In his Carnets de la drôle de guerre (1939-1940), Sartre wrote, day after day, that consciousness is « captive », « naked », « inhuman », « absurd », « poisoned », « duplicitous », « lying » and « non-thetic ». He also wrote that consciousness is « infinite » (because it envelops the infinite) and « transcendental » (because it transcends itself).

Finally, perhaps as a high point of consciousness’ transcendence, he wrote that it is « absolute ». In Being and Nothingness, Sartre’s masterpiece, published four years later, in 1943, the question of consciousness is dealt with in some seven hundred pages, rough, dry and chiselled. One gleans in it that consciousness is « pure appearance », « total emptiness », « reflection », « exhaustive », « lack », « slippery slope », « interrogative », « awareness of being other ». Consciousness also is « bad faith ». But it is also ‘revelation-revealed’, and even ‘ontico-ontological’ (i.e. it is in movement, it moves from ‘being’ towards ‘knowledge about being’). It is the « self », it is an « infinite », and also the « neantisation in itself »; it is « presence to oneself » and it is also « at a distance from oneself as presence to oneself ». A strong formula sums up all these apparent contradictions: « consciousness is what it is not and it is not what it is », — which is another way of saying that it is « bad faith ».

This is not to say that consciousness is, since it is not (what it is). Nor is it to say that consciousness is not, since it is what it is not. So what is it? To try to answer, let us analyse some of the qualifiers Sarte attributes to it.

« Captive »

Consciousness is ‘captive’ to the body, but it is also ‘captive’ to the finitude imposed on it by death. It is captive to the nonsense that death imposes on its present. However, this captivity is only relative, because consciousness also knows itself to be infinitely transcendent, and therefore infinitely capable of breaking all the ties that death or finitude seem to bind it.

« Now the man I am is at once consciousness captive in the body and the body itself and the acts-objects of consciousness and the culture-object and creative spontaneity of its acts. As such, he is both abandoned in the infinite world and the creator of his own infinite transcendence (…) It is through transcendental consciousness that man is abandoned in the world. »ⁱ

« On the subject of what I have just written: one factor is missing, and that is death. If consciousness exists only through its transcendence, it refers to the infinity of itself. But it is precisely the fact of death that brings this infinite reference to a halt. At every moment, consciousness has meaning only through this infinity, but the fact of death cuts off this infinity and deprives consciousness of its very meaning. However, the fact of death is not learned in the same way as the infinite transcendence of consciousness. The latter is experienced; the fact of death is learned. We know only the death of others, and therefore our death is an object of belief. In the end, therefore, it is transcendence that triumphs. »ⁱⁱ

If, in the end, it is « transcendence that triumphs », does that mean that in the end (i.e. in death?) we must find transcendence, and the infinite triumphant?

But isn’t Sartre an atheist? Of course he is, but he is an ambiguous atheist, who likes to make ‘transcendence’ triumph in the end, against all odds.

Could it be an atheistic transcendence? Undoubtedly, yes. But what is atheistic transcendence? Undoubtedly a non-theistic transcendence, unencumbered by all the theological baggage that millennia have weighed down our beliefs. In any case, this transcendence transcends consciousness, but also constitutes it.

« Naked »

Naked consciousness is a consciousness that demands the greatest possible ‘purity’ of itself. But this search is endless, or tragic. As the behaviour of a friend of Sartre and Beauvoir reveals, consciousness « entangled in itself » ends up becoming « mad », in other words « poisoned ». It goes round in circles, wants to get out of itself, then gives up, because it sees at the same time that it would be a false exit, a ‘comedy’. And then the trap closes. Consciousness is only ever laid bare in appearance; it always remains clothed in some clinging garment, or rather a Nessus tunic, a poisoned and burning gift that it has clothed itself in, on the pretext of saving itself. « That’s what strikes me about Dostoyevsky: I always get the impression that I’m dealing not with the ‘heart’ or the ‘deep unconscious’ of his characters, but with their naked conscience, entangled in itself and struggling against itself. In this sense, R.B., a madwoman, was unwittingly doing Dostoyevsky at his best. She would say to us, very simply: « Well, I’ll put on my hat and come downstairs with you, I’ll buy the newspapers to read the small ads » (she had just told us that she had resigned and was looking for a new job). She took a few steps and then threw her hat on the sofa: « No, I’m not going out, it’s an act. Then, lost and with both hands to her face: « But what I’ve just said is also an act! My God, how can I get out of this? » But it wasn’t because she was mad that she was « doing » Dostoyevsky – but because her madness had temporarily taken the form of a great demand for purity, which revealed to her the necessary poisoning of conscience ».ⁱⁱⁱ

