ABSTRACT

Sartre seeks to refute Husserl’s claim that the unity of consciousness is a product of the I and argues that the I is a product of the unity of consciousness. Sartre is partly able to escape the fundamentally Kantian framework of the debate. Sartre accounts for the unity of consciousness by a holism about the mental: acts of consciousness unify themselves as parts of one and the same consciousness through their intentional objects. In addressing the problem of individuating consciousnesses, Sartre rejects the view that consciousness is a substance. He draws a distinction between reflective and pre-reflective consciousness which will be crucial to his developed existential phenomenology in Being and Nothingness. The question of whether consciousness entails self-consciousness is discussed. In distinguishing states of consciousness with and without the I, Sartre concludes that the I only appears to reflecting consciousness. Sartre draws a distinction between the I and the me; that psycho-physical whole human being who I am. Sartre argues that the existence of the transcendental ego is inconsistent with the freedom of consciousness. In his break with Husserl’s Cartesianism Sartre nevertheless accepts the certainty of the cogito. Distinguishing a third ‘level’ of consciousness, reflection on reflection, Sartre tries to avoid the danger of an infinite regress. Sartre offers a phenomenology of pre-reflexive consciousness based on memory and argues that pre-reflexive consciousness contains no I. Sartre denies that the I is the ‘source’ of consciousness but concludes that the I is an existent. The I is intuited. The I appears to reflective consciousness but the I falls before the epoché.