Renovation Philosophy

A Study Guide to
The Transcendence of the Ego
by
Jean-Paul Sartre

Throughout The Transcendence of the Ego Sartre is very consciousness of responding to a particular philosophical tradition. The three most significant thinkers in this particular tradition are René Descartes, Immanuel Kant, and Edmund Husserl.

René Descartes (1596-1650) - The first modern (as opposed to ancient or mediaeval) western philosopher. Descartes wanted to know what, if anything, could be known without any doubt at all. The maxim which most famously expressed his only indubitable piece of knowledge was 'cogito ergo sum' (Latin for 'I think therefore I am'). An important element of Descartes' philosophy is that the 'I think' who is conscious of existing [the cogito] is the owner and manager of consciousness. This is basically the traditional religious thesis of the conscious soul put into secular philosophical form. Sartre specifically disputes this thesis. Descartes' cogito turns up, in modified form, as the 'I Think' of Kant.

Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) - The philosopher with whom Sartre begins by quoting (p.2). Kant crucially argued that consciousness had to bring certain 'transcendental' concepts to experience in order for experience to be meaningful. This being the case, not all of our ideas are learned from experience because some have to exist prior to experience just for it to count as experience. The necessity of transcendental concepts implies the existence of a transcendental consciousness to use them. For Kant, however, this 'transcendental I' is not material [soulish] but simply a set of logical abilities.

*Transcendental - Prior to and outside of sensory input (not to be confused with 'transcendent' qv). For Kant the word particularly indicated the pre-existing ideas and categories of thought that are necessary for experience to be meaningful. The concept and relationship of 'same as' and 'different from', for example, is not an object we detect with our senses but part of a rule-governed framework that we bring to sensory detection as part of making it meaningful. We cannot bring this framework to sensory detection unless it exists prior to, and independently of, what our senses detect. This being the case, the consciousness which brings these concepts and categories to experience must itself by transcendental in some way. Kant's theory of a transcendental I in consciousness is the first subject of Sartre's analysis in this book.

Edmund Husserl (1859-1938) - The pioneer of Phenomenology - a method by which we focus on what appears for consciousness without worrying about what it 'really' is. This method is meant to reveal to us the 'essence' of phenomena - i.e., the features that actually define the object as what it is. Husserl argued that this method shows (a) that consciousness has to have objects outside of itself to be conscious of, (b) that, contrary to idealism, the objects intended ['pointed at'] by consciousness really are outside of consciousness (transcendent), and (c) an ego [self] inhabits consciousness. Although initially inspired by Husserl, Sartre takes issue with his postulation of a transcendental ego inhabiting consciousness.

*Phenomenology - A scientific method in which we put aside ['bracket'] all existing theory - and especially our theoretical assumptions about reality - in order to systematically describe what appears to consciousness simply and exactly as it appears to consciousness.

*Transcendent - 'Being other than'. Consciousness is transcendent in the sense of not being the objects of which it is aware. Phenomena [the objects of which consciousness is conscious] are transcendent in being other than, and outside of, the consciousness which is aware of them. The contrary is immanent. An important feature of the transcendence of phenomena is that their total being  is more than appears to any single conscious experience; you experience them only an aspect or aspects at a time - i.e., their being transcends [is not and is more than] what appears. Against tradition, Descartes and Kant, Sartre will argue that your ego is transcendent in this sense (cf; p.ix). Transcendence is not to be confused with transcendental - which has to do with existing prior to, and/or independently of, experience. A transcendent ego, for example, could be either transcendental [existing prior to experience] or synthetic [constructed out of experience - which is what Sartre argues].

Sartre agrees with these three thinkers in holding that all consciousness is self-conscious. Where he dissents from all three is in his thesis that, (a) self-conscious is prior to and not the same as ego-consciousness, and (b) far from being a kind of manager of consciousness who exists within consciousness, the ego [self] is actually a product of consciousness that appears within the body but outside of consciousness (i.e., the ego is transcendent).

p.1 - What is at stake in TE is the relation between consciousness, self-consciousness, and the ego. The starting place of this project is the long-standing and almost universal human assumption that the essence of personhood is a conscious self of some kind. This assumption derives from ancient religious beliefs in which the ego [self] is pictured as a kind of ghostly inner presence that is (a) conscious, (b) the real [essential] 'me', and (c) something extra to the body which could, in theory at least, leave the body, or inhabit another body, without thereby changing its essential nature. Throughout TE we will encounter several accounts of the ego. These accounts broadly agree on what the ego does but not on what it is. What the ego crucially does is organise our disparate experiences into one 'mine' and 'hold us together' as who we are throughout our lives. On most accounts it is said or assumed that the ego is primary and central to our being as persons; it is our soul or the essence of who we are; the character and consciousness that we are and try to defend. In these theses the ego comes first and is conscious; it is the self of which we are conscious in self-consciousness. Sartre's thesis, however, is that consciousness is primary; we are not a self who possesses a consciousness but a self-conscious consciousness that 'spins' an ego/self around it. This self [the ego] is created by consciousness out of experiences and located outside of consciousness - which is precisely why we can be conscious of it. Being outside of consciousness, as an object of consciousness, is what Sartre calls being 'transcendent.'

* Consciousness - An awareness of objects that goes beyond sentience in being aware of itself as being aware of objects. The important features of conscious, according to Sartre, are that it is:
    ∙ An activity rather than a thing or state. We do not 'possess a consciousness', and consciousness is not
       some thing or essence which is aware of a world. Consciousness simply is a self-conscious awareness of
       objects outside of itself.
    ∙ Consciousness-of external [transcendent] objects of attention. Because consciousness is the activity
       of being aware, there is no consciousness without at least some sort of object to be conscious of.
    ∙ Not only prior to and other than the ego but self-conscious prior to being ego-conscious.

* Object - A focus of attention that is 'there' for whichever consciousness is conscious of it. There is always a 'gap' of some kind between consciousness and the object of which it is ware - even when that object is itself. Thus Sartre always assumes that whatever is an object for consciousness is necessarily transcendent [not the consciousness it is an object for]. The ego is external [transcendent] in this sense.

* Intentionality - The feature of consciousness whereby it is always and necessarily consciousness of objects of attention which, just by being objects for consciousness, are external to it [transcendent]. We cannot just be conscious, we must be conscious of something. This is the point missed by traditional theories of consciousness; we do not, and cannot, start with some kind of 'pure' consciousness that could somehow exist without anything to be conscious of. Consciousness is an activity, and it simply cannot be consciousness without something to be conscious of (i.e., it cannot be what it is without doing what it does). In Heidegger's terms, its existence [what it does] precedes and defines its essence [what it is].

* Erlebnisse - Our life experiences considered as ours. The reference on this page is to the traditional theory that some sort of a 'me' has to exist prior to erlebnisse - and therefore prior to consciousness of erlebnisse - in order to make my experiences 'mine'. It is against this theory that Sartre will argue that, in fact, consciousness of experiences [erlebnisse] comes first and that self-conscious consciousness constructs an ego out of erlebnisse.

* Ego - Who you are as a personal subject of experience and author of action; the integrity of the me who feels [the 'psyche'] and the I who acts. The ego is what we commonly identify as 'my self' and identify as the 'essence' of who and what we are; called the 'soul' in many traditional religions. Contrary to common belief, Sartre will argue that (a) consciousness is already self-conscious prior to being conscious of the ego, and (b) the ego is a transcendent product of consciousness already being self-consciousness. In Sartre's thesis, the ego is constituted by consciousness out of its experiences [erlebnisse]

Sartre inherited two philosophical variants of the traditional belief that some kind of self [an I or ego] inhabits consciousness. These variants, represented by Descartes and Kant respectively, differ only in their concept of the ego or I in question. Descartes, the older of the two, assumes that the self is the 'thinking substance' [material ego] of traditional religious belief. Kant argues that it is an 'I' which has no material substance but is a set of logical assumptions and abilities (i.e., a formal ego). Against these pictures of the ego as an inhabitant of consciousness, Sartre announces his intent to show that the ego is actually outside of consciousness as something that it spontaneously creates out of its experiences.

p.1 - I should like to show that the ego is neither formally nor materially in consciousness; it is outside, in the world (i.e., transcendent). It is a being of the world, like the ego of another person.

* Material ego - The ego [self] as 'there' in some thing-like way. The notion of a material ego is particularly associated with religion and folk psychology. The traditional soul of religious belief is a material ego even though the material it is supposedly made of is 'spiritual' rather than natural.

* Formal ego - Having an ego-like form but without being anything more than a set of logical abilities [functions] that are necessary for a consciousness to experience itself as the same 'I' over many experiences. The concept of a formal ego is particularly associated with Immanuel Kant. Sartre will examine the Kantian notion of consciousness embodying a formal 'I' in Section A of Part One.

* World - In this context, everything outside of consciousness considered as a meaningful integrity that is the context and environment of human personhood. From the point of view of consciousness, the self [ego] is part of the world - as shown by the fact that conscious can intend it just like it intends other objects in the world.

Sartre identifies two aspects of the ego - the I and the me. These aspects, although distinct, are not components of the ego, let alone separate 'sub-selves', but simply the ego considered in different aspects.

* I - The basic identity of ourselves with our actions as in "I think" or "I slept".

* Me - The identity of ourselves with our psycho-physical states and qualities (being happy, warm, prone to anger, etc.).

The me is more psychological, and less philosophical, than the I. It is 'there', as a specific personality with specific psychological properties, in a way that the I, as a unity of activities, cannot be. This is because no properties attach to the I except the relevant actions. The I is a 'contraction' of the more-richly defined me to a 'point of reference'. Because actions aren't thingish, the I is not tangibly 'there' in the way of the me. The I, however, is generally prior to the me. So if someone asks you where you were at a certain time, and you reply "I was doing such-and-such" this bare identity of yourself as doing something is more immediate than the richer definition of yourself as being contented or angry or whatever.

A key feature of our ego is that it integrates a great many, different and time-separated, activities, experiences and psychological states, into one set ['mine']. This unity is of philosophical interest because (a) our experiences are not innately connected, and (b) our bodies and personalities change so much over time. So what, for example, connects your experience of a dream last night with your experience of reading this Study Guide now? And what makes you the same person now that you were when you were a toddler with a wholly different body, character, and take on the world?
    Most folk continue to take it for granted that the necessary unifying mechanism is some kind of self [ego] who 'inhabits' consciousness and collects its experiences in memory. Sartre will now examine, and reject, three versions of this common assumption. The first (A, represented by Kant), pictures consciousness as embodying the I as a set of abilities and concepts [the formal I] . The second (B, represented by Descartes), pictures the I embodied by consciousness as materially 'there' [the cogito]. The third (C, represented by psychology), pictures consciousness as embodying a psychological me.

The theory of a formal [non-thingish] I inhabiting consciousness derives from Immanuel Kant. Formal, in this sense, indicating that the I performs the logical functions of a material self [soul] without, in fact, having any material presence (the I is not a material entity such as the soul is said to be). Descartes had pictured the I as a material presence - a soulish substance which thinks. Kant, however, argued that the I in 'I Think' is a logical function but isn't a material presence. The I, in other words, has a form but no substance.

* the I Think - Kant's term for the logical mechanism which (a) allows perception to be meaningful and (b) integrates consciousness. Traditionally, and for Descartes, the I which thinks is a kind of thing - a transcendental soul or mind. For Kant is it an ability or function, built-in to consciousness, which is transcendental without itself being thingish; i.e., it has the same function as a traditional soul but without being thingish in the traditional way.

For both Descartes and Kant, the I is aware of its own existence. And, while Sartre agrees that the I is present in all our representations of the world to ourselves, he disagrees with the assumption that the I is built-in to consciousness - arguing instead that it is built by consciousness.

p.2 - We [Sartre] have to agree with Kant that it must be possible for the I Think to accompany all our representations...(because)...I should always be able to consider my perception or thought as mine.

