that “the point of view of pure knowledge is contradictory; there is only
committed (engage ́e) knowledge” (BN 308 ).
Two other cardinal features of Sartre’s subsequent philosophy make
their appearance in this small essay. The first is simply repeated almost
as an aside, when Sartre likens the relation between consciousness and
world to a “nothingness” (un ne ́ant de monde et de conscience) and goes on
to argue that, if consciousness tried to coincide with itself, it would self-
destruct. “Ifper impossibileyou tried to enter ‘into’ a consciousness, you
would be grasped by a whirlwind and thrown outside, near the tree and
into the dust because consciousness has no ‘inside’”(TE 88 ). Anyone
familiar withBeing and Nothingnesswill recognize these features of self-
coincidence and nonself-coincidence as essential characteristics of what
Sartre will term being-in-itself and being-for-itself respectively, and the
relation between the latter and the former as one of “neantization”or
“nihilation.”^33 These emerge as defining features of Sartre’s “vintage”
existentialist thought inBN.
The second addition is an expansion of intentionality from the purely
cognitive to the evaluative and the emotive. We can “intend,” that is, be
“in the world,” in a loving, a fearing or a hating manner and not merely
in a cognitive way. The result is that the corresponding object of our
“intending” is something lovable, frightful or hateful. It is not simply
that we “project” subjective qualities on a neutral object the way a
projector casts an image on a blank screen. It is that the object’s qualities
are in essential relationship to our attitude toward it. Intentionality
throws us into a world that is hateful, frightful and lovable. This has
implications for Sartre’s theory of imaging consciousness, as we shall see.
But in the present case, Sartre is describing how Husserl’s intentionality
accounts for the “objectivity” of values and disvalues without appealing
to an inside/outside epistemology. This will prove especially suggestive
for his aesthetic and ethical theories. He concludes his brief discussion
with an example from each.
“It is apropertyof this Japanese mask to be terrible, an inexhaustible,
irreducible property belonging to its very nature – and not the sum of
(^33) This is another reason to favor dating this essay closer to the initial reflections in the late
1930 s that lead to the composition ofBeing and Nothingness. We shall note similar anticipa-
tions of basic theses and themes ofBNin Sartre’sWar Diariesof 1939 and 1940. Again, this
could be just another instance of late additions to an earlier text prior to its publication.
The first fruit of Sartre’s Berlin efforts 65