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Originally Posted by theapportioner
Hmm, good question. I don't know it -that- well so I could be wrong about a thing or two, but... Sartre, and many other Existentialists, do maintain a pretty unambiguous subjective-objective split. Descartes really helped to get this tradition going. Though I agree with Sartre that we are not merely beings-in-themselves (though for different reasons), I do feel that there is something partially ontological about the idea 'being-for-itself', or transcendence. And I've never been able to make sense of this 'nothingness' in its relation to consciousness. I tend to see Existentialism as a type of 'way of life' philosophy, an attitude towards seeing things. In this view then, I don't have a problem with transcendence. But I think Sartre -is- saying more than that, and if he is, I have a hard time swallowing it.
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According to Sartre, "nothingness"
is consciousness (the being-for-itself). It exists only as a
negation of being, contingent on yet able to control being-in-itself, which is a pretty unusual theory. It is what creates "free will" and is the director of all emotions. What sets him apart from Descartes is his rejection of the idea that this consciousness is the "self" or has an essence of its own. The self exists to Sartre, but
outside of us, as the synthesis of all our previous actions and psychic states. A good description might be that one's "self" and "reputation" are the same in Sartre's world. Obviously there's no real way to "prove" this is the case--it just seems to have been the result of reflection.
What keeps me unwilling to totally reject Sartre's ideas is the fact that, while science seems to have run counter to his theories, recent developments in cognitive psychology have shed tremendous light on how our thoughts can impact our emotional states.