“Reduction” denotes a suspension of belief (in Greek, epochē), a
withholding of judgment. It resembles the attitude of the ancient
Skeptics as well as Cartesian doubt. But in Husserl’s usage, it “brackets”
the naive belief in the “out there now real” character of our everyday
knowledge. In effect, it suspends the “Being” question that had haunted
metaphysics from its birth. Since it is a methodical “purification” of the
mass of uncritical beliefs harbored in our “natural attitude,” reduction is
not the definitive doubt of the Pyrrhonian Skeptics but resembles more
closely the “universal methodic doubt” of Descartes. Yet it seeks to
radicalize Descartes’s doubt by “reducing” even the empirical ego, as
Sartre observed in theCarnet Dupuis. Moreover, it does so with help
from Husserl’s phenomenological analysis of time consciousness, which
was missing in Descartes and, on Husserl’s view, not adequately analyzed
by Kant.
Sartre’s thesis is that the reduction to a transcendental egoa`laHusserl
and Kant compromises the “purity” of consciousness by positing a
“subject” within it which eludes consciousness itself. Furthermore, the
transcendental ego is unnecessary since its “unifying” function in our
experience is adequately served by intentionality and the objects it
intends. Finally, as a concluding gesture but one typically rich with moral
consequences, the transcendental ego cannot account for the motivation to
avoid the transcendental reduction; that is, it cannot explain our reluc-
tance to suspend our naive confidence in the “external” world. Though
this major essay would easily reward a lengthy discussion, it will have to
suffice to consider these three objections to the concept of a transcenden-
tal ego. We shall review these and related issues later inChapter 8 , when
we discuss Sartre’s first masterwork,Being and Nothingness.
A threefold attack on the transcendental egoThe purity of consciousness
We have noted along the way that Sartre avoids appeal to an unconscious
as incompatible with the spontaneity and evident lucidity of our aware-
ness (in BNhe will specifically reject the Freudian unconscious as
incompatible with freedom). To appeal to a transcendental ego, he
believes, is to posit a “substance” in the midst of the clarity of our
thought. Consciousness, Sartre claims and will repeat in BN,isa
“nonsubstantial absolute”; its “to be” is “to be aware” (TE 98 ).
70 Teaching in the lyce ́e, 1931–1939