Immanence and Illusion in Sartre{u2019}s Ontology of Consciousness

This book is a critical re-evaluation of Jean-Paul Sartre{u2019}s phenomenological ontology, in which a theory of egological complicity and self-deception informing his later better known theory of bad faith is developed. This novel reinterpretation offers a systematic challenge to orthodox apprehensions of Sartre{u2019}s conceputualization of transcendental consciousness and the role that the ego plays within his account of pre-reflective consciousness. Heldt persuasively demonstrates how an adequate comprehension of Sartre{u2019}s theories of negation and reflection can reveal the world as it appears to human consciousness as one in which our reality is capable of becoming littered with illusions. As the foundation upon which the rest of Sartre{u2019}s philosophical project is built, it is essential that the phenomenological ontology of Sartre{u2019}s early writings be interpreted with clarity. This book provides such a reinterpretation. In doing so, a philosophical inquiry emerges which is genuinely contemporary in its aim and scope and which seeks to demonstrate the significance of Sartre{u2019}s thought, not only as significant to the history of philosophy, but to ongoing debates in continental philosophy and philosophy of mind A Revaluation of Sartre’s Ontology......Page 5 What This Work Is Not......Page 15 Note on Translations......Page 17 Acknowledgements......Page 24 Contents......Page 26 A Brief Outline of This Work......Page 28 Abbreviations for Works by Sartre......Page 37 Sartre’s Critique of Hegel’s Logic......Page 39 Sartre and Bergson: An Agreement About Nothingness18......Page 49 Conscious Activity and Nihilating Differentiation: Internal Negation and External Negation......Page 54 Why Is Non-Thetic Awareness So Important?......Page 65 The Origin of Non-Thetic Awareness: Sartre’s Critique of the Cartesian Cogito......Page 69 Apperception and Inner Sense: Immanent Versus Transcendent Unity......Page 77 Immanent Versus Transcendent (Non-)Thetic Awareness......Page 83 Perceptual (Non-)Thetic Awareness and Négatités: Gestaltic Totalization of Actual Multiplicities......Page 96 Psychic (Non-)Thetic Awareness and Négatités: Egological Totalization of Virtual Multiplicities......Page 106 Bodily (Non-)Thetic Awareness: Lived Monadological Totalization......Page 119 Psychic Time-Consciousness as a Multiplicity of Juxtaposition......Page 131 Psychic Time-Consciousness as a Multiplicity of Interpenetration......Page 137 Original Time-Consciousness: A Unity Which Multiplies Itself; or, a Continually Discontinuous Continuity......Page 144 The Nihilating Temporalization of Time and the Nihilating Spatialization of Space......Page 155 The Hegelian Dialectic of Space and Time......Page 168 The Dialectic of Totalization and the Nihilating Spatialization of Psychic Space......Page 175 The Illusion of Immanence......Page 185 Memorial Totalization......Page 198 Texts by Sartre......Page 215 French Texts by Sartre......Page 216 Other Relevant Texts......Page 217 Index......Page 225