monadic totality that refers to the self of consciousness by itself [the
ipseity just mentioned].”^19
ConversionAll this is effected by what inBNSartre called a “Pure” or “purifying”
reflection as distinct from an “impure” or accessory reflection – our
standard “turning back on ourselves” that produces the ego and the
Me of reflective psychology – the “psychic” object. What makes pure
reflection different (and difficult to conceive) is that it seems to “reflect”
without objectifying. In effect, it purports to catch consciousness “on the
wing.” This yields an intensified grasp of the prereflective such as Sartre
describes in the phenomenological ontology ofBeing and Nothingness.^20
Sartre does speak of purifying reflection as a katharsis (BN 159 – 160 )
and it seems to carry an evaluative significance especially in the
Notebooks. If one simply limits the purifying reflection to the process
of changing one’s fundamental “Choice” in the sense that it is a
“criterion-constituting” Choice such as we can find in Kierkegaard, then
the name “conversion” is appropriate. It then denotes a radical shift of
the fundamental project to abandon the desire to be God (in-itself-for-
itself) and authentically to live one’s selfness (ipseity) spontaneously and
(^19) NE 418 .InChapter 14 below we discuss this major distinction between subject and
subjectivity in the later Sartre. It is the topic of his Confe ́rence de Rome of December 12 ,
1961 , not to be confused with the subsequent “Rome” and “Cornell” lectures delivered or
scheduled to be delivered in 1964 and 1965 respectively.
(^20) Some have likened it to Husserl’s “phenomenological reduction” that shifts our awareness
from the “natural attitude” of naive realism to the properly philosophical attitude that
“suspends” such uncritical belief and renders everything “phenomenal.” We have proposed
that what remains is the same melody but in a different key (see Thomas BuschThe Power of
Consciousness and the Force of Circumstances in Sartre’s Philosophy[Bloomington, IN: Indiana
University Press, 1990 ]). The difficulty is that Sartre also takes this reduction in a moral
sense and not simply the epistemological sense adopted by Husserl. From the start of his
career, inTranscendence of the Ego, for example, Sartre has given this reduction a moral
reading. This resonates with his describing it as a “conversion,” calling it “purifying” and
describing it as a “katharsis.” Consider: “But pure reflection can be attained only as the
result of a modification which it effects on itself and which is in the form of a katharsis. This
is not the place to describe the motivation and the structure of this catharsis” (BN 159 – 160 ).
On this topic, see Dorothy Leland, “The Sartrean Cogito: A Journey between Versions,” in
William L. McBride (ed.),Sartre and Existentialism,vol.iv, Existentialist Ontology and
Human Consciousness(New York: Garland, 1996 ), 167 – 180.
272 Ends and Means: existential ethics