Existentialism and the for-itself
Explanation
Jean-Paul Sartre published Being and Nothingness (1943) in the midst of the Nazi occupation of Paris, and in it he set out a radical phenomenology of consciousness that would shape generations. His central thesis distinguishes two modes of being: the in-itself (things, full, identical to themselves, with no internal distance) and the for-itself (consciousness, which never coincides with itself because it is always transcending towards something else).
Consciousness, according to Sartre, is essentially nothing. It has no content of its own, it is not a substance, it is not a thing among things. It is pure intentionality, pure capacity to refer to what it is not. That is also why it is pure freedom: nothing in my nature determines me, because I have no fixed nature; I am what I decide to be at each moment.
This radical freedom is the source of the famous existentialist anguish. It is not anguish before a concrete danger, but vertigo before the absolute responsibility of choosing one's own existence without prior instructions. We are condemned to be free, Sartre declares, and we cannot escape that freedom even by denying it: even denial is a choice.
To dodge that anguish we resort to bad faith, a form of self-deception in which we try to pass ourselves off as in-itself, identifying ourselves rigidly with a role or determination. The famous analysis of the waiter who plays at being a waiter with overly precise gestures shows someone trying to be a thing (waiter) instead of a free for-itself acting as a waiter.
Sartre adds a third dimension: being-for-others. When the other looks at me, they objectify me, turning me into a thing among things in their world. The famous keyhole scene (listening at a door and being caught in the act) reveals how the other's gaze constitutes me as an ashamed subject, giving me an identity I no longer control. Hell is other people is to be understood from here.
Sartrean existentialism had an enormous cultural impact in the post-war period and disappoints quite a few present-day readers: doesn't it exaggerate freedom by ignoring neurobiological, social and linguistic constraints? Later existentialists and embodied phenomenology have softened its radicality, but the core —that consciousness is an inner distance, an active negativity, an opening to possibilities— remains one of the most penetrating descriptions of what it is like to be a subject.
Strengths
- Subtle phenomenological analyses of mental phenomena (bad faith, shame, desire).
- Conception of the self as project, compatible with contemporary non-substantialist theories.
- Articulates freedom and consciousness in a non-naively-metaphysical way.
- Lasting influence on psychotherapy and moral philosophy.
Main critiques
- Underestimates the biological and neurological basis of subjectivity.
- The 'for-itself' as absolute nothingness is doubtful (criticised by Heidegger and Lacan).
- Excessive voluntarism: does not take the unconscious seriously.
- Difficult articulation with empirical results on the self.