PHI309 and PHI6003

SARTREAN EXISTENTIALISM
Course Booklet

Jonathan Webber Arts Tower, Floor 12, Room 24 Office Hours: Mondays 3-4 and 5-6 0114 222 0584 j.m.webber@sheffield.ac.uk

Lectures: Mondays 10.00-10.50 and 2.10-3.00 both in Arts LT2 Seminars: Thursdays 3.10-4.00 or 4.10-5.00 both in RRB-A85

Course Outline
Jean-Paul Sartres celebrated existentialist analysis of the human condition, as laid out in his Being and Nothingness, is again attracting philosophical interest, this time in relation to the nature and knowledge of character and virtue. We will study in detail the key tenets of his position, including his account of the constitution of the familiar world of everyday experience, and his related theories of the nature of values and of human motivation; his conception of the nature of character and its relation to projects; his notions of radical freedom and responsibility, and of our response to them in bad faith; his related description of interpersonal relations; and the possibility of Sartrean existential psychoanalysis.
Course website: http://www.shef.ac.uk/philosophy/modules/sartrean.html

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Assessment
Either: You will submit one 2500-4000 word essay by 4pm on Tuesday 22 November (week 9) and sit one two-hour examination at the end of the course, in which you will have to answer two questions from a choice of six topics. For coursework questions and reading lists, see p. where. For exam reading lists, see pp where. The exam will be pre-released in week 12. Or: You will submit one 4500-6000 word essay by 4pm on Tuesday 24 January (second week of exam period). If you are Single Honours student, you can only do this for two of your level three courses; if you are a Dual Honours student, you can only do it for one level three Philosophy module. If you are considering taking this option, you should consult me as early in the semester as possible. Further detailed information concerning notification of your intention to opt for assessment by long essay, advisory tutorials, deadlines, penalties, and format can be found in the Departmental Booklet Information for Third Year Students 30.

Plagiarism
In any essay or exam answer submitted for assessment, all passages taken from other peoples work, either word for word, or with small changes, must be placed within quotation marks, with specific reference to author, title and page. No excuse can be accepted for any failure to do so, nor will inclusion of the source in a bibliography be considered an adequate acknowledgement. Verbatim or near-verbatim reproduction of material from lecture handouts counts as plagiarism. If the marker decides that plagiarism has occurred, the student may be judged to have failed the essay and/or exam and/or module (depending on the degree of severity). The plagiarism will also be recorded on the students permanent record.

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Assessment Information for MA Students

Each Taught MA (TMA) or Research MA (RMA) module will normally be assessed entirely on the basis of one long essay with the possibility of two short essays for TMA students, who should consult with module teachers before deciding which option to take.
Format long essays should be between 6000 and 8000 words in length, short essays (TMA

only) should be between 3000 and 4000 words in length (inclusive of all quotations and notes, but exclusive of bibliography). Essays should be accompanied by an accurate word-count. Examiners will cease reading over-length essays at the point where they judge them to exceed the word-limit. All essays should be typed, double spaced, with margins of at least an inch.
Topics essay topics should be chosen in consultation with the course teacher concerned. The

essays should be thought of as mini research-papers, whose content can be related more or less loosely to the material covered in the course.
Examples of previously submitted TMA and RMA coursework essays, which may help to guide

you in the standard of work that is required, are available for consultation from the Departmental office see Joanne Elliott.
Drafts preliminary drafts of all essays should be submitted to the relevant course teacher well

in advance of submission. These will then be the subject of an advisory tutorial and will be returned with comments. Tutorial times will need to be negotiated with each of the course teachers concerned. For this course, these can be towards the end of the teaching part of the semester or after Christmas in the examining period.
Penalties late work will be penalised at a rate of one mark per day. If you feel that you cannot

submit your work by the following deadlines, you must meet fill out an extension request form and meet with the Director of Graduate Studies to arrange an extension (otherwise you will be penalised). It is in your interest to request extensions as early as possible. You should also read the plagiarism notice on the previous page.
Deadlines you must choose either 14 December 2005 or 1 February 2006. Then you must

stick to the deadline chosen.

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Lecture and Seminar Topics

TOPIC OF LECTURES 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 Phenomenology, Ontology, Existentialism Husserls Phenomenology and Two Egos Sartre on Husserls Transcendental Ego Being and Nothingness The Constitution of the World The Transcendence of the Ego WRITING WEEK Freedom and Facticity Sartres Critique of Freud The Content of Bad Faith Other People Existential Psychoanalysis SEMINAR READING NO SEMINAR NO SEMINAR Priest, The Subject in Question, ch. 2, 412 Barnes, Sartres Ontology, pp. 13-27. McCulloch, Sartre: Between Realism and Idealism? Morris, Sartre on the Transcendence of the Ego WRITING WEEK McInerney, Self-Determination and the Project Neu, Divided Minds: Sartres Bad Faith Critique of Freud McCulloch, Using Sartre, ch. 4. Stack and Plant, The Phenomenon of The Look REVISION AND EXAM ADVICE

