intentionality to emotional consciousness. But now it is reenforced by
Heideggerian concepts of “being-in-the-world,” “human reality”
(Dasein) and “situation.”^29 As in his previous study, Sartre draws both
on “classical” authors in this field, such as William James, Pierre Janet
and the followers of Wolfgang Ko ̈hler: Kurt Lewin and Tamara Dembo.
At the outset, he is careful to insist that psychology begins with the
study of empirical facts, citing American pragmatist Charles Sanders
Peirce: “the idea of man could only be the sum of the facts which it
unifies” (STE 3 ). In preparation for the phenomenological approach,
Sartre concludes: “In short, psychologists do not notice, indeed, that it is
just as impossible to attain the essence by heaping up the accidents as it
is to reach unity by the indefinite addition of figures to the right of 0. 99 .”
In other words, the analytic method of the natural sciences cannot yield
theeidos/essence of Husserlian eidetic reduction, which separates fact
from essence. As Husserl realized: “that there is an incommensurability
between essences and facts and that whoever begins his researches with
facts will never attain to essences” (STE 7 ). But Sartre now grants that
empirical psychology is equally unable to discover “the meaning of the
synthetic totality which one callsworld. Butman,” he continues, “is a
being of the same type as theworld; it is even possible, that, as Heidegger
believes, the notions of world and of ‘human reality’ (Dasein) are insepar-
able” (STE 5 ). Sartre is mounting his attack on the myopic view that
positive psychological science takes on the emotions, reducing them to
physiological and chemical changes and/or marginalizing their
importance.
In addition to the “eidetic intuition,” which Sartre insists must
take into account “the experience of essences and values,” he remains
(^29) Sartre takes the translation of Heidegger’sDaseinas “human reality” from Henri Corbin’s
translation of a collection of Heidegger’s works that includedWhat is Metaphysics?(the title
essay) along with excerpts fromBeing and Timeand a conference on Ho ̈lderlin (Paris:
Gallimard, 1938 ). Recall that an earlier version of Corbin’s translation of the title essay
had appeared in the same issue ofBifurin which a portion of Sartre’sThe Legend of Truth
was published. But the translation ofDaseinas “human reality” appears to come from the
portion ofSein und Zeitpublished in this later collection entitledQu’est-ce que la me ́taphy-
sique?Sartre’s critics, including Heidegger himself, regarded his adoption of “human reality”
forDaseinboth inThe Emotionsand thereafter, especially inBeing and Nothingness,as
evidence that Sartre had exchanged the ontological significance of Heidegger’s work for a
psychological and ethical interpretation. In effect, Sartre had employed the expression in a
“humanist” sense (seeHFi: 40 – 45 ).
96 First triumph:The Imagination