JeanPaul_Sartre_JeanPaul_Sartre_Basic_Writing

252Jean-Paul Sartre: Basic Writingschoice of position in the world is total like the complex; it is prior to logic like thecomplex. It is this which decides the attitude of the person when confronted with logicand principles; therefore there can be no possibility of questioning it in conformanceto logic. It brings together in a prelogical synthesis the totality of the existent, and assuch it is the center of reference for an infinity of polyvalent meanings.Both our psychoanalyses refuse to admit that the subject is in a privileged positionto proceed in these inquiries concerning himself. They equally insist on a strictlyobjective method, using as documentary evidence the data of reflection as well as thetestimony of others. Of course the subject can undertake a psychoanalytic investigationof himself. But in this case he must renounce at the outset all benefit stemming fromhis peculiar position and must question himself exactly as if he were someone else.Empirical psychoanalysis in fact is based on the hypothesis of the existence of anunconscious psyche, which on principle escapes the intuition of the subject. Existentialpsychoanalysis rejects the hypothesis of the unconscious; it makes the psychic actcoextensive with consciousness. But if the fundamental project is fully experiencedby the subject and hence wholly conscious, that certainly does not mean that it mustby the same token be known by him; quite the contrary. The reader will perhaps recallthe care we took in the Introduction to distinguish between consciousness andknowledge. To be sure, as we have seen earlier, reflection can be considered as a quasiknowledge.But what it grasps at each moment is not the pure project of the for-itselfas it is symbolically expressed—often in several ways at once—by the concretebehavior which it apprehends. It grasps the concrete behavior itself; that is, thespecific dated desire in all its characteristic network. It grasps at once symbol andsymbolization. This apprehension, to be sure, is entirely constituted by a preontologicalcomprehension of the fundamental project; better yet, in so far as reflection is almosta non-thetic consciousness of itself as reflection, it is this same project, as well as thenon-reflective consciousness. But it does not follow that it commands the instrumentsand techniques necessary to isolate the choice symbolized, to fix it by concepts, andto bring it forth into the full light of day. It is penetrated by a great light without beingable to express what this light is illuminating. We are not dealing with an unsolvedriddle as the Freudians believe; all is there, luminous; reflection is in full possession ofit, apprehends all. But this “mystery in broad daylight” is due to the fact that thispossession is deprived of the means which would ordinarily permit analysis andconceptualization. It grasps everything, all at once, without shading, without relief,without connections of grandeur—not that these shades, these values, these reliefsexist somewhere and are hidden from it, but rather because they must be established