JeanPaul_Sartre_JeanPaul_Sartre_Basic_Writing

Phenomenology67too, of course, the procedure is not to be one of introspection; firstly, becauseintrospection meets with nothing but facts, and secondly, because my comprehensionof the human reality is dim and inauthentic. It has to be made explicit and corrected. Inany case, the hermeneutic of existence will be sufficient foundation for an anthropology,and this anthropology will serve as a basis for all psychology. We are thus taking upa position opposite to that of the psychologists, since we start from the synthetictotality that man is, and establish the essence of man before beginning our psychology.At all events, phenomenology is the study of phenomena—not of the facts. Andby a phenomenon we are to understand “that which announces itself”, that of whichthe reality precisely is the appearance. And this “announcement of itself” is not thatof anything else . . . the being of the existent is not a thing “behind which” there is stillsomething else which “does not yet appear”. Indeed, for the human reality, to exist is,according to Heidegger, to assume its own being in an existential mode of understanding.And in Husserl, to exist is, for consciousness, to appear to itself. Since the appearancehere is the absolute, it is the appearance which has to be described and enquired into.From this point of view, Heidegger thinks that, in every human attitude—in emotion,for example, since we have been speaking of that—we can rediscover the whole of thehuman reality, for emotion is the human reality assuming itself and “emotionallydirecting”itself towards the world. Husserl, for his part, thinks that a phenomenologicaldescription of emotion will reveal the essential structures of consciousness, seeingthat an emotion precisely is a consciousness. And reciprocally, a problem will arisethat the psychologist does not even suspect: can one conceive of consciousnesseswhich do not include emotion among their potentialities or must we indeed regard it asan indispensable constituent of consciousness? Thus the phenomenologist willinterrogate emotion about consciousness or about man; he will enquire not only whatit is, but what it has to tell us about a being, one of whose characteristics is just this,that it is capable of being moved. And conversely, he will interrogate consciousness,the human reality, about emotion: what must a consciousness be, that emotion shouldbe possible, perhaps that it should even be necessary?We are now able to understand why the psychologist distrusts phenomenology.The initial precaution of the psychologist is, in effect, to consider the psychic statefrom an aspect that will divest it of all signification. For him a psychic state is alwaysa fact and, as such, always accidental. This accidental character is indeed what thepsychologist most firmly maintains. If we ask of a scientist: why do bodies attract oneanother according to Newton’s law? he will reply: I know nothing about that; or,because it is so. And if we ask him: what does that attraction signify? he will answer: