Sartre Phenomenology Midterm Review Important Passages

1. “By reducing the existent to the series of appearances that manifest it, modern thought has made considerable progress. The aim was to eliminate a number of troublesome dualisms from philosophy, and to replace them with the monism of the phenomenon. (1)

• Development of modern philosophy 

• Dualism to be rejected with modern philosophy has gone into experience itself 

• Phenomenology was to only world with realm of appearance

• Phenomena intended by consciousness or conscious experience 

• Appearance has been regarded as inferior or second hand being - older notion 

• Appearances and content of experiences itself takes on a new importance in modern philosophy 

• Appearance loses its negativity and becomes full in its positivity 

• Dualism of actuality will collapse 

• Reality of the object constitutes on the bases of intersubjective experience 

2. “From this it obviously follows that the dualism of being and appearing no longer has a legitimate place in philosophy. An appearance refers to the total series of appearances, not to some hidden reality that siphons off all the existent’s being for itself.” (2)

• Dualism to be rejected with modern philosophy has gone into experience itself 

• Phenomenology was to only world with realm of appearance

• Appearance has been regarded as inferior or second hand being - older notion 

• Appearances and content of experiences itself takes on a new importance in modern philosophy 

• Appearance loses its negativity and becomes full in its positivity 

• Dualism of actuality will collapse 

• Reality of the object constitutes on the bases of intersubjective experience 

Being-for-itself 

• conscious beings or subjects

• contains possibility 

• way human consciousness exists in the world - being of consciousness - subjectivity 

3. “If we want to avoid an infinite regress, it must be an immediate and non-cognitive relation of self to self.” (11)

• Finite and the infinite that arises between these two experience 

• Finite - the understanding of the object 

• Infinite possibility of experiences of the object 

• The reduction of this is consciousness to knowledge which creates subject object duality which must be gotten rid of

• This also creates a problem given the phenomenon would collapse into the unknown or we can declare infinite regress 

• To avoid infinite regress there must be a noncognitive relationship between the consciousness of consciousness

4. “...if nothingness can be given, it is neither before being nor after being; nor is it, in a general way, outside being; rather, it is right inside being, in its heart, like a worm.” (57)

• Nothingness expresses itself in human behaviour or attitudes as fundamental ways of being 

• Not inside all being, nothingness is not something that is characteristic of all being (objects, which does not constitute the characteristic) 

• Nothingness needs being to be able to come into the world and it depended on it 

• being is which brings nothingness into the world 

• Nothingness is dependent on being to come into the world yet being isnt depended on nothingness 

• Nothingness if only supported by being vanishes as nothingness and we fall back into being. Nothingness can only go into non-being on the ground of being 

5. “In this sense, fear and anguish each exclude the other, since fear is the unreflective apprehension of something transcendent, and anguish is a reflective apprehension of oneself; each is born of the other’s destruction, and the typical process, in the case I have just given, is a constant transition from one to the other.” (67)

• Freedom in question of itself - anguish - Anguish is distinct from fear

• Fear is thing out of your control - fear because im an object in the world 

• Anguish is fear of your own control

• Fear and anguish are constantly transitioning from one to the other in one's life, one may feel anguish in certain moments and fear in others. 

• Anguish reflects the person who feels it but fear is a normal feeling 

• One situation may reflect both feelings, one may feel fear and right after anguish 

• Sartre discusses an example of a man who has lost his resources in a financial crash, at one moment he has the fear of poverty, the next moment he is in anguish as he is crying “what am I going to do” 

• Therefore fear and anguish do not happen at the same time and exclude the other, but they are both in constant transition as a person cycles through feeling fear and anguish. 

6. “Yet I am situated over there, in the future, indeed it is the person I will be in a moment, at the bend of the path, that I am striving toward with all my strength, and in this sense there is already a relation between my future being and my present being. But, within this relation, a nothingness has slid: I am not the person I will be.” (69-70)

• He can never be this person in that he is separated by time, it's not the foundation of him and one cannot determine strictly what i will be 

• Also a relation between that future being that may not the being i will answer to 

• It is the consciousness of being one's own future, in the mode of not-being which creates anguish. 

