JeanPaul_Sartre_JeanPaul_Sartre_Basic_Writing

The self149It does not follow from this argument alone that there is no transcendentalego, only that there are no consistent phenomenological grounds forpostulating one. Nevertheless, Sartre insists on subjectivity: that which isconscious is not what consciousness is consciousness of. The subject ofconsciousness, is not an object of that consciousness.Sartre thinks that the existence of the transcendental is inconsistent withthe unity of consciousness. There is a unity of consciousness, so there isno transcendental ego. He perhaps overestimates the role of thetranscendental ego in unifying consciousness in Husserl’s philosophy.Husserl thinks that acts of consciousness are parts of the sameconsciousness through the horizontal and vertical intentionalities of timeconsciousness. However, Husserl does think that some mental act’s beingmine is its source being a particular transcendental ego. Sartre suggestsinstead that it is the intentional object of acts of consciousness that accountsfor their unity. Consciousness unifies itself in the face of its objects and thatis as much unity as consciousness has. Neither thinker has resolved theultimate problem of what it is for acts of consciousness to be mine.Sartre also argues that the existence of the transcendental ego isinconsistent with the freedom of consciousness. Consciousness is free,so there is no transcendental ego. Consciousness is a free spontaneity orplay of nothingness. If conscious states were directed by a transcendentalego this spontaneity would be impossible.The Transcendence of the Ego shows that Husserl misread Kant’s theoryof the self in The Critique of Pure Reason and that Sartre understood Kantcorrectly. Kant, like Sartre, rejected the transcendental ego although mostcommentators, like Husserl, mistakenly ascribe it to Kant. In the Paralogismschapter of the Critique of Pure Reason Kant insists that there is nosubstantial, subjective, quasi-Cartesian self. Kant’s distinction betweenthe noumenal self and the phenomenal self is only the distinction betweenhow I am and how I appear to myself. The noumenal self is not an extraentity.The psychic subject according to Sartre, far from being the subjectivesource of consciousness, is itself a product of consciousness. It is in factthe result of consciousness being turned on consciousness in reflexiveconsciousness. The I is not a psychic subject but a psychic object: theintentional object of reflexive consciousness. In reflection I appear to myselfas an ego. Independently of reflection I am the me. In the world, as the me,