* Representations - How we picture our selves and the world to ourselves.

The important point for Kant is that we represent the world to ourselves only by means of concepts, rules, and categories of understanding, that we bring to our experiences. It is the logical nature of the I who brings these rules, etc., to experience, that he wished to deduce from the job it has to do.

p.3 - The I is often talked about in a thingish way - almost as if it was a kind of 'little me' lurking inside your body as the 'driver' or 'manager' of your world-aware and self-aware consciousness. But, although Kant himself believed in an immortal human soul, he argued that the I who thinks is actually a complex set of functions that enable us to integrate a great many thoughts, experiences, and so on, into the unified and meaningful experience that we call 'my life'.

* Empirical consciousness (Kant) - Our everyday consciousness of objects in the world. According to Kant, empirical consciousness needs a transcendental I to (a) embody the concepts and categories of thought which must pre-exist our sense impressions of the world to make them meaningful, and (b) tie all our representations of objects in the world together as ours.

* Transcendental consciousness (Kant) - 'the set of conditions which are necessary for the existence of empirical consciousness'. Foremost of these conditions are the logical activities that Kant called 'synthesis' - most notably, the 'putting together' of spatial and temporal relationships, the integration of sensory inputs into objects, and the recognition of objects as fitting a concept. Thus, to perceive a multitude of sensory inputs as a tree, for example, you must be able to put together [synthesise] those inputs as being of an object which instantiates the concept of a tree in space and time. This is a rule-governed process which may or may not require a material ego but which does require an I of some kind.

To be aware that you are perceiving a tree, you must be aware of the tree perceived, as a tree, and the I perceiving it as a tree. This I, moreover, needs to unify your experiences as yours both over time [transversal or diachronic unity] and at a time [synchronic unity].

* Synchronic unity - That which integrates multiple simultaneous experiences into a single set ['mine']. At any given moment, for example, I can be conscious of many thoughts, intentions, actions and sensory inputs. The union of all these experiences as 'mine' is synchronic.

* Transversal [temporal] unity (more commonly called 'diachronic' unity) - That which makes a self the same self over time [the 'principle of unity within duration']. We change, both physically and psychologically, a great deal over our lifetimes. The unity of who we are today with who we have been throughout our various yesterdays is transversal (p.7).

The integration of all our experiences into one I over time can be thought about in terms of what unites our lives or, more simply, how we do it. The traditional approach asks what it is that integrates us as a self and answers that there is an 'inner self' inhabiting consciousness who integrates, sorts, interprets, and generally manages, the flow of information bought to it by consciousness. This is the reification of the conditions of experience as a thingish self. Kant, however, took the issue as asking only how we integrate ourselves. He argued that all that is needed is for consciousness to satisfy a set of formal [logically necessary] conditions - and that these conditions were satisfied just so long as we were able to represent [picture] an I to ourselves as a kind of logical 'hook' onto which we can 'hang' all the experiences we want to categorise as 'mine'. The only question, in this case, is whether or not this logical I is generated by the experiential unity of our representation or whether, conversely, it is a pre-experiential I which unites them.

One of the features which distinguishes consciousness from sentience is that conscious beings sense the world as meaningful. What interested Kant about this was the conditions that consciousness must meet in order to make sentience meaningful. His method of finding out these conditions was to start with what consciousness does and logically deduce from that the features and/or abilities it must have in order to do what it does. In keeping with this project he argued that it must be possible for the 'I Think' to accompany all of our representations. This possibility is de jure ['according to law'] because the 'must' is logical rather than empirical. It does not follow from a logical requirement that an 'I think' actually does accompany all of our representations in fact [de facto]. A de facto confirmation of Kant's theory requires a scientific examination of actual states of affairs in the world. Husserl undertook just such an examination and verified that in fact an 'I think' does accompany all of our representations. So the only question left is whether of not the 'I think' is brought to experience, as Kant believed, or derived from it.

p.3 - is the I which we encounter in our consciousness made possible by the synthetic unity of our representations, or is it the I that in fact unifies the representations among themselves?

* Synthetic - Put together from components (i.e., material parts, information, experiences, or, in this case, representations. The alternative to analytic - in which we start with a whole and then break it down into components.

The issue in this context is whether we start with experiences [erlebnisse] which we then put together as 'mine' or whether, to the contrary, we start with an I which unifies our experiences by analysing them as ours up front. Kant argued for the latter - the 'I/mine' is one of the categories of understanding that we bring to experience in order to make sense of it.

p.4 - Kant's philosophy was 'critical'; that is, based wholly on logical analysis. Critical philosophy cannot settle issues of fact - the analysis of what the world would have to be like for certain superstitions to be true, for example, does not tell us whether or not the world is like that. To settle questions of fact we need a scientific description and, as far as Sartre is concerned, the only reliable scientific description of consciousness would be one using Husserl's Phenomenological method. This method involves putting aside all of our theories and assumptions about 'real reality' in order to simply describe what is 'there' for consciousness as it is appears to consciousness. Such a method not only reveals the presence of things as objects of consciousness but also the consciousness to which things are present - thereby seeming to confirm that, de facto, Kant's de jure I does accompany all of our representations.

* Intuition - Direct apprehension; the kind of pre-theoretical knowledge of things and events in the world that we gain simply from confronting them as 'there'.

What Husserl claimed to intuit, however, was no longer Kant's formal I but something altogether more thingish.

p.4 - Husserl takes up Kant's transcendental consciousness and grasps it by means of the epoché. But this consciousness is no longer a set of logical conditions but an absolute fact.

* Epoché [εποχή] - The act of putting aside ['bracketing'] our normal realism in order to simply focus on describing what is there to our consciousness. This 'bracketing' is central to the phenomenological method and often shows up facts which have hitherto been overlooked or misconceived due to the preconceptions which we normally bring to our encounters with the world.

* Reduction - A device, employed in phenomenology, whereby we bracket [put aside] all explanatory theory in order to reduce our narrative to a purely non-interpretive description of the objects of consciousness as they appear to consciousness. Phenomenological reduction [the putting aside of explanatory theory] accompanies epoché [the bracketing of assumptions about reality].

Husserl held that if we put aside all of our normal prejudices, and simply focus on what is there for consciousness, then we encounter [intuit] the 'essence' [essential nature] of things that is normally obscured by prejudice and cosmetic detail. In the case of human consciousness, Husserl claims that we encounter an actual I lurking behind empirical consciousness. This I does indeed embody the logical functions that Kant had argued are necessary for empirical consciousness to work as it does, but has reverted to being thingish. The ego, in this case, is not bracketed as part of the phenomenological reduction.
    Sartre agrees with Husserl that the I revealed by phenomenology is real. He also agrees that it transcendent in the sense of being something outside of consciousness that we can contemplate in the same way that we contemplate all the other objects of consciousness. But he rejects the identity of the I who thinks with a transcendental consciousness. He argues instead that the 'I think' is actually part of the ego outside of consciousness - an ego about which we nourish assumptions which, like all our other assumptions, should be bracketed as part of the phenomenological reduction.

p.4 - I am convinced...that our psychical and psycho-physical me is a transcendent object which must come under the scope of the epoché.

The me is an object with properties' - not just an I who acts but a specific material actor in the world (cf; point '2' on p.5). The two main sets of these properties are the psychical and the psycho-physical.

* Psychical - Having to do with psychological activities such as thinking, feeling, imagining, musing, doubting, remembering and so on. The word has nothing to do with any supposed extra-normal abilities.

* Psycho-physical - A phrase invoking the role played by the body and its processes in synthesising a me. For consciousness, the body is the only vehicle of experiences in the world. In Part II, Sartre pictures the psycho-physical ego as 'enriching' the psychical ego by means of its endless day-by-day experiences.

Both Kant and Husserl argued that something more than the me - something in consciousness - is needed to integrate all of our disparate activities and experiences into one 'mine'. Sartre disagrees. Phenomenology reveals only consciousness and its objects. The psychological me is, like the abstract I, one of the objects of which we are conscious. Assumptions about its existence should, therefore, be 'put aside' as part of the phenomenological epoché.

Sartre now questions the need to introduce any sort of me-like qualities into ordinary [empirical] consciousness.

Ibid - But the question I would like to raise is...is this psychical and psycho-physical me not sufficient? Do we need to add it to a transcendental I, as a structure of absolute consciousness?

p.5 - His answer to this question is going to be 'No'; a consciousness and an ego is enough to do the job. And the list of four points on this page summarises what is, in fact, Sartre's own thesis as sketched in the Conclusion to TE and fully spelled out as a mature theory in BN.

* Transcendental field (transcendental sphere) - The realm of real or supposed transcendental objects and functions considered as a field of study. In traditional dualism the transcendental field of study is dominated by extra-natural entities and forces such as spirits, angles, and a soul-like I within consciousness. In Sartre's dualism, the field is replaced by consciousness conceived of as an unthinking activity that is devoid of any 'metaphysical' dimensions whatsoever. The ego is outside of this field in the realm [world] of objects. This means that consciousness can be fully explored and explained without reference to the ego just as the psyche [the emotional aspects of the ego] can be explored, by psychology, without confusing the ego with consciousness.

Sartre's objection to Husserl is that, having initially got rid of the traditional and problematic 'little me' inside of consciousness, he later smuggled it back in under the guise of a transcendental I in contradiction of what his own method had shown to be the case.

p.5 - Having considered that the Me was a synthetic and transcendental production of consciousness...he [Husserl] reverted...to the classical thesis of a transcendental I...

p.6 - What seems to motivated this move by Husserl is the need for a mechanism to explain how we integrate all our various experiences into the unique unity which we each identify as 'myself' even though these experiences are scattered over time. The traditional answer is that there is some sort of unique 'inner me' - a soul or ego - that (a) remains fundamentally the same throughout our lives and (b) exercises ownership of all our experiences.

p.6/hi - It is ordinarily thought that the existence of a transcendental I may by justified by the need for consciousness to have unity and individuality. It is because all my perceptions and all my thoughts are linked to this permanent centre that my consciousness is unified. It is because I can say my consciousness, and Peter and Paul can also speak of their consciousness, that these consciousnesses distinguish themselves from each other. The I is the producer of inwardness.

Sartre responds to this by arguing that phenomenology doesn't need to postulate this kind of I within consciousness because it recognises consciousness as an intentional ['pointing'] activity. If consciousness is intentional then it seems logical that the unity of consciousness arises from the fact that it 'points at' everything and isn't everything it points at (i.e., consciousness is integrated with itself by continually not being all those things that it intends). So say, for example, that I take a week's break from working on this Study Guide. What makes the pre-break I the same as the post-break I is my relationship with the Study Guide which remains 'there' for me throughout my different experiences of it at different times.

Ibid/lo - The object is transcendent to the consciousnesses (over time) that grasp it, and it is within the object that their unity is to be found.

pp.7-9 - If the world was dependent on my whim to be what it is, then I would need some kind of inner unity of consciousness to hold myself together in a world without stable points of attachment. But phenomenology shows that the world is not like that; if we put aside all our theorising and 'get real' then we cannot help noticing that the world we intend is 'there' for all of us in a stubbornly consistent way. Moreover, our engagement with this stability - a world that doesn't shape-shift with each perception - gives us all the transversal unity we need.

p.7 - [thus] the phenomenological conception of consciousness [as intentional] renders the unifying and individualising role of the I completely useless....the transcendental I has no reason to exist.

