In this work, Kathleen V. Wider discusses Jean-Paul Sartre's analysis of consciousness in Being and Nothingness in light of recent work by analytic philosophers, psychologists, and neuroscientists. ...She brings together phenomenological and scientific understandings of the nature of consciousness and argues that the two approaches can strengthen and suppport each other. Work on consciousness from two very different philosophical traditions—the continental and analytic—contributes to her explanation of the deep-seated intuition that all consciousness is self-consciousness.
Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–1980) was one of the most influential thinkers of the twentieth century. Regarded as the father of existentialist philosophy, he was also a political critic, moralist, ...playwright, novelist, and author of biographies and short stories. Thomas R. Flynn provides the first book-length account of Sartre as a philosopher of the imaginary, mapping the intellectual development of his ideas throughout his life, and building a narrative that is not only philosophical but also attentive to the political and literary dimensions of his work. Exploring Sartre's existentialism, politics, ethics, and ontology, this book illuminates the defining ideas of Sartre's oeuvre: the literary and the philosophical, the imaginary and the conceptual, his descriptive phenomenology and his phenomenological concept of intentionality, and his conjunction of ethics and politics with an 'egoless' consciousness. It will appeal to all who are interested in Sartre's philosophy and its relation to his life.
Anscombe distinguishes two notions of “self‐conscious”: the philosophical notion, which refers to the special form of awareness one has of oneself as oneself, and the ordinary notion, which we employ ...when we speak of “feeling self‐conscious before another”. My aim in this paper is to show that ordinary self‐consciousness cannot be understood in terms of either of the forms of intersubjective relation standardly acknowledged in the philosophical literature. It cannot be understood reductively, in terms of the psychological states of each subject nor can it be understood in terms of an irreducible second personal relation. Instead, I argue that in order to understand the phenomenological structure of ordinary self‐consciousness, we must rehabilitate Sartre's thought that when I am conscious of myself as being the object of another's gaze, I experience myself as being acted upon by them, in such a way that what I experience them as doing to me and what I experience myself as thereby undergoing are two aspects of an irreducible interpersonal transaction.
Successive generations of scholars have been hugely effective at challenging the once-common dismissal of Beauvoir's philosophy and the view that her work was a mere application of “Sartre's ...existentialism”. But while the originality and significance of Beauvoir's philosophical contributions are now widely acknowledged, there remains a series of foundational debates concerning The Second Sex and the precise nature of Beauvoir's intellectual relationship with Sartre. Although there is little consensus on this last point, it is increasingly common for scholars to distance Beauvoir's feminism from Sartre's early existentialism, especially his theory of existential freedom in Being and Nothingness. This partially derives from an enduring and widespread consensus that Sartre's early theory of freedom is fundamentally insensitive to the empirical realities of oppressive situations and therefore inimical to feminism.In this paper, I argue that the essence of Beauvoir's theory of freedom in The Second Sex is broadly consistent with Sartre's in Being and Nothingness, but that Beauvoir makes some major advances on Sartre by properly developing the relationship between freedom and power, resulting in a compelling existentialist framework for agency that significantly increases the viability of existentialism as a normative philosophy. I aim to demonstrate that recognising the foundational consistencies between Beauvoir's philosophy and Sartre's existentialism by no means detracts from Beauvoir's originality and intellectual independence, but rather champions it by allowing us to appreciate some of the most original and insightful features of The Second Sex and its role in the development of existentialism.
This work has the objective to reflect on the individual-society tension present in Critique of Dialectical Reason, Jean-Paul Sartre’s last great philosophical work, where the author tries to ...articulate its existentialist perspective with Marxist theory. Our analysis begins by reconstructing the context in which this work saw the light and then addresses the question of “sociality”, among other key notions linked to the Sartrean theory of practical ensembles. Finally, from this analysis we draw some conclusions in order to evaluate the reaches and limitations of the social ontology sketched in Critique of Dialectical Reason.
Sartre maintains that “all consciousness is consciousness of something.” Idiosyncratically, he also understands this “intentionality principle” to entail that what consciousness is “of” is ...necessarily distinct from it (or “outside of” it, or “transcendent to” it). Nonetheless, he also maintains that all consciousness is necessarily conscious of—or rather, “(of)”—itself in a non‐intentional (in his terms: “non‐positional/non‐thetic”) manner. Given that this non‐positional/thetic self‐consciousness is not intentional, it is evidently immune to the “difference” principle, but this is less clear with respect to self‐reflection (which Sartre simply calls “reflection”). It seems impossible for reflection to be “intentional” because intentionality entails difference—yet it also seems problematic to consider reflection “non‐intentional” because it then becomes difficult to distinguish reflection from non‐positional/thetic self‐consciousness as such (which is inherently “unreflective”). This can be called Sartre's “dilemma of reflection.” While Sartre seems to alternate between portraying reflection as intentional and as non‐intentional (it generally appears like the former), this paper argues that it should be conceived as both according to different respects. By piecing together various passages of Sartre's texts and drawing out their implications, Sartre can be shown to have the resources for an answer to his own dilemma.
...I was never passively listening to my mother-storyteller; my lively reactions were an integral part of the unfolding of her story. How to talk about the torrid sexual relationship between two ...lovers to children who were only eight or nine years old? I can still remember with an amused smile the narrative creativity of the storyteller; "every night," she would say, "a strong wind lifted Youmané's dress on her way back home." ...those frightened beings were often young women, like in the tale "Niantanta," which impressed me so much that I believe I have included it in every one of my novels in one form or another. The whole of their meaning resided in a sort of orgy of sound and a power of suggestion that gave them a rare intensity.
At the heart of this volume is the assertion that Sartrean existentialism, most prominent in the 1940s, particularly in France, is still relevant as a way of interpreting the world today. Film, by ...reflecting philosophical concerns in the actions and choices of characters, continues and extends a tradition in which art exemplifies the understanding of existentialist philosophy. In a scholarly yet accessible style, the contributors exploit the rich interplay between Sartre's philosophy, plays and novels, and a number of contemporary films includingNo Country for Old Men,Lost in TranslationandThe Truman Show, with film-makers including the Dardenne brothers, Michael Haneke, and Mike Leigh. This volume will be of interest to students who are coming to Sartre's work for the first time and to those who would like to read films within an existentialist perspective.
This issue has something of a symposium feel about it: a genuine conversation between some of our most eminent Sartre scholars, which, while clearly not planned this way, turns out to be rather ...appropriate in these socially distanced times. Whereas recent issues have testified to the breadth of Sartre’s work, the focus this time is on Sartre’s early philosophy, mainly, but not exclusively, on L’Etre et le néant.
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