A History of Philosophy | 71 Jean-Paul Satre

19th century philosophy is looking through that transcendental self self consciousness so unified in order to see reality made in the image of the self and the image of the self means reality is of the nature of mind or spirit and so you get 19th century idealism and then other things emphasizing concrete human experience organized unified in theory as waves you can see how its organized for whitehead by God's super ejected nature coupled with the decision of the new event which brings things into unity and you can see how it's organized for doing by virtue of the problem situation which is experienced which brings everything into a unity ready for a problem-solving decision but when you come to sod it's a different story and if you like you find in such the culmination of a process that Richard Taylor in not Richard Taylor Charles Taylor in his recent book on the self calls the loss of the self because the thesis of the transcendence of the ego is that the simply is no transcendental self there's no unifying core to the self that has any enduring identity I create myself with every act of thought with every experience with every sense perception I create myself now you say that sounds like a wild idea well maybe it seems so to us but keep in mind that Sartre is doing phenomenology and if you like that's the third reason why I selected this book that it gives an example of phenomenological description at work and as you've probably noted Sartre explicitly interacts with what her Searle has done with regards to the self hasar oh emphasized the intentionality of consciousness remember that was the main theme that came out of his phenomenological work intentionality he tried to bracket consideration of particular objects or our particular beliefs and theories so as to examine the universal structures of consciousness so that they could become the objects of what he called eidetic intuition can't speaks of them using another of hustles phrases as phenomenal objects the phenomenal object is obviously the object that appears it's an object of thought not necessarily an independent entity but what directly appears to the consciousness so when her soul brackets out all of the particulars and tries to concentrate on the universal structures of consciousness of being in the world that - relationship between subject and object then that - relationship becomes the phenomenal object those structures those I are using Plato's turn those universes become the phenomenal object now intentionality then is involved with reference to external objects in all of our consciousness but if the external objects are bracketed what they are in particular is excluded in phenomenological reduction then the intentionality is directed instead to the phenomenal objects which her soul attempts to describe and of course his description is of the act of intentional that's the universal that appears most prominently now Sartre is doing phenomenology he's an existential phenomenologist so you can anticipate that he's not interested in good not going to be interested in some transcendental self in order to provide a new foundationalism to rescue science from its relativizing tendencies remember his concern about the foundations of science nor is he going to be like Heidegger doing a phenomenology of human existence design as a key to perceiving xym being itself he's going to do simply a phenomenology of human existence for its own sake in order to gain this clearer perception of these universal characteristics of human existence of being in a - but rejecting any transcendental ego all that remains for him to concentrate on his intention ality as such you'll find that he says that consciousness is nothing but intentionality nothing but if you like a consciousness meaning or pointing to objects is a consciousness meaning pointing to intentional reference to objects so that you can see why Husserl is often said to tell us that intentionality is a meaning giving act a meaning giving it not primarily in the sense that we talk about the meaning of life or the meaning of some political event but in the sense of attending to focusing on that object making it present to us so the thing becomes a phenomenal object having meaning for me can't sting for a Mick I pull it into phenomenal status by the intentional act and in meaning it it has meaning for me now this means that the self itself is nothing but the act of consciousness and he develops that in another place in a little work of his the emotions where he rejects behavioristic psychology outright by which account the self would simply be a product of environmental causes now he's not going to say that nobody after the Kantian Copernican revolution who agrees with the Copernican revolution would say that behaviorists pre content enlightenment types as if the self is the passive recipient of these behavioral cause-effect mechanisms no rather he's inclined towards a depth psychology intentionality is the characteristic of human being the act of being in the world towards the world and emotion simply reveals that emotions have intentionality emotions are directed towards you're angry with hopeful about you love somebody you feel sorry for them emotion reveals our being in the world our facticity it's for that reason that you couldn't even in your wildest dream imagine Sartre debating with Descartes whether an external world exists it's as if he says I vomit therefore it exists but just the