Books
The course is essentially a study of two of Sartres books: The Transcendence of the Ego and Being and Nothingness. There are library copies, but it is a very good idea to buy your own! You should aim to read the original texts as much as possible. You might find that Joseph Catalanos A Commentary on Jean-Paul Sartres Being and Nothingness is helpful. It tends to employ Sartres idiolect too much, but does condense lengthy discussions considerably. All the seminar readings are included in this coursepack, along with a few other articles that you would otherwise find it difficult to get hold of. Everything else is in the library, much of it reference-only or in the Short-Loan Collection (SLC). Many are also available electronically, some as eBooks which you can access by accessing the library catalogue through your MUSE account, and either read on-screen or download for a reasonable price (similar to cost of photocopying). If you are not yet used to using electronic texts, then now is a good time to learn!

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Coursework Questions
You do not need to read everything on each list: a good critical understanding of a few arguments is far better than a cursory understanding of a lot of arguments. You should work down each list, but it does not matter if you skip over one or two. Remember that you are supposed to spend 13 hours per week on each 20-credit course, so subtracting three hours for lectures and seminars this means you should be doing ten hours reading every week when you are not writing your essay. This, of course, includes preparing for seminars. But the course is cumulative, so you should also keep up with reading the relevant sections of Sartres works as the course progresses.

1. Is Sartre right to reject Husserls theory of the transcendental ego?

The Transcendence of the Ego, part I.
Sarah Richmond, Introduction, in The Transcendence of the Ego, by Jean-Paul Sartre. Stephen Priest, The Subject in Question, ch. 2, 412. Available as eBook. Also in coursepack. Peter Caws, Sartre, ch. 4. Phyllis Sutton Morris, Sartre on the Transcendence of the Ego, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 46, no. 2 (1985): 179-198. Available online. And in coursepack. Aron Gurwitsch, A Non-Egological Conception of Consciousness, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 1, no. 3. (1941): 325-338. Available online. Edmund Husserl, Cartesian Meditations, First Meditation and Fourth Meditation 30-33. David Bell, Husserl, pp. 153-172 and 203-207. A. D. Smith, Husserl and the Cartesian Meditations, pp. 108-115 and ch. 1. Available as eBook. Stephen Priest, The Subject in Question, ch. 1. Available as eBook.

2. Is Sartre a realist or an idealist about the world?

Being and Nothingness, Introduction; Part I ch. 1 I-V; Part II ch. 1 III-IV; Part II ch. 3 II.
Kathleen Wider, The Bodily Nature of Consciousness, pp. 44-50. Gregory McCulloch, Sartre: Between Realism and Idealism?, International Journal of Philosophical Studies 1, no. 2 (1993): 286-301. And in coursepack. Extended version available as chs. 6 and 7 of his book, Using Sartre. Hazel Barnes, Sartres Ontology: The Revealing and Making of Being, in The Cambridge Companion to Sartre, edited by Christina Howells, pp. 13-38. Also in coursepack. Kathleen Wider, The Role of Subjectivity in the Realism of Thomas Nagel and Jean-Paul Sartre, Journal of Speculative Philosophy 4, no. 4 (1990): 337-353. Also in coursepack. Gregory McCulloch, Using Sartre, ch. 3. Jonathan Webber, Sartres Theory of Character, esp. V and VI. Available from my website. David Jopling, Sartres Moral Psychology, in The Cambridge Companion to Sartre, edited by Christina Howells, pp. 103-139. Arthur Danto, Sartre, ch. 2. Michael Hammond, Jane Howarth, and Russell Keat, Understanding Phenomenology, ch. 4. Peter Caws, Sartre, chs. 5 and 6.

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Exam Topics
The exam will be pre-released in week 12. There will be one question on each of the following topics. Each exam topic corresponds to one of the weekly lecture and seminar topics from week 6 onwards. Various key articles appear on more than one reading list. You may want to take this into consideration when choosing topics to prepare for the exam. But remember: while your exam answers can be related, you will be marked down significantly if you repeat any discussions.

The Transcendence of the Ego The Transcendence of the Ego, part II.
Phyllis Sutton Morris, Sartre on the Transcendence of the Ego, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 46, no. 2 (1985): 179-198. Available online. And in coursepack. Sarah Richmond, Introduction, in The Transcendence of the Ego by Jean-Paul Sartre, esp. pp. xxiii-xxviii. Stephen Priest, The Subject in Question, ch. 2, 1517, 20; ch. 3, 25, 14. Available as eBook. Hazel Barnes, Sartres Ontology: The Revealing and Making of Being, in The Cambridge Companion to Sartre, edited by Christina Howells, pp. 13-38. Especially pp. 27-36. Also in coursepack. Jonathan Webber, Sartres Theory of Character, IV. Available from my website. Thomas Busch, The Power of Consciousness and the Force of Circumstances, ch. 1. Aron Gurwitsch, A Non-Egological Conception of Consciousness, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 1, no. 3. (1941): 325-338. Available online. Peter Caws, Sartre, ch. 4. Phyllis Berdt Kenevan, Self-Consciousness and the Ego in the Philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre, in The Philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre, edited by Paul Arthur Schilpp, ch. 7.

