Phenomenology as Humanism:

The Case of Husserl and Sartre

THOMAS W. BUSCH
Villanova University

Ian Alexander, in his article, "The Phenomenological Philosophy in

France."' likens the impact of Husserl on French thought to that of Wit-
tgenstein on British thought: "the result in both cases has been to
revolutionize the philosophical perspective." When he goes on to assess
individual philosophers his judgment is that "of French
phenomenologists Marcel and Merleau-Ponty come closest to its essen-
tial aim." This type of judgment that the fruition of phenomenology is
an existential philosophy deriving from Husserl's treatment, in his last
work, of the grounding of consciousness in the pre-theoretical life-world
is commonplace. Sartre once made an interesting comment on his rela-
tionship to Merleau-Ponty in regard to phenomenology: "Alone, each of
us was too easily persuaded of having understood the idea of
phenomenology. Together, we were for each other the incarnation of its
ambiguity. "2 This ambiguity springs on the one hand from
phenomenology's emphasis on lived-experience, the life-world and
description, and on the other from its emphasis on the reduction, reflec-
tion and constitution. From the former emphasis there have developed
philosophies (Merleau-Ponty's and Marcel's-although Marcel's work
did not derive directly from Husserl's) which stress "the primacy of
perception," philosophies which are considered to be an "archaeology"
of the pre-reflective, tracing the roots of consciousness as they sink into
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what is other than consciousness. Sartre, in his "phenomenology of im-

agination," has taken philosophy in another direction, toward an ex-
amination of the activity of consciousness in reduction, reflection and
constitution. Without denying the situation of consciousness, he has
focused on the power of transcendence, the capacity of consciousness to
gain a perspective on its situation and, thereby, to gain some control
over it. In Sartre's estimation the archaeological philosophy has turned
toward a heteronomy and alienation of man, while he has pursued an
autonomy and authentic humanism. In this project, Sartre has never
claimed that he was being more faithful to Husserl than Husserl's other
"disciples." In fact, Sartre was often critical of Husserl. Yet, I believe
that a strong case can be made that Sartre's philosophy is, in its essential
thrust, the most faithful to Husserl's program of those thinkers influenc-
ed by Husserl. I will argue this by stressing that Husserl and Sartre
shared the views that the natural and phenomenological attitudes were
modes of life which directly involved moral and political issues, that
philosophy has as its goal the effecting of a humanistic society, and that
the phenomenological reduction was the necessary (but, for Sartre, not
the sufficient) means of realizing a humanistic society.

HUSSERL

. It
may appear odd to propose that Husserl's philosophical program is
in any way similar to Sartre's. The philosopher of the cafes, the revolu-
tionary, contrasts with the German academician, the epistemologist,
and at first sight they appear to inhabit two vastly different
philosophical worlds. To find a common ground between the two, we
must turn to those texts where Husserl talks about the task of philosophy
and, in particular, of his own philosophical "mission."
In a letter to Arnold Metzger, dated September, 1919,3 Husserl
replies to Metzger who has sent his work to Husserl for comment. He
tells Metzger: "It can only be that you felt, through the unadorned
soberness and radical objectivity of my writings, the personal ethos on
which they rest." (ML, p. 245). Throughout this interesting letter,
"
Husserl uses the expressions "my mission," "my true, god-sent mission,"
and "the deeper meaning of my work," "my original motives and
needs." The writings Metzger sent Husserl dwelt on the themes of
freedom, death and value. While Husserl told Metzger that the latter's
"ethical radicalism ... rejoiced my heart," nonetheless he expressed
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disappointment that transcendental phenomenology was not used by

Metzger as the foundation for his very practical concerns. Husserl ap-
plauds Metzger for seeing that "every form of anthropologism,
biologism, positivism turns into an anti-ethical, ethically
groundless ... egoism" (ML p. 247), but criticizes Metzger's failure to
see transcendental phenomenology's relevance to "the practical design
of ends." In fact, Husserl goes as far as saying that truth and scientific
knowledge do not count for him as the highest value.4 His entire project
to found a scientific philosophy flows from his "deepest impulses,"
"from an inexpressible need of the soul," which seems to have been
precipitated from a reading of the New Testament which "led to an im-
pulse to find the way to God and a true life through a strictly scientific
philosophy." (ML, p. 245).
Some years previously, he had published an outline of his
philosophical projects under the title "Philosophy as a Rigorous
Science" ( 1910-11 ).5 His opening sentences connect the project of
rigorous science to that of ethics:

From its earliest beginnings philosophy has claimed to be

rigorous science. What is more, it has claimed to be the
science that satisfies the loftiest theoretical needs and
renders possible from an ethico-religious point of view a life
regulated by pure rational norms. (PRS, p. 71)