experience of being nauseated by something means that the external reality is given in the feeling of nausea yes if you've ever been seasick you know what I mean there's never any question about the reality of the external world or the internal world so by virtue of the intentionality of the motion our being is being for something being in relationship to what the basic term is not I that I it not subject but subject - object that's the basic given together take heart stove heated room there being an illusory affair so then that's the theme and the way in which it relates to hasar oh you'll see it again let me pick this up now you'll see it again if ever you've read his little essay what is existentialism that sometimes is published simply under the title existentialism it was a one lecture thing it's there that he defines existentialism as saying existence precedes essence existence precedes essence and he's talking particularly about the south my existence precedes any essence yes they my existence precedes any essence I I have to create my own nature my own self there is no transcendental eager it's in that essay that he cites dusty s key if God is dead then anything is possible but he enlarges it from if god is dead then anything is possible to saying if there are no Universal than anything is possible if there is no transcendental self than anything because there are no fixed points of reference no fixed entities no fixed Universal structures of the self it's just intentionality so anything could be possible we have to create meanings at values that world well let's see that is developed much more systematically maybe I should leave that up developed much more systematically in his major work being a nothingness oh I wish I could have asked you to read that trouble is it has about 500 pages small print but there you get the whole books this is his philosophical magnum office it's the the system if you like and it's there that he develops explicitly the dialectic for which he's well known that seems to echo the master-servant relationship of Hegel the loss while correspond dialectic now the terms very simple per soir is for the self and Lance wha is what is already in itself and you can readily see that if intentionality makes an object into a phenomenal object an object for me that he's going to be saying that any person in the world in meaning getting involved in relating to any other person or object is seeking to make that person part of what is for me trying to make that into a phenomenal object his well-known play no exit I think I asked you before how many had read no exit I've got a dismal response these in literate Philistines well you see in that room from which these three people cannot get themselves to escape you think one starts trying to relate to another but in that for me fashion it's not a dialogical i thou relationship respecting the two persons no but it's in a manipulating or dominating a sense that's why in Being and Nothingness when he talks about sexuality it's always masochism or set or um sadism before me is the thing and the same is true in his play the flies which is a version of the old Greek drama are about arrests days the prince who comes back to the palace where he had been raised as a boy and so on and so forth and now his mother has married somebody else after killing his father and he of course was secreted away by a servant in order to save his life now he's a grown young man and comes back and he recognizes that little door in these palace wall and as he directs his attention to it the intention ality he says that's my door I used to go in and out of but immediately in that intentional act of referring to that door it gains meaning for him it becomes his and the door into the palace becomes his and the palace becomes his and the throne should be hence the intentionality and so he kills his mother and then the flies the fix hard drive but the before me the the in itself then if the for me is the phenomenal object the in itself is of course the new metal object the thing which simply is in itself now the dialectic becomes obvious when what already is in itself regardless of me doesn't respond to my intentionality 's so that you get a dialectic that is not simply a dialectic of possessing but also of rejecting repudiating now that mas were poor soir dialectic he spells out in relationship to endless things in Being and Nothingness and one of the things that he applies it to is of course understanding knowledge now we were watching this in Nietzsche in Heidegger in terms of the post-modern their tendency and in such likewise knowing he says is a mode of our being in the world now that's obviously the starting point because knowledge is a mode of intentionality intentionality is our being in the world in knowing something it's a it's an intentional act it's referring to now his point is that the and notice the vocabulary because you get the same vocabulary in transcendence of the ego the for itself before itself yes that's this content less self no essence to the cell the for itself has being by not being the in itself yeah how does the servant have identity as a servant had it's being as a servant by not being a master how does the master have identity as a master by not being a servant the for itself has being by not being something but the in itself so that by being conscious of something other than myself I now see myself I realize my own being as not now when you see the master-servant relationship and bring