• A feeling of fear which is induced by myself 

• Fundamental project is a project which i experience in time, in relation to past and future, but never fully determined by either 

• Project of being or becoming of self or project of identity 

• Believes humans have ability to make choice, more of a sense hat consciousness is free

• We have a sense of nothingness period to judgement prior to knowledge because it is part of the structure of consciousness and the way we experience it

• At any moment the self i was in the past I can change and does not fully determine 

• Anguish that this person will not complete this fundamental project and wont project this acceptable project of identity 

7. “If nothing constrains me to save my life, nothing prevents me from hurling myself into the abyss. The decisive behaviour will emanate from a ‘me’ that I am not yet, to exactly the extent to which the ‘me’ that I am not yet does not depend on the ‘me’ that I am.” (69)

• Also a relation between that future being that may not the being i will answer to 

• Fundamental project is a project which i experience in time, in relation to past and future, but never fully determined by either 

• At any moment the self i was in the past I can change and does not fully determine 

• Anguish is created from the amount of possibilities that are possible and the idea that the person can choose the wrong possibility

• A feeling of fear which is induced by myself  

• Anguish that my fundamental project or project of identity has too many possibilities, it's overwhelming. 

• There is also a difference between fear and anguish, a fear that I can fall into the abyss and the anguish that I can hurl myself into the abyss, yet the fear that I could fall can stop the anguish 

8. We have gained nothing from psychoanalysis, since, in order to eliminate bad faith, it installs between the unconscious and conscious mind an autonomous consciousness in bad faith.” (94)

• He thinks that the hypotheses of the unconscious doesn't do the job Freud thought that it did, for bad faith one must be somewhat conscious of their own deceiving, if they are being deceived about something and it is in their unconscious and unknown. If the censor is the one know the deceiving the sensor must then be in bad faith 

• How can a censor play this role unless it is somewhat conscious of what is being identified or what is being questioned

• For bad faith, one must be conscious a little of the truth therefore if the person has the truth in the unconscious they cannot be in bad faith since it is truly like the person is being lied to 

• Unconscious for Freud and non-thetic consciousness for Sartre 

9. “In fact, in the end, the goals of sincerity and bad faith are not that different... What is its [sincerity] goal? To admit to what I am, in order to make myself at last coincide with my being, in brief, to make it the case that I am, in the mode of the in-itself, what I am in the mode of ‘not being what I am’” (111)

sincerity 

• Learning of myself through others, listening to what others think I am, when i try to be this i approach my consciousness as a thing

• Sincerity is impossible and undermine itself

• Sincerity that targets itself, in the immanence of the present 

Bad faith

• Compared bad faith to a lie to oneself, how can one be the person lying and the person being lied too

• In bad faith i might have some awareness of the truth and it is not hidden from me but i proceed with the attitude of the lie partially because it works and I can get by this way 

  • The other can see better than the individual the truth

• Bad faiths goal is to make the case that i am what i am in the mode of not being what one is or that i am not what i am in the mode of being what one is 

• Sincerity's goal is to admit to what I am to make myself last coincide with my being. this doesn’t have a specific way of being.

• Sees the end goals of bad faith and sincerity as the same since they both aim to move one from one mode of being into another mode of being 

10. “The existence of desire as a human fact suffices to prove that human-reality is a lack.” (139)

• Defines it as a ‘lack’

• Desire has a physiological base but also ontological, also experience desire in relation to being 

• Desire comes from a lack of being and can never fully be satisfied, one can drink water but the desire of thirst has more than a physiological base. It also has an ontological base which is not satisfied when one is thirsty and they drink water

• The thirst has a desire for transcendence not for itself, it will be a desire in the eyes of the other, but this desire cannot be satisfied if one just drinks water   

• Can live through desire meaningfully but we can not satisfy both the physiological and ontological needs of a desire 

