Sartre's Philosophy of Social Existence is a critical interpretation of Jean-Paul Sartre's phenomenology of social existence and the dynamics of group-formation. It seeks to trade the foreshadowing of a theory of individual action in the practical field of social existence in Being and Nothingness and sees a continuity between this work and Sartre's Critique of Rational Dialectic (1960). The movement in Sartre's thought from the abstract freedom of consciousness to concrete freedom and individual praxis is illuminated (...) in relation to his description of a complex social dialectic. It is shown that as Sartre develops an account of social group-formation he admits determinations and necessities that undermine his attempt to preserve the idea of free individual praxis. (shrink)

Jean-Paul Sartre believed that consciousness entails self-consciousness, or, even more strongly, that consciousness is self-consciousness. As Kathleen Wider puts it in her terrific book The Bodily Nature of Consciousness: Sartre and Contemporary Philosophy of Mind, ‘all consciousness is, by its very nature, self-consciousness.’ I share this view with Sartre and have elsewhere argued for it at length. My overall aim in this paper is to examine Sartre's theory of consciousness against the background of the so-called ‘higher-order (...) thought theory of consciousness’ which, in turn, will shed light on the structure of conscious mental states as well as on Sartre's theory of consciousness and reflection. Another goal of this paper is, following Wider, to show how Sartre's views can be understood from a contemporary analytic perspective. Sartre's theory of consciousness is often confusing to the so-called ‘analytic Anglo-American’ tradition, but I attempt to show how this obstacle can be overcome against the backdrop of a specific contemporary theory of consciousness. (shrink)

A novel introduction to Jean-Paul Sartre’s existentialist phenomenology. Draws parallels between Sartre’s work and the work of Wittgenstein Stresses continuities rather than conflict between Sartre and Merleau-Ponty, and between Sartre and post-structuralist/post-modernist thinkers, thus corroborating ‘new Sartre’ readings Exhibits the influence of Gestalt psychology in Sartre’s descriptions of the life-world Forms part of the _Blackwell Great Minds_ series, which outlines the views of the great western thinkers and captures the relevance of these figures to (...) the way we think and live today. (shrink)

A who's who of Sartre scholars contribute to a collection of multidisciplinary perspectives from sociology, religion, and bioethics, on a hitherto neglected area of Sartre's philosophy.

This essay argues for a new conception of bad faith based partly on Harry Frankfurt's famous account of personal autonomy in terms of higher‐order volitions and caring, and based partly on Sartre's insights concerning tacit or pre‐thetic attitudes and “transcendent” freedom. Although Sartre and Frankfurt have rarely been connected, Frankfurt's concepts of volitional “wantonness” and “bullshit” (wantonness about truth) are similar in certain revealing respects to Sartre's account of bad faith. However, Sartre leaves no room for (...) Frankfurt's central point that people can volitionally commit themselves to develop certain motives and reduce others, thereby shaping an authentic identity through volitional “identification” and “alienation” of motives. Frankfurt in turn minimizes the role that a sense of liberty to form and alter higher‐order volitions plays in experiences of autonomy, which Sartre recognizes in the transcendence of the “for‐itself.” When these points are combined, we get a tri‐level theory of intrasubjective volitional stances that explains Sartre's cases better than his own theory can, and also clarifies how sincere or procedurally autonomous self‐relation is possible. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction Background: Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy Sartre's Account of Action Some Wider Background Assessment: Internal Relations Assessment: Human Beings and the Human World References.

ABSTRACT This essay explores the possibility for a phenomenology of Christian vocational calling through conversation with Jean-Paul Sartre’s existential-ontology. By demonstrating how Sartre’s account of nothingness comports with a Rahnerian understanding of God as absolute mystery and how Sartre’s account of bad faith further opens up an understanding of ontological self-identity as a turn away from God, we can establish a phenomenology of Christian vocation as one’s owning each finite situation in terms of its divinely available possibilities (...) rather than simply its given conditions. Divine call thus occurs where one’s possibilities for boundless becoming are freely recognized in any situation and are further apprehended in light of the character of God to become the possibilities for the freedom and calling of others. (shrink)

From the bestselling author of Assholes: A Theory, a book that--in the tradition of Shopclass as Soulcraft, Barbarian Days and Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance--uses the experience and the ethos of surfing to explore key concepts in philosophy. The existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre once declared "the ideal limit of aquatic sports...is waterskiing." The avid surfer and lavishly credentialed academic philosopher Aaron James vigorously disagrees, and in Surfing with Sartre he intends to expound the thinking surfer's view (...) of the matter, in the process elucidating such philosophical categories as freedom, being, phenomenology, morality, epistemology, and even the emerging values of what he terms "leisure capitalism." In developing his unique surfer-philosophical worldview, he draws from his own experience of surfing and from surf culture and lingo, and includes many relevant details from the lives of the philosophers, from Aristotle to Wittgenstein, with whose thought he engages. In the process, he'll speak to readers in search of personal and social meaning in our current anxious moment, by way of doing real, authentic philosophy. (shrink)

