feelings, which at fest strike iis
by their sincerity, we
26 EXPOSITION OF SARTRE'S ONTOLOGY
can detect duplicity; e.g.,
in being sad. Indeed, we are not sad,
claims Sartre, we make ourselves sad. 24 Sadness is not a load that
I
carry on my shoulders, it is a cup which loses its contents and
must continually be refilled.

As Husserl notes, it is in our relations with our fellow-brothers

that this tremendous absence
appears more than anywhere else.
ThisJaasiafreedom of each of us is. jn a .certajn^way, ^continual
absence. Peter is there in front of me. I look at him, but he is
not there. He is not a thing for me: he iselsewhere. The con-
sciousness of my fellow-brother posits itself, but,
as soon as it is

jposited,
it
escapes in freedom and negativity.
For myself, own consciousness is only consciousness in
my
act itself never consciousness
supported by being. Acting con-
stitutes its being. 25 It is thus inhabited
by being, the being of its
thinking, of its feelings; but it is not itself being. This fluidity of
the human consciousness makes all sincerity metaphysically im-

possible. Kant would object perhaps: "since

I must, therefore, I

can"; hence, sincerity is

something possible. This is an illusion,
however, proceeding from a failure to understand that reification
of the For-itself (massive identity of oneself with one-self) is

altogether impossible.
Pushing ahead his radical distinction between the For-itself
and the In-itself, Sartre claims that as long as something is not
a "thing" it is not something. A pederast is not a pederast, since,
in hismost intimate consciousness, he knows that there is no
compulsion for him to be what he is. He is not what he is, for
human nature escapes all definition and refuses to see in its act

any destiny whatsoever. If now, in a different approach, we ask

the pederast to confess and to recognize what he really is, then
we come again to the paradoxical situation that in the act of con-
fession itself he is no
longer what he is. And so, in a riotous
wealth of sincerity, instead of finding oneself one loses oneself.

^EN^p. roi.
a EN t p. ioi. Sartre notes in a concise way: "Le faire soutient Petrel"
THE FOR-ITSELF 2J
In this tragic failure of sincerity along so many lines the reason
once more appears why bad faith is possible. Bad faith is faith,
some kind of weak faith, a faith which lacks conviction but
which is nevertheless
strong enough to keep alive in the most
intimate part of being a flagrant disaggregation. At the origin
my
of bad faith lies the fundamental fissure in consciousness, by
which consciousness is what it is rtQ and is not what it is.

We
may regret that Sartre is unable to use a clearer termi-
nology in this definition. The fact is, of course, that he is obliged
to use a language normally made to express being and identity,
not ambiguity and nothingness. When Sartre defines the For-itself
as being which is not what it is and is what it is not, it
appears
to be a somewhat or flashy joke. This specious vocabu-
artificial

lary,however, is his means of rendering the essential ambiguity

and the monstrous originality of the fissure in the density of

being, that fissure which we call consciousness and- which, as

the analysis of bad faith has demonstrated, escapes from itself

and at the same time is itself.

This point is essential, and places us in a critical

position from
which we shall be able to command the whole development of
Sartre's ontology. Consciousness now must be explained in a
more positive way.

III. THE STRUCTURES OF THE FOR-ITSELF

/7) The For-itself as

m^ersonal.
The first
point which strikes
one is that Sartre's Cogito (Le., consciousness so far as it is con-
scious of something) is impersonal. On this point, namely the
absence of the Ego from the Cogito, Sartre separates himself
Sartre set his own view forth in an
completely from Husserl.
article called"La Transcendance de FEgo." 2e do not; he We
states, need the "Ego" as the unifying link of our representa-
tions. Phenomenology is able to show that consciousness is de-

*In Recbercbes Philos&pbiques (1936-37), p. 85.

 2 8 EXPOSITION OF SARTRE'S ONTOLOGY
fined
by intentionality: i.e., consciousness is consciousness of
something: consciousness that 2+2=4,
consciousness of
being
hungry. These objects, and not the Ego, are the specifying ele-
ments of my consciousness. Even the
feeling of personal identity
which accompanies me time and duration is not the
through Ego;
it is rather an of consciousness itself
activity means of a "trans-
by
versal"
intentionality. This transversal intentionality is made up
of concrete and real remembrances of
past consciousness.
/- The fundamental reason for all this is that consciousness is

complete trmslucidity, facing the opacity of the object and

nothing else.
Consequently, to introduce in the heart of con-
sciousness the massive and
opaque sword of the is fatal to Ego
consciousness. To
propose an egological structure is to make con-
sciousness heavy and
ponderable, to substantialize it in the Car-
way, or to convert it into some sort of Leibnitzian monad.
^tesian
For Kant, the self was a
regulative function, for Descartes it
a fact (une constatation de fait}-, both considered the
j'was Cogito
in the second
degree, however, namely in the reflexive manner,
where we consider consciousness itself as an
object. And it is
precisely at this moment, through the apparition of the reflexive
act, that the Ego emerges as apparent cause and center of the
irreflexive (prereflexive Cogito). Thus the Ego, according to
Sartre, is the result and creation of the reflexive act. There is

usually no Ego when I read a book or drive a car. Then suddenly

I become aware of what I
do; I reflect. The result is that I am
aware of my-driving-a-car or reading-a-book.
Consequently, we
should not in the prereflexive act say: "I am conscious of a chair,"
but rather: "There-is-consciousness-of-a-chair." As soon as re-
flection arises, we 27
apprehend and constitute the Ego. Conscious-
ness thus becomes
personal through reflection: for what funda-
mentally makes an existence
personal is not the possession of the

87
"La Xxauscendaace de EEgo," p. no. There is a similar idea in
Titchecter,Textbook of Psychology (New York: Macmillan, 1924) but in
not such am extreme form (see p. 17). See also EN,
p. 148.
THE FOR-ITSELF 29
Ego, which Sartre considers merely a sign of personality, but the
fact of being present to oneself (what
explicitly happens in the
reflexive act).
This cutting down of the Ego is an essential factor in Sartre's

phenomenological approach. In fact, what is his aim, the aim of

his
phenomenological ontology? He
ought to show that being!
in the full sense is
objective exteriority, and that consciousness,
reaching being in itself, reaches it as something external. He
ought to show, against Kant, that all intuition, although phe-
nomenal, hits ipso facto the Being-in-itself. What is at_stake is
* s on tfe 6- other side, on the

side of Being-in-itself, and that

consequently the For-itself, sub-
jectivity,
is
nothing but emptiness of ^in^inzitself7^It is thus
supremely important to show that For-itself never exists -for-
itself but only for the object^ and that subjectivity is a conscious-
ness without Subject.
In view of this aim, his method once more appears intelligible:
he wants to examine and re-examine the For-itself in order to
establish at each "boring" that the result is
"negative," that we
find only "negatites," that briefly all
operations, intentional
or psychological or other, are in one way or another "nihila-
tions." 28

Once the ensemble of structures of the For-itself has been in-

ventoried, and once it has appeared that they are made out of

nothingness, Sartre can claim that all their substantial value is

borrowed from the outside: from the being which they point at.
One ought thus to expel from consciousness all that could give it

consistency. What the tremendous risks of such dizzy proceed-

ings are will be discussed later.
These aspects are typically Sartrian, not Heideggerian, And
Sartre turns towards Heideg-
yet it is
possible to understand why

28
In French, "neantisation," Le n they are born out of this, strange form
of nothingness, which is consciousness itself, and they work by means of
"negation" or "nihiktion" in one way or another.
3O EXPOSITION OF SARTRE S ONTOLOGY
ger and borrows from him the term Dasein. This term Sartre
translates into the French "realite humaine," which means hu-
man existence not in the abstract Scholastic sense of "existentia"
but in the sense of concrete, lived existence with its possibilities
of transcending; human existence in opposition to the existence
of a thing, which is blocked into itself. 29 The Sartrian human

reality, however, never appears with an "egological" structure.

f) The For-itself as non^substantiaL Being "impersonal" it is
evident that Sartre's consciousness opposes itself flatly to what
he calls Descartes' substantialistic error. The Sartrian conscious-
ness is non-substantial. "I doubt, therefore I think, therefore I
am" 30
Descartes said, but, identifying himself with himself think-

ing, he concluded that he was a "thinking substance." Hence

the enormous difficulties which he encountered in the attempt to

escape from this prison: he needed God to bring himself back

into this world; he could never find it again by himself. Carte-
sian thought appears to be a compact and massive existence
with some sort of infinite density belonging only to the being of
things. The fundamental reason for its difficulty is not precisely
the Cogito as such but the fact that Descartes chose the reflexive

Cogito instead of the prereflexive one, which is essentially the

Cogito of something. Instead of starting from "I think of some-
thing," Descartes started from "I think that I think." His cause
was lost before he began.
We ought, then, in Sartre's view, to start from the prereflexive
Cogito, i.e., from the consciousness which is consciousness of

something. This is
intentionality. And if for a
should moment we
try to give consciousness a kind of being which would belong
to itself alone, we should have a form of nothingness, a pure

translucidity. But precisely because it is

pure translucidity, this

*
Heidegger, SZ, p. 42, ausg. Niemeyer (1929); cf. also, De Waelhens,
La PhUosophie de Martin Heidegger (LouvaJn, 1942), p. 35, and Werk-
meister, p. 85.
80
Descartes, Discours de la Methods (Vrin), IV, id., Meditations, II, 6.
THE FOR-ITSELF 3 J

consciousness inevitably intentional, i.e., "pointing towards'

is

that which beyond consciousness and which carries this pre-

is

reflexive consciousness in existence. It

jsjtecauseiconsciousness
needs its in order to exist as consciousness that the
being
object
of such an existence is[merely the being of the intentional
object,
i.e., of the external object.
Let us use a metaphor, which, although defective, may have
a certain value for
purposes of understanding. There is Life,
What is suicide in comparison to life? It is a negation of life, a
negation which life does not imply, but which nevertheless
reaches life in its heart. Suicide is nothing yet, but it is, nonethe-
less, that through which life takes on, for human reality (human

reality capable of suicide), a meaning which life would not have

if -suicide did not exist at all. Suicide
implies the possibility of
questioning life. In a similar way, nothingness implies the pos-
sibility
of questioning being. 31 "The In-itself, being by nature
what it is, cannot have possibles. Its relation to possibles can only
be established from the outside namely by a being, which faces
the possibles" 32 which carries in itself the ontological dimen-
sion of non-being. Life acquires a meaning on a background of

non-life, just as being gets its basic sense and signification against
a background of non-being. And this "being precisely by which
^
non-being comes to things" is consciousness or For-itself.

"Nothingness the questioning of being

is
by being, i.e., conscious-
ness or For-itself. It is an absolute event, which happens to being
through being and which, although not having being, is continu-
34
ally supported by being."
Q) The For-itself as lack and desire. This may not be under-
stood as suggesting that some external being expels the In-itself
from consciousness; it is the For-itself which posits itself as not
being the In-itsetf. As a matter of fact, there are different ways
in which something is iK>t something else. An inkstand is not a

* EN, EN,
p. 144. p. 59.
*EN, p. 58. "EN, p. 121.
32 EXPOSITION OF SARTRE*S ONTOLOGY
table. This is a mere external negation which leaves both ele-
Tnents intact. When, however, we say that a quarter of a moon
is not a full moon, we build up an internal relation, which we
can call the relation of lack. Notice that the lack does not be-
long to the In-itself In fact, the In-itself, as we know, is massive
.

and ignores the lack. The lack appears in the world when human
reality emerges. For the moon to be considered as a quarter, we
need human reality: a being which is able to go beyond the
datum toward the project of complete realization toward
the full moon and then come back once more to the quarter.
Indeed, it is the full moon which gives to the quarter its sense of
quarter. But, again, how is human reality made, so that the lack
appears in the world through its presence? Human reality, evi-
dently, must be itself a lack, since only that which lacks
is able

to go beyond being toward the lacked perfection. Human reality

thus "is not" as a "lack" is not.
The fact that the For-itself is a lack appears still more clearly
in Sartre's consideration of desire^ "Desire^ is lack of being." 35
All lack now is lack of being; the Venus of MiTo lacks 'both her
arms. The question arises: which sort of "arms'' is consciousness

lacking? Lack appears on a background of totality. In this sense

the Venus of Milo lacks her arms only when we view the total-

ity of the human statue.

All that lacks is lacking in ... for . . .

The For-itself is constituted through the negation of a certain

thing in order to be a certain way. What it lacks is

being, which
would make it a
totality,
a self, i.e., itself an In-itself. Thus, by
nature, the Cogito (or consciousness in its prereflexive form)

points to what it lacks,

is haunted
by being. Descartes was right
in emphasizing the fundamental tendency from imperfect to-
36
ward perfect: the imperfect goes beyond itself toward the

perfect. Perfection
is not a
transcending God, however, but this
form of Being-in-itself which could give the For-itself a real

Meditcttiow Metaphysiques, III, pp. 51, 52.

THE FOR-ITSELF 33
Self.
Regrettably, such a synthesis is
altogether impossible. The '

For-itself is a failure. A Being-for-itself can never be a Being-in-

itself without losing, ipso facto^ its most characteristic -feature of
consciousness. If such a being could be hypostatized, realizing this

Utopian identification of For-itself and In-itself, it would be

God 3T
Not one constraining
power_can display j^ch^ a being, jmd,
therefore,no human_gerson can ever be p^ectl^ ha^gy. On the
other hand and this is the supreme paradox the Cogito has
no sense without this haunting totality. Consciousness presup-
poses this absolute transcendency in the midst of its most inti-

mate immanence.
It should be observed that this whole mechanism is
thoroughly
concrete, for the concrete consciousness always faces the world
in one way or another, or is not, altogether. 38 It is in a very con-
crete and individual way that being haunts the For-itself, and yei
the For-itself is unable to realize or to become Being-in-itself
Take the example of suffering. I suffer, but
my suffering wil
never be this crystallized suffering of a statue, inasmuch as mj
35
awareness of my suffering prevents crystallization altogether.

EN, p. 133.
88
Sartre would say: "nous sommes toujours en situation."
88
This basic drive to attain being and some sort of impossible "statufica-
tion" of feelings is described by the hero of Nausea in his conversation with
Army. A t<
love so perfect thatJt would becomes tinng js imp<)ssibIe. There
:

are no perfect ome^S^ , . wieTKave Tost the same illusions, we^have fol-
lowed uie same patEs? (p. 200) There is a fundamental dissatisfaction in
human consciousness.
In his book on Baudelaire (New York, 1950), whom Sartre considers as
the typical realization of Existentialistic philosophy, he writes: ^Baudelaire
tried ail his life to turn himself mto a thing in the eyes of other people and
in his own. He wanted to take up his stand at a distance from the great
social fete like a statue, like something definitive and opaque which could
not be assimilated. In a word, we can say that he wanted to be and by that
we mean die obstinate, carefully defined mode of being, which belongs to
an object. But Baudelaire would never for a moment have tolerated in this
being, which he wanted to force on die attention of the others the passive-
ness and unconsciousness of an mensll.** (p. 79) The following text ex-
presses Sartre's philosophy in a remarkable way:
"Baudelaire wanted to be
34 EXPOSITION OF SARTRE'S ONTOLOGY
/2\ The
"" For-itself
^
as '
haunted by values and A...i~l,
possibles,
w^^^^^v.^^.^^J^^^^iiBMBpr .!'
'
We can
r,
j J"

girc a specific name to this being which the For-itself continually

desires. It is "value"
Value is also one of those notions which enter into reality
through the apparition of human consciousness. Value reveals
itself
through a human being who considers this or that as a
value and gives it, ipso facto, its existence. Sartre is here com-
am 40
pletely relativistic: I the being by which the values exist.

To be human is to estimate.
Not only do values draw their entity through the choice of
the For-itself, but the contrary, according to Sartre, is also true:
without value there is no desire. Something becomes valuable to
me because I need it or desire it, and, on the other hand, I am
nothing but desire for . . .
,
relation toward . Value and
. .

For-itself form, therefore, an eternal couple.

Sartre thinks that the main mistake of traditional philosophy is

that it
many times hypostatized notions, failing to under-
has so
stand that these notions are merely the inevitable result of the

apparition of the For-itself, without independent being in them-

selves. Take the notion of the possible, for instance. The possible

is neither a result of our ignorance, which vanishes through the

cessation of our ignorance (as Spinoza thinks), nor merely an

object of the divine mind (Leibnitz); in both hypotheses the

possible loses its value of possibility and is absorbed
into the sub-

jective being of representation. For Sartre the possible belongs

to reality itself, not as an Aristotelian potency, however, but as
a quality put into the heart of things as soon as consciousness
arises. The full moon as a "possible" is the result of the presence

of a human witness, or For-itself, which is able to go beyond the

reality of a quarter moon. And those thunder clouds on the

something whose very nature was a contradiction he wanted to be a

freedom-tbmg. He fled from the terrifying truth that freedom is only
limited by itself and he tried to force it into an external framework." (p. 69)
THE FOR-ITSELF 35
horizon can be commuted into rain only if 1 "pass*' them toward
rain.

And yet, my view of "passing" things in this way is, in its

turn, only possible because I

myself a possibility; i.e., I am an
am
absence from myself, a non-coincidence, a non-thing. Just as the
lack iq. the world supposes a test, which is itself a lack, so the

possible supposes human consciousness, which is itself an escape

toward . . . and is thus able to be present to a certain state of
the world. 41 The relation of the For-itself to the possible, which
it itself is, called "Circuit of Ipseity." 42 and the "world" is
is

nothing but the totality of being insofar as it is crossed by this

circuit of ipseity. consciousness is absence, diaspora all over
My
the place. And the world under its thousand aspects is the realm
of my concrete possibles; e.g., a road-on-which-I-must-walk, a

glass-from-which-I-must-drink, an obstacle-which-I-must-avoid
. To meet the world is thus to
. .
escape from ourselves toward
the world and from the world toward ourselves. The work

placed on this circuit is that through which human reality

reaches itself. It is worth remembering, however, that, when
it is not because I make the world in
consider the world as mine,
an manner but because the world is haunted by an im-
idealistic

mense number of my possibles, which give the world its unity

and its
signification.

IV. THE FOR-ITSELF AND TIME

i. Three-Dimensional Temporality. An examination of the

negative structures of the For-itself (negation, interrogation, de-

struction, and bad faith) constituted our first approach to the
For-itself. Subsequently we noted that this strange entity is an

41
EN, p. 146.
43
One of the many new words Sartre coins. In French: "circuit de
Tlpseite."
3 6 EXPOSITION OF SARTRE'S ONTOLOGY
impersonal and non-substantial one, and that it stretches itself
toward value and possibles. This activity of the For-itself hap-
43
pens "in time." This new aspect of human consciousness will
be discussed now: we shall call it the
"temporality" of human
consciousness.
Let us first have a look at the past. The attempt which was
made by some psychologists to explain the "passivity" 44 of our
sensations by means of the so-called cerebral traces must be re-

jected, according to Sartre, for the simple reason that, just as

you cannot explain extension by means of unextended things,
explain the past by means of the present. There
so you cannot
is been) a popular tendency to explain the past
also (or there has

by assigning to it some kind of honorary existence. Even Berg-

45
son, to a certain extent, went in this direction. The mistake
that both Bergson and the psychologists make is in cutting the

past from the

present. They have a wrong understanding
of the
notion of consciousness itself. As long as one considers conscious-
ness as some sort of solidified being, a Being-in-itself, then all
idea of it as
past is
incomprehensible.
From now on Sartre will remain faithful to his notion of the

For-itself, he will try to find his own solution

and by means of it

to the problems of temporality. His first question is: does the

In-itsclf have a past? His answer is negative. The In-itself is mas-

sive, full, dense, and compact; it has no history and no past, it

has neither present nor future. It merely is. It has a past only
insofar as it is caught on board the "ship" that we call the For-
46
itself. Take the example of a house which has been painted.
The house is blue; it was green. We should realize, claims Sartre,

43
There is probably no other place in his philosophy where Sartre has
been more influenced by Heidegger than in his notion of time. The way in
which this notion is conceived is practically identical in both authors, except
for the idea and explanation of present, where Sartre's position is more per-
sonal, as will be explained later.
**
In French, "jxassivite," ie., the fact of impressing us as being past.
45
Les Donnees, ch. two, pp. 74fL
"EN, p. 156.
THE FOR-ITSELF 37
that there no green house except in the memory of a human
is

consciousness. Without this "rescue," the "green house" would

be lost forever. The
use of the verb "was" (the house 'was
green)
implies precisely the activity of human consciousness. When I
say "the house was green," I am aware that without my support
this past color would be gone. 47
One could perhaps reply that material things sometimes carry
in themselves the result of their past, e.g., a nail used for the
second time may not perform its function as well: it may be
bent; its
point may be blunted. Sartre's answer is that even in a
case such as this the past no longer is; a new molecular struc-
ture affords a different genre of activity. There is indeed a new
coalescence, but there is no permanence of the past whatso-
48
ever.
As for the past of the For-itself itself, Sartre considers this

past as a "solidification" of the For-itself. When I

say "I was
tired," this fatigue is
something in which no possible can find
a place: my past becomes an In-itself ; I face it as I face the In-
itself of an external thing. 49 I cm not my past, but I 'was it. I

*7
Even the dead have a past only when they are living in the memory
of the For-itself. Malraux: "Death changes life into Destiny" and this Destiny
rests in the hands of the living.
^Sartre's argumentation at this point is not convincing. There is un-
doubtedly a permanence of the past in the nail which is used for the second
time.
This is one of the essential themes of Sartre's play No Exit where we
48

see Garcin righting in despair against his own cowardice, cowardice, how-
ever, which is past and therefore reified and irreparable. The chips are down
and the kst card is played.
Garcin: "Fve left my fate in their hands . Fm locked out; they are
. .

passing judgment on my life without troubling about me, and they are right,
because I'm dead." (p. 157) "I died too soon, I was not allowed time to do
my deeds." And Inez answers: "One always dies too soon or too late.
And yet one's whole life is complete at that moment, with -a line drawn
neatly under it, ready for the summing up. You are your life, and nothing
else." (p. 163)
In his book on Baudelaire Sartre writes: '^Baudelaire's nature belonged
to the past. What I am is what I was because present freedom always
my
casts a doubt on the nature that I have acquired. At the same time, Baude-
laire had not chosen to renounce this lucid consciousness which was the
38 EXPOSITION OF SARTRE'S ONTOLOGY
could not be my past,
otherwise I should no longer be what I

am, namely the For-itself with its intimate and absolute freedom,
full of possibles.

It follows thus that the For-itself, in Sartre's view, is

always
"beyond": it is
beyond what it is. We can now better under-
stand Hegel's statement: "Wesen ist was gewesen ist" as soon
as I am something, it becomes past and "solidified," so to speak.
From the preceding analysis the reader will understand that
*
the notion of "Being-in-itself is not merely applied by Sartre to
a material being a table, for instance but also to any being
which 50
is not strictly For-itself.
Withregard to the notion of present, Sartre makes the orig-
inal
approach to which I alluded earlier in this book. The first
and most profound signification of present, he says, has been for-
gotten by the laymen and
by the philosophers as well. Present
means to be present to something** and stays in opposition
to absent. To be present to something-, namely, to the Being-in-
itself.
Only the For-itself can thus be present to ... The In-
itself
merely is. To be present signifies to be witness, to be close
to X without being identified with X. This happens through the
negation of X: the For-itself is aware of X
as being an intimate
52
negation of X. "The basic structure of intentionality is nega-

source of his dignity and his uniqueness. His dearest wish was to be like
the stone and the statue enjoying peaceful repose which belonged to the
unchangeable: but he wanted this calm impenetrability, this permanence,
this total adhesion of the self to be conferred on his free consciousness inso-
far as it was free and consciousness. Now
the Past offered him the image
of this impossible synthesis of being and existence. My
past is I, but this
is definitive. What I did six years, ten years ago t was done once and for all."

(p. 170) Baudelaire is perhaps the book in which Sartre expresses best an
incarnation of his philosophy. Some presentations are marvellous. The only
point about which doubt may arise is the question of whether it is still
Baudelaire or ... Sartre?
w Sartre avoids
discussing die problem of living beings hi general. "We
shaH BOC discuss the? problem of die past of the living" (EN, p. 157)
01
The F^aocb ,Jifes **t^resent a . . ." implying thus a mental presentee*
BOC necessarily a physical one.
* k radically opposed to Heidegger. Sartre's philos-
THE FOR-ITSELF 39
tion as being a form of internal relation of the For-itself with
the thing; the For-itself constitutes itself outside the In-itself as
53
negation of the latter." The present is
consequently nothing
but an evasion of X which is there. The present is a flight. And
the present instant is a fictive "reification" which in fact does not
exist. And
yet can be present to the hands of the clock, which
I

point at nine, and say: it is at present nine Again, this does. . .

not imply that the present is; it merely implies that I am present
to the hands of a clock, pointing at nine. The
present is really
the For-itself, jggjMgggn ^omdousQcss, in" its flight out of the
54
pastintoA^future.
This consideration leads us to the observation that for Sartre
there is no -future without human consciousness. The In-itself,
of course, has no future. The For-itself, however, knows or plans
its future or waits for it insofar as it faces the future; Le., ascends
toward this future and comes back to itself. Future is, above all, i

a relation and a position of Self to Self (of For-itself to For-

itself). When we look at it carefully we notice how the future

defines each moment of our consciousness. When we play tennis,
for instance, each of our gestures is explained and specified by
the future. This future forms jhe^attraction, and the lacking

being, toward which we tend. Without lacking being, there

would be nothing but the plumb identification and solid
impact
of the In-itself. Again, this is the reason why the For-itself ap-

prehends itself once more as a non-being, i.e., as something,

the complement of which is at a distance. This future ought to
be regarded as the future co-presence of a For-itself with some

is characterized by the massive In-itself which the only being. As

is
ophy
explained above,
the For-itself is "negation of . * . ," non-being. See, on
is

this point, De Waelhens, "Heidegger et Sartre," Deucalion I: 21 (194$).

^EN, p. 167. This is an important quotation and a very characteristic
feature of Sartre's philosophy. It is indeed an aspect of nihilation or "neanti-
sation." To know is to negate. See Chapter Three, I, this book.
"Sartre's remarkable analysis brings IB very close to the meaning of
present as presence of mind. In fact, there is
no other presence than presence
of mind. Hence the derivative meanings such as: self-possessed, ready, etc.
40 EXPOSITION OF SARTRE S ONTOLOGY
In-itself. We
project ourselves toward the future in order to
unite ourselves with the "lacking." Lacking as such, however,
is never reached. It
glides into the past and forms the vacuum for
a new future. 55

hope that the Sartrian difference between past and future

I

now appears in a clearer light. Past is to be viewed as that in

which all possibility is excluded, while future, gnawed by the
freedom of the For-itself, presents us with the tragic fragility of
that which could be and could also not be. Here we also see the

deepest motive of anguish, which haunts all free being, inas-

much as its future remains eternally problematic, its freedom
being its
painful limit.
/D Time as Organic Unity. After this
phenomenological de-
scription of the three aspects of time past, present,
and fu-
ture Sartre attempts a presentation of time as organic unity.
And in this organic ensemble he distinguishes a double element:
(i) a certain order (before and after), which we shall call static

temporality, and (2)3 certain progress or course by which pres-

ent becomes past, which we shall call dynamic temporality.
I shall
give Sartre's view as clearly and as objectively as pos-
sible, although some aspects of it, while interesting, are less con-
vincing than others. For instance, his division between static
temporality and dynamic temporality, which he took over from
Kant, is not very clear, but his handy exploitation of his For-itself
is
56
extremely striking.
(i) A "temporal" view of the world and of human reality
presents it asbroken up into a dust of "before-and-after." The
unit in this crumbling is the instant, which before some
itself is

instants and after others. The instant the temporal atom, al-
is

though in itself
intemporal. It is
intemporal because time is suc-

K EN,
172.
w lt p.
appeals more and moi?e tfiat die notion of For-itself is the cornerstone
of Sartre^ system. It wil be also die main object of my critical study in the
part of this
t>ook.
THE FOR-ITSELF 4!
cession. 57 The link between the instants remained a terrible prob-
lem for Descartes, for Proust, and for many others. The problem
exists, claims Sartre, because we ascribe the quality of Being-in-

itself to instant A
and to instant B, and consequently find it im-
to tie them together. The
possible only plausible solution seems
to be that some outsider links them together. Descartes 5S charged
God and His continuative creation with the task of joining the
Kant hoped to find the solution in his different
loose instants.
forms of synthetic unity and in his intemporal "Self." In both
cases an intemporal being either God or the Self was
charged with the questionable task of temporalmng (i.e., bring-
ing the succession of time) something by means of intemporal
instants. In fact, if time is real, then God too must wait until the

sugar melts, as
Bergson puts it with a slight irony. If time is un-
real, then our impression of time is a mere illusion or a dream.
Leibnitz and Bergson hoped to escape the difficulty by empha-

sizing the continuity of time,

each in his own way; both, how-
ever, forgot that this continuity ought to be explained. After
Bergson's somewhat rhetorical exposition, we do not know if
it is
being which lasts or if it is the "duree reelle" which is be-
ing. The conclusion seems to be: "that time is not so much a

real multiplicity as a quasi-multiplicity in the heart of a unifying

act." 59 Before and after are only intelligible as an internal rela-

tion; i.e., before is understandable only if there is a beingwhich

is before itselfor which is out of itself. There is no such thing
as time, but there is a For-itself which is able to bring together
"before-and-after."
For Sartre, then, the For-itself must fulfill the task; it alone
can bring unity into the succession of time. The For-itself is out-

side itself in a variety of directions. As we saw, it "nihiktes**

under several forms and in several ways. The attitude of the For-

**Etf,p. 181
^Descartes, Discovrs de la. Metbade, V, par. 3, p. 45.
"EN, p. 183.
 ?

42 EXPOSITION OF SARTRE S ONTOLOGY

itself before the past is one: the For-itself, nihilating the
past (I
am no longer what I was) constitutes the past. (The past is what
I was before. 60 )
My attitude toward the past is not the same as my attitude
toward this chair, for instance,
although both are objects of my
"nihilation." With respect to this chair, my consciousness is

nothing but the translucid negation of

not-being-this-chair.
Facing the past, however, the For-itself, although no longer iden-
tified with the (which is an In-itself and as such
past negated)
nevertheless carries it behind the irreparable background
itself as

of all its deeds. The past is

always there: faces, family, town,
all of them and many others constitute
nation; past in its my
most concrete form; my past is all that I know. Myjast is my
knowledge.
Besides this ecstasy toward the past, there is the second ecstasy
which is a
plunge into the future* the plunge toward some com-
plement which is never attained as such. And yet this "requies
aeterna" where the For-itself would really attain its "Self," i.e.,
the completion until saturation, without destruction of con-
scious being, is a Utopia.
And finally,
there is a third ecstasy, the present^ne,
through
which the everywhere and nowhere. Escaping from
For-itself is

itself, it is present to being. This ecstasy is essential to conscious-

ness,the basis of other "projections" or ecstasies, although with-
out ontological priority.
Out of all this it appears clearly that Newton has no more
radical adversary than Sartre. Time can by no means be a uni-
versal container of all beings. Time is neither being, nor its de-
velopment, but is the mtra-structure of the For-itself. For-itself
needs the diaspora of time.
60
Connection with the foetus is thus not an ontological problem for
Sartre. Itbecomes a metaphysical one, however, as soon as one inquires why
one is bora out of this embryo and not out of another. As we shaH see later,
in Sartre's terminology, the term "Metaphysics" is used for the problem of
THE FOR-ITSELF 43
(2) In his research into the second element of time, namely
the dynamic element, or duration, Sartre sees in the notion of
the For-itself the solution to the difficult
problem: why does
p^ent^Jbecomejgast? Sartre opposes himself to the traditional
view, that change is the conditio sine
qua nan of "progress."
Progress notis
explained by change but by the basic incomplete-
ness of the For-itself. The For-itself, an unsatisfied and strange

being, running after itself in an eternal and useless pursuit, is the

source of time. 61 The For-itself is and must be refusal of the in-

stant, rejection of the past,hunting of the future. If there is no

"progress," then we are presented with a present For-itself which
climbs along a crystallized past and a frozen future. Such a For-
itselfwould no longer be what it ought to be: namely, the
spontaneous being which destroys what it builds and avoids what
it
longs for (i.e., the In-itself). It would be captured in a re-
ified In-itself. There is no For-itself without
progress in time.
The Eor-itselfjs a-flight__jnd^j^jtoj^g^gjput
of the^ast and
into the future. 62

V. REFLECTION OR PSYCHIC TEMPORALITY

I shall conclude this

chapter on the For-itself with a short
comment on Sartre's notion of reflection, by which I mean real
and authentic reflection, not the activity of the prereflexive
63
Cogito.
Reflection is
nothing more than the For-itself clearly and ex-

plicitly
conscious of itself. 64 The scissiparity of the reflection

gives birth to a double being:

a reflecting consciousness and a
reflected consciousness, A certain link must bring them together,
61
Camus employs the same idea in Le Mythe de Sisyphe*
**EN, p. 196.
**
See Chapter One of this book.
"Sartre calls reflection "thetic consciousness," "conscience positionelle
(de> soi," Le., a consciousness which posits kself, while the non-reflecting
consciousness (or is called by Sartre "non-theric con-
prereflexive Cogito)
sckrasness," "conscience non-positionelle (de) soL"
44 EXPOSITION OF SARTRE'S ONTOLOGY
and in one way or another the reflecting consciousness must be
the reflected one. And yet the reflected consciousness must re-
main an object. Complete identification ought to be avoided.
In fact, a careful look at this mechanism reveals the same onto-

logical construction as in the case of the For-itself in its relation

to the In-itself. Just as there was nothing between the For-itself
and the In-itself, so there is nothing separating the two elements
of reflection. It is a new form of "nihilation," performed this
time not outside but within consciousness. It is a nihilation of a

special sort, however. It is, in fact, a recuperation, for the For-

self, after the diaspora outside itself in the In-itself and in the

temporal ecstasy, takes itself back, so to speak.

triple
Notice that this attempt is a new failure, for the For-itself per-
forms the act of reflection in the way of the For-itself. Remain-
its own nature, it
ing faithful to gives birth, in the act of reflect-
ing itself, to anew evasion and a new flight. Indeed, reflection is
never plain identification. The supreme sadness of the For-itself,
65 The
therefore, is this permanent impossibility of stabilization.
For-itself cannot reach an identification either with the outside
world or with itself.

ReflectionJ&jtouble,
The purest and most
reflecting act in
its

simple form is the presence of the reflecting consciousness to the

naked reflected consciousness. There is, as I noted above, a cer-
tain identity between them. On the other hand, since there is

knowledge, there must be a negation or "nihilation" by which

and in which I separate myself from myself. This reflecting act
is also an exploration of the reflected consciousness in its
past,
future, and present. Reflection, thus, is consciousness of the three-
dimensional temporality.

(?) Impure reflection.

We have impure reflection when con-
sciousness considers itself (ie, the reflected consciousness) not
as Bafced but as loaded -stfith aH the affections,
passions, emotions,
*S^ t p. 200.
THE FOR-ITSELF 45
and desires of the psychicSartre calls this reflection
life.
"psychic
temporality," saving the name of "original temporality" for the

non-reflecting consciousness (prereflexive Cogito).

There exist a whole series of acts, born in the depths of the
non-reflective consciousness, which connect us with the things
of the world. But as soon as reflection emerges, it
apprehends
these multiple relations with the world. Take for
example my
love for Joan. I love Joan. It requires a second act, however, the
act of the reflecting consciousness, to be aware of love. my
As for the ontological nature of this love, Sartre claims that
love appears as something heavier and more opaque than the
translucid transparence of consciousness. In fact, love is an In-
itself. It is a totality in
striking opposition to the diaspora of con-
sciousness. It is a state, and has a steadfast strength by which it

performs the synthesis of past, present, and future. 66

Sartre himself is somewhat hesitant
concerning this problem.
At certain moments he calls the psyche (that is, the whole com-
plex of affections and emotions) a "hypostatized For-itself," or
an inchoate form of In-itself. This endangers to a certain extent
the straight distinction between For4tself and In-itself. There
are, indeed, a whole series of existents those which Descartes
calls the "passions of the soul" which cannot be catalogued
among the "brute existents" of the world. Since this psychic part
of ourselves has some sort of inertia, some sort of stability and

"ready-madeness," Sartre is prevented from considering it the

For-itself, for the For-itself is
essentially freedom and spon-
taneity. The conclusion would seem to be that Sartre excludes the

psyche from the realm of the For-itself and relegates it into the
domain of the Being-in-itself,
At any rate, psychic and appears as soon as we apply
life exists

impure reflection. Strangely enough, through this reflection we

detect also the outlines of another world, Le n a world which is
not our own world. Through reflection I am aware of my love
W and "La Transcendance de YEgo"
EN, p. 212 p. 109.
46 EXPOSITION OF SARTRE'S ONTOLOGY
for Joan, and in this love I detect the existence of the Other.
While not yet proof of the existence of the Other, 67 it is
this is

evidence that our psychic life, discovered by impure reflection,

suggests the existence of another world.

87
1 shall discuss the Other in Chapter Four.
 THE IN-ITSELF

Old men ought to be explorers

Here and there does not matter
We must be still and still
moving
Into another intensity
For a further union, a deeper communion
Through the dark cold and the empty desolation,
The wave cry, the wind cry, the vast waters
Of the petrel and the porpoise. In my end is
my
beginning.
T. s. ELIOT, "East Coker"

The life in us is like the water in the river. It may rise

this year higher than man has ever known it, and flood
the parched uplands; even this may be the eventful year
... I do not say that John or Jonathan will realize all
this; but such is the character of that morrow which
mere lapse of time can never make to dawn. The light
which puts out our eyes is darkness to us* Only that day
dawns to which we are awake.
H. D. THOREAU,

The present chapter will examine the structures

of
the second region of being, namely Bemg-in-itself. In the section
that follows I shall consider that which links both regions to-
gether; Le n knowledge as a type of relation
between the For-itself
andtheln-itself.
48 EXPOSITION OF SARTRE'S ONTOLOGY

I. KNOWLEDGE: THE BRIDGE BETWEEN FOR-ITSELF AND

IN-ITSELF

1
Sartre firmly believes that all knowledge is intuitive. Even rea-
intuition. This
soning and deduction lead toward intuition,
2
however, not what Husserl called the presence of the thing
is

to consciousness, but on the contrary the presence of conscious-

ness to the thing. A consciousness which is not the consciousness

(of) something is consciousness (of) nothing. Consciousness is

a permanent game of the dyad reflex and reflecting, i.e., a re-
order to reflect a reflex, and as
flecting For-itself exists only in
soon as there is nothing to reflect, all reflecting falls away.
The way in which a thing is
present to consciousness is, as

already stated, through negation, or, In Sartre's terminology,

"nihilation." The thing is that which is
present to consciousness
as that which is not consciousness itself. This negation comes
from the For-itself itself. Knowledge thus is neither a relation,
a quality, nor an activity; it is the essence of the For-itself insofar
as it "present to ..."
is

This negation, furthermore, an internal negation. 3 That is

is

to say, the negation of one term constitutes the other by the same
fact; for example, the negation by which it is stated that I-am-
not-this-car is
precisely my consciousness.
A current objection might be that one can never negate before
one knows, and that consequently negation presupposes cogni-
This objection has some validity, in the sense that conscious-
tion.

ness is unable to know that from which it is

entirely cut off.
Aside from this, however, the objection is a mere intellectual-

istic illusion. The For-itself is not a thing; it is

always out of itself,

in and around the Materialism placed itself in a hopeless

In-itself .

situation by inventing two substances with the vain hope that they

*EN f p. 220.
*In German, "sache,"
*
Negation may be external^ as weft (e.g>,
a table is not a chair).
THE IN-ITSELF AQ
could be merged in one act of
knowledge. For Sartre, on the
contrary, / am the non-being which receives its determination
through the full and massive
presence of the In-itself. A charac-
teristic is In fascination, we
example -fascination. notice the over-
whelming strength of the known, and the complete disappear-
ance of the knower. "In fascination there is
nothing but a gigan-
in a 4
tic
object deserted world." And yet this does not imply the
fusion of the For-itself with the
In-itself, for in such a case all

knowledge would completely disappear; the Being-in-itself is

never the For-itself.
"
Knowledge is,
nothing but the fact that "there
practically,
5
being. It is thus the solitude of the known. And the
really pure
best word to define
knowledge seems to be the verb "to realize"
in the double word:
ontological signification of this e.g.,
I realize
the difficulty of and To know
my position, I realize a project. is
to realize in this twofold sense:
through knowledge I realize that
there is being (am aware of
being), and also I realize being in the
sense that I make that which
appears. Sartre would say: through
my knowledge I make that "there is" 6
being. This is a dangerous
expression, for it sounds very idealistic, and
yet Sartre is not an
idealist in the strict sense of the word. His
knowledge of the
world does not create the being of the world but makes the
world "appear." Sartre therefore
agrees with Heidegger when
the latter claims that T
"knowledge is the world." (Again, not
in the idealistic sense, but in the sense that our
knowledge makes
the world appear, organizes the world, divides,
specifies, and
categorizes things. The following pages will show this more
clearly.)
4
EN, p. 226.
B
N,p. 227.
/I use the verb "to make" instead of *to cause" in order to avoid an ideal-
istic
interpretation,
7
Hoberg, Das Dasem im Menscben. "Die Grundfrage der Heideggerschen
PMosophie" (1957): "Die Entwickhrog des WeltfcegrSfe hat als bei Heideg-
ger nicfcts anderes znm Zkl; ak zu zeigen, wie das Sein der Welt zn dieser
Strucrar der Sabjectivitlt gehort.1* (p. 73)
50 EXPOSITION OF SARTRE S ONTOLOGY
In the knowledge of a total universe, we may now ask, how
do we know a specific object? The knowledge of "this" thing

L'ETRE LE NEANT

(I) (2) (3)

possible by emphasizing some specific negation, leaving, at

is

the same time, the rest of the world in a foggy background.

On a total groTOci of negativity, I am at the moment not-th!s-
taWe or iK>t-this-chair. In this
way I know this table or this chair.
THE IN-ITSELF r l

The world may be compared to a box which is

always ready
to be opened in order to show some concrete
being. Its "con-
tinuum" can blow up into several discontinuous
elements, ac-
cording to the object to which attention is directed. It follows
that a "this" (that a specific
is,
object) can only appear to a be-
ing which is able to go "out" of itself. Only a being which is
able to go out of itself is able to
negate-, i.e., to accomplish the
famous negation which is characteristic of
knowledge, and is
the means
by which we know "this" or "this" object.
Let us for a moment come back to the notion of
^^gmg/j7gg^
turn. As noted, an
example is that a chair is not a table. It is obvi-
ous that the determining relation of "this" (a
chair) and of "that"
(a table) does not belong to "this" or "that" as such. "This" and
"that" are born in the For-itself
through internal negation. The
dumb and massive being, and its delimitations in the
In-itself is

way of nihilations are the work of the For-itself. This does not
mean that an external relation is An external
simply subjective.
relation neither objective nor
subjective, but "hangs," claim*
is

Sartre, "in the air." It is nothing; its whole being consists in "be-

ing quoted" by the For-itself.

The preceding exposition will, I think, enable the reader to un-
derstand Sartre's
concept of space. Space is that by which I no-
tice that "this" is external to "that"
of course,
supposes the
It,

intervention of the For-itself, which, thanks to its internal

nega-
tion, knows and delimits "this," and knows and delimits "that,"
concluding finally that "this" lies outside "that." 8 It must be
stressed that space, for Sartre,
although it supposes the existence
of external objects, is subjective. The
"organization" by which
I consider "this" as external to "that" lies inside consciousness,

And this
organization is
precisely space.
9

8
Analysis seems to imply a chronological succession. In fact, tnere is no
chronological succession. All happens in one act.
8
EN, pp. 2 }3, 240, Cf. Varet, Ontolo&e fa Sartre (Paris, 1048), no. p.
52 EXPOSITION OF SARTRE S ONTOLOGY
II. THE STRUCTURE OF THE IN-ITSELF

I shall now deal

briefly with the meaning which
Sartre ascribes
to the notions of quality , potentiality , and "utensility"
the being of a "this," when the "this" is consid-
fpQuality^is
ere.d independently from all external realations with the world
and from the other "this."
Qu^ty^hereJojre^Js not something
subjective. For example, yellow is not a subjective mode of ap-
prehension but belongs to the lemon. There is no substance, but
the interpenetration of qualities gives us "this." Quality is not a
mere external aspect of things; since there is no inside, there is
no outside. Quality is the being as a whole revealing itself as
10
something which is. The For-itself by means of internal nega-
tion knows (or "announces to itself") that which-
as Sartre says

it-is-not by means of the quality. The quality is there and haunts

us. It is not some mysterious being imposed upon substance. It is
the "profile" of being revealing itself to the For-itself as not-
1J
being-the-For-itself.
In order to understand Sartre's notion of po-
tentiality, let us return for a moment to the concept of internal
negation. The negation performed by the For-itself and applied
on any Being-in-itself whatsoever always escapes toward
the
future. The "this" appears as something beyond which I
go and
which is
passed as soon as it is known. Indeed, the prereflexive
12
Cogito forgets itself, so to speak, and posits being. This "posit-
ing" of being implies a future dimension. If it is a mere external
relation, by which I notice that a chair is not a table at the mo-
ment, I
perform the future dimension by the simple fact that I
10
Sartre's position his claim that he is a realist
concerning "quality"
is not shared by Heidegger. The German Existentialist does not make the
slightest effort to protect and save the realism of the "quality" at least, not
&%,&, la, fatjs potx&lied lectures on the poet Holderlin, however, there seems
to be a growing tendency to recognize the realism of the "quality."
*
EN, pj;. 13, Z9^}6, 694,
^Sartre in liis
complicated terminology wooM say that the For-itself is
nou-tfetie consciousness of itself and thetk consciousness of
being.
THE IN-ITSELF 53
exclude the future. If an internal negation
it is
by which, for
instance, staying at the foot of Mount Washington I consider

by negation or "nihilation" that I-am-not-Mount-Washington

the future appear in several ways; e.g., Mount-Washington-
may
as-object-of-funire-climbing or non-climbing, or Mount-Wash-
ington-as-p^77?7^2e?2t-objectof-my-admiration. Permanence is an
elementary view of the future in things: when I look at a table,
even unconsciously, I consider the table as permanent. This way
of considering things is a
way of going beyond them into the
future. The For-itself thus deposits in the Being-in-itself this

potentiality: permanence, permanence as object of admiration, as

object of future climbing, and so on.
Still other
potentialities manifest themselves in the "this."

Since, for example, the For-itself is already beyond the quarter

of the moon, the quarter becomes the potency of a full moon

Again and again human reality is seen as that by which possi-

bility
and potency come into the world. The Aristotelian po-
tency is a human invention. In fact, the Being-in-itself is
quite
indifferent to its achievement or lack of achievement: it
merely
13
is.

As for my own possibilities,

since they are dependent on my
free choice, their contrary is
always possible. I can put this ink-

stand on my desk or I can throw it

against the floor. Conse-
quently, the inkstand itself is
"provided" with a whole set of
These possibilities are nothing but the
possibilities.
result of the

potentializing view of the For-itself.

In this "going beyond things" Sartre discovers his notion of
abstraction. Abstraction is never given. Green is never
green;
the existent never possesses its essence as a present quality; in-

33
EN, pp. 123, 129, 131, 247. Sartre seems not really to have understood
the Aristotelian potency. The latter may not be understood as some small,
spatial entity hidden
somewhere in the quarter of the moon; it is rather the
capacity of the quarter of the
moon to become a full moon, and this capacky
is there, independent of my knowledge. (Metaphysics, bk DC, ch. 5, 1048, a,
54 EXPOSITION OF SARTRE'S ONTOLOGY
points at it. The essence lies beyond, haunts and obsesses
stead it
consciousness. It constitutes the ideal outlines of a
thing realized
in its most
perfect form. As a matter of fact, I need this back-
ground of the essence of green (which lies . . to
beyond .
)
detect green in
reality.
If there could exist an essence in the most idealistic form cor-
relative to
my most idealistic dreams of the For-itself, it would
be beauty. This is
impossible, however. Being ourselves a "lack,"
we shall go everywhere "beyond" and shall find
everywhere
14
something lacking. Beauty, therefore, is
always apprehended as
an absence,
implicitly in the imperfection of
revealing itself
the world.
In conclusion, then, let us remember that
among these differ-
ent structures of
Being-in-itself ("thisness," sgatiaUty, perma-
nence, potency, and essence) there is no
priority of any oruTof
the elements. the of the For-itself, the In-
Through apparition
itself reveals itself with the
totality of its structures. They accost
the For-itself as soon as it is there. And behind them there is no

unifying link, such as a substance, for instance: all is

given at
once.
"
We
are able now
according to Sartre, to un-
>

derstand the "drives" and "tendencies" so often discussed in

psychology. What
psychologists try to teach us on this point is
incomprehensible. "Drives" must be understood as
projections
from the For-itself into the In-itself,
projections proceeding
from the "lacking" attitude of the For-itself. The world
essential

appears continually as obsessed by absences which must be real-

ized.
pulls along with itself a whole cortege of pos-
Every "this"
and absences which indicate and
specify it. Where an
sibilities

absence appears as that which

ought to be realized, we speak of
task.And the "thing," remaining in its passive indifference but
^EA^, p. 244. eseW to remind ourselves constantly that the For-
It is
is a "tefc* (inFrench "nn- manque" ), It can never be saturated. It
jself
eve^ywi^re, A
saturated Fo~ftsetf would no longer be a
Aerefoce, can satisfy the For-itself .
THE IN-ITSELF r
^
nevertheless
indicating a task which can be fulfilled, is called
a tool. 15
After all this, the reader well wonder
may if Sartre is still a
realist and, if a realist, of what sort?
Repeatedly Sartre takes a
16
position against idealism, and his book is, in a
way, a long at-
tempt to show that the whole mas of being lies outside con-
sciousness in the has
Being-in-itself. Nobody except Sartre
emptied the For-itself or human consciousness to such an extent.
And yet this is
paradoxical in Sartre's system the
nothing-
ness of the For-itself is active. The For-itself does
extremely not
create the being of the world in an idealistic
way, but human
reality nevertheless makes the "there is" being. By this ambigu-
ous statement Sartre means that the
being of the world appears
by means of the For-itself. There is not at first a consciousness
and afterward "revelation" of
being, but consciousness is pre-
cisely revelation of the world by means of "nihilation" or "nega-
tion."
Granting that there is
being m
the world, however, Sartre
does not include in this being such entities as time,
space, or the
Aristotelian potency. These are the result of the presence of
human consciousness in the world. All the so-called
categories
(unity-multiplicity, whole-part, more and less, besides, outside
one-two-three 17 are ideal manipulations of
of,
things which
leave Being-in-itself intact. are different
completely They ways
in which the For-itself "attacks" and organizes the "apathetic
indifference" of things. 18

Reasoning along the Sartrian lines* we may say that Meyerson

was wrong when he accused reaEty, that Is, the Being-in-itself,
of being guilty of the "scandalous
diversity" of the universe-
According to Sartre, the universe is not diverse.** It is the For-
**
ENt p. 250.
ENi pp. 30, 268.
1T
Those are the Husserlian categories.
**EN> pp. 182, 234, 241. Let us remember, however, that "quality * belong! 3

to the In-itself. As we have seen, yellow belongs to the lemon. On this

poim
Sartre differs from Heidegger.
M Cf.
Sartre, Nawea> p. 171: "And then all of a sadden, there it was
56 EXPOSITION OF SARTRE'S ONTOLOGY
itselfwhich, through the rich variety of its ecstasies, through its
continual "nihilation" and its multiform
intentionality, consti-
tutes a world. It does this not in an idealistic
sense, but by being
present at each "this," constituting it in its isolation,
relating it
to other "thises,"
considering it in its pragmatical value, and so
on. Only a For-itself can
engage in all these activities, because
only a For-itself can "go out of itself." But when one is identified
with one's self, e.g., the
Being-in-itself, then all "ecstasies" are
excluded, and there is neither
variety, diversity, nor number in
the world.
Sartre, then, is not an
idealist: the
predominating trait of his
one of extreme realism. And
is
system yet, this extreme realism
is interwoven with elements of an
equally extreme subjectivism.
To be exact, one could consider Sartre both as a realist and as an
idealist; as a realist
because he accepts the "brute existent" as
being independent of human intervention, and as an idealist be-
cause he charges human consciousness (or
For-itself), with the
task of giving or to this "brute existent." 20
meaning significance
The outstanding characteristic of Sartre's
system is, perhaps,
the tension between a
Being-in-itself which has nothing to do
and all to be, and a For-itself which has nothing to be and all to
do. And his truest claim to
originality may be not so much his
invention of an
"empty" For-itself as his constant care to keep
alive the
perpetual opposition between these two elements of his
doctrine. What is at stake is not the affirmation of a
Being-in-
itself, nor of a Being-for-itself, but the
paradoxical necessity of
their
contradictory and simultaneous affirmation. In the descrip-

clear as the day: existence had

suddenly unveiled itself. It had lost the harm-
less look of an abstract category, it was the
paste of things, this root was
kneaded into existence. Or rather the root, the
park gates, the bench, the
sparse grass, all that had vanished: the diversity of things, their individuality
were only an appearance^ a. veneer. This veneer had
melted, leaving soft,
raoastrous masses, ail in a
frightful, obscene, nakedness." Cf. The Age of
Reason (New York: Kmopf* *947) 7 Suttora trans!.,
20 p. 109.
Some atithocs* e^
Przywara, cotssider Heidegger as an idealist. The
M
same autlKMEs wffi probably consider Sartre as an eaSst as weH.
THE IN-ITSELF 57
tion of their mutual relation the exceptional mastery of
lies

Sartre's dialectic. There too,

perhaps, lies the vulnerable spot.
What if Sartre's For-itself is too thin to perform the enormous
amount of work that he
expects it to do?

HI. THE IN-ITSELF AND TIME

After what has been set forth in the preceding pages, the
reader will probably expect Sartre to take a radical position

against the so-called temporality of the world. In his view there,

is no such thing as succession of time. The inkstand, which II

see there in front of me, exists "in one stretch" through pastJ
present, and future, while the temporality of the For-itself sets'

itself, as saw, we 21
along the revealed In-itself as along an im-
mense and monotonous wall, of which it cannot see the end.
Through this exploration done by the For-itself, the Being-in-
itself
appears assomething identical with itself, as
being itself.

Temporality is thus an organ of vision. It is that by which we

measure the permanent identity of a thing. Time allows us to
notice that this chair remains this chair and that this table remains
this table. Strictly speaking, things do not last, they simply are,
and time flows over them.
The
objection that even in a chair or table some changes may
appear and consequently offer ground for temporality does not
convince Sartre. If the changes are only accidental, he claims,
then at least the f orm remains and this f orm lasts as
long as the
22 If
thing itself lasts. changes are more profound, if
they are
21
See above, Chapter Two, IV.
33
EN 9 p. 256. It strange, indeed, to see how a man like Sartre
may seem
invokes some kind of Aristotelian form in order to save the identity of a
thing. In fact, Sartre, like every other philosopher, has difficulty in explain-
ing the notion of time. Once more he will try to solve the problem in a sub-
jective way, as we shall see; and yet, at the end of
a very subtle and inter-
esting exposition, he states that we need motion in order to be aware of
time* So, without Hiotion* BO time. Two thousand years ago Aristotle had the
same experience.
58 EXPOSITION OF SARTRE'S ONTOLOGY
substantial, there is still no problem, for the facts do not belong
to the thing but are merely views of the For-itself. When some-

thing disappears, it is not the end of it but rather an end for me

(not of me of course) in fact, the thing is outside its end and is
:

"until there ." Abolition or destruction too makes sense

. .
only
for someone who is able to be "after . . .
," just as apparition
has meaning only for someone who is able to be "before . . ."

This "someone" can only be the For-itself. The In-itself has

neither childhood nor youth* It is when the For-itself emerges
that the "adventures" begin. Before the For-itself was, the mere
mass of being existed homogeneous lump. As soon as the For-
as a
itself comes into the world, it draws and moulds the world, ex-

plains the disappearance of that beyond which we live and the

apparition of that which was not yet there when we were already
there.
This explains, according to Sartre,
the principle of causality.
Of course for Sartre there is no causality. Since the Being-in-
itself does not have a past, past can hardly influence its pres-
its

ent. The psychological obsession by which human consciousness

is
continually inclined to accept the principle of causality is a
result of its "ecstasy" into the
past and into the future. That is,

through this ecstasy human consciousness able to "perceive" a

is

thing before it
appears.
23 Human consciousness can -foresee. And

"perceiving" B before it
appears, human reality is inclined to
conclude that B appears because of A. In fact, B merely comes
after A.
Sartre's presentation is thus different from Hume's, although
the result is the same. Causality (that is, the internal metaphysical
link between cause and effect) as something discovered by
abstractive deduction is
rejected immediately, for Sartre denies
the Aristotelian method and accepts only a descriptive phenom-
enological approach, Heiaee, he does not "discover" causality.

**E2^, p* 25$* Sartre mesefy toee&es cm. caiasalky,, for a few lines, in his
enormous txx>K* namely on pp. 157 and 259.
THE IN-ITSELF 59
The succession of events "appears," but causality does not "ap-

pear."
The world, therefore, is
merely a disintegration into "thises"
and "thats" with a relation of mere exteriority, not with an
internal metaphysical connection.

Just as there was, strictly speaking, no past, neither is there

any present in things. There is only being. This consideration,

however, ought not to make us forget that some beings are im-
mobile and others mobile. In fact, there is movement in the
world. 24 Movement, according to Sartre, differs from change in
the sense that change is
qualitative and movement is local. Diffi-
culties arise, however, when we try to assign what belongs to
being as such and what to the creative mind of human reality.
Avoiding all deduction, Sartre attempts a description in which
he shows again and again his exceptional perspicacity. First of all
he notes that the mobile being is the same on arrival as it was
at the start. But what, he asks, happened in the meantime?
We saw that place implies a revelation of a "this" being ex-
as

terior to another "this." There is movement when being does not

restrict itself to this exteriority but is outside of it. Thus motion
is
nothing but the being of a being which is outside of itself.
And this being outside of itself forms a kind of destruction which
is not is see above)
strictly change (in fact, change qualitative;
but is nevertheless an abolition. Yet, it is an abolition which does
not succeed, for being retakes itself continually.
It is obvious that this whole mechanism can only be perceived

by a being which is already tbere^ i.e., by a consciousness. When

the "this" is at rest, the space is; when the "this" is in motion the
so to speak, in a continuous
space becomes or generates itself,
and abolition of new exteriorities along a line which
apparition
we call a trajectory and which vanishes as soon as it is born.
The function of movement is to make the For-itself aware of

^EN, pp. 260, and also p. 715, where Sartre wanders perhaps motion
if

was not the first

attempt of matter to become conscious.
60 EXPOSITION OF SARTRE'S ONTOLOGY
time. In an eternal present where nothing would change, time
would not appear, for nothing would differentiate the perma-
nent. But motion, destroying one exteriority after another, de-

stroys ipso facto one instant after another and makes us aware
of the progress of time. 25

Concerning the future, little can be added to what has been

said in the discussion of the future of the For-itself. The future
of a Being-in-itself implies the "possibilities" of this thing, pos-
sibilities which are viewed
by the For-itself. Each thing, as soon
as it
appears, appears as a tool,
and consequently puts some of
its structures and into the future: i.e., it has a certain
properties
permanence, it can be used in such and such a
way, it is an orna-
mentation of our rooms, and so on. As soon as the world appears,
there is future. Our first
apprehension is
really practical: it is in

viewing (Sartre would even say:

"in being . .
.") our own
possibilities beyond the co-present thing that we discover the
future.

25
EN, p. 265.
 THE OTHER

I'm nobody! Who are yon?

Are you nobody, too?
EMILY DICKINSON
The Greeks painted the eyes of marble statues and made
out of enamel or glass or precious stone those of their
bronze statues, but the Roman was the first to drill a
round hole to represent the pupil, and because, as I think,
of a preoccupation with the glance characteristic of a
civilization in its final phase.
w. B. YEATS, A Vision

I. THE PROBLEM AND ITS SOLUTIONS

For centuries, the existence of the Other (i.e., of

other persons) was not a specific problem of philosophy. Even
the post-Cartesians considered the Other as an existent, among
other existents, which required no special proof. In the last few
decades, however, the existence of the Other, as such, has pre-
occupied philosophical minds. Sartre's phenomenological analy-
sis, claiming to afford a complete system, could not overlook this
problem.
Before discussing Sartre's view of the question, I should like to

point out three positions those of Husserl, Hegel, and Heideg-

ger which in a direct way influenced him in

elaborating his
own personal explanation. What characterized
these positions
is the fact that all three of these
philosophers tried to find out
whether the structure of human reality did not necessarily in-
volve the presence of the Other.
62 EXPOSITION OF SARTRE^S ONTOLOGY
1. HusserL In constructing his intermonadic world Husserl
claimed that the Ego implies the existence of the Other. The
Other is
everywhere and if I doubt the existence of the Other
I
might as well doubt my own existence. My empirical Ego and
the empirical Ego of the Other emerge in the world at the same
moment. Take anything whatsoever a table, a chair, a wall:

presence of the Other. The

1
all of them and the
imply suppose
Other is the ever-present theme of my phenomenological sphere.
Although this suggestion is valuable, it is,
according to Sartre,
still
incomplete and too close to a Kantian regulative concept.
HusserFs Other remains a sort of supplementary category help-
ing us to understand the world; in itself it is not a real existent
being but a series of significations; in fact, an absence. As such,
it no more than a concept regulating and unify-
presents us with
2
ing experience. In order to escape solipsism Husserl accepts the
Other on the ground of knowledge a solution which presents
us with the insoluble problem of the value of the representation.
Indeed, Sartre believes that it is altogether impossible to prove
that something exists beyond representation.
2. Hegel. In his Phenomenology of Mind Hegel attacks the
problem way. For
in another him, the Other is
absolutely neces-
sary if I am to build up the structure of my own consciousness.
"I am I" is only possible if the Other is there and emerges with
"me." / can only be I because there is an Other which is not 7.
There is thus an "internal negation" constituted as "conditio sine
qua non" of the Ego. The Ego assumes its value through the
Other; it is to the heart of the Ego that the Other penetrates. In
this view Sartre sees an interesting development on the Husser-

lian position. In fact, the negation which constitutes the Other is

internal, reciprocal* and direct, and at the same time presents us

with a universal and objective rule for the Ego in generaL And
1
Med&atfom CartesifTmes* p. 74.
*
JEtf, "pfc 291, 294. Cf, also Hegel, Phenomenology of Mind, tr. Bailie,

pp. 226 33*1 229.

THE OTHER j

so,although Hegel conies chronologically before Husserl, in the

order of thinking he seems to have made some gain on him. 3
On the whole, however, there are several objections to be
made. First of all, the Hegelian view includes again the knotting
element. Indeed, the conclusion of Hegel's dialectic is: I know
that another knows me as me. This exposes him to the same ob-

jection that can be made against Husserl. In Hegel's case, how-

ever, the affirmation 7 am I" does not denote the concrete con-
4

sciousness, but some transcendental Ego, entirely "sui generis"

which can by no means be justified. Consciousness, on the con-
trary, is a concrete being which was there before it was known,
but is measured by the being of reality,
as in naive realism. The
whole dialectic of Hegel terminates in some kind of tricky uni-
versal consciousness, and here, as everywhere, we must oppose
to Hegel Kierkegaard, who against all abstract universalization
saved the value of the individual.
Furthermore, Hegel errs by an exaggerated epistemological
optimism. He claims that there is reciprocal and equivalent rec-
ognition on the part of both consciousnesses, mine and the
Other's, formulated as follows: "I know that the Other knows
me as himself." This is completely erroneous according to Sartre's
view. Between the Other, Object of my knowledge, and me,
Subject , there is no common measure: I cannot know myself in
the Other if the Other is first object for me. To be object is by
no means to be subject.
Another optimism in Hegel is what could be called his onto-

logical optimism. Hegel affirms die unity of the whole, but does
not explain the "scandal of plurality" of consciousness. He as-
serts that each consciousness is a moment of the whole; the whole

is a mediator among these pluralities.

The is that the relation
fundamental mistake in all this ought
not to be considered as that between kno*wmg subject and hnoewrt
object, bm: as that between being
and being.
*EN> pp. 291, 194. Cf. also Hegel, Phenomenology of Mmd, p. 148.
64 EXPOSITION OF SARTRE'S ONTOLOGY
3. Heidegger. Heidegger seems to have understood this ne-
cessity, for he emphasizes two points particularly: (i) the rela-
tion of "human realities" (in the Heideggerian terminology,

Dasein) is,says, a relation of being, and (2)

he this relation must
link together the Daseins in their essences. 4
Human reality is "in-the-world." This includes several aspects:
the world, to be in, and to be. The world is that by which human
nature announces to itself what it is. "To be in" is the so-called
"Befindlichkeit." And manner of being in the
"to be" is the
world, i.e., Mitsein (to-be- with). This Mhsein is essential; it
constitutes my own being in its heart. The "Mit" indicates some

ontological solidarity for the exploitation of the world. The

Other is thus neither a "tool" nor an "object of knowledge my
as such," but a determinate opposition which is always there. 7
am continually confronted by everybody's things: clothes, parks,
trains, umbrellas, menus. 7 am really commutable. To return,
however, under the appeal of my conscience (unter dem Rtcf des
5
Geivissens), toward Authenticity, is an act of individuality
which also arouses my neighbor at the same time. walk to- We
gether toward death in a spirit of decision. The idea of "team"
is the
symbol of Heidegger's intuition of community. "Team"
comprises you and me, and all of us, linked together, not through
knowledge but through some feeling of dumb existence by which,
e.g.,
the rowers are thrown into one and the same action toward
one and the same aim.
Heidegger's solution of the problem of the Other brings us a
step nearer to Sartre's view on the subject. The fact that our own
individual existence implies the existence of the Other is indeed
a considerable gain. And yet there still remain unsolved difficuV
*SZ, p. 1 1 6: Und so ist
c<

ebensowenig zunachst ein isolierces ich

. . .

gegeben ohne die Anderen." See also Vom Wesen des Gnmdes (which is
perhaps his best work), p. 97, and SZ, p. 117.
5
Authenticity implies consciousness of our real situation, of oar contin-
gency and fatede, of omr dependence. O;, S2^ pp. 274 ff. It is obvious that
this summary of Heidegger is incomplete. I am borrowing from his
system
what seems necessary for Ae liaderstanding; of Sartre's.
THE OTHER 65
ties. First of all, how can Heidegger prove that human reality
implies by nature the existence of the Other; and, even if human
nature "in abstracto" does imply the existence of the Other, how
can he prove that my existence implies coexistence with Peter?

step from the ontological structure of my es-

It is an audacious

sential Mitsein to the Mitsein in a concrete case. Heidegger's

position, compared with Sartre's on this

question, is still too
abstract and too aprioristic. 6
Nevertheless, Heidegger shows Sartre the way to the solution
which he will afford. The existence of the Other is no longer the
conclusion of a proof but is noticed. Even Descartes did not

prove his own existence. In fact, he was already convinced long

before of his existence: he did not prove, he stated.
In the same way, Sartre pretends that the analysis of his Cogito,
the description of the phenomena which appear to him, will
i.e.,

show him in a concrete and factual way the existence of the

Other. Before all have an implicit understanding of
analysis, I
the Other. The analysis of the Cogito must reveal explicitly (not

prove, however) the existence of the Other. The Other must ap-
pear before my own personal being as not being what I am and
as distinct from me through negation. This negation will not be
external, such as we notice between a chair and a table, but in-
ternal*, i.e., a negation by which one substance is constituted

through the negation of the Other substance.

4- ^artTe
7
- We turn now to Sartre, and to his own subtle
search for the Other. The search reveals once more how, in the
method of phenomenological approach, he is a master of excep-
tional value.
For a long Other was considered merely as an object
time, die
of perception, not as a subject. One may ask, however, whether
the Other ought not to be considered as an object of a special
and privileged order or, so to speak, as a Subject, The Other,
6
EN, p. 305.
T
From EN, pp. 310, 405, 419, 448,
66 EXPOSITION OF SARTRE'S ONTOLOGY
pausing before me on Main Street, looking round, builds up a
personal and, in a way, subjective world which is a disintegra-
tion of own world. "And this falling to pieces of
my monop- my
olized world is
precisely the apparition of the Other in the uni-
verse." 8 He has stolenmy world and yet is object of world.my
All happens within the limits of my world. Nevertheless, it is a
hole in my world, an aperture through which my world escapes
toward a world which he perceives as I perceive mine. He looks
at me andthus constitutes himself as a Subject against me. Now,
to look at me means to annihilate "me as a subject" and to reduce
me to the rank of an object. To be looked at is to be lowered
from myself as a Subject to myself as an object.

Let us suppose that I am looking through a keyhole and that

at a certain moment somebody arrives and sees me in this posi-
tion. What
happens? I am ashamed. This implies that I am con-
scious of being looked at, conscious of the Other looking at me
and of myself hanging, so to speak, at the end of his look. Shame
possible only through the Other: indeed, shame implies
is that
I am ashamed of myself before the Other. The Other is thus a
real existent being, completely independent of thinking. And my
;shame is the irrefutable revelation ofjjhe fact that I accept the
?
Other s_ex;stenqe. No proof is needed. Shame is the apprehension
of myself as an object for the Other and consequently at the same
time the apprehension of the existence of the Other. 9
9
EN, p. 312.
pp. 321, 404. Observe how again and again Sartre does not prove.
9
EN,
He describes what happens and what appears. And this phenomenological
description of a look^ or of shame, is supposed to replace all rational argu-
mentation. See also Sartre's Baudelaire **Was not the function of the Other's
look to transform him [Baudelaire] into a thing?" (p. 119) "But who were
the Others, the anonymous crowd of Others? He was in no way familiar
with them. They were potential judges, but he did not know the rules on
which their Judgments were founded. The tyranny of the human face
would be much less frightening if there were not planted in each of the
faces two eyes spying oa yo*i. Tiiere were eyes everywhere and behind the
consciousnesses. All tliese c^wascioiisoesses saw him, seized on him and
!

r
took fckn iaj that is t> say, lie remained in the bottom of their hearts,
padci up wfeh a} l&bel attached to him which he hadn't seen."
THE OTHER 6j
Through Other transcends me; his possibilities
his look, the

transcend my possibilities. When the Other surprises me in the

idiotic position of looking through a keyhole, I can run away
and escape . . . but the Other can push a button and call for the

police!
Although my o*wn possibilities (what I can and what I shall

eventually do) belong to me and appear, in most cases, as mere

probabilities for the Other, nevertheless my position never be-
longs to me entirely: I can take my gun, for instance, but 7 see
in his eyes that He has foreseen this possibility of mine . . .

Through the presence of the Other, I am no longer master of the

situation. 10

Furthermore, the glance of the Other locates me in space.

Indeed, as we saw, Sartre's idea of space is

subjective. Space is
organization. That which is
organized lies outside consciousness,
but the organization itself lies inside consciousness. And so,

through the organizing activity of the Other For-itself, I am

located.^
The Other posits me in time as well. The presence of the Other
me with a feeling which I could certainly not acquire in
invests

solitude; namely, simultaneity. If I were alone, I could, as a matter

"That was true ^restitution you belonged to everybody." "Baudelaire had

a horror of feeling that he was a quarry. It was a torture for him to go
into a place, into a public place, because in this case the looks of everyone
there converged on the person who just came in; while the new arrival,
taken aback and not accustomed to the place, could not defend himself by
staring back at the people who were staring at him." (p. 148)
20
It is this painful and unstable situation which Kafka describes In such a
marvellous way in Der Process and which Is nothing else but our being in
a world-for-the-Other. See also Sartre, Tbe Reprieve (New York: Knopf,
1947), transl. E. Sutton, p. 135: "They see me no, not even that: it sees
me. He was the object of looking. A
look that searched him to die depths,
pierced him like a knife-thrust, and was not his own look; an impenetrable
look the embodiment of night, awaiting him in his deepest self and con-
demning him to be himself, coward, hypocrite, pederast, for all eternity.
Himself, quivering beneath that look, and defying it. That look! That
night! As if the night was the look. I am seen. Transparent, transparent,
transfixed. But by whom? *7 &m not altme^ said Daniel aloud."
11
Varet, Ontologie de Sartre, p. 1 10.
 68 EXPOSITION OF SARTRE'S ONTOLOGY
of fact, be co-present to several things but not "simultaneous
I

with . . ." This arises

through the glance of the Other who is,
12
|
as well as I, "present to . . ." I become subject to his
appre-
ciations, to his value-judgment, to his freedom. "I am his slave." 13
1

All this happens not through an ordinary, intellectual knowledge,

but appears as a new dimension through the look of the Other.
JSIiame, pride, alienation in different ways are spontaneous reac-
tions to the fact that we are "looked at" by the Other and are
therefore a proof of the latter's existence.
It must be stressed that this knowledge is not common: it can-
not be conceptualized. not a projection emerging out of my
It is

own consciousness, for my awareness yields only myself out of

myself. Neither is it some unifying and regulative category
& la
Husserl. I can perhaps, in the so-called phenomenological epoche,

Cf. Erskine Caldwell, We

Are the Living, in French transl. Agnes,
on regarde (Paris, N.R.F.).
te
EN, pp. 326, 404, 418. Cf. a very interesting passage in The Reprieve^
where the look has not only an epistemological value concerning the exist-
ence of the Other but also concerning my own existence: (Daniel in a letter
to Mathieu, the Philosopher) "And you too, skeptic and scoffer as you are,
:

you are seen. But you don't know it. I can easily describe that look: it is
nothing; it is a purely negative entity: imagine a pitch-dark night. It's the
night that looks at you, but it's a dazzling night, in fullest splendor; the
night behind the day. I am flooded with black fight; it is all over rny hands
and eyes and heart, and I can't see it. Believe me, I first loathed this inces-
sant violation of myself; as you know, I used to long to become invisible, to
go and leave no trace, on earth or in men's hearts. anguish to dis- What
cover that look as universal medium from which I can't escape! But what a
relief as well! I know at last that I am. I
adapt for my own use, and to
your disgust, your prophet's foolish wicked words: I think, therefore I
am/ which used to trouble me
so sorely, for the more I thought, the less
I seemed to be; and I
say: *I am
seen, therefore I am. I need no longer bear
1

the of my turbid and disintegrating self: he who sees rne causes

responsibility
me to be; I am as he sees me, I turn my eternal, shadowed face towards the
night, I stand up like a challenge, and I say to God: Here arn L Here am
I as you see me, as I am. What can I do now? You know me, and I do not
know myself. What can I do except support myself. And you, whose look
eteroaly creates me do support me. Matbteo, what joy, what torment!
At last I am traasnjoced into> toyseM. Hatsdt despised, sustained, a presence
po^Es a^e to cipiie tfens Itorever, I ana Mbite am<! infeitely gtdky.
I am* MatJien* I acfcu fielofet God and before men* I con. Ecce homo
THE OTHER 69
exclude the world, but I cannot exclude the Other, for he does
14
not, strictly speaking, belong to the world. Consciousness-shame
is a conviction of the
presence of the Other, a conviction which
cannot be put into concepts but which is nevertheless, according
to Sartre, unshakable.
As a result of his view, Sartre
distinguishes a double attitude
in the For-itself. Either can consider myself as I know myself
I

(Sartre calls this

my Bemg-for-myself) or I can consider myself
as known by the Other
(my Bem^or-the^Other) In other .

words, to be Subject (Being-for-myself) is not to be object, and

to be object is not the same thing as to be subject.
Perhaps I
should have trouble in recognizing myself if
by chance I could
compare my Being-for-the-Other (i.e., the way the Other views
me) with "the incomparable and to all preferable monster"
15
(Malraux) of my Being-for-myself.
Concerning the presence of the Other, we can, of course, be
deceived. We
can believe that somebody is "there" when in

reality nobody is
present.
This does not imply, however, that the
existence of the Other is doubtful. It simply means that he is not
there. He is absent. And absence is in turn, on closer scrutiny, a
form of presence, for one can only be absent relatively to Others.
The absence of Peter is
only a special way of being present to Joan
and shows plainly that Peter is not dead but that, for the time
being, he is still existent. In other words,
Presence or Absence are
16
different forms against an identical background of presence.
We turn now to a consideration of phenomenological structure
of the Being-for-the-Others. First of all, it seems not to be a
the hypothesis of a com-
necessary characteristic of the For-itself:

14
Since the Other is also a For-itself, he is not a Reing-in-itself, and
consequently does not belong to the world
of the Being-in-itself.
Or, to say k in a simpler way, there may be enormous difference be-
15

tween what the Other thinks of me and what I think of myself. "My Being-
for-the-Other is a fall through absolute emptiness towards being an Ob-
ject." EN, p. 334.
**
EN, p. 337-
70 EXPOSITION OF SARTRE
?
S ONTOLOGY
the
pletely solitary For-itself is not altogether impossible. Hence,
presence of the Other is not a necessity but a primary and per-
manent fact. Furthermore, if there is an Other (in general), I,
myself, am supposed to be the one who is not
the Other. Indeed,
the fact of not being the Other, of being thrown away from him
in an inner negation, constitutes the For-itself. meet, here We
this time, however, with
again, the relation of internal negation,
17
a relation of reciprocity. Formerly I was the For-itself facing
through internal negation the In-itself. Now
a double For-itself
is involved in a mutual facing of part to part. The Other is a
refused For-itself or, so to speak, a "non-ego-non-object," which
in a way limits my own Spinoza says that
consciousness.

thought only limited

is
by thought; and according to Sartre
awareness is restricted in its bounds through awareness. The limi-

tation is active, however. It encloses me. It surrounds me and yet

I never reach the Ego-object. And this is not the In-itself,
it. I am
nor strictly speaking the For-itself, but simply the For-the-Other;
Le., something I cannot reach and which the Other cannot fully
reach either. 18
We come now to the second aspect of the relation of the For-
itself with the Other. In the first moments of an encounter, the
Other, transcending my possibilities, throws me out of the game.
Shame, -fear, and pride are so many of my spontaneous reactions.
Each of them, however, implies other possible reactions. I can
therefore reconquer my transcendance. Take f ear, for instance.

17
EN, pp. 121, 167, 1 86, 200, 22of., 343.
33
EN, p. 346. Cf. also Sartre
The Flies (London: Hamilton,
in his play
1946), p. 72, where the words of King Aegisthus exemplify in an extreme
form the Being-for-the-Others: "Since I came to the throne, all I said, all
my acts, have been aimed at building up an image of myself. I wish each of
my subjects to keep that image in the foreground of his mind, and to feel,
even when alone, that my eyes are on him, severely judging his most private
ttiougjbts. But I have
been trapped in my
owp net. / have came to see myself
wfy as they see me. I peer into tiie dark pit: of their s<mfs and there, deep
down, I see the insane tfeafrl faave fmik'n^. 1 slwdder, but I cannot take
my eyes oil it. Afaiigfoty Zees; wtic*
**
am I? Am I anything more than the
dread tliaf ottes feye of me?
THE OTHER
Although fear reduces me to the state of object, I can, in positing
certain acts, annihilate fear and
capture my Being-for-itself. A
soldier, who at first was a deserter but who, in a second encounter
with the enemy, risked his life, would be an
example of such a
reversal. In the same
way, shame, reducing me to the state of ob-
ject and establishing me as athing for the Other, can be van-
quished by looking at the Other and by becoming Subject once
19
again in this way. Adam and Eve in
clothing themselves re-
conquered their dignity |Where we stay before a
as
Subjects.
Subject which will never become object (God, for instance),
we perpetuate our shame and hypostatize our The
Being-object^
Black Mass or any other manifestation of hatred of God are com-

plete failures for the simple reason that God is an Absolute Sub-
20
Pride in its turn is a manifestation of
ject. freedom, my by
which try as an object, as a special object of beauty and intelli-
I

gence, to impress the Other and at the same time to find in the
Other as free Subject the impression of his admiration. This,
however paradoxical it
may a new
seem, is
recognition of my
dependence.
While I see in things around me innumerable
possibles which
can be realized (that is the reason
why I consider them as took),
I notice at the same time how the Other
organizes the world
**Cf. a marvellous passage in Faulkner's Light in August (New York,
1932). They have emasculated Christmas, and he dying. ". . But the
is .

man on the floor had not moved. He just lay there, with his eyes open and
empty of everything save consciousness, and with something, a shadow,
about his mouth. For a long moment he looked up at them with
peaceful
and unfathomable and unbearable eves. Then his face,
body, all, seemed to
collapse, to fall in upon itself, and from out die slashed garments about his
hips and loins die pent black blood seemed to rush like a released breath.
It seemed to rush out of his
pale body like the rash of sparks from a rising
rocket; upon that black blast the man seemed to rise soaring Into their mem-
ories forever and ever. They are not to lose k* in whatever peaceful
valleys,
beside whatever placid and reassuring' streams of old
age, in the mirroring
faces of whatever children they will contemplate old disasters and newer
hopes. It will be there, musing, quiet, steadfast, not fading and not par-
ticularly threatful,
439-40)
but of itself alone serene, of itself alone triumphant.'*
r ^
(pp
* This is
hypothetical, since for Sartre riiere is no God.
72 EXPOSITION OF SARTRE S ONTOLOGY
around himself as well and sees in things his own possibilities. In
the fact that the Other is
given as an Object, He appears as being
a powerful force, which extends
strength throughout the
its

world, He appears as a concrete 'subjectivity/ the bottom of

which never can be reached, 21 The Other is a center: his whole
life is a continual disposition of the world around himself. 22 He
is
continually present, and yet he is "absent." The Other is
1'
an "absence-presence, a mysterious being which ought to be
handled with care: "I want him to stay object and I hate to see
himsubject again! He makes it time.
nevertheless from time to
2S
The dead alone stay object for ever." They are locked out.

They belong to the living. And the living can pass judgment on
the life of the dead without being troubled.
In regard to this ontological description a metaphysical ques-
tion arises: namely, <why are there Others? 24
In order to answer this question even tentatively, we must
refer once more to Sartre's concept of successive ecstasies. The
first
ecstasy was that of the scissiparity of the For-itself which,

facing the In-itself, implies in its most intimate structure a per-

EN* ibid. It should be clear now why Sartre is anti-behavioristic. It is

22

not the world which explains human reality, but human reality which ex-
plains the world; as discussed above,
human reality is the key to the world's
organization (cf., EN, p. 237). After a long flirtation with leftist movements,
Sartre became anti-Marxist as well (see Les Temps Modernes [juin 1946]
or Situations III [Paris, 1949], art. "Materialisme et Revolution"). It is, in-
deed, hard to understand how a philosopher, whose aim is to restore man to
absolute freedom, can at the same time agree with those whose purpose is
to trap man in "historical necessity." Sartre's present political
position ap-
pears, however, once more, ambiguous (see Les Temps Modernes [mai,
aout, octobre-novembre 1952] ). But this is not within the limits of the
subject that we are discussing.
28
Cf. Sartre, NoExit (New York: Knopf, 1947), p. 61. "So this is hell.
Fd never have believed it. You remember all we were told about tornire
chambers, the fire and brimstone, the burning maiL Old wives* tales! There's
ao need for redhot powers. Hell is other peopled (Italics mine)
r
**Notice Sartre s distinction between ontology and metaphysics. Ontol-
ogy is
descriptive, whie metaphysics is the search for origins. Cf. EN, pp.
3*, 358,71*.
THE OTHER 73
manent negation of the latter. 25 The second was that of
ecstasy
the reflection or, as it were, "recuperation" of this first evasion
toward the In-itself . 26
Reflecting consciousness and reflected con-
sciousness are separated by nothing, yet the one is not the other
and both constitute one being, otherwise all reflection would be
excluded. The third ecstasy is that of the Being-for-the-Other,
which, as noted, is caused not by an external negation but by an
internal one. 27
Sartre compares this last scissiparity to a reflection in its most
extreme form. In the supposition, however, we need a supreme
totality in order to explain this enormous "reflection" which is
able to generate so many Hegel was right in
individuals. Perhaps

emphasizing totality as the

generator of diversity. It looks as if
an immense For-itself, in a supreme effort of recuperation, gave
birth to the Other. 28 The schism could be the result of the failure
of a reflection, and the creation of millions of Others nothing
but the crumbs of an immense blowing-up.
On the other hand, it is not so evident why the totality has

produced split
and plurality. As explained previously, plu-
this

rality (the
For-itself facing the Other [s]) is produced by double
negation but all this appears to be merely contingent: i.e., it

is 9 but there is no
necessary reason why it must be.
Concerning the metaphysical question: why is there a plurality
of consciousness?, Sartre believes that the answer involves an in-
soluble antinomy. In a certain sense, plurality supposes an original

totality, but,
in another sense, the fact of plurality seems irre-
ducible. The answer, then, remains open; all that we can say is:
"it is. so."

Can this antinomy be avoided by the acceptance of a God who

stays outside the totality
and can have a view on the totality
25
EN, pp. 1 1 8, 220, 270. **EN, pp. 149, 182, 200.
21
EN, pp. 303, 332, 342, 343.
18
TMs view could be compared to the explanation of die Trinity in Chris-
tian theology,
*
EN, p. 363.
 74 EXPOSITION OF SARTRE'S ONTOLOGY
Sartre rejects this hypothesis completely: for him, there
itself?

is
nothing outside the totality, and no one part of the totality has
a view on the
totality
itself. There is no Creator.
30
As we have
already seen in different passages of his book, it is mainly the
idea of Creator which he
rejects.
He cannot accept the coexist-
ence of an Absolute Being (maker of all
things) and of these
things themselves. God absorbs all or is not. Since there is no

positive proof of His pantheistic existence, He is not.

31
II. THE BODY

A
chapter devoted to a consideration of the Other may strike
some readers as a curious place in which to introduce a study of
the human body in Sartre's system. The reason is very simple,
however: the essential characteristic of body is to be the-known-

by-the-Other. body points at the Other and at the fact that

My
I am For-the-Other. The
body is not, however, merely For-the-
and it is not f or me in the same
Other; it Is also For-me, way as
it is f or the Other. To be sure, I can look into a mirror and see
my own body, happens to be from the outside.
but this hand My
can touch objects and by doing so indicate their nature, but this
F does not indicate the nature of hand itself. There is thus a
my
difference between the body as Being-for-itself and the body as

Being-for-the-Other. As for the Being-for-itself, there is no dis-

tinction between consciousness and body: they are not united,

they are one. Nothing is hidden behind the body; the_ body is

consciousness^
Not only do I exist
my body; not only do I exist in myself
the Body-for-the-Other; but also and this is the third onto-

Etf, pp. 32, 287, 362, 363,

41
no equivalent in Heidegger's, at least in
Sartre's philosophy here finds
those parts wMdi tere fe^n pgbisiiecL This is one of the most original of
Sartre's viewsv aad psobabfy'the one tfeat history wil consider as the most
valuable.
THE OTHER 75
dimension of the body I know
logical myself as a Body-
known-by-the-Other. Hence, the three points to be analyzed in
this section: (i) the body as Being-for-itself; (2) the body as

Being-for-the-Other-, (3) my body as Body-known-by-the-

Other.

tip The Body as Being-for-itsel^ Everyone knows the famous

Cartesian statement: "The soul is easier to know than the
32
body" and everyone also knows the tragic consequences of
such an illusion. Descartes, introducing a radical distinction be-
tween soul and body, needed the veracity of God in order to
save the value of bodily sensations.
Sartre is thoroughly opposed to this distinction; he claims that
the "For-itself is
entirely its
body and entirely consciousness: the
For-itself isnot united to a body . . The body is entirely psy-
.

chic." 33 This is easy enough to say, but not so easy to understand

or to explain. Sartre himself has had a difficult time clarifying
his ideas on this point. I shall try now to summarize his slightly

verbose dialectic as clearly as possible.

