ABSTRACT
This chapter examines a case for the common relevance of Sartre and Kierkegaard for locating blind spots in third-person approaches to consciousness and subjectivity defended in current analytic philosophy. Existentialism is important because of its challenge to traditional ways of understanding human beings. Sartre's elucidation of consciousness and subjectivity follows the lead of the phenomenological tradition started by Husserl and developed most notably by early Heidegger. The phenomenological tradition, to which Sartre belongs, takes consciousness to be something significantly different. Sartre as well as for Kierkegaard, discusses consciousness and subjectivity are not easily divorced from issues in ontology and metaphysics. One can construe Sartre and Kierkegaard on consciousness and subjectivity as a challenge to first-person approaches to consciousness and subjectivity that fail to develop a sufficiently robust concept of first-personhood. The idea here is that many approaches to consciousness are first-person in a way that fails to individuate consciousness radically.