He sees philosophy as a "vocation" whose task it is "to teach us how to

carry on the eternal work of humanity" (PRS, pp. 72-73). Since he em-
braces this lofty idea of philosophy, Husserl sees that philosophy must
bear on culture. Setting the context of his work, he tells us that he writes
out of "the conviction that the highest interests of human culture de-
mand the development of a rigorously scientific philosophy" (PRS, p.
78). Consequently he accepts the burden of responsibility for humanity:
"we remain aware of the responsibility we have in regard to humanity." "
(PRS, p. 141). When he attacks naturalism, psychologism and
historicism he does so not simply because they are epistemological er-
rors, but as "a growing danger to our culture." These objectivistic views
of consciousness lead to sceptical absurdity or relativism in the realm of
values. A "remedy" is called for in the form of a critique of reason, a
transcendental phenomenology, which will lay the foundation for a true
ethic:
 130

... if depressing absurdities in the interpretation of the

world are connected with such prejudices, then there is only
one remedy for these and all similar evils: a scientific criti-
que and in addition a radical science, issuing from below,
based on sure foundations, and progressing according to the
most rigorous methods- the philosophical science for which
we speak here. (PRS, pp. 141-42).

Toward the end of his life, in the "Prague" and "Vienna" lectures, in-
cluded in The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental
Phenomenology (1938),6 when Husserl was presenting his
phenomenology on a new footing, he again refers to the ethical context
of his work.
He condemns science for

... an indifferent turning away from the questions which

are decisive for a genuine humanity ... questions of the
meaning or meaningfulness of the whole of human ex-
istence. Do not these questions, universal and necessary for
all men, demand universal reflections and answers based on
rational insight? In the final analysis they concern man as a

`
free, self-determining being in his behavior toward the
human and extra-human surrounding world and free in
regard to his capacities for rationally shaping himself and
his surrounding world. (Crasis, p. 6)

It would be a mistake to consider this attitude as the superficial adop-

tion of an existentialist (particularly Heideggerian) viewpoint that was
then in vogue- a window dressing as it were for Husserl's epistemology
and idealism. Such an interpretation would overlook the ideas clearly
"
expressed in the Metzger letter and "Philosophy as a Rigorous Science."
The language of "self-determination" (Husserl, like Sartre, often refers
to the "autonomy" of consciousness) is crucial for putting into pers-
pective the much discussed theme of the "life-world" in the Crisis.
Contrary to those commentators (and it appears that Ian Alexander is
one of these) who see in the life-world theme a radical break from
Husserl's former program, it is clear that Husserl continues to em-
phasize the capacity of consciousness to disengage from the life-world,
to effect an epoche of culture so that the life-world can be critiqued.
Husserl in no way thinks that we are so embedded in the life-world that
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its norms and values can not or ought not to be questioned. On the
contrary, he insists that "the whole praxis of human existence, i.e., the
whole of cultural life, must receive its norms not from the naive ex-
perience and tradition of everyday life but from objective truth" (Crisis,
p. 287). The life-world, subjected to the epoche, is brought within the
scope of human constitution:

... every fact given under the heading of 'culture,'

whether it is a matter of the lowliest culture of necessities or
the highest culture (science, state, church, economic
organization, etc.) ... is something constructed through
human activity, (Crisis, p. 376).

- Husserl recognizes a human responsibility for culture and calls for a

change of human institutions into a more human, rational form:

... man should be changed ethically and the whole human

surrounding world, the political and social existence of
mankind, must be fashioned anew through free reason ...
... The quite personal responsibility of our own true being
as philosophers, our inner personal vocation, bears within
itself at the same time the responsibility for the true being of
mankind. (Crisis, pp. 8, 17)

These sentiments echo the Metzger letter and "Philosophy as a Rigorous

Science." Naturalism, psychologism and historicism continue to be
viewed as forms of alienated reason,' a reason which, missing its true be-
ing, explains itself in terms of the world. His perception of the danger to
culture posed by this alienation of reason was, of course, confirmed for
him by the rise of National Socialism. What the Crz'sz'soffered, however,
and what was lacking in the earlier works, was an attempt to make
alienation intelligible in terms of history.
The Greeks are cited as the creators of the humanistic ideal: "a new
sort of attitude of individuals toward their surrounding world" (Crisis,
p. 276). Instead of being fascinated by the environing world, immersed
in it through the pull of practical need, the Greeks effected an "epoche"
which issued in a theoretical attitude toward life,8 making possible "the
universal critique of all life and all life goals, all cultural products and
systems that have already arisen out of the life of man, and thus it also
becomes a critique of mankind itself and of the values which guide it ex-
132

