CONSCIOUSNESS AND PHENOMENON IN SARTRE: IN SEARCH OF THE TRANSPHENOMENAL BEING

Abstract

This article seeks to articulate the notions of consciousness and phenomenon in the
philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, a prominent name in French existentialism. Based on the heritage of
Husserl’s phenomenology, Sartre seeks to position himself on the controversy between realists and
idealists about the subject-object relationship and the consequent problem of knowledge. At his back,
Sartre has the strands of transcendental philosophy (Kant and Husserl), which also took a position on
the quarrel. The article goes through texts by the young Sartre and the “Introduction” of Being and
Nothingness in order to recover the uniqueness of the Sartrean solution to the problem of knowledge. I
argue that this question has been present sinde Sartre’s first texts and is linked to the philosopher’s
appropriation of phenomenology, and, above all, of the concept of intentionality of consciousness,
which gains existential contours. In Being and Nothingness, however, the question undergoes a
decisive inflection because it presents itself in its ontological, or onto-phenomenological aspects,
which points to the complementary notion of the transphenomenality to characterize both the being of
consciousness and the being of the phenomenon. Such an endeavor requires understanding that all consciousness is a relationship with the world, which seems to extrapolate the original limits of
phenomenology of continuity with critical philosophy. I propose that Sartre redimensions the issue in
properly existential terms, irreducible to the strict sphere of knowledge. To this end, the philosopher
seeks a creative synthesis arising from the reelaboration of the transcendental tradition, between the
critical project and the phenomenological project.