This is an admirable anthology of the ten chief writers who, in Dr. Kaufmann’s opinion mark the chief stages or variations in the contemporary challenge to the inauthentic existence of academic philosophy. In fact the only professed existentialist is Sartre, who coined the title to indicate the priority of existence over essence and understood it subjectively and absolutely of human freedom. The other live members of this classification repudiate the association with their verbal founder—the dead never had the opportunity. (...) Sartre, who straddles both literature and philosophy, is given the largest representation—with a story illustrating the absurdity of a prisoner’s choice, a psychological analysis from his technical philosophy on self-deception, complemented by an abridged essay, ‘Portrait of an Antisemite’ and his apologetic lecture, ‘Existentialism is a Humanism’. While Sartre is a virtuoso of keen insight and Cartesian clarity, his exercises in literature and philosophy provoke the criticism that he fails to fulfil either and thus has a lived ambiguity of his own: the intellectual play of abstract ideas in a novel or drama inhibit the development of character situation, while the dramatic interaction of characters may sacrifice the rigorous pursuit of the merely intellectual problem. The present lull in existentialist philosophy may be a concession to this fretful complaint, the French exponents in particular forsaking the technical treatise for the professional theatre. (shrink)

Using the same technique employed in The Tragic Finale, Desan now has written an admirable guide to Sartre's Critique de la Raison Dialectique. Desan begins by tracing Sartre's development from the time of L'Etre et le Néant with careful attention to the heated controversies that appeared in Les Temps Modernes. This provides the context for a lucid and fair explication of the main argument of the Critique. Throughout, Desan has maintained a judicious balance between exposition, explication, and criticism. (...) The study can not replace the reading of the original work, but there is no doubt that it serves as an excellent guide through the labyrinth of Sartre's intricate and turgid dialectic.—R. J. B. (shrink)

Phenomenologists call for the abandoning of all philosophical theorizing in favor of a descriptive study of the "things themselves" as they are given. On its face, such a study of appearances would appear to have little to contribute to ontology, traditionally understood as the science of being and its most fundamental categories. But phenomenologists have not hesitated to draw ontological conclusions from their phenomenological investigations. Phenomenology and its ontological pretensions have come under attack, however, from philosophers of a wide variety (...) of persuasions . ;The project of this dissertation is to re-examine the relationship of phenomenology, conceived as a philosophical method, to ontology. I proceed by undertaking systematic critical examinations of the attempts of thee central figures in the phenomenological tradition to arrive at categorial ontological results upon the basis of phenomenological investigations. At issue are Brentano's descriptive psychological studies of so-called mental phenomena in Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint , Husserl's static transcendental phenomenological study of the structures of pure consciousness in Ideas I, II, and III, and Sartre's phenomenological ontology of consciousness in Being and Nothingness. For each of these cases, I attempt to ascertain the precise way in which the application of phenomenological methods gives rise to specific ontological claims or "results". In none of these cases, I argue, does the thinker in question succeed in producing ontological assertions in a sufficiently phenomenological fashion. All, that is, depart to some extent from the phenomenological ideal of an ontology arrived at in accordance with an unprejudiced examination and description of "the things themselves". In the final chapter I ask whether the particular failures of these thinkers to have formulated ontological claims in a phenomenologically satisfactory manner implies the general failure of all phenomenological approaches to ontology. I argue that while principled reasons can be given why a truly phenomenological ontology must remain an unattainable ideal, it is an ideal that philosophers ought not abandon. (shrink)

Hartmann gives a careful, succinct, clear exposition, and, integral to it, a criticism of the main systematic outlines of Sartre's L'être et le néant. He interprets Sartre as attempting to use a phenomenological base for an "objective" ontology. He suggests that Sartre's highly formal dialectic, unlike its Hegelian model, is external to its "content" of concrete existential insights. The comparisons of the en-soi and pour-soi with Hegel's Sein, Dasein, Fürsichsein, and the more developed Begriff and Geist go (...) far to challenge the adequacy and richness of Sartre's determinations. The author discusses Husserl's subject-oriented epistemology, and refers to the Heideggerian contributions to Sartre's phenomenological base. A first rate job of opening up serious questioning in the area.--J. M. (shrink)

Douglas Harding developed a unique first-person experimental approach for investigating consciousness that is still relatively unknown in academia. In this paper, I present a critical dialogue between Harding, Sartre and Merleau-Ponty on the phenomenology of the body and intersubjectivity. Like Sartre and Merleau-Ponty, Harding observes that from the first-person perspective, I cannot see my own head. He points out that visually speaking nothing gets in the way of others. I am radically open to others and the world. Neither (...) does my somatic experience establish a boundary between me and the world. Rather to experience these sensations as part of a bounded, shaped thing (a body), already involves bringing in the perspectives of others. The reader is guided through a series of Harding’s first-person experiments to test these phenomenological claims for themselves. For Sartre, the other’s subjectivity is known through The Look, which makes me into a mere object for them. Merleau-Ponty criticised Sartre for making intersubjective relations primarily ones of conflict. Rather he held that the intentionality of my body is primordially interconnected with that of others’ bodies. We are already situated in a shared social world. For Harding, like Sartre, my consciousness is a form of nothingness; however, in contrast to Sartre, it does not negate the world, but is absolutely united with it. Confrontation is a delusion that comes from imagining that I am behind a face. Rather in lived personal relationships, I become the other. I conclude by arguing that for Harding all self-awareness is a form of other-awareness, and vice versa. (shrink)

This book examines the conditions which make possible an existentialist social philosophy in the writings of Sartre. At issue, of course, is the question of the legitimacy of Sartre's Marxism. To deal with this question, Flynn focuses on the issue of collective responsibility. Is there, in Sartre's later writings, a social ontology which allows one to assign responsibility to a social ensemble? Can Sartre conceive of collectivities in a way which must be possible for any version (...) of Marxism? (shrink)