A TAKE ON SARTRE’S CRITICISMS TO HUSSERL IN THE TRANSCENDENCE OF EGO

INTRODUCTION

     There are many versions of phenomenology that came after and surprisingly before Husserl mentioned it as his philosophy. Hegel used the term phenomenology in his Phenomenology of the Spirit yet we ponder was this the phenomenology that Husserl is stressing? Moreover, Husserls predecessors such as Kant also used the same term. Husserl embraced phenomenology and even baptized the term much later in his works for he was concerned first in creating arguments that are against the trend of psychologism during his time. Psychologism was a grand perversion of empiricism in a way that it has placed all into contingency without a way out. Most of Husserl’s early works are devoted into giving explanations against psychologism. “His preoccupation with refuting ‘naturalism’ and ‘psychologism’ is the dominant theme in the first volume of Logische Unterschungen.”[1] Moreso, he wish to save the crisis that is looming especially that psychologism is also paired with growing interest on science. Although, Husserl is for science but towards the perversion thereof which is scienticism, he is strongly against it, because he asserts that there is something that is objective. By objective, he is not referring to mere possibilities with experience but something that governs truth making as there is the truth to truths. Thus it is his task “. . . his project of laying the groundwork of a strictly scientific philosophy.”[2]  Most celebrated are his rigorous explanations in giving a view on what this ‘phenomenology’ is.

     There were many of those who follow Husserl who eventually broke up with him. Many claimed to be phenomenological yet the most diehard of Husserl scholars say that his is the only phenomenology that there is.[3] Among those who are prominent is Jean Paul Sartre. Jean Paul Sartre gave phenomenology an existential and psychological twist as he delved into psychology in one of his books The Sketch on the Theory of Emotions and later on to his magnum opus Being and Nothingness. Yet traces of Sartre’s discord with Husserl comes from his work on Transcendence of Ego as he gives his arguments pertaining to Husserl’s claims. The area here pertains to the ego of which is varied from Descartes. Here then is the main concern of the paper.

SARTRE AS A PHENOMENOLOGIST

     Husserl and Sartre all look back to the influence that Descartes gave unto them of which founded the way to their central themes pertaining to the thinking I. Descartes made that breakthrough into giving the focus to the subject when it comes to finding out certitude. Through methodically doubting everything, Descartes has done to a certain extent what a radical sceptic would do, but he did not end in all out contingency of things as he was keen on what remains to be ‘true’. Therefore, in every moment of doubt one must secure oneself to another plain of which one can lay rest onto.

“Now before beginning to rebuild the house where one lives, it is not enough to knock it down, to provide building materials and architects  (or to practice architecture oneself), and to have the plans drawn carefully, it is also necessary to have provided oneself with another house which to live comfortably while the rebuilding is taking place.”[4]

     This tactic into the doubting process initiated by Descartes proved that whenever one deconstructs, he has to secure one’s self while the deconstruction takes place. Moreover, what can be implied is that even though that this tactic could serve as a first step into the doubting process but as it goes ad infinitum then at the end of it Descartes found that house wherein he has to stay amidst everything deconstructed and that is the thinking I. Needless to say, amidst the doubt, there is one thing sure of and that is the thinking I. Coming from this vantage point, objectivity has moved from purely objective to the evaluation of the knower, the subject. Later on, both Husserl and Sartre would stress on the subject (given that it is the consciousness) but Husserl followed the German obsession of objectivity coming from transcendental aspects of consciousness which was laid out by Kant. The German tradition focused more on what is in the mental act or the formal structures of consciousness not of the ‘fact’ or the ‘material’. “Unlike Kant, for instance, who approached experience from the aspect of its general validity and necessary conditions, French philosophers from Descartes to Sartre have been concerned mainly with questions of fact – not with the transcendental conditions of thought, but with the actually thinking and experiencing cogito; not with the necessary but with the sufficient conditions; not with the formal but with the ‘material’ structures of consciousness.”[5]

     Although French philosophy echoes the Cartesian cogito but Sartre added a psychological twist to it. However, what comes as a similarity between Husserl and Sartre is the central theme of consciousness coming from the Brentano’s intentionality. In the reduction of everything into being grasped by consciousness, then consciousness becomes the major concern into arriving at objectivity (Husserl) or that existential purpose (Sartre). The concern of Sartre is not on the formal categories which are within consciousness of which helps into arriving at objectivity for he regarded this as an impossible take into mapping out such. He was more concerned with the experience of consciousness of which gravitates into two poles “a) the experience of radical autonomy from being, of freedom, a personal escape from the threat of being or becoming a determined and derterminate ‘thing’ and b) the recognition that consciousness has no single essence, that it cannot be defined like other realities but only described in its polymorphous variety.”[6] Thus, Sartre’s take on consciousness tackles on the ‘behaviour’ of consciousness which is implied in its ability to experience.