Freedom and Facticity Being and Nothingness part I ch. 2 II; part III ch. 2 I; part IV ch. 1 II.
Kathleen Wider, The Bodily Nature of Consciousness, pp. 63-68. Gregory McCulloch, Using Sartre, ch. 3 and pp. 56-62. Latter passage also in coursepack. Jonathan Webber, Sartres Theory of Character, esp. III. Available from my website. Mary Warnock, Freedom in the Early Philosophy of J.-P. Sartre, in Essays on the Freedom of Action, edited by Ted Honderich, pp. 3-14. And in coursepack. Peter McInerney, Self-Determination and the Project, Journal of Philosophy 76, no. 11 (1979): 663-677. Available online. And in coursepack. Dagfinn Fllesdal, Sartre on Freedom, in The Philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre, edited by Paul Arthur Schilpp, ch. 17. And in coursepack. Anthony Manser, A New Look at Bad Faith, in Sartre: An Investigation of Some Major Themes, edited by Simon Glynn, ch. 4. And in coursepack. David Jopling, Sartres Moral Psychology, in The Cambridge Companion to Sartre, edited by Christina Howells, pp. 103-139.

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Rejection of the Freudian Unconscious Being and Nothingness, part 1 ch. 2. I and III.
Gregory McCulloch, Using Sartre, ch. 4, pp. 54-6 and 62-70. Also in coursepack. Jerome Neu, Divided Minds: Sartres Bad Faith Critique of Freud, Review of Metaphysics 42 (1988): 79101. Also in coursepack. Jonathan Webber, Motivated Aversion: Bad Faith and Non-Thetic Awareness, Sartre Studies International 8, no. 1 (2002). Available from my website. Joseph Catalano, Successfully Lying To Oneself: A Sartrean Perspective, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 50, no. 4 (1990): 673-693. Available online. Ronald Santoni, Bad Faith and Lying to Oneself, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 38, no. 3 (1978): 384-398. Available online. Reprinted as ch. 2 of his book, Bad Faith, Good, Faith, and Authenticity in Sartres Early Philosophy. Anthony Manser, A New Look at Bad Faith, in Sartre: An Investigation of Some Major Themes, edited by Simon Glynn, ch. 4, esp. pp. 63-67. And in coursepack. Richard Wollheim, Freud, ch. 6. Ivan Soll, Sartres Rejection of the Freudian Unconscious, in The Philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre, edited by Paul Arthur Schilpp, ch. 24.

The Content of Bad Faith Being and Nothingness part I ch. 1 V; part I ch. 2 II-III.
Gregory McCulloch, Using Sartre, ch. 4. Also in coursepack. David Cooper, Existentialism, pp. 116-121. Jonathan Webber, Sartres Theory of Character, esp. II and III. Available from my website. Stefanie Grne, Sartre on Mistaken Sincerity, European Journal of Philosophy 11, no. 2 (2003): 145-160. Available online. Peter Caws, Sartre, ch. 6. Anthony Manser, A New Look at Bad Faith, in Sartre: An Investigation of Some Major Themes, edited by Simon Glynn, ch. 4, esp. up to p. 63. And in coursepack. Ronald Santoni, Bad Faith, Good, Faith, and Authenticity in Sartres Early Philosophy, chs. 1, and 4. Robert Stone, Sartre on Bad Faith and Authenticity, in The Philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre, edited by Paul Arthur Schilpp, ch. 10.

Other People Being and Nothingness part III ch 1 IV (and if you have time: part III ch. 3 I-III).
This will help: Joseph Catalano, A Commentary on Jean-Paul Sartres Being and Nothingness. Arthur Danto, Sartre, ch. 4. Kathleen Wider, The Bodily Nature of Consciousness, pp. 60-63. Gregory McCulloch, Using Sartre, ch. 8. Jonathan Webber, Sartres Theory of Character, esp. II and VII. Available from my website. Peter Caws, Sartre, ch. 7. George Stack and Robert Plant, The Phenomenon of The Look, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 42, no. 3 (1982): 359-373. Available online. And in coursepack. Hazel Barnes, Sartre, ch. 5. Thomas Busch, The Power of Consciousness and the Force of Circumstances, ch. 2. Maurice Natanson, The Problem of Others in Being and Nothingness, in The Philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre, edited by Paul Arthur Schilpp, ch. 14. James Giles, Sartre, Sexual Desire, and Relations with Others, in French Existentialism, edited by James Giles, pp. 155-174. William Schroeder, Sartre and His Predecessors, ch. 4.

