Sartre, whom we saw praise “intentionality” for restoring our physical
and cultural worlds with their properties and values, now finds in
Husserl’s attenuated version of the transcendental turn a concession to
idealism that he had opposed since his studies with Brunschvicg and
others. Hence the title of his essay: “Transcendence of the Ego.” It plays
on the double genitive: objective and subjective. The “transcendental”
Ego bequeathed to us by Kant and retained by Husserl as the “subject
that cannot be an object” is “transcended” in the sense that we have
moved beyond it, while the “empirical Ego” is rendered other than or
“transcendent” to consciousness – as we already saw sketched in the
Carnet Dupuis. The transcendental Ego is “transcended” (rendered
unnecessary) and the empirical Ego is affirmed as heterogeneous (tran-
scendent) to consciousness. In sum, there is only one Ego and it is an
object “in the world” (almost) like other things. I caution “almost”
because we shall witness Sartre pulling his punches toward the end of
the essay when he concedes that we are “more intimate” with our own
egos than with those of others. We shall consider what Sartre means by
“intimate” in this context as we now study the entire text.
Its subtitle is “Sketch for a Phenomenological Description.” In add-
ition tointentionality, which Sartre praises for offering a third alternative
to epistemological realism and idealism, it is thedescriptive forceof the
method that attracts him. Indeed, his “factum” on contingency is a kind
of prolonged phenomenological description of our experience of the
contingency of our existence. The present work constitutes a close
reading of a second principle of Husserlian phenomenology in addition
to “intentionality,” namely, the phenomenological “reduction” to a tran-
scendental consciousness or ego.
phenomenology isnota science of facts but one of essences and that he distinguishes fact as
contingent from essence as a priori and necessary (seeIdeas§ 8 ). Indeed, Husserl’s early
opposition to the “psychologism” of neo-Kantian philosophers and others centered on the
irreducibility of an a priori science to an empirical one (a science of “essences” like logic or
mathematics to a science of “facts” like empirical psychology). One can sense already an
impending parting of the ways between Husserl and the “existential” phenomenologists on
the critical issue of the existing individual, theexistent. Can its existence be captured in a
“reduction”? Or does it slip through the net, leaving it disqualified for “scientific” study and
mired in the vulnerabilities of the “natural attitude”? This is a question that must be
properly formulated and its elements sorted out as phenomenological description becomes
existential analysis with Heidegger and existential psychoanalysis with Sartre.The first fruit of Sartre’s Berlin efforts 69