JeanPaul_Sartre_JeanPaul_Sartre_Basic_Writing

Phenomenology87that for consciousness there is no being outside of that precise obligation to be arevealing intuition of something—i.e., of a transcendent being. Not only does puresubjectivity, if initially given, fail to transcend itself to posit the objective; a “pure”subjectivity disappears. What can properly be called subjectivity is consciousness(of) consciousness. But this consciousness (of being) consciousness must be qualifiedin some way, and it can be qualified only as revealing intuition or it is nothing. Now arevealing intuition implies something revealed. Absolute subjectivity can be establishedonly in the face of something revealed; immanence can be defined only within theapprehension of a transcendent. It might appear that there is an echo here of Kant’srefutation of problematical idealism. But we ought rather to think of Descartes. We arehere on the ground of being, not of knowledge. It is not a question of showing that thephenomena of inner sense imply the existence of objective spatial phenomena, butthat consciousness implies in its being a non-conscious and transphenomenal being. Inparticular there is no point in replying that in fact subjectivity implies objectivity andthat it constitutes itself in constituting the objective; we have seen that subjectivity ispowerless to constitute the objective. To say that consciousness is consciousness ofsomething is to say that it must produce itself as a revealed-revelation a being whichis not it and which gives itself as already existing when consciousness reveals it.Thus we have left pure appearance and have arrived at full being. Consciousness isa being whose existence posits its essence, and inversely it is consciousness of a being,whose essence implies its existence; that is, in which appearance lays claim to being.Being is everywhere. Certainly we could apply to consciousness the definition whichHeidegger reserves for Dasein and say that it is a being such that in its being, its beingis in question. But it would be necessary to complete the definition and formulate itmore like this: consciousness is a being such that in its being, its being is in question inso far as this being implies a being other than itself.We must understand that this being is no other than the transphenomenal being ofphenomena and not a noumenal being which is hidden behind them. It is the being ofthis table of this package of tobacco of the lamp, more generally the being of the worldwhich is implied by consciousness. It requires simply that being of that which appearsdoes not exist only in so far as it appears. The transphenomenal being of what existsfor consciousness is itself in itself (lui-même en soi).Notes1 From Greek e???. Sartre seems to have ignored the rough breathing and writes“exis.” Tr.