possibly utter remarks indicative of frustration and anger with every
futile move. Sartre reads this as the subject’s way of conjuring up an
alternative “world” in which the problem is resolved by these bodily
changes as if by magic. Sartre’s point is that there is a finality to
emotional consciousness as there is to all consciousness. But emotions
exploit “the twofold character of the body as both an object in the world
and as something directlylivedby consciousness” (STE 50 – 51 ). And
here is where the cognitive dimension enters the scene: emotion is a
phenomenon of belief. This, Sartre thinks, is the essential point.
Another example seems especially prescient in view of the famous film
of Hitler’s little “jig” performed under the Arc de Triomphe during the
Nazi occupation of Paris. Sartre describes someone who literally “jumps
for joy” in a quasi-magical attempt to possess “all at once” the desired
object that of its nature requires a temporal unfolding.^37 Such emotions,
Sartre summarizes, “are tantamount to setting up a magical world by
using the body as a means of incantation” (STE 47 ). But he warns
that there are more than the four major types of emotion (fear, joy,
sadness and anger) that he sketches here. To grasp the significance
and the finality of each, one would have to analyze each particular
situation. “It is only when he has been convinced of the functional
structure of emotion that one will come to understand the infinite variety
of emotional consciousness” (STE 47 ).
Toward a phenomenological theorySartre’s common criticism of most psychological theories is that they
treat emotional consciousness as if it were primarily a feature of reflective
consciousness. This would mean that fear, for example, would be origin-
ally consciousnessofbeing afraid rather than our prereflective (what here
he callsirre ́fle ́chie) awareness of a fearful situation as the phenomenolo-
gists insist. This is the significance of emotional consciousness under-
stood as originally a manner of being “in the world” rather than as a
second-order awareness of the complex, fear-object. Again, Sartre is
synthesizing Husserlian intentionality with Heideggerian being-in-the-
world so as to avoid the recurrent problem of an inside-outside
(^37) SeeSTE 35 – 36 , 39 – 41 and especially 45 – 47.
Sketch for a Theory of the Emotions 101