can attend to the being of the phenomena but “brackets” or “suspends”
access to the transphenomenal.^34 Whatever transcendence or “otherness”
remains in Husserl’s “reduced” world is transcendencewithinimmanence –
a condition that Sartre, rightly or wrongly, will later reject as an idealist
position. In Sartre’s view, on the contrary, the intuition of essences does
not reach being because the phenomenon of being is not a concept, not
an eidos to be abstracted, but an experience of another kind. Sartre
remarks that “being will be disclosed to us by some kind of immediate
access – boredom, nausea, etc. and ontology will be the description of
the phenomenon of being as it manifests itself; that is, without inter-
mediary” (BNxlviii). So “the being of the phenomenon [its “to be
perceived”] can not be reduced to the phenomenon of being” (BN
xlix). This means that the phenomenon of being is “ontological” in the
sense that St. Anselm and Descartes appealed to an “ontological
argument” to usher us via definition into the realm of being. Sartre
is claiming that “the phenomenon of being requires the transpheno-
menality of being,” not in the sense that being lies “hidden” behind
the phenomenon like the Kantian thing-in-itself, but in the sense of
another dimension coextensive with that very phenomenon. Pace
Heidegger, Sartre is insisting that his version of human reality
(Dasein) is likewise ontic-ontological and not merely ontic or anthro-
pological or average-everyday as Heidegger claims.
The upshot of these considerations is that “the being of the phenom-
enon, although coextensive with the phenomenon, cannot be subject to
the phenomenal condition – which is to exist only insofar as it reveals
itself – and that consequently it surpasses the knowledge which we have
of it and provides the basis for such knowledge” (BNl). This is the being
we have already seen Sartre designate as the “in-itself.” He now speaks
explicitly ofbeing-in-itself.
Without repeating the argument Sartre offers to reveal the transphe-
nomenal dimension of the “to perceive,” it leads to consciousness as
(^34) Without pursuing the Husserlian side of this issue any further, let me point to the debatable
concept of the “hyle ́” or “matter” of the “reduced” object that seems to have been
introduced by the early Husserl to defend his “realism.” In his review of Sartre’sL’Imagi-
naire, recall, Merleau-Ponty takes his friend to task for allotting such importance to this very
problematic concept in Husserl’s work (see above,Chapter 5 ). Reprinted in Merleau-Ponty,
Parcours 1935 – 1951 ( 11220 Lagrasse: E ́ditions Verdier, 1997 ), 45 – 54. Sartre did come to
reject this concept as did Husserl.
178 The war years, 1939–1944