that to to that language it seems to be perfectly simple and obvious I find my own being in not being the other now he goes on to say that this removes the illusion of having objective intellectual knowledge of things exactly as they are the illusion of enlightenment knowledge is removed because what I know is always identified as what it is not if I'm talking about the in itself what I know is that it's not the for myself so what I know then is nothing but what I intend what I mean nothing but what it is for me so there is my being which is other than that and the nothingness of what is in itself and so what's the title of the book being purse wha finding my being in relationship to others Being and Nothingness last one the in itself which is nothing but what it is for me Being and Nothingness so in trying to determine enlightenment style what this is in trying to determine its essence all that I'm actually doing is determining what it is for me and nothing else the so knowledge is not representational exit Descartes through cants verse critique knowledge is not representational that's an invention of philosophers it says knowledge is simply being present for me because intentionality make something present tonight knowledge is intentionality so knowledge is the act of making something present for me well you can see then what that does to traditional Enlightenment epistemology do you get the last word well thing the in itself for itself that that's really the the philosophical thesis that runs all the way through his writings you get a hold of that then he's very easy reading relatively speaking it's not exactly comic strick stuff yeah yeah one can now let me back up and see his concern is with the nature of the self and as with Heidegger the concern is what does it mean to be in the world design being in the world what does it mean the phenomenological discovery of intentionality okay will conscious acts or intentional acts pointing to meaning in intentionality is the act that presents to me an object which otherwise is just what it is in itself and in the intentional act of knowing it becomes what it is for me becomes part of the for me before me is not just the isolated individual it's me and my world my understanding my knowledge you see the whole thing organically related that sense me now that is the being you see that is creating its own meaning my be before me what then is the other the in itself well it's nothing but what it is for me I don't know anything else about it but it's for meanness only no it is a phenomenal object so from the standpoint of intentional consciousness the in itself is nothing so the hold of Being and Nothingness is a tale of Being and Nothingness get it yeah yeah this is the interesting thing because in Hegel you you get these sense that the master-servant relationship is potentially an eyes out relationship in which the eye is a for me and the vow is another for me okay and the way Hegel plays it out in that selection you read each of these is seeing the other as he is for me right now the the thing is about sod is that it's more a one-sided relationship it's not an eye Val but an eye it that's Martin boobers language it's not an eye though it's an eye it Yesi so that the other person is we tend to say dehumanized if the in itself is indeed a human being of a consciousness consciousness I only nobody is for me I don't know what he is for himself and so in that sense son you never get inside the other self and all you have is an ayat in that sense of one way streamed now he does cleaned up that sometimes the ayat not the ayat sometimes the in itself sort of rises up against you and what happens with the flies they rise up against Orestes but sometimes the ayat that rises up against you maybe another person who does it out of the for meanness of his intentionality but it's always antithesis and synthesis antithesis the clash of opposites dialectic struggle so in effect you see such as a dialectical antithesis thesis and antithesis with no synthesis because there's no universals yeah I I suppose if you're talking of a father-child relationship okay the tendency of the child is to see the father as an it especially in early adolescence growing up yes and the should I say the the unsympathetic father is apt to see a child as just another it to be provided for yes a there's a for me in some other way but my kids you get it between students and administration well faculty in administration where it's a we damn you know and I use the accusative case to get the dehumanization anyway yeah labor management well it's no wonder that such one phase in his life sort of allied himself with French Marxism if they because the theme of alienation runs through both the dialectic with its alienation runs two bucks now say that again I missed it the yeah wouldn't the in itself you say inside of the dialectic yeah you see the the in itself insofar as it's made for me I make it for me the in itself it's nothing left but what it is for me as far as I'm concerned that's why it's nothing you say dissolved he would say in a gated same thing well the clash comes in those mushrooms the in itself is resistant in as much as there is some boomerang effect yes or in those three people in that room no exit when a third person intrudes into the block budding relationship and by intruding and making up to the one who's becoming for me makes that one in two before me fur so that what was someone for me he becomes Justin in itself dissolving