plicitly or implicitly" (Crisis, p. 283). Owing to this outlook, mankind

can transform itself into "a new humanity made capable of an absolute
self-responsibility on the basis of absolute theoretical insights" (Crisis, p.
283).
This humanistic ideal defined the spiritual development of Western
man until it became "forgotten" in the 16th and i 7th centuries when
there occurred the "mathematization" of nature. Ideal methematical
objects, founded on the perceptual encounter with nature, became
synonymous with "nature itself:" "Nature itself is, in its 'true being-in-
itself,' mathematical." This metaphysical "hypothesis" lost its
hypothetical character to become an evident given of the educated
Western thinker. It became a tradition, a cultural deposit, by virtue of
being sedimented in the consciousness of Western man. Husserl speaks
as if a culture were constituted by a cultural consciousness which has a
retentional structure permitting the past to stretch into the present:

"the whole of the cultural present, understood as a totality

"implies" the whole of the cultural past in an undetermined
but structurally determined generality. To put it more
precisely, it implies a continuity of parts which imply one
another, each in itself being a past cultural present." (Cra'sis,
p. 371)

Naturalism, psychologism and historicism are forms of the general

thesis of the natural attitude. These particular forms of the natural at-
titude arising in the 16th and 17th centuries, became "sedimented" in
Western culture (and certainly were so when Husserl began his work, for
he was himself at first their victim). The "crisis" Husserl wrote of in the
Crisis, what he calls "europe's sickness," is the heritage of an
epistemological mistake. To be born into this heritage is to be placed in
the natural attitude.
But, of course, to know this is evidence of the capacity of con-
sciousness to effect an epoche of history in order to grasp its meaning.
Man is not fated to be the hapless victim of history, although the
phenomenon of historical sedimentation does seem to explain how there
can be victims of the natural attitude. Man can bracket his life-world,
see its constitution viz-a-viz his own consciousness as well as its constitu-
tion viz-a-viz past consciousness by way of sedimentation. This possibili-
ty of effecting an epoche of history is itself the capacity for overcoming
the alienation of reason and restoring the ideal of humanistic progress.
 133
To be human at all is essentially to be a human being in a socially and
generatively united civilization; and if man is a rational being (animal
rationale) it is only insofar as his whole civilization is a rational civiliza-
tion, that is, one with a latent orientation toward reason or one openly
oriented toward the entelechy which has come to itself, become
manifest to itself, and which now of necessity consciously directs human
becoming [emphasis added]. (Crisis, p. 15)

Thus Husserl, from the outline of his program in 1910-11 and extend-
ing into his last words on his programs, consistently situated that prog-
ram within a humanistic framework. The Greeks, for Husserl, invented
the humanistic ideal of a life according to reason. Husserl consciously
places his phenomenology within this ideal (teleological idea). The
phenomenological reduction, disclosing transcendental consciousness,
was not meant to sever reason from man. On the contrary, the reduc-
tion had the effect of placing consciousness beyond those reductionisms
so antagonistic to humanism, while clearly placing human life within
the scope of reason's constitution. Husserl's phenomenology was intend-
ed to retrieve reason from its alienation (the natural attitude and its
varient forms) and restore reason's responsibility for life.
Sartre's early work, principally The Transcendence of the Ego
(1935-36),9 The Emotions: an Outline of a Theory (1939)10 and The
Psychology of Imagination ( 1940)" form an attack on "objectivistic"
psychology in an attempt to establish a humanistic view of man. The
Transcendence of the Ego specifically aims at employing
phenomenology to critique all objectivistic views of consciousness and to
lay the foundation for "a positive morality and politics." Midway
through that work, he writes:

We have been learning to distinguish 'the psychic' from con-

sciousness. The psychic is the transcendent object of reflec-
tive consciousness. It is also the object of the science called
`psychology.' ( TE p. 71)

