The Subject in Question: Sartre's Critique of Husserl in The Transcendence of the Ego

by Priest; Stephen

• ISBN13: 9780415213691
• ISBN10: 041521369X
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2000-08-04
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

The Subject in Questionprovides a fascinating insight into a debate between two of the twentieth century's most famous philosophers over the key notions of conscious experience and the self. Edmund Husserl, the father of phenomenology, argued that the unity of one's own consciousness depends on the "transcendental ego," an irreducible, essential self not available to ordinary consciousness. But inThe Transcendence of the Ego, Jean-Paul Sartre launched a sustained attack on Husserl's doctrine and argued that the self is instead a construct, a product of one's self-image in the eyes of others. In this first book-length commentary on Sartre's influential work, Stephen Priest explores Sartre's hostility to any essentialist conception of the self and sheds new light on the debates over consciousness, the legacy of Descartes and Kant, the nature of selfhood and personal identity, and the development of the phenomenological tradition.

Author Biography

Stephen Priest is Reader in Philosophy at the University of Edinburgh and a Visiting Scholar of Wolfson College, Oxford.

Table of Contents

Preface	vii
Abbreviations	ix
Husserl and the transcendental ego	1	(17)
The transcendental ego and the epoche	1	(2)
The `discovery' of the transcendental ego	3	(5)
The properties of the transcendental ego	8	(10)
The theory of the formal presence of the I	18	(75)
Summary	18	(1)
Sartre on Kant's `I think' doctrine	18	(2)
Is Kant's `I think' doctrine true?	20	(1)
Is Kant's `I think' doctrine purely formal?	21	(3)
Hypostatisation	24	(2)
Subjectivity and synthesis	26	(8)
The unity of consciousness	34	(2)
Sartre's holism	36	(3)
Consciousness makes itself	39	(3)
Individuality	42	(3)
Pre-reflective consciousness	45	(6)
Consciousness without the I	51	(6)
Consciousness with the I	57	(7)
Sartre's cogito	64	(2)
Sartre's retentions	66	(3)
Positional consciousness	69	(6)
The me	75	(6)
The phenomenology of the I	81	(2)
The ego and the epoche	83	(3)
Consciousness and the I	86	(2)
Why the I is not the source of consciousness	88	(2)
Sartre's conclusions on `The I and the Me'	90	(3)
The theory of the material presence of the me	93	(46)
Summary	93	(1)
Sartre's criticisms of La Rochefoucauld	93	(4)
The autonomy of unreflected consciousness	97	(2)
The constitution of the ego	99	(2)
Consciousness and the ego	101	(9)
The ego as the pole of actions, states and qualities	110	(3)
The ego--world analogy	113	(2)
Sartre and the Evil Genius	115	(3)
The certainty of the cogito	118	(3)
Poetic production	121	(4)
Interiority	125	(6)
The structures of the interiority of the ego	131	(1)
Self-knowledge	132	(5)
The ego as ideal	137	(1)
The ego and reflection	137	(2)
Conclusions	139	(15)
A correct transcendental phenomenology	139	(3)
The refutation of solipsism	142	(4)
A non-idealist phenomenology which provides a foundation for ethics and politics	146	(4)
Subject--object dualism	150	(2)
Absolute interiority: towards a phenomenology of the soul	152	(2)
Notes	154	(23)
Select bibliography	177	(3)
Index	180