• This way the existence of desire is a cycle which cannot be satisfied 

11. “...the pure event through which human-reality arises in the form of presence to the world is its apprehension of itself as being its own lack. Human-reality grasps itself in its arrival within existence as an incomplete being.” (142)

• Human reality is not something that can exist first, it exists in as a lack and in an immediate synthetic link with its missing item, therefore its existence is that of an incomplete being 

• Human-reality is depended on another being for its own existence and is always tied to the being which created its existence 

• Human-reality will always be dependent on another being and therefore cannot be a complete being 

• Human-reality exists in the world for us and is a kind of being in the world

12. “Desire tends by itself to perpetuate itself: man stands by his desires fiercely.” (157-158)

• Desire comes from a lack of being and can never fully be satisfied, one can drink water but the desire of thirst has more than a physiological base. It also has an ontological base which is not satisfied when one is thirsty and they drink water

• The thirst has a desire for transcendence not for itself, it will be a desire in the eyes of the other, but this desire cannot be satisfied if one just drinks water   

• Is desire something you want to get rid of, what desire want to be a void that is filled 

• It is impossible for itself to coincide with itself because the for-itself that actualizes possibility will make itself be as for-itself, therefore there is constant disappointment when one tries to satisfy their desire which does not complete the pleasure of satisfaction but of self-coincidence 

• Desire become this perpetuating cycle that does not stop, since one cannot satisfy or can only partially satisfy their desires, it only keep perpetuating itself

13. “I am ashamed of what I am. Shame therefore brings about an intimate relation between me and myself: through shame I have discovered an aspect of my being. And yet, although some complex and derivative forms of shame can appear at the level of reflection, shame is not in the first instance a phenomenon of reflection.” (307-308)

• I don't know the other exists but i feel the shame of the other 

• I am ashamed of what i am 

• Through same i have discovered i do or say shameful things which is pre-reflective which is immediate experience of same 

• Direct relation i have to the other though shame 

• My immediate shame, the other is the intermediary between the shameful act and myself 

• The experience of shame with the other is immediate and not reflective 

• The other is in my pre-reflective and non-thetic conscious

• Non-thetic is still conscious but not reflectively aware of itself or knowledge of something 

• Pre-reflective is having a non-thetic awareness of our own consciousness in the world 

• I notice the other, but the other it is a sudden shame that is put on me from the other. It isn't a level of reflection where one feels shame. The shame that one feels is immediate when they feel the other looking at them, since the other reflects a feeling of shame. 

14. “I am ashamed of myself as I appear to the Other.” (308)

• I am ashamed of what i am 

• Direct relation i have to the other though shame 

• Ashamed of myself as I appear to the other 

• My immediate shame, the other is the intermediary between the shameful act and myself 

• The experience of shame with the other is immediate and not reflective 

• My being for the other is something that is mind but which i have no control over 

• The other sees me and put shame on me

• Shame is reflected on to me as i appear to the other 

• I cannot control how i appear the other but shame is still reflected on to me from the other 

• My being for the other is something that is mind but which i have no control over 

• The other passes judgement on me as it would be an object, in this was the other objectifies me. The other merely sees me as an object but i recognize the shame that the other reflects on me

15. “If therefore realism founds its certainty on the spatio-temporal thing’s presence ‘in person’ to my consciousness, it cannot lay claim to the same evidence for the reality of the Other’s soul, since, by its own admission, that soul is not given in person to mine: it is an absence, a meaning; the body points toward it without delivering it up.” (310)

• I can see the body of a person but not experience the soul, become problem for realism 

• Realism for the existence of the other can only be an object of probable knowledge 

• It is only probable that a person has consciousness 

• Realism approach issue of the knowledge of a thing 

• The other has a consciousness is aa a principle is not accessible as something as knowledge 

• In principle the other is not accessible on account of realism 

• The other is treated as an object as knowledge in other works 

• The other is not on the basis of knowledge but is being 

• Being of other isn't something we can know but it is something we can experience