Sartre's phenomenology

157 Pages·2007·8.053 MB·English

by  Reisman, David, Strawson, Peter Frederick, Sartre, Jean-Paul

SARTRE'S PHENOMENOLOGY
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SARTRE'S PHENOMENOLOGY
DAVID REISMAN
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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN-10: HB: 0-8264-8725-4
ISBN-13: HB: 978-0-8264-8725-4
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Reisman, David 1963-
Sartre's phenomenology / By David Reisman.
p. cm.
ISBN-13: 978-0-8264-8725-4
ISBN-10: 0-8264-8725-4
1. Sartre, Jean-Paul, 1905-1980. 2. Sartre, Jean-Paul, 1905-1980. Etre et le neant.
3. Existentialism. 4. Existential psychology. 5. Strawson, P. F. I. Title.
B2430.S34R45 2007
171'2-dc22
2006034643
Typeset by Aarontype Limited, Easton, Bristol
Printed and bound in Great Britain by Biddies Ltd, King's Lynn, Norfolk
Contents
1
1. Sartre and Strawson
1
Introduction
Persons as fundamental particulars in our conceptual scheme 4
The properties we attribute to persons 11
Beyond Strawson 15
2. Pre-reflective consciousness and the perceptive field 26
Introduction 26
Sartre and Husserl on consciousness and its objects 27
Consciousness, negation, and temporality 34
Pre-reflective self-consciousness and reflection 40
3. Impure reflection and the constitution of the psyche 45
Introduction 45
Pure and impure reflection 48
Impure reflection, the ego, and psychic objects 52
The ontological status of the psychic 57
Impure reflection as the constitution of an outline for the body 68
4. The Look and the constitution of persons 75
Introduction 75
The body-for-itself, the body-for-others, and the Look 78
The role of the Look in apprehending other persons and 84
the objective world
The role of the Look in apprehending oneself 95
5. Bad faith 112
Introduction 112
Bad faith 116
Notes 131
Index 148
Acknowledgements
The book is based upon a dissertation I wrote under the direction
of Richard Aquila. Sheldon Cohen and John Nolt made helpful comments.
Richard deserves special thanks for spending hundreds of hours with me,
discussing every idea in this book and twice as many that did not make it.
The philosophy department at the University of Tennessee treated me very
well, as has that at East Tennessee State University since then. My first
philosophy teachers, Ray Martin and Dan Kolak, are continual sources of
inspiration and encouragement.
Due to limitations of space I have relegated to endnotes whatever discus-
sion of commentary that has not been edited out altogether. Due to limita-
tions of space and time, I have not added discussions of some important
commentary that has come out since I did my original research.
Permission to quote from Individuals was kindly granted by Thomson
Publishing Services on behalf of Taylor and Francis books. Permission to
quote from Being and Nothingness was granted by Regeen Najar on behalf
of Philosophical Library. Finally, I would like to thank East Tennessee State
University's Research and Development Committee for providing a grant
for the book's index.
Chapter 1
Sartre and Strawson
Introduction
What is a person?
It makes sense to say that a person is a body, a physical object, with con-
sciousness. We usually assume that we know well enough what a physical
object is. Attempts to understand what a person is, by philosophers both of
dualistic and of materialistic leanings, can thus be seen as attempts to figure
out what 'with consciousness' means. For the dualist, having consciousness
has to do with having (or being) some sort of nonphysical thing, a 'mind',
somehow associated with the body. A person is a body with a mind. For the
materialist, consciousness is a quality of certain physical objects, or perhaps
something more like an activity in which these objects are engaged. A per-
son is a physical object having such a quality or engaged in such activity.
In either case, a description of consciousness will tell us what it means to
satisfy one of the most important criteria for being a person and, if we have
the relevant information, which physical objects are persons.
Sartre attempts to provide such a description, but his approach and con-
clusions differ in important ways from those of both dualists and material-
ists. Sartre's view is developed by examining the way in which the world
appears to consciousness. His starting point, like Descartes', is our experi-
ence of the world as it appears to us. Rather than thinking of experience as
providing evidence for the existence of an immaterial substance (something
that has a manner of existing different from that of material objects), how-
ever, he thinks of the Cartesian ego as constituted by the process of reflec-
tion. He ends up identifying the subject of consciousness with the body, but
his view, if it can be considered to be a form of materialism at all, is unlike
other forms.
For Sartre, in order to understand what a person is we have to understand
the process by which we constitute ourselves as persons. On his view, con-
sciousness originally apprehends itself in terms of what it is consciousness