His method consists of a demonstration that, for a For-itself
in this world, there is no other 'way than to be senses and body.
He begins by trying to show that we need the senses, and after-
ward that we need a body. His procedure is almost the same in
both cases.

As we have already seen, the For-itself implies a relation to

the world, or, rather, is nothing but a relation to the world. For-
itself and world are correlative.34 But and this is an important

point there is no such thing as so-called pwe knowledge.(All

knowledge implies a viewpoint, and commits itself from mis
viewpoint in time and in space. The world, therefore, appears to
me in a certain order, and this order is myself.) "A desert world
or a world without human is a contradiction." ^
reality Again,
^Descartes, Meditations, IV.
* EN,
p. 368.
84
EN, pp. 230, 259!., 372.
38
EN, p. 381. Cf. Heidegger, SZ pp. 59, 113.
76 EXPOSITION OF SARTRE'S ONTOLOGY
this does not imply that human reality makes a world in an
idealistic way; it
simply means that the world in its formal organ-
ization is the result of my presence.
The ^gonnecrion^pf myself with the world
happens through
knowledge, through^^sensation. Traditionally, sensation has
i.e.,

beeiT~3esciibed^as a sort of impression caught by the Ego and

saved in a box of souvenirs. This absurd reification leads one into

complete subjectivism and consequently prevents all real knowl-

edge of the world. For Sartre there is no such thing as a sensation;
instead, there is a presence to the 'world through senses. Senses
themselves are not seizable, but the world is.
The objects of my senses seem to be oriented; i.e., each object
appears against a background of the world as a "this" located
amongst other "thises." But this orientation is connected with a
center, which I do not see, for I am that center. The order of

things as perceived by my senses, then, reflects mei I cannot see

without being visible. Presence in the world is thus so essential
that the existence of a being which is not of this world but never-
theless claims to know altogether impossible. Con-
the world is

sequently, to be a For-itself in this world and to appear in this

world and to be able to say that there is a world and to have
senses are one and the same thing. I may say that,my:.body jCand

senses) are all over the world: it is in the street that I see and in
the car that I hear. My to the world and at
body^is^coextensive
the^ same time conden$edj^q_th_e nucleus which / am and to

This shows us what a sense really is: sense is not chronolog-

ically before the sensible object, nor after the sensible object, but

contemporaneous to the object. Senses are objects insofar as ob-

jects reveal themselves to us; e.g., sight is the visibility of things,
viewed from the point which is myself. As soon as I emerge into
the world, a totality of things appear around Hae and uiy senses
as tie
ot>|ective way in
which the qualities? of tilings present
fWT, p. 381.
THE OTHER 77
themselves. "Senses therefore are our-being-in-the-world in the

way we ought to be in the world."

37

These remarks concerning the senses may be generalized and

applied to the body as a whole. The body as whole is a center
of references to which things point. And
yet we must distrust
the traditional view of the body as some sort of physical instru-
ment manipulated by the soul. Such a view causes inextricable

problems. Let us therefore try to restore to the body its nature

of Being-for-itself, using the same procedure as we used in deal-

ing with the relation between the senses and the world.
It is first of all, that the world is not understandable to
plain,
a merely contemplative mind. Such a mind would be able to
understand neither a hammer nor nails. Things are tools and can

only be understood in this way; i.e., by someone who is body.

The space around us is hodological, full of ways and roads; it is
instrumental and offers continually the means for an aim. As soon
as the For-itseIf-(as)-Body emerges, the world appears as an
enormous complex, presenting the outlines of possibles in an in-
38
finite variety.

This revelation of the world, however, is not merely subjec-

tive but fully objective. Things are real and objective, but they
are instrumentally connected with a center. One instrument

points to another instrument

and the latter again to another until
an instrument is reached^ 'which instrument I &m* This center is
39
is nonsense.
necessary, otherwise instrumentality
This center that I amis called body. It is known through the
things of the world. It is in
the world and part of the world. It
is
everywhere: in the bomb which can kill me, in the stick which I
use, in the chair on which I sit. There is not first a body and then
later a revelation of a world, but the relation of the world has
revealed a body to us. Utensility (i.e., the fact that things are
40
tools) has pointed to a body, or, to put it
briefly, action reveals!

W
"JEN, p. 382. E#, pp. 171, *87 , 253, 386.
*
EN, p. 388. EN, pp. 250, 390.
78 EXPOSITION OF SARTRE'S ONTOLOGY
a body. Body therefore is the Being-for-itself, as it is in the
world.
We may also call body a "viewpoint" on the world. It is I

who am this viewpoint: "Je suis un point de vue." 41 Because I

cannot have a viewpoint on this viewpoint (this could go on into

infinity), I am not (without reflection) conscious of my body.

The body is really the "neglected." It is the "sign": for it denotes
not itself but a "significatum," namely the world under all its
aspects. And although it seems paradoxical, the body must be
considered as that which passed and beyond which I am. In
is

fact, the body is "past" and "passed": not only does it belong
to the past because of the continual solidification of the For-
but also it is an "obstacle," it is
itself into In-itself,
plunged into
the world and without it I could not be in the world, and yet I
am beyond it in the world. It is in this last sense that the body
is
42
passed.
To conclude: for Sartre there is not a body and a soul in the
Cartesian or in the Scholastic sense, but there is consciousness
which, wants to be in the world, ought to be body, even
if it

though once it is
body it will always be beyond. This body is
not an instrument for the soul in the Platonic sense; conscious-
ness or For-itself exists its instrument in the whole complex of

utensility which is the world; this instrument is the

body. Con-
sequently, the For-itself, taking a contingent -form in a world
43 Plato's
of contingent things, is the body. text: "If we were

gods, we should not know Love," might be transformed to: "If

the For-itself (or consciousness) lacked a body, its presence in

"EN,
42
p. 39.
"The body is passed" or "being beyond the
body" means that habitually
our consciousness is outside: we see an inkstand in front of us, we hear a
car on the street, we write a letter. Habkaaly we forget, so to speak, our
body, and yet we are our body. There is here, indeed* a paradox, which
Sartre retains in his system: we are our body and nevertheless we are
beyomd our body j tfci paradox, however, fits in i*k system, and is once more
dee to tibe exceptional stamps of the For-itself,
'
THE OTHER 79
the world and Its
knowledge of the world would altogether be
excluded."

Although I am normally not conscious of my body, there are

nevertheless a few experiences which allow me to study the
consciousness (of) body in its pure form; i.e., without transcend-

ing it toward the world. Physical suffering is one of these ex-

periences. When I carefully examine one ache or another, let
us take a pain in the eye, I notice that this is in fact a way in
'which I exist my eyes. This ache exists nowhere in the world,
neither in the book which I am reading, nor outside the book,
nor in my body as object (no one other person can find the ache
in my body). It is a mere translucid form of existence of con-
sciousness. But even such consciousness does not exist without
the world. It implies at least a negation of the world. Suffering,

being a form of awareness, always remains a For-itself and con-

sequently implies that which is so characteristic of consciousness:
evasion. This brings us close to the idea which I treated in my

analysis of the For-itself.

44
No
one form of consciousness (or
45 The statue
For-itself) can be a petrification. of Laocoon with
his two sons in the fight against the serpents is an incarnation

of suffering. But lived suffering, because it is conscious, is never

reified. Therefore, one never reaches a climax in suffering. 46 The

world present as long as I suffer and consequently my eye-ache

is

always appears as a specific consciousness against a background

of vague consciousness of the world, of a non-suffering attitude
and of the body in general.
As soon as I project on my pain a reflex consciousness, how-
**EN^ pp. 99, 398. Cf, also Sartre, Age of Reason? p. 227.
45
See above, p. 25. Cf. Sartre, Age of Reason: "Mathteu was no longer
listening, this image of grief made him feel ashamed. It was only an image,
he Icnew that quite well, but none the less . . *I don't know how to suffer,
.

I never suffer enough.* The most painful thing about suffering was that k
was a phantom, one spent one's time pursuing k, one always hoped to catch
it and
plunge into k ainl suffer squarely with clenched teeth; but at that
instant k escaped . .**
(p. 227)
*A climax of suffering woold be a swoon, but in a swoon we no longer
have suffering.
80 EXPOSITION OF SARTRE's ONTOLOGY
ever, I posit it as an object-pain. The object is in a certain way a

being, with the qualities and characteristics "which a sick person

knows so well and which he considers almost as a living being
and as a "visitor." And yet evil (we can denominate as evil this
hypostatized form of pain or suffering) is not something ex-
ternal, but is
something lived. It is transcendent but without dis-
tance. It is almost outside and yet it is here, hanging onto
consciousness with all its teeth. While for the non-reflecting
consciousness pain was identified with the body, for reflexion
pain appears as something distinct; and yet, it is there. My body
appears as something on passive which my pain lives, as the

ground from which it harvests its

strength. It is the earth for
Antaeus. And yet even this pain, i.e., the pain detected through
reflection, is not really "known" but rather is tolerated. In order
to know more about it, I need the help of the Other.
Pain is
only one aspect of my contingent conscious-living.
There are several others: nausea, for instance, which is the in-
sipid, colorless, tasteless feeling of existence. Nausea is not a
metaphor but something real and physical: the ground on
it is

which other smaller nauseas appear, e.g.,

the nausea caused by
rotten meat. 47
fz^\ The Body as
^^g-fg^j^O^^^* In preceding pages I

have described what the body for myself: a center of refer-

is

ence toward the "utensility" of the world, and a contingent ex-

pression of my contingent being. For me the body is nothing
more. to this point there are no indications of a physiological
Up
organism whatsoever, nor of any anatomical and spatial consti-
tution. But the body exists also for the Other, and it is to this

aspect that we must now turn.

47
It is worthwhile to observe, I believe, that in EN, his main philosoph-
icalwork, a book of 722 pages in small print, Sartre speaks only on two or
three occasions, and in a few lines, of the so-called nausea. Unfortunately,
qpke a few people, even among: professional philosophers, have identified
his whole philosophy with this theme. The reason seems to be that Sartre,
m one of fes fest novels, Nousee^ deals with it in detail Cf. also Chapter
Nine of tiis iwofc/
THE OTHER 8 I

Just as / consider myself as a center of the world, so the Other

as well builds his own kingdom in the world. The things of the
world continually point to the Other as body. Even the objects
of my world denote the existence of an additional center of
references, nothing else than the Other. When I take
which is

a pencil inmy it denotes the Other,

hands, although the Other
(the owner or the maker) is absent. Even the absence of the
Other as body is a form of presence. When Peter is not in his
48
room, all
things nevertheless point to him.
The body of the Other reveals itself to me as an In-itself
which I transcend with my possibilities:
I consider it as being

here, but as capable of being elsewhere, as sitting for the moment

but capable of lying down. But again, this body is not the
as

flesh of a corpse, which has with the rest of the world only the

relations of exteriority. The body of the Other is

given as flesh,
which organizes around and a synthetical to-
itself a "situation"

tality: i.e.,
it is
always in some situation or another and defines
itself
through a complex of relations with objects. The body
defines itself through the water it drinks, through the food it

eats, through the chair on which it sits, the sidewalk on which it

walks. The totality of all these references gives us the definition

of a body.
cannot perceive the body of the Other
It follows, (i) that I

outside a certain situation. This is evident when the body does

not move. But it is still evident when the body behaves as a body
(i.e., body). In fact, the body moves always within
as a living

certain spatio-temporal limits. And this is full of meaning. I,

understand (or rather I interpret) Peter's gesture, i.e., his body,

by means of the glass on the table toward which he extends his

arm. To put it another way, I ttaderstand his
present position
through what he is
going to do: I undei-stand his
present through
his future. Once more, a body is not a corpse; for the under-j
49
standing of it i&e must go beyond.
"EN, pp. 355, 48, "%&, p- 412.
82 EXPOSITION OF SARTRE*S ONTOLOGY
(2) Since the body appears as a totality of life and action,
each gesture must be understood in the ensemble and totality of
the living organism. I never see a fist, but I
perceive a man who
in certain circumstances closes his hand. This act, considered in
connection with past and present and understood from the view-

point of a body in "a certain situation," is anger.

The important point in all this is that the body is a psychic

object. The body of the Other gives the Other as he is, as that
which is
continually passed toward an aim. The body is "passed"
and "past" too; 50 not pure past, however, for it is still a "tran-
scended transcendence," i.e., the body of the Other is a transcend-
ence in being a For-itself (which transcends the In-itself ) and

yet it is a transcended-transcendence, since 7 as Subject go even

beyond the Other as transcendence. As soon as the body loses
its "transcendence" it is
completely "past" and becomes a
51
corpse. The corpse is a mere "this" among other "thises" and
the study of this "this" is what we call anatomy; while the syn-
thetical reconstitution of life
going away from death is physi-
ology. Even the study of life on life, or so-called vivisection, does

not find life as such, but is a study of life from the viewpoint of
death. Indeed, vivisection does not find the "passing toward" or
"going beyond" which is so characteristic of life.
Out of the preceding analyses, Sartre draws an interesting con-
clusion concerning character. The For-itself (or consciousness)
does not know its own character, since it has no character.
Character is the result of a classification born out of a compari-
son with Others, Character consequently is
something that exists
for-the-Other. Sartre believes that the first encounter with a
person important, for a person's character is always given im-
is

mediately in a synthetic intuition^ although it may take time to

interpret and to analyze what is thep

roc{
Passe<r in French would be *a%ss4" a&d %as^ "passe." See above,
p. 78.
THE OTHER
gj
Nevertheless, all character analysis has
something about it that
is and fragile. Human
relative
reality in Sartre's view is essentially
what we see is always
free: "past" and the Other is always ca-
of his situations. The
pable modifying body of the Other is the
magical object "par excellence," for it is not a corpse but always
body-more-than-body, and as such full of surprises.

"
Not only do I
exist "my own body," not only lio"l eSstln body-for-the-Other.
But also and this is the third I know
ontological dimension
myself as
body-known-by-the-Other. I realize myself as a my-
52
self-object, and the omnipresence of the Other crushes me
down. My body undergoes a mysterious alienation and becomes
a
tool-among-the-tools, a sensitive-organ-perceived-by-sensitive-
organs. This is the downfall of own world; it flows away
my
toward the Other, where it is reconstructed into a new
world,
the world of the Other.
An effective expression of this fact
is
timidity or shyness. Shy-
ness the uneasy feeling of
is
somebody whose body "escapes"
from himself and in a way belongs to the Other. It looks as if
the Other were the
only one to know him as he is; this
really
gives the Other an apparent superiority and his victim a feeling
of inferiority, which is
shyness. It is obvious that body-object my
for the Other is by no means
object for me. Through reflexion,
however, I am capable of grasping my own "body-object" as
object, just as I am able to posit Evil in a reflexive act as an In-
above). This consideration of my own-body-as-object-
itself (see

for-the-Other enables me to express what I know about own my

body-object in terms-for-the-Other. My evil, e.g., my stomach
ulcer, can now be scientifically explained with all its anatomical
detailsand pathological complications: all this
happens, however,
through the knowledge of the Other. It is not my evil in so far as
I
"enjoy" it; it is now Illness, known to me thanks to the formu-
lation of the Other.

53
EN, p. 419.
84 EXPOSITION OF SARTRE'S ONTOLOGY
It does not seem necessary to indicate that I can consider my
own body, so to speak, from the outside, e.g., I can consider my
hand and my foot. In this case the latter become objects in a
world of objects, and I simply take the viewpoint of the Other.
It is a revelation of my body, not as acting or perceiving, but as
acted upon and as
perceived. In fact the nature of my-body-for-
me escapes me entirely as soon as I take the viewpoint of the
Other. That is
why I learn to know own body through the
my
knowledge of the Other and why a child gets acquainted with
the body of the Other before it knows its own body.

III. THE CONCRETE RELATIONS WITH THE OTHER

I noted in Chapter Two how the For-itself is a perpetual eva-

sion of the In-itself and, at the same time, a flight toward the
In-itself. This flight, although an unavoidable failure, is never-
theless continually entertained. This is not some accidental and
additional quality but is the For-itself itself. The For-itself is
relation.
And yet, the For-itself is not alone in this world; the Other
is there, too. The
presence of the Other hits my For-itself in the
heart, so to speak; He reifies me. For the Other I am what I am:
he totalizes my totality and transcends my possibles; even my
freedom a "given" for him.
is

Once more it appears that it is not true that I can at -first and
that I try only afterward to objectify or to assimilate the Other.
As soon as I am, I face the Other. "The Other is original my
sin." 53

What are the attitudes that I can assume in the presence of

the Other? They are double: either I can conquer the freedom
of the Other through Love, or I can
try to conquer his body
or through Destruction (Hate).
THE OTHER 85
/? First toward the Other: Love, Alasochism. All
attitude

through descriptions of tEe delations with the Other runs

Sartre's
the eternal theme of conflict. Some
descriptions, especially the
one about "desire," are excellent; others the one concerning
love, for instance are
incomplete. Again and again, Sartre em-
phasizes the contradictions and the failures of human relations
without ever mentioning the slightest positive value. He is ob-
sessed by the idea that the look of the Other diminishes the For-
54
itself.
Consequently, in order to recover my individuality I
must overcome the freedom of the Other. In this recovery, how-

ever, Iam supposed to respect the nature of the Other: I may

not destroy him, I may not kill. He may not become a thing; he
must remain a For-itself. Briefly speaking, I should like to stay
what I am and nevertheless be the Other. I am obsessed by the
idea of some absolute being, which w^ould be "me" and at the
same time "Other." Such a state would be Utopian, ideal; such a
being a kind of deity. This is completely impossible, however. A
double negation, conditio sine qua non of me-being-me and the
Other-being-the-Other, separates both of us, is essential as the
guarantee of our individuality. This union with the jDtherJsjfaus
adream and in il

Nevertheless, the illusion has value. Love is the ensemble of

value. It is obvious, how-
projects by which I try to realize this
ever, that Love carries in itself an insoluble paradox: it tries to
influence the freedom of the Other, yet it does not want to

possess an automaton
in its
conquest. Love let us say the love
of a man for a woman wants to possess the Beloved as a thing
(influencing her freedom) and at the same time
not as a thing.
The male pretends to be loved in an absolute way; i.e., by a free-
dom which is no
longer freedom. He wants to be for the
finally
Beloved "tout au monde," i.e., a sort of "this" which involves and
"EN, pp. 312, 329, 429, 431, etc. Numerous references in his other
works, e.g^ Age of Reason, p. 22; Baudelaire^ pp. 115, 142, 76; No Exit or
In Camera (London, 1946), pp. 149, 150, 152; Le Sursis (Paris, 1946), pp.
109, 158,298.
86 EXPOSITION OF SARTRE'S ONTOLOGY
passes all other "thises," an object, not any object, but an abso-
lute object. For this
highest value the Beloved is even expected
to violate all laws if she is asked to.
The relation could be
compared in a certain sense with the re-
lation ofMaster and Slave in the Hegelian view, although the
Master does not pretend, at least not primarily, to confine the
freedom of the slave. In Love, on the contrary, the choice of the
Beloved is
supposedly absolute. And knowing or believing that
He is now an end in himself, the Lover is happy: for his exist-
ence is
justified, he is no longer too much. 55
His happiness is extremely fragile, however, and the evolution
of the romance very fast. As a matter of fact, the Beloved still is
the Other. She has the "glance," the Sartrian "glance," and is
able to consider the Lover as an object amongst other objects.
She has no desire to limit her freedom or her independence. The
Lover, conscious of this situation, tries to become a fascinating
object; i.e., he attempts to become a fullness of being, a being
outside of which there is
nothing. He can become the unchal-
lenged either through money or his personality, through his
his

looks or through some other means. 56

All this supposes language; we may even say is language in its
broadest signification or as the phenomenon of expression (not
language, as articulated words, which is a derivative form).

Language in its
original form belongs to human reality and im-
plies the existence of the For-itself and of the Other as well.
There is "language" as soon as one is not a thing, i.e., as soon as
one is able to go beyond the situation and to exploit the possi-
bilities to maximum profit.
All language is not necessarily a seduction, but seduction is one
form, and a mysterious one, inasmuch as it is altogether impos-
sible to say what effects it produces OH the beloved
person. It has
**As we saw in Chapter One, to be. "too modi** (etre de crop), in
SartreY termsioic^y, means not to be justified, to be without end or
motive.
"^IS^ pp. 439^ 441. d. Sartre, Psychology of Imagmation* p. 207.
THE OTHER 87
something sacred and noumenal about it. It recognizes the free-
dom and the subjectivity of a silent listener, i.e., his transcend-
ence. 57
Seduction succeeds when the Beloved is moved toward the
Lover with the intention of alienating her freedom, just as the
Lover wanted to alienate his freedom for her. And yet this is a
vain effort and a failure, since the double "negation" 58 of two

people facing one another in their respective For-itself cannot

be eliminated. Each lover is marooned in his or her immanence.
Furthermore, as soon as the Lover becomes in the eyes of the^
Beloved an object amongst the objects, i.e., is no longer an abso-^
5
lute object, the seduction fails
completely, and Love is gone, ^
An attempt is made to overcome the failure of Love when,
instead of saving their respective subjectivities, either of the
lovers becomes freely "object" for the other by means of the
so-called Masochism. The Masochist, in letting his partner tor-
ture and beat him, tries to become a Being-in-itself. Masochism

too, however, is a sin and a failure. It is a sin because the Maso-

chist, in attempting to become an "object," gives up his freedom.
It isa failure because he seeks to have his partner consider him
60
as an "object" when he is not one and never can be one.

Masochism is not without

importance in Sartre's view. It is an
w The reader
may have noticed that Sartre uses and abuses the terms
transcendence and ta transcend. Transcendence signifies sometimes the
position of the For-itself as not being
the In-itself, and sometimes it indi-
cates the position of the In-itself as lying outside the For-itself. The Other
in his turn may be called transcendent, implying by this that he has an
immanent subjectivity. The verb **to transcend,** used often in Sartre's
analysis of'the look, means that through his glance
the Other goes beyond
my possibilities, foresees them and dominates them in a way. See above,
pp. 67, 70. Sartre is not the only philosopher to give a very general meaning
to the word transcendence, but a Ikde less ambiguity would have been
appreciated.
08
Negation in the characteristic Sartrian way, described above on p. 48.
**EN", pp. 312, 320, 445. The danger of "relativation" is, according to
Sartre, the rnafr* reason why lovers want to be alone. The glance of a
Third person reduces them to the state of "object." The lover becomes
then "object" in die presence of his Beloved . . . Very humiliating, indeed!
88 EXPOSITION OF SARTRE'S ONTOLOGY
attempt to become an "object"; at the same time It manifests the
"love of failure," for it desires to do what it can not do. The way
in which Sartre describes Love illuminates the "failure of Love,"
so that the
conequence of this "failure of Love" is quite often the
"love of failure"; i.e., Masochism. Sometimes, Love retakes its

right and starts in its own way toward a new failure and . . .

so on. Human reality always tries and never succeeds. 61

Sexual Desire, Sadism, Hate. It may happen that after my
(*)
failure to assimilate the Other in his freedom, I am tempted to

"look at him" and to transcend him as I can

an object. glance at
his
glance and build up my own subjectivity on the demolition
of his. 62 This is indifference. I look at people as look at things;
I

I
graze them as I graze a wall. I am unaware of the existence of
the Other. The enormous concentration on own subjectivity my
isa source of unhappiness, for in forgetting the Other, and facing

continually own freedom, it becomes a permanent duty for

my
me to carry this load alone.
The problem of Desire and sexuality has been considered for
a long time as the result of a physiological constitution, as if a
human being experienced Desire because he or she had sexual
organs. One might well wonder whether the contrary is not
truer, and whether perhaps sex
is not the
expression of some
deeper attraction. Not only
the youthful, vigorously mature, but
children, old people, and eunuchs as well have sexual desire. It
would appear that sexuality is a fundamental aspect of the Be-
ing-for-itself-for-another rather than some anatomical accident.
The expression of Desire through the sex organ is accidental and
contingent. Desire, thus, is
something more profound; it is

through Desire that sex is revealed. Desire discovers my sex-

63
sensitive body and its sexual life.

Since Desire is so essential to any study of Sartre, let us have

**C Jeansoe, Le Probleme Moral et la Pensee de Sartre (Paris, 1947),
p. 274.
"*#, pp. 312, 329, 429, 43 r t446!
IT'S Dasem is an asexual being.
THE OTHER 89
a more careful look at the notion. Desire seems always to be
"desire for something," for some transcendent or external object.
This object is, let us say, the body of a woman not the material

body as such, but the organic totality on a background of con-

sciousness. But who is
desiring? / am desiring. And this happens
at the moment in which I "exist"
my body in a particular way,
a way which, in phenomenological terms, could be considered
as a "disturbance." Sexual desire is something like hunger but
takes me as a whole and is as overwhelming as sleep. In a grow-

ing desire, there is a growing tendency to identify the For-itself

with the body. One becomes "thing." The supreme degree of
Desire could be a collapse.
This form of incarnation happens in the presence of the Other
and seeks to appropriate the Other as flesh. Desire is an effort to
make the Other's body exist as flesh; a caress is nothing but an
his body as flesh for himself and
attempt to make the Other feel
for me. Caress is Desire or, rather, expression of Desire just
the caress I try
as language is expression of thought. Through
to incarnate the Other. Consequently, the revelation of the flesh
64
of the Other happens through my flesh.
The question now arises of the motive behind Desire. Let us
first of all remember
that this special existence of body "in my
desire," although it creates a special relation to the world (real-
izes a special being-in-the-world), points toward the Other above
all. Desire, therefore, is a primitive form of relation to the Other,

which constitutes the Other as desirable flesh in a desired world.

This relation is
basically an appropriation of the Other, an at-

tempt through my own incarnation to subject the Other in his

transcendency and in his body. I restrict and limit my own pos-

sibilities and in a way I incarnate my own consciousness, I eti-

gulf myself into my body with the hope and the wish that the
Other will also confine his possibilities, realize his being-matter,
and become flesh not only in my eyes but in his own eyes as
* EN,
p. 459-
 ?

90 EXPOSITION OF SARTRE S ONTOLOGY

well. Desire is thus fundamentally an invitation to Desire. Only
flesh finds the
way to flesh.
Although Desire is a tremendous attempt to seize and to re-
duce the Other, it is nevertheless a failure. In coition there is not
only a fulfillment (and consequently a killing) of Desire, but
also, in the utmost pleasure of the coition, there is a forgetting
of the Other and his incarnation. When Desire has lost its
feeling
of "disturbance" or "trouble" (and this stage does not last indefi-

nitely), the body of the Other becomes again an ordinary object.

Sometimes, at the moment of the disappearance of the incar-
nation of the Other, a new attempt arises to overcome the Other
in his transcendency. This is Sadism. The sadistic man, being
unable to perform his own "incarnation" through Desire, never-
theless uses his flesh as an instrument to subjugate the Other by
force. He attempts, so to speak, to provoke an incarnation

through pain.
Sadism is a failure and gives literally nothing. Once I am facing
a tortured body, I really do not know what to do with it, 65 un-
less Iam subjugated myself by a new desire. Furthermore, the
submission of a victim is always deceptive, fragile, and unstable.
The glance alone of the victim constitutes his revenge on the
aggressor, showing that the freedom which the aggressor tried
to vanquish is still there. 66
Sartre's treatise is not one on sexuality, and he does not
pre-
tend to exhaust the subject* The only point that he likes to em-

phasize is "that sex and desire are inherent to the For-itself as

soon as the Other is there and that the actual organic form of
sexuality a contingent and accidental expression of this funda-
is

mental attitude." 67 His position is therefore anti-Freudian, in-

ismuch as he rejects the vague and general Freudian libido

**EN, p. 475.
Cf. also Sartre,Marts sms sepulture, where one of the
mlitmBen tormres a "imqiaisajrd^ feecaose, consciotis of his own failure,
fee waats tfee imq^isacci to confess that he (die maquisard) is a coward . . .
**
See Farfkue^s Dotation (above) from Light in August.
THE OTHER gi
supposedly underlying all our feelings. Sex and Desire are not
expressions of libido; they are the result of a fundamental atti-
tude: the For-itself, because of its essential "lack" of tries being,
to
conquer the other.
motive of our failure j,njnirj?elations 'with the Other
.fJ^P^^^
ate a Subject is a
a Subject.
for
Any attempt to appropri-
the
startling failure, Other-Subject is some-
thing that as such can never be possessed.
Every act is a conflict;
even a gift a form of humiliation. mere
is
My
is
already existence
a limitation of the Other's existence. The meaning
of culpability
arises
through the Other: would culpability ever make sense
without the existence of the Other? Is it not before the Other
that "And they knew
I feel
my abjectness, my nakedness: that
they were naked." (Gen.^y) Again and again it
appears that,
emerging into a world where the Other exists, I meet through
the presence of the Other
my unavoidable culpability.
Out of all this can arise eventually the desire to liberate
myself
from the presence of the Other in order to
prevent once and
forever all-being-object and all form of alienation. Hate Is
pre-
cisely such a desire.
Since Hate is the wish to all-round freedom of
conquer my
For-itself, to have it restricted by no other
existence, in most
cases Hate assumes the form of hate against
everybody. It is
useless to
say that Hate is a new -failure? for the suppression of
the Others does not
prevent them from having been in existence.
And so I shall always be the one whose life has been contami-
nated by the presence of the Other.

IV. SOCIAL IMPLICATIONS OF SARTRE*S VIEW

I turn now to the consideration of a certain number of "For-

itselves/* a plurality of "For-itselves," the individualities of which
ape certainly recognized,
yet are, for the time being, subdued
and united in some collective process. In such a case, if I consider
92 EXPOSITION OF SARTRE'S ONTOLOGY
myself among a group, I
speak of "<we" (we look at ... ive
eat . .
.). It is plain that this "ive" does not constitute some in-

tersubjective consciousness, but is grounded in one way or an-

other in the Being-for-another. Since grammar distinguishes the
"ive-subject" and the "us-object" I shall follow the same division,
6S
beginning with an analysis of the "us-object."
fi\
The "Us-object" The "us-object" arises when I am in con-
69
flict with the Other and a Third, appearing, glances at both
of us. Both of us become object in the world of a Third person.

My possibilities and the possibilities of the Other are petrified,

judged, compared, annihilated by the Third man. In this new
situation, I and the Other become suddenly equivalent and uni-
fied. There emerges a reciprocal
assumption by which we are
constituted as "us-objects." This supposes necessarily the pres-
ence of an external subjectivity, the Third man. The "us"-form
is
very humiliating, believes Sartre: it is an alienation and an im-
potency. Belonging to an "us-object," I stick to the Others and
cannot rid myself of an infinity of strange existence. 70
Some situations in this field are more characteristic than others;
for instance, ordinary kinds of shared work. An automobile or

any other manufactured thing points to the "us-object" of the

workers. All of us, the workers of the plant, are apprehended

through the object. It is well to remember, however, that each

human situation creates the "us-object" as soon as the Third
man emerges. When I walk on this sidewalk, I sketch the "us-
object" as soon as the man on the opposite sidewalk looks at me
and at the Other, who walks on my side,
Strictly speaking, the physical presence
of the Third man is
not necessary; even his absence is a form of presence. 71 This

**
Conflict for Sartre means tmy relation,
m EN*
pf 490. Socfe theories betray deadjr the extreme individualist and
ex|$aia tfee ^e^ialfe dadfe
feetweea ExKtemtiaiaEn and Marxism, See
Lokacs, Existen&disTTte ou Marxwne (Paris, 1948) .
: ''
'
THE OTHER 93
brings us to the question of class-struggle. When a poorer group
considers itself as oppressed, it conceives, ipso facto^ the rest of

society as the oppressing class and as the enemy. The "bour-

geois" and the "capitalist" appear as the Third persons. Without
the Third man, all the misery of the world would not humiliate
me in my poverty, but as soon as the Third is there the shame
of being an "oppressed" class arises with him. The liberation
from this inferiority-complex, characteristic of the "us-object"
situation, begins when the "us-object" transforms itself into a
"we^subject," inevitably to the detriment of the oppressing class.
It is noticeable that on the whole a class or
group, or whatever
form of "we," behaves itself as an individual. And here, as in
the relations of individuals, there are manifestations of Love,
Hate even of Masochism (when, for instance, a whole class
throws itself into slavery and wants to be dealt with as object).
This monstrous materialization of the populace has a fascination
for each of its members; each of them wishes to be an instru-
72
ment-object in the hands of the Leader,
The "us-object" concept also arises from the consideration of
the totality of human beings before God. 73 Indeed, according to
Sartre, the consideration of human totality as such can only be
realized by positing the existence of a new Third being, this time
a Supreme Being, a being looking at us without itself ever being
looked at; i.e., God. Since *we cannot look at God, we are not
able to constitute Him as an object. He is beyond and above.
All this is hypothetical, however. There is no God for Sartre,
and any attempt to assemble the whole of human beings in some
form of human intersubjectivity is necessarily a failure. The rme-
humanist is nonsense for Sartre. 74

ra
"JEN, p. 494. EN, p. 495.
74
that not all atheists share Sartre's view-
pp. 495, 501. It is obvious
EN,
as I sfeall explain in Part IL
point,
In his booHet, Portrait of the Anti-Semite (Partisan Review Series,
1946), Sartre gives another example of the "us-object" "The degree of
integration of each anti-Semite
wkfain this community as well as the degree
94 EXPOSITION OF SARTRE S ONTOLOGY
/2\ The "We-subject" It is the world, especially the world of
*Tfianufactured" things, which announces to us our
membership
in a "we-subject" class. We use the subway, we use the same cor-
ridor and the same staircase, and although our further aims may
differ, our nearer aim is the same. In this corridor or passageway
in thesubway (supposedly one-way) there is and there was only
one "project" written in the matter forever. The "we-subject"
appears also in the cadenced rhythm of a marching regiment, in
work done in concert. All this is merely a psychological struc-
ture, however, and certainly not an ontological one. The differ-
ent For-itselves remain strictly outside one another. It follows
that the experience of the "we-subject" is very unstable. The or-

ganization of a special form of collectivity disappearing, the "we-

subject" feeling vanishes also. It is very characteristic, for in-
stance, for friends made on a liner to disappear as soon as the
boat reaches the harbor. Furthermore, the "we-subject" form is
not an original form, but presupposes the existence of the Other.
Even when we use a manufactured thing, we know that this
75 Not
object is already "humanized," as Heidegger says. only
n
does the car that we use presuppose the "we-subject group of
the factory where the car was made, but my group, i.e., the

"we-subject" group to which I belong, is made up of "Ps" or

of eqrtalitarianism which characterizes him are set by what I will call the
temperature of the community. Proust showed for example how anti-
Dreyfusism brought the duke closer to his coachman, how, thanks to their
hatred of Dreyfus, bourgeois families forced the portals of the aristocracy.
The equalitarian community of which the anti-Semite feels himself a part
is of die mob variety or the kind of instantaneous society which
develops
at a lynching or upon the occasion of a public scandal. The social tie is
anger; collectivity has no other aim than that of exercising a diffuse
repres-
sive sanction on certain individuals; collective movements and manifesta-
tions are thrust upon individuals . * ."
(p. 15) "The anti-Semite hopes that
his own person will suddenly melt into the group and be carried away by
the collective torrent. It is this pogromlike atmosphere which he has in
mmd when he cais for the *umon of all Frenchmen . . .' " (ibid^ p. 15)
w Ni E
jx -199. Heidegger^ SZ, p. 78* Heidegger takes the example
of the fcsee airow
''
used liy a driver to sliotr the drectlorf which he intends
'
THE OTHER 95
individuals. There is no *we without /. When 7 say ive^ I imply
that 7 am with somebody.
There is no strict correlation between the "we-subject" and
u
the "us-object." The us-object" is a real dimension, depending

upon the existence of the Third man and resulting from Being-
for-the-Other. The "we-subject" is merely psychological and
does not bring an ontological link between the For-itselves which
constitute the "we-subject" group. It is merely a subjective "er-
lebnis." 78 Sartre condenses his stubborn anti-community-life in

the following statement, which is anti-Heideggerian as well:

"The relation between the consciousnesses is not essentially a
77
'mitsein' but a conflict."
79
1 believe that neither English nor French has an exact translation for
the German word "erlebnis." Perhaps "experience," "personal and lived
experience," would give the sense.
77
EN", p. 502. Cf. Heidegger, S2, (1929), p. 120. "Even when the Dasein
is alone, even then he is 'with' [mit]" and after the conversion to au-
thenticity the mtsem remains essential. "Im Miteinandersein inderselben
Welt und in der Entschlossenheit fur bestimmte Moglichkeiten sind die
Schicksale in vorhineinen schon geleitet." See above, p. 64.
 5 FREEDOM AND ACTION

"A la guerre il
n'y a pas de victimes innocentes."
JULES ROMAINS, Les Hoimnes de Bonne Volontc

I. THE THEORY OF ABSOLUTE FREEDOM

I have tried to show how the For-itself, as an eternal

hunter of the Being-in-itself, tries continually to identify itself
with the latter. This pursuit happens to be in the world. As such,
it
implies action^ and to act implies the possibility of changing in
one way or another the shape of the world, and of performing this
change intentionally. To act without intention is really not to
act at all (a smoker who by mistake sets fire to a house does not

act). On the other hand, as soon as there is intention, there must

be intuition of some lack; i.e., I notice that something is not but

ought to be done. This supposes a permanent possibility for the

consciousness to break off with its own past,
to tear itsetf away
from 'what it is toward that which
not yet but can be. Thisis

capacity of negation, together with the possibility of positing

an
aim or purpose, means -freedom}-
Freedom can be described, but it cannot be defined, for it
creates itself incessantly. What Heidegger says about Dasein in

general can be applied to freedom. In freedom, "existence pre-

cedes and commands essence." 2 In fact, how can we even de-
scribe something which performs itself in a continual free cre-

* ct
Heidegger, SZ, p. 42. Das Wesen des Daseins liegt in seiner Existenz."
See also pp. 43, 117.
FREEDOM AND ACTION 97
ation? There is no essence of freedom just as there Is no essence
of consciousness. As I
explained in Chapter Two, Sartre's For-
continual "escape towards its possibles," "it is always
itself is a

in the making." 3 Husserl and Descartes were wrong, according

to Sartre, in looking for the essence of Ego through an analysis
of the Cogito, for all that we can define is that which is already

past and gone: "Wesen ist was gewesen ist" (Hegel). Our defi-
nitions can only apply to the past. Hence, the best that we can
do is to describe what happens. Freedom cannot be frozen into a
lexicon; defined, it loses its meaning.
When, previously, consciousness was described as that which
can at any moment tear itself away from the world and from
itself in a radical negation (nihilation) , it was in fact freedom
which was being described. Whoever speaks of freedom means

negation of all boundaries whatsoever. T^crejs^nly onejimit to

freedom, and that is freedom itself: we can,, so to speak, be noth-
4
i^^EeTuFfoeg. Determinism, on the contrary, is in its essence
5
an ossification of motives and tries to consider them as things,
forgetting at the same time that their whole value depends on my
insight and on my continual evaluation. Determinism is an effort
to choke freedom under the weight of massive being. & The de-
terminist closes his eyes to his inner anguish, which is the clear
and irrefutable voice of freedom. Human reality is free because

*
Sartre, Existentialism, p. 59. In Part II I shall examine this statement
and conclude that it is an impossible assertion. How can Sartre make his
whole comment on something as human reality which by hypothesis is not
definable? EN, pp. 514*1".
*
There is not in Heidegger the same expression of the notion of free-
dom. In Vom Wesen der Wahrheit (Frankfurt-am-Main: KJostermann,
1943), however, Heidegger presents a view of freedom which comes very
close to Sartre's negative approach. "Die Freiheit
ist in sich aus-setzend, ek-
sistent," (p. 16) Thfcs, the capacity of going beyond
freedom for Heidegger is
oneself toward things, without identifying oneself with them. Sartre, on
the other hand, emphasizes the negation from ... or what one might
call, in his terminology* th capacity of "neantisatiGn** (the capacity of
withdrawing oneself from things). Actually, the one attitude supposes the
other.
98 EXPOSITION OF SARTRE'S ONTOLOGY
it is "not what it is," because it is not massive Being-in-itself, be-
cause it is "For-itself."
Descartes considered human reality as
a free being haunted
by the so-called "passions of the soul." This dualism in no way
pleases Sartre. How
can we imagine, he exclaims, a being which
is both pure spontaneity and determined action? Passions cannot
influence freedom for the same reason that the In-itself is
pre-
vented from touching the For-itself. Passions, considered as a
bundle or as the whole pathos, are a sort of In-itself a some-

thing, an object and consequently are unable to work on the

spontaneity of the For-itself. The only link with the For-itself
is the Sartrian link of
"negation": i.e., freedom is able to "negate"
the passions. 7
When we consider the will, the motion of freedom appears
still clearer. Will implies this fundamental characteristic of ne-
8
gation and a reflected decision concerning some aims. It is, in

fact, an attitude towards an end. passion A (e.g., fear) is also an

attitude toward an end, but is not so deliberate or reflected. I am
involved in a battle and see suddenly an enemy appear in front
of me: either I decide to stay and to resist deliberately, or, acting
in fear, I throw my gun away and flee. The first act is a deliberate

volition, the second act is passion: both are an expression of an

original choice. This original choice is not before its

expression
but is identical with its expression. It is useless to distinguish

freedom from will, as Bergson distinguished "le moi profond"

from "le moi superficiel"; freedom is precisely my will or my
actual passion. The popular view of a 'will-thing or In-itself and

7
N, p. 517. Cf. also Sartre, Existentialism^ p. 27: "The existentialist
does not believe in the power of passion. He will never agree that a sweep-
ing passion is a ravaging torrent which fatally leads a man to certain acts
and is therefore an excuse. He thinks that man is responsible for his passion."
la Portrait of the Ante-Semite, Sartre emphasizes* die same idea:: "Anti-
SenMEism feas chosen to exist on a passionate leveL It is not unusual to
choose aa einotional way of life ramec djia a reasonable one." (p. 24)

*Btergson, Les DormeeSj p. 961

FREEDOM AND ACTION 99
10
a passion-accident
complete distortion of reality.
is a Such a
psychological Manichelsm is indefensible. Emotion is not some
psychological storm, but is the unreflecrive answer to a concrete
Fear or even collapse are free but unreflective means
situation.

by which I avoid
facing a dangerous situation. I could have taken
a more rational position: i.e., a position in which I sought calmly
the means for resolving the problem of my situation. Fear is as

free as courage, although the latter implies calmer reflection.