Sartre further objects that the idea of a transcendental I in consciousness actually gets in the way of our understanding of ourselves. Phenomenology shows clear differences between consciousness and the objects it is conscious of. Postulating an object [the ego] within consciousness simply, and unnecessarily, messes up all the insights into our being that we gain from noticing these differences.

p.8 - Phenomenology reveals (a) consciousness and (b) the objects intended by consciousness. Consciousness is not the objects of which it is conscious of because, just by being objects for consciousness, objects are outside of the consciousness that intends them (p.8/hi). The ego is obviously one of the objects outside of consciousness - we couldn't be conscious of it otherwise - so ego-consciousness cannot be the kind of inner-awareness that consciousness has of its own existence. One of the differences, between ego-consciousness and consciousness-consciousness, is that the first is relative while the second is not - i.e., the self-consciousness of consciousness is absolute.

* Absolute - Not relative to anything outside of itself. When consciousness is conscious of a table, for example, then its being is relative to that table. The relation of consciousness to the ego is like this - we are aware of ourselves as an object of attention. But the relation of consciousness to itself involves no external point-of-view - the relation is entirely internal and therefore absolute [non-relative].

The objects of consciousness are 'opaque' because we get to experience them only one aspect at a time whereas their reality [being] is fully manifest only as an uncountable number of aspects over their entire lifetime.

* Lucid/Opaque - The objects of consciousness are opaque in that their being, which is variously manifest aspect-by-aspect only over an entire lifetime of change, is never clear to us during any given perception of the object - we perceive only what appears now, not what has been and will be there to appear in all the moments of the object's existence. Consciousness, however, is lucid in that it doesn't change; consciousness is always and only a matter of being aware both of a world and of its own awareness of that world.

Our ego is demonstrably opaque and thereby obviously thingish. Not only is who we are is 'dispersed' over our entire lives, but we seldom know ourselves fully even as a present-tense me (that is why we can keep on finding out new, and sometimes startling, facts about ourselves). Consciousness, however, is not opaque - it is lucid - because it is not a thing but simply the same activity all the time. When I was a boy growing up in the country, for instance, my senses were much sharper than they are now, but my consciousness of my changed sense experiences is itself unchanged. If we incorporate an I into consciousness then we cloud the lucidity of consciousness with the opacity of thingish selfhood - a cloudiness which seriously, and unnecessarily, confuses our understanding of consciousness.

Sartre now introduces his positive thesis about the self-awareness of consciousness. The distinction here is between:
    * Unreflective consciousness; that it, self-conscious consciousness of the world,
    * Reflective consciousness; that is, when consciousness takes its own being as an object, and
    * Ego-consciousness; that is, consciousness of the ego as a set of psychological qualities, states and activities.
What marks the passage from unreflective consciousness to reflective consciousness is reflection.

* Reflection - The action in which consciousness 'turns inward' in specific consciousness of itself.

In the normal course of events consciousness is not focussed inwardly on itself but outwardly on objects and events in the world. Consciousness in this mode is self-conscious unreflectively.

* Unreflective consciousness - The self-consciousness of consciousness in its normal, everyday, mode of being focussed on [absorbed in] objects of attention in the world.

Sartre argues that all consciousness is self-conscious all the time but that self-consciousness need not involve specifically being conscious of being a particular consciousness. The important feature of unreflective self-consciousness is that it includes no I or me. So say, for example, that you are absorbed in reading a book. In this case your self-conscious consciousness is not focussed on the 'I am reading' but of what is going on in the book. There is an I reading the book but this I doesn't appear to consciousness as an object in its own right until you reflect on what you are doing. Reflection doesn't create the reading I but reveals it. So here you are, absorbed in your book, and someone interrupts you to ask what you are doing. In such a case you can immediately say "I'm reading this book". This allows the unreflective I appear as the reflective I. The fact that this I can appear instantly in such circumstances, without needing any intellectual synthesis, shows that it was there is the reading, unreflectively, and needs only a switch of focus to appear.

* Positional - Derived from the word 'posit' [affirm]. When consciousness intends an object outside of itself, it affirms the object as 'there' - i.e., it takes a positing [positional] attitude towards the object. This is why, in our dreams, consciousness treats dream objects as real in exactly that same way it does material objects when we are awake.

The point here is that unreflective self-consciousness is not positing itself as an object of attention.

p.8 - My question is this: is the any room for an I in unreflective consciousness. The reply is clear: of course not. This I, after all, is neither the object...nor is it an I of consciousness, since it is something for consciousness

If you are absorbed in an activity then your I plays no role in that; there is only the activity that has your attention and your consciousness of the demands of that activity. Indeed, introducing self-consciousness into that activity actually interferes with your consciousness. So if you are enjoying a social occasion, for example, and you suddenly become aware of that enjoyment, your enjoyment of the occasion is spoilt by that awareness. The simple and unreflective awareness of events, that we have before introducing an I into that awareness, is what Sartre calls 'spontaneous'.

* Spontaneous - Not backed by thought or rational process; having no agenda. Consciousness is spontaneous because there is no calculation or policy involved; it is simply aware of what is before it without any forethought, prompting or planning.

If we introduce reflective [thought-based] activity into consciousness then we not only destroy the 'highly productive definition' that phenomenology originally gave us, we are also forced to abandon the phenomenological insight that consciousness is a non-substantial [un-thingish] absolute.

p.8 - consciousness is an absolute quite simply because it is consciousness of itself. It this remains a 'phenomenon' [an object for consciousness] in the highly particular sense in which 'to be' and 'to appear' are one and the same.

In the normal course of events, phenomena manifest only an aspect of their being in any given appearance. This aspect is not their whole being because there being is manifest only as countless aspects over their whole lifespan. There is therefore a fairly sharp distinction between the appearance of a phenomenon, at a time, and its being which is spread over time. Consciousness is a phenomenon because it can be an object to itself. This intending itself is, as we have seen, absolute [non-relative] by being wholly internal. But, because consciousness is unchanging, its appearance and its being are 'one and the same' - there is no thing-like opacity to consciousness, it is simply and wholly the same activity for as long as it exists.
    This is why Sartre holds it to be so important not to confuse consciousness with selfhood. Our ego [self] is opaque, thingish, and outside of consciousness. Consciousness is lucid, an activity [consciousness of objects], and wholly 'in itself'. Confusing the two only messes up the insights into consciousness which phenomenology has enabled.

p.9 - [in the later Husserl] consciousness has...lost that character that made it into the absolute existent by virtue of the fact that it did not exist. It is now heavy and ponderable.

When consciousness is conscious of external phenomena, its point-of-view is relative to a phenomenon that is opaque ['heavy and ponderable']. The awareness that consciousness has of itself is absolute [non-relative] because, from the point of view of consciousness, its own being is not an external relatum. Its being, moreover, is all lightness and lucidity because it is an activity unclouded by either thought or thingness. Introducing an I into consciousness, as Husserl did, weighs down the lucidity of consciousness with all the baggage of selfhood unnecessarily dragged in from outside of consciousness.

Kant's 'I Think' is the logical structure which Husserl argued is 'there' as the cogito - the thinking self that tradition has is in consciousness but which Sartre argues is there only for consciousness in the self-consciousness which precedes ego-consciousness.

* Cogito - The self of which consciousness is aware in self-consciousness. In Sartre's thesis, the cogito is consciousness as it appears to itself in reflective self-consciousness.

Sartre's use of the term 'cogito' derives from Descartes' maxim cogito ergo sum ['I think therefore I am'] in which consciousness ( the 'I am') is equated with the thinking self (the 'I think') and the thinking self is pretty much the traditional soul derived from a religious context and redefined for a philosophical context. For Descartes, the cogito is a thinking substance - a transcendental material ego in which 'thinking' includes feeling, willing, remembering and so on - but is also, like the traditional soul, specifically self-aware and basically independent of the body within which it is imprisoned. This means that, for Descartes, self-consciousness is ego-consciousness. Against this, Sartre argues that consciousness is self-conscious before it gets to ego-consciousness. His cogito is, therefore, different from Descartes'. Indeed, if Sartre is right, the Cartesian cogito doesn't actually exist but is merely a confused theoretical hybrid of consciousness and ego

p.9 - Sartre agrees that the cogito is the I which thinks, it is personal, and it is revealed whenever we reflect on our consciousness of the world. But he wants to argue that the cogito, revealed in reflection, is not the ego.

p.10 - There is no doubt that an I [the cogito] is revealed when we reflect on our own existence. But this not our normal mode of consciousness. Consciousness is normally unreflectively absorbed in being conscious of the world. The trouble is that whenever we try to think about our own consciousness we disengage from our normal focus to 'look inwards' in a way that makes an I appear to consciousness. This makes it easy for us to overlook the fact that our normal self-consciousness is precisely not the kind of reflective I-consciousness that we encounter when we reflect on our experiences. And this, indeed, is exactly the mistake that Descartes made in his Meditations.

The point here is that an I appears whenever we reflect on consciousness but consciousness itself is not an I. Descartes and Husserl, however, conflated the I which appears in reflection with the consciousness that is conscious of it in reflection.

p.10 - the consciousness which says 'I think' is precisely not that consciousness that thinks. Or rather, it is not its own thought that it posits by this thetic act.

* Thetic - The kind of intellectual awareness that involves having a thesis [a set of beliefs] about the object of which we are aware. Sartre argues that our everyday self-consciousness is not thetic - it involves no thesis about an I or a me. This kind of unreflective self-consciousness becomes thetic only when we turn aside from our everyday engagements with the world to reflect on [think about] our conscious experiences. The absence of thesis-laden thought is called 'athetic' on p.12/hi.

What we normally call 'self-consciousness' is actually ego-consciousness - we take the integrity of our own experiences, thoughts, feelings, perceptions, and so on, as an object about which we have various beliefs. This object [our ego] is opaque in the way of all objects. Ego-consciousness involves having various self-beliefs. Consciousness, however, cannot be self-conscious in this way because it is not a self. Nevertheless, consciousness is a witness to its own existence. The trouble with admitting this is that we seem to thereby split consciousness in two: there is our ordinary consciousness of the world and 'behind' that is another consciousness that witnesses the first consciousness being conscious of the world. But this cannot be right because if the witnessing consciousness is conscious, and all consciousness is self-conscious, then we imply a third consciousness to witness the witness - and so on and on (this is the infinite regress of p.11/hi). So here we come up against a feature of consciousness which will become the cornerstone of Sartre's philosophy - because consciousness witnesses its own existence, and a witness 'stands apart' from what it witnesses, consciousness never fully coincides with itself. After all, to be conscious of being a consciousness your consciousness must be conscious of itself as an object of attention; there is a very real sense in which the consciousness is 'standing apart' from its object [itself] that it is conscious of. This means that there is a kind of attitudinal 'split' within consciousness between itself as the consciousness reflected in reflection and itself as the consciousness doing the reflecting. The witness and object it witnesses are apart from each other even though they are the same consciousness, so there is a sense in which your consciousness is both itself and not itself at the same time. This split is the second-order [reflective] consciousness that underwrites the third-order consciousness in which we are actually ego-conscious (p.11/hi). But there is no regress of consciousnesses witnessing each other because the 'witness' and its object are one-and-the-same consciousness.

* Reflecting consciousness - Consciousness in the mode of being aware of itself when reflecting on itself in self-consciousness.

* Reflected consciousness - Consciousness in the mode of being the 'itself' that it is aware of when reflecting on itself in self-consciousness.