"The psychic," as transcendent to transcendental consciousness is a

"bastardized," reified version of transcendental consciousness, consti-
tuted by a reflection upon transcendental consciousness and mistakenly
"
identified with transcendental consciousness by an "impure reflection."
In such reflection psychic life is seen to be composed of "qualities" and
"states" from which conscious actions issue. The "ego" is posited as the
134

transcendent, ideal unity of psychic life: "the ego is the spontaneous,

transcendent unification of our states and actions." (TE, p. 76) This im-
pure reflection which would identify transcendental consciousness with
11
its constituted product is, of course, the natural attitude. The "pure"
reflection of the phenomenological reduction is required in order to
gain access to the domain of transcendental consciousness.
A great deal of the misunderstanding which surrounds Sartre's work
hinges on this issue of the phenomenological reduction. We are told
that "Sartre has abolished the reductions;"'2 " ... Sartre found no role
in his philosophical method for that central feature of Husserlian
phenomenology-the epoche;"'3 "Sartre explicitly rejects Husserl's
phenomenological reduction in all its forms; " 14 "He [Sartre] rejects
Husserl's reduction ... "I' Yet
phenomenological clearly The
Transcendence of the Ego, The Emotions, and The Psychology of Im-
agination utilize the reduction. 16 The Transcendence of the Ego, in par-
ticular, is critical of Husserl for not extending the reduction far enough.
For Sartre, the temporal structure of transcendental consciousness is a
sufficient account of its unity and there is no need to posit a
transcendental ego for that purpose. Nor is the ego the content of
transcendental consciousness in the sense of fixing that consciousness as
"something." The ego, for Sartre, is "content" in the sense of
"character" or "essence," but this is an objectified product of the spon-
taneous life of transcendental consciousness.
We find Sartre, in The Transcendence of the Ego, employing the
reduction ("all transcendence must fall under the f7rOXr¡) in order to
grasp the constitution of the ego:

... really consciousness are first; through these are consti-

tuted states; and then, through the latter, the ego is consti-
tuted. (TE, p. 81)

The constitution of the ego has, for Sartre, humanistic implications

since the constitution of our character or essence is attributed to the
"spontaneity" or freedom of consciousness." On the other hand, the
natural attitude of objectivistic psychology is anti-humanistic insofar as
it shifts responsibility for behavior away from man.

But, as the order is reversed by a consciousness which im-

prisons itself in the world in order to flee from itself, con-
sciousnesses are given as emanating from states, and states as
 135

produced by the ego ... 'the natural attitude appears

wholly as an effort made by consciousness to escape from
itself into the me and becoming absorbed there ... (TE,
pp. 81, 103)

In his first philosophical work, then, Sartre can be seen to use the reduc-
tion in a humanistic context, to effect a true conversion of existence
wherein human life is seen to be a moral and political task. The reduc-
tion is not simply a "knowledgeable" operation: "the 6?row is no
longer ... an intellectual method, an erudite procedure ... " (TE, p.
103), but is the entrance into authentic existence.
Understanding this use of the reduction in order to develop a
humanism is essential for a correct reading of Being and Nothingness
(1943).'a In the first chapter of Being and Nothingness Sartre raises the
moral problem: "Everyday morality is exclusive of ethical anguish.
There is ethical anguish when I consider myself in my original relation
to values" (BN, p. 38). This original relation is ordinarily overlooked:
"Ordinarily ... my attitude toward values is eminently reassuring. I
find I am engaged in a world of values" (BN, p. 38). This natural at-
titude or "seriousness," which attributes more reality to the world than
to consciousness, which considers values as transcendent givens inde-
pendent of human subjectivity" (BN, p. 626) must according to Sartre
be subjected to the epoche. Anguish appears "at the moment that I
disengage myself from the world where I had been engaged - in order to
apprehend myself as a consciousness ... " (BN, p. 39). The reduction
reveals value-constitution: "everyday values derive their meaning from
an original projection of myself ... as sustained in being by my
freedom" (BN, p. 39). Sartre then notes that "everything takes place, in
fact, as if our essential and immediate behavior with respect to anguish
is flight" (BN, p. 40), thereby setting the context for the remainder of
Being and Nothingness.
Sartre sees the natural attitude as something more than an
epistemological mistake. His intent in Being and Nothingness is to in-
vestigate this "inauthentic" mode of existence. He explicitly reserves for
"separate study"19 the attitude of anguish as a basis for ethics. The re-
mainder of Being and Nothingness sets out to track down the motive for
the natural attitude (bad faith or seriousness), and, having tracked it
down, to neutralize it. The "passion to be," the ideal value of being-in-
itself-for-itself, is, of course, the motivation for those inauthentic
states wherein consciousness considers itself to be a fixed entity.
136

