blargh

I have a lot of thoughts on this book, and would like to write a response that would seek to describe the way improvisation relates to "action" in the existentialist tradition. As soon as I get my thoughts straight on this subject, I'll post the writing on my blog.

read for philosophy of self and other
skimmed

With this Essay, Sartre thus inaugurates the work of exploration, which will lead to Being and Nothingness. Moreover, the chronology confirms the incontestable unity of his philosophical preoccupations of this period: we can say that all his works were if not written, at least conceived simultaneously. First, the Essay on the Transcendence of the Ego was written in 1934, partly during Sartre's stay in Berlin to study Husserl's phenomenology. Then, from 1935 to 1936, he wrote both L'Imagination and L'Imaginaire (published respectively in 1936 and 1940), then in 1937-1938, La Psyché, which he already had the idea of in 1934.
In the first part, Sartre, through the phenomenological description, analyzes the Ego in its dual component of an I and a Self.
In the second part of his work, after making the genealogy, he examines the constitution of the Ego.

"anguish ... imposes itself on us"

Don't let the length of this book trick you, it's anything but a light read or overview or Sartre's philosophy (unlike Existentialism is a Humanism for example). I vividly remember spending about an hour on 5-7 pages of this work, only really taking in a minor dose of information in that stretch of time.
The main crux of this book is Sartre's rejection of the then dominant psychology, Freud's ego psychology, which sought to split the mind or the 'Unconscious' into parts (the famous ID, Ego and Superego). In response, Sartre, building on Descartes, Heidegger and Husserl (even making reference to Proust and La Rochefoucauld) uses phenomenology to fight against this erroneous idea. Sartre takes on from Husserl's work, focusing specifically on his 'Cartesian Meditations', adapting this revolutionary phenomenological method, but rejecting Husserl's implication that the I is a formal structure of consciousness.
Simply put, for Sartre, consciousness simply is. It is not a mystical, idealist spirit, but simply a negation. It is how we see the world, and the thing through which we live.

To understand Sartre, this probably isn't the best place.

Introduction - Sarah Richmond introduces the text by situating this text within Sartre's 'early work', wherein Sartre 'exhausts' Heidegger and Husserl, developing, critiquing and deepening their phenomenology. Richmond also explains the two separate sections of Sartre's essay, with the first section 1)engaging with Husserlian thought, and section 2)offering a simplified alternative to Husserl's phenomenology.

Husserl's Phenomenology - Sartre provides an exposition of Husserl, depicting Husserl as a continuation of Kant's effort to make philosophy proceed as a "rigorous science". Husserl therefore continues from Descartes' cogito, parenthesising unproved beliefs, to narrow pheonomenology down to the indubitable consciousness. This indubitable consciousness is the epoche. However, whilst Husserl explains the epoche, he also adds a 'transcendental I' above it, an ego of sorts, which Sartre sees as superfluous.

The Ego and the Epoche - Sartre replaces the epoche with a Pure Ego. This Pure Ego self objectifies itself and comes to see itself as part of the world. Personhood is the result of this anonymous constitution for Sartre. This is a worldy ego also, not some transcendental idealistic 'I' as Husserl would hold.

The Transparency of Consciousness - Sartre explains the purity of consciousness, with the transcendental I being superfluous as this would in effect rule over the Ego, making the Ego
useless. This makes seeing the Transcendental I as the source as Ego, "nothing except consciousness can be a source of consciousness".

The Non-Transparency of Reflection - Descartes and Husserl were correct in personalising the cogito, yet they also misinterpret the encounter with a self that had always been there. The reflecting attitude, rather than discovering the self, creates it. There is no 'inner life', or division in the mind.

Phenomenology without Reflection - Sartre explains unreflective consciousness, wherein we remember things without reflecting on them, for example reading a book and recalling the characters without actively contemplating them.

The Constitution of the Ego - The ego is a 'transcendent pole of synthetic unity' consisting of 1)Qualities, 2)States and 3)Actions. The relation between me and my mind is beyond normal causal relations, it is a mystical and magical thing.

Phenomenology Existentialised - The epoche is driven not by reason, but by the experience of anguish. Sartre rejects the idea that this notion leads to idealism, instead situating himself within a historical materialist framework and referring to Spinoza's idea of substance.

read for philosophy of self and other
skimmed