Imagine the situation in which you switch from being unreflectively engaged in some activity to being conscious of the you who is so engaged (this is not ego-consciousness, in which you are aware of your own emotional make up, but simply the kind of reflexive self-consciousness in which you are conscious of being in the world as a consciousness). This act of reflection reveals the I who has been engaged in the activity. You are now conscious of this I as an object of consciousness. In this case it is almost as if there are two consciousnesses: the one you are conscious of and the one that is conscious of it. The truth, however, is that there are not two consciousnesses - actor and witness - but only one consciousness being conscious of itself. This is why neither of these [actor and witness] can exist without the other (p.10/mid). The 'split' is entirely internal; actor and witness are like two roles that are played simultaneously by the same actor. As Sartre puts it, there is one consciousness in two modes: the I you are conscious of is your consciousness in the reflected mode while your consciousness of this reflection is consciousness in the reflecting mode.

p.11 - Sartre admits that reflection alters our consciousness of objects and that, on the basis of this, some folk might argue that, far from revealing the I that is there unreflectively, reflection actually brings it into existence.

p.11 - an unreflected thought undergoes a radical modification when it becomes reflected. But does this modification have to be limited to a loss of naivete? Might not the essential aspect of the change be the fact that the I appears?

To answer this question, Sartre proposes that we think about an experience, in which we can remember being absorbed in an activity, and notice how the I which was absent from that unreflective engagement instantly appears in reflection (p.11/mid-12/hi). Such an experiment undoubtedly confirm his thesis. If I reflect on any activity in which I was unselfconsciously absorbed, my I appears in that memory even though I wasn't I-conscious at the time. It might be objected, however, that memory is unreliable. Sartre concedes that this would be a valid objection in the kind of situation where our memory is at odds with present evidence (p.12/mid). But that is not the case here. There is no conflict in which memory must compete with present consciousness precisely because there is no I in present consciousness. The I is present only during reflection, and whenever we become aware of an I we find that we are reflecting rather than experiencing, so objections based on the supposed unreliability of reflective memory have no relevance.

p.13 - This means that common experience confirms what Sartre has already concluded must logically be the case.

p.13 - there is no I on the unreflected level. When I run after a tram, when I look at the time, when I become absorbed in the contemplation of a portrait, there is no I. There is only consciousness of the tram-to-be-caught, etc., and a non-positional consciousness of consciousness....I am plunged into the world of objects, it is they which constitute the unity of my consciousnesses (cf; p.6)...but, as for me, I have disappeared, I have annihilated myself.

p.13/mid-p.14 - Sartre now further argues that Husserl's own theory shows that the cogito is other than consciousness.

p.13/lo - Husserl insists...that the certainty of the reflective act stems from the way that in it, consciousness is grasped without facets, without profile, as a totality (without abschattung).

Sartre here is quoting Husserl's own words back to him. Husserl argued that, when we perceive an phenomenon, all we ever actually perceive is a 'profile' or aspect [abschattung]. We do not, and cannot, grasp its whole being.

* Abschattung - The aspect or facet of something perceived in an appearance. Any perception of my desk, for example, shows one perceiver only one aspect [abschattung] of the desk seen in a certain light and from a certain point of view.

The idea that we perceive only appearances, and that appearances hide some kind of 'real reality', is as old as human thought. Traditionally it has been thought that the 'real reality' of objects, hidden behind appearances, is some kind of inner essence or structure which only clever people can get at, and then only by taking things apart philosophically or scientifically. Husserl rejected this mythology to argue that the being of phenomena is no more than the sum total of their aspects over their entire existence. Because the aspects of a phenomenon are countless, their being is a kind of 'ideal unity' of an infinite number of aspects (p.14/hi). Consciousness, however, is not like this; we grasp consciousness 'as a totality' (p.13/lo). The ego is an ever-changing 'perishable' structure (p.14/mid) but consciousness is always just awareness of objects. So while the man I am now is very different from the boy I was fifty years ago, my consciousness is still nothing more or less than the same awareness of objects that is always has been. This means that, according to Husserl's own initial theory, consciousness and the cogito belong to different categories of being. It also means that, if Husserl was to take his own theory seriously, the cogito should be categorised as 'outside' of consciousness along with everything else transcendent (p.14/lo)

p.14 - The I affirms itself as transcendent in the 'I think', and this is because it is not of the same nature as transcendental consciousness.

pp.15-16 - Sartre now argues that the cogito is not produced by reflection but only revealed by it.

p.15 - the I does not appear to reflection as the reflected consciousness; it gives itself through reflected consciousness.

The self-knowledge grasped during introspection is supposed to be certain because our I [the cogito] is believed either to be consciousness or, at least, to be in consciousness. Sartre agrees that if the I was consciousness then the evidence of introspection would be unquestionable. If the I was in consciousness then, although not unquestionable, the evidence of introspection would certainly be empirically adequate. But, in fact, it is neither.

Ibid - the I of 'I Think' is the object of neither an apodictic nor an adequate evidential certainty.

* Apodictic - Certain beyond doubt. The experience of feeling scared, for example, is apodictic evidence of being scared. Such evidence is gained only by 'pure' reflection.

* Adequate - 'Second-hand' evidence that is sufficient to justify a belief about something to which we do not have direct access. Fearful behaviour by another, for example, is adequate evidence to justify a belief that she is scared.

The certainty of self-knowledge isn't apodictic because in saying I we affirm something that isn't experienced directly but only through reflection. And it is not adequate because the I presented in reflection is patently opaque.
    If the 'cogito' were part of consciousness then the altitudinal split in my consciousness during self-reflection would become some kind of material split between a conscious I, doing the reflecting, and an unconscious I being reflected on - neither of which could communicate to each other. This violation of our integrity is precisely that which Freud et el postulated. But how these two 'sub-selves' are meant to achieve the unity of consciousness which transversal and synchronic unity requires, is a mystery.

In summary: the I is who is indicate in such claims as "I was reading" or 'I went for a walk". And Sartre lists four claims about this I that he believes are justified by his analysis.
1.    The I is real [existent] and not consciousness [transcendent].
2.    We intuit the I as something 'behind' reflected consciousness.
3.    The I appears only during, and as a result of, reflection.
4.    We should put the I aside when describing our consciousness of phenomena because all we actually have in such cases is a phenomenon and a consciousness of that phenomena.

Of these, point '3', gives Sartre an opportunity to summarise his theory. In the normal course of events our consciousness is unreflected - there is no I but only our consciousness of objects in the world.

p.16 - there is an unreflective act of reflection - an act without an I - which is aimed at a reflected consciousness.

Consciousness differs from sentience in being aware of being sentient. According to Sartre, this 'awareness of being aware' is not the same as, and comes before, awareness of an I because the I is a product of reflection and consciousness is normally unreflective. So when you are absorbed in an activity there is no I before your consciousness, as an object of consciousness, even though consciousness includes a consciousness of being conscious. The reading I can become an object of attention if you switch focus from the book to yourself. But what happens in this case is that you introduce an I where there wasn't one prior to reflection. This I obviously isn't within your consciousness precisely because you are conscious of it as something 'there' to be conscious of. The I, in short, is a transcendent object of the reflective act.

Ibid - reflected consciousness becomes the object of the reflecting consciousness without, however, ceasing to affirm [posit] its own object (a chair, a mathematical truth, etc.). At the same time a new object appears which is the occasion for an affirmation [positing] of the reflective consciousness and is in consequence neither on the same level as unreflected consciousness (because the latter is an absolute that has no need of reflective consciousness in order to exist), nor at the same level as the object of the unreflected consciousness (the level of an object of consciousness). This transcendent object of the reflective act is the I.

The I that appears in reflection has no properties beyond that of being 'whatever-is-it' that thinks or reads or whatever. It is, in other words, only a unity of our actions. But if we expand our reflection then we discover that this I has various thoughts, feelings, attitudes, and so on. Sartre calls this 'expanded I' the me. Seen from this point of view, the I is a 'contraction' of the me - a kind of conceptual 'hook' on which to 'hang' the activities of the me. This will be explained on pp.40-41 but, in the meantime, Sartre wants to do for the me what he has already done for the I.

pp.16-17 - Having argued that the I is not part of consciousness, Sartre now wants to argue against the common and popular psychological theories in which a 'me' and its interests are smuggled into consciousness as the 'real (as selfish) reason' why we behave as we do. Against these theories, Sartre argues that, like the I, the me appears only with the reflective act and as the intended object of a reflective intention. Both, in other words, are a product, rather than component, of reflective consciousness. In the process of making this point, he argues that (a) the me is an integrity of our psychological states and (b) the integrity of our states [the me] and actions [the I], together constitute the ego [self] within the body but outside of consciousness. Being outside of consciousness is what makes the ego transcendent (hence the title of the essay).

* Amour-propre - Self-interest [self-love] in which the self in question is a primitive 'me' whose drives affect our behaviour but are frequently hidden from consciousness (see quote from La Rochefoucauld in translator's footnote 38). The theory is that, beneath our rational motivations, there is a wholly self-interested 'me' whose self-serving ambitions are the 'real' reason for our behaviour.

According to amour-propre theory, all our acts are self-interested, even though we are seldom aware of that fact. This lack of awareness is then explained by invoking an 'unconscious' or 'subconscious' that harbours our 'real' motives.

p.17 - [self interest] conceals itself in the most diverse disguises. We (or some 'expert') have to track it down before we can grasp it.

Sartre uses self-interest morality as a vehicle for a criticism of all psychological theories that build the products of reflective activity into unreflective consciousness as an 'unconscious'. In such theories the clarity and spontaneity of consciousness is sacrificed to a Machiavellian 'me' who serves himself at the expense of my 'civilised' self.

p.18 - In Sartrean psychology there is only consciousness and the objects it intends. So if I feel pity for Peter then, as far as consciousness is concerned, there exists only the object 'Peter-needing-aid' in which the 'needing aid' acts like an imperative [a force] before it is justified or killed by reflective responses.

p.18 - At this level (i.e., the 'first moment of desire' before we get to thinking about what advantage or disadvantage there might be to us in helping someone in need of help) desire is given to consciousness as centrifugal (it transcends itself, it is the thetic consciousness of 'having-to-be' and the non-thetic consciousness of itself)...

* Centrifugal - Aimed 'outwards' from consciousness. Desire, for example, is always desire for some object and is a 'reaching' towards that object. Sartre is arguing here for the outwardness of desire against the psychological thesis that all desire is actually reflexive [pointed inwards - at the primitive 'me' - via some outwards objects].

What we have here is the emotional ['me'] equivalent of being absorbed in an activity. Any emotion we experience in such moments is entirely focussed on the object (e.g., Peter's distress); the me is missing just as the I is when we are unreflectively engaged in an activity.

Ibid....there is no me: I am faced with the pain of Peter in the same way I am faced with the colour of this inkwell (i.e., the pain which motivates my response is a property of Peter just as colour is a property of ink).

Against this thesis, self-love psychologists have it that, lurking behind the outwardly-directed desire to help someone in need, is actually a hidden and inwardly-directed desire to help myself. In this case, our emotions are reflexive rather than centrifugal.

Ibid - They have imagined behind the desire to help another state which remains in the shadows: for example, I aid Peter so as to put an end to the unpleasant state in which the sight of his sufferings have out me.

p.19 - These kinds of theories, which we have all come across, assume that reflection comes prior to consciousness. Put this way, we can see why the hypothesis is absurd.

p.19 - We can doubtless conceive of a consciousness appearing immediately as reflected, in certain cases. But even then the unreflected has an ontological priority over the reflected [the 'mirror' must exist before it can reflect anything] since it does not need to be reflected in order to exist, and reflection presupposes the intervention of a second-order consciousness.

A believer in reincarnation or karma, for example, may crush her consciousness of another-in-pain almost instantly if she is deeply-enough steeped in her superstition. But that merely reinforces Sartre's contention that the consciousness of another as 'in pain' is a 'complete and autonomous moment' that needs some sort of reflection to crush it afterwards (i.e., the moment exists as something to be explained away) - even if that 'afterwards' is immediately after

Ibid - We thus reach the following conclusion: unreflected consciousness must be considered autonomous. It is a totality that has no need to be completed - there is no need to add an I or a me to consciousness - and we must recognise...that the quality of unreflected [spontaneous] desire is that it transcend itself [reaches out] by grasping, in the object, the quality of desirability.

