READING SARTRE Jean-Paul Sartre was one of the most influential philosophers of the twen- tieth century. The fourteen original essays in this volume focus on the phenomenological and existentialist writings of the first major phase of his published career, arguing with scholarly precision for their continuing importance to philosophical debate. Aspects of Sartre’s philosophy under discussion in this volume include: Consciousness and self-consciousness Imagination and aesthetic experience Emotions and other feelings Embodiment Selfhood and the Other Freedom, bad faith, and authenticity Literary fiction as philosophical writing. Reading Sartre: On phenomenology and existentialism is an indispensable resource for understanding Sartre’s philosophy. It is essential reading for students of phenomenology, existentialism, ethics, or aesthetics, and for anyone interested in the roots of contemporary thought in twentieth-century philosophy. Jonathan Webber is Lecturer in Philosophy at Cardiff University. He is the author of The Existentialism of Jean-Paul Sartre (Routledge, 2009) and translator of Sartre’s book The Imaginary (Routledge, 2004). READING SARTRE On phenomenology and existentialism Edited by Jonathan Webber First published 2011 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 270 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016 This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2010. To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk. Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2011 Jonathan Webber for selection and editorial matter; individual contributors for their contributions. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Reading Sartre : on phenomenology and existentialism / edited by Jonathan Webber. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Sartre, Jean-Paul, 1905–1980. 2. Phenomenology. 3. Existentialism. I. Webber, Jonathan. B2430.S34R43 2010 194--dc22 2010008825 ISBN 0-203-84414-9 Master e-book ISBN ISBN 13: 978-0-415-55095-6 (hbk) ISBN 13: 978-0-415-55096-3 (pbk) ISBN 13: 978-0-203-84414-4 (ebk) CONTENTS Notes on contributors vii Preface ix 1 The ethics of authenticity 1 CHRISTINE DAIGLE 2 Imagination in non-representational painting 15 ANDREAS ELPIDOROU 3 What is it like to be free? 31 MATTHEW C. ESHLEMAN 4 The transcendental dimension of Sartre’s philosophy 48 SEBASTIAN GARDNER 5 Being colonized 73 AZZEDINE HADDOUR 6 A Sartrean critique of introspection 90 ANTHONY HATZIMOYSIS 7 Imagination and affective response 100 ROBERT HOPKINS 8 The significance of context in illustrative examples 118 ANDREW LEAK 9 The graceful, the ungraceful and the disgraceful 130 KATHERINE J. MORRIS 10 Magic in Sartre’s early philosophy 145 SARAH RICHMOND v CONTENTS 11 Alienation, objectification, and the primacy of virtue 161 ALAN THOMAS 12 Bad faith and the Other 180 JONATHAN WEBBER 13 Pre-reflective self-consciousness and the autobiographical ego 195 KENNETH WILLIFORD 14 Shame and the exposed self 211 DAN ZAHAVI Bibliography of Sartre’s works cited 227 Bibliography of other works cited 230 Index 239 vi CONTRIBUTORS Christine Daigle is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Brock University and Past President of the North American Sartre Society. She is the author of Le nihilisme est-il un humanisme? Étude sur Nietzsche et Sartre (2005) and Jean-Paul Sartre (2009), is co-editor of Sartre and Beauvoir: The Riddle of Influence (2008), and has published articles on the ethics of Nietzsche, Sartre, and Beauvoir. Andreas Elpidorou is a doctoral candidate in philosophy at Boston Uni- versity and Visiting Scholar at the University of Pittsburgh. He is writing his dissertation on the nature of perceptual content. Matthew C. Eshleman is Associate Professor of Philosophy at University of North Carolina Wilmington. He is the author of a series of articles on Sartre and Beauvoir, focusing on their theories of freedom, bad faith, and normative justification. Sebastian Gardner is Professor of Philosophy at University College London. He is the author of Sartre’s Being and Nothingness (2009), Kant and the Critique of Pure Reason (1999), Irrationality and the Philosophy of Psychoanalysis (1993), and numerous papers on metaphysics, aesthetics, and psychoanalysis in European philosophy since Kant. Azzedine Haddour is Senior Lecturer in French at University College London. He is the author of Colonial Myths: History and Narrative (2001), editor of The Fanon Reader (2006), co-translator of a collection of Sartre’s