Whatever may be now the manifestation of choice: my re-
flective acts of the will, or an emotive expression of fear, or

anger or another passion they are reactions toward an aim

which human reality chooses and gives to itself. The For-itselr
manages to have the world that it wants. "Man is the future of
man." J1 That means that there is no weight of the past on him,
and that man with no support or aid is condemned at every mo-
ment to invent man. "There is
continually for each of us a future
to be forged, a virgin future before us." 12 All this is only a con-

30
EN, p. 520. Sartre, Emotions (New York: Philosophical Library, 1948),
pp.49, 50, 51,52.
11

13
Ponge, quoted by Sartre, in Existentialism, p. 28.
Sartre, Existentialism, pp. 28 f. See also The Age of Reason, where
this idea of complete freedom, in no way motivated, appears very often:
"On the table there were some tattered magazines and a handsome Chinese
vase, green and gray, with handles like parrots' ckws. Uncle Jules had told
him [Mathieu, the little boy], that the vase was three thousand years old.
Mathieu had gone up to the vase, his hands behind his back, and stood,
nervously a-tiptoe, looking at it: how frightening it was to be a little ball
of bread crumb in this ancient fire-browned world, confronted by an im-
passive vase three thousand years old! He had turned his back
on it; and
stood grimacing and snufBing at the mirror without managing to divert his
thoughts; then he had suddenly gone back to the table, picked up tiie vase,
which was a heavy one, and dashed it on the floor it has just
happened
like that, after which he had fek as light as gossamer. He had eyed tfae

porcelain fragments in amazement; something had happened to that tfiree-

thousand-year-old vase within those fifty-year-old walls, under the ancient

light of the summer, something very disrespectful
that was not unlike the
air of morning. He had thought: *I did it,' and felt qwte proud, freed from
the world, tuitfaotit ties or kin or origins, a stubborn little excrescence that
had berst the terrestrial crust.'* (p. 62) "He was free, free hi every way,
free to behave like a fool or a machine, free to accept, free to refuse, free
to equivocate; to marry, give up the game, to drag his dead weight about
 100 EXPOSITION OF SARTRE'S ONTOLOGY
sequence of the translucidity of the For-itself. "It is the Subject,
who in
emerging gives sense and value to things and no one thing
reaches the without touched as first
Subject being by a sudden
evaluation. Consequently there is no action from things on the
Subject, there is
only a centrifugal signification (in the active
sense of the term, i.e., the
Subject himself gives sense and value
to the external 13
thing)."
The distinction between motive and mobile, believes Sartre,
reinforces and The motive is the external
enlightens his position.
fact, e.g., in the case of Clovis' conversion, the
political situation
of Gallia; the mobile on the the
contrary is subjective fact, e.g.,
Clovis' ambition. 14 The motive is and it
objective, yet appears
as motive only before the For-itself. Motives have value only
when separated, gathered together and "nihilated" by the For-
15
itself, which chooses them as such in the whole of the world.
The world when one interrogates it,
"answers," claims Sartre,
and "one interrogates
specific action." And
only initview of a
"far from the act, the motive arises in and witH the
determining
n
act. ls Just as the of the For-itself is revelation of the
emergence
with him for years to come. He could do what he liked, no one had the
right to advise him, there would be for him no Good or Evil unless he
brought them into being. All around him things were gathered in a circle,
expectant, impassive, and indicative of nothing. He was alone, enveloped
in this monstrous silence, free and
alone, without assistance and without
excuse, condemned to decide without support from
any quarter, condemned
forever to be free." (Ibid^
p. 320)
^Merleau-Ponty
M Phenomenolo&e de la Perception (Paris,
1945), P- 49&
I amnot sure of the significance of the
English word "mobile" in such
a context. But in order to save Sartre's
meaning, I have kept his terminology.
"The use of the characteristically Sartrian barbarism "nihilated'* should
no longer shock the reader. As we have seen on
page 48 of this book, it
simply means a way of knowing. Knowledge is internal negation, Le.,
just as for the word "transcendence," Sartre has given
nihilation. However,
tke word "nihilation^ too broad a
signification. Knowledge in the present
is"nifaiktbn" (neantisation), ectasy in the future is also
"nihilation," ecstasy
into the past is alsp *nMatioiLn The view of
possibles, when I accept
my
UMI&, a ajblktiQi^ when I reject them, it is also a "nihilation." It
pre-
a WaM
popapp JnraiectiiaJ suppleness to follow Sartre, as Jean
prikpcs tere noted, CL Deucalion, L 71 (1946).
FREEDOM AND ACTION I OI
world, so the free projection of the For-itself toward an end
results in a certain structure of the world, structure which is con-
sidered as a motive. For
example, Clovis' ambition (mobile)
views the political situation of France as motive for his conver-
sion. Mobile and motive are thus correlative.

Motives and mobiles, however, as soon as they belong to the

past, receive some
sort of solidified being.
They become "mine."
This explains the traditional view of motive as some sort of
affective content of consciousness. But even there it is I, and
only
I, who decide about its determinative influence on my choice
and on my actions. Freedom is
beyond motives and mobiles, and
even when I deliberate in the choice of my arguments, I prepare

my The chips are down before all deliberation. 17

decision.
In fact, freedom must be identified with the For-itself. Human

reality is
free because it stays out of being, escapes from being.
If the For-itself were engulfed in the massive and full density
of the Being-in-itself, claims Sartre, it would no longer be free.
For-itself, Nothingness,
18
Human Consciousness, Freedom, Free
Choice system, one and the same thing.
are, in Sartre's
All this us nothing new, 19 unless it would be that the fur-
tells

ther we advance in Sartre's philosophy, the more we find that

his enormous elaboration can be reduced to a few principles

17
EN 9 p. 527. Cf. also Sartre, Existentialism,
where he gives an example
of somebody who, before an important decision, looks for an advisor. In
choosing his advisor he has already made his decision:
"If you are a

Christian, yon will say 'Consult a priest.' But some priests are collaborating,
some are just marking time, some are resisting [the reference is to German
the young man chooses a priest who is
occupation]. Which to choose? If
resisting or collaborating, he has already decided on the kind of advice he's
going to get." (p. 32)
33
Sartre, however, does not consider the For-itself as a "nihilum abso-
lutum" that is, by definition, the "absence of all being." Sartre's For-
itself is what he calls "une privation singuliere"; Le., the negation of some-
of this house. But being this
thing concrete: for example, the negation
It is only in being not that the
negation it is non-being, it is nothingness.
For-itself is able to negate.
This is a manifest sophism which I shall discuss in Part EL
20
See above, Chapter Two, I.
102 EXPOSITION OF SARTRE'S ONTOLOGY
which repeatedly return in the
interpretation. (This is not neces-
sarily acondemnation, for it is a characteristic of many philoso-
phers, even of the greatest.) A
free being, hence, is like con-
sciousness: free from all else, able to make its
past in the light
of its future, and announcing itself to itself
by something other
than itself.

This does not freedom mere ca-

imply, however, that my is

price. If we are two friends climbing Mount Washington, I shall

perhaps stop earlier than you and complain and sit down. Does
that
imply, then, that I am more tired than you are? Not neces-
simply means that, facing the "f acticity"
It 20
sarily. of the
world, my fundamental choice is different. Instead of
seizing
my fatigue with a certain flexibility, I apprehend it with a certain
anger and stiffness.
In fact, according to Sartre and this is a
very interesting
point each human gesture implies fundamentally a whole
21
"Weltanschauung." In the main we feel it, but are not
always
able to describe ifso facto the which the
deepest structure out of
"gesture" is born. Freud makes the same statement, yet he ac-
cepts some form of vertical determinism (sexual influence in one
sense or another) which is
finally founded in a horizontal deter-
minism (external circumstances and the
history of the Subject
itself) which explains the present act.
22
It
is obvious, of
course,
that Sartre can with the Austrian psycho-
only partly agree
analyst. He
admits with Freud that the structure of the whole
can be seen in a single but he claims that not the
act,
past but the
future explains the present, i.e., it is my free choice which con-

stitutes
my
actual being.
Neither does Adler's explanation which uses the
inferiority

*>In French, "Facticite," another of Sartre's new words. The term is

more frightening than its
signification. Facticity means the complex of
facts, Bemg-m4tselves/' which surround the free For-itself as so many
obstacles. Tie concept will appear again later.
*
Vertical ijefcearmmism could also be called
chronological determinism
FREEDOM AND ACTION 103
Sartre
complex satisfy completely. Inferiority^ according to
Sartre, is
again a choice, a choice by which I decide to consider

myself inferior to the Other, whose "scandalous" existence I

cannot prevent.
Surely each action is understandable^ not, however, in the link
of a casual connection, but rather as the projection of myself
toward a possible. I put my bag on the ground in order to rest
a minute. take a certain position on the tennis court in order
I

to return the ball in such or such a way. Freedom is

nothing but
discovery of the world and choice of myself in the world. This
choice conscious (not necessarily deliberated, though) insofar
is

as it isone witl^ujconsciousness. Choice and consciousness are

thus finally ^one and the same thing. 2* Consciousness is really "se-
lection," as psychologists claim; the mistake of Bergson,
many
according to Sartre, was in putting the backbone of some "sub-
stantial" consciousness behind this active selection. 24 are We
what we choose; and Gide 25 was wrong in making a distinction
between "to love" and "to want to love," for when we love, we
want to love. And if somebody decided to marry, and then does
not marry, it is because he has decided not to marry.
Sartre pretends, as I have already remarked, to extend the
26
Cartesian Cogito and to transform it into a prereflexive Cogito.
This prereflexive Cogito is always consciousness of something,
and consequently is always out of itself, committed to some-
thing. It is committed
to some future project, and it is in and
with this permanent anticipation that a human being must be
apprehended. Furthermore, human reality is this project, is this

living toward the future.

We are always in one way or another
27
the solution of some concrete problem of
being. This does not

imply that we are expected to know ourselves m

ourselves easily,
but that the world* our wodcl, takes care of k.
merely room, My
38

26
EN, p. 539. ^Beigson, Les **Domteev, pp*, 105A
Gide, Jowrwtl des F&ux-Monnayeurs. See above* pp. 9 f.
*
EN, p. 540.
 ?

104 EXPOSITION OF SARTRE S ONTOLOGY

my furniture, my clothes, my way of dressing, all reflect my
choice, i.e., my being. I am a continual choice, and this fact
is
betrayed through my anguish and feeling of responsibility,
which may be either more or less manifest, but which is
always
there. 28
It should be more and more plain that the act of putting down

my bag on the side of the road, when I climbed Mount Wash-

ington, was neither capricious nor, strictly speaking, gratuitous.
In fact, my action placed itself in a global "Weltanschauung,"
where I
judged that the difficulties were "not worthy to be en-
dured." It was an expression of my fundamental and ultimate
choice, but even change. And, as noted, the possi-
this is liable to

bility of alteration is
expressed by anguish. my
This original choice ought not to be represented as that which
reproduces itself from one instant to another. It unfolds itself
along the triple ecstasy of past, present, and future, and is there-
fore a continual temporalization (the fact of living in time). In
Sartre's view, then, temporalization, freedom, choice, "nihila-
tion" in its active meaning of knowing, cutting out, sifting, etc.,
are so many aspects of consciousness, or rather are so many ac-
tivities which constitute consciousness.

It remains true, however, that I am always threatened by the

"instant." 2d And "instant" here means the break in my
way of
thinking and living. Sartre calls the "instant" a beginning and
an end: as a beginning it has nothing before, and as an end it is
followed by nothing. A
conversion, for example, is limited by
this double non-being: Peter was an atheist and became a theist;

the "instant" implies the end of his atheism (there is nothing left)
and the beginning of his theism (there was nothing before).
Nihilation thus goes on continually, and free choice as well,
as long as the "instant" does not interrupt the stream. And yet
is obvious that the "instant" is also a manifestation of
it
my free
choice, The. "instant" is always in the neighborhood, precisely
88
See above, p. 21* **EN, p. 544.
FREEDOM AND ACTION I 05
because I a?n free. It remains the ghost whose presence continu-

ally haunts me. It is a permanent threat but can also be a favor;

e.g.,
the "instant" in which Raskolnikov decides to denounce
himself. These
are the marvelous and
extraordinary "instants":
old projects crash down and new ones arise on their ruins; we
lose ourselves in joy and hope and anguish in order to save our-

selves; we save ourselves and yet we seem to lose ourselves. Such

situations are nothing but the clear and moving image of our
freedom. 30
It is well to remember that the foregoing
description is theo-
somewhat simplified. Reality is much
retical and, consequently,

more complex. Although each choice in reality is an expression

of a global and ultimate choice, this particular choice is not the

only one that could be made: on the same background several

"detailed" possibles might arise, them unpredictable. It is
all of

precisely this unpredictability which makes the study of each

individual so problematical Not only is the gamma of possibles

extremely broad, but the "instant" may produce a complete

change.
I shall conclude this section with a summary of Sartre's views
on freedom:
1. "To be," for human reality,
is "to act." Here, according to
Sartre, the behaviorists were right to insist on the analysis of
human conduct in concrete situations. Therefore, it is not: first
to be and then to act^ but to be means to act*1
2. The act is autonomous, however, and no substantial support
backs it.

3. The act goes in a certain direction toward a certain end,

which does not yet exist but to which the For-itself tends. (By
80
EN, p. 552. Sartre agrees partly with Adler, as noted above, concern-
ing the existence of an inferiority complex; but* loyal to Ms own views,
claims that the inferiority-complex is the result of a personal choice. The
subject chooses to be inferior
and for him too the core of complete change
can be brought by the "instant." If inferiority is not cured, it is because
it is warned and kept in bad lakh.
106 EXPOSITION OF SARTRE*S ONTOLOGY
the same fact the For-ltself specifies and determines itself.) This
confirms the Heideggerian and Sartrian idiom which I have al-

ready quoted: through the world the For-itself announces itself

to itself.

4. Intention is the choice of an end, and reveals at the same

time the world under such and such an aspect. intention may My
be to have a good dinner. Choosing this aim, the road which
leads to the restaurant receives a special signification. It is world
structure under such and such an aspect.

5. An end, however, does not exist as such unless the For-itself

chooses. Mount Washington can be considered as that-on-which-
I-must-climb because I, as For-itself, can want and can choose.
The For-itself can "break" with the massive being (i.e., Being-in-
itself); that is, it can
negate the In-itself by means of internal
negation?*
6. This "breaking off" with the object is one and the same
33
thing as so-called internal negation (or nihilation) , Conscious-
ness always implies an object which it "nihilates" in
knowing it.
Consciousness without object is pure non-sense, since to be con-
scious of nothing is not to be conscious. Consciousness therefore
is
negation of the datum and yet not itself a datum (otherwise
it would not be a negation of a datum). Being not itself a solidi-
fied datum, the For-itself is free and
always "committed." Free-
dom is not "something" before free choice this would be
again
a reified datum but is mere choice. 84

7. Free choice is inevitable. I cannot not choose, otherwise I

should fallinto the category of massive being. choice, how- A

ever, is
always fragile, for freedom my
always threatens my
freedom. My choice is
unjustifiable and absurd; Le., is not deter-
mined in a deterministic way. And at each moment the "instant"
85
of my conversion may emerge.
The preceding remarks, especially Nos. 5 and 6, insinuate

** **
See above, p. 48. EN, p. 558.
FREEDOM AND ACTION IOJ
clearly that there datum (an object, a given) which faces
is a
freedom. The relations between these givens (data, or, as Sartre
calls the whole
complex, "facticity") and freedom will be dealt
with in the following section.

II. FREEDOM AND "FACTICITY"

The reader's general impression of the foregoing study may

well be that Sartre, in his view on freedom, has tried to remain
faithful to his characteristic notion of the For-itself that

strange being whose whole entity is nothing but to be out of

itself and all over the world. This contact with the world is not

only a continual revelation of the world, but is also a

permanent
selection, a basic free choice. The For-itself is freedom. Sartre's
freedom is
something absolute; he rejects all determinism what-
soever, even under its mitigated form as imperialism of the pas-
sions.Consequently, he presents us with a freedom more acute
than, possibly, has been seen in two thousand years of philoso-

phy. And yet he too is obliged to cope with the classical argu-
ment namely our lack of freedom. For there
against freedom,
are so many things which seem to handicap us and make us de-
It would appear that milieu, atavism, nationality, and so
pendent.
on, make me much more than I make myself. In this section I
shall examine how Sartre's system attempts to solve this intricate

problem. The whole set of obstacles which freedom has to face

is
desimatedJbyjSartre under the denommatioii J^fomd^." It
includes five "facts" or data, namely: my place, my past, my

surroimdings^ my fellow-brethren, my death Before detailing!

each of them, however, a few general remarks are necessary.
of things, of what
It
appears first* of all that the resistance
Heidegger calls "the brute existents," is mostly dependent upon
our own position. It is impossible to carry a boulder with one,
but the same rock may be a inarveloos pedestal for looking over
a landscape. The so-called brute **resistaats** or "existents" are
108 EXPOSITION OF SARTRE's ONTOLOGY
not a danger to our freedom but a matter of unfolding it: it is
because of my freedom that, although I cannot put the boulder
in my pocket, I can nevertheless climb on it or walk around it.
Sartre goes so far as to affirm that the existence of a free For-

itself, projecting itself toward an external aim, would be im-

possible without objects which were external to the For-itself

and were able to be disposed of and arranged as a means toward
an end. 36
Furthermore, the philosophical notion of freedom ought not
to be confused with the popular one. For the man on the street,
freedom very often means obtaining what he wants, or receiving
what he desires. This is a false view, however. Fulfillment of wish

does not belong to the philosophical notion of freedom. Freedom

is to will by oneself; autonomous choice. The distinc-
it is choice,
tion already considered by Descartes emphasizes once more that
to 'will does not imply to be able to do?*1 He who is able to de-
termine himself is free, not he who is able to grasp one million
dollars when suddenly he wishes for them.
Andyet, there seems to be some sort of "datum" which pre-
vents full exercise of our freedom and involves, so to speak, some

predominance of the In-itself over the For-itself. This must be

carefully investigated.
Let us first of all remember that freedom does not have its

own ground: in fact, though we are free we did not choose

to be free. We
are "geworfen," as Heidegger says. This "ge-
worfen" implies that we are thrown on the world without ex-
planation or justification, that we are in a way "abandoned."
And so, although freedom lack of being and not a massive
is

being, nevertheless it also has, or rather it is* its own datum-.

the fact that it is free and cannot not be free. Tfee question now
"
EN, p. 565. This statement wonld astonish Aquinas, who in his angelic
vtogki places s|>akfet*al foelags able to reafee what they want without re-
sistance* A
cleske is a reafeikn*
^ I, 35; Lettres a Meslmd (May 2, 1644), A. T, t. IV,
FREEDOM AND ACTION I
Op
is: what the relation with the real datum (the
is
plenum, the
In-itself)? The datum is not the cause of freedom (plenum pro-
3S
duces only plenum) nor the motive of the For-itself and its
freedom (motive emerges only through freedom); the datum
is the matter which freedom touches with its
"negation," and
illuminates with the light of its finality. Freedom stays in the
midst of the world and through its choice specifies and, so to

speak, creates thedatum or obstacle. Through the fact that my

freedom is in the world and projects itself toward an end, any
object whatsoever can become a datum. It is because 7 have
decided to climb Mount Washington that a boulder on the road
appears to me as an obstacle. The boulder in itself is neither easy
nor difficult to climb. The boulder is boulder. It is
easy or diffi-
cult f or me^ because I have decided to master it in one way or
another.
There is no absolute obstacle, but the obstacle reveals its co-
efficient of adversity and resistance in proportion to my means
and to my decision to surmount them.
Furthermore, in speaking of the human body, we saw how
3&

the For-itself exists its body. Freedom, with which the For-itself

may be identified, exists its body as well. It exists its datum. It is

obvious that this datum plays an important role in facing some

external datum such as, e.g., the boulder-to-climb. boulder can A
be easy to climb for an athlete and difficult for me, because I
am not an athlete. But again this does not imply that I am less
free than an athlete. As a matter of fact, I decided freely to do
the hiking. I could as well have stayed at home. In that case,
the boulder would have been neither easy nor difficult; it would
have dissolved in the totality
"world" without emerging from it

in one way or another.

From these introductory remarks one point becomes more
38
EN^ p. 567. Through such a statement the metaphysical problems of
the origin of For-kself (freedom and consciousness) is not solved; this will
remain for Sartre a crucial problem, as we shall see in Part IL
*
EN, pp. 369, 569.
110 EXPOSITION OF SARTRE'S ONTOLOGY
evident and it is an important one: Human reality encounters
obstacles and resistances everywhere, but all these are such be-
~'

itself^
We shall now deal more in detail with the five "obstacles" to
freedom.
The
place which I occupy for the moment pre-
e.

supposes another place, and this place still another, until I reach
the first place which I received the place, namely, where I
was born. It is from this original place that I can be said suc-
41
cessively to have occupied several places. This seems indeed to
restrict freedom. The determinist, emphasizing this limita-
my
tion, pretends that the choice of a certain place excludes other

possibilities and notably limits my freedom. The partisan of free

will, on the other hand, claims that, although I am in this spot
at the moment, I am always free to go somewhere else.
Neither of them, according to Sartre, hits the nail on the head.
First of all, place and space can be said "to be," as we have
42
seen, only through humanity. This does not imply that I create
it does mean that the
place in an idealistic way, but occupation
of a place is the result of my "organizing the world." It is in
considering several "this-es" my town, the four walls of my
room, my desk, my chair and in separating myself from them
in a continual and multivalent negation, that ipso facto I "situate"

myself amongst them as a "this" amongst "other thises." In this

way I constitute my place. Place can only be realized by a being
which is here and also there-, i.e., by a being which, although here,
is able "to go beyond" and to be present to another being, which
is there. As a matter of fact, one is only here because one is aware
of a there. And so only human consciousness can speak of place.
A Being-in-itself is not strictly speaking in a place, unless some
40
It is
pesfeaps needless
to say that this Is Sartre's opinion. In Part II, I
shall feave occasion to $|iow "why I disagree, Cf. Chapter Eight.

p. 241; see above, p. 51.

FREEDOM AND ACTION I I I

For-itself takes it
up in this active world organization and, con-|
^

it as a certain "this" (a table the four walls of

sidering among
my room), by the same fact locates it.

We come now to an important

point, a point which is char-
acteristic of Sartre's way of viewing
things: place in itself claims
Sartre, is neutral: it is neither an obstacle nor a help to free- my
dom. It is "projection towards a certain end" which makes
my
a help or a hindrance. 43
Practically, the fact of
my place either
a
occupying place happens always in view of an end; I am never
simply there. I am there for better or worse,
according to the
end which I have chosen. A place, therefore, becomes comfort-
able or not according to the end 'which my freedom has chosen.
is an obstacle for
Consequently, if my place my freedom, it is
because I myself -freely have chosen an end for which my place
is an obstacle. If I am a poor worker in Paris, it is obvious that
a trip to New York is
something impossible. It is impossible in-
deed. Since I choose New York, my place (the place of a poor
worker in Paris), is a real obstacle. But if my freedom chooses a
in Paris will no longer be an obstacle.
trip to Versailles, my place
Place, then, is not in itself an obstacle to freedom. body is My
always in "a place." Place a contingent form which my free-
is

dom takes; it is from there that I can -freely decide whether or not
44
this place is obstacle.

(5 My ^ast\ One of Sartre's most important assertions is that

freedom means to be free from all deterministic influence of the
past.
This does not imply, however, that freedom exists without
past. If I prepared myself
for the Marines during years of study
and practice, the inevitable result will be that I am really
pre-
pared for this kind of employment. I certainly can regret it and
even change it, but regret or change suppose precisely this past

*
EN, p. 573.
**N, p. 575. Cl. also pp. 369, 386,
where Sartre develops the hodo-
logical or instrumental
value of spstce; ie., according to Sartre, our view on
but is pragmatical, con-
space and place is not merely static or speculative,
tinually pragmatical
 112 EXPOSITION OF SARTRE^S ONTOLOGY
and happens "from this past." Consequently, each time I choose
and change, the existence of a position in the past is implied.
And although I am unable to change the brute fact of such a
45
/ am able now to decide freely about this past and give
past,
it a sense or meaning: I am an officer in the Marines; I can stay
at the same job or I can change, even through suicide. It is my
actual freedom which decides about my past. 7, myself, build up
the past of my future. My life and my past are continually in

suspense because of my freedom. "And nobody can be said to

be perfectly happy before his death." 4e
Consequently, our past appears as: (i) a continual materiali-
zation of what we are. For Sartre the past belongs to the region
of being which he calls "Being-in-itself." All that is behind us is

continually "petrified." (2) Furthermore, the past is that which

is in the world and which is visible for us and for the Other.

We can choose the future which we prefer, but, once it has

been chosen and has fallen into the past, we cannot prevent it
from being what it is. To want something concludes JSartre is- ?

it may be good remember -^to want its past.

to
Sartre expounds his view with multiple subtle analyses, but
all of them cannot
disguise the fact that here is one of the weak
i

points of his system: how to protect an extreme form of freedom

!

against a real and effective influence from the past. Having the
past which I have, is there not a certain motivation which pushes
me in one direction rather than another? Being the son of an
alcoholic and belonging to a family of alcoholics, shall I not be an
alcoholic myself or perhaps a rabid anti-alcoholic? Having been
a delinquent for many years during my youth, now, however,
converted and thoroughly transformed, shall I not at certain
moments still feel the influence of my past? Sartre makes many
suggestive remarks, but he does not solve this problem: there
-EN, p. 583.
**EN, p. 581. This proceeding" character of human existence is one
of tfae main themes of Kafka's Der Prozess. The same Idea is connected
die notion of anguish, p. 21, and EN, the marvellous pages 76 and 77.
FREEDOM AND ACTION 113
is in the life of a past which they no longer want;
some persons
what about this
past? Do
these persons enjoy the same freedom
as if this past had never been there? Sartre would be inclined to
tell us that
they are free to die; they can always commit suicide
and escape the weight of the past, performing in this way some
sort of Heideggerian "Freiheit zum Tode"; 47 but even this does
not eliminate the real influence of the past on freedom, the
my
past which I perhaps did not choose.
Surroundings. My
surroundings, in the Sartrian ter-
reTieiffieFmy place nor the space that I occupy, but
the things (tools) which surround me with their coefficient of

adversity and utility. These tools certainly have their value and
their own resistance. But who organizes this world, my world In
the German sense of "Umwelt," in such and such a way towards
such and such an aim? My own free will does this, and nothing
else. When I plan to use my bicycle, I know that the road is

rough and the sun hot and the hill steep. Nevertheless, I decide
to use my bicycle and choose to vanquish the "brute resistants."
I
may, however, act in a contrary way and decide to stop or even
to return home. But all this manifests clearly the existence of a
free choice.
In fact, a relation is built up between the For-itself and that
which is not me, namely the Being-in-itself. Without the in-

dependent In-itself, there would be no choice of an aim, nor of

tcols toward an end. There would be no action. To be free means
to-be-free-in-order-to-act or to-be-free-in-the-world. And free-
to-act means to be free to manipulate things, which
them- in
selves are indifferent to action. If there were not this "indif-
ference" in things, I could not act and would consequently not
be free.
The relation freedom and die things (tools) of
between my
therefore to be double. In the Sartrian
my surroundings appears
view, we need things, tools or means, HI order to act, ie., to be
*
Heidegger, SZ (19^9), p. 266*
ii4 EXPOSITION OF SARTRE'S ONTOLOGY
free. And this is
perhaps still more important the resistance
of things to our freedom depends on our freedom itself. A bi-
"

cycle is in itself an indifferent tool, but if I choose it freely in

bad weather, it may be a very "resistant" thing. It is thus really
the For-itself which has created the resistance. And if the world,

my world (meine Unwoelt), does not always seem so kind, I

should not be surprised. I should remember that the "resistance"
of certain things is
imputable to my free choice, and that if at

certain moments the resistance is

higher than I
anticipated, it is

because I could not foresee all

things. The world may not always
be "the valley of tears" which the Bible describes, but it is on-
tologically true that I am "exiled in an indifferent world." It is
my free choice which mostly decides about the coefficient of
48
adversity or utility of this world.
Sartre's position regarding surroundings is the same as that
regarding place: both are indifferent; it is
my free choice which
makes them obstacle or help.
(^)My Fellow-brethren. It is obvious that the presence of
the Other thrust upon me world which was already organized
a
when I arrived, a world which I did not supply. There is, as
we saw,
49
an existence-in-the-world-in-presence-of-the-Other.
This existence of mine amid the Others has concrete and pre-its

cise form: I am an American, a New

Yorker, a middle-class
person. It seems evident that the fact of belonging to such or
such a class, to such or such a country, places me in a
category
of beings which I have not chosen.
In order to understand the position of the individual before
the human species or before the nation, Sartre proposes that we
make a slight detour and look at the relation between grammar
and language. The great mistake has always been to put the gram-
mar before the language, to separate the language from the
spoken and living word, and to divorce the spoken word from

,, pf>* 342, 546, 596.

See above, pp. 65 fF.
FREEDOM AND ACTION I I
5
the concrete situation. To understand a sentence of the Other,
however, is
precisely to understand his concrete situation. I ask
my friend: How are the returns? He answers: Fair. I understand
that for the time being the vote wise
political situation is

only fair. Together with his, mind takes my

a quick view of the
political climate of our country. I realize his "situation," I move
toward his possibles, i.e., the objects which can both tran- we
scend: the war
situation, the government, the Republican party,
the latest national emergency.
It is therefore obvious that each word and each statement must

be connected with the global situation of a For-itself, and that

they are free expressions of a free being. All schemes about lan-
guages or dialects are by themselves "zmselbstandig" and have
sense only ewhen incarnated in the living word and as such car-

by a "free imll. And this is true for all human techniques.

50
ried
We can make a method and a scheme out of all of them, but
they exist only in the materialization of the concrete act of the
For-itself.
This now can be applied to human beings. The human species
does not exist prior to its concrete incarnation in some individual.
The For-itself, therefore, is not dependent upon the human
species or the nation. Instead, the For-itself
in choosing (or ac-
itself presents us with the of elaborating a
cepting) possibility
51
scheme which is the human
species or the national collectivity.
It is because several of us accept being Americans that the Ameri-
can nation exists. And just as each For-itself is
responsible for
the existence of the human species,
American through the
so each
fact that he admits being an American constitutes the American
nation.
50
EN, p. 600. Sartre touches here a very interesting point, namely die
danger of using techniques for all things. In using and abusing methods
and techniques for all things, e.gn a technique for conversation, a technique
for entertainment, eccn we run die risk of developing a "technique of
techniques" . . . widb tite corollary danger of losing forever human reality
itself.
n6 EXPOSITION OF SARTRE'S ONTOLOGY
One
could object that language or any other technique is
ready-made for an individual when he emerges in the world.
Sartre partly agrees with this objection. There is indeed a "datum"
which I cannot prevent. When I "arrived" in the world, the
world was already "looked at," organized, measured. And yet, it
is still
my task to take over, to "interiorize," and to make my
own the human and And
once a technique
national techniques.
is "interiorized," it is no
longer a technique but something in-
carnated and guided by my free will toward an aim. 52 My free-
dom uses, exploits, and, so to speak, masters the technique in an
individual way. As for the idea of nation, I can, as a matter of
fact, not be a person without belonging to one form or other
of community (continental, national), but all these characteris-
53
tics have nothing "substantial" about them. It is
my personal
world in its concrete form, and to be a Frenchman, a proletarian
are only means of being myself. That which exists, asserts Sartre,
isthe individual. The categorization of the individual comes later
and is
merely human work. "What is a Jew? It's a man whom
54
other men take for a Jew."
This cannot be prevented, admits Sartre. In appearing in
55
this world, I am the "For-the-Other," and as such the Other
may detect in me some aspects which he likes either more or
less; e.g., I may appear unfavorably to him as Jewish or as Ger-
man. Ifso -facto I am alienated. The Other limits me through
his presence; once more, freedom is only restricted by free-
dom ^ in this case, freedom by the freedom of the Other.
my
Emergence in the world as freedom before the Others implies
inevitably that this freedom appears as object for the Other,

"JEZ^pp.jzi, 604
88
In the German sense of "selbstamdig."
64
Cf. Sartre, The Reprieve, p. 96.
iBR
See above, Chapter Fow, 1, 4.
**
Sartre's basic notasoai rif fieeclom, as I stated earlier, supposes no limi-
tation wteasoeTOTi fo is only fimised by freedom. Here he asserts that it is
only Imitsed fyf I'eedom, but in this case he points to the freedom of the
s t^e ^spictmg element of my freedom.
FREEDOM AND ACTION II J

and is thus, in a certain sense, alienated. This alienation is uncon-

scious, however. If it is not, if I become conscious of my aliena-
tion in the mind of the Other, at the same rime I become, through
him, conscious of my own freedom; in a sense I recover my free-
dom. 57
Concerning my defects: they are never viewed by me as they
are viewed by the Other. Whatever defect the Other finds in

me, which appears in fact to be true, cannot as such be realized

by me. The ground of the question is that I am unable to view
myself as the Other views me. The realization that "I am a
sinner," that "I am guilty," is an impossible task at least, in

the way that the Other would like me

to perform it. This is what
Sartre calls an "unrealizable". If the Other claims that I am ugly,
I
ought to assume it, even when I myself do not see it. There are
many such "unrealizables" inmust assume them in pain
life. I

or pleasure, in hate or joy. It is the view of the Other on me.

In a certain sense such views do restrict my freedom not in its
internal and essential dimension, believes Sartre, but as some ex-
ternal limitation through the strength of the Other.
And with this Sartre hopes to convince the reader that his

theory of absolute freedom is

adequate notwithstanding the ex-
istence of the Other. 58

fT^ My Death. This is the last "obstacle" to freedom, or at least

that which could eventually be considered as an obstacle. The
is, how far can death be considered as a real obstacle? 59
question
First of all, death can be viewed from several angles. The Chris-
tian Ethic considers death as something non-hwnan\ i.e., as the

beginning of another life, Ethic "metaphorically ex-

or, as that

it, as the gate to an Eternal Life. Some members of recent

presses
literary milieus, however Rilke and Malranx, for Instance

w
EN", p. 609. The same thing happened in the look (see above, pp. 66 ff.),
where the Subject became object in the look of the Other bat again Sub-
ject in looking at the Other.
88
Sartre's motion of freedom w21 be examined in detail in Part IL
w
EN, p. 615.
n8 EXPOSITION OF SARTRE'S ONTOLOGY
have considered death as
something entirely human, belonging to
my own life as a quality of my life.
Heidegger was the first

to give a philosophical interpretation to this "humanization"

of death. As we have seen, Heidegger's Dasein is a "project
toward . .
."; i.e., Dasein is a source of possibilities. According
to Heidegger, one of the possibilities is, precisely, death. Death

is even the possibility "par excellence,"

the most personal and
the most unavoidable possibility. And Heidegger concludes:
"Dasein ist sein zum TodeT 60

Sartre once more posits absurdity this time as a basic quality

of death. 61 Death is absurd because one cannot foresee it or wait

for can expect death, but I cannot wait for it. I can 'wait for
it. I

a train and expect a friend to be on it: the arrival of the train

is
something specific and determinate; the arrival of my friend,
on the contrary, is ambiguous. Death can only be expected be-
cause of its vagueness. Consequently, claims Sartre, we cannot

agree with Heidegger and call it my possibility. 62 It is not my

possibility;
it is the destruction of my possibles and is itself out

of my possibles.
Death is also absurd because one cannot choose it. In fact, we
are always 'waiting for something. This is essential to the For-itself
as being a continual temporalisation. This continual waiting,

waiting, waiting looks in fact for a state where there is no more

waiting. The Christian Ethic solves the problem by calling death
an eternal rest, "requies aeterna," considering it as something in
which the account is closed and life receives its definite sense.
60
SZ, p. 250. Cf. De Waelhens, pp. 135 fF.
"Sartre uses and abuses the term "absurd." In its fundamental signifi-
cation, absurd means "that which is contrary to reason." Sartre, however,
deviates more or less from this original signification. Absurd for him has
several meanings. Sometimes, it implies a failure; in this sense, the For-
itself perpetually desiring and never satisfied is a failure and is "ab-

surd.** Sometimes, absurd means or "without justifica-

^without foundation,"
tidiC* e^^ again die For-itself is not justified in its origin. It is absurd. As
we saw, Love is, absurd in the sense of failure: mutual conquest is impossible.
Here, abstod means "that which does not make sense."
FREEDOM AND ACTION 119
This completely wrong, however, according to Sartre. I myself
is

do not close the account, somebody else does it for me. Precisely
because I cannot choose the instant of my death, death is ab-
surd. I can train myself for years to became a great author and
then die suddenly before I have written the first page of my
book. Death does not give a real sense to life. 63
For Sartre, then, death is completely absurd. The For-itself is

perpetual desire, and death is the end of all desire. The For-itself
is
permanent expectation, and death is the end of all
expectation.
Death does not really belong to the For-itself, it does not fit
thej
For-itself, it lies outside, belonging to the Other. This last is the

important point in Sartre's view on death. The question now isr

why? The answer, that death is the external limit of my con-
sciousness: the For-itself disappears forever when death appears.
The results is that I die ... not to myself, but to the
Other.j
As soon I become
as I die, I
disappear into the In-itself: somej
sort of solidified being, a past, which belongs to the other living"
human beings. Malraux notes rightly: Death converts lifejjuto
destiny. When I am dead, the Other takes care of
my life. He
becomes, so to speak, the guardian of my life. In a way, he is
responsible formy can forget me or he can keep me
death. He
in his memory. Each of us must consider himself as the subject
of a future and strange alienation, an alienation by which we
we belong to the Other as soon as we die.
Sartre writes a very interesting and original page on this mys-

dependency of death on the living Other. AH death is a

64
terious
defeat in this sense: that it makes us thoroughly dependent upon
the Other. This being of the dead is not purely imaginary; it
is a
being another real being of a special dimension (not a

ghostly one). Louis is a real XV

being, but death has reduced
him to the dimension of pure exteriority or mere Being-for-
the-Other.
Sartre's cpocfasionL is that there is no place for mortality in the
* M
EN, p. 624. EN, pp. 632, 654-
 ?
120 EXPOSITION OF SARTRE S ONTOLOGY
For-itself.
Mortality lies outside the For-itself. 65 Death is the
external limit of life; life itself is freedom and choice.
The relation between freedom and death is this:
just as death
is the external limit for my subjectivity, so is it the external limit
for my freedom. My freedom
a living being is complete.
as

Death is the limit for

my freedom, but a limit which I shall never

grasp and which will never restrict me as a conscious being. For

when death is there, I am no longer there.
The conclusion of the curious dialectic is that I am not free to
die but that I am a free mortal.
And here I shall conclude and summarize this exposition of
Sartre's notion of freedom. Human reality is
essentially
and
basically free. This freedom is not some accident of the For-
itself or human consciousness, but is human reality itself. How-
ever, this freedom must by going away from certain
realize itself
I am in a
data: place; consequently my freedom must realize
itself
by going away from this place which it is free either to
make an my surroundings or tools: they
obstacle or not. I have

again are means to free performance according to my own free

decision. Emerging into the world, I meet the so-called tech-
niques, such as language and nationality. These cannot be avoided;
I have to assume them. But once more, in
choosing myself as an
existent being, they are a logical consequence. Being born in
New York, and choosing to exist, I must assume the fact that I
am an American. There speaking no obligation, but
is
strictly
there is a free acceptance. Death itself does not concern me . . .

for as Epicurus puts it, and Sartre follows him on this point, "it is
the moment of life which I never have to live."

The result of this freedom in its most acute form is

responsi-
bility. We cannot escape responsibility. Human reality "carries
* two concepts of death and which
According to Sartre, the finitude,
are usually connected, must be separated. Human reality would be finite
even if ^immortal, inasmuch as human reality in its very essence is die
capacity for choice, and being able to choose is finite.
FREEDOM AND ACTION 121
on shoulders the weight of the "world." 68 I am not responsible
its

for the existence of the world, but I am responsible for the fact
that it is what it is. If the world is not better than it is, the fault
is incumbent on the For-itself (or human reality). Consequently,
it is world is our world: we have
ridiculous to complain. This
made it, we have chosen it, we must take it. The most terrible
war situations are not inhuman: they are tragically human. They
could have been avoided by desertion or by suicide. Rejecting
both desertion and suicide, I have to fight. 67 One could object
that I did not ask to be born. Indeed, that is true. And Heidegger

may have a point "when he claims that we are "geworfen" on this

world, I
amesponsible for all
things except for my responsi-
bility^
And yet it remains true that whatever attitude I take
concerning my birth, let us say regret, hate or joy, it is again
a free assumption of my birth and already a way of considering
my birth as mine.
This precisely the tragic origin of anguish: it is the feeling
is

of a being which is not responsible for its origin or for the origin
of the world, but which, because of its dreadful freedom, is

nevertheless responsible for itself and for the world that it

structures. "The man who makes such a discovery, has neither
^
regret, nor hate, nor excuse ... he is free. He
is freedom."

III. ACTING, HAVING, BEING

The For-itself, being freedom, expresses itself in a continual free

and concrete choice. 68 The object of that choice is the In-itself :

because of its basic incompleteness, the For-itself desires being

*
EN, p. 639.
91
In The Reprieve* Sartre explains how war is the result or ratfoer the
total of all our free wills. Some and collective in soch a
acts are national
way that, although we are all responsible, through the fact that we all
ns and the whole
cooperate freely, our freedom in a certain way escapes
fatalistically unavoidable. The Reprieve, p. 257.
becomes See also Campbell,
Jean-Paid Sartre^ p. 155, and Sartre, Psychology of Imagination p. 67.
* EN, ~2V* pp- 652,688,
p. 642.
122 EXPOSITION OF SARTRE'S ONTOLOGY
and this desire
expresses itself in a permanent attraction toward
the plenum of the In-itself. The
For-itself longs for an identifica-
tion with the In-itself but at the same time tries to save its con-
scioumess; i.e., it tries to become In-itself and to stay For-itself
at the same time. As we have seen, such an identification would
be God. There is not the slightest chance, however, of realizing
this desire: all identification with the In-itself is, ipso facto, plain
extinction of consciousness and, consequently, disappearance of
the For-itself.
Desire toward the In-itself can take several^orms, but all of
themjgn be reduced, claims Sartre^ tpja. jform^ of appropriation
^ n t ie somew hat disordered but
"
interesting last
70
chapter of Sartre's book, the following main statements can be
detected:
1. Human activity in its various forms is an attempt toward
appropriation.
2. Possession (i.e., the result of appropriation) is for the For-

a form of being an In-itself.

itself

3. Possession leaves the possessor (the For-itself) unsatisfied.

As for the first point, Sartre remarks that we notice in human

activity not only an effort to possess money and property but an
attempt "to possess" all other manifestations, such as art, knowl-
edge, eating, sex or play. In the phenomenological description of
these different aspects of human life, Sartre is once more a virtu-
oso. Faithful to his method, he shows and explains, details and
analyzes. The reader is attracted, captivated, and yet hesitant. The
main ideas are worth exploring, particularly since they point once

again to the tragic conclusion of Sartre's ontology; that is, to

the failure of human existence.
When the artist makes a statue, claims Sartre, it is in order to

possess it. It is his creation. It is an idea of his which has taken

form. Between the artist and his work a double relation arises:
he is the one who conceives the statue and the one who possesses
FREEDOM AND ACTION 123
it; it is his,
completely his. Some people prefer to surround them-
selveswith the work of their hands. Their joy is double: not
only
do these works belong to them but they are made by them. 71
To know is also a form of appropriation. This appropriation
may not be exclusive others may have the same knowledge
but it is a manner of possession nonetheless. Sartre tries to sup-
port his statement by making a detailed analysis of several terms:
72
knowledge is a "denudation," it is a "hunting," an "eating" (a
child, for instance, wants to eat what it sees), an "assimilation,"
There also
is a wish to
assimilate without
destroying, e.g., Jonah
in the stomach of the whale. Sexuality also presents an attempt
73
at assimilation, an assimilation, however, which is a failure. The
dream of the lover to identify himself with the loved woman
is

without losing his own individuality; the other must become

him without ceasing to be the other. This is an impossible thing.
The complexion of a woman, always smooth and polished, which
one can grasp but never entirely possess, is a symbol of this
impossible assimilation. Eating, sex,
and knowledge are so many
forms of possession or appropriation.
Is play also a form of appropriation? It looks at first as if pky

would not be an appropriation, for play supposes that one does

not take the world seriously. A revolutionary, for instance, is a
man who takes the world "seriously"; in fact, he tries to change
the aspect of the word. A
materialist, claims Sartre, is also a man
who takes the world too seriously, for he is crushed down by

all-importance. Both attitudes, the

its attitude of the materialist

and the attitude of the revolutionary, are characterized by a pre-

dominance of the object over the Subject.
series of acts in which, disregarding the
Play is an act or a
rules of the world, one follows self-made roles in some sort of
artificial world. And yet, play is a form 0f appropriation,

71
EN* p. 665.
**
EN, p. 667. "(Test le viol par k vne, deiorer en voyam.**
**See above, Chapter Three, HI, i.
124 EXPOSITION OF SARTRE S ONTOLOGY
Through a description of skiing, Sartre tries to prove his thesis. 74

Skiing is a visual possession, he states; it is also, because of the

extreme speed, a real possession of the snowfield; it is a conquest
of space-, it is an attempt to be "here" and "there" at the same
time; it is
possessive.
In short all human activity is an
attempt to appropriate in one
way or another the In-itself . This appropriation now and this
the second point special form
is is for the For-itself a of being;
it is a
way of becoming In-itself.
When we look carefully at the concept of "to have" or "to

possess," noticewe
that through the possession of an object a link
arises between the
possessor and the object. This link between
the possessor and the possessed implies some sort of unity. This

explains why in primitive societies

a man was often buried with
all his
belongings. This link between the possessor and his object
cannot be explained by somebody who takes the traditional
realistic
position in epistemology. As a matter of fact, such a
doctrine supposes an object and a Subject which are completely

independent of one another; it excludes all real connection be-

tween them. In the Sartrian view, on the contrary, things are
easier. The possessed object being the real thing
supposedly
(Le., the Being-in-itself) and the possessor as For-itself being
thoroughly "unselbstandig," union between them is possible.
The For-itself is precisely lack of being, desire of being. De-
sire for appropriation, therefore, is a desire to
complete one-
self, a desire to be "one with . . .
," a desire for "identification
with . . .
," a desire to become a Being-in-itself, to a certain
extent.
What sort of link between the possessor and its object do
we find realized in possession? Or, to phrase the question differ-
ectly, what
sort of completion does possession give?