Although this ideal value haunts being-for-itself, it must be pointed out

what Sartre clearly defines being-for-itself, as the "being of the pre-
"
reflective cogito."
It is the unreflective consciousness which naturally desires this ideal
value. Pure phenomenological reflection affords a grasp of this correla-
tion between natural desire and ideal value. Once this reflecting con-
sciousness becomes acquainted with the quest for ideal being, it can
itself refuse complicity with it, since it sees other possibilities.2° Man
cannot alter the fact that absolute being is an unrealizable ideal of con-
sciousness, but, according to Sartre, man is not constrained to
reflectively pursue that ideal.2' In other words, an ethics which aims at
being (in the sense of a fixed condition) is out of the question and in its
place must be substituted an ethics of action or existing, the only ethics
possible to human reality.
Realistic morality, then, is a morality which somehow begins and
ends with existence, and, since existence is freedom, freedom is the goal
of morality.
The closest that Sartre has come to presenting any moral principles is
What Is Literature? (1946).22 There, for the first time, he speaks of
"reciprocity" in human relationships, affording his readers a context for
discussing human interrelationships other than the power categories of
BN. Sartre argues that literature is a cooperative venture of writer and
reader. Writer and reader form an abstract community in which each
recognizes, respects and has confidence in the other. The relationship is
abstract and formal because the reciprocity is tacit, or pre-reflective.
The writer exercises his freedom in creating an aesthetic object. In ad-
dressing his work to readers, he acknowledges the freedom of his readers
which is required of them in order to reproduce the aesthetic object. At
the same time, the reader acknowledges the freedom of the writer when
he takes up the book.

... since the one who writes recognizes, by the very fact
that he takes the trouble to write, the freedom of his readers,
and since the one who reads, by the mere fact of his opening
the book, recognizes the freedom of the writer, the work of
art, from whichever side you approach it, is an act of con-
fidence in the freedom of men. (WIL, p. 57)

On the basis of this abstract reciprocity, Sartre concludes:

 137

It would be inconceivable that this unleashing of generosity

provoked by the writer could be used to authorized an in-
justice, and that the reader could enjoy his freedom while
reading a work which approves or accepts or simply abstains
from condemning the subjection of men by man. (Will. p.
57)

The use of the term "inconceivable" here appears to signify an irra-

tionality, a contradiction. If the writer implicitly recognizes the freedom
of his readers, it would be a contradiction for the writer to approve the
subjection (non-freedom) of some men who would be his possible
readers, i.e., those who would be included in the theoretical group of
possible readers of the book, those who have the imaginative capacity to
read. A comparable example would be the master who treats his slave as
a "thing," but takes precautions against the slave's escape or rebellion.
His precautions are a tacit recognition of the slave as more than a thing,
viz., a being that has projects. The master, then, treats what is not a
thing as a thing, yet implicitly recognizes that the thing is not a thing.
The first act of morality for Sartre is to raise to the level of reflection the
tacit reciprocity of human interrelationships. Then reflection must
acknowledge this reciprocity as the human way of dealing with others,
i.e., treat others as ends, not means. The goal of morality for Sartre is
the "City of Ends," a community of real reciprocity: "it is therefore up
"
to us to convert the city of ends into a concrete and open society ...
(WIL, p. 268). The next step of moral reflection is to see that the City of
Ends cannot be realized under present social, particularly economic
conditions: "If the city of Ends remains a feeble abstraction, it is
because it is not realizable without an objective modification of the
historical situation.... the fundamental structures of our society are
still oppressive ... it is quite impossible to treat men as ends in con-
temporary society" ( WIL, pp. 268, 269). Sartre's entire interest in Marx
stems from the moral and political goal of materializing the City of
Ends. This goal also sets the context for understanding The Critique of
Dialectical Reason (1960).23
The Critique of Dialectical Reason marks the beginning of Sartre's
attempt to exhibit now history is constituted. In Being and Nothingness,
Sartre had accused Marxism of "seriousness" and reiterated this
criticism in "Materialism and Revolution" (1946) :24 "the materialist
"
does not admit that the world is the product of our constituent activity."
In the latter article he stresses the capacity of consciousness "of going
138

