Immanence And Illusion In Sartres Ontology Of Consciousness

This book is a critical re-evaluation of Jean-Paul Sartre’s phenomenological ontology, in which a theory of egological complicity and self-deception informing his later better known theory of bad faith is developed. This novel reinterpretation offers a systematic challenge to orthodox apprehensions of Sartre’s conceputualization of transcendental consciousness and the role that the ego plays within his account of pre-reflective consciousness. Heldt persuasively demonstrates how an adequate comprehension of Sartre’s theories of negation and reflection can reveal the world as it appears to human consciousness as one in which our reality is capable of becoming littered with illusions. As the foundation upon which the rest of Sartre’s philosophical project is built, it is essential that the phenomenological ontology of Sartre’s early writings be interpreted with clarity. This book provides such a reinterpretation. In doing so, a philosophical inquiry emerges which is genuinely contemporary in its aim and scope and which seeks to demonstrate the significance of Sartre’s thought, not only as significant to the history of philosophy, but to ongoing debates in continental philosophy and philosophy of mind.

The following is a study of Jean-Paul Sartre's ontology of conscious awareness. Ontology, for Sartre, consists in the delineation of the constituent elements, structures and dimensions of Being as well as the way in which such constituent features interact within the ekstatic dynamics of the lived experience of the being for whom such ontological features are capable of becoming phenomena of possible awareness. Sartre's methodology, then, is manifold. The ontological project which Sartre undertakes to develop is at once transcendental, phenomenological and dialectical. It is transcendental inasmuch as it is a theory of the way in which phenomena become experientially possible for a being whose primary existential mode of conscious awareness is as an act of immanent self-relation, as pure auto-affection, and is capable of divesting itself of its modality of active self-affective immanence in constituting for itself a particular phenomenon transcendent to itself. This is to say that what Sartre refers to as pure or transcendental consciousness is capable of dissolving its primordial mode of autoaffective immanent self-awareness in the intentional (or, attentional) act whereby a choice is made to privilege a given phenomenon from amongst the otherwise undifferentiated multiplicity of the conscious existent's (auto-)affective conscious awareness in order to become conscious of something which is not itself and from which the act of consciousness differentiates itself as not being, whether this privileged phenomenon is ekstatic or extensive, whether it is chosen from the otherwise undifferentiated virtual multiplicity of this conscious existent's own psychic pastness (or possible future) or from the indifferent multiplicity of worldly actuality. In either case, whether the privileged phenomenon of intentional awareness is egological or material, of the psyche or of the world, the noematic correlate of conscious attention (the explicit or thetic phenomenon of intentional awareness) is transcendent to transcendental consciousness. It is in the investigation of such phenomena that Sartre's ontology manifests itself as phenomenological. However, for Sartre, such awareness is by no means static, and it is through the ekstatic dynamization of the constituent features of conscious awareness that the transcendental and phenomenological methodologies of Sartre's ontology of lived experience ultimately prove to be dialectical. Every moment of conscious awareness must, for Sartre, be both surpassed and preserved. Every moment of awareness, with its transcendent dimensions of virtuality and actuality and the auto-affective immanence upon which they depend, reveal themselves as intimately related, then, to memorial dynamics, dynamics which Sartre did little to explicitly develop but upon which an adequate understanding of his ontology depends and which will ultimately ground any investigation of what we might call an existential epistemology.

The Imaginary marks the first attempt to introduce Husserl's work into the English-speaking world. This new translation rectifies flaws in the 1948 translation and recaptures the essence of Sartre's phenomenology.

The Imaginary marks the first attempt to introduce Husserl's work into the English-speaking world. This new translation rectifies flaws in the 1948 translation and recaptures the essence of Sartre's phenomenology.

Sartre explains the theory of existential psychoanalysis in this treatise on human reality.

The Psychology of the Imagination was originally published in France in 1940 under the title of L'Imaginaire. It was specifically designed as an essay in phenomenology and it constitutes the first attempts to introduce Husserl's work into French culture,and from there to the English speaking world. Published three years before Being and Nothingness , it reveals Sartre's first extended examination of such concepts as nothingness and freedom, both here derived from the consciousness's ability to imagine objects not only as they are but as they are not, and to imagine objects not in existence. According to Sartre, an object can be given to us in three ways: by perceiving it, by having an idea of it, and by imagining it (having an image of it). Although we may try to respond to the image in the same way as we would to the object itself, the fact remains that an image, however vivid, presents its object as not being. It was in The Psychology of Imagination that Sartre first brought together his new enthusiasm for phenomenology with the analysis of the preconditions for human freedom which was to figure so prominently in his later philosophical works.

With the emerging dominance of digital technology, the time is ripe to reconsider the nature of the image. Some say that there is no longer a phenomenal image, only disembodied information (0-1) waiting to be configured. For photography, this implies that a faith in the principle of an "evidential force" – of the impossibility of doubting that the subject was before the lens – is no longer plausible. Technologically speaking, we have arrived at a point where the manipulation of the image is an ever-present possibility, when once it was difficult, if not impossible. What are the key moments in the genealogy of the Western image which might illuminate the present status of the image? And what exactly is the situation to which we have arrived as far as the image is concerned? These are the questions guiding the reflections in this book. In it we move, in Part 1, from a study of the Greek to the Byzantine image, from the Renaissance image and the image in the Enlightenment to the image as it emerges in the Industrial Revolution. Part 2 examines key aspects of the image today, such as the digital and the cinema image, as well as the work of philosophers of the image, including: Roland Barthes, Walter Benjamin, Gilles Deleuze, Jean-Paul Sartre and Bernard Stiegler.

At the end of Being and Nothingness, French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-80) claims that his ethics follow from his ontology and are based on it. Zheng (philosophy, St. Cloud State U.) investigates whether, and to what extent, that is true. After studying in detail the important notions in his early ontology and ethics, including some notorio

Most readers of Sartre focus only on the works written at the peak of his influence as a public intellectual in the 1940s, notably "Being and Nothingness". "Jean-Paul Sartre: Key Concepts" aims to reassess Sartre and to introduce readers to the full breadth of his philosophy. Bringing together leading international scholars, the book examines concepts from across Sartre's career, from his initial views on the "inner life" of conscious experience, to his later conceptions of hope as the binding agent for a common humanity. The book will be invaluable to readers looking for a comprehensive assessment of Sartre's thinking - from his early influences to the development of his key concepts, to his legacy.