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J. P. Sartre has some critical pages, in Being and Nothingness (1956), in which he discusses the meaning of the Cartesian Cogito. In the famous expression Cogito ergo sum, the consciousness which states "I am" is not, and cannot be the subject's consciousness. The Cogito, in fact, reflects and indicates Descartes' thinking upon his own thinking, rather than the thinking of Descartes pinpointed by traditional understanding. In sum, strictly speaking, the Cartesian Cogito ergo sum, Sartre notes, is reflective: its object cannot be itself but the original consciousness of doubting which has made it possible. And this pre-reflective Cogito is a non-thetic, non-positional consciousness. In other words, the consciousness of the object (thinking) is a consciousness of being conscious of the thinking as object, that is, of being aware of it. Thus, in this Cogito, Descartes is not reflecting upon his consciousness, but rather stating an awareness. Consequently, the paradigm should be understood to mean: "I am aware that I am thinking, therefore I am."
Following Sartre further, one's being is tension between I'en-soi (being in-itself), which simply is in the absoluteness and contingency of its existence, and le pour soi (being for-itself), which is both nihilation of the in-itself and its transcending (1956: 395-397). This for-itself names its complexity through three cissiparities that initiate three ekstases or modes of being: temporality, reflection, and le pour autrui (being-for-others). There is residual tension, which may be put into question as: what reveals the for-itself vis à vis the massive passivity of the in-itself, that is the affirmation of an object transcending itself and capable of critically perceiving itself as both consciousness of being and being of consciousness? Or, to put it in a different way, this tension signals a basic truth, that of a consciousness which becomes aware of itself (1967: 51). The case of Antoine Roquentin in Sartre's Nausea (1964) is exemplary here, as he discovers that he is what is not and he is not what he is, while meditating on his being and that of things.
In this framework, one understands that it is always before an other, outside of the for-itself, that one is intelligent or stupid, ashamed, or innocent (1956: 431). The other is the occasion by which one unveils previously...