of, i.e., as an activity of apprehending the world. As with Descartes, one is
2 Sartre's Phenomenology
immediately aware of this activity and its objects. However, Sartre stresses
that at this level one is not aware of any substantial self supporting one's
consciousness. One is aware only of the world and the activity of apprehend-
ing it. The question, for Sartre, is how one gets from this minimal form of
self-awareness to apprehending oneself as a person.
The constitution of something like a Cartesian ego, described in The
Transcendence of the Ego,1 is part of the process. But, according to Sartre,
apprehending oneself as a physical object involves an awareness of another
consciousness. In Being and Nothingness2 Sartre examines this awareness and
its role in apprehending ourselves and in perceiving others.
Sartre via Strawson?
One way to approach Sartre's account is by comparing it to the explanation
of the concept of the person in Strawson's Individuals? For an essay emerging
from the analytic tradition, Strawson's is particularly apt for comparison
with Sartre's phenomenological work because the concepts he intends to
analyse are so very basic that he feels that he 'must abandon his only sure
guide', namely, the actual use of words:
Aiming to lay bare the most general features of our conceptual struc-
ture, [descriptive metaphysics] can take far less for granted than a more
limited and partial conceptual inquiry. Hence, also, a certain difference
in method. Up to a point, the reliance upon a close examination of the
actual use of words is the best, and indeed the only sure, way in philosophy.
But the discriminations we can make, and the connexions we can estab-
lish, in this way, are not general enough and not far-reaching enough to
meet the full metaphysical demand for understanding. (I, xiii-xiv)
Strawson contrasts his project, descriptive metaphysics, with a revision-
ary metaphysics whose aim is to produce a new conceptual structure with
which to understand the world, rather than merely to describe the one we
use. Descriptive metaphysics, 'content to describe the actual structure of
our thought about the world' (I, xiii), is more akin to common conceptual
analysis than to the revisionary metaphysics of Berkeley or Descartes. How-
ever, descriptive metaphysics is concerned with our most basic concepts:
there are categories and concepts which, in their most general features,
change not at all. Obviously these are not the specialities of the most
refined thinking. They are the commonalities of the least refined thinking;
and are yet the indispensable core of the conceptual equipment of the
Sartre and Strawson 3
most sophisticated human beings. It is with these, their interconnexions,
and the structure that they form, that a descriptive metaphysics will be
concerned. (I, xiv)
Sartre's early work, with its talk of being-in-itself, the Other, and the con-
stitution of the ego, might be taken to be the furthest possible thing from a
description of'the actual structure of our thought about the world'. But
many of the questions guiding Sartre's inquiry are quite similar to Straw-
son's. For example, the following one, to which Sartre devotes considerable
time, is central for Strawson as well.
I am in a public park. Not far away there is a lawn and at the edge of that
lawn there are benches. A man passes by those benches. I see this man;
I apprehend him as an object and at the same time as a man. What does
this signify? What do I mean when I assert that this object is a man? (341)
Admittedly, it is rare for Sartre to phrase a question in such a form: his chief
interest is in what is involved in apprehending other persons, the world, and
ourselves, not in what we mean by our assertions. Nevertheless, as this pas-
sage implies, to see something as a person, for Sartre, is to mean a person.
While the object of Sartre's study is our field of experience, rather than, as
for Strawson, the conceptual scheme underlying ordinary language, both
philosophers are concerned with the most basic components of what might
be called our scheme of meaning, namely, persons and things. Strawson
believes the first half of his book demonstrates . . .
the central position which material bodies and persons occupy among
particulars in general. It shows that, in our conceptual scheme as it is,
particulars of these two categories are the basic or fundamental particu-
lars, that the concepts of other types of particular must be seen as second-
ary in relation to the concepts of these. (I, xv-xvi)
Strawson's discussion of persons focuses on two questions: 'Why are one's
states of consciousness ascribed to anything at all?' and 'Why are they
ascribed to the very same things as certain corporeal characteristics, a certain
physical situation, &c.?' He says that, until we have answered them we do
not understand 'the concept we have of a person' and 'the use that we make
of the word "I"'(I, 84).
The part of Sartre's work I want to discuss addresses similar issues: what is
involved in apprehending others and ourselves as persons, i.e., as conscious
physical objects? Regarding the man in the park, Sartre says: