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

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

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

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

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

This book gives the beginning student one more passable text to chose for an introductory survey of the history of Western philosophy. Surveys of this sort usually contain some questionable assertions—e.g., referring to Aquinas' proof of God from motion, Stumpf states: "Potentiality means the absence of something and is therefore nothing...". But Stumpf writes clearly enough and includes a useful bibliography.—D. J. B.

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

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

Man’s rational practice requires an intelligible and affirmable world, but as composed of the elements of metaphysical dualism, such a world is either arbitrary as a concatenation of meanings willfully projected on natural bodies, or an illusion to be absorbed into the actual but meaningless being of natural matter. The project of phenomenological ontology bears on the "future orientation of our civilization" because it aims to reconstruct a familiar world for man from the "broken totality" shattered by metaphysical dualism. Fell (...) places Heidegger and Sartre at the forefront of this project. (shrink)

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

In chapter one I cover the basic concepts developed in Being and Nothingness, notable those of "temporality," "negation," "anguish" and "bad faith." In chapter two I move from the individual as the center of free action, to the individual in relation to the Other. In chapter three I attempt to unify the perspectives in the first two chapter and present a theory of action. In chapter four I introduce the reader to the Critique and establish its thematic links with Being (...) and Nothingness. In chapter five I analyze the ramifications of the concept of the practico-inert, which, for Sartre, is inseparable from human sociality. In chapter six I deal with the concept of organization, which refers to the contradictions within the social group as it moves into advanced stages of social integration. In chapter seven I cover the concepts of power and authority. Chapter eight deals with the idea of dialectical humanism and highlights essential concepts in the work by way of concluding it. --Introduction. (shrink)