essays, Colonialism and Neocolonialism (2001), and author of various articles on Sartre and postcolonial theory. Anthony Hatzimoysis is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the Uni- versity of Athens. He is the author of The Philosophy of Sartre (2010) and editor of Self-knowledge (forthcoming) and Philosophy and the Emotions (2003). He has published a range of articles on the nature and knowledge of emotion. vii CONTRIBUTORS Robert Hopkins is Professor of Philosophy and Head of the Department of Philosophy at The University of Sheffield. He is the author of Picture, Image and Experience (1998) and a range of articles in aesthetics, epistemol- ogy, and philosophy of mind, focusing on beauty, depiction, testimony, perception, and imagination. Andrew Leak is Professor of French at University College London. He is a former President of the UK Sartre Society and former editor of Sartre Studies International. He is the author of The Perverted Consciousness: Sexuality and Sartre (1989), Jean-Paul Sartre (2006), and numerous articles on existentialism, literature, and critical theory. Katherine J. Morris is Fellow in Philosophy at Mansfield College, University of Oxford. She is the author of Sartre (2008) and editor of Sartre and the Body (2010), and has published a range of articles on the nature of embodiment and the philosophy of psychiatry and psycho- analysis. Sarah Richmond is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at University College London. She has published articles on phenomenology, psychoanalysis, and feminist philosophy, focusing on the nature of lived experience and drawing particularly on Bergson, Klein, and Sartre. Alan Thomas is Professor of Ethics at Tilburg University and Director of the Tilburg Hub for Ethics and Social Philosophy. He is the author of Value and Context: The Nature of Moral and Political Knowledge (2006) and numerous articles in philosophy of mind, moral psychology, and the metaphysics and epistemology of moral value. Jonathan Webber is Lecturer in Philosophy at Cardiff University. He is the author of The Existentialism of Jean-Paul Sartre (2009) and translator of Sartre’sbookThe Imaginary (2004). He has published articles on moral psychology and applied ethics, focusing on the nature and ethical importance of character and personality. Kenneth Williford is Associate Professor of Philosophy at The University of Texas at Arlington. He is co-translator of Sartre’s book The Imagina- tion (2010) and co-editor of Self-representational Approaches to Conscious- ness (2006), and has published a series of articles on the nature of consciousness. Dan Zahavi is Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Center for Subjectivity Research at University of Copenhagen. He is the author of numerous books and articles in philosophy of mind and cognitive sci- ence informed by twentieth-century phenomenological philosophy, including Self-awareness and Alterity (1999) and Subjectivity and Selfhood (2005), and is co-author of The Phenomenological Mind (2008). viii PREFACE Reading Sartre is no easy task. Although much of his substantial oeuvre is characterised by a brisk lucidity, his philosophical writings tend to involve dense, entangled, abstruse passages at crucial moments and the gradual development of his own idiosyncratic terminology as he struggles to articu- late his comprehensive and systematic account of our existence in all of its dimensions. Yet these writings have proved fertile ground for readers with a wide range of theoretical interests, yielding valuable insights and perspectives in return for exegetical and argumentative labour. This is especially true of his philosophical output of the 1930s and 1940s, his most clearly phenom- enological and existentialist works which form the basis of the rest of his career. Part of the aim of this book is to provide a snapshot of current scholarly engagement with these works and the contribution this is making to various discussions and debates. In so doing, it documents inevitable inter- pretive disagreements among those currently working with Sartre alongside much agreement across their diverse intellectual styles and commitments. The contributions to this book range across the breadth of Sartre’s philosophical concerns in the first decade or so of his published career, including the nature of mind and its relation to the rest of reality, the ways in which we understand ourselves and one another, the moral and political dimensions of interpersonal