Consciousness is only aboutness, so nothing about me can define me

Evidence

It is peculiar idea — but what Sartre is trying to get at is the structure of Husserlian intentionality, which defines consciousness as only an insubstantial ‘aboutness’. My consciousness is specifically mine, yet it has no real being: it is nothing but its tendency to reach out or point to things. If I look into myself and seem to see a mass of solidified qualities, of personality traits, tendencies, limitations, relics of past hurts and so on, all pinning me down to an identity, I am forgetting that none of these things can define me at all. In a reversal of Descartes’ ‘I think, therefore I am,’ Sartre argues, in effect, ‘I am nothing, therefore I am free.’ — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 500

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines Husserlian intentionality and Sartre’s reversal of Cartesian doubt in one compact passage.
• XREF: Connects to the reader’s knowledge of Descartes and, likely, to other secondary treatments of Sartre’s ‘I am nothing, therefore I am free’ slogan. — connects to: Exteriority-to-self can be revealed only to a being that is consciousness — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 643; Facticity neither determines who we are nor resists us independently of consciousness — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 343; The mind cannot naturally stay empty because aboutness is its default state

Broader Connections

• Exteriority-to-self can be revealed only to a being that is consciousness #expands (0.85) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 643
• Facticity neither determines who we are nor resists us independently of consciousness #qualifies (0.80) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 343
• The mind cannot naturally stay empty because aboutness is its default state #expands (0.78)