Obviously, there is no question of a real physical identification.

Tlie objects which belong to me are completely independent of
FREEDOM AND ACTION 125
me and confront me. "And yet because of the link, the special
link of possession, there is something of myself in the object,
which I own," claims Sartre. 75 In other words, there is an ideal
presence of the For-itself in the possessed object (Being-in-itself).
Appropriation, therefore, is an initial attempt of the For-itself,
which basically empty, to complete itself
is and to become an
In-itself. Appropriation is a
symbol of what we would want to
realize completely, become an In-itself and yet to
namely, to
remain a For-itself The human dream of becoming a For-itself-
in-itself, however, will never be realized. Possession gives us a
faint foretaste of this Utopia, 76
nothing more.
This second point has already answered the third one: what
do we see in the object of our possession itself? Do we want
this object for itself or do we want more?
According to Sartre, no one object can satisfy us. Therefore,
to appropriate an object is in reality an attempt to appropriate
the world. Just as the lover loves all women in one woman, so
the For-itself, in its
appropriation of one object, merely mani-
fests its vain but deep-seated attempt to conquer the whole of
the Being-in-itself 7T .

Christian moralists, too, have very often stressed the idea of

the vanity of worldly satisfaction. Their motive is different, how-
ever. If they underline the inanity of possessions, it is in order to

emphasize the supreme value of God, in the sense of Augustine's

in Te, Domine."
"Irrequietum est cor nostrum donee requiescat
The Christian ethic, furthermore, appeals to our experience and
to our disillusionment with worldly pleasures,
Sartre s statement, on the contrary, is not so much empirical as
r

a priori. Indeed, it is founded on his basic notion of the For-itself.

75
EN, p. 682.
78
In order to show still better how we are obsessed by the idea of ap-
propriation, Sartre presents
some minor arguments, e.gn destruction. When
we destroy something, we simply express our joy at possessing a thing
completely. A
part of our joy in smoking is sadistic:
we like to destroy.
a. EN, pp. 683, 687.
77
EN, p. 686.
126 EXPOSITION OF SARTRE's ONTOLOGY
His ontology has repeatedly shown what human reality is: it is
a passion toward
being, a longing toward identification with the
In-itself with the vain hope of becoming God. In each of us is
the desire to become the God-man but in a way opposite from
that of Christ. Christ from God became man and we from man
try to become God. This passion is useless, and the divine dream
isa contradiction.
And this is the tragic finale of Sartre's ontology.
The For-itself is a failure in its inner constitution. Being what
it is not and not being what it is, it carries in itself an insoluble
78
paradox.
The For-itself is a failure in its attitude toward the Other:
love, desire, sex are so many illusions. other people."" 79
"The hell is

The For-itself is a failure in its conquest of the world: it will

never be what it wants to be, the For-itself-in-itself: i.e., God.
"Human being is useless passion
. . . and to intoxicate your-
self alone in a bar or to conduct the nations is equally vain." 80
78
See Chapter Two, I and II. Bad faith is one of these manifestations
of the ambiguity of human reality. Sartre's Ethics^ which have not yet
appeared, wul take this ambiguity
as a starting point and consider it as a
source of value. At least, this is what is generally expected.
79
Sartre, No Exit, p. 61.
**EN, pp. 708, 721. Sartre's statement has become idiomatic in France:
L'idee de Dieu est contradictoire et nous nous perdons en vain: Vhomme
t

est une passion mutflel" And in the Age of Reason, at the end of the book:
"He yawned: he had finished the day, and he had also finished with his
youth. Various tried and proven rules of conduct had already discreetly
offered their service: disillusioned epicureanism, smiling tolerance, resigna-
tion, flat seriousness, stoicism all the aids whereby a man
may savor,
minute minute, like a connoisseur the failure of a life [italics mine].
by
He took off his jacket and began to undo his necktie. He yawned again
as he repeated to himself: 'It's true, it*s really true: I have attained the
"
age of reason.' (p. 397)
 PART TWO
CRITICISM AND COMMENTS
Edwards: "You are a philosopher, Dr, Johnson. I have
tried too in my time to be a philosopher; but, I don't

know how, cheerfulness was always breaking in."

BOSWELL, The Life of Samuel Johnson

 SARTRE'S EPISTEMOLOGICAL
APPROACH

In this second part I shall consider critically the main

*
points of Sartre's ontology: his epistemological approach, his
notion of For-itself, his concept of freedom, his conflict with
metaphysics, and finally his one-sided negativism or subjectivistic
approach. I shall begin, however, with a general view of the whole
of his doctrine.

Sartre's ontology is dominated by a double entity: the For-itself

(human consciousness) and the In-itself (all which is not human
consciousness), The In-itself is not the For-itself, but nevertheless
the In-itself appears through the For-itself. In order to make this
clear I shall borrow the example which the scientist uses in ex-
plaining the atomic structure of the universe: if one of the atoms
which constitute the universe were to be annihilated, we are
told, the result would be a catastrophe which would destroy the
whole cosmos. This can serve as a descriptive metaphor for
Sartre: the For-itself is some sort of absence of being (of Being-

in-itself), a hole in being, as Sartre calls it, a lack of being; and

because of this "hole" a tremendous event happens to the Being-
in-itself. This event is the appearance of the world. Thanks to

the For-itself the world appears or, to use Sartre's terminology,

thanks to the For-itself the world is. The For-itself is the Fiat:

*A <letailed exegesis would not be of any gieat value, since accessory

statements serve meidy to enforce or Hominate Sartre's essential points.
I
JO CRITICISM AND COMMENTS
not in the sense of creating the being of things but in the sense
of revealing and organizing them.
The For-itself is not a "nihilum absolutum," however; it is

rather continual nihilation: it is "not that": not a car, not a tree,

not a house, not a barber's pole. For the For-itself to be this
"nihilation," it must be empty. In order to effect this drastic

emptying Sartre describes the For-itself as a pure "Unselbstandig-

impersonal, non-substantial, a lack. He

keit": it is claims that in
this
way he avoids the famous Subject-Object dualism which for
centuries was the stumbling-block of philosophers. There is no
Subject-Object. There is only an object. This object
is the

Being-in-itself, of which the For-itself nothing but the appear-

is

ance or revelation.
Since the For-itself is lack^ it appears that it is desire as well.
The For-itself is desire of the In-itself ; it is the eternal seeker of
the In-itself. But all
attempt at identification with the In-itself is
a failure, according to Sartre, for if the For-itself could succeed
in its identification, it would stop being For-itself (i.e., conscious-

ness).
In fact, Sartre notices, at three different moments, a split
in
the universe:
1. The split
between For-itself and In-itself: the recuperation
of the For-itself is a failure.
2. The split
in the For-itself through reflection: the For-itself,

in order to be conscious of itself, reflects. This reflection is a

new disaggregation and the reflecting consciousness is unable to
catch again the reflected consciousness, since if it could there
2
would no longer be a reflection.
3. The split between several For-itselves, which results in the
existence of the Other, 3 disrupting the unity of a world con-
sciousness. And yet it is obvious that position in front of the
my
Other is different from position in front of the Being-in-itself.
my
*
See aixwe, C&apter Two, V.
*
See above, Chapter Four*
SARTRE'S EPISTEMOLOGICAL APPROACH
131
I seize the In-itself,
but the In-itself does not seize me. I seize the
Other and the Other seizes me as well
The between myself and the Other formed the sub-
relations

ject of Chapter Four and need not be

recapitulated here. Suffice
it to say that they too are a failure.

Chapter Five examined Sartre's notion of freedom, and con-

cluded that Sartre propounds- the most anti-deterministic notion
of freedom which two thousand
years of philosophy has ever
presented. His position can be summarized in one statement:
human reality is freedom. No motive whatsoever influences the
For-itself. The In-itself is full and massive. The For-itself is in-
dependent of matter and is
pure freedom.
The For-itself, being freedom, lack, and desire, is insatiable;
that is to say, its free activity
expresses itself in a continual at-
4
tempt at "appropriation." This appropriation is an effort to
become In-itself and to remain For-itself at the same time. But

this, too, is condemned to be an eternal failure.

In summary, then, we may say that Sartre's whole system is

a structure of subtle relations between two "entities," one of them
consisting of "all" of being and the other "consisting" of "nothing-
ness." We
touch here perhaps one of Sartre's most
strikingly orig-
inal
points (not necessarily his most meritorious), for although
r
Plato s Sophist has a similar intuition, 5 the
way in which Sartre
states this
presence and form of "nothingness" is new. As we have
seen in preceding
chapters, Sartre identifies the For-itself with
the capacity of "nihilation," and considers human
reality there-
fore as the source of nothingness in the world.
Being the orfy
reality by which nothingness can happen in the world, it is itself
"non-being."
In more traditional views, consciousness was
generally pkced
"on the side of being"; humanity joined itself with the fullness
of being and not with non-being.
Strangely enough, only the
*
See above, Chapter Five, HL
5
1 shall come back to this similarity later.
132 CRITICISM AND COMMENTS
mystics present human reality as an emptiness. Their presenta-
the nothing-
tion, however, is
metaphorical, and, in emphasizing
ness of human nature they want the latter to be filled with the

transcending God. A
human being in their eyes is "this non-being
capable of God," as Tauler observes; or the "tamquam mhilum
coram Te, Domine" of Catherine of Siena. 6 find the same We
idea in John of the Cross, who uses a metaphor of the night,
"noche oscura? to illustrate the fact that where all form and all
vision have been erased, the All, "Todo," emerges. 7 The mystics
want the emptiness of the soul so that God and God alone can
inhabit it. If the soul is a desert, the ocean of God will fill it.
8

Their crushing down of the human being, therefore, goes on

an equal footing with an obsession for and a faith in the Absolute.
It isobvious that Sartre's For-itself has nothing ascetic about
it, and yet there is something almost equally striking in the way
in which he demonstrates through seven hundred pages the tragic
adventure of the For-itself in unceasing but impossible siege
its

of the In-itself. Seldom has a philosopher stated this dramatic

aspect of human reality. Human reality is "nothingness."
It can-

not succeed. It is a failure. And . . there is no God. Here, ,

perhaps for the time in history, is a system which does not,

first

through its atheism, seek to exalt the

power of man. Sartre has
given up the old alliance between naturalism and optimism, athe-
ism and self-independence. In linking human reality with "noth-

ingness," he has produced a real conceptual revolution.

Thus, the Sartrian For-itself is something new. But is not per-
haps this originality Sartre's weak point? This is the question
which examine in the following pages, beginning with a
I shall

critique of Sartre's epistemological method.

*"I am like nothing before Thee, My God."

7
Cf . also SyMd&i Ed. Crit. I, p. 90: "Para venir a serlo todo, no quieras
sear a%o en nada,* Le., **if you want to become the All, try to become
nodblng.'*
*CC Tattoos comment on the text "the abyss invokes die abyss" in his
Second Sermon on John the Baptist.
SARTRE'S EPISTEMOLOGICAL APPROACH
133

IL

In order to discuss this difficult

point clearly, let us first of all
remember what Sartre, from the start of his exposition, has tried
with the greatest care to avoid.
Claiming to be, and to remain, a
realist, he has rejected the Cartesian
Cogito; i.e., the progression
from reflected
thought toward was born
reality. Critical idealism
the day Descartes decided that the mathematical method could

replace the metaphysical one, for the mathematician proceeds

from thought toward
being. His overthrow of the Aristotelian
and medieval method constitutes
perhaps the first "Copernican
Revolution" in philosophy. 9
Although his method was idealistic,
Descartes was still realistic
enough in his intentions, however:
the Meditations Metaphysiques are
nothing but a laborious
attempt to reach a reality which others had attained before him
in an
easy and simple affirmation without any proof whatsoever.
The phenomenological school to which Sartre
belongs saw in
the Cartesian Cogito an absolute truth and the
very beginning
of all philosophical exploration. 10 Husserl, however, unlike Des-
cartes, made not the slightest effort to reach an external world.

Phenomenology in the Husserlian view was a description of

that which appears of phenomena, therefore. As for the real
*
Historians have more and more tended to
point to the disturbing simi-
larity between Descartes' axiom, "Cogito, ergo sum," and
Augustine's **Si
enim fallor, sum" (De Trimtate^ X, 10). Cf, Blanchet, Les antecedents
u
historiques de je peme, done je sws" (Paris, 1920); and Gilson, Le Role
de la pensee medievde dans la formation du systems Cartesien (Paris,
195)
Even during the lifetime of Descartes there was some doubt about the
t

originality of the Cogito." Leibnitz, who never cared limch for the French
phflosopher, called Descartes a thief: "Monsieur des Cartes est un voleur!"
Descartes himself claimed never to have read
AugTistine. At any rate,
Descartes was the first to use the Cogito in the
way he used it. He was
the first philosopher to elaborate a radical dualism between and
body
and one can say that through this dualism comes a
soul, deepening of the
Augustinian view. The Church father cared merely for a proof of th-e
spirituality of the soul. Descartes made this deepening with his eye on
-

was needed for his theory of mechanism.

10
Husserl, Meditations Cartesiermes (Park: Vrin, 1947).
134 CRITICISM AND COMMENTS
existence of these phenomena, Husserl solved the problem with
his famous "einklammerung" or thematic reduction; i.e., he put
existence between brackets,
postponing the solution until later.
"The existence of the world, based on the evidence of natural
experience, can be for us no longer an evident fact; it is only an
n "Let us reflect. As
object of affirmation." philosophers, who
meditate in a radical way, we possess at the moment neither a
valuable science, nor an existent world. Instead of existing simply,
this world is for us a mere
phenomenon pretending to exist (Seins-
l2
anspruch)." This was HusserPs provisional (!) solution of the
epistemological problem. In actual fact, he became an idealist
and considered "personal experience as an appearance and the
universal experience as a coherent dream." 13 His Cogito was

nothing but his consciousness, a consciousness in which, through

reflection, he noticed several phenomena; description and com-

parison of these phenomena constituted his phenomenological

method.
Sartre followed his master in the matter of phenomenological

description, but carefully avoided Husserl's idealistic way of

proceeding. Instead of taking the reflexive Cogito and the "Ein-
klammerung" of existence, Sartre took the so-called prereflexive
Cogito as the starting point for his phenomenological ontology.
His reason for doing so is clear. He could not follow Husserl in
his subjectivism, for if he had, the all-important massive and full
being the Being-in-itself would have escaped him com-
pletely. What was at stake, as he saw the problem, was the straight
and simple affirmation of this external reality, this reality which
each of us notices in our everyday contact with the world, this
external reality which is given in our
ordinary knowledge or
prereflexive Cogito. To consider the prereflexive Cogito in an

example: to know Peter is, ipso facto, to affirm the existence of

"Htisserl* Meditc&km? Gcartenemte^ p. 15.

SARTRE'S EPISTEMOLOGICAL APPROACH
135
Peter. Sartre knew very well the
mortality rate of philosophical
systems which lock themselves up in the prison of the Cartesian
Cogito, and he sought his own salvation in the idea of "pre-
reflexive" consciousness: conscious
knowledge of an external
object, any external object.
In this Sartre was
right. And yet he fails to prove his most
important statement: that to know is to know
something, to be
conscious is to be conscious of 14
One must be careful
something.
about conclusions where Sartre is concerned, and
however,
attend closely to the
subtlety of his proceedings. Since each
epistemological position supposes always in one way or another
an object and a Subject, an examination of each of them should
help to illuminate the defects and of Sartre's
qualities starting
point.

IIL

As
regards Sartre's notion of object,
15
one notices in his In-
16
troduction a strong to start from reality and not
tendency
from thought, to accept the value of and to avoid
knowledge
making a problem of something which in fact is
only a pseudo-
problem. As far as this general attempt goes, one is in agreement
with him. However, disagreement arises as soon as Sartre claims
to
specify the ontological status of the object. And on this
delicate point he does not leave his readers
long in doubt. In
the early pages of his book he states: "Modem
thought has made
considerable progress in reducing the existent to a series
of
apparitions which manifest the existent. An attempt has been
made in this
way to eliminate a certain number of dualisms and
to replace them by the monism of the phenomenon." 17 On the

"See above, p. 9.
15
ma)? appear dangerous in a criticism of Sartre's epistemology to
It
'from Subject. This separation is not definitive, however, as
separate object
will appear in the following pages, and is made here
only for clarity's sake,
7
EN, p.
136 CRITICISM AND COMMENTS
following page there is a no less ambiguous statement: "The
18
Being of an existent is precisely what it appears." The influence
of Husserl is manifest in such affirmations, as Sartre confesses
himself. 19 Husserl was prudent enough, however, not to risk
himself beyond the "phenomenon," and his whole system aimed
to be a coherent systematization of phenomena. Sartre is much
more audacious: the phenomenon leads him to the affirmation of
a massive Being-in-itself. A
realistic view will also accept the

existence of this massive being, but not by starting from the phe-
nomenon as such. Famous authors such as Anselm and Descartes
have attempted to demonstrate that an appeal to ontological proof
makes sense. But others, no less famous, have proved its basic
the radical impossibility, namely, of proceeding from
fragility:

knowledge of something (in the case of the notion of Perfec-

tion) to the affirmation of the existence of such a being. Sartre,
in his ontological proof, commits himself to the same imprudence
and goes beyond his
phenomenological ambitions, which are
merely or, at least, are supposed to be merely to describe
that which appears. According to Sartre, the Being-in-itself over-
20
flows its
appearance.
One wonders why, and wonders, too, how a phenomenologist
knows this?

Sartre at certain moments calls this overflowing the "trans-

phenomenality" of being.
21
An equivocal term, indeed. This
transphenomenality, he specifies, implies
that the being which
22
appears does not merely exist insofar as it
appears. The whole
problem is whether, proceeding as a phenomenologist, he can
be allowed to state the existence of that which does not appear
but will perhaps appear. It is entirely possible that the impres-
sion of reality may be a mere structure of the For-itself and the

M
EN, p. 12.
"Ibid.
30
See above, p. n.
* Ibid. Also
EN, p. id.
SARTRE'S EPISTEMOLOGICAL APPROACH 137
a facade and an illusion. 23
phenomenon simply Sartre's proof of
the existence and the massiveness of the Being-in-itself is cer-

tainly not apodictic.

This flow in Sartre's dialectic has been aptly exposed by Roger
Troisf ontaines, who writes:
The phenomenon from which one starts manifests itself at once as
a relation between two transphenomenal beings: consciousness on the
one hand and the objective condition of all manifestation on the other.
Is one consistent then, with the method of
phenomenology, when one
asserts that a being which appears only in its relation to consciousness
is non-relative to consciousness? Granted that relation as a term im-

plies a degree of autonomy that belongs to the Being-in-itseif, yet is

it not a palpable extrapolation to make it into an absolute and to cut
it from all relations? Is it not
yet another equally obvious extrapola-
tion to declare it non-conscious, inert, massive, simply because it is
other than my consciousness? The question comes down to this:
. . .

by what right does one place beyond all relation an In-itself which
"*
is known only through a relation?

And Gabriel Marcel likewise remarks in Homo Viator:

There is reason to believe that the source of the contradictions is

to be found in the unclear introduction to the work [EN]. This

source seems to me to lie in what M. Sartre in a dangerously am-
biguous phrase, designates as 'the transphenomenality of being.' Con-
trary to what might be expected this word in no way refers to any-
thing that resembles Kant's Ding-an-sicb. The transphenomenal being
of phenomena is the being of this table, of this pack of tobacco, of the
lamp, and more generally the being of the world implied by con-
sciousness. What consciousness requires is simply that the being of
that which appears should not exist solely insofar as it appears . . .

It is difficult to see how the transphenomenality of being could be

Jeanson, a disciple of Sartre, writes: "No one phenomenon is, as such,

23

an absolute, bat the transplieaomenality, the being of the phenomena, is

an In-itself absolutely objective beyond the manifestations." (Le Probleme
Moral et la Pensee de Sartre* f>. 183.) BIK we still wonder why? How
can he prove that tfeere is sofnetlilng la-itself, absolute beyond the manifesta-
tions?
Roger Troisfontaines, Le Cboix de
**
J.-P. Sartre (Paris, 1945), p. 4*>-
138 CRITICISM AND COMMENTS
anything but a figment invented by a mode of thinking which has not
25
yet fully succeeded in unfolding its own meaning.

And C. E.Magny, in an otherwise rather laudatory article

entitled "Le Systeme de Sartre" likewise raises the question:

upon what do the initial analyses rest, what is our guarantee for their
Must they be taken as postulate or as grounds of evidence,
validity?
or how else? *

My own opinion is that this initial start is not a form of evi-

dence but is
something far more like a postulate. Nevertheless,
itwould seem unfair and naive to restrict the whole epistemologi-
cal value of the system to what Sartre says in the Introduction or
even in the first
chapter of his book.
As have already suggested several times, Sartre's epistemologi-
I

cal position gains a certain strength from the ensemble: Le., the
inner coherence and solidity of the complete system, presented

throughout the whole of UEtre et le Neant. His aim is to give

the overall weight of being to the Being-in-itself. He does this
not only by means of a somewhat summarized affirmation of its
massiveness and its existence, but also by a continual emaciation
of human consciousness throughout the entire book. If human
consciousness is lack and
emptiness, and if nevertheless there is
being somewhere, it rmist inevitably be in the In-itself.
This argumentation is not without value, if one supposes that
the For-itself is
really this strange being which is non-substantial,
." and "revelation of ...
impersonal, "mere lack of
. .
being."
This brings us to an examination of what might be called Subject
in Sartre's epistemological approach. Subject intimately con-
is

nected with this chapter, but it will be separately treated in the

following chapter.
B
Gabriel Marcel, Homo Viator (Paris, 1944), p. 250.
*C-3L Magny in Esprit (avril 1945), p. 722.
 THE CONTRADICTIONS OF THE
7 FOR-ITSELF
In order to prove that the whole
ontological mass of
being is on the side of the Being-in-itself, and that
consequently
the For-itself is
only emptiness of this being, it was essential for

Sartre to show that the For-itself, however paradoxical this

expres-
sion may seem, never but only for the object
exists for itself

the Being-in-itself; and that the subjective element of the epis-

temological tandem, Subject-Object, is consciousness without

subject.
The outlines of Sartre's argumentation are thus clear. Concern-
ing the Being-in-itself there is not too much to say, 1 but the
be thoroughly examined, for it is imperative to
For-itself has to
show that at each boring human consciousness exhibits nothing
but nothingness.2 When this
inventory is
completed, the result,
at least in Sartre's eyes, is that the whole structure of the For-
appears to be "negative" and that
itself its
consistency lies out-

side, in the Being-in-itself at which it

points.
In the following pages I shall examine the value of Sartre's

way of emptying the For-itself by claiming that all its activities

are contaminated by non-being. A
second section will examine
the question of whether it is really possible for Sartre to sustain
3
his view that the For-itself is impersonal.

1
See above, Chapter Three.
*
See above, Chapter Two.
See above, Chapter Two, HL
I4<> CRITICISM AND COMMENTS
i. SARTRE'S NEGATIONS

Sartre, a very subtle dialectician, has his aim in view at all

times. He has, so to speak, prepared his

play and carefully dis-
tributed the parts. He takes three notions interrogation, de-
struction, and negative judgment. Each of these notions implies
somewhere a non-being under one form or another. This non-

being is not in things. There is no gap in the world (here he

agrees with Bergson). Hence, this non-being must lie in human
consciousness.

Concerning the notion of interrogation, one can agree with

Sartre thatit
supposes an absence of knowledge. An obvious
sophism, however, is Sartre's claim that this absence of knowledge
is a form of
non-being incarnated in consciousness itself. Because
human consciousness, thanks to its
comparative and abstractive
function, is able to see what is and what is not but could be, it

certainly does not follow that this consciousness itself is a non-

being under any form whatsoever.
The danger of Sartre's argumentation, therefore, is double:
first, he reifies "non-being," claiming that it is, and second, he

identifies it with "human consciousness" itself. Neither of these

assertionscan be proved. Sartre himself, in a cogent page, 4 claims
that being is full and that all gap or non-being under any form
must be excluded. Why necessarily does he, and how can he, then

pretend that absence of knowledge is

something which ought to
be localized, and localized in human consciousness? The fact is
that absence of knowledge is not, merely not; it is, therefore,
nowhere neither in an external world nor in a human con-
sciousness. Absence of knowledge, the characteristic of interro-

gation, is a result of human intellectual activity, which recog-

nizes that which is and that which can be.
The same thing can be said concerning negative judgment.
The fact that Peter is not in the cafe allows me to conclude:
BN.pp.S7f.
CONTRADICTIONS OF THE FOR-ITSELF 141
Peter is not there. This
a negative judgment, it is not at all a
is

"non-being" localized either in the cafe or in mind. The my

most we can say is that human consciousness is (or has) a faculty
which is able to compare, to divide, to abstract, to construct and
to reconstruct, to go backward in time, to foresee, to view its
"possibles," and so on, and hence to formulate interrogative and

negative judgments.
If Sartre objects: "If
being is everywhere, not only non-being
is inconceivable, but the
negation as well" (the objection is
mainly against Bergson), the consequence included in his state-
ment does not follow. The world may be full and the non-being
may be absent, yet nothing prevents me from conceiving non-

being: e.g.,
I can consider a
plain worker as a man who does
not know philosophy. I can conceive a blind person as some-
body who lacks sight. It does not follow that, being able to
make up concepts, I am in my most intimate being a non-being. 5
The contrary is obvious: to think is to be\ to make a negative
judgment supposes a real existing human consciousness; to for-
mulate an interrogation presupposes an intellect: to think is to
exist in the face of the world, for the simple reason that non-

being does not think and does not act. Non-being is not even
phenomenologically perceptible; how can Sartre as a phenome-
nologist treat of it and charge it imth complex activity, activity
of 'which non-being certainly is incapable?
As for the notion of destruction, Sartre here presents a new
approach: he claims that destruction is only possible in the pres-
ence of a human witness,
6
and concludes, as we have seen,7 that
5
Cf. Ayer, Horizon (July 1945).
^Novelist-Philosopher, J.-P. Sartre,"
"Sartre's reasoning on the subject of *le neant' seems to me exactly on a
par with that of the King in 'Alice through the Looking-glass.* *I see
nobody on the road' said Alice. *I only wish I had such eyesP remarked
the King 'to see nobody! . . .* The point is that words like 'nothing* and
'nobody are not used as the names of something insubstantial and mys-
terious, they are not used to name anything at all." (p. 19)
*
This approach is not exclusively Sartrian, but belongs to Heidegger
as well.
T
See above, Chapter Two, I, p. i6w
142 CRITICISM AND COMMENTS
the destruction or transition of form A into form Bis a form of

non-being which in fact is not in things, but which appears

because of the presence of human reality. And so human reality
becomes once more motive and reason of non-being: human
reality "puts" non-being in things and is able to do it because
it is itself
non-being.
3
Jean Wahl, in an article in Deucalion, attacks Sartre on this
notion of destruction. According to Wahl, destruction happens

equally well without a human witness as in

the presence of
one. A
planet could be destroyed before the existence of any
consciousness whatsoever; even now, a storm can destroy inde-

pendently of all human witness.

Wahl's attack seems only partly justified,
and certainly does
not reach the heart of the problem. true that a planet could
It is

be destroyed during say the pre-Cambrian period, before

the appearance of human consciousness. Disintegration of such
an entity a planet, a star does not need the presence of a
human witness. Neither Sartre nor Heidegger denies this. The
to emphasize is that our vocabulary
only point that they like
ought to be understood in a more humanistic way: destruction,
for instance, is a "humanistic" term; it is because a human wit-
ness noticed form A in a specific, organized way, before its dis-

integration, that the

destruction of A
can be spoken of. Accord-
ing to Sartre (and Heidegger), if there is nobody to view as A
such, one cannot speak of the destruction of A. Phenomenolo-

gists,
such as Sartre and Heidegger, claim that we human beings

place in things far more than we think:

we charge them with a
great number of attributes, qualities, and potencies which they
do not have.
This discussion between Wahl and Sartre does not, however,
grapple with die principal And that issue is: does destruc-
issue.
57
tion imply the "existence of a non-being in human conscious-
ness?
8
Jean WaM^ "Deucalion^ I: 47 (1946) .
CONTRADICTIONS OF THE FOR-ITSELF 143
My own answer, once more, is that it does not. A brief
glance
at the of the term "destruction" makes this clear. De-
meaning
struction is not an annihilation in
any strict sense of the term.
Destruction is a
merely change. This change can be interpreted
in a
metaphysical Aristotelian way as a substantial one/ or more
naturalistically as a shifting of molecules. The universe was as
full after the destruction of Hiroshima
by the atom bomb as be-
fore. Destruction as such is knowable by human consciousness,
and the does not need to be a
latter
non-being in order to per-
ceive the change.
Sartre would have done well to have reread Plato's
Sophist,
and understood that the idea of "not 1'

being something is simply

the idea of otherness. 10 It would then have
appeared that what-is-
not-a-car
non-being but merely something else,
is not, therefore,
and that when my own consciousness is not the world, it does

not follow that it is 11

Aristotle is even more
non-being.
explicit in his De Animal According to the Stagyrite,
since phantasma only from experience, man's intellect
arise

is, at the
beginning and before all knowledge, like a "tablet"
on which nothing is actually written. Aristotle's tabula rasa
is a
potentiality which, through union with the known, can
become anything. It is a
nothingness, indeed, but it is a nothing-
ness only in the sense that it is not
yet what it will know. It is
not a nothingness in its own structure. Yet, in order to
grasp
what it is
ought to be of a nature different from its "ma-
not, it
terial"
object, and may therefore be called "Immaterial." To be
able to become all
things, one must be unlike all things which
9
A
substantial change in the Aristotelian way
implies
tfee
jperoianeace
of the so-called prime matter along with a sofosdcetkHi of the form.
However, precisely iMr makes k a change and isot an aanllilladon*
**
Plato, The S&pbitf (Jowett ed.), VoL H, p. 264.
11
Cf. Demos, The Pb&osopby of Plato (New York, 1939}^ p, 154:
"Not-A equivalent to 'other than A.* Otherness is a relation whose term
is

within Being: what is other than something, is something too . . .

falls
Now it is indifferent what
entity we select as itself and what as its others.
Every entity is the other of some other entity."
**De Amm&> pp. 4302 ff.
144 CRITICISM AND COMMENTS
does not mean that one must be non-being, but only that one
must be different from the rest. 13
The trouble is that Sartre starts, in his Introduction, with the
doubtful assertion that all
being is Being-in-itself and that the
For-itself is
nothing. His constant preoccupation, therefore, is
with eliminating all positiveness in the For-itself. This is an im-
possible task: unless nothingness is no longer nothingness, one
cannot call the For-itself nothingness.
The same objection can be made concerning his general ap-
14
proach to knowledge, which he constantly defines by means of
the so-called "internal negation": the world is known when

present to consciousness as that which is not consciousness it-

self. Sartre concludes that we are surrounded
by nothingness!
What is so astonishing in that, since, according to him, we
immerse negative judgments in non-being and we surround even
positive knowledge with non-being? Why should we not our-
selves finally be drowned in nothingness!? "That by which Non-
"
being comes into the world, must be its own 'Non-being/
claims Sartre. 15 and what if this
"non-being" of the For-itself
or human consciousness is too fragile to carry other non-beings
into existence!

II. THE REPUDIATION OF THE EGO

Since Sartre's impersonal consciousness 16 has something in

i.

common with the conception of William James, it will not be

out of place to compare both views on the concept of conscious-
ness and personal identity. This is
by no means intended as an
18
It follows that, in this realistic view, there is never a
complete
and
clear-cut abstraction of "being" as there is, for example, of notions such
as "animal" and "rational." Being includes everything and is left out
nowhere.
* See
above, Chapter Three, I.
**ENt p. 59- Pages 58 and 59 contain an excellent summary of Sartre's
dialectic on non-being.
**$ee above, Chapter Two, III, p. 27.
CONTRADICTIONS OF THE FOR-ITSELF 145
exhaustive comparative study which alone would afford a
topic for a book but a brief
comparison which aims at illumi-
nating Sartre's position.
In his article "Does Consciousness 1T
Exist?," James writes:
"I believe that consciousness once it has
evaporated to an estate
of pure diaphaneity, is on the
point of disappearing altogether.
It isthe name of a non-entity" A
few lines further, he adds:
"Let me then
immediately explain that I mean only to deny
that the word stands for an
entity, but to insist most emphatically
that it does stand for a function." 1S And that function is "know-

ing. Consciousness is supposed necessary to explain the fact that

things not only are but get reported and are known."
lft

Sartre would agree with James that consciousness is a non-

20
entity; he would even say that it is a function; but he would
claim that this function is itself a "negation," while James would
consider as
something positive. As explained above, Sartre's
it

to the external world comes about

approach by means of his
so-called "internal negation." And, notes Sartre, the conditio
sine qua non of this negation is an internal void. "The necessary
condition to be able to say no is that
non-being be permanently
21
present in us."
Nothingness, therefore, is the condition of
nega-
tive
judgment, of interrogation, of ordinary knowledge, and so
*o
on.

James does not carry things to such an extreme. Knowledge

forhim is an experience which "in one group figures as a thought^
in another
group as a thing. And since it can figure in both
groups simultaneously we have the right to speak of it as
subjec-
tive and 2a And
objective at once." so, for Janies, the life of the
1

17
The JownnaL of Philosophy (September i, 1904), p. 477.
^id^ p. 478; James, Essays m
Radicd Empiricism (Modem Library,
) P- 3-
The lawmd of Philosophy , p. 478.
See above, Chapter Two, L

*
See aBove, Chapter Two, L
8
Jomnal of Plwasopby? p. 480.
 CRITICISM AND COMMENTS
individual consists of a series of discrete
pulses of experience,
called by him
"thoughts," each perishing in turn before the ad-
vent of its successor. 24 Sartre in turn would say that the For-itself
(or human consciousness) is a continual "neantisation" or
as have translated 25
"nihilation," I it. This "neantisation" is,

strictly speaking, not a quality; but it is the essence of the For-

itself insofar as the For-itself is
always present to ... some-
thing; or, to put it in other terms, insofar as consciousness is
28
always consciousness of something.
Both James and Sartre would agree that there is no
intervening
image between consciousness and the 27
known. Both intend to
eliminate traditional dualism in the act of
knowing. But again,
their way of avoiding a dualistic
interpretation is
notably differ-
ent. "As subjective" explains James, "we
may say that the ex-
perience re-presents, as objective it is represented. What repre-
sentsand what is represented is here
numerically the same; but
we must remember that no dualism of being represented and
rep-
resenting resides in the experience per se. In its pure state, or
when isolated, there is no of into Consciousness and
self-splitting
the consciousness 'of.' Its and objectivity are func-
subjectivity
tional attributes solely, realized
only when the experience is
taken." 28
Instead of using the term experience, Sartre would exploit his
so-called prereftexive Cogito or intentional "The Be-
approach.
ing-in-itselfand the Being-for-itself are not
juxtaposed .

There is no For-itself without In-itself And a For-itself . . .

without In-itself would be absolute 29

The term
nothingness."
"phenomenon" expresses for Sartre the same idea. There is no
84
The Principles of Psychology, pp. 339, 340. Cf. Sartre, EN,
36 p. m.
At other moments, Sartre would define an individual as "a continual
choice," each concrete choice being the expression of some fundamental
choice.
26
See above, Chapter Two, I, and Chapter Three, I.
*The Journal of Philosophy, p. 481. See above, Chapter Four,
* The Journal I.

of Philosophy, p. ^5.
*
EN, p. 715.
CONTRADICTIONS OF THE FOR-ITSELF 147
phenomenon without a consciousness, neither is there conscious-
appears. While James
ness without something which could even-

tually call a human being "a subjective experience," Sartre would

consider human reality as "a lived intentionality." 30
As for the matter out of which the subjective experience or
the "knowing function" is made, James notes: "There is no
general stuff of which experience at large is made. There are
as many stuffs as there are 'natures' in
Experi-
things experienced.
ence only a collective name for all these sensible natures, and
is

save for time and space (and if you like for being) there appears
no universal element of which all things are made." 31
would agree with the preceding statement insofar as
Sartre
it which an act of knowledge contains as being
asserts that all

comes from the outside. For the For-itself, according to Sartre,

since it is
nothing, adds nothing, but is a necessary condition
for being to appear. 32 We
come always to the same conclusion:
the For-itself is revelation of being.
Both philosophers expel from consciousness the notion of
person; i.e., they reject the existence of a permanent and under-
lying entity which allows me to say / am. Their motives differ
greatly, however.
For James, experiences are always unique and
fleeting;
what lends them their seeming stability and identity is
the power which they possess of meaning the same things. The
notion of person, therefore, is a useless entity. Sartre's repudi-
ation of person and substance proceeds from the fact that he
needs an empty For-itself. Only void and nothingness can un-
33
derstand that which is.

Having expelled the notion of person, there remains, neverthe-

less, the feeling of personal identity to explain.
30
Let us not forget that James was a psychologist and that Sartre is
(or claims to be) a phenomenologist.
81
The Journd of Philosophy, p. 487.
33
And yet Sartre rejects the epithet of the materialist. He writes in Les
Temps Moderrtes, I; 7 (1945): "pour nous qui, sans ecre materialistes,
n'avons jamais distingue Fame du corps, etc."
148 CRITICISM AND COMMENTS
James sees a solution in the so-called self-identification; that is,

I am identical with my own past, rather than with someone

else's
past, because I claim this identity; because I take an interest
in my own which cannot take in the past of the other, and refer
I

present experiences back to it in a unique fashion. The thought

of my past has for me a "warmth and intimacy" which the past
of another person is
incapable of causing, however interesting
it
may be to me. 34
For Sartre, the feeling of identity through time and duration
is an activity of consciousness itself,an activity which works

"transversely" and transmits continually to the present concrete

and real remembrances of the past. 35
To conclude, both theories, although differing remarkably in
their general approach, agree in repudiating personal identity and
in replacing this central and permanent core either by a succes-
sion of discrete entities (thoughts) or by a continual "neantisa-
tion." 36 In the place of personal identity comes a sort of fiction

through which we believe ourselves to be persons.

In denying the existence of an underlying and permanent Sub-

ject which allows me

to say / think, both James and Sartre set
themselves against Descartes and also against Kant and the Kan-

M In his book
Essays in Radical Empiricism, James gives a slightly dif-
ferent view. He writes: "Continuity here is a definite sort of experience"
(p. 49) , and "There is no other nature,
no other whatness than this absence
of break and this sense of continuity in that most intimate of all conjunc-
tive relations, the passing of one experience into another when they belong
to the same self. And this whatness is real empirical 'content.* (ibid~> p. 50)
35
"La Transcendance de 1'Ego," p. 87. I must confess that I do not
grasp easily these "transversal" transmissions, as I shall explain further.
36
Whitehead in turn would say that the individual consists of a dis-
creet succession of "actual occasions" or droplets of experience, each as
it arises
totally replacing its predecessor as it perishes. There is a sense,
however, in which no actual occasion vanishes completely, since it achieves
what Whitehead calls "objective immortality" by passing on to its suc-
cessor a group of "eternal objects" which, incarnated in the different
occasions of a given series, define nature and personality. I find it hard to
understand what Whitehead means by the second part of his hypothesis,
namely the mode of conservation through "eternal objects." Ct. Process
and Reality (New York, 1929), ch. HI.
CONTRADICTIONS OF THE FOR-ITSELF 149
tian school, which claimed that the presence of being in our

knowledge supposes always an "Ego" in the center of our

37
thinking.
The theories of James and Sartre also oppose absolute idealism,
where the function of the Ego receives such extraordinary im-
portance and is supposed to supply to philosophical thinking the
means for the unification and ordination of things in space and
time.
And finally, through his rejection of the
Ego, Sartre opposes
himself to his master in the phenomenological school. For Hus-
serl, indeed, the signification of the presence of the Ego was

immense. His approach is a methodical and systematic descrip-

tion of what appears (phenomenon or cogitatum) to the Ego.
It is the Ego, therefore, which gives the world its coherence and

its
unity. For Husserl "the Ego sum must be considered as apo-
38
dictical."

2. The preceding section was an attempt to clarify Sartre's

position. Absolutely rejecting
the Ego, Sartre states that there
is in human
beings no permanent and underlying entity such
as would allow each of us to say / am or 1 think. 3 * This position,
however, has its
disadvantages, as I shall try to show in the fol-

lowing pages.
A. There is first of ail the necessity of the so-called authentic

reflection. In order to understand the value of this argument, let

us remember Sartre's distinction between it and the prereflexrue

Cogito. This supremely important, and yet, very curiously,

is

most commentators in articles and booklets have evidently over-

looked it. 40 Authentic reflection is the act in which we are ex-
n
^Lalande, Dictiomaire de Pbttosopbie (Paris, 1947), term "Ego.
^Httsserf, Meditations CartesieTtnes^ p. 18. Cf. Gaston Berger, Le Cogito
dans la PbUosophie de Husserl (Pars, 1941 ), p. 93.
*It is unnecessary to make a distinction in definition between the
Kantian and the Cartesian approaches. Sartre rejects both of them.
*It is the merit of Varet in his excellent book UOntologie de Sartre
to have underlined this essential aspect (p. 80).
150 CRITICISM AND COMMENTS
plicitly conscious ofwhat we do or of what we know. When I
know a table, my act belongs to the prereflexive Cogito. When
I know that I know a table,
my act is one of authentic reflection.
The inevitable result of authentic reflection is the presence of
the Ego: I
knowing the table.
consider myself
Hence working out his whole phe-
Sartre's constant care, in

nomenological approach by means of the prereflexive Cogito,

to avoid emphasizing authentic reflection: it brings him in-

evitably into the presence of the Ego. And, as we have seen,

Sartre wants an empty For-itself.
In order to avoid the necessity of authentic reflection, Sartre
claims that there is
always some sort of permanent consciousness
in the
ordinary knowledge of the prereflexive Cogito. This con-
sciousness is not an authentic reflection but a so-called "small"

reflection, a reflection without split

in the consciousness, a re-
flection without scissiparity,
Sartre would say, a reflection which
is almost not a reflection but which nevertheless is a reflection.
In short, when I know the table, I always know that I know the
41
table, otherwise I would not know the table at all.