the for meekness I can't reach her anymore you see it could just be that the other person doesn't like me and slaps my face so you know just reflect for a moment on interpersonal relationship you see how realistic the description sounds which is why it makes such gripping and sickening plays and novels all right now against that background the transcendence of the ego the transcendence of the ego the introduction by the editor you'll find helpful in setting the context in relationship to her Cyril now I've already tried to do that okay but you'll find it helpful in that the text itself begins on page 31 and the opening lines will I think make begin to make some sense for most philosophers the ego is an inhabitant of consciousness hey that sounds like Descartes doesn't it inhabiting my consciousness is this self that has the consciousness some affirm its formal presence at the heart of Errol Edna's Errol Edna's is literally lived through Errol Edna's lived in us it's the German equivalent of concrete experience the notion we found in both Whitehead and Dewey concrete experience is here if you pardon the new verb existential eyes okay lived experience concrete experience in existential terms air lemonis some affirm its formal presence as an empty principle of unification unifying the self like a transcendental ego others psychologists for the most part claim to discover its material presence as the center of desires and acts in each moment of the psychic life that sounds like the behaviorist we'd like to show here that the ego is neither formal a transcendental structure nor materially in consciousness it's outside in the world it's a being of the world like the ego of another yeah there's no hidden soul tucked away within all that self refers to is in the world being in the world Dez I'm on paid he refers to Kant and builds up the historical story that you're familiar with then on page 34 at the bottom of the page he formulates the question arising from Descartes cogito bottom of 34 is the eye that we encounter in our consciousness may possible that the synthetic unity of our representations now whose position was that Kant the I made possible by the synthetic unity of our representations or is it the I which in fact unites the representations to each other now if we reject all the more or less forced interpretations and I think that offered by postcard Ian's wish to solve the problem of the existence in fact of the eye we meet in our path the phenomenology hasar oh so to Husserl he turns and her cells attempt at a scientific kind of phenomenology page 37 he says towards the top Hoxha Searle gives his reply having determined that the having determined in his logical investigations that the me is a synthetic and transcendent production of consciousness is a synthetic transcendent production of consciousness yes intentionality he reverted in ideas towards a new phenomenology and phenomenological philosophy to the graphic position of the transcendental I this I so to speak behind each consciousness would light up each phenomenal each phenomenon presented in the field of attention this transcendental consciousness becomes thoroughly personal sin force and what Sartre goes on to do is simply to repudiate that at the top of page 38 it's certain that phenomenology doesn't need any appeal to any such unifying and individualizing I by intentionality consciousness transcends itself it unifies itself by escaping from itself notice how he loves paradoxical statements yes a and I think he loves them because he's trying to capture the dialectic thesis antithesis it unifies itself by escaping from itself yes in the intentionality of dealing with something new I am transcending what I already am and becoming something different yeah it's as if Whitehead or do he was saying each experience each event each problem adds to the experience that is the continuing core of you what constitutes personal identity after all in the empiricist tradition that the continuity of consciousness born by memory but as you pointed out those memories are atomistic fragmented gapping so there's actually no continuity of consciousness and force at each moment of intentionality isn't new and it's in the focus of attention in this new experience that my consciousness is unified once more so it unifies itself by escaping from itself into a you new kind of unification somehow other every new experience has to be integrated into what we are so then on 39 about eight lines down its consciousness that unifies itself concretely by a play of transversal intentionality which are concrete and real retentions of past consciousness yeah because not only do I encounter a new experience but I live with my memories of the past I grab on to a past experience and in the intentionality towards that past experience you see I mean I'm incorporating into this new unity which is me the past as well as the present and the emerging future but I do it every moment in the million the intentionality of the now it's almost as if Whitehead would say here you have positive and negative prehension s-- positive pretensions that are unified into the decision negative pretensions that are rejected all right you you move on further and he addresses himself to this all the way through I think to about page sixty but look at page 49 and see if this illustration helps the very last line on forty eight when I run after a streetcar but when I look at the time when I'm absorbed in contemplating a portrait there's no I there is consciousness of the streetcar having to be overtaken that's what you can't yourself that's what focuses your attention that's where the intentionality is everything else is brought to bear on that a new unity in fact I'm then plunged into the world of objects it's they that constitute the unity of my consciousness it's they that present themselves with values attractive qualities but me the self I've disappeared there's no self-awareness in that process if you're really concentrating on the streetcar that's got to be overtaken there if at the same time you're self-conscious in the process of doing isn't thinking of the spectacle you're making to all the people who are watching you you see then there is a little bit of self-consciousness between the absorption in the streetcar I've annihilated myself there's no place for me at this level it's not a matter of chance during to a momentary lapse of attention but happens because at the very structure of consciousness get that business a structure of consciousness he his phenomenological description illustrated by the streetcar if they showing a structure of consciousness or page 50 let's see now page 60 page 60 let's start it there the I page 60 the little paragraph the I is the ego as the unity of actions the me is the ego as the unity of conscious states qualities the distinction between the distinction one makes between these two aspects the eye and the main two aspects of the same reality seems simply functional grammatical now in the section that follows on the constitution of the ego he picks up on that paragraph and says in effect that the ego is constituted of constituted of actions states and qualities actions states and qualities is so that on 61 he starts in two states there's transcendent unities of consciousness that runs to page 68 where he picks up on actions but in order to get what he means by States look at page 66 hatred is a state state of mind it's not simply an act for thinking feeling it's an enduring as it were state of mind and he says that by this term state I've tried to express the character of passivity which is constituted of hatred you're not doing something and just hating the state of mind so then when you get to actions on page 68 you notice that he says at the bottom of the page would like to remark that concerted action is first of all the transcendent transcend simply a state of mind it take for instance playing the piano driving a car riding these are actions taken in the world of things it's the concrete realization of something actions and he works with that a little and then on 71 pulls it together you notice the new heading the constitution of the ego is the pole of action states and qualities all three and you might want to look for instance on page 77 no 76 back up there and the new paragraph on 76 the second sentence the ego is the spontaneous transcendent unification of states and actions spontaneous yeah just if you like happens not necessarily planned transcendent yes because in that I transcend what I was by acting I transcend what I was and become something I am not yet so transcended a self-transcending an old self transcending unification of states and actions the spontaneous transcendent unification of states and actions and on 77 he says everyone by consulting the results of his intuition intuition of course is the act of looking at the structures of consciousness in phenomenological ways can observe that the ego is given as producing it states we understand here a description of the transcendental ego of the transcended ego rather not transcendental the transcendent important difference right transcendental is cants a for your eye structures transcendent is rising beyond by becoming something new so we begin with the undeniable fact that each new state is fastened directly to the ego as its origin this mode of creation is creation ex nihilo in the sense that the state is not given as having formerly mean in the me I make it for me I create it for me I'm creating me the for me my being in the world so next paragraph the unifying act of reflection fair is each new state to the concrete totality the mean reflection isn't confined to apprehending a new state is attaching to this totality as fusing with it it intends a relation which traverses time backwards and gives the me as the source of the state I made it for me so that's the way he goes now let's see 88 take a look there no let's make up a little top of 88 phenomenology will understand without difficulty that the ego may at the same time be an ideal unity of states majority of which are absent and a concrete totality wholly giving itself to intuition a tree or a chair exists no differently it's a concrete totality of states what and then the next paragraph what radically prevents the acquisition of real cognitions of the ego that is to say really knowing the ego is the very special way in which it's given to reflective consciousness and here he is making a distinction that runs pretty well throughout the book between reflective and non reflective consciousness when you're running for the streetcar totally absorbed in that that's unreflective consciousness non reflective consciousness but when you are thinking about yourself running for the streetcar okay that is obviously reflective consciousness so the meaning of the terms is is pretty clear and he says then on 88 that there's a very special way in which the ego is given to reflective consciousness the ego never appears except ones not