beyond the situation in which [it] is placed." The revolutionary "escapes

from the society that crushes him." This requires that an epoche of the
situation is effected, whereby the revolutionary "makes [the situation]
exist for himself as a totality." The revolutionary act implies a
bracketing of the natural attitude with regard to past and present social
conditions, a grasp of the correlation of these social conditions to
human projects, and a vision of other possible social conditions. Once
more one confronts Sartre's emphasis upon the capacity of consciousness
to rise above its situation. "This possibility of rising above a situation in
order to get a perspective on it ... is freedom." (MR, pp. 235-36).
Several years after this essay, Sartre claimed that his criticisms were
not directed against Marx as much as they were against "Marxist
scholasticism." In "Marxism and Exitentialism" (1957 )25 Sartre claims a
kinship with Marx and hails his work as "the most radical attempt to
clarify the historical process in its totality." The language of this essay,
however, should not obscure the fact that Sartre was interested in Marx-
ism as a method which could shed light on phenomenological problems
of history. This Sartrean view of Marx implies the retention, of Sartre's
basic phenomenological view: overcoming the natural attitude by way
of reduction, viewing the world (now the social, economic, historical
world) as correlated to and constituted by, human projects, as well as
the attempt to change the presently constituted social condition in favor
of realizing the humanistic society of the City of Ends.
What attracted Sartre to Marxism was the fact, discovered personally
by Sartre, of being conditioned by historical events. Sartre's work on
Genet (Saint Genet: comedian and martyr, 1952)26 was his great
demonstration of this truth: man is victimized by society. 21 Put in
phenomenological terms the problem is this: how can consciousness
both constitute the historical world and be constituted by it? Sartre's
early work could not account for this truth. The natural attitude, in the
early works, was an attitude self-imposed - a flight from a freedom
which one "knew" but attempted to repress. Now, in the context of
history, it appears that the natural attitude can be imposed on con-
sciousness by its situation. Correspondingly, whereas previously the in-
dividual in the natural attitude was responsible for this situation, now
Sartre insists that others (those who sustain certain social structures) and
not the individual can be at fault. To Sartre's way of thinking, there is
only one way to explain this victimization and also avoid a Skinnerian
type of determinism with regard to social or historical condi-
tions- dialectic:
 139

... we support unreservedly that formulation in Capital by

which Marx means to define his 'materialism.' 'The mode of
production of material life generally dominates the develop-
ment of social, political, and intellectual life.' We cannot
conceive of this conditioning in any form except that of a
dialectical movement (contradictions, surpassing, totaliza-
tion). (SM, pp. 33-34)

The Critique must be read as a study of the constitution of social "ob-

jectivities" within the context of a phenomenological reduction. Yet,
Sartre indicates how these objectivities are taken as "being" by an
alienated consciousness. Truly, "man makes history" but insofar as his
activity is objectified and alienated, history "appears to men as a foreign
force." Clearly, the message of the first volume is: men, see how your
praxis is the basis of the constitution of history; your work suffers aliena-
tions, but knowing this, you can gain some control of history: "By
becoming conscious of itself, the Proletariat becomes the subject of
History." To reiterate, the purpose of this exercise is to effect the
materialization of the City of Ends:

As soon as there will exist for everyone a margin of real

freedom beyond the production of life, Marxism will have
lived out its span; a philosophy of freedom will take its
place. (SM, p. 34).

Both the early and late work of Sartre constitute a humanism that is
developed within the context of the phenomenological reduction, which
effects a change of attitude whereby responsibility for one's being and
that of the world is assumed by man.
.
CONCLUSION

The philosophical programs of Sartre and Husserl can be seen to

agree in several important respects.
1. Both men criticized anti-humanistic views of man which were bas-
ed upon the objectification of consciousness-Sartre taking on
behaviorism and objective psychology, Husserl fighting against
naturalism and psychologism. Furthermore, they both were very con-
cerned with what they saw as dangerous practical consequences for
humanity which issued from the objectification of consciousness.
140
2. Both utilized the phenomenological reduction to achieve a
humanistic ideal of existence. The power of human transcendence was
itself incarnated in the reduction. As Husserl put it, the reduction issues
from "our perfect freedom Through the reduction our lives and
culture could be retrieved from an alienated state (the natural attitude)
and brought within the scope of an autonomous constitution and self-
responsibility. Both agreed in seeing this use of the reduction as
transformatz'zre of existence, speaking of a "new man" and of a "new
society." In other words, Sartre and Husserl saw the natural and
phenomenological attitudes as, respectively, anti-humanistic and
humanistic modes of living.
3. Both came to see the historical character of these modes of living.
This confronted them with the task of explaining how a transcendental
consciousness can be both in history and constituting it. This latter
aspect was crucial to them since they refused to submerge man in
history, making him its puppet. They insisted on the possibility of an
epoche of history as a result of which man could constitute history in a
humanistic direction. Husserl reverted to the notion of sedimentation to
explain how transcendental consciousness is in history, while Sartre
reverted to the dialectic.
4. Both seem to agree on the "direction" of history. Husserl is even
more explicit on this point than Sartre, seeing the "telos" of Western
history as the realization of human autonomy.29 While both recognized
man as "autonomous" and "free" in his capacity to transcend his situa-
tion through reflection, they saw that a society and culture befitting this
capacity was wanting. The task of history, then, is the realization of
social and political conditions befitting an autonomous existence.
Husserl saw phenomenology's role in history (and thus his own role) as a
renewal of and fruition of the humanistic ideal which began with the
Greeks.
These major points of agreement in the philosophical programs of
Sartre and Husserl form a core of a shared humanism. However, as their
similarities are brought into focus, so is their principle difference,
namely, the motivation for the natural attitude and its alienated mode
of existence.
Husserl always considered the natural attitude to be an
epistemological mistaken. Even when, given his view of history, he ex-
hibited how there may be victims of the natural attitude, the explana-
tion was in terms of the sedimentation of an epistemological mistake.
His cure, his "remedy" for alienation, both in his early and his late
 141