But Sartre himself recognizes 42 very correctly that this pre-

reflexive structure has meaning only because there is an ulterior
reflection. In fact, the prereflexive Cogito as such is
only known
and consciously perceived because there is an authentic and ul-
terior reflection. Sartre's seven hundred pages of phenome-

nological description are a result of his own constant, perma-

nent and inquisitive reflection: it is because he himself has ob-
served carefully what appears in his prereflexive Cogito by means
of authentic reflection that he has been able to expose his view
and to tell us that there is no Ego! His Ego was present all
. . .

the time.

Just as absolute Idealism always needed some real external

^Sartre calls it in French "one reflexion an accomplice re-

complice,"
flection, Scroetmes he calk k "une reflexion du coin de Foeil."
**
EN^ pp. 116-117.
CONTRADICTIONS OF THE FOR-ITSELF 151
things so that it could at least negate them and transform them
into pure
spirit,
so Sartre, pioneer of an absolute Realism (the

Being-in-itself alone is real), isunable to expose his extreme posi-

tion without reflection and
consequently without the Ego which
is continually discovered in reflection.
.*

Sartre be right in claiming that the Cartesian Cogito is a

may
dangerous starting point as an epistemological basis for his phi-
losophy, but he himself continually uses reflection "in the second
degree." And it is
precisely this authentic reflection which al-
lowed Descartes to reach at least one certain fact, namely the
affirmation of his own Ego
as an existent and thinking Subject.

The least we that Sartre does not practice wr hat he

can say is

preaches: repudiating both authentic reflection and the Ego,

he himself uses authentic reflection and thus encounters the Ego
whenever he commits himself to this reflection.
B. A
second argument against Sartre's impersonal For-itself is
the intimate and unshakable conviction that 7 am. Sartre's most
subtle dialectic cannot destroy this overwhelming belief that 7
am something and that this something is really existent. Theo-
retically speaking,
to justify, but the unavoid-
it
may be difficult

able fact, the unmistakable evidence, is there nevertheless: I am

something really existing. If this evidence is pure illusion, then

all evidences give way and we
into complete agnosticism.
fall

Together with the firm conviction that 7 om goes the equally

strong belief that 7 am tfee center of my acts. Being the center of
my acts,my something7 is after all Sartre will object tliat this 7
n
is
nothing but "relation towards . . . ," "revelation of ... ,

"desire for the real being which lies "outside/* Conscious-

. . ."

ness is always consciousness of something; e.g., "conscioiisaess-

thirst" is the consideration of a glass of water as desirable. TOte

being in the "game" lies in the glass of water. The trouble Is

that one wonders to lubom this glass of water is desirable. The

quickest look at myself

is
enough to convince me that this glass
of water is desirable to me, and tbst this Ego is the inevitable
152 CRITICISM AND COMMENTS
counterpart of a cosmos 'which lies outside. If the For-itself is

"relation towards ," , . . and

relation supposes a terminus a if

quo as well as a terminus ad quern, the result is that just as the

Being-in-itself is something, so the For-itself hides something,
namely the It is / who know the world, it is / who desire
Ego.
the world, it is 7 who choose and it is I who negate, it is / who
desire the glass of water. 43

C. Another argument in favor of the Ego is the necessity for

unity and unification. As noted in "La Transcendance de 1'Ego,"

Sartre claims that the Ego not necessary as the unifying link
is
44
of our representations. Consciousness being always conscious-
ness of something, it is, according to Sartre, this external some-

thing which specifies and delimits consciousness. There is some

truth in this statement, for external objects really do specify con-
sciousness. However and once more this is an important point
if the external world succeeds in determining and specifying

my consciousness, it is obviously because there is in my con-

sciousness a permanent Subject and Center, the terms of the am-
bivalent relation with the world; that is to say, an Ego which
exercises the acts of awareness.
When we look at it "spatially" i.e., when we consider the

spatial unity,
Sartre may be right when he claims that my en-
I am in
vironment creates my "situation."
my room in front of
my desk; I write a paper; I hear a car in the street. All these ob-

jects together create actual "situation." However, I am

my
aware that if this situation makes sense, it is because I
equally
am the center of it. My situation does not make sense if 7 am
not there.

43
1 admit thatsecond argument does not affect Sartre alone. It is
this
and it was simple form the traditional argument against Hume's
in its

elimination of the objective identity of the Self. Hume himself recognized

hs strength just as he recognized the stubborn everreturning conviction
of our personal identity (Treatise of Human Nature [Oxford, 1896),
appendix, p, 635), but he was unable to reconcile it with the results of his
method.
analytical
"Recfaerches Pbihsophiquef, p. 85. See above, p. 27.
CONTRADICTIONS OF THE FGR-ITSELF 153
As for chronological unity, the feeling of personal identity
which accompanies us through time and duration, again Sartre
claims that this can be explained without the Ego. This feeling
of permanence, he says, is an activity of consciousness itself, an

activity which works "transversally" (instead of horizontally)

and transmits continually to the present concrete and real re-
membrances of the 45
past.
I confess that I am unable to grasp Sartre's explanation, which
in his own text is
amazingly short. At any rate, if there is some
"transversal" transmission, which gives the sense of a permanent
Ego, is it not because of an underlying and permanent substra-
tum? Do Sartre's "concrete remembrances of the
past" make
sense when is no
Subject unifying past and present? Could
there
Sartre speak of a past without something which was yesterday
and is still today? Sartre himself accepts the existence of the past
for the For-itself, 46 and yet, how could the For-itself have a past
if the same For-itself did not exist
yesterday?
r
Even when one looks from Sartre s viewpoint and when
at it

one uses his terminology, one wonders how he can reject all
permanent identity and nevertheless preserve internal unity in
the For-itself especially when the latter commits itself in the
so-called ecstatic diaspora in the past, present, and future. If the
For-itself is
entirely out of itself (which Sartre repeatedly as-
serts),
47
how can it still be a one-self? In his absolute process
48
of emptying the For-itself, Sartre has killed it,

D. Another argument against Sartre's impersonal For-itself

seems to be the essential "finitude" ofhuman reality. Heidegger,
much more even than Sartre, has commented on this finitude.
It
expresses itself in the fact that we face an immense universe

45
"La Trauseendaace cb FEgo," p. 1 10.
**
See above, Twos, IV, i.
* See above, Chapter Two, IV, 2, and
Chapter Chapter Four, II, i ,

^Gascon Berger, cofBmesting oa Sartre s radical rejection of the Ego,

notes: "La phenoojenologie . . .
peot-elle se passer d wi centre de vision,
1

d'ttn point de vue?" (L& CQ&&& M

Jaw Plbfetfplrae de Husserl^ p. 154)
154 CRITICISM AND COMMENTS
and that we
ourselves are limited in space and time. Dread is the
result of this awareness. Itis not the fear
resulting from a con-
crete threat but a general painful feeling of finitude and limi-
tation. 49

Sartre agrees on this essential limitation of human reality. "The

finitude an ontological structure of the For-itself" and "Human
is

reality remains finite even if it be immortal." 50 On the other

hand, For-itself means consciousness. The For-itself therefore is

limited consciousness. But what else is an Ego (or a

person) but
a consciousness which is conscious of its limitation? To designate
consciousness as an existence which is conscious of its limitation
is
nothing but to designate the Ego as existent.
In fact, Sartre agrees that consciousness, as soon as it
emerges,
possesses this original finitude and determination which make it
"personal." He writes: "As soon as consciousness emerges,
through the nihilating movement of the reflection, itbecomes
51
personal" But he refuses flatly to call it an Ego. 52 Why? For
fear that such an Ego will become a Being-in-itself ! One agrees
readily with Sartre that the Ego, as the conscious center and
subject of our psychic life, ought not to be considered as a
usual object, as an ordinary In-itself. But even if there is an Ego,

why mustnecessarily be an "opaque and massive being," a

it

Being-in-itself? Is a partly-spiritualized entity, which is trans-

parent to itself, at this stage of our cosmological evolution really
inconceivable? 53
E. In examining Sartre's views on the Other, as set forth in

^Heidegger, SZ, p. 186. Cf. also "What is Metaphysics?" where

Heidegger writes: "[There is dread when we have the feeling that] there
is
nothing to hold on." Cf. also Werkmeister, p. 87: "Fear is not the feeling
of being afraid of some specific thing or specific condition of existence,
but the basic *mood* in which we are confronted with the possibility of
T

*not-being with utter nothingness. Fear is the realization that we could

not be."
50
EN, p. 631.
K
68
EN, p. 148.
im.
^Jolivet, Les Doctrines Exktentialistes (Paris, 1948), p. 188.
CONTRADICTIONS OF THE FOR-ITSELF 155
Chapter Four, the reader must have been struck by the fact that
his argumentation is
grounded on the implicit affirmation of a
real and existing Ego.
Although Sartre remarks that the existence of a completely
solitary For-itself is not altogether impossible, nevertheless the

presence of the Other has been proven a primary and perma-

nent fact. 54 And Sartre even goes so far as to say that "if there
is an Other, I must above all be the one who is not the Other,

and it is in this negation applied by myself to

myself (I am not
the Other) that I make myself to be and that the Other emerges
as the Other." 55
One wonders if this whole argument has the slightest value
if / am not? Sartre's dialectic collapses if there is not somebody
at each end of the line. If there is an Other and if Iam not the
Other, it is because I am I; i.e., because I am an existing Subject.
And if the Other is not I, it is He is He.
because
If Sartre claims that there is a North Pole only because there
is a South Pole and a South Pole only because there is a North
Pole, we
can agree, but it is obvious that at least there is some-
thing which one can call a North Pole and something which one
can call a South Pole.
As I
hope Part I of this book made clear, Sartre more than
anyone else sharpens the opposition between the For-itself and
the Other. 56 But to emphasize a conflict is precisely to reinforce
the individuality of both antagonists. There is no conflict be-
tween "non-beings/* The position of one (myself) facing the
Other, which in Sartre's eyes is a real opposition^ considerably
increases the reality of my own being and that of the being of
the Other. The concrete and real existence of the Other gives to
me a strange and growing self-consciousness, irreconcilable with
the statement that I can not. The conclusion of this long section,

EN", p. 502. See above, Cfeapter Four, HI.

156 CRITICISM AND COMMENTS
then, is that Sartre does not succeed in eliminating the Ego from
the For-itself.
It is true, of course, that in eliminating the Ego Sartre has
avoided the danger of solipsism. He may have some merit, too,
in having expelled from consciousness the whole
psychological
luggage, the so-called pathos or complex of passions which tra-
dition so often has pushed into the realm of personality. His
approach toward the negation of the Ego may well be new, and
fit in the whole of his
system remarkably well. He may even
be right in emphasizing the notion of freedom and in considering
it as more important than the Ego. And yet, for
all this, his re-

pudiation of the pole of identity which we call the Ego is to

put it mildly not apodictical. By throwing the whole value

of being onto the object i.e., onto the Being-in-itself Sartre
has left the For-itself empty and vacant and yet, as college stu-
dents say (in a slightly more restrictive sense), "as busy as a

young mink." It causes the "apparition" of the world, it

organ-
izes the cosmos in time and space, it divides an amorphous uni-
verse into different "thises," it notices the existence of the Other,
it has a whole world to conquer and yet it is "neant" or "noth-

ingness." The truth is that, as soon as the For-itself realizes what

it does and what it can do, it
any longer to be the dupe
refuses
of a system where it has all to do and nothing to be. One may
question, therefore, whether Sartre himself has been able to
maintain his extreme position concerning the impersonal and

empty For-itself; whether, perhaps, by means of some sort of

dialectic, not unlike the Hegelian one in the Phenomenology of

Mind, he has not by little given his impersonal For-itself a

little

greater ontological dimension and even a somewhat personal

structure?

do not believe that a decisive answer can be given to this

3. 1

question. At certain moments there are indications, however,

of a sight deviation from the initial extreme position to a milder
CONTRADICTIONS OF THE FOR-ITSELF 157
view with regard to the presence of the Ego in consciousness.
Sartre took his most radical stand in the article
published in
"La Transcendance de FEgo," 57
1936 called to which I have
had occasion to refer before. 58 He was
stated there that there
no Ego at all, that the Ego as a unifying link of our representa-
tions was
completely useless. He was then more of a phenome-
59
nologist than Husserl himself, observed Varet; he made, so to
speak, a reduction or "Einklamrnerung" of the Ego. At the be-
ginning of his main book, VEtre et le Neant, he did not theo-
retically modify however, he set about
his position. Practically,

using the Ego, as have pointed out. "He reproaches Bergson

I

with having reified the Ego," notes Jean Wahl, "and in his analy-
sis of bad faith, he does it as much as *
Bergson and even more.'*
On page 79 (of EN), for instance, he speaks of "my conscious-
ness,'* "my possibles." But why speak about my consciousnes,

my or myself, when the world is all and / am nothing?

possibles,
On page 87, Sartre defines the lie as an exploitation of the onto-

logical dualism of Ego and the Ego of the Other. And a few
my
lines later he defines bad faith or self-deception as an act
wherein I hide the truth from myself.
When Sartre speaks about reflection (authentic reflection), he
describes it as an act
by which the For-itself, dispersed all over
the world in the Being-in-itself and in the triple ecstasy of past,

present, and future, takes itself

back. (EN, p. 220) On the same

page, he insists that the For-itself

"takes its being back." (Italics

mine) This that there is at least some being which

surely implies
we try to recuperate. Is this the Ego? If it is not, what can it be?
It is in positing the existence of the Other that Sartre makes
significant concessions. He
his most writes; "The elimination of
the does not help us in the affirmation of the Other." (EN,
Ego
p. 291)
The hypothesis of the "impersonal" consciousness at this
ro
"La Transcendance de FEgo," p. 87.
58
See atxrre, Qiapter Two, Hi
**
Varet,Ontolo&e de Sartre* p, Si.
80
"Le Neant d'nn Probleme; Deucalion* I: 65 (1946).
158 CRITICISM AND COMMENTS
stage of Sartre's dialectic thus becomes "useless" very likely
this is an understatement. In fact, as I believe I have sufficiently
demonstrated in preceding pages, the affirmation of the existence
of the Other in the Sartrian way is a dangerous threat to his "im-

personal" consciousness. Some statements are extremely signifi-

cant: "Reflection allows me
to recognize myself as myself be-
fore the Other." (EN, p. 343) There even seems to be in the For-
itself a
permanent identity, which Sartre describes as follows: "I
am always retaken by myself" and "I am what I am." (EN, p.
329) Such assertions are important, indeed, especially when they
come from someone whose predominate theme has been the
expulsion of personal identity.
In his exposition of freedom, however, Sartre once more em-
phasizes the radical opposition between For-itself and In-itself.
His extreme notion of freedom needs a For-itself which is void,
completely void. He
thinks that the slightest granule of being
would provide something for deterministic influence to take
hold of, and that the freedom of his pure and translucid con-
sciousness would thereby be destroyed.
At the end of his book Sartre is as radical as at the begin-

ning: he maintains in the most emphatic way that his For-itself

"is
absolutely not an autonomous entity," that it is a "privation,"
that "it has not the slightest sufficiency." (EN, p. 712)
The fact is, that Sartre must exclude the Ego if he wants to
save the general architecture of his ontology. He must prove
that the whole ontological mass is on the side of the In-itself,
that the For-itself is
nothing but the void of the In-itself and
does not exist for itself but only for the object, that it is a sub-

jectivity without Subject.

Practically, however, Sartre has not been able to escape the

necessity of an absolute pole of identity, i.e., of an Ego. The

whole magic of what makes a personality, he claims, lies out-
side the For-itself in the Being-in-itself. Unfortunately, the Be-

ing-in-itself gets its specification down to the minutest

detail
CONTRADICTIONS OF THE FOR-ITSELF 159
from the For-itself. Hence the tremendous activity of a For-
itself which is "nothingness" but has nevertheless to do every-

thing. The
answer is that the Ego is there despite Sartre, but
61
Sartre has "received it not.'*

Nor, as I demonstrated in the first section of this chapter,

can one agree that the analysis of negative judgment, interroga-
tion, and destruction exhibits the much desired "nothingness"
of the For-itself. This "nothingness" is
myth. It is original in
a

marvellously into the ensemble

invention, and it fits of Sartre's

dialectic, butdoes not correspond to reality.

it

If the For-itself is not this strange non-substantial being,

"mere negation of . ." and "in itself non-being," Sartre's epis-

.

further invalidated. As I noted at

temological approach is still
the end of Chapter Six his approach was not merely formu-
lated at the start of his ontology but was to be confirmed by
would appear
"emptying" process throughout the book.
his It

now that this "emptying" of the For-itself has not succeeded,

and, consequently, has not fulfilled its purpose.

1 am inclined to believe that Sartre is much more Hegelian than he

61

wants to be, for the absent (!) Ego, in building up a whole ontology,
took over much more than he suspected. Strangely enough, the Existen-
tialist movement, born as reaction against Hegel, seems gradually to have
come back under his wing. This alone would afford material for a separate
study: Hegel and modem Existentialism.
Whatever may be the case, it
seems that Hegel has not yet spoken his last word.
 CRITIQUE OF SARTRE'S EXTREME
8 FORM OF FREEDOM

One can disagree with Sartre's basic issue and his

affirmations concerning the fundamental relation between the
For-itself and the Being-in-itself, but one must admire the subtle

way in which he leads his dialectic from the so-called "trans-

lucid" For-itself to the most extreme form of freedom the his-
tory of philosophy has ever presented.
As I have had frequent occasion to say before, the For-itself
is free from the massive fullness of the
Being-in-itself. Since it is
not the In-itself and knows what it is not, the For-itself is "lack"
I
and desire; it isthe eternal hunter of the In-itself. In its pursuit
of being, the For-itself is never identified with being. It stays

free, completely and absolutely free. Its actions are free actions.
2
Its
permanent choice is a free choice.
As noted, Sartre eliminated the Ego so that the For-itself
would contain no one consistent element on which deterministic
influences could adhere. There is thus no motive which exercises

any influence whatsoever on my freedom. If some motive see?ns

to influence me, it is because I choose to be influenced by this
motive. Motives have no priority on my choice: / (i.e., my free-

dom) choose the motive and the act. The conclusion is that
3
human reality is
completely free.
It is this notion of freedom that will be examined in these
following pages. Sartre's view undoubtedly has a certain coher-
1
See above, p. 31.
2
These are the outlines of Sartre's dialectic proceeding from the For-
itself to freedom. At certain moments he changes his process slightly;

e,g^ on |>age 511 (E2S/"). Bin the general scheme remains the same.
3
W, p. 5*3-
SARTRE'S FORM OF FREEDOM 161
ence, and for anyone who is
strongly anti-deterministic it will
even be appealing. In connection with this it may be well to
remember what Sartre's extreme freedom means in terms of
reason and of sensibility. There is
always in man a conflict be-
tween his rationalistic
approach (where reason kills his soul)
and his most profound
sensibility (where
he revolts against this
murder). In the past we have had Descartes' rationalism and at
the same time Pascal's "le coeur a des raisons que la Raison ne
connait pas"; we have had Voltaire opposed by the romanticism
of Rene and Atala; we have had Comte's optimism outbalanced

by Baudelaire's nostalgia and what we can call the "nausea" of

Emma Bovary.
On the continent at
present Marxism and Existentialism ex-
hibit themselves in flagrant opposition. Marxism, being above all
collectivistic and anti-individualistic, wants to establish a scien-

tific
economy, a progressive education, a conditioning of the
masses and, if
necessary, an absorption of the individual. Sartre's
freedom appears as a revolt. It is a counter-attack of the individ-
ual against the determinism of matter and science.
Viewed in this light, Sartre's attempt has real merit. And yet
he has not been able to prove his point, for he has taken it upon
himself to prove too much. "Qui niinium probat, nlhil probat."
A first
argument against his position has already appeared in

these pages. My discussion of the For-itself involved a rejection

of freedom in the sense in which Sartre presents it. I tried to

prove the necessity of the Ego as an internal point of support,

and I tried also to give a certain "consistency" to the For-itself.
These exclude formally the acceptance of the notion of freedom
which, according to Sartre, ought to be identified with the For-
itself.

One is constrained to differ with Sartre on other points in

the notion of freedom as well, for his extreme position implies
various problems. Indeed and this is a second argument this

freedom involves an insoluble contradiction.

l62 CRITICISM AND COMMENTS
According to Sartre, human freedom has no limits. Conse-

quently still
reasoning along Existentialisric lines human
reality cannot be set in bounds; it cannot be defined. Human
reality is what it makes itself to be and this in complete free
choice. Hence the famous Existentialistic idiom: existence pre-
cedes essence. 4
Such formulas suckle the monster that will devour them. Ac-
cording to Sartre, human reality cannot be considered as an es-
sence, since the For-itself is pure and undefinable freedom. But
here precisely appears the antinomy. If the For-itself is pure
freedom one is in fact presented with an essence of human real-
ity. Sartre
does not escape the necessity of defining that about
which he is
talking.
This argument is even more striking when one looks at the
expressions which Sartre himself uses. Several times he claims
that "human condemned to be free/' 5 that no one
reality is

power can prevent it from being what it is; namely, absolutely

free. In this sense, he asserts, it must be understood that "free-

dom has not other limits except its own." e "But to speak about
the 'condemnation' and the 'necessity' of freedom/' retorts Aime
7
Patri, simply to return to the philosophy of essences from
"is

which Sartre has tried so energetically to escape." In fact, each

thing is what it is and can only be what it is. If according to
Sartre, a human being is free
by nature, freedom is its essence
or, at least, part of it.

Sartre himself does not really succeed in explicitly eliminat-

ing the notion of human reality or of essences preceding (logi-

cally)
existence. He writes:
To be in a certain situation signifies to choose oneself in a certain
situation and men differ from one another as their situations differ

*See Sartre, Existentialism* p. 27.

7t
'Remarques sur une nouvelle doctrine de la Liberte," Deucalion^ I:

79 (1946).
SARTRE'S FORM OF FREEDOM 163
and alsoaccording to the choice they make of their own person.
What men have in common is not a nature, but a condition, i.e., an
ensemble of restrictions and coercions: the necessity of dying, or
working in order to live, of existing in a world together with other
people. And this condition is the fundamental human situation or if
one prefers the ensemble of abstract characters common to all situa-
tions*

What else do we intend when we speak about human nature

or a human essence?
9
Elsewhere, he writes:

There does exist a universal human condition. It's not by chance

that today's thinkers speak more readily of man's condition than of
his nature. By condition they mean more or less definitely, the a

priori limits which outline man's fundamental situation in the uni-

verse. Historical situations vary: a man may be born a slave in a

pagan society, or a feudal lord, or a proletarian. What does not vary

isthe necessity for him to exist in the world, to be at work there, to
be there in the midst of other people, and to be mortal there. The
limits are neither subjective or [sic,] objective; rather they have an ob-

jective and subjective side. Objective because they are to be found

everywhere and are recognizable everywhere; subjective because they
are lived and are nothing if man does not live them, that is freely
determine his existence with reference to them. And though the con-
figurations may differ, at least none of them are completely strange
to me, because they all appear as attempts either to pass beyond these
limits or recede from them or deny them or adapt to them. Conse-

quently, every configuration, however individual it may be, has

a
universal valued

Again and again it would seern that Sartre is stating exactly

what one means when one speaks of human nature. Essence is
not a thing. This is obvious. It is an abstract notion which is
actualized as soon as a human being exists Ami, as abstract no-

tion, human essence is indeed "an ensemble of abstract charac-

ters" which one finds in each of the Existentialistic "situations."

'Sartre, Reflexions swr la question jt&ve (ed. Morihien, 1947), p 7&

(Italics mine)
* *
Sartre, Existentialism, p. 45. Sartre, Existentialism, p. 45.
164 CRITICISM AND COMMENTS
As such, I.e., as abstract notion, essence precedes existence, what-
ever Sartre may say.
It is obvious, too, that "this precession is

purely logical-, before it exists, the essence is nothing but an

abstract possibility, an ensemble of "abstract characters." n
There is in Sartre's Existentialistic psychoanalysis a concept
which he uses quite often. It is
expressed by the term "funda-
12
mental project" and can be described as the essential and basic
attitude of a person toward the world. That is to say, each con-
its own
crete For-itself has personal attitude. The example I
have previously used will serve once more. My friend and I set
out to climb Mount Washington; we are both equally strong
and equally athletic (or equally non-athletic). And yet I stop
earlier than my friend and complain and sit down. Does that
mean that I am more fatigued than friend? Not necessarily.
my
It
simply means that, facing the ensemble of obstacles of this
13
world, my fundamental choice is different.
In each gesture, in each mimic, in each individual choice, in
each preference, however small it may be, this fundamental at-
titude of each of us toward the world appears. 14 The whole
technique of Sartre's psychoanalysis consists in tracing down
this "fundamental project" through the hundred and more little

actions of every day.

This aspect of the so-called "fundamental project" is not the
one that I want to consider at the moment. There is a deeper,
an underlying meaning of "fundamental project" which Sartre
speaks of at certain moments but
does not always distinguish

very clearly from the first one. This deeper notion is the one
which characterizes each For-itself and belongs to each For-itself
as such. The fundamental and essential project of each For-itself

(or of the For-itself as such) is tendency toward being. On this

point Sartre is clear: "The original tendency
of the For-itself is
n Les Doctrines Existentialistes, p.
Jolivet, 23.
13
See Appendix in this book.
18
See above, p. 104; cf. EN, p. 535.
u
EN* p. 656; see Appendix of this book.
SARTRE'S FORM OF FREEDOM 165
toward being: this project of being or desire or tendency to-
ward being does not proceed from some physiological differ-
entiation or contingent event; it isnot distinguished from the
15
being of the For-itself." The For-itself, therefore, tries con-
tinually to become In-itself and yet wants to remain For-itself
(i.e., consciousness). The ideal of the For-itself is to be a For-

itself In-itself. This, according to Sartre, would be God. The

For-itself thus a being which seeks to become God: "the best
is

way to express the fundamental project of human reality as

such is to say that human
a being which tries to become
reality is
1G
God," or is fundamentally "desire of God." 17 Sartre could
not be more explicit. Max Scheler gives the same definition, and
claims that it is an essential definition of human reality. Sartre
18
calls it "a fundamental and human structure of the For-itself,"
and adds that it is an abstract scheme which the For-itself in

concreto applies as it w ants. One agrees with Sartre on this point;

r

in fact, he gives us the description of human nature or human

essence, an abstract notion, a scheme or a frame in which the

existent human being fits in one
way or another. So, once more,
Sartre notwithstanding his prodigious dialectical ability
proves not that existence precedes essence but that essence {logi-

cally} precedes existence, that is to say, that human existence

does not create itself in some wild and unlimited freedom but
follows a general scheme which is called human essence or hu-
man nature.
Another contradiction and here is a third argument is

the formulation of this extreme form of freedom. Just as the

Cretan invalidated his statement that "All Cretans are liars/'
so the Existentialistic statement of pore freedom destroys itself
as soon as it is The climax of freedom is to be free from all
put.
19 There no
things except from freedom reason, however,
itself. is

15
EN, p. 651. Cf. above, Chapter Five, IEL
**EN, p. 6$$. Scheler: Der Formdismus in tier BfMk tmd die mexteride
Wertetbik* pp. 301-302, and Vom Umstwrz der Werte^ voi I, p. 296,
1T M
ZS7,p.653. EN, p. 655. BN,p*st$.
I 66 CRITICISM AND COMMENTS
to prefer Sartre's statement to the following formulation: the cli-
max of freedom is to be free from all things including freedom
20
itself. In both cases the issue is fatal. Restricted by itself, free-
dom is limited as well as if it were limited by something else. In
Sartre's formulation the limitation is efficient; one choice is for-

mally excluded, namely, the choice of renouncing freedom. In the

formulation of supreme freedom to be free from all things, includ-

ing freedom Itself, means that the capacity (not the necessity)
of destroying my own freedom is always there. In the second

hypothesis, there is no limitation at all. But as soon as I practice

or realize this climax of freedom, I
destroy my freedom; e.g.,
freedom is done with, and done with forever.
by My
suicide.
Sartre deals with the question of suicide somewhat summarily.
In his very interesting and detailed phenomenological descrip-
tion of death (some twenty pages in UEtre et le Neant) he de-
votes only fifteen lines to the problem of suicide. 21 As I have
remarked, he pretends that death, like many other things, is
absurd. Death is absurd because, according to Sartre, one cannot
choose But everybody knows that we can choose suicide and
it.

even give the form which we want. Suicide is a possibility any-

it

way, a free choice, but a free choice which closes the book
forever.
The is that, from whatever side one looks at it,
conclusion
there no unlimited and absolute freedom: either freedom limits
is

itself (we are condemned to be free) or we are free from all

things, even from freedom itself. Suicide is
proof of the latter,
but also the end of freedom.

In the presentation of his meaning of freedom, Sartre makes

an interesting comparison between his own theory and that of
Leibnitz. An examination of this comparison indicates once
20
See Aime Patri in Le Choix, Le Monde UExistence, Paris, 1947. Jean-
of
Jacqoes Rousseau pointed even in his time to the insoluble paradox
democracy: "What if people do not want to be free ... I? Must we com-
pel tfaero to be free?"
SARTRE'S FORM OF FREEDOM 167
more how dangerous and unstable Sartre's extreme position is.
For Leibnitz as well as for Sartre there was a possibility for
Adam not to take the apple. But for both, the implications of
another gesture (not to take the apple) are so numerous that a
different gesture implies the existence of another Adam.
For Leibnitz Adam chose the apple because he was Adam; i.e.,
he followed his essence, that which he received from God ac-
cording to the application of the plan of "the best of all
worlds." 22 On this point Sartre disagrees. He claims that the Leib-
nitzian notion of freedom is
wrong because it
supposes a hitman
23
being "acting according to its essence" Sartre sees in Leibnitz'
freedom no external necessity (Adam was free in the sense that
he was forced by no external motives) but an internal necessity
(Adam was not free because he had to follow his essence, an es-

sence which he had not chosen!).

For Sartre, if supposed to be free, we must
Adam's gesture is

accept the fact that Adam chose not only his gesture but also
his being: consequent to his doctrine of unlimited freedom,
Sartre claims that Adam chose to be Adam. 24

Again, this odd statement is the result of Sartre's boundless

freedom. It supposes in a way some anteriority of the Subject
to himself. As a matter of fact, the Subject of the choice cannot
be identical with the object. So that we must conclude that
there is a being which chooses (active) without being chosen

(passive). Concerning this

point, Merleau-Ponty,
who cannot
be suspected of prejudice against Sartre, writes: "The idea of a
first or original choice is a contradiction ... If there is choice,

it must start from somewhere. It supposes something previously

acquired."
**
The choice, the orighzal choice of Adam by Mm-
M No.
Leibnitz, Tbeodicea^ IF.233
28
EN, p. 547.
**C. Age oj Reason; "'You are a man,* said Mathieu to Bronet *A
man?* asked Bronet with surprise,It would be awkward if I wasn't. What
do you mean by that?* ^Exactly what I say: you hare chosen to be a
5
man! ** (p. 153)
^Fbenofttenologie de la Perception, pp. 501-502.
I 68 CRITICISM AND COMMENTS
self, is thus altogether Impossible. In fact, Adam first is, and may
change eventually; i.e., he may make supplementary and acci-
dental modifications to his essential being. But, at any rate, he had
to start from somewhere, namely from the simple fact that he
was Adam. And that was not a choice, but a given.
It
appears thus more and more that the difficulties of Sartre's
position are numerous and intricate. If freedom has no limits, if
human reality breaks
all boundaries because it creates itself con-
tinually, if there is no essence except that which is continually
in the making, then nothing is definable, our terminology is cut
off at the base and we finish in complete subjectivism.
This anti-philosophical attitude is not the one Sartre wants, and
yet it is the result of his basic
principle: existence precedes es-
sence. Perhaps fortunately, he himself does not remain faithful
to this philosophical radicalism. He rejects the Ego but uses it
as copiously as any other philosopher. He condemns essence and
finds other terms to designate the same thing. There is no es-

sence, but there is "an ensemble of abstract characters common

to all situations"! 26 There is no essence, but "there does exist
27
a universal human There is no essence, but there
condition"!
which has 2S Human
is "a configuration universality"! reality
cannot be defined but ... it can nevertheless be defined as that
"which tends to become God." 29
The reader may wonder at this insistence on the critique of
Sartre's freedom. The reason is that Sartre's notion of freedom
is essential in his
system. It is, in fact, the For-itself in its dia-
metrical opposition to the Being-in-itself. What is at stake in a
critical examination of Sartre's Existentialism is not a detailed

exegesis of his seven hundred pages of pheno'menological on-

tology but a thorough exploration of his basic notion, the For-
itself, and its relation with the In-itself .

Sartr^ Reflexions sw
28
la question juive, p. 76.
27
Sartre, ExtstentialisTn, p. 45.
*
EN, p. 653.
SARTRE'S FORM OF FREEDOM 169
The German Karl Jaspers, in his book Philoso-
Existentialist,

phie, tome II, Existenzerhellung, also attacks the idea of abso-

lute freedom. His critique is not explicitly against Sartre in

fact, was written a dozen years before the appearance of

it

UEtre et le Necmt and yet his argumentation is effective as

regards Sartre. Under the title "The Illusion of Absolute Free-
dom," he writes: "All freedom, which is freedom of an indi-
vidual, must stay in opposition, it must unfold itself continu-

ally and in struggle and consequently be limited. An absolute

freedom would be the freedom of a totality which has not oppo-
sition 'outside' itself but has them all inside itself." 30 "In the
case of an Absolute freedom, not only the idea of Subject and

Object disappears but in the disappearance of all opposition,

the self itself no longer is. Absolute freedom is nonsense. Free-
31
dom becomes empty without contradiction." The deeper
meaning of all this is that freedom implies the existence of some-
thing which is not the Self, and which therefore is in one way or
another an obstacle.
Precisely this problem of "obstacles" bothers Sartre very
much, and in order to dispose of it, and to preserve his absolute
freedom intact, he performs the most prodigious dialectic. 32 The
underlying fallacy, which he presents in different ways, is that
the obstacles are not obstacles as such; my choice in choosing
them what makes them obstacles. If a rock is an obstacle in my
is

climb on Mount Washington, it is because I have decided to

make this climb. If I decide not to climb, the rock loses its quali-
fication of obstacle. This demonstration appears at first to be
sound, and Sartre uses it in various ways al tliroegh Ae four
first data: my Place, my Past, my SuirouiKfiiigs* my Fellow-

my project adncb rmses

t
brethren. It is, he claims, the cbofee of
the obstacles^

**KarI Jaspers, Ph^oso^e^ t. H, Ex&tenzerbett&ng (Berlin, 1932), p. 194.

^IMtt-, p. 195. Sartre, too, accepts tbe existence of ^obstacles'*
strangely enough, claims that freedom is w&rmited. m
"See above, Chapter Five, H. EH
v p. 561 fT.
170 CRITICISM AND COMMENTS
And yet, this reasoning itself hides a fallacy. It is
necessary to
distinguish between a freedom of decision and a freedom of
execution. It may happen, and it does happen, that I am free
in deciding an act but not in executing it. I have decided to go
from Lille to Paris by bicycle, but while I am on the way, a
heavy storm comes up. Obviously, I must either interrupt my
trip or go ahead and risk being drenched. No
one can claim,
however, that I have freely chosen these different hypotheses.
The storm was certainly not included in my initial choice. It is
true that if I had stayed at home, I should not have been in the
storm, but it is also true that what was not foreseen at all cannot
be imputed to my free decision. It is not I who choose this

"situation." The obvious conclusion is that all choice supposes a

certain number of data-. 1 can choose among those data, but the
data themsehes I have not chosen. Choice is never unlimited,
but rather happens to be between A or
it Even when A, B or C.
B and C are the result of an anterior choice, they are neverthe-
less limited and irrevocable. After having spent years preparing

myself for the Marines, the result is that I am prepared for the
Marines and not for the Air Forces or for a chair of philosophy.
Whatever Sartre may say, this is a limitation of my choice.
Absolute freedom is a mere illusion.

No less a person than Merleau-Ponty, in his excellent Phenom-

enologie de la Perception** saw the weak point in Sartre's radical

affirmation that freedom always means absolute and unlimited
freedom. For Sartre, once one is free,there cannot be the slightest
deterministic influence. As soon as there a possibility of de-
is

terministic influence, no matter how weak, the For-itself is no

longer free. Merleau-Ponty believes that this position is merely
theoretical. There is, he claims, and rightly, a certain "sedimenta-

tion" of our life. Once we have repeatedly taken an attitude

toward the world, there an almost invincible tendency to keep
is

this same attitude. Theoretically speaking, one is always free to

**Merleau-Pontty, Phenom&iologie de la Perception, p. 502.

SARTRE'S FORM OF FREEDOM 171
change one's life; practically, however, it can be impossible or at
least extremely difficult. Sartre claims that an attitude of inferi-

complex, is a free choice, and that

ority, the so-called inferiority
ifthe psychiatrist does not succeed in curing a patient afflicted
with an inferiority complex, it is simply because the patient does
not want to be cured. 35
This a rather simple way of reasoning. In actual fact, it is
is

only slightly probable that I shall be able to destroy an inferiority

complex with which I have lived for more than twenty years.
Although this
inferiority is not something fatal, it is nevertheless
a weight; it is the real weight of my past. Real and concrete life

isnot as simple as Sartre's

straight argumentation; one is free or
one is not free; if one is free then one must be absolutely free,
and so on. In fact, our freedom is
grounded on our concrete
situation, and this concrete situation is the result of a multitude
of influences: our past, our heredity, our ability to learn, etc.

Again, take the situation of a poor worker. Sartre will claim

that he is what he is because he chooses to, etc. This is a some-
what elementary statement. Through strong competition and
rough struggle, life in certain countries is often settled to such
an extent that the only thing for the poor man of moderate tal-
ents to do is to stay where he is.

Although one is theoretically free, one has, nevertheless, the

clear conviction that life is very hard and that one is kept pressed

against a wall. No doubt freedom exists, but there is also an

amount of "fatum" which reduces so-called absolute freedom to
a mere phantom. There is, in fact, a zone of settled existence
around the freedom of die For-itself, a part of our being which
is
ready-made, so to speak: I am a human being, a bourgeois or
a worker, and these things my freedom cannot change much.
Sartre forgets too often that freedom does not start from nothing.
A decision, no matter how free it is, starts from somewhere. In
fact, I am always to use a Sartrian term committed in the

*EN 9 p. 5p. See above, Qiapter Five, JL

172 CRITICISM AND COMMENTS
world. My freedom therefore is not "alone" but is bound to start
from such or such a situation.
"To be Merleau-Ponty, "is to be born in the
free," writes
world and from the world." 36 There is neither a complete de-
terminism nor a complete or absolute freedom. I am not a thing,
and I am not pure consciousness either. In particular, my initia-
37
tives, my situations, once they are chosen, carry me. It is there-

fore frequently difficult to determine where freedom begins and

where the ensemble of "obstacles" or the so-called situation plays
its role. Take a Christian martyr under the Roman persecution,
for instance. Notwithstanding the tortures, he refuses to give up
his faith. We
ought to remember that his is not a "solitary" de-
cision. True, it is a free decision, but it is supported by many

external motives.The martyr feels at one with the Church; he

is convinced that an eternal reward awaits him; he wishes to

prove that he can suffer and that he has been consistent in his
thinking and acting. All these motives do not eliminate the free-
dom of his decision, but they show clearly that the decision is
supported by different motives. It is not a naked For-itself which
endures the tortures, but a For-itself helped and sustained by so

many strengthening influences.

In fact, we are mixed up with the world and with others in an
inextricable confusion. The influences of past, my
heredity, my
my environment, my education, are real, and yet the part played

by each of them cannot be cut out like a slice from a pie. I have
a style of life, a way of acting, a manner of deciding certain

questions. All these are

the result of my free decision and of
different influences permeated by my -free decision?*

**
Phenomenologie de la Perception, p. 517.
87
Here Bergson has a point: "In reality the past conserves itself com-
It follows us continually as a whole: all what we thought, felt,
pletely,
wanted since our childhood is there What are we but the condensa-
. . .

tion of the story which we have lived since our birth." Evolution creatrice,

*
There is much truth in the following text by Antoine de Saint-
*Tu dans ton acte meme. Ton acte, c'est toi . Tu
Exupery: loges . .
SARTRE S FORM OF FREEDOM 173
An absolute freedom exists nowhere. It
is
truly astonishing to
find a man who
seeks to give us in his phenomeno-
like Sartre,

logical approach a strictly objective view of what appears

in

reality, managing nevertheless to build up a conception of free-

dom which is so thoroughly unrealistic.

t'echanges .L'homme n'est qu'un noeud de relations, les

. . relations seules

comptent pour Fhonune." PHote de Guerre, pp. 171, 174.

 THE CONFLICT WITH METAPHYSICS

As I have already remarked, Sartre makes a distinc-

tion between ontology and metaphysics. Ontology is the phe-

nomenological description of being, the subject that he explores

in UEtre et le Neant. These explorations show us the double
element of his system, the For-itself and the In-itself, and pre-
sent us with all that his reflection and dialectics have discovered

concerning their mutual relationship. Metaphysics, on the other

hand, is, in Sartre's terminology, the search for origins; a search
for the origins of the In-itself and For-itself is thus not the busi-
ness of ontology. His book, therefore, devotes only a few pages
to metaphysical problems. But these pages contain a certain num-
ber of assertions which are worthy of comment.

I. THE ORIGIN OF THE IN-ITSELF

Concerning the origin of being, Sartre makes a distinction be-

tween the origin of the Being-in-itself and that of the Being-for-
Itself. As regards the question of the world's origin x
the first

Sartre's assertion is plain: the world has "no reason, no cause,

and no necessity." 2 He calls the existent being a contingent
absolute: 3 absolute not in the sense of that which is
necessary,

*
is understood in an ontological sense (i.e.,
If the question why is there
answer is of course obvious: there is being because of the
Sartre's
bein^?),
For-itself. Without the For-itself, the In-itself would ontologically never

appear. See also Heidegger, Vom Wesen des Grundes, p. 109.

CONFLICT WITH METAPHYSICS 175
but of that which cannot be deduced/ and contingent as that
which is, but could equally well not be.
How does Sartre demonstrate such radical assertions? His
argumentation can be presented as follows. The Being-in-itself
cannot question itself. It is dumb "packed-togetherness" without
any consciousness whatsoever. The For-itself, on the contrary,
can ask questions about origins. Unfortunately, there is For-itsetf
only because there is Being-in-itself. The For-itself posterior is

to Being-in-itself, which is the real and full

being. Thus, its ques-
tioning comes after Being-in-itself, and supposes Being-in-itself.
Just like the non-being of the Sophist, consciousness is "other"
than being and comes into existence only if there is being (Le.,

Being-in-itself). Hence, consciousness itself can never cause or

justify Being-in-itself. The latter is before the For-itself, and
consequently has no cause and no reason.

It is obvious that in
metaphysical speculation, Sartre has
this

once more exploited, with his usual skill, the famous idea of the
For-itself. Having established once and for all that being is only
In-itself, and this in the first pages of his book, and that the For-
itself is void and "emptiness," die whole value of which consists
in making being appear and be known, there is no place for any
other entity whatsoever.
Sartre himself proposes the hypothesis of a third possibility,
T
namely a "Being-for-itself-in-itself some kind of synthesis of
both which could be called God. This being could explain the
origin of things, and give us the so much desired metaphysical
foundation of the world. He calls it in Spinozistic
terminology
Ens Causa sui, but discards it as soon as he has stated it. There
is no such
thing as "Being-for-itself-in-itself." The reason is that
an identification of consciousness and massive being results in-

4
Since being cannot be deduced, Sartre calls it "absorde" or "de trap.**
As have remarked,
I mSartre*s terminology wfiat cannot be jtisdfied or

grounded is always "too much."

