ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that intentional directedness toward the world can, for J. P. Sartre, be understood as a form of revelation that conforms to the sort of schema. Understanding the notion of pre-reflective awareness is one of the hardest tasks in Sartre scholarship. Sartre argues that a form of self-awareness—pre-reflective awareness or non-positional self-awareness—is built in to any conscious act. Ludwig. Wittgenstein’s insight, in essence, was that any object of inwardly directed awareness—a picture, a rule, etc.—would have the logical status of a symbol. Reflective awareness, according to Sartre, depends for its existence on pre-reflective awareness. Pre-reflective awareness is built in to intentional directedness toward the world in virtue of the fact that many, perhaps all, of the contingencies that underwrite such directedness are ones involving the conscious subject. Sartre thinks No Content Thesis, that no object of consciousness is part of consciousness, follows immediately and obviously from Intentionality Thesis, the thesis that, necessarily, all consciousness is intentional.