work, was "a critique of reason." Sartre on the other hand, first sought
the motive for the natural attitude in a flight toward Being. His remedy
was individual and attitudinal: a special reflection whereby one can
become aware of this unrealizable goal and refuse it. Later, he sought to
explain how there could be victims of the natural attitude through
social and historical conditions. Among these conditions was the op-
pression of some men by others, an oppression which blocked the way to
the City of Ends. Thus, the remedy for this alienation was not simply
"reflection," but also "revolution." Sartre, then, came to recognize and
attempt to come to terms with the irrational in man while Husserl's
humanism remained a thorough going rationalism.

NOTES

lJan Alexander, "The PhenomenologicalPhilosophyin France. An Analysisof Its

Themes, Significanceand Implications,"in Currents of Thought in French Literature:
Essaysin Memoryof G. T. Claxton (Oxford: Blackwell,1966).
2"Merleau-PontyVivant," Les TempsModernes(October, 1961)."Merleau-Ponty,"in
Situations, trans. B. Eisler (Greenwich:Fawcett, 1965), p. 159.
3HumanContext (vol. IV, 1972), pp. 244-49.Hereafter ML.
4"Notthat truth and scientificknowledgecount for me as the highestvalue. On the con-
trary :'intellect is the servant of the will." Ibid., pp. 245-46.
"'Philosophieals strengeWissenschaft,"Logos(1910-11).The Englishtranslationcited
herein as PRS is that of Quentin Lauer, "Phenomenologyas RigorousScience"in his
Phenomenologyand the Crisisof Philosophy(New York: Harper, 1965),pp. 72-73.
6Die Krisis der europhaischen Wissenschaften und die transzendentale
Phanomenologie,edit. W. Biemel (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1954). The English
translation is by David Carr, The Crisis of European Sciencesand Transcendental
Phenomenology(Evanston:NorthwesternUniversityPress, 1920).
'Husserlusesthe equivalentof "alienation"in referring to "the downfallof Europein its
"
estrangementfrom its own rational senseof life... Crisis,p. 299.
'In his CartesianMeditationsHusserlhad attributed to Descartesthe first impulsesof
transcendentalphenomenology.It appears that his remarkson the Greekswouldpush the
ultimate roots of phenomenologyback into Greece,even though the epoch?of the Greeks
was not, technically,transcendental.
'La Transcendancede L'Ego: esquissed'une descriptionphénoménologique,introd.,
notes et appendicespar SylvieLe Bon (Paris: Vrin, 1972).The Englishtranslation cited
herein as TE is by Williamsand Kirkpatrick, The Transcendenceof the Ego (NewYork:
Noonday, 1957).
1°Esquissed'une theoriedes ftotions (Paris: Hermann, 1939).The Englishtranslation
is by B. Frechtman, The Emotions: Outline of a Theory (New York: Philosophical
Library, 1948).
"L'Imagznaire (Paris: Gallimard, 1940).The Englishtranslation is by B. Frechtman,
The Psychologyof Imagination (New York: WashingtonSquare Press, 1966).
142

'zWilfredDesan, The Tragic Finale (New York: Anchor Books,1960), p. 5.