« Poisoned »

Conscience is poisoned by its own passion, which tears it apart and drives it to fight ever harder against itself. It is a poison that does not come from some external vial poured by an assassin. Poison, like any pharmakon, is at first seen only as a medicine, supposed to cure consciousness of itself. But as soon as it begins to act, it reveals its true, deadly nature. Consciousness in search of purity and nakedness poisons itself. « About Nastasia Philippovna, a character in The Idiot: I think: what could be greater than what she does? What place would she have in the Holy Russia he dreams of? And isn’t she better this way, passionate, torn apart, fighting against her passion, against her poisoned conscience, poisoning herself at every level of the struggle and finally dying victorious over herself? »^iv

« Inhuman and absurd »

War fills all consciousness with its own « fullness », in order to deny it. It organises the world and human beings according to its laws, turning them into inert objects. « To destroy is not to annihilate, it is to dehumanise man and mankind. world. Man and the world become, or rather make themselves, inert objects in the face of transcendental consciousness. We now find the absurd fullness of inhuman existence in the face of inhuman and absurd consciousness ».^v War adds to the « absurd » side of existence, by « making things » of human reality. But the more this reality becomes « reified » (chosifiée), the more transcendental consciousness becomes « purified ». « The man of war is to reify himself in the face of transcendental consciousness, in the midst of a world to be disorganised ».^vi The man of war reifies himself and the world, everything becomes a thing-for-war, everything becomes disorganised, with a view to organising war. But in the face of this reified world, transcendental consciousness takes flight all the more.

« Duplicitous and lying »

The expression ‘duplicitous and lying’ is found in a note written by Juliette Simont about a text by Sartre on his mescaline injection in February 1935 at the Hôpital Sainte-Anne. « For Sartre, the ‘lies’ of the madman mean: all consciousness is in some way duplicitous and lying, but the madman [lies] to himself in a specific way — which is also a mode of consciousness and not an absolutely opaque night. »^vii Juliette Simont explains that, according to Sartre, « ‘normal’ consciousness is already in itself depersonalised, duplicitous, insubstantial, elusive, conducive to the lies to oneself for which Being and Nothingness will elaborate the concept: that of ‘bad faith’. »

The expression ‘bad faith’ is used 172 times in L’Être et le Néant, but the word ‘duplicity’ is used only twice, first in connection with a coquettish woman who flirts with a suitor, without really wanting to give in to him, but without wanting to break the spell of the ‘first approaches’ either.^viii It is also used to refer to the type of homosexual who has difficulty admitting his condition.^ix

Duplicity is not a Sartrean concept. Bad faith is.

« Non-thetical »

In a note, Arlette Elkaïm-Sartre explains that the non-thetical(or non-positional) consciousness of something is « a consciousness that does not return on itself to posit the existence of what it is aware of. »^x This consciousness « which does not return on itself » is therefore partly unaware of itself, or at least partly unaware of what it is aware of.

Sartre says more briefly that it does not know itself. « If [consciousness] has only a non-thetical consciousness of itself, it does not know itself. What remains is recourse to a reflexive consciousness directed at the mobile consciousness ».^xi

Non-thetical consciousness « does not know itself », it has no « position » as to what it is or knows of itself. It does not return to itself to « posit » (or weigh) its own existence, its origin or its end.

On the other hand, of a consciousness that is « positional », we could say that it « poses » itself, at the same time as it « poses » what it is aware of, that is, what it perceives as external to itself.

When it ‘poses’ itself, it certainly returns to itself, but it does not yet know itself; it only ‘poses’ what it perceives and what it believes it knows. The true essence of consciousness is precisely to be able not to pose itself, to be able to remain outside the world, apart from its immediate presence in the world. In short, its essence is to be ‘non-thetical’.

« Infinite »

Consciousness envelops the infinite, since it transcends itself, and never ceases to transcend itself. ^xii

But how do we know this? We cannot know it directly, only indirectly. What we do know is that the essence of consciousness is to transcend itself, because if it ceases to transcend itself, then it is no longer ‘consciousness’, it is a ‘thing’, it is reified. And if it always transcends itself, then, mathematically, if I may say so, because it is a reasoning by recurrence, it can only go on to infinity, unless of course it is stopped by death. But who can say what happens to consciousness after death? Materialists claim that at death the brain stops, and that the flow of consciousness ceases incontinently. But there are other theories that are difficult to refute a priori. It is perfectly possible, in theory, that the consciousness we possess results from the interaction of a material substrate (the neurons in our brain) with an immaterial principle (the soul). At death, the material support dissolves, but the immaterial principle may fly off into some ether, who knows? Perhaps it will then interact with other types of substrate, of which we have no idea? But how can such an immaterial principle interact with a material substrate? One might reply that matter is only ‘material’ for materialists. Matter itself could possess an immaterial essence, but simply lacking the specific form with which the soul is endowed. The union of form with matter is a general and generic principle, once defined by Aristotle. The existence of this principle explains the plausibility and possibility of the specific union of a singular soul with matter (cerebral matter, for example), in which it is called upon to immerse itself, for a time.

