JeanPaul_Sartre_JeanPaul_Sartre_Basic_Writing

7 The selfWhat is this subjective being that I am? The distinction between reflexiveconsciousness (la conscience réflexive) and pre-reflexive consciousness(la conscience préréflexive) is essential to understanding Sartre’sphenomenology of the self. It finds its original and clearest expression notin Being and Nothingness but in Sartre’s short 1937 work TheTranscendence of the Ego.There Sartre argues against Husserl, that there is no transcendentalego, no irreducibly subjective and psychic self, no hidden inner source ofone’s own mental states. Husserl’s transcendental ego is transcendentalin two senses. On quasi-Kantian grounds, Husserl argues in CartesianMeditations and elsewhere that there exists an ego that is a necessarycondition for experience. The ego also transcends our ordinary prephenomenologicalconsciousness. It is not to be found within the world ofthe natural attitude. It is revealed as the source of the transcendental field, orsubjective consciousness, by the application of the epoché or transcendentalreduction. It is the subjective ‘pole’ of my mental states and does not existwithout them. It explains my numerical identity over time. It is what I ultimatelyam.In The Transcendence of the Ego Sartre brings this argument againstHusserl: Phenomenology is the description of what appears toconsciousness, without any preconception about the objective reality ofwhat thus appears. But no transcendental ego is given to consciousness,not before the phenomenological epoché and not after it. Rather, Husserlassumes or postulates the transcendental ego as an explanation of howconsciousness is possible. It is not the role of phenomenology to postulatebut to describe. Ironically, the transcendental ego falls before the epoché.