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Existential Psychoanalysis Being and Nothingness part IV ch 2 I.

Kathleen Wider, The Bodily Nature of Consciousness, pp. 68-71. Peter McInerney, Self-Determination and the Project, Journal of Philosophy 76, no. 11 (1979): 663-677. I. Available online. And in coursepack. Jonathan Webber, Sartres Theory of Character. Available from my website. Hazel Barnes, Sartre, ch. 3. David Jopling, Sartres Moral Psychology, in The Cambridge Companion to Sartre, edited by Christina Howells, pp. 103-139. James Edie, Sartre as Phenomenologist and as Existentialist Psychoanalyst, in Phenomenology and Existentialism, edited by Edward Lee and Maurice Mendelbaum, ch. 6. NB: This issue draws on a number of previous ones, so you should use the lecture notes and your reading to find relevant passages from the rest of the course.

Seminar Readings
Seminars start in week 3. You should allow at least three hours, preferably in a single block, to prepare for each seminar at which you are not doing a presentation. This should involve taking notes, and re-writing them so that you will find it easy to find your way around them. You should allow more than that to prepare a presentation. When reading, taking notes in your own words is much much better than underlining parts of the text, as it helps you to understand what is going on, and using highlighter pens on the text is disastrous (you might later decide that passage is not so important); underlining or highlighting in library books, moreover, is morally wrong even if you underline in pencil but leave it there! Each presentation should last no more than 15 minutes. It would be good to use a handout and / or slides. I can do the photocopying for you, so long as you give me, email me, or leave in my pigeonhole your copy by the end of the weekend. Below are the issues that should be addressed in the presentation: the rest of the seminar will also involve discussion of more of the paper.

Week 3: Stephen Priest, The Subject in Question, ch. 2, 412 What to say? Is the presentation about the whole thing? Week 4: Hazel Barnes, Sartres Ontology, pp. 13-27. According to Barnes, how are the concepts of being-for-itself, consciousness, being-in-itself, objects of consciousness, nothingness, negation, and nihilation related to one another in Sartres thought in Being and Nothingness? (This presentation should focus on pp. 13-20 and 22-27.)

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Week 5: Gregory McCulloch, Sartre: Between Realism and Idealism?. How does McCulloch characterise Cartesian Realism, Berkeleyan Idealism, and Kantian (or, non-Berkleyan) Idealism? What reasons does he give for claiming that Sartres view is none of these? Why does he think that Sartres view is nonetheless a form of realism? What is the problem he deals with in the final section, how does he deal with it, and do you think he is right? (You should read the whole paper, though the discussion of recent externalist theories of mind in the second part of 4 is not important.) Week 6: Phyllis Sutton Morris, Sartre on the Transcendence of the Ego Morris is concerned to rebut a number of criticisms of Sartres work, among them the criticism that he has failed to account for the unity of consciousness. Exactly what is this criticism? How does Morris respond to it? What is the relation between The Transcendence of the Ego and Being and Nothingness in this regard? (You should read the whole paper, but the presentation should focus on II and the first few paragraphs of III.) Week 8: Peter McInerney, Self-Determination and the Project Presentation 1: How does McInerney understand Sartres conception of the ends or goals of projects? What is the role of nothingness or non-being (nant) in this conception? And how does this help Sartre to formulate an argument for the freedom of consciousness? (Read the whole article, but focus your presentation on pp. 665-6, 669). Presentation 2: This argument, according to McInerney, requires Sartre to conceive of consciousness as an activity of nihilation. Why is this? And what are the three features of this activity? In what ways are the first two features complex? (Read the whole article, but focus your presentation on pp. 665-6, 669). Week 9: Jerome Neu, Divided Minds: Sartres Bad Faith Critique of Freud What to say? Is the presentation about the whole thing? Week 10: Gregory McCulloch, Using Sartre, ch. 4. What does McCulloch think that Sartre thinks we are usually in Bad Faith about? Explain this using your own words explain both Sartres jargon and McCullochs terminology, but try not to employ them. Do you think McCulloch is right? (You should read the whole chapter, but your presentation should be concerned with pp. 56-62). Week 11: George Stack and Robert Plant, The Phenomenon of The Look What reasons do Stack and Plant give for their denial that Sartres theory of the look describes pathological attitudes and behaviour? How does the discussion of nonhuman animals fit into this claim? To what extent do they think that empirical evidence supports Sartres theory that the look is basically threatening and leads to conflict, and in what ways do they think that empirical evidence falsifies this claim? What do you think of their discussion? (This presentation should be based on the whole paper.)

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