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Pure Reflection: Self-Knowledge and Moral Understanding in the Philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre

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Pure Reflection: Self-Knowledge and Moral Understanding in the Philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre PURE REFLECTION: SELF-KNOWLEDGE AND MORAL UNDERSTANDING IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF JEAN-PAUL SARTRE Christopher Vaughan Submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Philosophy Indiana University August 1993 Accepted by the Graduate Faculty, Indiana University, in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. __________________________________________ Paul Vincent Spade, Ph.D. __________________________________________ Paul Eisenberg, Ph.D. Doctoral Committee __________________________________________ Milton Fisk, Ph.D. __________________________________________ David Pace, Ph.D. July 30, 1993 Copyright © 1993 Christopher Vaughan ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank the Department of Philosophy and Indiana University for their support of my graduate studies. I would like to thank the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the Department of West European Studies for the Dissertation Write-Up Fellowship which made the final year of this research possible. I would also like to thank the members of my committee, and in particular my director, Paul Vincent Spade, whose guidance and careful comments were invaluable at every stage. I could not have asked for a better, more conscientious, or more helpful advisor. My thanks also to Robert Stone and Monica Hornyansky for so kindly responding to my inquiries and offering helpful suggestions and insight. Finally, I would like to express my gratitude to my parents, to Noemí and Richard, to Omer and Choi, to Liz, and to Christina for their company, encouragement, and support. It made all the difference in the world. iv PREFACE This project began as a re-evaluation of Sartre’s moral theory in an attempt to answer what appeared to me as the surprisingly unanswered question of the nature of authenticity. Sartre’s moral theory has attracted vastly more comment than his metaphysics, despite the fact that Sartre had vastly less to say about it. It struck me that in the substantial body of critical literature on this topic, the basic terms of Sartre’s thinking on morality had yet to be satisfactorily defined. That is what I set out to do. In the course of my research it quickly became clear to me that the question of authenticity turned on a prior question which had been even less adequately addressed, namely, the nature of pure reflection. The concept of pure reflection is an interesting one, first because of its tantalizing obscurity but even more for its role as the conceptual link between Sartre’s ontology and his never-fully developed morality. Pure reflection is the key to understanding many things in Sartre: the continuity between his ontology and his ethics, the ethical terminology he employs, and the ultimate direction his ethical thought would have taken. For this reason, any reasonably thorough interpretation of Sartre’s morality must begin by settling the question of pure reflection. This had never been done, and it was hence to this question that I turned my attention. This dissertation is thus a study of pure reflection. Through the careful reading of his texts and the consideration of his philosophical influences, I have attempted to v arrive at an interpretation which makes sense of what Sartre says and will serve as the starting- point for a more thorough study of his moral thought as a whole. In the interest of restricting my scope to the reasonable, I have not attempted to address all the outstanding questions about Sartrean ethics. I have, however, indicated in my final chapter several obvious moral conclusions which follow from my interpretation and the manner in which they address certain long-standing criticisms of Sartre. It is my hope that this will give some indication of the direction which our understanding of Sartrean ethics should take. Since this work is almost wholly exegetical, I have foregone any attempt at criticism of Sartre’s theory. There is criticism enough to be found in the body of Sartre commentary, most of which, in my opinion, suffers from a failure to fully understand what it seeks to critique. I have not so much attempted to defend Sartre as simply to explain him, but it is my sense that in the course of explanation many of the common objections raised against Sartre are adequately answered. Sartre’s defenders have often complained that his work is badly understood. I agree. It is in redress of this complaint that I primarily undertook this project. Because the nature of chapter one necessarily requires the drastic summarization of a number of theories that cannot be developed here in detail, it assumes a greater degree of background knowledge than the chapters which follow. The non-specialist reader may find it forbiddingly dense. The material contained in chapter one is important to understanding the terms of the problem which the remaining chapters address and represents an uneasy compromise between the need to provide such a background vi and the limitations of space and scope. The reader who