ABSTRACT
The problem of the observing observed need no longer be a problem if we accept reflective activity (consciousness) as having the effect of introducing differentiation into the unitary self. Sartre is able, where Hume and Kant were unable, to positively acknowledge a duality in the structure of the self, and he is therefore no longer frustrated by not being able to find simple identity in his notion of the self. Consciousness, by its very nature, is the separation of the in-itself and for-itself, and hence the unitary conscious self is an impossibility. Possibility arises through consciousness and the ability of the conscious for-itself to project a state of affairs different to that in which it finds itself, this is the significant feature which distinguishes conscious being-for-itself from being-in-itself. Sartre's necessary and sufficient conditions for a theory of the existence of Others are first and foremost, the divorce between the existence of Others and knowledge of these Others".
