2 Early philosophy
Sartre's first published philosophical works were L'Imagination (1936a), a history of theories of imagination up to the
theory of Edmund Husserl, and 'La Transcendance de l'ego' (The Transcendence of the Ego) (1936b). The Transcendence
of the Ego shows hostility to any kind of essentialism of the self. In it Sartre argues (against Husserl) that the ego is not
transcendental but transcendent, that is, it is not an inner core of being, a source of my actions, emotions and character, but
rather a construct, a product of my self-image and my image in the eyes of others, of my past behaviour and feelings. Sartre
maintains that consciousness is not essentially first-person but is impersonal, or at most pre-personal, and that it is
characterized by intentionality, that is to say it is always directed at something other than itself. In this context Sartre
positions himself in relation to the Kantian 'unity of apperception', arguing that although the 'I think' must be able to
accompany all my representations, it does not always do so, at least explicitly. I may turn my attention at any moment
away from what I am doing and direct it towards myself as agent, but this reflexivity is not a permanent, thetic feature of
consciousness. Later, in L'Être et le Néant (Being and Nothingness) (1943a), Sartre claims that it is precisely this very
reflexivity - the self-consciousness of consciousness - that personalizes consciousness and constitutes the human subject, but
in The Transcendence of the Ego such a notion is absent and he is more concerned to argue against the identification of
consciousness with selfhood than to explore the ways in which consciousness relates to the notion of subject.
In his Esquisse d'une théorie des émotions (Sketch for a Theory of Emotions) (1939) Sartre turns his attention to
another area of human experience in order to show that this, in its turn, cannot be described in essentialist terms. Emotions,
in Sartre's account, are chosen rather than caused: emotion involves a 'magical' attempt to transform reality by changing
what can be changed (my own feelings) rather than what is less easily malleable, that is, the outside world. In the face of
extreme danger I may faint from fear: the danger has not disappeared but I am no longer conscious of it. Sartre here takes a
radical position which he maintained but modified in later years, as his recognition of the degree to which we are formed by
external conditions gradually increased. He is careful to distinguish between various areas related to emotion - passion,
feeling and so on. Emotion is not sustainable continuously through time, but is subject to fluctuations of intensity, and may
at times be replaced by alternative feelings. In this sense too Sartre rejects essentialism: like Proust he believes in the
'intermittances of the heart': love, for example, is not a continuous emotional state, but an amalgam of affection, desire,
passion, as well as, perhaps, jealousy, resentment and even occasionally hatred. Love is not the permanent compelling state
we may like to imagine: it is the product of a decision and a commitment (see Emotions, nature of §4; Emotions,
philosophy of §4).
