Sartre’s Project of Understanding Pure Consciousness: A Reading on His Critique of Husserl’s Ego

Authors : Gülsu Çivril

Pages : 175-199

Doi:10.20981/kaygi.1593103

View : 25 | Download : 16

Publication Date : 2025-03-28

Article Type : Research Paper

Abstract :Jean-Paul Sartre is most famous for his major work Being and Nothingness (1943) which presents his journey from phenomenological ontology to existentialism. Some of the focal concepts of this work are consciousness, intentionality, and being human. Sartre’s interest in these begins years earlier when he studies the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl. Sartre realizes that phenomenology enables us to think of consciousness in a non-substantial and non-reified manner. However, he detects a significant reification of consciousness even in Husserl’s ideas: Transcendental I or the pure Ego. In The Transcendence of the Ego (1936), his first philosophical essay, Sartre claims that the Ego is transcendent, like an object in the world, rather than consciousness itself. In other words, it fails to escape epoché, which parenthesizes all the presuppositions out of the legitimate field of phenomenological investigation. In addition, he finds various issues regarding reflection, which is the condition of self-consciousness. He concludes that reflection serves the constitution of the Ego, rather than the observation of pure consciousness. This work aims to examine why Sartre takes a critical distance from the Ego and the role this criticism plays in phenomenology to become more consistent with itself and at the same time, clear the way for existentialism.
Keywords : Fenomenoloji, Bilinç, Ego, Yönelimsellik, Refleksiyon, Nesneleştirme, Varoluşçuluk