Our everyday experiences would seem to indicate that this is right. If I desire chocolate, for instance, then I am conscious of the chocolate as desirable much as, if I perceive a tree, I perceive the tree as green. The desirability of the chocolate, like the greenness of the tree, is in the object - not in some 'me' lurking behind my consciousness. So say, for example, that I am consciousness of someone-in-need. The 'in need' aspect of this consciousness is an 'intuitive grasp of the disagreeable quality of the object' - I perceive the 'someone' as in need, not myself. And if this consciousness of 'person+quality' is accompanied by a desire then the desire 'reaches out' to the quality in the person.

Ibid - It is just as if we lived in a world where objects, apart from their (physical) qualities of heat, odour, shape, etc., had the qualities of being repulsive, attractive, charming, useful, etc., etc.,and as if these qualities were forces having a certain power over us.

It is only on a level of reflection, which comes after consciousness, that I can have the kind of 'hidden' motive that pop psychology has lurking prior to consciousness.

pp.19-20 - If what Sartre asserts is correct then, far from motivating our consciousness of qualities in objects, reflection actually 'poisons' it after the event - the spontaneous 'reaching out' to someone-in-need becomes masturbatory and self-serving. What was consciousness of an object-with-properties in the world now wallows in the slop-and-gurgle of my psyche. Even in this case, however, the reflective 'poisoning' of spontaneous consciousness presupposes a spontaneity of consciousness to be poisoned.

p.19 - the (psychological) me must not be sought in the states of unreflected consciousness, nor behind then. The me appears only with the reflective act, and as a noematic correlate of a reflective intention.

* Noematic correlate (a term from Husserl's phenomenology) - Consciousness always intends ['points at'] an object. This intentional object, which may or may not exist materially, is the noematic correlate or 'noema' of intention. So what Sartre is asserting, on p.19/lo, is that the me is simply what our consciousness introduces when we reflect on our own thoughts, feelings or actions (just as the I is simply what our consciousness introduces when we reflect on our own activities).

You could think here of consciousness as an activity around which 'fibres of experience' cohere. The activity of consciousness 'spins' these fibres into a length of 'yarn' which is our life. There is no transcendental 'essence of yarn' which pre-exists the yarn itself as a form or material structure onto which the fibres are attached. Nor do you need any transcendental 'yarn soul' to explain the yarn's wholeness - even though none of its constituent fibres endures unbroken throughout its entire length. Rather, the attachment of fibres to each other is enough to spin the yarn out of nothing but the fibres. And the way the many individual fibres overlap and bond together is enough, on its own, to explain all the properties of the yarn. According to Sartre's theory, the intentional activity of consciousness similarly 'spins' an ego out of activities and emotional experiences by integrating them with each other, and only with each other, through reflection. There is no pre-existing me onto which these experiences have to be attached - the overlapping integrity of the experiences themselves is all we have, and all we need, to explain the life-long integrity of ourselves as persons.

pp.20-21 - the I and the me are in fact one (ego). We are going to try to show that this Ego, of which I and me are merely two faces, constitutes the ideal (noematic) and indirect unity of the infinite series of our reflected consciousnesses.
    The I is the Ego as the unity of its actions. The me is the Ego as the unity of states and qualities.

The ego is the creation and object of consciousness by which reflection unites all our experiences into one 'mine' (cf; p.6). We have already seen (p.13) that the being of phenomena is no more than the sum total of the aspects [abschattung] they manifest over their entire existence. Because the aspects of a phenomenon are countless, its being is a kind of 'ideal unity' of an infinite [uncountable] number of aspects (p.14/hi). Sartre argues that the same holds for the Ego as the unity of countless moments of consciousness being reflected on. When we reflect on our actions the I appears, when we reflect on our psychological states the me appears. The I and the me are just two facets of the ego that appears to reflection. Because reflection can only follow consciousness, the ego - as a product of reflection - cannot precede consciousness in the way so often taken for granted. Moreover, because conscious can intend ['point at'] the ego which reflection produces, the ego must be outside consciousness as an object for consciousness to be conscious of. As with everything else outside of consciousness, the ego is opaque and its being is one of countless appearances over time. In this case, the reflective act which reveals the ego is like an ordinary perception in which we surpass appearances to intuit the whole phenomena as a unity of aspects over time.

This ends Sartre's negative theory about what the ego is not - and what it is not is consciousness or the self [cogito] in self-consciousness - he can now go on to sketch out his positive theory about what the ego is.

p.21 - In traditional belief it is the ego which is thought to integrate all the experiences of our consciousness into one 'mine'. Sartre basically agrees with this idea but, contrary to traditional theory, understands the ego be an object for consciousness rather than the essence of consciousness. The transcendence [objectivity] of the ego entails that the transversal and synchronic unity that it provides for consciousness is not in consciousness, as is usually thought, but in the objects of consciousness. And that, indeed, is what Sartre argues is the case. There is some degree of inner [immanent] unity to consciousness but most of its unity is based on the 'thereness' of the objects it intends - of which the ego is the most immediate and most important.

p.21 - The ego is not directly the unity of reflected consciousnesses. There exists an immanent unity of these consciousnesses; namely the stream of consciousness constituting itself as the unity of itself - and a transcendent unity: states and actions. The ego is the unity of states ['me'] and actions [ I]...[in both cases] it is the unity of transcendent unities and is itself transcendent. It is a transcendent pole of synthetic unity, like the object pole in the unreflected attitude, except that this pole appears solely in the world of reflection.

* Immanent - An object of consciousness that is fully known in a single conscious experience (cf; p.ix). Immanent is the contrary of transcendent.

* Immanent unity - The unity which consciousness experiences simply by being conscious.

* Transcendent unity - The unity which consciousness gains from the relative stability of the objects that it is conscious of. Chief among these objects is the ego with which it is in a particularly intimate relation.

In the normal course of events, for example, you repeatedly awake to the same body. In this case, the ongoing sameness of the body - the fact that it changes only imperceptibly day by day - provides one kind of [transcendent] unity while the ongoing 'stream' of awareness - of continually being conscious-of various bodily sensations - provides another [immanent] kind. Sartre will argue that (a) transcendent unity is more significant than immanent unity to the integrity of consciousness and (b) the ego provides the most immediate 'relatively coherent set of properties over time' that gives consciousness its transcendent unity. This thesis seems to be confirmed by the way that too much change in our body or circumstances can produce an identity crisis in which our unity as selves breaks down.

By being an object intended [pointed at] by consciousness, the ego is transcendent [there for consciousness] - just as is everything else in the world (cf; last sentence of 1B). The big difference, however, is that the ego appears only to introspection [in the 'world of reflection'] where as the 'external' world appears to perception (the ego being what reflective consciousness intends when look inwards, to our subjectivity, rather than outwards at the world)

p.21 - The ego is like a length of cloth being woven from various yarns. Among these 'yarns' are psychological states, qualities and actions, which are, in turn, 'spun' from the 'fibres' of experience by reflection.

* State - An emotional/moral 'thread' of our character, such as love, hate or desire, that endures over time. States are not always to the forefront of consciousness but they are real and clearly apparent if we turn 'inwards' in self-reflection.

p.21 - If I hate Peter, my hatred of Peter is a state that I can grasp by reflection. The state is present to the gaze of reflective consciousness, it is real.

Because the state is transcendent rather than immanent (i.e., present to reflective consciousness rather than within consciousness), we can be uncertain about its nature even though we are in no doubt about the feelings it produces.

p.22 - Just as a phenomenon is a unity of aspects (abschattung) over time, so is a psychological state a unity of emotional experiences [erlebnisse] over time. So Sartre's hatred of Peter, for instance, is a 'thread' of his ego constituted and revealed by a series of emotional 'fibres' over time. These experiences disclose the state much as appearances disclose a material object. And, although we cannot be in any doubt about being conscious of a feeling, we can be mistaken about the state of which it constitutes an appearance.
    States continue to exist even when we are not fully aware of them - I may go on loving or hating someone, for instance, even in the absence of specific feelings about them. So what Sartre is saying here is that, from the point of view of consciousness, psychological states are phenomena and the feelings that periodically 'well up' from these states are the aspects of the states which appear from time to time. An analysis of states such as hatred confirms this thesis. Sartre gives an example of his being sure of experiencing a repugnance when thinking of Peter without being entirely sure that state this loathing indicates is hatred. In this example the feeling of repugnance is the aspect which appears while the hate is the state [phenomenon] of which the experience is an aspect. The opacity of the state, despite the clarity of the experience [erlebnis], confirms that, like objects in the world, psychological states are 'outside' of consciousness as objects that consciousness intends. This alone is enough to limit the 'right' of reflection to rule on our states (p.23/mid).

The differences between states and the feelings which express them defines the difference between 'pure' and 'impure' reflection.

* Pure reflection - An awareness limited to direct emotional experience without invoking any thesis as to its cause. In the case of Sartre's hatred of Peter, for example, pure reflection would entitle him to say only that he feels an 'upheaval of revulsion and anger' upon seeing Peter. Unlike impure reflection, pure reflection is without error because being aware of a feeling is all the evidence we need to be certain that the feeling exists.

* Impure reflection - A thesis-laden awareness that goes beyond what is given in pure reflection to affirm more than it is directly conscious of - like diagnosing a disease from a symptom. Sartre's diagnosis of hatred for Peter, for instance, can appear only within the perspective of impure reflection because his 'disease' [hatred] is understood as outlasting his current experience of the 'symptoms' [feelings of repugnance] that supposedly express it. 'After all, I have hated Peter for a long time and I think I will always hate him.'.

Unlike pure reflection, impure reflection can be, and often is, mistaken and is not, therefore, a reliable 'diagnosis' of our inner condition. This does not entail, however, that the feelings we experience are not symptoms of something real.

p.23 - We must not conclude that hatred is a mere hypothesis, an empty concept. It truly is a real object, which I grasp through the erlebnis [experience], but this object is outside consciousness and the very nature of its existence implies its dubitability.

p.24 - The failure to distinguish states from the experiences which disclose them leads to serious misunderstandings of the human condition. The invention of a supposed subconscious or unconscious, in which our 'real feelings' hide from us, is one such misunderstanding. The fact, however, is that emotional experiences [erlebnisse] are always exactly what they seem to be - it is only the underlying state that is opaque, and that state is opaque only because it is part of the transcendent ego and, like everything transcendent [outside of consciousness], not entirely clear to us. Thus a person can be very well aware of, say, feeling irritation at someone's presence [the experience] while not being aware that the irritation is a symptom of envy [the state].

By lying inert as part of the ego, between appearances as feelings, psychological states are 'passive'.

* Passive - A feature of enduring phenomena whereby they manifest more-or-less coherent aspects over repeated appearances. If, for example, granite appears hard to me every time I experience it then hardness is a passive quality of granite. In such cases I am adequately justified in believing that granite remains hard between appearances. Similarly, I am justified in believing that my psychological states remain in being between their appearances as feelings.

p.25 - What makes psychological states passive is that they are not always apparent as distinct feelings but that, at the time when they are manifest, they manifest themselves as similar feelings. So if I like someone, for instance, that liking will keep appearing as similar feelings even though those feelings ebb and flow with circumstances. This is another feature of states which they share with phenomena such as things in the world.

p.25 - The entire psychology of states...is a psychology of the inert.

Psychological states can be said to mediate between consciousness and the body as a means of enacting our feelings - the state of liking someone, for example, causes the spontaneous smile with which we greet her approach. The smile, in this case, emanates from the state.