     Supposed to be consciousness should be a no-thing­ yet it creates its self identification when it relates itself with objects, with beings. “Consciousness tends to get bogged down in being. There is too much of it. It is soft, warm, sticky, sweet, suffocating, viscous, corpulent, flabby, expressive. We cannot comprehend it; it stands there dumb, in bad faith.” [7] “Consciousness alone, though embedded in being through its body, experiences itself to be not a thing but the consciousness of things, not a being but consciousness of being, i.e. a no-thing, separated from being by nothing but itself.”[8] Thus coming from the fact that it mistakenly relates itself as a being within the multitude of beings, then acknowledging that the identification of consciousness with being can be changed presupposes that consciousness indeed is a no thing i.e. a blank canvass wherein man can paint more or undo. This is where freedom lies, when one acknowledges that no-thing structure of one’s consciousness and thus one is ‘free’ to associate, accumulate meaning along the way.

     The notion of intentionality echoes on Sartre as consciousness indeed is always conscious of an object i.e. being. Intentionality is transcendence as consciousness is oriented towards something which is not itself. This is where true freedom is at, the ability to change to a something beyond itself.

     Sartre stressed on consciousness in the real as opposed to Husserl as a substrate of where the fundamental categories are at. Real in the sense that it is always related to the experience of individuals and not the kind of phenomenology that is obsessed with hardcore objectivity but with something practical and that is existential. Moreover, let us go to the points where Sartre drafted his own brand of phenomenology as he stems away from Husserl.

TRANSCENDENCE OF THE EGO?

              “The phenomenology of Husserl was a reflexive inquiry, or a philosophy of consciousness.” [9] 

     Husserl’s main objective again is to map out the structures of consciousness in order to bridge the link between the subject and the object into gaining certitude. Husserl has first dedicated a testament onto objectivity by tackling the objects themselves and then in his later works focus on the subject of which is the recipient of the world. That is why, eventually Husserl was not anymore concerned on the experience of consciousness but more on to what is within consciousness that gives ‘certitude’ to the objects perceived. Moreover, consciousness for Husserl “is consciousness of an object and composes no part of the object.”[10] The consciousness is in-itself independent from the object and coming from this assertion, he is hinting on the fact that consciousness is can be a totally separate entity, thus he recourse to the notion of an ego which has all the constructs in order to 'take on' objects. The germs of such ideas can be read in his Logical Investigations Vol I where he hints of a unifying principle of all areas of the sciences. In the chapter The Idea of Pure Logic the main question he raised is “what makes science a science?”

“Science  is , in the first place a unified item in anthropology: it is a unity of acts of thinking, of thought-dispositions, as well as of certain external arrangements pertinent thereto. . . . We are rather interested in what makes science science.” [11]

     Although this section concerns with Husserl want to establish about an overarching theory of science which can be seen as not yet concerning the structures of consciousness, but it is evidential enough that along the way he mentions of interconnections of all sciences, of all truths and together with their validity of which may pertain to the functional aspect of consciousness through logic, which may hint of the externality of consciousness as a logical entity but also the logic behind the logic which consciousness permeates itself through specific scientific disciplines. “All scientific procedures of the objective sciences of fact are governed, as Descartes and Leibniz saw, not by psychological contingency, but by an ideal norm.”[12]

     Looking at Husserl’s phenomenology gives us a notion of it being dry and devoid of a kind of ‘immediate experience’ that Sartre would stress upon. Not only is Husserl concerned with inner structures of consciousness that can help us in the quest of validating objectivity but he even extends to the point of objectivity in letting objects as such in an ‘idealistic’ fashion. “Husserl insisted that the phenomenologist ‘bracket’ questions of fact.”[13] This has become also an epistemic concern as the “theory of knowledge need not to be closeted with the activities of consciousness, but could go directly in reflection to the intended objects of consciousness and the principles governing them.”[14]

     Eventually, there is this implication of an ego that governs intentionality of which possesses the above mentioned structures. However, the Sartre contends if ever this ego is indeed a substrate or an object. “Is the I that we encounter in our consciousness made possible by the synthetic unity of our representations, or is it the I which in fact unites the representations to each other?”[15] The question aims to attack how the followers of Kant viewed ego of which Husserl too claims especially on the hinting of the inevitability of an ego to be a reflection of the ‘I think’, more or like a ‘me’. “It is a real consciousness accessible to each of us soon as the ‘reduction’ is performed. And it is indeed this transcendental consciousness which constitutes our empirical consciousness, our consciousness in the world, our consciousness with its psychic and psychophysical me.[16] “But we raise the following question: is not this psychic and psycho-physical me enough? Need one double it with a transcendental I, a structure of absolute consciousness?” [17] To Sartre there is no more need to recourse to the 'unifying and individualizing I’ because consciousness as being conscious of something always transcends itself into the relation with objects. Thus there can be no I without an object. I is always in relation to the object, but this cannot be an I for an I is a product of refletion. There can be no transcendental ego that is absolute and an isolate. Consciousness finds itself in attachment to being, to others. "It unifies itself by escaping itself."[18]

