ean Paul Sartre: Existentialism

The philosophical career of Jean Paul Sartre (1905-1980)

focuses, in its first phase, upon the construction of a philosophy
of existence known as existentialism. Sartre’s early works are
characterized by a development of classic phenomenology, but
his reflection diverges from Husserl’s on methodology, the
conception of the self, and an interest in ethics. These points of
divergence are the cornerstones of Sartre’s existential
phenomenology, whose purpose is to understand human
existence rather than the world as such. Adopting and adapting
the methods of phenomenology, Sartre sets out to develop an
ontological account of what it is to be human. The main
features of this ontology are the groundlessness and radical
freedom which characterize the human condition. These are
contrasted with the unproblematic being of the world of things.
Sartre’s substantial literary output adds dramatic expression to
the always unstable co-existence of facts and freedom in an
indifferent world.
Sartre’s ontology is explained in his philosophical masterpiece,
Being and Nothingness, where he defines two types of reality
which lie beyond our conscious experience: the being of the
object of consciousness and that of consciousness itself. The
object of consciousness exists as “in-itself,” that is, in an
independent and non-relational way. However, consciousness
is always consciousness “of something,” so it is defined in
relation to something else, and it is not possible to grasp it
within a conscious experience: it exists as “for-itself.” An
essential feature of consciousness is its negative power, by
which we can experience “nothingness.” This power is also at
work within the self, where it creates an intrinsic lack of self-
identity. So the unity of the self is understood as a task for the
for-itself rather than as a given.
In order to ground itself, the self needs projects, which can be
viewed as aspects of an individual’s fundamental project and
motivated by a desire for “being” lying within the individual’s
consciousness. The source of this project is a spontaneous
original choice that depends on the individual’s freedom.
However, self’s choice may lead to a project of self-deception
such as bad faith, where one’s own real nature as for-itself is
discarded to adopt that of the in-itself. Our only way to escape
self-deception is authenticity, that is, choosing in a way which
reveals the existence of the for-itself as both factual and
transcendent. For Sartre, my proper exercise of freedom creates
values that any other human being placed in my situation could
experience, therefore each authentic project expresses a
universal dimension in the singularity of a human life.
After a brief summary of Sartre’s life, this article looks at the
main themes characterizing Sartre’s early philosophical works.
The ontology developed in Sartre’s main existential work, Being
and Nothingness, will then be analysed. Finally, an overview is
provided of the further development of existentialist themes in
his later works.

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