JeanPaul_Sartre_JeanPaul_Sartre_Basic_Writing

68Jean-Paul Sartre: Basic Writingsit does not signify anything; it just is. Similarly, the psychologist, questioned aboutemotion, is quite proud to affirm: “It exists. Why? I know nothing of that, I simplystate the fact. I do not know its signification.” To the phenomenologist, on the otherhand, every human fact is of its essence significant. If you deprive it of its significanceyou rob it of its nature as a human fact. The task of the phenomenologist, then, will beto study the significance of emotion. What are we to understand by that?To signify is to indicate something else; and to indicate it in such a way that indeveloping the signification one finds precisely the thing signified. For the psychologistemotion signifies nothing, because he studies it as a fact; that is, by separating it fromeverything else. It will then be non-significant from the start; but if every human factis in truth significant, this emotion of the psychologists is of its nature dead, nonpsychic,inhuman. Whereas, if we want to see emotion as the phenomenologists see it,as a true phenomenon of consciousness, we shall have to consider it as significant firstof all; and this means that we shall affirm that it is strictly to the degree that it signifies.We shall not begin by losing our way in the study of psychological facts, simplybecause, taken by themselves and in isolation, they signify almost nothing: they are,and that is all. On the contrary, we shall try, by developing the significance of behaviourand of disturbed consciousness, to explain what is signified. And what this is we knowfrom the beginning: an emotion signifies in its own manner the whole of theconsciousness, or, if we take our stand on the existential plane, of the human reality.It is not an accident, because the human reality is not a sum of facts; it expresses undera definite aspect the synthetic human entirety in its integrity. And by that we must inno wise be understood to mean that it is the effect of the human reality. It is thathuman reality itself; realizing itself in the form of “emotion”. Hence it is impossible toregard emotion as a psycho-physiological disorder. It has its own essence, its peculiarstructures, its laws of appearance, its meaning. It cannot possibly come from outsidethe human reality. It is man, on the contrary, who assumes his emotion, and emotionis therefore an organized form of human existence.It is not our intention here to attempt a phenomenological study of emotion. Sucha study, if we had one, would deal with affectivity as an existential mode of the humanreality. But our ambition is more limited. We would rather try, in one defined andconcrete case, that of emotion, to see whether pure psychology could derive a methodand some instructions from phenomenology. We will not quarrel with psychology fornot bringing man into question or putting the world in brackets. It takes man in theworld as he presents himself in a multitude of situations: at the restaurant, in thefamily, at war. In a general way, what interests psychology is man in situation. In itself