     Moreover, Husserl justifies that this so called I can be proven via an examination on memory wherein one recalls the I. While reflecting on consciousness via memory, we can see the I. Sartre replies that “. . . but the I was no inhabiting this consciousness. It was only consciousness of the object and non-positional consciousness of itself. . . there was no I in the unreflected consciousness.”[19] Upon memory, what we can recall is consciousness being conscious not that of an I. In memory, it is the unreflected consciousness that we gain insight to, for ‘it’ was immersed in intentionality not reflection.

CONSCIOUSNESS FOR EXISTENTIALISM

     Sartre’s project into criticizing Husserl was that of revealing that there can be no transcendent ego as mentioned above. But to devote oneself into finding that ego deviates us from what really matters. Although finding that domain of the purest of logic and to be able to have a description of it ‘may’ solve once and for all the question concerning truths and objectivity, but the impossibility presented to attain such calls us to redirect our ‘conscious’ efforts towards something else. Even via memory, the I cannot be attained, thus there can be no instance that consciousness is ‘removed’ from the world because it is always conscious of the world, on facts. Thus the focus is on being, is on the world and even the nausea of consciousness of self-identification to beings which is not it. The shift now points towards into the scenario wherein what are we to consider urgent because what we have is that indeed we are immersed in the world and later on it is called in existentialist language ‘facticity’. This then were Sartre deviates from Husserl as matters of fact are present and demands ‘care’ into how we relate to it. The concern is not anymore how Husserl would save science, but on how we could relate to the world in order to live. Thus, the drive is bring consciousness to the core of it always conscious of something and ought to relate with it, to live and not to find its absolute erasure by finding that transcendent ego, the I in consciousness.

                                                       

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Descartes, Rene. Discourse on Method and Related Writings translated by Desmond Clarke. New York: Penguin Books. 1999.

Husserl, Edmund. Logical Investigations Vol I translated by J.N. Findlay. New York: Routledge. 2001.

_________. Phenomenology and the Crisis of Philosophy: Philosophy as Rigorous Science and   Philosophy and the Crisis of the European Man translated by Quentin Lauer. New York: Harper and Row Publisher. 1965.

Lee, E. & Mandelbaum, M. Phenomenology and Existentialism. Baltimore: The John Hopkins Press. 1967.

Sartre, Jean Paul. The Transcendence of the Ego translated by Forrest Williams and Robert   Kirkpatrick. New York: Hill and Wang . 1960.

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[1] Husserl, Edmund. Phenomenology and the Crisis of Philosophy: Philosophy as Rigorous Science and Philosophy and the Crisis of the European Man translated by Quentin Lauer. New York: Harper and Row Publisher. 1965. p. 3.

[2] Ibid. p. 4

[3] According to a footnote on the translation by Quentine Lauer on the introduction to the Phenomenology and the Crisis of Philosophy: Philosophy as Rigorous Science and Philosophy and the Crisis of the European Man he says that “many of Husserl’s most ardent disciples are preferred to base their own investigations on the earlier ‘practical’ method than on the later idealistic theory. . .”. Thus, this is where the divide happens; however, if they were to adopt the earlier Husserl and the reject the later one, it does not mean a total overhaul of the thoughts of the man because the later is implied in this earlier works.

[4] Descartes, Rene. Discourse on Method and Related Writings translated by Desmond Clarke. New York: Penguin Books. 1999. pp. 18-19.

[5] Lee, E. & Mandelbaum, M. Phenomenology and Existentialism. Baltimore: The John Hopkins Press. 1967. P.142. (The section is the sixth essay in the book entitled as Sartre as Phenomenologist and as Existential Psychoanalyst by James M. Edie.)

[6] Ibid. p.143.

[7] Ibid. p.145.

[8] Ibid. p.145.

[9] Sartre, Jean Paul. The Transcendence of the Ego translated by Forrest Williams and Robert Kirkpatrick. New York: Hill and Wang . 1960. p. 12.

[10] Ibid. p.13.

[11] Husserl, Edmund. Logical Investigations Vol I translated by J.N. Findlay. New York: Routledge. 2001. p.144

[12] Ibid. p. 161.

[13] Sartre, Jean Paul. The Transcendence of the Ego translated by Forrest Williams and Robert Kirkpatrick. New York: Hill and Wang . 1960. p. 16.

[14] Ibid. p.15.

[15] Ibid. p.34.

[16] Ibid. pp.35-36.

[17] Ibid. p.36.

[18] Ibid. p. 38.

[19] Ibid. p.47.