when one's not looking at it you you know introspect and try to see the self the reflective gaze must be fixed on the air hardness the lived experience insofar as it emanates from the state then behind the state at the horizon the ego appears out of the corner of the eye soon as I turn my gaze to it and try to reach it in vanishes this is because in trying to apprehend the ego for itself as a direct object of the consciousness I fall back onto the unreflecting level yes I'm not looking at myself I'm looking at the ego just like a greased pig you just can't catch it the ego disappears along with the reflective act whence that vexing sense of uncertainty that many of philosophers expressed by putting the eye on this side of the state of consciousness where did I see it why in me of course and affirming the consciousness must return upon itself in order to perceive the eye which is behind it and so Descartes looked inside and said I think therefore I even said I have a notion of the self as mind mote notion is an unclear under stinked idea in other words I'm not sure when I got that I got something well so sir you don't got it because it's not in there it's not as something to be in there you think the self is being unified created formed in each act of reflection or unreflecting of intentionality so on page 90 then he develops that further the I that we find here is in some way the support of the actions that I do in the world for example the word has to be broken into small pieces for the fire to catch it has to that's the quality of the word objective relationship of the wood to the fire that hath to be lighted now I'm breaking the word the action is realized in the world the objective and empty support of the action is the I concept this is why the body and bodily images can consummate the total degradation of the concrete I of reflection to the I concept by functioning for the I concept as it's a losery fulfilment when I say I break the wood and I see and feel the object body engaged in breaking the wood the body there serves as a visible and tangible symbol for the I what is the body it's being in the world my being in the world that's what it is as a phenomenal object so then we see the series of refraction and degradation x' which an ego ology ego ology would be concerned reflective and reflective well finally page 98 bottom of the page we may therefore formulate our thesis transcendental consciousness is an impersonal spontaneity it determines its essence at each instant without our being able to conceive anything before it existence precedes essence it determines its essence at each instant without being able to conceive of anything before it the before it is mere existence from the standpoint of this new essence thus each instant of our conscious life reveals to us a creation ex nihilo not a new arrangement but our no existence there's something distressing for each of us to catch in the act this tireless creation of existence of which we are not the creators at this level the man has impression of ceaselessly escaping from himself trying to be something else the creative process continues so now when Sartre says that if god is dead if there's no transcendental ego anything is possible you see what he's saying is that in this creative act of spontaneously becoming a new self there is absolute freedom because your freedom to act in any way in the world is what is going to create the new you your freedom your act music so what we have here is what he regards as absolute freedom now he argues backwards from this if there is absolute freedom there can be no transcendental ego because if there were a transcendental ego it wouldn't be absolute freedom it would be pre structured but the transcendental ego if there is absolute freedom there can be no God because then the ego would be structured by what God makes possible so what he does with the Dostoevsky cow count is this if God is and then anything is possible okay anything is possible therefore no it's the fallacy of affirming the consequent you see there all right he's not trying to argue it logically he's trying phenomenologically to show this is the case after all if it is the case that there is a god or there is a transcendental ego then there couldn't be that absolute freedom yeah here it's as if his argument is more if there is a God there couldn't be absolute freedom and they are is absolute freedom isn't the god which is the fellow which is an appropriate modus tollens argument well some people have pointed out that what you have in such then is the absolute ization of freedom a process that began in the Enlightenment with its emphasis on freedom from tradition and Authority enlarged in current with his assertion of freedom of the will the autonomy of the world enlarged in Hegel where the whole of history is the gradual manifestation of freedom more and more fully you see and now culminating in sult where in his words it is dreadful freedom you see the romanticist rubs his hands in glee at the freedom for complete full self-expression but salt brings his hands in despair at the dreadfulness of the fact that something I do could blow up the entire universe yes anything is possible well the heart of that is the concept of the self do you follow okay I think he has a pretty consistent position I think he's mistaken in the phenomenological description and I want to make some comments about that next time

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Published: Thu May 14 2015