And it occurs in his posthumously publishedNotebooks for an Ethics,
composed in 1947 – 1948. But it plays its major role inSearch for
a Method and theCritique of Dialectical Reason where it supplants
consciousness (“being-for-itself) as the vehicle of transcendence and
freedom. It is already clear that Sartrean consciousness is goal-oriented.
InBNhe had taken it as coextensive, if not synonymous, with life-
orienting fundamental choice. Already inBN, Sartre claimed that “the
view of pure knowledge is contradictory: there is only the viewpoint
ofcommittedknowledge. This amounts to saying that knowledge and
action are only two abstract faces of an original and concrete relation”
(BN 309 ;EN 370 ). The significance of this conception of knowledge as a
form of action is that it translates easily into knowledge as a form of
praxis and all that will accompany it in terms of dialectical relations and
understanding (Verstehen). This, of course, remains to be elaborated in
theCritique of Dialectical Reasonin the 1960 s, but it assures us that the
move from consciousness to praxis was not an about-face. Correlatively,
it echoes Marx’s famous claim in the 1844 Manuscriptsthat the time had
come no longer merely to understand the world but to change it. Sartre
had been moving in that direction for some years.
The appearance of the concept of lived experience (Erlebniss;le ve ́cu)
was as significant in Sartre’s vocabulary as that of praxis. “Lived experi-
ence” was introduced, as Sartre explained, to enrich the situational and
the subconscious aspects of “consciousness” that it supplanted in his
writings:
What I callle ve ́cu– lived experience – is precisely the ensemble of the dialectical
process of psychic life, in so far as this process is obscure to itself because it is a
constant totalization, thus necessarily a totalization which cannot be conscious of
what it is....“Lived experience,” in this sense, is perpetually susceptible of compre-
hension but never of knowledge.
(BEM 41 )
He explains: “I suppose [le ve ́cu] represents for me the equivalent
of conscious-unconscious” (L/S 127 ). As we noted earlier in our study,
le ve ́cuseems to be a refinement of “prereflective” consciousness inBN
where you understand more than you (reflectively) know.
This major modification of Sartre’s psychology enables him to appeal
to “Freudian” concepts without resorting to the opaque realm of the
unconscious. The unblinking eye of Sartrean consciousness is retained
and our unqualified responsibility preserved. An “existential” approach
294 Means and ends: political existentialism