I
76 CRITICISM AND COMMENTS
evitably in the extinction of consciousness itself. As a matter of
fact, the "desire" of Sartre's For-itself is ambiguous, for when
it remains consciousness it remains
"incomplete," and if it at-
tempts to become an In-itself it destroys itself.

Sartre's
position concerning the origin of the world and the
existence of God (both are metaphysical questions in his termi-

nology) can thus be summarized as follows:

There are only two sorts of beings: the Being-in-itself and the
Being-for-itself. The real being is the In-itself (let us call it

X); the secondary being is human consciousness or For-itself,

which in fact is nothing but a negation of the real being (let us
call it Y). X cannot be God, for it is massive and dumb

"packed-togetherness." Y cannot be God for it is

essentially in-
complete and comes ontologically after X. Neither can the sum
X + Y gives us thenotion of God, for X Y is the destruction
+
of X. An unconscious God is not God.
The conclusion is that the search for the origin of the world
does not make sense. It is a harmless occupation, but it can give
no result whatsoever.

Now we can understand more clearly Sartre's aim in making

up his dialectic concerning negative judgment, interrogation, de-

struction, and especially concerning bad Sartre intends
faith.

above all to disrupt the identity and the unity of the For-itself.
To be present to yourself, he claims, means not to be yourself

entirely. To be present
to yourself implies "non-coincidence,"
for it supposes separation in one way or another. 5 The same
his presentation of temporality. As
tendency was noticeable in
above, the For-itself never possesses itself completely
explained
but, stretching itself along past, present, and future, lives "in
time"; that successively. The For-itself thus is never complete.
is,

Sartre's subtle dialectic is nothing but a continual demonstration

intended to emphasize this basic "lack" of the For-itself. And
once it is demonstrated that human consciousness is "Netmt" and
6
EN; p. 120.
CONFLICT WITH METAPHYSICS 177
that the world is "FEtre" It is rather easy to take the metaphysical
attitude which I have already discussed.
Sartre's adventure is
basically an attack in the grand style
against metaphysics; i.e., against allsearch for the origins of be-

ing. Pedro Descoqs right when

is he claims that Sartre's system
is a
"plaidoyer" for the defense of atheism, 6 even when this
atheistic conclusion is not primarily intended. It is supremely

important to understand that Sartre's atheismproceeds from his

7
conception of a For-itself. This notion of For-itself, however,
is also the vulnerable spot in Sartre's system and, as I believe I
have demonstrated sufficiently, his dialecticof negative judg-
ment, interrogation, and destruction is, to put it
mildly, an in-
sufficient proof.
The same thing can be said concerning the notion of Being-
for-itself-in-itself, or God. Sartre considers the idea of God as
8

some ideal limit of the For-itself, where both contradictory no-

tions of the For-itself and the In-itself are supposed to be recon-
ciled. This is impossible indeed. The whole problem is, however,

whether the concept of a Supreme Being must be considered in

that way. It may be difficult to prove the existence of God, but it

may be equally audacious to state that God is and must be a

merging of the material cosmos and human consciousness, a so-
called Being-for-itself-in-itself.
One notices here the same "vicious intellectualisni" which
William James exemplified in the famous idiom, "the cat looks
at the king." The concept of a king looked at by the cat says
nothing of a king who loves his wife and a king who governs
his kingdom. There are thus three kings who cannot be fused
*
Pedro Descoqs, "Existentialisme," 'Revue de Philosophic, pp. 39 f (1946).
There is anotiher argument in EN against God as creator, which was
7

discussed in Chapter One. This argument, however, is not new. It is the

traditional argument of pantheism, excluding a simultaneous existence of
finite and The originality of Sartre's atheism consists in his ekbora-
infinite.
tion of the notion of For-iiself.
'Sartre speaks about God in die following passages of EN-. pp. 31-32,
12 1-124, 133-134* 2*4* H 1 * 35** 3<%*495* <$53 7&
178 CRITICISM AND COMMENTS
together. The king who is looked at by the cat may not be
the only king. And the way in which Sartre looks at God may
not be the only way in which the Supreme Being ought to be
considered.
At any argumentation in favor of an atheistic
rate, Sartre's

position, at least insofar as

it is
typically Sartrian, is
not compel-
the whole line. There is even, when it is looked at
ling along
carefully, some contradiction with his epistemological position.
As stated in Chapter One, Sartre claims that the existence of the
external transphenomend being is the condition of my phenom-
enal perception. 11 The whole problem is, however, whether the
725* Causa sui is not brought to the same status as the transphe-
nomenality of the Being-in-itself; that is, whether the Supreme
Being is not the condition of my thinking just as an external
transphenomenal Being-in-itself is the condition of my phenom-
enal perception. 12 Both can be considered as intentional projec-
tions of human needs, projections which we are compelled to
assertby nothing else but our need for them. Setting one "proj-
ect" against another, there does not appear to be any difference
between them, except that the one (concerning the Supreme
Being) sustains that part of freedom which enables me to im-
agine it, whereas the other (concerning the massiveness and
-transphenomenality of being) oppresses it. Since Sartre's phe-

nomenology affirms transphenomenality even when it does not

yet appear, why should he not "affirm God"? If the transphe-
nomenal being is ultimately in no way "the thing present in
person,"
13
but much rather "the condition of all unveiling," u
there is no apodictic reason
to reject a similar process arguing for
an Eternal Thought the ground of my thought. This should
as

not be understood as a new form of proof in favor of God's exist-

ence; it is
merely intended to point to the fact that it is not so

**EN, p. 15. I have criticized this epistemological

weakness in Chapter
Six. See above, p. 136.
113
See Varet, UOntologie de Sartre, p. 170.
w "Ibid.
EM>p. 15.
CONFLICT WITH METAPHYSICS 179
simple to be a phenornenologist in the Sartrian way and be a
consistent atheist at the same time.
At any rate, Sartre considers himself an atheist. His atheism,
as noted above, has no self-sufficiency. "The existentialist thinks

very distressing that God does not exist."

15
it The fundamental
reason may well be that Sartre is afflicted with the presence of his
terribly lonely For-itself, which wanders all over the cosmos and
does not know
where to anchor. More than other any philos-
opher he has emphasized the extreme need of the Absolute, with-
out, however, conceding the existence of an Absolute Being as
a remedy to this obsession. He is the pilgrim of the Absolute who
never reaches the Absolute. "Human reality is a being which
16
tries to become God," but deification or saturation by the
divine is excluded.
In one of his latter publications, this unrest seems even to have
increased. Sartre writes:

God is Hegel tried to replace him with a system and the

dead . . .

system foundered; Comte, by a religion of humanity, and positivism

foundered. About 1880, in France and elsewhere, worthy men, some
of whom had enough esprit to insist that they be cremated after death,
thought they could institute a lay morality. have lived for someWe
rime with this morality, and now there is M. Bataille, along with so
many others, to demonstrate its failure. God is dead, but man has not
for all that become atheistic. Silence of the transcendent joined to
the permanence of the need for religion in modern man that is
still the as . . For M. Bataille refuses
major thing, today yesterday .

to reconcile these two unshakable and opposed exactions: God is

silentand that I cannot deny everything in myself calls for God
and that I cannot forget * . As a matter of fact, this experience can
.

be found in one form or another in most contemporary authors: it is

the torment in Jaspers, death in MaJteaux, destitution in Heidegger, the
reprieved-being in Kafka, the insane and futile labor of Sisyphe
in
Csxaas?

15
Sartre, Existentialism, p. 26.
*
EN, p. 653.
St I (Paris, 1947), p. 153.
 8 CRITICISM AND
I
COMMENTS
After this, one wonders
atheism is not rather the re-
If Sartre's
fusal of God
than the absence of God. His doctrine caUs for a
theistic
complement but this complement is discarded. Address-
ing a public meeting of the group "Maintenant" Sartre said,
"Christians start from the postulate 'God
exists/ I set out from
the postulate: 'God does not exist.' " This is a
significant con-
18
fession, indeed.
Whatever may be the decisive reasons for Sartre's atheism,
it is
possible to believe that, in emphasizing the exigency of the
Absolute, he has in a very personal way elaborated on an idea
which has its deepest roots in human nature.
Philosophers, mys-
tics, and poets have
always been, more than others, aware of it,
but every human being at certain moments of his existence is
sensitive to this
appeal. Sartre has with an unusual skill thrown
this
aspect into relief. This is a merit. And yet the reader does not
escape a certain malaise, for Sartre creates an immense need for
the Absolute without whatsoever. "The
supplying any remedy
deep . . . lifted
up hands on high" w but there was no re-
his

sponse. The examination of the origin of the For-itself will

only
increase this malaise. 20

18
In his recent play, Le diable et le bon Dieu (Paris:
Gallimard, 1951),
Sartre seems to have overcome all doubt. In an interview with the
Figaro
Litteraire he declared that
he was "convinced" and "certain" of his atheistic
position. (See Le Figaro Litteraire, June 30, 1951.) And yet, one cannot
help wondering why, if there is no God, Sartre's main lead in the play is
so incensed with an empty name.

20
.
,.
not
my task to analyze the ethical consequences of Sartre's atheism.
It is
Let me merely point to a conclusion which is characteristic of his
system.
Since there is no God, there cannot be a
"we-subject" of all world citizens,
observes Sartre (EN, pp. 495, 501; see above,
Chapter Four, p. 93). The
idea of the
"we-subject" appears only when the Third man emerges. In the
absence of God, therefore,
humanity is unable to form a complete coalition
and aft attempt to assemble the whole of
humanity is an inevitable failure.
It is obvious that Sartre's
argumentation is not convincing. There is no
reason why atheists cannot tend toward some sort of world union. In
fact,
they do. Several of them tend toward some form of humanistic ideal where
concern for brotherhood and for moral and material welfare of all human
beings replaces faith in an invisible deity.
CONFLICT WITH METAPHYSICS l8l

II. THE ORIGIN OF THE FOR-ITSELF

If the search for the origin of the world is meaningless, the

same thing cannot be said
concerning the origin of the For-itself.
"The For-itself such," claims Sartre, "that it might look back
is
21
on its
origin." This search for the origin of the For-itself, how-
ever, is fatal to Sartre's ontology, as will soon
appear.
From where does the For-itself come?
"All happens as if the In-itself," explains Sartre, "in a project
of grounding itself, has given itself the modification of the For-
22
itself." ." And
"As yet, this is altogether impossible, if
. .
if
the definitions of the basic areas of his ontology are to remain
true. The Being-in-itself, the dumb, massive, brute existent of
Sartre's system, cannot plan or intend to become a For-itself.
The contradiction is flagrant, and the author himself is obliged
to recognize it. "The Ontology," he writes, "is confronted here
with a profound contradiction. In order to be able to speak of a
project grounding itself, it is necessary to conceive an In-itself
which originally is present to itself, that is, to conceive an In-
23
itself which is consciousness at the same time." In this way,
it
appears that to explain the descent of the For-itself from the
In-itself, Sartre's system must rest on Being-in-itself which acts
24
like a For-itself.
In order to save his ontology, one could object perhaps that
the origin of the For-itself out of the Being-in-itself was involun-
at all, but the mere result of some strange seis-
tary, not planned
mic event. But Sartre himself asserts repeatedly that even the
concept of the coexistence of both Le., of the For-itself and of

the In-itself in one, is

altogether excluded.

28
,.. To m means to found
EN, p. 715. ground itself, Sartre's terminology,
itself, to explain itself, tx> Justify or to give a motive or cause.
28
EN, p. 715.
24
Paleontology rejects si nypotkeses immtaimng that human conscious-
ness (For-itself) is equally as old as die fe-xse& ,
I 82 CRITICISM AND COMMENTS
The ideal being, the total being, the concept of which would be
the single synthesis of the In-itself and of consciousness (or For-
itself), this ideal being would be the In-itself grounded by the For-
itself and which grounds it, it would be the
identical to the For-itself,
'ens causa sui,' But things are such that the In-itself and the For-
. . .

itself exclude one another thoroughly and make such ideal syntheses

impossible. With this assertion we do not mean that the 'integration'

took place, but on the contrary, that it never took place, for it was
25
always wanted but never possible.

The problem, therefore, remains without solution; Sartre is

unable to explain the origin of the For-itself without giving up
He leaves it to the metaphysicians,
his definition of the In-itself.

however, "to formulate hypotheses which [will] allow us to

understand" 26 the apparition of the For-itself from the In-itself.
He wonders if motion was not the first
"attempt" of the In-itself
to become a For-itself and to ground itself. 27 We, too, wonder.
But after what he has told us concerning the notions of For-itself
and In-itself, we will probably conclude that the metaphysicians
will keep silent and stick to the "absurd/' to use a Sartrian term.
"We are in the heart of the absurd (indeed) and we wonder if
Sartre does not condemn himself to move around in an infernal
wherein he has willingly locked himself up." 2S
circle,

All through the phenomenological process of his ontology,

Sartre sets forth, one by one, the failures of human activity. The
For-itself is a "lack," its
conquest of the In-itself a failure. Its
relations with the Other are a disillusion. And now, at the end of
his book, in a brief metaphysical approach, he faces an insoluble
contradiction and a serious threat to his ontological system.
25
EN, p. 717. *lbid.
**
EN, p. 717. In French, Sartre uses the word "tentative" (attempt) and
puts it between inverted commas to show his hesitation in using the word in
connection with the Being-in-itself. For the In-itself does not attempt . .

It
merely &. Sartre has stated this repeatedly in the past, and one can under-
stand his hesitation about modifying this essential definition at the end of
his book.
28
Gabriel Marcel, Homo Viator, p. 254.
CONFLICT WITH METAPHYSICS 183
There seems to be in his personal
psychology such an obsession
with "nihilation" that he cannot even escape the desire to destroy
what he has made with his own hands. The existence of God
could eventually deliver Sartre from his atrophied and contra-

dictory world. Unfortunately, for Sartre, there is no God.

Sartre has made his choice. It is the refusal of God, the refusal
of the Other, the absurdity of his own existence, 20 and the omni-

presence of a heavy, massive, and inexplicable Being-in-itself.

There are no more issues. Sartre is
brought to a standstill.

One can now understand the so-called nausea. The Sartrian

nausea may be defined as the fundamental reaction of the For-
itself
against the absurdity of its own existence and the existence
of the world. Horror and disgust for the Being-in-itself manifest
themselves in nausea. No
<f
necessary being can explain exist-
ence ... It complete gratuity. All is gratuitous, this garden,
is

this town and myself. When one happens to realize it, then it
30
turns one's heart, begins to float . . . : that's the Nausea."
all

In this universal downfall of all positive values, however, one

is freedom. "Human
value stands. It reality is free, basically and
31
completely free." This freedom serves no other value. It is a su-
value. Sartre's heroes choose for the pleasure of choosing
preme
39
Again, absurdity in the Sartrian sense.
80
Sartre, Nausea, p. 166. The idea of the absurdity and gratuity of exist-
ence finds a somewhat different expression in Heidegyer. It is death which
is essential to his view and which, more than nausea m
Sartre, exhibits the
limit and the vanity of our possibles. T2!Sb!: TP m
***
gfaordky of existence
is rare among human beings, according' t<^ Heidegger; one needs the
appeal
'ol.cQnsdence toward AutfaentJcjty^^reafee one*s <^mtH^ency and fjrjjpijte.
Lucjdity brings one back to true magHtT"
At 3iis point Heidegger can T>e compared with Camus {in Le My the de
Shyphe). We can find in Heidegger the feeling of "boredom" as revelation
n
of existence (see "What is Metaphysics? , p. 364). This "boredom" has
nothing of Sartre's disgust and nausea about k,
To be complete, one must note that Sartre's notion of nausea is slighdy
different in his novel of that name -than it is in EN. In the latter, nausea
seems restricted to the taste of bodily In-itself In the novel, nausea is, as
.

explained above, a reaction against every In-itself.

81
N, p. 559.
184 CRITICISM AND COMMENTS
and do not use their freedom in view of a higher value: love, for

example, or action. It a liberty, not a liberation. 32

is

Freedom with negation of all the rest: that is the choice of

Sartre. The result is
tragic isolation.
33

32
1 want to avoid
drawing ethical conclusions, the more so since Sartre's
Ethics has not yet been published. It is possible that there he will try to
use his "freedom" in some way so that our defeat (revealed by his phenom-
enological ontology) may become a victory (?) As a matter of fact, in his
booklet Existentialism, to which I have occasionally referred, Sartre has
already attempted an Existentialistic defense of social responsibility. This
presentation, fiowever, is weak, and doubly so after a reading of EN. The
booklet as a whole, in fact, must be regarded as a regrettable publication.
There is also a hopeful note in one of his recent (1950) novels, Troubled
Sleep. Boris, the lover of Lola, wants to join the Free French Forces.
Mathieu, locked up in a church tower together with five or six soldiers, or-
ganizes a senseless but heroic resistance against the Germans and seems then
to discover the meaning of life that has eluded him thus far.
33
Some texts in Baudelaire are a marvelous illustration of this feeling.
"Baudelaire was the man who felt that he was a gulf. Pride, ennui, giddiness
he looked right into the bottom of his heart. He saw that he was incom-
parable, incommunicable, uncreated, absurd, useless, abandoned in the most
complete isolation, bearing his burden alone, condemned to justify his exist-
ence all alone, and endlessly eluding himself, slipping through his own
fingers, withdrawn in contemplation and, at the same time, dragged out of
himself in an unending pursuit, a bottomless gulf without walls and without
darkness, a mystery in broad daylight, unpredictable, yet perfectly known.
It was his misfortune that his image still eluded him. He was looking for the
reflection of a certain Charles Baudelaire, the son of Madame Aupick, the
poet who got into debt and the lover of the negress Duval. His gaze en-
countered the human condition itself. His freedom, his gratuitousness and
his abandonment which frightened him were the lot of humanity; they did
not belong particularly to him." (p. 40)
"Suddenly for a trifle, a mere feeling of disappointment or tiredness, he
discovered the unending solitude of this consciousness which was as vast
as the sea'.... He realized that he was incapable of finding a signpost, any
support, or any orders outside it." (p. 41 )
Unjustified and unjustifiable, he suddenly becomes aware of his terrible
freedom. Everything still has to begin. He suddenly emerges in solitude
and void." (p. 55)
 THE CHOICE
SARTRE, OR
10 EXISTENTIALOFSUBJECTIVISM
There is much truth in the assertion that each of us,
in coming makes his choice. This choice may
into the world,
never be verbally declared: our being may emerge into
silently
the world (in which case it will be our acts which will
betray
us); or the choice may be formulated into a doctrine, and this
doctrine will express our choice systematically.
This last is the choice that Sartre has made, and his qualities are
manifest: sharp dialectic; an entirely new approach to the prob-
lem of Nothingness; a penetrating analysis of bad faith, anguish,
and desire; an original statement on the possibles; and a defense
of freedom which, although extreme, is impressive. He has, fur-
thermore, the merit of reminding us of some points such as
the inanity of existence and the fragility of happiness which
we had decided not to examine any longer. For anyone who con-
siders not only theimmediate and pragmatical result, but has the
audacity to view die totality
of the real, it may appear that
Sartre has something to say. The technician and the pragmatist

glue us to the visible world. The Existentialist, on the contrary,

takes to himself all those things wMch others want to frustrate
in us: experience of existence, experience of freedom and of its

absurdity. The pragmatist has hands oafy* though we admire

their skill. The Existentialist is above all the Chanter: lie has lost
the world, indeed, but how much more depdi tbere is m his
agony! Once more* we are torn between the PaseaBaB
de FhoiBine*** *
et misere
1
See Jean. Oniuias, *Tedmkjne et Desespoii:," in Etudes, 257: 195:
I 86 CRITICISM AND COMMENTS
has made his choice and this choice is
Sartre^ thejj>isery_jnf^
human existence. But in order to do this in the
way that he has
done he has eliminated several other choices, and this is very
it,

unfortunate. He knew what he wanted from the start, and he has

obtained what he wanted. But if the task of true philosophy is
to show us the world as it is and ourselves as we are, one can-

not believe that Sartre has really achieved success. Instead of an

objective speculation concerning man and the cosmos, he has

presented us with an analysis, often subtle and always interesting,
of one man's experience with life, an experience marked by over-
powering negativism and presented with a considerable parti
pro; an experience, moreover, disastrously deficient in the appli-
cation of deductive method.
First of all, there is no reason to make a mystery of the fact
that, even before coming to the consideration of an issue, the
method by which a philosophical problem is attacked is
already
which the solution will be found. Sartre
in itself the direction in

has his definitions of For-itself and In-itself from the start; he

supports them as much as he can, throughout

the seven hundred

pages of his book, by means of phenomenological analyses, but

he never modifies their initial signification.
There is therefore a For-itself and an In-itself, a human reality
and a massive being. There is Peter and there is the mountain.
There is no God and no place for the "living." Sartre's starting-
point is exclusive. And since this starting-point, as I think I have

demonstrated, is it too has in it much of a

insufficiently proved,
postulate.
Furthermore, Sartre has not only "chosen" the basic areas of
his
system and eliminated (too quickly) the eventuality of other
beings, but
he has also decided about the way in which both
these entities will be examined and analyzed. His approach is

pheiiomenological, and, as stated at the beginning

of Chapter
One, "phenomenological" means "descriptive" of "what appears
to consciousness." This phenomenological description is the de-
EXISTENTIAL SUBJECTIVISM
187
scriptiofi of the concrete human existence and Its relations with
the world.
I should not wish to be construed as
suggesting that such a
description is without value, or that it cannot be objective and
complete. Nevertheless, I do want to suggest that these descrip-
tions which claim to be
objective are very often not objective
at all. They aim in
many cases to confirm an idea of existence
which the author has made up for himself at the start. In such
cases the
description proves nothing at all: a diff erent initial con-
ception of existence could have been similarly strengthened by
descriptions. The result is that the descriptions, instead
different
of affirming a proof, become mere illustrations of what was

planned and wanted.

The most striking argument against Sartre is the fact that other
authors using the same method come to different results. For
Heidegger, for instance, Dasem (human reality) implies a Mit-
sein? That is, I am conscious of my finitude and of my con-
tingency, but this consciousness
(Heidegger calls it the act of
Authenticity), while it is an act of individuality, also arouses my
fellow-brother at the same time; we walk toward death in a
spirit
of decision and communion. The idea of a "team" is the
symbol
of Heidegger's intuition of community, "Team," as noted above, 3

comprises you and me, and all of us, linked together through
some feeling of dumb existence, by which, e.g., the rowers are
thrown into the same action. Such a conception is far from
Sartre's idea of conflict. In Marcel, too, more so even than in

Heidegger, one notices the complete opposite of the Sartrian

view.
For Gabriel Marcel, love and communion are the
enriching
values of life. He
accepts die limitation of human reality, but
sees in
friendship the compensation for this restriction. "It is only
in communication that the Self is for the Other Self a mutual

*
Heidegger, SZ, pp. 120, 121, 125,
*See above, p. 64.
J 88 CRITICISM AND COMMENTS
4
creation." And so each loss of communication is a loss of be-
ing, and, for a being without communication, the
only issue is
despair. It is
all-important in life to change the he into you:
that to
is, change the neutral, indifferent unknown man into a
human being, a center of life, of
suffering, and of love.
5
We
must
6
stay "available." Staying available, the presence of the Other,
his conversation, his look, in contrast to the Sartrian
look, may
become the liberating appeal and the end of
my unhappiness. 7
"Suicide must be tied with 8
for a being which
up unavailability,""
is available for Others does not itself the in
recognize right to
9
dispose of itself. The Other is not the Enemy
10
but the Saviour.
Instead of the Sartrian
autarchy, Marcel concludes with what
he "ontological humility," by which each being accepts and
calls

enjoys the fact that it is not autonomous. This can be formulated

as follows: "The more I think of
my own being, the more I real-
ize that this
being does not depend on its own jurisdiction,"
n
and "the more I am, the more I affirm
myself as being, the less
12
I
posit myself as autonomous."
While
Sartre considers "nausea" as the
vague sensation of dis-
gust before the unintelligibility of the In-itself, Marcel, in imita-
tion of Minkovski,
speaks of the subtle resonances in the soul
which indicate what he calls the "primitive of the dynamism
cosmos." This implies to a certain extent a
uniformity of struc-
ture in the cosmos, a
uniformity which allows, in the act of feel-
ing, perception of what happens. This does not mean that Marcel
is in favor of a but that he
complete anthropocosmical unity,
*

B
Marcel, Journal M
etaphyslque, II: 58 (1927).

*
7&W.,p. 175.
In French,
"disponible." Cf. Refus a ?Invocation (Paris, 1940), pp. 55 f.
Ibid.
*Etre et Avoir (Paris, 1035), p- I 8-
"Aspects Phenomenologiques de la Mort,"
*Ibid., p. 179,
^Compare with Sartre's "The Hell is Other People," No Exit, p. 61.
^Etre et Avoir, p. 192. These statements are in
striking opposition to
Sartre's absolute freedom. It is well to remind the reader that Marcel's
pres-
entation was written before the publication of Sartre's UEtre et le Netmt
n
EXISTENTIAL SUBJECTIVISM 189
13
does accept a certain "resounding" from one to the other. This
receptivity of our senses must be highly respected (no nausea);
14
and it is, in its inscrutable mystery, the "birth to reality."

Probably was as a reaction against the philosophers of ab-

it

surdity that Marcel published his Homo Viator which is mostly

the testimony of his veneration for "creation." "What the Oc-
cident has always considered as precious is a certain attitude of

respect before existence and by this is understood, all that

exists, oneself and the world around oneself, the mysteries which
surround us, the mystery of birth, the mystery of death, and a
16
certain love for all which is created." The author complains
that even Christianity is perverted by a Luciferian disregard for
matter. What we need instead of Sartre's despair is aptly ex-

pressedby Rilke's "Zustimmung zum Da-sein," that is, a pro-

found and sincere approval of existence. 17
If I appear to have dealt in unnecessary detail with this other
analyst of human existence in its concrete form, it is because I
wanted to show the wide divergences to which the phenomeno-
logical method leads.
The opposition between Marcel and Sartre
is extreme, and
yet each has described the phenomenon of hu-
man existence as it has "appeared" to him. Here we encounter
perhaps one of the weakest points of Existentialism: grounded
on an experience, and exposed in a descriptive manner, it will
always be difficult to impose the chosen experience as the only
one, as a "view" iswhich
compelling for everyone.
Clearly, nobody can reproach Sartre for writing from his own
as it is one of exceptional interest; but
experience, particularly
one can justifiably reproach him for presenting it as the only
valuable experience, as lawgiver in ontology and in ethics.

**Refus a Vlmoca&on, pp. infF. In French, "retentissement."

"IMd^p. 123.
^Paris,
M Homo 1944,
Viator, p. 105.
^Rainer Maria RIBce* Die Ai^etcbungen des M&lte Lmerid Brigge
(Leipzig, 1919), Aofz.XIV.
19 CRITICISM AND COMMENTS
From should not be concluded that
all this it
phenomenology,
way, is not a valuable approach. On the con-
used in the right

trary, the method invented by Husserl is a precious instrument

in scientific and
philosophical research. Exactness, precision, sur-
render of prejudice, careful attention to the given, methodical
all

description of the same, this method has its place in the study of
the positive sciences. Just as
physics needs mathematics, it may
appear soon that the speculative sciences ethics and epistemol-
f r instance
gy 5 require the exact phenornenological approach
as an introduction to further
logico-deductive developments.
Even experimental psychology may well make use of a phe-

nomenological method, for, before any experiment, one ought

to know that
concerning which one makes the experiment.
There are, however, two remarks to make regarding this
method. First, the descriptions should not be subjective; 18 and
second, philosophy should not cease with mere descriptions.
First of all, in
claiming that a phenomenological must approach
be objective, want to indicate that the phenomenologist is not
I

supposed to state more than what he knows. Phenomenology,

therefore, requires some kind of auto-critique, not unlike the
Kantian one: a critique which controls the results of previous
descriptions. we need
Together with the analytical description,
a reflective dialectic,which reexamines the results of previous
19
descriptions and rejects or expels all which is not demonstrated.
Through this critical approach the exact scope and value of the
first
approach is determined. In the case of Sartre, it is
sadly
apparent that he claims to know much more concerning the
transphenomenality (that is, the massive existence) of the In-
itself than he is able to I believe that I have
justify. sufficiently
elaborated on this point in Chapter Six, demonstrating there that

w I am not word
using the "subjective" here in the sense of idealistic.
Concerning Sartre's idealistic or realistic position, I have commented in

Chapter Three, II.

**
An interesting example of this method is Van Steenbergen's Epistemol-
ogy (New York, 1949) .
EXISTENTIAL SUBJECTIVISM I 9I
Sartre's affirmations of the existence and the rnassiveness of the
In-itself are mere postulates.
A
second condition for avoiding subjectivity is the formula-
tion in one way or another of a definition of human nature.

Through famous principle that "existence precedes essence,"

his

and his claim that "man continually invents man," Sartre destroys
20
all definition of human
reality. But, in actual practice, how can
he claim to make a system without accepting a general definition
of human nature? How can his descriptions fit all and each of us
if there is no stabk conception of human reality? If human real-
ity is free, unique, unstable and indefinable, there are no laws of
existence. And if Sartre cannot teach us the laws of existence,
how can he build a system?
Yet, this is what he wants to do. He has
paradoxically
the ambition to make a "phenomenological ontology," distin-

guishing himself by this fact from Kierkegaard and Jaspers. The

result is that he must either give up his ultra-subjective axiom
"existence precedes essence" or abandon all idea of systematiza-
tion. Practically, Sartre tries to save both. He makes a system,

but a system contaminated by a strong subjectivism, the system-

atization of one life a life entirely negative, remarkably one-
sided, and wholly pessimistic. 21 Such subjectivism is largely the
result of an Existentialistic approach, an approach in which a
stable notion of human reality is rejected and a concrete, whim-
sical, and unstable existent is set forth. Who wants to defend
must first define.

A
third condition of objectivity and this condition comes
close to the second one is the
necessity of a multiform ap-
90
Sartre, "Mise an Point," in V
Action (Dec. 27, 1044). See also the dis-
cussion of Sartre's concept of absolute freedom in Chapter Eight above.
tt
One may be inclined to believe that Kierkegaard and Jaspers* in saying
farewell to all svstematization, are more consistent. And yet these too can-
not escape a striking contradiction. For the claim that we ought to be afm-
philosophicd^ and that philosophy is an impossible waser, oblisres both
Kierkegaard and Jaspers to formulate and to defend a thefts, and this is,
by hypothesis, in direct copttadictioii t0 what tfaey want to do.
I9 2 CRITICISM AND COMMENTS
proach in phenomenology; that is, of an approach which looks at
human reality from different angles.
The necessity of this method follows from the complexity of
human reality itself. Human reality is a concrete confluent of

many paradoxes: it is rational and irrational, it is emotional and

coldly intellectual, it is
spontaneous and methodical, immanent
and extrovert, dependent and independent, synthetic and ana-
lytic, optimistic and desperate, happy
and unhappy ... A de-
scription which claims to be objective ought to account for this
continual paradoxical tension in the concrete reality. This para-
dox is not a contradiction; rather, it expresses the multiple aspects
of living reality and shows therefore how a complete record of
a concrete existent can be obtained: namely, by a successive anal-

ysis of both aspects of the paradox. The paradox of description

only reflects the

paradox of life. Without an ambivalent
descrip-
tion the result will inevitably be one-sided, incomplete, and
therefore only partly true. With a double approach, however,

realitycan be approximated as nearly as possible. The truth will

then be situated between both poles of the analysis. human A
reality, for instance,
is neither a
desperate being nor a perma-
nently cheerful entity, but rather the result of a tension between
the extremes.
It is obvious that Sartre does not follow this rule. When he
makes an analysis of love,
he finds that the Other's freedom,
which can neither be abolished nor appropriated, may well ap-
pear intolerable; nowhere does he set forth a fair account
of the

positive values
which love and friendship introduce in human
life. When he speaks ofsex, he gives us an interesting account
of the reasons why certain people are frustrated, but again his

analysis is
incomplete, for frustration is not
the necessary and
sole life. Human behavior,
reward of matrimonial implying joy
and pain, generally moves in both zones. Sartre sees only one
his book he emphasizes the antithesis and
aspect. Throughout
forgets the synthesis. His main preoccupation is with underlining
EXISTENTIAL SUBJECTIVISM I
93
the antithesis between the For-itself and the In-itself, the For-
itself and the Other, the For-itself and God, Obsessed by the
antithesis, he has forgotten the harmony. 22
In summary, then, greater objectivity in a phenomenological

approach means, first, that the results must be submitted to what

I have called a critical examination; second, that a clear and hon-

est definition of human reality must be given; and, finally, that

the descriptions must be complete and realistic, made up after

the elimination of whatever has appeared to be one-sided and
individualistic rather than specific and essential. 23

Still, this is not yet philosophy. Once a careful examination

and objective phenomenological description has been made, phi-
losophy itself should not be considered as finished. On the con-
trary,
we
need a systematization of what has been gathered in a
descriptive way, and even a further exploration of reality by
means of a logico-deductive approach. Sartre'sontology is an
attempt at systematization, but it is also an exclusion of further

exploration by means of any method other than the phenomeno-

logical. He does not formally exclude metaphysics; but, as we
have seen, the assertions and the conclusions of his phenomeno-
logicalontology make metaphysical construction in a logico-
deductive way impossible. The basic assertion seems to be that
that which does not "appear" does, ipso facto^ not exist; hence
we have a formal rejection of such concepts as causality and sub--
stance. "There is nothing behind" or "there is nothing to it" is
evidently essential.
These words of Nietzsche seem, for Sartre
and for some other phenomenologists (e.g., Landgrebe), to have
"a positive and liberating meaning by making the man seek the
absolute as revealing itself in his existence here and now, re-
29
Or, as Andre VendoiBe puts k: "II a vonio eteindre les etoiles et les
"
etoiles brillent Eoufoors . . ("Sartre et la Litteratnre," Etude^ 259: 40
(1948).
**
Although dMfereetfy fe^mdbted, tfeese remarks are neyerdieless in-
tended to suggest tfee advisability of a certain return to Hesserf and his 1

eidetic redncrioe witfeatit the Trassceiideacal ''&* towerer, **: tlie tfee-
matic redaction and the ideaistiG ^sef^aces life m !
194 CRITICISM AND COMMENTS
f
erring him where he must prove
to that instant in his existence
his worth, knowing and
that here
now, on the spot where he
stands, the absolute reveals itself, and not in transcendance 'be-
" 24
hind the world.'
Defense of metaphysics not task alone would
is
my this of-
fer material
enough for a substantial volume but I do want to
to the fact that Sartre's (and Landgrebe's)
point approach is
incomplete. In the first
place, it is not so evident that the rejec-

liberating as some phenomenol-

tion of
"something behind" is as

ogists claim it to be. Sartre himself does not feel too satisfied with
his affirmation that the absolute is "here and now," and it is

obvious that the rejection of the Supreme Being and of immor-

tality does not

fill him with
joy. But the fault is elsewhere.
The fault seems to be that a descriptive method is considered
as the only valuable one; all other means for attaining the truth
or enlarging our view are rejected. The result is that we move
from a position which claims to be objective, open and "voraus-
setzungslos," into closed empiricism, and that consequently a part
of reality which may eventually exist escapes us forever. Further-
more, descriptions which have been gathered in an objective
phenomenological approach must be interpreted. Philosophy im-
plies more than description; it implies also an interpretation of
the real and a reduction to the unity of a system. It is in this at-

tempt to understand not merely to see the world and hu-

man reality,
method has its irreplaceable
that a logico-deductive
value. Once
analysis has dismembered the given into the primi-
tive elements or psychological atoms, the moment has come to

explain and to reconstruct the unity of beings. Is there an element

of unity and identity in space which we can call substance ? Is
1

there an ontological continuity in time, by which one being in-

fluences another, which we can call causality? Sartre rejects these

questions with an indefensible swiftness, for his method does not

^Landgrebe, '^Phenomenology and Metaphysics," Philosophy and Phe-

Tiomenologjical Research * p. 205 (December 1949).
EXISTENTIAL SUBJECTIVISM 195
allow him further speculations. We
know how he charges human
consciousness with the enormous task of creating a human world
"thereis no world" without human consciousness but "there
is world which has become human" through its relations with
a
human reality. This by no means solves the problems of metem-
pirical unity
and origin with which nature presents us continually.
Sartre ignores these problems; he must ignore them.
They are
meaningless, for his method does not allow him any solution what-
soever. And yet we have seen how he is tortured by the idea of a
human existence which locked up in the prison of its finitude
is

where it moves in an infernal circle. This dependence brings him

nausea. But if he has dependence, and has failed
fallen into this
to break the barricade in a drive toward the Transcendent, it is
because he did not switch toward another method when the mo-
ment had come to do so.
It would seem that here the mistake which has been
perpe-
trated so many times has been committed once more; i.e., the
mistake of an eliminative rather than a cumulative
procedure.
Each philosopher tries to raise the edge of the veil and to de-
scribe for us what he Frequently he seems to us to be right.
sees.

He is wrong, however, when he claims that his colleagues see

nothing, for to perceive is to adopt a viewpoint, and no view-
point is exhaustive. Quite often the findings of the first do not
contradict those of die second; only the method of approach is
different. The founder of a new system often consciously or un-

consciously discards, together with the system, the

methods of
his predecessors, instead of using them and extracting from them

at least the "particula veri" which they contain. By doing this,

his philosophical system becomes perhaps Jte, that is, the result

of his studies, of his education, of his whole climate, but it is

not what it ought to be, namely a comprehensive grasp of the
It cannot satisfy humanity as
intricacy and richness of being.
such, for another philosopher with another mode of approach
will see another world. A
new system is too often a substitution,
 CRITICISM AND COMMENTS
and not often enough of an enrichment, too much an antithesis
and not enough of a synthesis. And being only a system among
other systems, a view among
many views, a hypothesis among
other hypotheses, it has quite often but a
temporary and local
value. The doctrine has value but is
fragmentary, and it is frag-
mentary because it is incomplete in its method and in its approach.
Fragmentation without reconstruction is always disappointing.
If we see further than our ancestors, is it not because they
carry us? And should we not see more if we let them carry us
still further? that is, if we made more abundant use of their
methods not of their results. Philosophy is not static, it is pro-
if

gressive. All means of knowledge, however, even the ones pre-

sented by the past, are not too much when we set out to ex-

plore the unknown regions concealed in the future. The mystery

of reality needs a multivalent approach; that is, one which is
descriptive and experimental, logico-deductive and even emo-
tional; descriptive in that it perceives and analyzes "what hap-

pens"; deductive in that it is able to rebuild the unity of the real

dismembered by analysis, and able, at the same time, to eventu-
ally
transcend the visible; and even emotional in that anybody
who agrees that there is still in this world an element of mystery
and of absurdity will admit that "logical thought is not the uni-
versal heiress" (Levy-Bruhl). Many of us who sincerely like
reason, and want to explain all
things by reason alone, have never-
theless lived long enough to realize that this is impossible. 25
Where any one means of approach is omitted, the danger is

great that we shall lose contact with a part of the real. system A
may be original and new, but excluding this total approach, by
which the infinite complexity of mankind and of the cosmos is
explored from all sides and from novelty will
all directions, its

fade and its originality become one more of those quickly ex-

*A characteristicexample of the last approach is Max Scheler's; see

Wesenimd Formen der Sympathy (Bonn, 1923). Also Sartre himself, in his
excellent exploration of the feeling of anguish. EN, p. 69 ff. See above, p. 21.
EXISTENTIAL SUBJECTIVISM 197
tinguished intellectual revolutions which make the gods smile
and the history books unnecessarily long.
Totality is wanted; that is, a total application of all available
methods in order to grasp the totality of being. "Hegel may be
right," writes Sartre. "Totality is
perhaps the right viewpoint,
the viewpoint of being." 26 This assertion seems to carry much
truth indeed. But this is also the reason why we do not want a
world which is Sartrian only; we want a world which is more
inclusive. Philosophy is not one man's life. It is not the product
of one climate, of one nation or one era; it is, on the contrary,
homeless and supra-national. We
are crowded in the philosophi-
cal field with small orthodoxies which serve as refuge for many
individualities. Although each viewpoint, even that in a novel
or a play, may help us to understand ourselves and the world,
we do not consider this as philosophical, for philosophy is still

that which, having grown above the concrete and the subjective,
achieves oneness from the multiple and builds a System with a

variety of methods. There is no philosophy of one man.

There is

a Philosophy of Mankind. It is toward this synthesis that each

effort must tend.
38
EN, p. 361.
 APPENDIX
EXISTENTIAL PSYCHOANALYSIS
SARTRE AND FREUD

Toward the end of his major work Sartre inserts a

number of ideas about psychoanalysis. It is quickly evident to a stu-
dent of his that these ideas have not come to complete maturity.
Rather, they have been added because of their connection with his
doctrine, "the last discoveries of Phenomenological Ontology being
1
the principles of the Psychoanalysis." As "first principles" and
first

novel ones at that, they are of real interest, however perplexing or

even unconvincing they may occasionally appear.
The immense desire of the For-itself to become all of the In-itsel

and to remain consciousness at the same time, is a failure. The rich

variety of its is not without great interest. Each
attempts, however,
For-itself is free choice,and each one of its acts, the most insignifi-
cant as well as the most important, expresses this choice and is a result
of this choice at the same time. It has been said that this choice is a
choice of being. My freedom is a choice of becoming God, and all
my acts and projects express this choice and reflect it in a thousand
ways. It is the task of Psychoanalysis to detect by means of these
concrete manifestations the original project which we are; that is
to say, the fundamental and underlying way we follow in choosing
our being.*
The Empirical Psychology has to an extent understood this prin-
1
EN, p. 663.
2
The subject
matter of tnese and following pages is partly a discussion
of the last 70 pages of EN. These last pages of EN, however, contain more
than the principles of Sartre's I%yclK>analysis. They contain also tfee con-
clusions of Sartre^s C^Dlofiy. Ttese concfasiaos have been discussed above
in Chapter Five* Hazel E, a translation of two
papies,|a$ pofalisiied recently
sections of EN, eatitlecl Ex$$te$&ia fsyeb&analysis (Plulosophical Library,
200 APPENDIX
ciple. It was working in that direction, for instance, when it claimed
that a human being must be defined by means of his wishes. And yet
this approach, from a Sartrian viewpoint, hides a double error. First,
a substantialistic one: the
psychologist considers desires as so many
entities contained in our consciousness, he will not accept the fact
3
that the desires constitute the essence of our consciousness. Second,
he believes that the task is finished when a bundle of needs and
drives has been found. One ought to remember, once and forever,

says Sartre, that the individual cannot be characterized in his indi-

viduality by a mere enumeration of abstract qualities. Most of these
qualities are so superficial that they actually specify and determine
nothing about character. When Bourget in his Essais de Psychologic
Contemporaine claims that the young Flaubert was full of ambition
and full of an indomitable strength, and that both these abstract
schemes resulted in producing the concrete literary temper "Flau-
bert," it
appears to Sartre that Bourget starts from the hypothesis
that an individual lies at the intersection of a certain number of uni-

versal and abstract laws. This is a postulate, which Sartre in his

horror of the abstract utterly rejects. In place of the easy assertion
that Flaubert has a "grandiose ambition" we need an analysis which
leads us to the "irreducible." And this will only be arrived at when
Flaubert's character has been stripped to its most fundamental and
essential"projection." This projection, which in fact is Flaubert,
without being a substance is an absolute. It is the way in which
Flaubert approaches and desires the world. This desire, even when it
haunts one particular object, is a desire of the world as such. Stendhal,
following different methods, came to similar conclusions, for the
deeper meaning of Stendhal's crystallization is that the love for a
particular woman implies a desire for the whole world through the
woman.4 The Don Juan of the Catholic novelists, whose succession of
loves implies fundamentally a search for the Absolute, has a similar

meaning. Each desire goes beyond itself and implies a desire of the
whole. This or that jealousy, which "historializes" itself toward this
or that woman, signifies for the one who is able to discover it the
global relations "toward" the world, in and through which the sub-
ject constructs himself. He is this jealousy
at this particular moment,
and this attitude reflects his view of the world. When I am rowing
on die river, I am nothing but this concrete project of rowing on
the river, at the same time the rowing is an expression of myself
*
'EN, pp. 642 f. EN, p. 649.
1ARTRE AND FREUD 2OI
tnd of fundamental choice "toward" the world. I am totally "in"
my
:ach gesture. It would seem that Heidegger's distinction between
5
LUthenricity and inauthenticity, besides the deplorable fact that it has
>een made for ethical purposes, can by no means be considered as a
undamental "project" for being. The attitude toward death on
:

kvhich Heidegger has founded this distinction is not the most funda-
mental one, the For-itself not being fundamentally a desire of life or
Df death but a desire of being. In this fundamental quest, which is in
Fact a godseeking attitude, the human reality has a free choice in the
particular invention of its ends, but ultimately it is that, and nothing
else.

the task of the Existential Psychoanalyst to interrogate and in-

It is

terpret certain empirical data which betray the fundamental approach

to being. Itis not
enough to make a list or a classification of these
drives,however. One must be able to unriddle and read them accord-
big to the rules of a certain method. This method is Existential
Psychoanalysis.
In the hope of clarifying his position, Sartre attempts a comparison
with Freudian Psychoanalysis. He agrees with Freud that the external
and empirically detectable manifestations of psychic life are nothing
but the expression of the underlying global structure that really con-
stitutes the person. Like Freud he rejects the existence of so-called

previously given elements, such as heredity and character.* Both men

consider human reality as a totality and a permanent "historializa-
tion" and, in their search for the proper individuality of the Subject,
try to "reconstruct" him from his birth until the moment of his cure.
Each element in the reconstruction leads closer to the inner dis-

position of the individual. In this domain objective

intervention on
the part of the Subject is not expected. He could interfere, strictly
as "the Other" in the most
speaking, but only by considering himself
rigorous way.
The differences between the two methcxls, however, are consider-
able. While Freud has stated, once and forever, he nature of the fun-
damental motivation (libido), Sartre allows Iranian B3re Itself to
announce its fundamental trait. The "appropriation** of tlie world,
which according to the French existentialist* is the ain$ of fiiumn
reality in Ms own terms the conquest of die In-itself by tfae For-
T
itself is not merely a sexoal one* Tlie insatiable desire of fhp ooi-
202 APPENDIX
verse which tantalizes the human reality expresses itself in a thousand
different forms.
Freud himself has never been able to give an apodictic proof of
the basic statement of his doctrine; namely, the sexual tendencies in
the child before the development of the genitals. We
are never cer-
tain thatour adult interpretations of childish gestures and childish be-
havior are the right ones. If the child is not the pervert that Freud
claims it to be, then all the logical consequences which he deduced
from this basic assertion give way. Different human activities such
as art, mysticism, and religion are no longer manifestations of a re-

pressed sexual life, but are somany approaches to the world and
have nothing essential in common with libido. As was the task of
the Viennese psychoanalyst to draw our attention to the importance
of sex in our lives, it may be the task of existential psychoanalysis
to react against certain exaggerations of the Freudian doctrine

exaggerations which, in fact, are now beginning to fade away in the

peaceful manner of all extreme assertions.

