approach to psychological phenomena that begins with the synthetic
totality of human reality “in situation” as opposed to the analytic
approach of empirical psychology.
But Sartre is doing his best to avoid choosing between Husserl and
Heidegger in this regard. He will never abandon the intentional nature of
consciousness, whereas “consciousness” is conspicuous by its absence in
Heidegger’s major work. But he seems to read the Heideggerian con-
cepts of world and human reality as more synthetic and totalizing than
the Husserlian view. Thus he quotes Heidegger to the effect that “in
every human attitude – in emotion, for example, since we have been been
speaking of that – we can rediscover the whole of human reality, for
emotion is the human reality assuming itself and ‘emotionally directing’
itself toward the world.”^33 Yet Sartre continues to stress the methodo-
logical primacy of Husserlian phenomenology when he admits that any
analysis of “man in situations” must be subordinated to phenomenology,
“since a truly positive study of man in situation would have first to have
elucidated the notions of man, of the world, of being-in-the-world, and
of situation” (STE 12 – 13 ). Phenomenology, he cautions, is still in its
infancy. Sartre regards this sketch as “anexperimentin phenomenological
psychology. We shall try to place ourselves on the level of signification,”
he explains, “and treat emotion as aphenomenon”(STE 14 ;STE-F 30 ).
In his critique of the “classical” theories of William James and Pierre
Janet, therefore, Sartre agrees with Janet against James that a
(^33) STE 10 (Sein und Zeit, 35 – 36 ). In his seminal study,Le Proble`me morale et la pense ́e de Sartre
(Paris: Seuil, 1965 ), Francis Jeanson points to a continuous tension betweenEmotionsand
Being and Nothingness: the former prepares an ontology of the psychological (le psychique) for
which it uncovers the essential structures of consciousness, while the latter elaborates the
existential comprehension of human reality by itself insofar as it exists. Jeanson seeks to
resolve the tension, at least inEmotions, by distinguishing themethodof investigation, which
is Husserl’s contribution, from theobjectof the inquiry, which is Heidegger’s (see 111 ). As
Jeanson summarizes the issue:
The idea here is that ontology must betotal; that is to say, that one must not lose sight of
the fact that its object is double or, better,ambiguous. One must not take it for an
“essential” ontology or let it disappear from the start into an “existential” analysis: in
both cases it lacks its object which is the very relation of essences to existence, of the
intentions of consciousness to their motivations. In brief, ontology can only have as its
object that freedom (liberte ́) that is revealed in affirming itself when intentions give a
meaning (sens) to motivations, but also in renouncing itself when [motivations] tend to
become thecausesof the meanings.
(112)
98 First triumph:The Imagination