« Transcendental »

Consciousness needs a finite point of view, » says Sartre. That is the body. But consciousness cannot be satisfied with a finite object, because that would be a death sentence for it. It needs to be open to the infinite. Bringing these two needs together is the role of ‘transcendental’ consciousness. It ‘completes’ one with the other. « It is not possible to conceive of any finite object, because that would be a halt for consciousness. Any object that is finite in its size will be infinite in its smallness, and so on. But in this infinite world,consciousness needs a finite point of view. This point of view is the body. Infinite if it is taken as an object by others, finite if it is my body felt as mine. We therefore find this antithesis of the finite and the infinite at the level of things, but here it is no longer created but suffered; it is the antithesis between things and the thing in itself. In other words, here the finite and the infinite oppose and repel each other instead of complementing each other as they do at the level of transcendental consciousness. » ^xiii

Transcendental consciousness is not static or contemplative. It must become, it must make itself human-reality. « Wisdom is immortal. Authenticity, on the other hand, can only be achieved in and through historicity. That’s more or less what Heidegger says. But where does this ever-present hesitation between wisdom and authenticity, between timelessness and history, come from? It is because we are not only, as Heidegger believes, human-reality. We are transcendental consciousness that becomes human-reality ».^xiv Sartre can therefore be considered neither a materialist nor an idealist. Transcendental consciousness hovers far above matter. So out with materialism. But it is not a pure or ideal abstraction, so out with idealism. On the other hand, consciousness must become a « human reality ». It’s as if we were reading a rewriting of the Christian dogma of the Incarnation in Sartre’s pen. Consciousness is like a god who must become incarnate in « human reality ».

« Absolute »

Sartre does more than claim genius for himself. He claims an « absolute awareness » of the world. « Sometimes I even have the impression that by attributing genius to myself I am falling short of my standards. To be content with that is to fall short. This pride, in fact, is nothing other than the pride of having an absolute conscience in the face of the world. Sometimes I marvel at being a consciousness and sometimes at knowing an entire world. A consciousness supporting the world, that is what I pride myself on being and, finally, when I condemn myself harshly and without emotion, it is to a primitive state of supporting the world that I return. But, it will be said, this state of supporting the world is common to all men. Precisely so. So this pride oscillates between the singularity of each consciousness and the generality of the human condition. I am proud to be a consciousness that assumes its condition of human consciousness; I am proud to be an absolute.^xv

This statement (« I am proud to be an absolute ») opens the way to all freedoms of thought and being. It implies that every human being is also an absolute. Each of the billions of humans crammed into our drop of blue water and dry mud is entitled to be seen as an ‘absolute’, as an absolutely singular, singularly absolute being.

From this idea, which is itself absolute, we have only just begun to perceive the distant, unimaginable implications, and the close, imperative consequences, which require action hic et nunc.

There is nothing materialist or idealist about the idea of ‘the absolute’, whether it be Sartrean or metaphysical, or whatever form we are given to conceive or perceive it in. The absolute is beyond the perceptible and the conceivable. But it is not beyond intuition and feeling. It is no pleonasm to say that the absolute abolishes absolutely everything that is relative. It challenges the singular. It forces all singular consciousness to measure itself against the very yardstick of its absolute transcendence…

How can a simple consciousness, alone and singular, look the absolute light of absolute transcendence in the face without dying? In absolute terms, it has to be said, there is nothing to ‘see’ straight away. All you need is silence. To take a breath. And then begin to move slowly, in its infinite infinity.

In Sartre’s pride in being « an absolute », I am tempted to detect a deliberately emphatic exaggeration, or a tragi-comic provocation, intended to impress the « bourgeois », — whether this « bourgeois » corresponds to the intimate part of Sartre which was perfectly aware of his intrinsic « bad faith » (to which we shall return in another blog), or that this ‘bourgeois’ represents his readership in the broadest sense, — a public eager for soft thrills, ephemeral disdain, pusillanimous impulses, soft revolts against the masters of thought under whose yoke, dazed, they have an irremissible tendency to masochistically place themselves.

But Sartre, this ‘genius’, this ‘proud’ and ‘absolute’ mind, had more than one trick up his sleeve. He knew that no matter how full of absolutes he was, he had to tone it down, lose his superbness, crack the shell of his considerable ego.

