Sartres 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. Sartres early works are characterized by a development of classic
phenomenology, but his reflection diverges from Husserls on methodology, the
conception of the self, and an interest in ethics. These points of divergence are the
cornerstones of Sartres 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. Sartres substantial literary output adds dramatic
expression to the always unstable co-existence of facts and freedom in an indifferent
world.
Sartres 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 nonrelational 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
individuals fundamental project and motivated by a desire for being lying within
the individuals consciousness. The source of this project is a spontaneous original
choice that depends on the individuals freedom. However, selfs choice may lead to a
project of self-deception such as bad faith, where ones 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 Sartres life, this article looks at the main themes
characterizing Sartres early philosophical works. The ontology developed in Sartres

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.

Table of Contents
1. Sartres Life
2. Early Works
1. Methodology
2. The Ego
3. Ethics
4. Existential Phenomenology
3. The Ontology of Being and Nothingness
1. The Being of the Phenomenon and Consciousness
2. Two Types of Being
3. Nothingness
4. The For-Itself in Being and Nothingness
1. A Lack of Self-Identity
2. The Project of Bad Faith
3. The Fundamental Project
4. Desire
5. Relations with Others in Being and Nothingness
1. The Problem of Other Minds
2. Human Relationships
6. Authenticity
1. Freedom
2. Authenticity
3. An Ethical Dimension
7. Other Contributions to Existential Phenomenology
1. Critique of Dialectical Reason
2. The Problem of Method
8. Conclusion
9. References
1. Sartres works
2. Commentaries

1. Sartres 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 Lyce Henri IV in Paris.
After two years of preparation, he gained entrance to the prestigious Ecole Normale
Suprieure, where, from 1924 to 1929 he came into contact with Raymond Aron,
Simone de Beauvoir, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and other notables. He passed the
Agrgation 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 lyce 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 lyce 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
USSRs invasion of Hungary and Czechoslovakia, and speaking up against Frances
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, LIdiot 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
Sartres early work is characterised by phenomenological analyses involving his own
interpretation of Husserls method. Sartres methodology is Husserlian (as
demonstrated in his paper Intentionality: a fundamental ideal of Husserls
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 Sartres development of Husserls phenomenology can be
characterised in terms of Sartres methodology, of his view of the self and of his
ultimate ethical interests.

a. Methodology
Sartres methodology differs from Husserls in two essential ways. Although he thinks
of his analyses as eidetic, he has no real interest in Husserls 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 subjects 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 subjects 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. Sartres 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
Sartres view also diverges from Husserls 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 Kants 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 selfconsciousness and the production of the ego through conscious activity? The key to
answering the first part of the question lies in Sartres 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 consciousnesss 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 prereflective 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 Sartres 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 Sartres 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 Sartres 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 subjects 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 imaginationss activity. In all three
cases, a key factor in Sartres 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 Sartres phenomenological

approach? Sartres 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 Heideggers focus upon Dasein
in tackling the question of Being. This aspect of Heideggers work is that which can
properly be called existential insofar as Daseins way of being is essentially distinct
from that of any other being. This characterisation is particularly apt for Sartres
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, Sartres 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 Sartres work logically evolves. In relation to
what will become Being and Nothingness, Sartres early works can be seen as
providing important preparatory material for an existential account of being human.
But the distinctiveness of Sartres 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
Heideggers analysis. Thus the nature of Sartres 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 initself 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 Husserls
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 Sartres version of Heideggers ontological relation of being-inthe-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
Hegels 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 foritself, 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 foritself 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 Sartres 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 caf to meet Pierre and
discovering his absence from his usual place. Sartre talks of this absence as haunting
the caf. 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 caf, 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 Sartres 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 secret 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 Sartres 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
consciousnesss power of negation is explored in its different ramifications. These
bring out the core claims of Sartres 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 foritself, a task which amounts to the selfs seeking to ground itself.
This dimension of task ushers in a temporal component that is fully justified by
Sartres 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
Sartres 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 individuals 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. Sartres analysis of the project of bad faith is
grounded in vivid examples. Thus Sartre describes the precise and mannered
movements of a caf 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 foritself, 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 agents 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 Freuds
theory of self-deceit, with its appeal to censorship mechanisms accounting for
repression, all of which are beyond the subjects awareness as they are unconscious
(BN, 54-55). The reason is that Freuds theory diminishes the agents responsibility.
On the contrary, and this is the second consequence of Sartres account of bad faith,
Sartres 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-itselfs
setting itself self-identity as a task. This in turn is the result of the for-itselfs
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-itselfs aiming for another mode of being, the foritself-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-antithesissynthesis 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 subjects 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-itselfs interact. Far from neglecting the issue of intersubjectivity, this represents an important part of Sartres 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.
Husserls 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 others 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 others 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 Sartres 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 others
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 intersubjective bad faith.

6. Authenticity
If the picture which emerges from Sartres examination of human relationships seems
rather hopeless, it is because bad faith is omnipresent and inescapable. In fact, Sartres
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 Sartres 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 individuals
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 Pierres 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.
Sartres conception of choice can best be understood by reference to an individuals
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 Heideggers, since it involves a
mode of being that exhibits a recognition that one is a Dasein. However, unlike
Heideggers, Sartres 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 ones 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 Kants. This should come as no surprise since both Sartre and Kants
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 agents
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 Sartres 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 Sartres 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
Sartres 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. Sartres Works

Intentionality: a Fundamental Ideal of Husserls 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 Re, 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 Sartres 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.