* Emanation - An action or feeling which issues from a psychological state; an 'outgrowth' of a state; often expressed as a 'because' relation (i.e., "Why did you do that?" "Because I love/hate her")

p.26 - Sartre insists that the emanation relation, between psychological states and bodily actions, is 'magical' rather than rational.

* Magical - Not rational. The theory invoked here, spelled out in Sartre's Sketch for a Theory of the Emotions (1939), is that our emotions are a primitive way of trying to manipulate the world. So if, for example, you get angry at something that will not work then you are acting (non-rationally) as if the expression of anger could somehow affect the physics of the object of your anger. It doesn't, but that doesn't stop us repeating these kinds of behaviour over and over again.

Sartre also observes that the psycho-physical experience 'appears' 'to produce itself 'at the expense of' the psychological state which it expresses. That this appearance is misleading is explained in Section 2C. The 'activist' who expresses her indignation in self-righteous violence, for example, appears to be 'letting off steam' but, because her states are actually 'spun' from experiences such as violent behaviours, she is actually 'stoking the boiler' which produces the very 'steam' that needs to be 'let off'. This is why, although terrorists always talk as if their cause demands violence, it is actually their violence which demands a cause.

pp.26-27 - In this short section, Sartre first distinguishes two main kinds of action: physical actions such as driving a car and 'psychical' actions such as doubting, thinking, and so on. Both of these kinds of activity are transcendent in that consciousness can 'point at' [intend] them just as it intends things and states of affairs.

p.26 - What misleads us here (when we confuse physical and psychical actions) is the fact that action is not merely the noematic unity of a stream of consciousness; it is also a concrete realisation.

* Noematic Unity - An object-based unity. In an activity over time, it is the activity which provides the transversal unity which integrates all the various moments of consciousness occurring during that activity into a whole (cf; Section 2D, where the psychological state is said to provide the noematic unity of spontaneous reactions based on love, hate, desire, fear, and so on).

All psychological states involve some kind of periodic behaviour. These behaviours constitute what Sartre calls a 'concrete realisation' of the state. They also provide the noematic [objective] unity which integrates all the various moments of consciousness occurring during that activity into a whole - much as repeated appearances provide the totality of a phenomenon. A periodic activity such as stamp collecting, for example, involves behaviours that are separated by, often considerable, periods of time. What unites all these activities and experiences into a single phenomenon [stamp collecting] is the collection of stamps; the unity, in other words, is in the object [noema] rather than in consciousness, just as it is for phenomena or psychological states. And this object provides a transversal unity for consciousness.

Sartre also distinguishes between spontaneous actions, such as the 'fight or flight' reaction to an intuited danger, and thetic actions such as analysing a danger and planning a considered response to it. Distinguishing these matters to keeping the actions of consciousness separate from those of the ego (spontaneity is a function of consciousness, deliberation involves the ego - cf; thetic). So his analysis here effectively repeats that of transcendent states and immanent experiences, and with the same end in mind - i.e., that of showing that the psychic 'content' of the ego is outside of consciousness, as a set of objects that consciousness intends, despite our tendency to locate it's unifying function within consciousness by confusing transcendence with immanence and spontaneity with deliberate action.

pp.27-28 - This short section expands section 'A', without altering Sartre's basic thesis, by observing that if we manifest a tendency towards certain psychological states then that tendency becomes a quality of our character. Thus a person who manifests kindness, for instance, can be said to be kind; this 'being kind' is a quality of the person's ego.

* Quality - A psychological disposition or trait such as a tendency towards kindness, anger, spite, conciliation, etc.

A quality is a potential which is fairly easy to turn actual. Jealousy, for example, is a state which may be triggered on only one occasion or on many. So say that Abel is jealous of one person; this jealousy is a psychological state of his ego. But say that Abel tends to be jealous of lots of people for lots of reasons; in this case Sartre would describe jealousy as a quality of Abel's ego. So qualities tend to issue in the states which appear as feelings and/or actions at various times and circumstances.

To understand Sartre's theory in this section it helps to first to acknowledge the distinction between being human and being a person.

* Human - A member of the mammalian animal species homo sapiens. Being human is a natural [biological] category of being that normally coincides with, but is not the same as, being a person.

* Person - Any self-conscious consciousness that, by being self-conscious, constitutes an ego out of its experiences. Personhood is the ongoing condition of being a person in much the same way that parenthood, for example, is the ongoing condition of being a parent.

Because human persons are an integrity of humanity and personhood, all the humans normally we meet are persons and all the persons we normally meet are human. But being human and being a person are not the same, and there is no reason for assuming that being human is a necessary condition for being a person. The aliens and spirit beings of popular superstition, for example, are conceived of as non-human persons in that they are supposed to embody aspects of personhood such as intelligence, will and memory in a non-human - and, in some cases, non-biological - form.

p.28 - Sartre pictures the personhood aspect of being a human person as integrating two 'poles': consciousness and ego. These depend on and reflect each other much as the 'positive' and 'negative' poles of a magnet depend on and reflect each other - i.e., you simply cannot have a magnet [a person] without two poles each of which is what the other is not. Consciousness, for example, has no content while the ego is all content (states, thoughts, memories, etc.). Similarly, consciousness is wholly active while the ego is basically passive.
    An extension of reflective self-consciousness is being aware of our thoughts, doubts, memories, psychological states, and so on. This set of psychical 'threads' forms an integrity [a 'permanent synthesis'] which is the Ego - an Ego which appears to consciousness as a transcendent object [something 'there'] which consciousness is conscious of.

p.28 - The psychical is the transcendent object of the reflective consciousness....The ego [self] appears to reflection as a transcendent object realising the permanent synthesis of the psychic.

Sartre notes here that he has not yet got around to including the biological aspect of human personhood - the whole ' psycho-physical 'me' which is a 'synthetic enrichment' of the psychical ego. The whole human person is an integrity of self-conscious consciousness + ego + human biology + temporality [consciousness of having a past, present and future] - in which Sartre is, in this section, considering only the ego in its two aspects of the I and the me.

p.28/lo - It is not through abstraction that we separate out these two aspects of the ego [I and me]. The psycho-physical me is a synthetic enrichment of the psychical ego, which can exist in a free state.

pp.29-30 - In identifying the ego with the psyche, it is important not to think of the ego as a sort of 'container' of our psychical experiences and processes. The ego, rather, is woven of psychic phenomena in much the same way that a length of woolen yarn is spun out of lots and lots of individual fibres.

p.30/mid - The ego is nothing outside of the concrete totality of states [me] and actions [I] it supports.

To explain this, Sartre first uses the metaphor of a melody (p.30/hi). A melody is made of notes, it is nothing apart from the notes of which it is made. The notes, in turn, are not the notes they are except as the melody. So, if we want to predicate something of a note or a melody, we need to consider the whole note-melody integrity as a complex whole spread over time - the notes, for example, are not merely notes in a melody but the notes of a melody. By this analogy, the ego is like an extended and complex piece of music of which our many and particular psychic activities and experiences [erlebnisse] are the notes or chords sounded sequentially over time, our psychological states are the melodies made of notes, and our psychological qualities the themes which appear as the melodies made of notes. Take away the ego and our actions/experiences are dis-integrated (not the experiences or actions of a unified consciousness); take away the actions/experiences and there is nothing there at all.
    In another analogy Sartre likens objects in the ego to objects in the world (p.30/lo). The world is an integrity of things in various relationships - in much the same way that a melody is an integrity of notes. Every object is located 'in' the world, and it makes sense to distinguish objects in the world from the world they are in (i.e., the world as a whole), but there is not a distinct world 'around' the objects that are in it - the world just is the sum of the objects and relationships of which it is made.
    Finally (p.31/hi), and reverting to Heideggerian language, Sartre describes the ego as the 'horizon' of psychic activity - i.e., the area of all the psychic activity that each of us can call 'mine'

* Horizon (Heidegger) - The 'area' within a boundary. I put the word 'area' in scare quotes because Heidegger's use of geographical terms is metaphorical rather than literal. So take our temporal existence as an example; the temporal horizon of our lives is our lifespan from birth until death - i.e., not just our birth and death as limits but the whole experience of being who we are that is encompassed by them.

pp.31-32 - Like all objects of consciousness, the ego is opaque. This is why we can be unsure or mistaken about the states and/or qualities which underlie our actions. This does not mean, however, that the ego is just a hypothetical object. The ego is as real as a melody even though, like a melody, it never appears complete in itself but only one 'note' at a time.
    The ego is the spontaneous and transcendent unification of our psychological states and actions by consciousness (p.31/lo). It is spontaneous in the sense of having no plan, purpose or agenda behind it. It is transcendent through being 'there' for consciousness as an object of attention that consciousness can intend. Thus the ego is an object for consciousness that is created by consciousness as a product of its consciousness. It integrates, and is made from, our psychic experiences and activities - it is the 'melody' of which our experiences are the 'notes' - and is spontaneously synthesised by consciousness out of those experiences and activities when it [consciousness] reflects on them. The ego is, therefore, outside of consciousness as part of the world. And, because consciousness is the actual hub of our integrity, is only a 'virtual' locus of who we are (p.34/lo).

p.32 - As a product of consciousness, the ego is actually created out of states spun from experiences. As an object of consciousness, however, it appears to us to be the origin of its states. The ego, is this case, appears to magically produce states and qualities 'out of nothing' [ex nihilo].

p.32 - The unifying act of reflection links each new state in a very special way to the concrete totality me. It is not limited to grasping it [the new state] as (merely) attaching to this totality...it intends a relation which traverses time backwards and which gives the me as the source of the state.

Thus it is that each new 'note' I add to the 'melody' of my life, each new 'fibre' I add to the 'yarn', is experienced by me as growing out of who I am - which is really who I have been up until now - even though who I am is really being made up by me as I go along.
    Sartre has already argued that carrying ego-consciousness 'backwards', into our reflections on consciousness, leads us to mistakenly identify the ego - which is a creation of consciousness - as the source and seat of consciousness. We similarly confuse the product of states [the ego] with the creator of those states by the same reflective process.  And, in both cases, we get away with this confusion because the ego is opaque and does not, therefore, contradict our inversion of its processes.

p.33 - Sartre has already argued that consciousness has no mind or manager whose will or reason directs its activity. It follows from this the creation of an ego by consciousness is not reasoned but similarly spontaneous. The creative activity of consciousness to a kind of un-minded spinning that, simply by being what it is, inevitably picks up and spins any fibres at hand into a ball [the ego]. The ego, in this case, is not the artifact of a mind - be that mind natural or divine. It is spontaneously [mindlessly] created by consciousness and derives its own apparent creativity - by which it seems to generate states - at second-hand as a 'degenerate' preservation of the consciousness's spontaneity (p.33/lo).
    This spontaneous creation of an ego out of experiences is not to be confused with the kind of self-creation for which we are responsible through our choices. If you choose to make yourself a liar by telling lies, for example, then your self-definition as a liar is your choice and therefore your responsibility. What you are not responsible for, and have no control over, is the fact that your consciousness will spin a you out of what is at hand without reference to whether or not you want what is at hand spun into who you are.

p.34 - Consciousness spontaneously creates a ego out of various psychological states and actions - whether we will it or not. Because the ego is an object of and for consciousness, it is not only opaque but also passive in the sense of preserving its contents even when we are not specifically conscious of them (cf; p.34/mid). An interesting feature of this process is that what is spun into the ego consequently takes on a life of its own. We become, like Dr. Frankestein, victims of a creation of our own consciousness.

p.34 - The spontaneity of the ego [its seeming creativity] exceeds itself because the ego's hatred (for example), although unable to exist by itself alone, possesses...a certain independence vis-a-vis the ego.