13 A.G. Pleydell-Pearce,in a reviewof MauriceNatanson'sbook ACritiqueofJean-Paul
Sartre's Ontology,Thejournal of theBritishSociety forPhenomenology(Vol. 5, January,
1974), p. 86.
14 RobertSolomon,Phenomenologyand Existentialism(New York: Harper and Row,
1972),p. 20.
"Joseph Catalano, A CommentaryonJean-Paul Sartre'sBeingand Nothingness(New
York: Harper and Row, 1974), p. 8.
16Atext from The Emotions should make this clear enough: "If we wish to found a
psychology,we shall have to go beyondthe psychic,beyondman's situation in the world,
to the verysourceof man, the world, and the psychic:the transcendentaland consecutive
consciousnesswhich we attain by 'phenomenologicalreduction' or 'putting the world in
parentheses,' p. 11. Sartre consistentlyuses the reduction to exhibit the constitutionof
meaning and value. It is true that Sartre claims that an element of facticityescapesthe
reduction. Robert Sokolwskiin The Formationof Husserl'sConceptof Constitution(The
Hague: MartinusNijhoff, 1964)draws the sameconclusion:"In providingonlysubjectivi-
ty as a condition of possibility,Husserlis left with the content of constitutionas an unex-
"
plained residuum, a pure facticitywhich escapesthe principlesof his philosophy."
""We may therefore formulate our thesis: transcendental consciousnessis an imper-
sonal spontaneity. It determinesits existenceat each instant, without being able to con-
ceiveanything before it." TE, p. 98.
18L'Etreet le Neant (Paris: Gallimard, 1943).The Englishtranslation cited herein as
BN is that of Hazel Barnes, Beingand Nothingness,(New York: PhilosophicalLibrary,
1956).
'9BN, p. 44. This reference to a separate study appears severaltimes in BN: pp. 70,
412, 581; the separate study would be of authenticity, not flight.
2°"Assoon as freedomdiscoversthe quest for being and the appropriationof the in-itself
as its ownpossibles,it willapprehend by and in anguishthat they are possiblesonlyon the
ground of the possibilityof other possibles.... What will becomeof freedomif it turns
its back upon this value?"BN, p. 627.
2"Thediscussionof play (BN, pp. 580-81 is ) extremelyimportant becauseit affordsthe
exampleof an autonomousactivitywhichwouldnot aim at the project of being God, but
at the project of consideringfreedomas an end.
zp"Qu'est-ceque la litt?rature?,"SituationsII (Prais: Gallimard, 1964).This workfirst
appeared in Les Temps Modernes in installmentsfrom February-July,1947. What Is
Literature), trans. B. Frechtman (New York: Harper, 1965),p. 56-57.
23 Critiquede la RazsonDialectique(prec6d6de Questionsde M6thode)Tome I: Th6orie
des ensemblespratiques (Paris: Gallimard. 1960). Critique of DialecticalReason, vol. I
Theory of PracticalEnsembles,transl. Alan Sheridan-Smith(London: HumanitiesPress,
1976).
24"Matérialisme et revolution,"Les TempsModernesQuin, 1946).The Englishtransla-
tion cited here is by Annette Michelson,"Materialismand Revolution,"Literary and
PhilosophicalEssays(New York: Collier, 1962,cited as MR).
25"Existentialisme et Marxisme," in "Questions de m6thode," Les Temps Modernes
(September, 1957). The English translation is by Hazel Barnes 'Marxism and Existed
tialism,' in SearchFor A Method (New York: Vintage Books, 1968),pp. 3-34.
26saintGenet: Comédienet Martyr (Paris: Gailimard, 1952).Saint Genet: Actor and
Martyr, trans. B. Frechtman (New York: Mentor, 1963),p. 37.
 143
2'Cf. my "Sartre and the Sensesof Alienation," The SouthernJournal of Philosophy
(vol. XV, Summer, 1977).
?BEdmundHusserl, Ideen zu eiger reinen Phanomenologieund Phänomenologischen
Philosophie,edit. W. Biemel,HusserlianVol. III (The Hague: MartinusNijhoff, 1950).
Ideas: General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology,trans. W. R. BoyceGibson(New
York: Collier, 1962),p. 97.
29Thesecond volume of Sartre'sCritique of Dialectical Reason was to be entitled
"Histoire." What Is Literatllre.1offers a very sweeping, but schematic, look at social
history and literature from the Middle Ages to the present. Clearly, Sartre depicts a
developmenttoward the goal of freedom, and announceshis project of materializingthe
City of Ends as the goal of history, The Crisisis replete with referencesto the historical
telos of autonomy. The followingpassageis a good representativeof Husserl'sthought:
Human personal life proceeds in stages of self-reflection and self-
responsibilityfrom isolated occasional acts of this form to the stage of
universalself-reflectionand self-responsibility,up to the point of seizingin
consciousnessthe idea of autonomy,the idea of a resolveof the willto shape
one's whole personal life into the syntheticunity of a life of universalself-
responsibilityand, correlatively,to shape oneselfinto the true "I,"the free,
autonomous"I" which seeksto realizehis innate reason, the strivingto be
true to himself, to be able to remain identical with himselfas a reasonable
"I"; but there is an inseparableconnectionhere betweenindividualpersons
and communitiesby virtue of their interests-interrelated in both harmony
and conflict-and also in the necessityof allowingindividual-personal
reason to come ever more perfect realization only as communal-personal
reason and vice-versa"(p. 338). Phenomenology'sfunction is to make
"possible mankind's development into a personal autonomy for
mankind - the idea whichrepresentsthe drivingforceof life for the highest
stage of mankind." (p. 338)