JeanPaul_Sartre_JeanPaul_Sartre_Basic_Writing

Imagination and emotion91Sartre, like Husserl, argues that being aware of the whole physical objectdepends on the possible awareness of its parts, (empirically and realisticallyits sides or, phenomenologically, its available profiles or Abschattungen).However, Sartre insists that the object really exists outside consciousness.It is our awareness of the object as a whole that is constituted by the actualand possible mental acts we direct towards it. The object itself is notconstituted by consciousness. It is really there.We can now see the sense in which the object of the perception constantlyoverflows or exceeds the consciousness of it. There is always more to anobject than the consciousness of it. It is incoherent to suppose an objectcould be the consciousness of it. Also, an object systematically exceedswhat it directly presents to consciousness. In the visual case, a front impliesa back and some sides. The whole exceeds the momentarily presentedparts.Sartre’s phenomenology of perception is a realist transformation ofHusserl’s theory of the constitution of objects. Sartre retains from Husserlwhat we could call a kind of ‘perspectivism’. An object is always perceivedfrom a point of view and always presents an aspect to that point of view. Itfollows that ‘the object appears only in a series of profiles, or projections’(The Psychology of Imagination, p. 9). The profile is however part of theobject. The profile is any part of the object that appears to a point of view ata time.Husserl thought that an object is constituted by the infinity of possiblepoints of view on it. Sartre thinks the object really exists, independently ofany point of view. Nevertheless, it is only ever seen as presenting an aspectthat both implies and excludes an infinite number of other points of view.What I see exists even when unseen. Other points of view are excluded inthe sense that at any one time I may adopt just one and not any other ofthem. Other points of view are included in the sense that at other times Icould adopt any one of them.It is the object that makes possible the points of view on it. The points ofview do not make the object possible, even though they make possible theperception of it. So, when Sartre argues in The Psychology of Imaginationthat an object itself is a synthesis of all the appearances of it, an appearanceis nothing mental. The appearances of an object are the parts of it that canappear.Husserl was wrong to claim that consciousness constitutes objects.Rather, objects constitute consciousness. In The Transcendence of the Ego