JeanPaul_Sartre_JeanPaul_Sartre_Basic_Writing

66Jean-Paul Sartre: Basic Writingspsychology we must go beyond the psychic, beyond the situation of man in theworld, even to the very source of man, of the world and of the psychic; to thetranscendental and constitutive consciousness that we attain through a“phenomenological reduction”, or “putting the world in brackets”. It is thisconsciousness that must be interrogated; and what gives value to its answers is that itis mine. Husserl knows how to take advantage of that absolute proximity ofconsciousness to itself; which the psychologists do not choose to profit by. He takesadvantage of it wittingly and with absolute confidence, because all consciousnessexists precisely to the degree that it is consciousness of existing. But here, as above, herefuses to question consciousness about the facts, which would be to find the disorderof psychology again upon the transcendental plane. What he sets out to describe andto fix in concepts are precisely the essences which preside over developments in thetranscendental field. Thus there will be, for instance, a phenomenology of emotionwhich, after “putting the world in brackets”, will study emotion as a purelytranscendental phenomenon, not addressing itself to particular emotions, but seekingto attain and elucidate the transcendent essence of emotion as an organized type ofconsciousness.The absolute proximity of the investigator to the object investigated is also thepoint of departure for another psychologist, Heidegger. What must differentiate allresearch into man from other types of strict investigation is precisely this privilegedcircumstance, that the human-reality is ourselves. “The existent that we have toanalyse,” writes Heidegger, “is ourselves. The being of this existent is my own.” Andit is no negligible matter that this human-reality should be myself, because it is preciselyfor the human reality that to exist is always to assume its being; that is, to beresponsible for it instead of receiving it from outside, as a pebble does. And since “thehuman reality” is essentially its own possibility, this existent can itself “choose” whatit will be, achieve itself—or lose itself. “This assumption” of itself which characterizesthe human reality implies an understanding of the human reality by itself; howeverobscure an understanding this may be. “In the being of this existent, the latter relatesitself to its being.” For indeed this understanding is not a quality that comes to thehuman reality from without, but is its own mode of existence. Thus the human realitywhich is myself assumes its own being by understanding it. This understanding ismine. I am, then, first of all, a being who more or less obscurely understands his realityas a man, which means that I make myself a man by understanding myself as such. Ican therefore question myself and, on the basis of that interrogation, carry out ananalysis of the “human reality” which will serve as the basis for an anthropology. Here