Journal of the History of Philosophy

This paper has two, interrelated aims. The first is to clarify Sartre's theory of intersubjectivity. Sartre's discussion of the Other has a puzzling way of going in and out of focus, seeming at one moment to provide a remarkably original solution to the problem of other minds and at the next to wholly miss the point of the skeptical challenge. The nature of his argument is equally uncertain: at some points it looks like an attempt to mount a transcendental argument, a kind of Refutation of Idealism regarding the existence of others, at others, to be a defence of direct realism; yet again, it can seem to propose a dissolution of the problem closely analogous to Wittgenstein. I will argue (Section 1) that none of these provides quite the right model for understanding Sartre, which requires one to take seriously his method of resolving epistemological issues into matters of ontology. I argue further (Section 2) that Sartre's theory becomes fully coherent only if we make explicit its implicit presupposition of a conception of intersubjectivity articulated by Fichte.

My second aim is to pursue the connection opened up of Sartre with German idealism. To the extent that commentators attempt to relate Sartre systematically to German idealism, it is almost always Hegel who provides the other term of comparison.¹ What I try to show (Section 3) is that the usual comparison of Sartre with Hegel, which is largely negative, is distracting, and that Sartre's closer philosophical [End Page 325] relations are to Fichte and Schelling.² This supplies, I argue, an important correction to the tendency of anglophone discussion of Sartre to isolate his claims from historical considerations, or to restrict Sartre's historical frame of reference to Hegel, Husserl and Heidegger: Sartre's philosophy, I suggest, is viewed fruitfully in the context of philosophical debates pursued in early German idealism. Sartre's ethics, I argue (Section 4), provide supporting evidence for this view. I propose tentatively in conclusion (Section 5) a corresponding view of existential phenomenology as a whole.

1. Sartre's Theory of Intersubjectivity

Philosophical theories of intersubjective cognition—in analytic parlance, solutions to the problem of other minds—may be classified along several dimensions. First, we may distinguish between theories that locate the ground of intersubjective cognition (i) by descent from the level of persons as a whole to the sub-personal level of their elements or component parts, (ii) by ascent to a supra-personal level, and (iii) exclusively at the level of whole persons. Second, we may distinguish between (i) naturalistic theories, and (ii) theories which maintain that intersubjective cognition has non-naturalistic, thus "metaphysical," grounds. Third, an associated distinction may be drawn between (i) theories which construe intersubjective cognition as fundamentally dependent on an empirical causal relation, and (ii) theories which deny that any such relation is fundamental to intersubjective cognition.

These distinctions are rough, and not exhaustive, but they help to establish the philosophical geography. The following alignments are familiar. At the one extreme are the theories of the German idealists, distinguished by their commitment to supra-personal and non-naturalistic grounds of intersubjective cognition. At the other extreme are naturalistic, sub-personal theories which maintain that our knowledge of others is achieved by way of empirical causal relations between behavioural acts and the causes thereof, and empirically formed (perhaps innate, hard-wired, neurally realised) representations of these. In the territory that lies between these extremes, which it is tempting to think of as that of "common sense" or "the natural attitude," various permutations are possible. Sartre's theory, like Wittgenstein's, appears to belong here. Sartre insists on locating the ground of intersubjective cognition at the level of whole persons: Sartre takes it as a guiding principle throughout his discussion that knowledge of others cannot be grounded on bodily facts and causal relations involving them (what he calls "realism"), nor that we are permitted to make reference in our account of intersubjective...