Consciousness and Its Alienation in the Philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre

In the philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre, three works stand out for their compass: Being and Nothingness (L'etre et le neant, 1941), Critique of Dialectical Reason (Critique de la raison dialectique, 1960) and The Idiot of the Family (L'Idiot de la famille, 1971). While the subtitle of the first work states that it is an "essay on phenomenological ontology," the second work aims to study the "theory of practical wholes," and the last work presents the method of existential psychoanalysis in practice. Due to their distinct focuses, these volumes can be presented as three entities independent from one another, differing not only in terms of their topics and terminologies, but also in their methodological procedures. The aim of the article, however, is to show that in spite of the different perspectives from which Sartre views human existence in the individual texts, there still remains a certain continuity between the discussed works. This continuity lies in Sartre's effort to restore an authentic relationship between consciousness and the world. Sartre in fact never repudiated his initial concept of consciousness as intentionality, however much he later came to regard it as being inadequate. As a result of pressure from historical events and also the influence of Simone de Beauvoir, he shifted from the concept of "consciousness in the situation" to "consciousness in society and in history." Across the range of his philosophy, he is primarily concerned with restoring the spontaneity of consciousness and prioritizing it over inauthentic attitudes.