our reactions to a piece of sculpted wood” (TE 89 ). In other words, with
intentionality, “Husserl has restored the horror and the charm to
things.” He has given us back the world of the artist and the prophet:
frightful, hostile and dangerous, with its havens of grace and of love.
And he has cleared a place for a new treatise on the passions based on
this homely truth that “If we love a woman, it is because she is lovable”
(TE 89 ). Sartre might well have been thinking of Scheler in this regard,
but he likewise offered “paradigm case” arguments in his many ethical
remarks, not to mention the basic moral/ethical character of his plays
and novels. As Heyden White has observed, “Wherever there is narra-
tive, there is a moral.”^34
Finally, almost as a corollary to his thesis on intentionality, Sartre
makes a point that will attract much attention among the structuralists
and poststructuralists of the last quarter of the twentieth century: “Every-
thing is external to consciousness, everything,even ourselves:outside,in
the world, among others.” This is yet another point that will assume
importance both in the following essay and inBeing and Nothingness.
Transcendence of the EgoOf Sartre’s philosophical pieces, this is the most highly regarded by
philosophers of various schools. Anglo-American philosophers, some of
whom expressed suspicion of “French fog,” are fulsome in their praise of
this original and vigorously written work. And by expounding the “ego-
less” consciousness just mentioned, it sustains its relevance to recent
philosophical discussions on both sides of the Channel.
The critical philosophy of Immanuel Kant left us with the problem of
the two egos: theempiricalego, which is the object of psychological
reflection and scientific examination, and thetranscendentalego, a prop-
erly philosophical concept. Strictly speaking, though Husserl talks of
transcendental consciousness and subjectivity, Kant speaks of the “tran-
scendental unity of apperception” and the “I think” that accompanies
every conscious process.^35 The empirical ego is the subject of our
(^34) See Heyden White,The Content of the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representa-
35 tion(Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press,^1987 ),^24.
See Eugene Fink’s famous essay on the three egos in Husserl’s thought: “Die Pha ̈nomeno-
logische Philosophie Edmund Husserls in der gegenwa ̈rtigen Kritik,”Kant-Studien 38
66 Teaching in the lyce ́e, 1931–1939