The Transcendence of the Ego

1936 book by Jean Paul Sartre

The Transcendence of the Ego is a philosophical and phenomenological essay written by the philosopher Jean Paul Sartre in 1934 and published in 1936. The essay demonstrates Sartre’s transition from traditional phenomenological thinking and most notably his break from the philosopher Edmund Husserl’s school of thought (phenomenology), and into his own. This transition is more apparent after Sartre’s military service from 1939 where we observe a rather more sympathetic view of being in the world, a topic that is dealt with in much greater detail in his 1943 work Being and Nothingness. This essay begins Sartre's study and hybridisation of phenomenology and ontology. The basis of the essay is to at once appreciate Husserl's description of 'intended objects' (as appearing) being described in their own right, but also to observe the ego as 'in the world' and not materially of consciousness. For Sartre, it was rather more apt to describe the ego as an object for consciousness.

"The essay [ ] is Sartre's very first work. The only two publications that preceded it, in fact, cannot be considered as philosophical inquiries in the strictest sense. ":7 It grew out of his study of Husserl at the French Institute in Berlin,:viii and first appeared in the 1936 1937 issue of Recherches Philosophiques. An English translation by Forrest Williams and Robert Kirkpatrick was published in 1957. Librairie Philosophique J. Vrin issued the essay in book form in French in 1966. In light of this for Sartre, the constitution of the ego is 'states and actions [these intended objects we speak of] it supports'. This is to say, that the material presence of things in turn proves the ontology of the object contemplating them. Ego is then nothing without something in which to contemplate but is reliant on itself and its being. Further, the flexibility of consciousness for Sartre is the ability to contemplate something in its absence, this being special for his idea of reflection.

He concludes that though people can contemplate the same thing, we cannot contemplate 'the intuitive apprehension' of another. This connotes the Sartrean idea of becoming apprehensive about the awareness that we are to be responsible for our own doings, and also that we can be conscious of the thing like another consciousness is conscious of the thing, but we cannot reflect on their being conscious of the thing like we can reflect on our being conscious of the thing. In this way we are still only condemned to making ourselves as we battle with our own consciousness, and so we don’t create the world, we are objects in the world.

Eckhart Tolle first explored ego in The Power of Now, where he juxtaposed form identity and essence identity. He equated form identity with ego, which he defined as "a false self, created by unconscious identification with the mind. ":18 He described essence identity, on the other hand, as "your true nature,":22 He invoked Sartre for his central thesis:<blockquote>[Sartre] looked at Descarte's statement "I think, therefore I am" very deeply and suddenly realized, in his own words, “The consciousness that says ‘I am’ is not the consciousness that thinks. ":23 "The Ego (including both the 'I' and the 'Me') does not come into existence until the original consciousness has been made the object of reflection. Thus there is never an Ego consciousness but only consciousness of the Ego. ":x

Using Tolle's terminology, form identity (ego) is the object of essence identity (consciousness), which is the ultimate subject.