ABSTRACT
In 1946 Jean-Paul Sartre published an introduction to a selection of the writings of Descartes, which is an interesting example in itself of his characteristic method of criticism—personal, loaded, and full of insights. Besides the concept of human freedom as something of which we are necessarily directly aware, Sartre claims to derive from Descartes a certain view of human consciousness in general. Indeed, it is to this view of consciousness that he himself is most inclined to award the honorific title of Cartesianism. Sartre goes on to elaborate other differences between the objects of perception and those of imagination, besides this glaringly obvious one. For instance, there is an essential poverty which he ascribes to objects conceived imaginatively, by contrast with those perceived. Sartre’s own view of what is meant by consciousness becomes clearer in the course of his next critical discussion, which is of the psycho-analytic theory of emotion, or the theory of the unconscious.