So say, for example, that you love someone. Although this love is your creation, and quite unable to exist apart from your sustaining input, you can't just turn it off at will. The 'certain independence' that Sartre invokes is admitted by claims such as "In my head I know that x..." followed by a "..but in my heart I still hope that not-x".
    The independence of the ego, along with its second-hand spontaneity, explains why we can surprise ourselves with who we are (p.34/mid). A man who has always thought of himself as a coward, for instance, may astonish himself by acting bravely in a crisis. This bravery is not connected to his psychological state by reasoning; it is, rather, irrational in the way of the properties of all objects.
    In the ongoing creation of an ego by consciousness the actual order (p.34/lo) is weaver [consciousness] ⇒ fibres [experiences] ⇒ yarn [states] ⇒ cloth [ego]. But the ego is a creation of consciousness which consciousness posits in the same way it posits all objects. Posited objects, just being objects for consciousness rather than parts of consciousness, are opaque to it. These objects, including the ego, are also passive in the sense of manifesting a coherent set of properties from one appearance to another. When consciousness intends the ego then it apprehends it as a thing with properties. Thus the order (p.35/hi) seems to be cloth [ego] ⇒ properties [states].

Ibid - the Ego is an object apprehended but also constituted by reflective knowledge. It is a virtual locus of unity, and consciousness constitutes it as going in completely the reverse direction from that followed by its actual production; what is really first is consciousness, through which are constituted states, the, through these, the Ego. But as this order is reversed by a consciousness that imprisons itself in the world in order to flee from itself, consciousnesses are given as emanating from states (which are) produced by the Ego.

The Ego is only a 'virtual' locus of unity because the actual locus is the activity [consciousness] which 'spins' the Ego out of the 'fibres' of experience.

As we saw in p.26, the passivity of objects gives consciousness a transcendent unity over time. The passivity of the ego as an object gives the consciousness a transcendent [object based] unity which it carries with it wherever it goes.

p.35 - As already observed, our psychological states seem to have a life of their own. But what we need to remember here is that the ego [self] is an object both apprehended and created by consciousness. When apprehended by consciousness, the ego seems to take on a life of its own. In actual fact, however, consciousness is both prior to and the source of all the ego's power. Consciousness projects it own spontaneity onto its creation [the ego], thereby giving the ego the creative power it needs, but this spontaneity is, so to speak, second hand.

p.35/hi - ...this spontaneity (of the ego-self), represented and hypostasised in the object, becomes a bastard and degraded spontaneity, which magically preserves it creative power even while becoming passive.

* Hypostasis - The 'thinging' of something which isn't a thing. In this context, the personification of the spontaneity of consciousness as a supposed creativity of the ego.

Sartre's choice of words here ('degraded', 'bastard') reflects his contention that the ego mimics consciousness only in the way that Elvis imitators mimic Elvis; i.e., without the 'X factor' that Elvis had in spades and his imitators so conspicuously lack. Indeed, Sartre goes so far as to picture the ego-self as a kind of magic trick or illusion that we play on ourselves. Our ego is actually created out of experience by consciousness but, when we look 'inward' at ourselves, it appears to us to be the creative heart of consciousness. So, in effect, we create a kind of idol [the Ego] that personifies what is actually a power of consciousness that the idol itself doesn't really have. It is this 'trickery' which explains why the ego appears active [creative] when, in fact, it is passive [a creation]. It also explains why, in the way of all idols, we so soon lose sight of the power it supposedly represents and start worshipping the idol itself.

The passivity [thingness] of the Ego is what allows it to be acted on [affected]. We are, for example, vividly aware of the way in which events in the world can excite or depress us. The 'us' which these events excite or depress cannot be our consciousness because consciousness is only the act of being aware of the events. The ego, however, is thingish and, like all things, can be acted on by things and forces in the world.

Ibid - Nothing can act on consciousness, since it is the cause of itself. But...the Ego which produces [acts in the world] is affected by the repercussions from what it produces. It is 'compromised' by what it produces...the action or state turns back on the Ego in order to qualify it.

The Ego, in other words, is self-modifying. Using the 'note and melody' metaphor of p.30, to express your love for someone would be to add a 'note' to the 'melody' [state] of love. This 'melody' would appear to issue from the ego (p.26) bit is, in fact, an addition to the ego which further 'colours' it a little bit one way or another.

Ibid - Every new state produced by the Ego colours and nuances the Ego in the moment the Ego produces it. The Ego is...spellbound by this action,....Thus everything produced by the Ego acts upon it.

p.36 - The fact that we mustn't lose sight of here is that the ego only appears to produce states. Its seeming productive power is actually a personification of the impersonal power of consciousness. And the real reason why these states nuance the ego is because they are in fact being added to it like new notes to an existing melody.
    Because the ego appears only in and to reflection, which is internal, it is actually cut-off from the world (p.36/mid). External events, therefore, cannot affect it directly but only indirectly as 'occasions' of states or actions. Thus the birth of a child, for instance, does not affect us directly - the birth is an 'occasion' for joy and it is the joy, which the Ego seemingly produces, that acts on it.

Sartre's thesis amounts to a claim that the ego is a non-rational synthesis of activity derived from consciousness as a transcendent integrity of states, qualities and behaviours - which it why it appears to have the 'life of its own' which has led to it being hypostasised as a kind of homunculus. The synthetic integrity of different properties [activity and passivity] helps explain why the ego can appear differently from different points of view. It is not, however, the only synthesis of apparently incompatible properties at stake here.

p.36/mid - Just as the ego is a non-rational synthesis of activity and passivity, it is also a non-rational synthesis of inwardness and transcendence.

All that this means is that the ego appears only when we look inwards in reflection but that, when we do look inwards, it appears as an object we can reflect on. Nothing is closer to us than ourselves; indeed, our Ego seems to it to be even more 'inward' than the emotional states we experience as being a property of the Ego. But, if we want to think about ourselves - perhaps in order to gain some insight into our own behaviours - we have to mentally 'stand back' from ourselves to contemplate who we are 'from the outside' so to speak. When we do this, the 'myself' we become conscious of is the ego.

Ibid - It [the Ego] is...the inwardness of reflected consciousness, as contemplated by reflective consciousness....reflection, in contemplating inwardness, makes it an object placed before it.

The word 'contemplation' needs qualification because consciousness is conscious of itself as an ego simply by being what it is  (p.36/lo).

Ibid - for consciousness, to be and to know oneself are one and the same thing.

The 'contemplation' of the ego by consciousness is not something extra to its consciousness of the world but something built into its being consciousness in the first place. Its very existence as consciousness - an existence which is a pre-condition of contemplation - entails that (a) consciousness is consciousness of an ego and (b) it turns itself as ego into its own object simply by being aware of being conscious.
 
p.37 - This can sound odd. But the simple fact is that, to be aware of yourself as an ego, you must take yourself as your own object of attention - you are, so to speak, both the aware subject and the object you are aware of even though both subject and object are the same person. We can demonstrate this fact to ourselves, any time we want, simply by thinking about ourselves. When we do this, we become an object to ourselves and look on ourselves as if we were someone we know rather than someone we are.

p.37 - to posit inwardness as in front of oneself is perforce to give it the weight of an object. It is as if inwardness were closed back on itself and exhibited to us merely its external aspects.

The phrase 'closed back on itself and exhibited to us merely its external aspects' specifically invokes the phenomenological concept of a phenomenon. By being so close to you, your ego should be clear to you, but you cannot turn inward without turning what is inward [your ego] into a phenomenon - and phenomena are opaque. This gives your ego the odd feature of being both intimate and indistinct.

Ibid - In relation to consciousness, the Ego is given as intimate. It is just as if the Ego were part of consciousness, with the sole and essential difference that it is opaque to consciousness.

* Indistinctness - A form of opacity that Sartre likens to a 'primordial undifferentiation of all qualities' and a 'pure form of being, anterior to all qualification' (p.37/lo). His point here is that your ego is a literal mystery because who you are - the most intimate fact about you - is opaque to you.

The indistinctness of the ego is what allows us to be surprised when an extraordinary event reveals us to be different from how we have been understanding ourselves (p.38/hi). It is also what makes folk afraid of 'getting carried away' if they don't keep their emotions in check (cf; Note g, p.65).

p.38 - The odd mix of intimacy and indistinctness obscures your ego from all eyes - other's are obscured by its intimacy [inwardness], and yours are obscured by its indistinctness [transcendence].

p.38/mid - The me, as such, remains unknown to us...it is given as an object. So the only method for getting to know it is observation, approximation. wailing, experience (i.e., the same methods we use for learning about any phenomenon). But these procedures, which are perfectly suitable for the entire domain of the non-intimate transcendent, are not suitable here, by virtue of the very intimacy of the me. It is too present for one to look at it from a really external point of view, if we move away from it to gain the vantage of distance, it accompanies us in this withdrawal. It is infinitely close and I cannot circle round it.

This is why we so often learn about ourselves from other people. Although transcendent to introspection, our own self is not transcendent enough for us to get a truly objective 'spectator' view of ourselves; we are too involved.

Ibid - Thus 'to know oneself well' is inevitably to look at oneself from the point of view of someone else....a point of view that is necessarily false;

This is the irony of selfhood. We cannot know ourselves 'from the inside' because we are too close to ourselves to get a clear view of ourselves. We can know ourselves only from an outside point of view, but an outside point of view is false because no one outside of ourselves can get inside of our consciousness to reflect on our ego. Thus, the attempt to know a self is always frustrated because the inwardness of the ego means that neither we nor others can overcome the indistinctness of the ego to really get a handle on it. Indeed, on p.39, Sartre refers to our attempts to know ourselves as a 'perpetually deceptive mirage that yields 'everything' by being so close to us (closer than anything else) while simultaneously yielding 'nothing' because we can never lay hands on it - like a mirage, it retreats as we approach.

pp.39-40 - A phenomenon has to be the 'ideal' sum of all its aspects simply because all of its aspects never appear all at once - the worn upholstery of old furniture, for example, is part of its being that may not appear until some years after the unworn upholstery of its newness no longer exists. The ego is an ideal unity of states and actions for the very same reason - there is no point in any life when someone could say "There - that's when I was the total me" any more than there is any note in a melody of which someone can say "There - that's the note which is the whole melody". We experience ourselves only one experience [erlebnis] at a time over an entire life. And these experience are not accumulative - the me I was as a boy isn't added to the me I am now but has long since slipped away into the past just as the notes that led to the part of a melody that I am listening to now have slipped away to a past that is no longer present. Because of this we cannot, even in theory, know ourselves as a whole phenomenon (p.39/mid). Indeed, at any given moment the vast majority of our states are absent because they are in the past or future.
    What finally 'seals' the indistinctness of the ego is the fact that it never appears before us 'naked' so to speak; we only ever glimpse it obliquely. At the unreflective level our Ego does not appear at all - I am conscious of Sartre's narrative, not of 'me reading Sartre's text'. If I want to 'expand' the I who is engaged with the world - in order, say, to understand him - then I immediately lose sight of my being-in-the-world and find myself focussed on properties of the me [how I feel, what I perceive, etc] behind which the ego appears to lurk as their origin. If, however, I try to fall back on the unreflective level then the Ego promptly disappears again. The nearest I get to 'grasping' who I am is a kind of fleeting 'sideways glance' at myself as I shift between world-consciousness and ego-consciousness.

p.39/lo - The ego never appears except when we are not looking directly at it. The reflective gaze has to fix itself on the erlebnis (e.g., the feeling) which emanates from the state. Then, behind the state, at the horizon, the ego appears..(p.40)..the ego is by nature fugitive.

