“interstructural,” not causal. Because of what he will later call the
“translucency” of consciousness, he will point out that “there is an
immanent bond ofcomprehensionbetween the symbolization and the
symbol.”^36
In an aside that could open the door for more degrees and modes of
consciousness and responsibility than Sartre will ever explicitly recog-
nize, he remarks: “This does not at all mean that this signification has to
be perfectly explicit. Many degrees of condensation and clarity are
possible” (STE 32 ). Aside from the distinctions between thetic and
nonthetic consciousness and the prereflective and the reflective, Sartre
will consistently reject talk of “degrees” of consciousness and hence of
responsibility, as we shall see.
Now the intentionality of emotive consciousness such as Sartre adapts
from Husserl is clearly cognitivist; it points to an object in the world. As
Sartre puts it, it is a matter ofbelief. But it is not “intellectualist,” that is,
it is not a “theoretical” way of relating to the world. Emotional con-
sciousness is a way of being-in-the-world that synthesizes bodily change,
behavior and knowledge. In an expression that will henceforth be a staple
in Sartre’s vocabulary, finding particular use in his massive Flaubert
study, emotion isconduite d’e ́chec(setback behavior). As intentional, it is
purposeful and does constitute an object; as behavior, it is a practical
orientation toward the world; as setback behavior, emotional conscious-
ness employs a kind of “magical” transformation of the subject’s body in
order to conjure up, as if by magic, a change in the world that allows it to
deal with a challenging situation: one struggles against the ropes, one
gets hypertensive, one faints.
Two examples of such “setback behavior” will illustrate Sartre’s
account. A golfer who lands in a sand trap and, despite repeated swings,
fails to extricate himself, starts to perspire, may get red in the face and
(^36) STE 32. In March 1940 , a few months after the publication of this book (December 1939 ),
Sartre will argue in hisWar Diariesfor “an inner relation of comprehension” between Kaiser
Wilhelm’s withered arm and imperial German foreign policy toward England (WD 301 ;
F 366 ). This hypothesis advances Sartre’s theory of history which is starting to take shape in
response to Raymond Aron’s brilliant defense of his studies in the philosophy of history for
hisdoctorat d’e ́tatin 1938. In fact, I have argued elsewhere that “prereflective awareness,”
“comprehension” and “lived experience” (le ve ́cu) are functional equivalents of the classical
unconscious (seeSFHRi: 206 and 307 ,n. 6 ; andL/S 127 – 128 ). Sartre will later describe
comprehension as the “self-awareness of praxis.”
100 First triumph:The Imagination