« With Gauguin, Van Gogh and Rimbaud, I have a clear inferiority complex because they knew how to lose themselves. Gauguin by his exile, Van Gogh by his madness, and Rimbaud, more than all of them, because he knew how to give up even writing. I think more and more that, to achieve authenticity, something has to break. »^xvi

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iJuliette Simont notes that « Sartre here sketches out an attempt at conciliation between Husserl and Heidegger on the relationship between man and the world ». She also notes that « the word ‘infinite’ does not appear in Heidegger’s writings, or only to be challenged. The ‘abandonment’ — ‘dereliction’ in Corbin’s translation — is experienced not in the presence of the infinite, but of ustensility, where human reality ‘is assigned to a ‘world’ and […] actually exists with others’ (Being and Time, p.187). In other words, the abandonment is not due to that which infinitely transcends consciousness, but to that which prevents it from being permanently face to face with its most proper possibility, death. » Ibid. note 181, p.1411-1412

iiJean-Paul Sartre, Carnets de la drôle de guerre, Notebook 1, Tuesday 10 October 1939, in Les Mots et autres écrits autobiographiques, Gallimard, 2010, p.223-225

iiiJean-Paul Sartre, Carnets de la drôle de guerre, Notebook 1, Monday 16 October 1939, in Les Mots et autres écrits autobiographiques, Gallimard, 2010, p.238-239

ivJean-Paul Sartre, Carnets de la drôle de guerre, Notebook 1, Monday 16 October 1939, in Les Mots et autres écrits autobiographiques, Gallimard, 2010, p.239

vJean-Paul Sartre, Carnets de la drôle de guerre, Notebook 1, Wednesday 18 October 1939, in Les Mots et autres écrits autobiographiques, Gallimard, 2010, p.250

viJean-Paul Sartre, Carnets de la drôle de guerre, Notebook 1, Wednesday 18 October 1939, in Les Mots et autres écrits autobiographiques, Gallimard, 2010, p.251

viiNote on ‘Notes sur la prise de mescaline’. In Jean-Paul Sartre, Les Mots et autres écrits autobiographiques, Gallimard, 2010, p.1609

viiiJean-Paul Sartre, L’Être et le Néant, Gallimard, Paris, 1943, p.92

ix« This is certainly a man of bad faith that borders on the comical, since, while acknowledging all the facts imputed to him, he refuses to draw the necessary conclusions. His friend, who is his most severe censor, is annoyed by this duplicity: the censor asks only one thing – and perhaps then he will show himself indulgent: that the guilty party admit his guilt, that the homosexual declare openly – in humility or claim, it doesn’t matter – « I am a pederast ». We ask here: who is acting in bad faith? The homosexual or the champion of sincerity? » Jean-Paul Sartre, L’Être et le Néant, Gallimard, p.98

xNote 259, p. 1418, in op.cit.

xiJean-Paul Sartre, Carnets de la drôle de guerre, Notebook 1, Monday 16 October 1939, in Les Mots et autres écrits autobiographiques, Gallimard, 2010, p.275

xii« Indeed consciousness, as we intuitively conceive it, after phenomenological reduction, envelops the infinite by nature. This is what we must first understand. Consciousness, at every moment, can only exist insofar as it refers to itself (intentionality: to perceive this ashtray is to refer to subsequent consciousnesses of this ashtray) and insofar as it refers to itself, it transcends itself. In this way, each consciousness envelops the infinite insofar as it transcends itself. It can only exist by transcending itself, and it can only transcend itself through the infinite. Jean-Paul Sartre, Carnets de la drôle de guerre, Notebook 1, Tuesday 10 October 1939, in Les Mots et autres écrits autobiographiques, Gallimard, 2010, p.222-223

xiiiJean-Paul Sartre, Carnets de la drôle de guerre, Notebook 1, Tuesday 10 October 1939, in Les Mots et autres écrits autobiographiques, Gallimard, 2010, p.223

xivJean-Paul Sartre, Carnets de la drôle de guerre, Notebook 1, Tuesday 17 October 1939, in Les Mots et autres écrits autobiographiques, Gallimard, 2010, p.244

xvJean-Paul Sartre, Carnets de la drôle de guerre, Carnet 1, Vendredi 13 octobre 1939, in Les Mots et autres écrits autobiographiques, Gallimard, 2010, p.235-236

xviJean-Paul Sartre, Carnets de la drôle de guerre, Notebook III, Wednesday 22 November 1939, in Les Mots et autres écrits autobiographiques, Gallimard, 2010, p.307