This does not alter the fact that an I appears instantly whenever I reflect on an activity that I have been unreflectively engaged in (p.40/mid). This I isn't me because it lacks the intimacy of me. It is an empty I-concept, a logical office; the I of, "I am going into town", for example, is impersonal - degraded. If I try to represent an occupant for the office of I in 'I am going into town' what I actually picture to myself is my body walking across the Whitiora Bridge wearing my clothes. But this is a seriously (Sartre says 'totally') degraded I; an 'illusory fulfilment' of the 'I-concept' as my idea of myself.

Sartre finishes this section with a little schematic. Note that, at the unreflective level, the I is an 'empty ' transcendence - the I of "I went into town today" is an object of reference, without content, that is located in an activity. At the reflective level, however, this I becomes an 'inward' set of feelings - the me I actually live with.

pp.41-42 - Descartes' formula "I think therefore I am" identifies the 'I think' [the ego] with consciousness as the Cartesian cogito. This identity, if valid, would (a) contradict Sartre's thesis that consciousness and ego are different and (b) require that the self-awareness of consciousness was always ego-consciousness - which it plainly isn't. What Sartre points out, however, is that the Cartesian cogito [the 'I think'] is someone engaged in a project. Projects are composed of states and actions such as, in Descartes' case, systematically doubting what can doubted in order to find out what, if anything, is indubitable. Projects, in other words, are reflective. And what Descartes did was inadvertently carry the reflectiveness of his project into the unreflectiveness of consciousness that he proved existed - "In a word, the cogito is impure."
    This is what would nowadays be called a 'category mistake'. Consciousness is a category of being, the ego is a different category of being. In equating the 'I Think' with consciousness Descartes improperly applied a property of one category of being [the ego] to a different category [consciousness].

p.43 - In traditional dualism there is a radical dichotomy between the 'objective' world of things and actions and the 'subjective' world of our thoughts and feelings. This dichotomy is such that the subject is assumed to have a privileged understanding of her own inner states that completely 'trumps' any insights of an observer. However, if, as Sartre claims, there is only consciousness and its objects, and if the ego and its states are an object for consciousness, then the 'inner life of the soul' is not an essence or thing but a representation [an essentially public act that relies on public rules, language, conventions and expectations]. It has been assumed that we all have an equivalent access to public [objective] phenomena but that you have an irrefutable access to your own psychological states. But this is not quite right. No one can get inside your consciousness (p.45/hi) but your ego and its states are transcendent [outside of consciousness]  for you (p.44/mid). You cannot be mistaken about the experiences [erlebnisse] that issue from, and return to, your psychological states. But you can be mistaken about the states themselves and, as experience shows, people who observe you can gain insights into your states and qualities that you yourself have overlooked or misinterpreted. And, in both cases, your emotional states and personality are not solely a matter of private experience but also of public evidence (p.44/lo). This observation does not privilege observers, and does not validate the common hubris by which psychological 'experts' presume to know you better than you know yourself, because both the internal view and external view are necessary flawed (see p.38/lo)

p.44/lo - Peter's me is accessible to my intuition as it is to Peter's and in both cases it is the object of inadequate evidence.

pp.45-48 - Although the ego of others is accessible to us, their consciousness is 'radically impenetrable' because each consciousness is both world-aware and self-aware at the same time - and only the particular consciousness itself can experience itself from its own point of view. That is why we can never know this or any other world except from our own point of view. If the religious fantasies were right for example, and after death we can take on new forms for new lives in new environments, our consciousness would still be ours alone and exactly the same consciousness that it has always been. A consciousness simply is a point-on-view, and that's all it is. Changing the view or the ego that 'frames' the view will not change that

p.45/mid - The transcendental sphere is a sphere of absolute [unqualified, non-relative] existence; that is to say, a sphere of pure spontaneities which are never objects and which determine their own existence.

If Sartre's analysis is correct right then there is no I or me 'driving' consciousness; our I and our me are objects for consciousness. Consciousness is consciousness of everything, but consciousness itself is a kind of no-thing because all 'somethings' are outside of it as objects for consciousness. So where traditional dualism bases the transcendental sphere on an absolute something (a force, law or God); Sartre bases it on an absolute nothing (self-conscious consciousness).
    What we discern, when we reflect on our own psychological states, qualities and actions, is our ego. But the ego, which integrates our thoughts, states and memories into one 'mine', is not part of consciousness and, especially, is not the 'manager' of consciousness. It is, rather, an object for consciousness like any other.

Ibid - The ego is not the proprietor [owner] of consciousness; it is the object of consciousness....p46/hi (quoting the poet Arthur Rimbaud)....the I as an other.

Of course you are more familiar with your ego than are other folk, but it is not as if you can 'get inside' yourself in a way that others simply cannot; you are just more intimately acquainted with your ego than is anyone else (cf; the final sentence of Remark 2, p.50). Thus, in psychology for example, both external observation and introspection have the same belief-justifying status - neither is more authoritative than the other (p.95/hi-mid - this is shown in the way that both can be mistaken and either can be corrected by the other). What matters, however is that neither external nor internal observation continues to assume that consciousness is a property of the self (i.e., that the ego is the owner of consciousness - an almost universal assumption which Sartre has tried to show cannot stand close scrutiny).

p.46/lo - I may therefore formulate my thesis: transcendental consciousness is an impersonal [pre-personal] spontaneity. It determines its own existence at each instant, without our being able to conceive anything before [prior to] it. Thus each instant of our conscious life reveals to us a creation ex nihilo. Not a new arrangement, but a new existence.

This harks back to the claim on p.35 that consciousness is the cause of itself (and Sartre is quite right in observing that we cannot conceive anything before consciousness). A new arrangement would imply a kind of monofilament selfness that threads our experiences together out of consciousness rather than, as is the case in fact, an activity [consciousness] that mindlessly spins a selfness [ego] out of the fibres of reflected-on experience. But, because it is actually consciousness that creates the ego - and because it continually creates and recreates the ego as an ongoing function of its activity - each instant is a whole new existence.

If Sartre's thesis is right then, far from standing on God or nature, human personhood actually stands on nothing. Neither we nor God nor nature are our creators. We, in effect, awake to personhood to find ourselves already riding a 'roller coaster of experience' which we neither created nor chose but within which we must somehow try to keep a semblance of control because a crash really is terminal (not to say painful). This is scarey.

p.46/lo - There is something that provokes anguish for each of us, to catch 'in the act' this tireless creation of existence of which we are not the creators.

Here, for the first time, we plainly hear the voice of Sartre the existentialist. And note the language he uses at the top of p.47 - we have the impression of 'ceaselessly eluding' ourselves, of 'overflowing' who we are, of being heirs to a 'monstrous spontaneity'. The point here is that the self we have to be, the self we are responsible for, is being spun out of our choices and circumstances by something [the spontaneity of consciousness] which is out of our hands. We cannot 'master' this spontaneity because mastery requires will, will is a 'thread' in the ego, and the ego is outside of consciousness as an object for consciousness. Traditional theories soothe us with the comforting belief that there is a kind 'super me', immune from the traumatic trivia of daily living, who 'driving' our lives and who will escape the final crash of our lives - often to get a second or third go-round. But this simply isn't true, your me [your soul] is being made-up as you go along by a creator [consciousness] that has a power but no mind or purpose. There is no driver at the wheel. There's not even a wheel.

p.47/mid - Consciousness takes fright at its own spontaneity because it senses that it [the spontaneity] lies beyond freedom.

The spontaneity of consciousness, which 'spins' for you the self you have to live with, is 'beyond freedom' by being beyond your control (see translator's footnote 73, p.66). Consciousness cannot, of course, be literally frightened of itself because consciousness has no content. But the point is still well made - we are frightened of our own potential. The example of Janet may be an extreme one but it is not entirely alien; most, if not all, of us have experienced what Sartre calls the 'vertigo of possibility' - the realisation that the only force that keeps us from 'going over the edge' is a self that is barely in control of itself while dealing with the relentless rush of experience.

* Vertigo of possibility - In the normal course of events there are no end of personal and social restraints on the realisation of our possibilities - we want to survive, we fear censure or punishment, we want to be comfortable, we want to be liked and/or admired, we don't want to hurt ourselves or those we care about, and so on. The 'vertigo' of possibility arises when we realise that all of these restraints are self-imposed and have no more authority than we personally give them on an ongoing basis. This is like a literal vertigo in which the source of our fear is not the knowledge that we could fall off the edge but that there is nothing to stop us stepping off the edge if we so choose.

p.47/lo - This vertigo is comprehensible only if consciousness suddenly appeared to itself as infinitely overflowing in the possibilities the I which ordinarily serves as its unity

At the top of p.48 Sartre suggests that perhaps the most important job of the ego just is to mask the spontaneity of consciousness from consciousness. Perhaps unmasked consciousness simply could not survive in a world where 'going over the edge' is terminal.

p.48/mid - Everything happens as if consciousness constituted the ego as a false representation of itself....absorbing itself in the ego as if to make the ego its guardian and its law (my emphasis).

If thrust is not counterbalanced by drag then it just gets faster and faster until something breaks. By this analogy, consciousness is the thrust and the ego is the drag. The ego, which is resistant to change, slows the consciousness down. If consciousness did not inhibit its own thrust by means of a 'false representation of itself' (i.e., an ego) then there would be no distinction between the possible and the actual or between passion and action. In such a case consciousness would sooner or later - and probably sooner - destroy itself either by (a) actualising one of the terminal possibilities that abound in a world where actions have consequences, or (b) picking up every actual and possible 'fibre' of experience until it collapsed under the 'weight' of experience.

p.49 - Our awareness of the 'vertigo of possibility' introduces the distinctly existentialist theme of anxiety - called 'dread' by Kierkegaard, 'angst' in Heidegger, and 'anguish' in Being and Nothingness. Human persons are scared of their own personhood, their own nothingness and freedom. This fear, Sartre suggests, is the primary source of our many and chronic neuroses. He even goes so far as to argue, on p.49, that this 'existential anxiety' [anguish] provides the attraction of the epoché of phenomenology - the attempted phenomenological 'escape' from the implications of existence is not so much an intellectual device as a profound relief.

p.50 (second 'concluding remark') - Traditional theories of consciousness lead to solipsism because, according to such theories, our I is trapped within consciousness. Because we cannot get at the consciousness of others, our I is the only one we can know exists. Sartre, however, has tried to show that our I is 'out there' in the world. If this is the case then we have no grounds for claiming to know our I exclusively while denying the existence or knowability of any I except ours.

* Solipsism - The belief or theory that the believer is the only person who exists or, at least, is the only person who she can truthfully say that she knows exist.

Very few folk seriously believe in solipsism, and it is treated in Western philosophy mainly as a challenge which any valid theory of personhood must meet. Many philosophers have tried to meet this challenge, with various degrees of success. Sartre's argument is that solipsism cannot even get started once we recognise that our I - which solipsism has as the only existent - is transcendent ['there' in the world] just like all the Is which solipsism pictures as unreal or unknowable. This means that the solipsist cannot make his own I certain and another's I uncertain because his own I no longer has privileged status.

pp.50-52 (third, and final, 'concluding remark') - The Twentieth Century was a rabidly political period dominated by ideology - most notably communism, fascism, and Islamic fundamentalism. And here we see the beginning of the political involvement that would bedevil Sartre's later philosophy. Political ideologies are, of course, emphatically self-righteous and fond of accusing all in sundry of various crimes and failings. In this case, Marxists had accused phenomenologists of an idealism which trivialised all the wrongs which Leftists so like to get indignant about. Sartre counters this accusation by pointing out that his particular brand of phenomenology is actually the only theory of personhood which locates the I in the real, public, world rather than in a private consciousness (p.51). Indeed, he argues that Marxist ethics find a far more rational base in his phenomenology of the world-embedded I than it does in its own theory of historical materialism (it must be remembered here that communists considered their ideology to be intellectually superior to other ideologies). This argument foreshadows his later attempts to make existentialism compatible with Marxism.