This is not to say that Sartre's psychoanalytic attempt is on this

particular point a fish without bones. The insubstantial and impersonal

absolute, which at the same time is the fundamental project toward
the world and the essential definition of an individual, remains a
somewhat obscure assertion. This is especially true when it is related
to the more detailed and smaller projections in and through which
thisfundamental project expresses itself. One of the difficulties with
which Sartre's theory has labored from the start is the "impersonal"
structure of human reality. He considers this structure essential, but
in maintaining it he
destroys ipso -facto the inner continuity and
spatial identity of the subject.
It will be well to remember, furthermore, that for the existentialist
this ultimate term is always a choice, a free choice. Nothing influ-
ences unless the subject wants to be influenced. A
certain fragility,
therefore, is inherent in all analytical technique, for the patient being
absolutely free, can in one moment overthrow the most carefully
checked conclusions. A
human being is this mobile entity from which
the best and the worst can be expected at any time. The "instant" of
8
total conversion is always possible.

Precisely because human reality is choice, conscious choice, the

Freudian dualism of consciousness and unconsciousness has to be
rejected. How can Freud trust the confessions of his subject, won-
*EN 9 p. 661. See above, p. 104.
1ARTRE AND FREUD 203
lers Sartre, when
the content of these confessions is an unconscious
8
me. It is often the case that the subject claims to recognize the
mage of himself which the psychiatrist presents to him. But how
:an he recognize what he did not know before, since between the

ign and that "which is signified exists a wall, namely, that of the
o-called unconscious? And yet this sudden illumination of the sub-
ect is
explainable only if we realize that the subject never
a fact. It is

:eased for a moment to be aware of his most intimate being. He was

vware of it, but he did not know it. This is precisely Sartre's inter-
>retation of the hidden. Distinguishing between consciousness and
knowledge, he claims that one can be conscious of something and
levertheless not know not the Freudian enigma,, however.
it. It is
10
Et is there, in full
light, "en pleine lumiere," writes Sartre, but in
order to be perceived and conceptualized it may require the presence
of the Other in this case the presence of the Psychoanalyst or
of the Subject acting as Other. The existential psychoanalyst makes
the subject know that of which he is already aware. His task is one
of enlightening the subject. How successful he is will depend on the
number of facts that his hypothesis can explain and unify and also
on whether or not he has really reached the fundamental trait. Even
when this fundamental project of the individual has finally been un-
covered, it will really only be the knowledge of the Other as it is
for-the-Other; i.e., the project, as it is for-itself, will always escape
our investigation, for as such it can only be "enjoyed," not known
objectively,
Sartre's argument against the Freudian unconscious does not seem
wholly convincing. One cannot help feeling, indeed, that his dis-
tinction between consciousness and knowledge is fairly thin. The
question boils down to this; whether or not the Freudians can accept
tie ontological unity of conscious and unconscious, granting that both
names are merely labels for one and the same underlying principle,
or whether they will claim that conscious and unconscious are two
ontologically distinct processes for
which Sartre's unifying tendency
can by no means make up. One thing appears certain, namely, that
for Freud the conscious processes are only conscious for a short
period and are an ephemeral quality which adheres
to a psychical
11
process only temporarily.
While Sartre protects the conscious ele-

,
11
Freed, New Iraradttctory Lectures on Psycbo-andysis (New York,
WJ)* PP- 8z f- S^ a^ Freud, Moses and Monotheism (New York, 1939),
Part III Section L
204 APPENDIX
ment (For-itself ), Freud will emphasize the unconscious and consider
it asthe normal state of large portions of the Ego and the Super-ego.
In fact each defends what he needs. The Viennese psychoanalyst
tries to save the unconscious: it is essential to his doctrine. Sartre

rejects the unconscious, for to accept the Freudian unconscious is

obviously to endanger the homogeneity of the For-itself, which in
Sartre's view is coextensive to psychic life, the In-itself being all the
12
rest.
what he calls Freud's trinity
Sartre's opposition to Id, Ego, and

Super-ego stems from the same origin. The Super-ego is defined

as a part of the inhibiting forces of the outer world which have
become "internalized" and constitute in the Ego a sort of extension
13
and representation of parents and educators. Sartre is very reluctant
14
to admit such intruders in his For-itself. The Id, or "oldest of the
mental provinces," 15 containing everything which is inherited, espe-
cially the instincts, is equally eliminated. His
main argument consists
in a long, phenomenological analysis of so-called bad faith or dis-
simulation.
18
We
have bad faith when something is, at the same time
and in the same person, both known and veiled, accepted and re-
jected. Bad faith is unintelligible, however,
without the acceptance of
17
absolute unity and simplicity in the psychic organism. Freudian
psychoanalysis has not explained the double activity of repulsion and
attraction; it has merely localized it. There are several cases of bad
faith, such as that of the woman who goes to a "rendez-vous" with
the feeling that her lover wants more than her love, or that of the
frigid woman who
claims not to enjoy marital relations and yet is
unable to hide her pleasure at these particular moments. Both cases
presuppose the translucidity of one undivided consciousness, in which
the subject is masking the truth from himself. "Each time that I was

12
Except for emotions and passions which have grown into a habit and
are, so to speak, like inchoate forms of In-itself. See above, p. 45.
Cf. Freud, The Question of Lay Analysis (New York, 1950), pp.
71 ff. and Freud, Dictionary of Psychoanalysis (New York, 1950), p. 179.
14
N,pp.92f.
Freud, Dictionary of Psychoanalysis, p. 90, and The Question of Lay
15

Analysis^ pp. 41 f .

16
EN, 85 ff.
* "Les pp.
efforts de la psychanalyse (freudienne) pour etablir une veritable
dualite et meme une trinite (Es, Ich, Ueberich s'exprimant par la censure)
n'ont abouti qu'a une terminologie verbale. L/essence meme de Tidee re-
flexive de *se dissinraler' quelque chose, Tunite d'un meme psy-
implique
chisme et par consequent une double activite au sein de FuniteY' EN, p. 92.
SARTRE AND FREUD 205
able to push my investigations far enough," wrote the ex-Freudian
psychoanalyst Wilhelm Stekel, "I found that the core of psychosis
was conscious" M
Sartre's psychoanalysis implies more than the acceptance of his
doctrine and the rejection of a part of the Freudian doctrine; it en-
tails the examination of a certain number of
empirical data as well.
The question may be asked, indeed, why do we choose to conquer
the world under the form of this object rather than under the form
of that object? do we detect certain constants, such as the
Why
"geological tendency" in Rimbaud and the "fluidity" of water in
Foe? Why do we discover in different persons different "tastes"
which according to the Latin axiom "de gustibos non, ." should .

not be discussed, but which, in fact, ought to be discussed thor-

oughly? Wriy does John prefer candy rather than a cocktail? Candy
is not more
important than a cocktail, but the fact that John attempts
the conquest of being through candy rather than through a cock-
tail is very revealing, indeed. That is why we need a psychoanalysis

of things
A answer, of course, would be that this is the inscrutable
first

mystery of man's freedom and that herewith all has been said. Ac-
tually, this answer is incomplete, for the object of my choice de-
serves careful attention*
In his examination of the empirically given, Sartre makes many
interesting suggestions and combines them with the conclusions
of
30
Gaston Bachelard. not to say that Sartre agrees with the
This is

latter as far as his poetical symbolism goes. We

may even say that
he thoroughly disagrees on that particular point, for he considers
Bachelard too subjective and even too irrational in several of his
interpretations, especially
in his speculations on water, the so-called
UEau et les Reves. What
the existentialist gladly borrows, however,
is a certain respect for the rich individuality of the matter, inde-
pendent of its formal beauty. There is an aesthetic of material
1

Bachekrd, and not merely of formal.* This seems

causality, claims
to have been forgotten by the art critic. Matter has a richness and

La Femme Frigide (Paris, NJRP-).

,..
Bachelard, UEmi et les Reves (Paris: Cora, 1947) and La P$y~
20
Gaston
chcmdyse du Feu (Galiimrd, 1938). Cf. also from the same author, VAtr
et les Songes (Corti, 1945), and Lft Terre et les Reveries de la Vohnte
(Corti,
206 APPENDIX
depth of its own, whatever may be its peculiar form at the moment
that we approach it for exploration. Hence the necessity for a care-
ful examination, a psychoanalysis of the four fundamental elements,
air, water, fire, upon which we shall apply a method of
and earth,
objective deciphering, with the hope of detecting behind the symbols
22
the roots of our imaginative virtue.
There is another point where Sartre differs from Bachelard; namely,
in the use of libido, which in Bachelard's Psych analyse du Feu has
taken a preponderant place. M. Bachelard has not been able, unfor-
tunately, to shake off the Freudian influence, and the early chapters
of La Psychanalyse du Feu lean heavily on this a prioristic assertion
that sex is the leitmotiv of existence. A psychoanalysis of things,
however, is supposed to examine things not for their sexual potential
but for their peculiar material being and for the way in which this
28
particular kind of being affects human reality. This psychoanalysis
is and must be
presexual. It is
possible, however, that on a secondary
level a sexual symbolism can be detected in nature.
It is well to recall at this point what was said in Chapter Three of
this book 2* concerning the structure of the external object. An ob-
is made out of qualities. Although a quality has to be "revealed"
ject
by a human consciousness and presupposes, therefore, the nihilating
25
action of the For-itself, it is nevertheless something reaL Each
quality has a special metaphysical density and so has the object, made
manifest by the qualities. What is the metaphysical density of yellow,
red, viscous, of lemon, oil and water? The examinations of these is

much more helpful than considerations of sex, claims Sartre.2*

In this ontological examination of an object, a belief in the so-called
"projection" of our feelings into the object,
must be rejected. When,

Aquinas has a similar idea in "prime-matter," which is pure potency

22

and yet affords its part in the individuation process of the substance. See
De Ente et Essentia, c.2,q.r,a.i, ad 2. An attempt at "psychoanalyzing" ob-
jects, with a totally
different purpose, however, was made by the German
essayist, Guardmi,
in his books, The Spirit of Liturgy and Sacred Signs
(New York: Benziger Brothers, 1931).
N, P .<5o 3 .

34
See above, p. 52.
25
"L'energie potentielle d*un corps est une qnalite objective de ce corps
qm doit etre calculee objectivement en tenant uniqnernent compte de cir-
coestances objectives. Et pourtant cette energie ne peut venir habiter ce
coirps qtte dans un monde dont rapparition est correlative a celle du pour-
n
soi. EN* p. 692. See also p. 694.
SARTRE AND FREUD 20 J
instead of applying the term "viscous" to the object, the term is

applied to the individual by means of analogy, it is obvious that the

transfer of the notion from its physical meaning (a viscous thing) to
a moral application ("un type visqueux, un sourire visqueux") cannot
be done, unless a certain meanness in the viscosity has already been
detected. Even children, without knowing anything of so-called pro-

jection, or of the analogy between terms, show a real repulsion for

the viscous.
As a matter of fact, the viscous object presents itself as a possible
which can be "appropriated." 27 Let us remember that the empty
For-itself continually attempts to possess the world or In-itself, to
extend and to prolong itself into the In-itself, to grow and to over-
power all that is not itself. My "appropriation" of the viscous, how-
ever, is peculiar. When I touch it, it becomes, so to speak, the world
at this particular moment of my existence and reveals itself as some-

thing ambiguous; it is solid, and yet it is mellow, it is docile and sub-

but all of a sudden it appears to be
missive, sticky. It's a cupping
glass. I feel myself in danger in presence of the viscous. The viscous
possesses me as much as I possess the viscous. It's an overthrow of
values: the owner is owned by what he owns. It's a revenge of the
28
In-itself. Being under the threat of becoming myself the viscous,
I am
frightened. The prospect of becoming a river is not so terrify-
ing, for water has a clarity and a dissociability which viscosity does
not offer, but the metamorphosis into the viscous is dreadful. I must
stayaway from the viscous.
Each time I encounter in lif e an event which presents similar char-
acteristics, e.g., a certain smile, it will appear to me to belong to the

category of viscosity. This approach to the world may occur even

in early childhood. A
child learns these things at the very beginning
and his whole life is a gradual development and application of these
experiences.
It is important for the analyst to know the attitude of his patient
toward the viscous, claims Sartre, for if he is one who likes it, what
**
sort of double-minded fellow is he? Tastes and preferences are
revealing, indeed. "De gustibus disputabiturl"
On this point Sartre is right: one is what one prefers, but in order
to specify what one is, one has first to "psychoanalyze" what one
prefers.
What seems less convincing, however, is the notion of appropriation
* *
EN, pp. 698 f. EN, p. 701. EN, p. 706.
208 APPENDIX
or fear of appropriation which Sartre blends into his analysis of the
viscous. A
child may love to walk in a puddle without any fear of
being swallowed up by it. An oil man may enjoy stirring heavy oil
with his hand, pulling his fingers out of it and forming gluey, elastic
columns, and yet be completely alien to all weltschmerz! And if I
dislike the viscous, why cannot my original aversion to the viscous
be the result of my personal feeling for cleanliness and hygiene
rather than my fear of getting engulfed? I hate the viscid, because it
endangers my white hands and my clean shirt, not because I am
afraid of losing myself. Once this interpretation is accepted, a trans-
position from the notion of physical cleanliness to the idea of moral
purity does not offer special problems. One may object that my
attitudetoward physical and moral purity reflects nevertheless my
fundamental "project." It does, indeed. But this fundamental project
does not seem to include necessarily the idea of appropriation or of
fear of appropriation.
Besides his psychoanalysis of the viscous, Sartre attempts also,
^
although with less detail, an examination of "holes." The For-itself,
he says, is obsessed with the idea of filling voids. A
hole is an appeal
for being and, in this sense, a woman's physical structure is an appeal
for a strange flesh. This assertion ought to be well understood. As a
matter of fact, it is not a concession to the Freudian doctrine, for
it has here a presexual
meaning only. It is the mere attempt of the
For-itself to realize its most fundamental vocation, which is to be,
to create, to fill, to conquer, and to own. As has been said before,
sex happens to be one expression of this most fundamental of all
projects.
It would seem that in all this Sartre has not avoided the dangers
of a method which is almost exclusively descriptive. The results are
very and therefore not legislative at all.
easily one-sided, subjective,
Your description of the viscous, of holes, night, light, and so on, may
not fit my description at all. Let us take the case of three entirely
different people watching the ocean: a watchmaker, a metaphysician,
and a painter. All three of them love the ocean. The watchmaker,
man of a physical microcosmos, bent all day over a job of close de-
tail, loves the ocean for the endless space it offers, where his eyes
can dwell and relax. The metaphysician, standing in front of the

ocean, feels the width of the immense panorama in complete harmony

with the structure of his own soul: this visual expanse is a symbol of
86
EN, p. 704.
SARTRE AND FREUD 209
his intellect striving for depth. And
the painter's eye discovers on
the surface of the ocean an everchanging projection of wonderful
colors, such as no one painter ever threw on the canvas. The ocean
is the same and is not the same. It hides indeed an infinite
variety of
aspects and three candidates have chosen their viewpoint which
all

happens not to be the other man's viewpoint.

It appears, therefore, that it is not enough to ask the
patient whether
or not he likes a certain object or a certain quality, for his like or
dislike as such is not revealing. One ought to ask him, why precisely
he likes or dislikes a certain object. It's only when the analyst knows
the reason for a certain aversion or preference that he is able to
draw any conclusions concerning the fundamental psychological
traitof his patient. If someone tells me that he likes the viscous be-
cause of the feeling of being swallowed up, this is revealing indeed.
If another tells me that he loves the ocean because he is looking for
the colorful or for the immense or for some "absolute," then and
then only shall I be able to say something about his inner disposition.
In this manner, I do not inflict upon the subject my description of
the object, but I much more than Sartre does, to choose
allow him,
his own viewpoint. be the task of the analyst to build upon
It will

this subject-object relation a much more objective theory of psy-

chological diagnosis.
In Chapter Ten of this book, I pointed at a similar danger in
Sartre, namely how often he was the victim of a one-sided and sub-
jective approach. Aristotle himself in his time had noticed already
the danger of the irrational in individuality and in all that has not
reached the level of the Necessary and the Universal. Descriptions
may easily be tainted by an individual and subjective view.
It is obvious that in these last pages of EN, where the Existential

Psychoanalysis is explained, Sartre himself is fully aware that he is

adrift. His assertions, although very interesting, are tentative and
for the most part, take the form of phenomenological descriptions
which lack rational systematization. But if it is true that the irra-
tional comes first and that the rational systematization will follow,
we may assume that more is to come and that it will be presented
in a more systematic and coherent way.
To conclude, it
may be well to remind the reader that whatever
Existential Psychoanalysis carry us through life and
may propose to
make things somewhat easier, Sartre does not intend to alter the con-
clusions of his Ontology, Its tragic conclusions remain unshaken;
210 APPENDIX
human reality is and continues a failure. And one of the results of
an existential psychoanalysis is precisely to convey this insight into
y 33-
the naivete of l esprit de serieux" and to expose the vanity of all
human attempts to achieve real happiness.
31
EN, p. 721.
 BIBLIOGRAPHY

THE WORKS OF J.-P. SARTRE

i. Philosophical Works
"Legende de la Verite," Bifur (8 juin 1931).
"La Transcendance de 1'Ego," Recherches Philosophiques, 6 (1936-
37)-
Ulmagination (Paris, 1936).
"La Structure Intentionelle de 1'Image," Revue de Metaphysique et
de Morale ( octobre 1938).
"Une Idee Fondamentale de la Phenomenologie de Husserl," Nouvelle
Revue Frangaise (Janvier 1939).
Esquisse d'une Theorie des Emotions (Paris, 1939); English Transla-
tion: The Emotions, Outlines of a Theory (New York, 1948).
"M. Jean Giraudoux et la Philosophic d'Aristote," A
propos de
'Choix des Eleves,' Nouvelle Revue Frangaise (mars 1940).
Ulmaginaire (Paris, 1940); English Translation: Psychology of Im-
agination (New York, 1948).
UEtre et le Neant, Essai d'Ontologie Phenomenologique (Paris, 1943);
English translation of two sections: Existential Psychoanalysis
( New York, 1953).
"Materialisme et Revolution," Les Temps Modemes (juin 1946).
Descartes (Paris, 1946). Introduction to Descartes* Works, ed. by
Sartre.
UEocistentialisme est un Humanisme (Paris, 1946); English Transla-
tion: Existentialism (New York, 1947).
Reflexions sur la Question Juive (Paris, 1946); English Translation:

Antisemite and Jew (New York, 1948).

Baudelaire (Paris, 1947); English Translation: Baudelaire (London,
1948).
Situations I (Paris, 1947).
Situations II (Paris, 1948).
212 BIBLIOGRAPHY
Qu'est-ce que la Litter ature? (a part of Situations //, translated into
English as What is Literature? [New York, 1949]).
Situations 111 (Paris, 1949).

2. Novels and Plays

La Nausee (Paris, 1938); English Translation: Nausea (New York,
1949). "The Root of the Chestnut Tree," a chapter of La
Nausee, especially translated for publication in Partisan Re-
view (Winter 1946).
Le Mur (Paris, 1939); English translation: The Wall and Other
Stories (New York, 1948).
Les M ouches (Paris, 1943); English Translation: The Flies, together
with No Exit (New York, 1947).
Huis Closy piece en un acte (Paris, 1945); English Translation, Huis-
Clos (see above).
Les Chemins de la Liberte: I. UAge de Raison (Paris, 1945). "Les
Chemins de la Liberte" is the title for a tetralogy. Three vol-
umes have been published. English Translation: The Roads of
Freedom: I. The Age of Reason (New York, 1947).
Les Chemins de la Liberte: II. Le Sursis (Paris, 1945); English Trans-
lation: The Reprieve (New York, 1947).
Theatre I (Paris, 1947). Four Plays: Les Mouches, Huis Clos, Morts
sans Sepulture, La Putain Respectueuse)\ English Translation
of last two plays appears in Three Plays (New York, 1949).
Les Jeux sont faits (Paris, 1947); English Translation: The Chips are
Down (New York, 1948).
Les Mains Sales English Translation: Dirty Hands, in
(Paris, 1948);
Three Plays, see above.
Les Chemins de la Liberte: III. La Mort dans FAme (Paris, 1949);
English Translation: Troubled Sleep (New York, 1951).
Les Chemins de la Liberte: IV. La Derniere Chance (in prep.).
Le Diable et le Eon Dieu (Paris: Gallimard, 1951 ).
Luctfer and the Lord, trans. K. Black (London: Hamilton, 1952).
Saint Genet, Comedien et Martyr (Vol. I of the complete works of
Jean Genet. Paris: Gallimard, 1952).
VAffaire Henri Martin, commentaire (on the texts of several authors),
(Paris: Gallimard, 1953).
Kean (adaptation of the play of A. Dumas) (Paris: Gallimard, 1954).
Nekrassov, play (Paris: Gallimard, 1956).
Preface to Le Traitre, by A. Gorz (Paris: Ed. du Seuil, 1958).
Les Sequestresd'Altona, play (Paris: Gallimard, 1959).
BIBLIOGRAPHY 213

WORKS OF OTHER AUTHORS

Allen, E., Existentialism from Within (New York: Macmillan,

Ayer, A. J., "Novelist-Philosophers, J.-P. Sartre," Horizon (July,

I945)-
Beigbeder, UHoirrme Sartre (Paris, 1947).
Berger, Le Cogito dans la Philosophie de Husserl (Paris, 1941).
Bergson, Henri, La Pensee et le Mouvant (Paris, 1946).
UEvolution Creatrice (Paris, 1932).
Les Donne es Immediates de la Conscience (Paris, 1944).
Blackham, H. J. Six Existentialist Thinkers (New York, Harper
Torchbooks, 1959).
Campbell, R., Jean-Paul Sartre ou une Litterature Philosophique
(Paris, 1945).
J., The Existentialists (Chicago, Regnery, 1952).
Collins,
de Beauvoir, S., "L'Existentialisme et la Sagesse des Nations," Les
Temps Modemes (decembre 1945).
Demos, R., The Philosophy of Plato (New York, 1939).
Descoqs, P., "L'Atheisme de J.-P. Sartre,*' Revue Philosophique
(1946).
De Waelhens, A., La Philosophie de Martin Heidegger (Louvain,
1942).
"Heidegger et Sartre," Deucalion^ I (1946).
est-il un Humanisme?," Revue Philosophique de
"L'Existentialisme
Louvain (mai 1946).
"De la Phenomenologie a FExistentialisme," Le Choix, Le Monde,
V existence (Paris, 1947).
Dubarle, D., "L'Ontologie Phenomenologique de Sartre," Revue de
Philosophie (1946).
Descartes, Rene, Discours de la Methode (Paris, 1947).
Meditations Metaphysiques (Paris, 1946).
Farber, M., The foundation of phenomenology, Edmund Husserl and
the quest for a rigorous science (Cambridge: Harvard Uni-
versity Press, 1943).
Gilson, E., Being and Borne Philosophers (Toronto, 1949).
Grene, Marjorie, Dreadful Freedom (Chicago, 1948).
Harper, R., Existentialism, A
theory of Man (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1948).
Hegel F., The Phenomenology of Mind, ed. Bailie; Logic, ed.
Wallace.
214 BIBLIOGRAPHY
Heidegger, Martin, Sein und Zeit (Halle, 1929).
Existence and Being (Chicago: Regnery, 1949).
Hoberg, Das Dasein des Menschen (Zeulenroda: Bernhard Sporn Ver-

Hoffman, K., Existential Philosophy: A study of its Past and Present

Forms (Harvard University, Ph.D. Dissertation, March 1949).
Holz, H. H., Jean-Paul Sartre, Darstellung und Kritik seiner Philoso-
phic (Meisenheim: Verlag A. Hain, 1951).
Hume, David, A
Treatise of Human Nature (Oxford, 1941).
Husserl, E., Meditations Cartesiennes (Paris, 1947).
James, W., Essays in Radical Empiricism (Modern Library, 1936).
"Does Consciousness Exist?," The Journal of Philosophy (Sep-
tember 1904).
Jaspers, K., Philosophic //, Exist enzerhellung (Berlin, 1932).
Jeanson, Le Probleme Moral et la Pensee de Sartre, Introduction by
Sartre (Paris, 1946).
Jolivet, R., Les Doctrines Existentialistes de Kierkegaard a Sartre
(Paris, 1948).
Kuhn, Helmut, Encounter 'with Nothingness (Hinsdale, 111., 1949).
Landgrebe, Ludwig, "Phenomenology and Metaphysics," Phil, and
Phenomenological Research (December, 1949).
Lefebvre, H., UExistentialisme (Paris, 1946).
Lenz, Joseph, Der moderne deutsche und franzosische Exist entialismus
(Trier: Paulinus- Verlag, 1951).
Lukacs, G., Existentialisme ou Marxisme? (Paris, 1948).
Magny, C.-E., "Systeme de Sartre," Esprit (mars 1945).
Marcuse, H., "Existentialism, Remarks on Jean-Paul Sartre's Etre et
le Neant" Philosophy and Phenomenological Research (March

1948).
Maritain, J., Existence and the Existent (New York: Pantheon, 1948).
Marcel, Gabriel, Etre et Avoir (Paris, 1935).
Du Refus a FInvocation (Paris, 1940).
Homo Viator (Paris, 1944).
Mercier, "Le Ver dans le Fruit," Etudes, 5; 232 (1945).
J.,

Merleau-Ponty, "La Querelle de TExistentiaHsme," Les Temps Mod-

ernes, p. 345 (novembre 1945).
Pbenomenohgie de la Perception (Paris* 1945).
Moonier, Emmanuel^ Introduction aux Exist entialismes (Paris, 1947).
Natarjsoa, M. A^ A Critique of Jean-Paul Sartre's Ontology (Univer-
sity of Nebraska, 1951).
BIBLIOGRAPHY 215
Reinhardt, Kurt F., The Existentialist Revolt (Milwaukee: Bruce,
1952).
Ricoeur, P., Gabriel Marcel et Karl Jaspers (Paris, 1947).
Stern, Alfred, Sartre, His Philosophy and Psychoanalysis
(New
York: Liberal Arts Press, 1953).
Troisfontaines, R., Le Choix de J.-P. Sartre (Paris, 1945).
True, Gonzague, De J.-P. Sartre a L. Lavelle ou Desagregation et
Reintegration (Paris, 1946).
Varet, G., VOntologie de Sartre (Paris, 1948).
Vendome, A., "Sartre et la Litterature," Etudes, 259:40 (1948).
Wahl, Jean, Etudes Kierkegaardiennes (Paris, 1948).
"Essai sur le Neant d'un Probleme," Deucalion I (1946).
Werkmeister, W. H., "Heidegger's Existential Philosophy," Philoso-
phy and Phenomenological Review, II: 80 (1941).

"Books on Sartre by other authors published after the publication of

our -first edition.

Murdoch, L: Sartre, Romantic Rationalist

(New Haven, 1953).
Jeansons, F.: Sartre par Lui-meme
Ed. du Seuil, 1955).
(Paris:
Alberes, R. M., Jean-Paul Sartre (Paris: Ed. Univ., 1957).
Manno, A.: UEsistentialismo di J.P. Sartre (Naples: S. Chiara,
1958).
Plessen, J.: Inleiding tot het denken van Sartre (Assen, 1959).
Champgny, R. J.: Stages on Sartre's Way 1938-52 (Bloomington
Ind., 1959).
 COMPARATIVE TABLE OF REFERENCES IN
L'ETRE ET LE NEANT
AND
BEING AND NOTHINGNESS

THE TRAGIC FINALE I/ETRE ET LE NEANT BEING AND NOTHINGNESS

9 p. 17 p.
LIII
p.
10 28 LXni
11 13 XLIX
16 40 5
46 ii
18 57 21

51 ff 15 if
19 59 23

21 65 2#-

69 32
22 74 36
78 40
81 43
23 86 47 if

26 101 61
102 62
28 148 103
31 144 100

58 22

59 23

32 121 79
131 88
33 133 90
34 7<$ 38
35 146 102

36 156 112

38 157 114
39 167 I2 3

40 172 128

217
BEING AND NOTHINGNESS

p. 131
136
J 49
154
164
172
i?7
179
184
190
XLIX
LXIV
186
603
81
86
88
197
i94f
200
LXV
216
136

191 f
205 f
207
209
621
214
235
238
249
252
339
35 r
379
256
263
THE TRAGIC FINALE

p.
68

70

70

72

73

74

75

76
77
THE TRAGIC FINALE L ETRE ET LE NEANT BEING AND NOTHINGNESS

p. p. 187 p. 141
253 202
386 322
3 88 325 f

250 200
390 325 f

78 391 326
371 308 f

99 59 f
79
398 33?
81 353 292
408 342
4" 345
82 230 181

372 309
4i3 345
83 4*9 35 1
84 329 270
353 292

429 362
85 312 257
429 362
431 364
86 439 371 f
44i 373
87 312 257
320 261
445 377
446 378
88 312 257
329 276
429 362
431 364
446 378
89 459 389
90 475 404
462 392
92 486 415
490 418
THE TRAGIC FINALE L ETRE ET LE NEANT BEING AND NOTHINGNESS
p. p. 337 p. 277
491 419
93 494 422
495 423
501 428 f

94 499 42 7
95 5 02 -

42 9
96 511 436
97 515 439
516 440
98 517 441 f
518 442
99 5 20 444
100 524 448
101 527 450 f
102 535 457
103 539 462
540 463
104 544 465
10 5 55 2 473
555 476
106 558 478
559 479
108 563 483
109 567 487
369 307
569 488 f
no 570 489
241 190 f
in 573 492
369 307
386 322
112 583 502
582 501
114 588 506
342 282
346 286
506 514
115 600 516
THE TRAGIC FINALE I/ETRE ET LE NEANT BEING AND NOTHINGNESS

p. p. 602 p.
116 321 263
604 522
Iiy 609 526
6l 5 531
118 621 537
119 624 539
632 547
634 548
121 639 553
642 556
652 565
688 597
122 643 F 557 ff

123 665 576

667 578
124 674 584
125 682 592
683 593
687 597
686 596
126 708 615
721 627
1 35 1
1-34 XLVII-LXIX
136 12 XLVTII
16 LIT
140 57 f 21 f

144 58 f 21 f

145 46,47 II, 12

146 715 621 f

147 233 l84 f
150 116-117 74-75
154 631 546
148 102
155 343 283
502 429
160 513 438
162 515 439
I&4 535 457 f
THE TRAGIC FINALE

P-
I6 5

166
167
168
169
171

176
177

178
179
180

181

182
183
197
199
200

201
202
203
THE TRAGIC FINALE L'ETRE ET LE NEANT BEING AND NOTHINGNESS

p. p. 660 p. 573
2.04 92 f 52 f
85 ff 47 ff
205 690 600
206 693 602 f
690 599
207 698 605
706 614
208 704 612
210 721 627

224
 INDEX

Adler, A., 24, 102, 105 Choix, Le Monde, ^Existence, Le

Age of Reason, The (Sartre), 56, (several authors) , 8
79,85,99, w>5 I26 Christ, 126
Air et les Songes, L' (Bachelard), Clovis, roof
Cogito dans la Philosophic de Hus-
205
Anima, De (Aristode), 143 serl,Le (Berger), 149, 153
Anselme, 9, 136 Comte, Auguste, 161
Antecedents historiques de "Je Critique of Practical Reason (Kant) ,

done je suis" (Blanchet), 18

pense,
J
33
6, 108, 206 Dasein im Menschen, Das (Hoberg),
Aquinas,
Aristotle, 11, 34, 53, 55, 571, 143 49
Arnold, Matthew, xxi De Trmitate (Augustine), 133
Atala (Chateaubriand), 161 De Waelhens, Alphonse, 8f, 12, 30,
Aufzeichungen des Make Laurid 39, 118

Erigge (Rilke), 189 Demos, Raphael, 143

Augustine, Foreword, 125, 133 Descartes, xxiv, 4, 9f, 28, 30, 32, 41,

Ayer, A. J., 141 45, 61, 65, 75, 78, 97, 103, 108, 133,
136, i48f, 151
Bachelard, G., Descoqs, Pedro, 177
Baudelaire, 16 1 Deucalion (group of authors), 100,
Baudelaire (Sartre), 331", 37^ 66f, 85, 142, 157, 162

184
Diable et le bon Dieu, Le (Sartre),
Beauvoir, Simone de, 7 1 80

Berger, G., 149, 153 Dickinson, E., 61

Bergson, 18, 22, 36, 41, 98, 103, 1401", Dictionary of Psychoanalysis
157, 172 (Freud), 204
Blanchet, 133 Dictionnaire de Philosophie (La-
Boswell, 127 lande), 149
Discours de la Methode (Descartes),
Bourget, Paul, 200
Brock, W., 12 3, 4 1
Doctrines Existentialist es, Les,
Caldwell, Erskine, 68 (Jolivet), 154, 1 64
Camus, Albert, 7, 43, 183 Dreyfus, 94
Campbell, 121
Carroll, Lewis, 3 Eau et les Reves, V (Bachelard),
Catherine of Sienna, 132 205
Choix de /.-P. Sartre, Le (Trois- Eliot, T. S., 47
fontaines), 137 Emma Bovary, 161
226 INDEX
Emotions (Sartre), Foreword, 99 Holderlin, 52
Encounter with Nothingness Homme du Ressentiment, V
(Kuhn), 19 (Scheler), 24
Ente et Essentia, De (Aquinas), 206 Hommes de bonne volonte, Les
Epicurus, 120 (Romains), 96
Epistemology (Van Steenbergen), Homo Viator (Marcel), 1371", 182,

190 189
Essais de Psychologic Contempo- Hopkins, Gerard Manley, 15
raine (Bourget), 200 Hume, 20, 58, 152

Essays in Radical Empiricism Husserl, Edmund, xiv, xxiv, 4f, 26f,

(James), 145, 148 48, 55, 6if, 68, 97, 1331", 136, 149,
Etre et Avoir (Marcel), 188 157, 190, 193
Etudes Kierkegaardiennes (Wahl),
21
Ideen (Husserl), 4, 5
Evolution Creatrice (Bergson), 172
Ulmagination, xv
Existence and Being (Heidegger),
12. See also What is Metaphys-
ics James, William, i44f, i47f, 177
Existential Psychoanalysis (Sartre), Jaspers, Karl, xxiv, 7, 169, 191
199 Jean-Paul Sartre ou une Litterature
Existentialism (Sartre), 12, 20, 97, Philosophique (Campbell), 121
98f, 10 1, 1621", 168, 184 Jeanson, F., 88, 137
Existentialisme ou Marxisme John of the Cross, Saint, 132
(Lukacs), 92 Johnson, Samuel, 127
Jolivet, Regis, 154, 164
Faulkner, William, 71, oo Jonah, 123
Femrne Frigide, La (Stekel), 205 Journal des Faux-Monnayeurs
Flaubert, 200 (Gide), 103
Flies, The (Sartre), xxii, 12, 70 Journal Metaphysique (Marcel), 187
Formalismus in der Ethik und die
materiale Wertethik (Scheler),
Kafka, 67, 112
165
Kant, 11, 18, 26, 28f, 4of, 62, 137,
Freud, Sigmund, 24, 102, i99f, 202f,
i48f, 190
204
Kierkegaard, xxi, 7, 21, 63, 191
King Lear, i
Gide, Andre, xiii, 103
Kuhn, Helmut, 19
Gilson, Etienne, 133
Guardini, Romano, 206
Lalande, A., 149
Habacuc, 180 Landgrebe, 6, i93f
Hegel, 5, i6f, 38, 6if, 63, 73, 86, 97, Lawrence, D. H., 24
I
5 <5 *59, J
97 Leibnitz, 28, 34, 41, 133, i66f
Heidegger, Martin, xxi, xxiv, 5f, 8f, Lettres a Mesland (Descartes), 108
u, 16, 17, 2of, 29f, 36, 38f, 49, 52, Levy-Bruhl, 196
55f, 61, 64f, 74f, 88, 94f, 97, io6f, Life of Samuel Johnson, The
108, 113, 118, 121, i4if, 154, 174, (Boswell), 127
183, 187, 201 Light in August (Faulkner), 71, 90
Hiroshima, 143 Louis XV, 1 19
Hoberg, 49 Lukacs, 92
INDEX 227
Magny, Claude-Edmonde, 138 Philosophy of Plato, The (Demos),
Malraux, 37, 69, 117, 119 H3
Marcel, Gabriel, 7, 137^ 182, iSyf, Pilote de guerre (Saint-Exupery),
I 7 2f
189
Marxists, xvii, xxiii, 72, 92, 161 Plato, 24,78, 131, 143
Materialisme et Revolution, xvi Poe, Edgar Allan, 205
Mauriac, Franois, 24 Ponge, Francis, 09
Meditations (Descartes), 30, 32, 75, Portrait of the Anti-Semite (Sar-
i?3 tre), 93, 98
Meditations Cartesiennes (Husserl), Principes (Descartes), 108
62, 133, 149 Principles of Psychology (James),
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, 7f, 100, 167, 146
Probleme Moral et la Pensee de
170, 172
Metaphysics (Aristotle), 53 Sartre, Le (Jeanson), 88, 137
Meyerson, Emile, 55
Process and Reality (Whitehead),
Milkowski, 188 148
Marts sans sepulture (Sartre), 90 Proust, Marcel, 24, 41, 94
Moses and Monotheism (Freud), Prozess, Der (Kafka), 67, 112
203 Przywara, Erich, 56
My the de Sisyphe, Le (Camus), 43, Psychanalyse du Feu, La (Bache-
183 lard), 2<>5f
Psychology of Imagination (Sartre),
Nachtvort zu meinen Ideen (Hus- n, 20, 86, 121
serl), 6
Nausea (Sartre), xiv, xv, xxi-xxv, Question of Lay Analysis, The
i if, 13, 33, 55, 80, 183 (Freud), 204
New Introductory Lectures on Psy-
choanalysis (Freud), 203 Raskolnikov, 105
Newton, Isaac, 42 Reflexions sur la question juive
Nietzsche, xxi, 193 (Sartre), 163, 168
No Exit (Sartre), xxii, 37, 72, 85, Refus a ^invocation (Marcel),
126, 188 i88f
Rene (Chateaubriand), r6r
Onimus, Jean, 185
Reprieve, The (Sartre), 67f, 116,
Ontologie de Sartre (Varet), 51,
121. See also Sursis, Le
Rilke, Rainer-Maria, 117, 189
Pascal, Foreword, 161, 185 Rimbaud, 205
Patri, Aime, 162, 166
Role de la pensee medievale dans la
Pensee, et le Mouvant, La (Berg- formation du systeme cartesien
son), 22 (Gilson), 133
Phenomenologie de la Perception Romains, Jules, 96
(Merleau-Ponty), 8, 100, 167, 170, Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 166
172
Phenomenology of the Mind Sacred Signs (Guardini), 206
(Hegel), 62, 63, 156 Saint-Exupery, Antoine de, 172
Philosophic de Martin Heidegger, Scheler, Max, 24, 165, 196
La (De Waelhens), 30 Scholastics, xxiii, 5, 12, 30, 78
Philosophic, Vol. II, Exist enzerh el- Sein und Zeit (Heidegger), 5, 6, 9,

lung (Jaspers), 169 11, 75, 94f, 113, 118, 154, 187, 201
228 INDEX
Shakespeare, i
Valery, Paul, 25
Situations I (Sartre), 179 Varet, Gilbert, 51, 67, 149, 157, 178
Sophist, The (Plato), 143 Vendome, Andre, 193
Spinoza, 17, 34, 70 Vision, A (Yeats), 61
Spirit of Liturgy, The (Guardini), Voltaire, 161
206 Vom Umsturz der Werte (Scheler),
Steenbergen, Fernand van, 190 165
Stekel,W., 205 Vom Wesen der Wahrheit (Hei-
Stendhal, 200 degger), 97
Sursis, Le (Sartre), 85 Vom Wesen des Grundes (Hei-
degger)^, 174
Tauler, 132
Terre et les reveries de la volonte, Wahl, Jean, 21, 100, 142, 157
La (Bachelard), 205 W olden (Thoreau), 47
Textbook of Psychology (Titche- Ways of Freedom, The (Sartre),
ner), 28 xxii
Theodicea (Leibnitz), 167 We are the Living (Caldwell), 68
Thoreau, 47 Werkmeister, W. H., 21, 30, 154
Through the Looking-Glass (Lewis Wesen und Formen der Sympathie
Carroll), 3 (Scheler), 196
Titchener, E. B., 28 What is Metaphysics? (part of Ex-
Transcendcmce de FEgo, xv istence and Being) , (Heidegger),
Treatise of Human Nature (Hume), i54, 183
20, 152 Whitehead, Alfred North, 148
Troisfontaines, Roger, 137
Troubled Sleep (Sartre), 184 Yeats, W. B., 61
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