is unfamiliar with the terminology of chapter one might do well to begin with chapter two and return to the first chapter later. I have, in my notes, cross-referenced the French editions of Sartre’s texts with their English translations, although I have given all quotations from Sartre in English. Where non- standard editions of these texts exist, I have attempted to use the standard ones. I have done the same in my references to Francis Jeanson, whose special stature among Sartre’s critics merits careful attention, and for certain quotations from Simone de Beauvoir where the translation is important and questionable. Where I have referenced texts by other authors not originally written in English, I have not cross-referenced the original, since nothing of import hangs on the fine points of their translation. I have, however, included the original-language editions of all works cited in my bibliography, again using standard editions where available. I have also noted in the bibliography the original publication dates of all texts where they differ from the edition cited (and is not obvious), in the interest of making clear what was available when vii Christopher Vaughan PURE REFLECTION: SELF-KNOWLEDGE AND MORAL UNDERSTANDING IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF JEAN-PAUL SARTRE This dissertation develops an interpretation of pure reflection in Sartre’s early philosophy. The primary contention is that while the concept of pure reflection is not well- developed it is crucial to understanding Sartre, and that it is possible to reconstruct an understanding of pure reflection from Sartre’s brief indications which is both coherent and consistent with Sartre’s thought as a whole. Chapter one presents the concept of pure reflection as a response to a specific set of problems about reflection in Sartre’s phenomenology. Reflection arises in the first instance as a problem of epistemology. The epistemological problem of reflection is translated into an ontological problem in Being and Nothingness, and on this ground becomes a problem of morality. Pure reflection represents Sartre’s response to the problem on all three levels. The narrow definition of the problem of reflection suggests an equally narrow definition of pure reflection. Chapter two argues that pure reflection cannot be understood as a special case of the phenomenological reduction as it has sometimes been maintained, but rather viii requires a distinct type of consciousness which is closely related to Sartre’s view of conception in The Psychology of Imagination. Likewise, pure reflection is not arrived at through abstraction as it has also been thought, but must immediately deliver consciousness to itself without an object. On the basis of these considerations, it is argued that pure reflection is on the one hand identical to the experience of anguish and on the other represents a reflective thematization of the pre-reflective cogito. Chapters three and four present the case that this reflective thematization is analogous to the notions of “intuition” in Bergson and “understanding” in Jaspers, respectively, which reflects a direct and substantial influence of Bergson and Jaspers on Sartre’s thought that is often overlooked. Chapter five develops the implications of this interpretation for Sartre’s ethical theory, maintaining that the concept of authenticity is rendered more intelligible and that Sartre’s understanding of moral judgment as a consequence avoids several of the serious objections that have been raised against his theory. ix CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS iv PREFACE v ABSTRACT vii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS xii Chapter I. THE PROBLEM OF REFLECTION HUSSERL THE TRANSCENDENCE OF THE EGO REFLECTION II. PURE REFLECTION PERCEPTION, IMAGINATION, AND CONCEPTION THE PHENOMEONOLOGICAL REDUCTION ANGUISH CATHARSIS AND THE PRE-REFLECTIVE COGITO III. BERGSON, INTUITION, AND THE FUNDAMENTAL SELF BERGSONIAN INTUITION THE FUNDAMENTAL SELF INTUITION AND INTELLECTUAL EFFORT x IV. JASPERS AND UNDERSTANDING UNDERSTANDING REVELATION THE UNUNDERSTANDABLE EMPATHY AND AUTHENTICITY V. CONVERSION, AUTHENTICITY, AND SARTREAN MORALITY ORIGINAL CHOICE CONVERSION PLAY AUTHENTICITY SARTREAN MORALITY SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY PRIMARY SOURCES (BY SARTRE) OTHER PRIMARY SOURCES SECONDARY SOURCES xi LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS All works are by Sartre unless otherwise noted. BN Being and Nothingness: A Phenomenological Essay on Ontology. Translated with an introduction by Hazel Barnes. New York: Philosophical Library, 1956; New York: Washington Square Press, Pocket Books, 1966. References are to the Pocket Books edition.1 C Cahiers pour une morale. Edited by Arlette Elkaïm-Sartre. Bibliothèque de philosophie. Paris: NRF, Gallimard, 1983. CDG Les Carnets de la drôle de guerre: Novembre 1939–Mars 1940. Paris: NRF, Gallimard, 1983. CS “Consciousness of Self and Knowledge of Self.” Translated by Mary Ellen Lawrence and N. Lawrence. In Readings in Existential Phenomenology, ed. Nathaniel Lawrence and Daniel O’Connor, 113–142. Englewood Cliffs (N.J.): Prentice-Hall, 1967. CDS “Conscience de soi et connaissance de soi.” Bulletin de la Société française de philosophie 42, no.3 (April–June 1948): 49–91.
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