Sartre denies any phenomenal-noumenal distinction in being

Evidence

Sartre, as I read him, is not a Cartesian, however. He does not understand the givens of our situation as pure materialities devoid of human intentionalities. Th ey are facticities. Th at is, consciousness is not, as with Descartes, a passive meaning fi nder as much as it is an active meaning giver. In disclosing the meanings of the world, consciousness also constitutes them. Given that every materiality we confront is already sedimented with historical, social, political, economic, and cultural layers of intentional acts, and given that consciousness fi nds meaning already inhering in the materialities that confront it, it appears that materialities are meaningful in themselves. Facticities, materialities imbued with human meaning, that is, appear to be facts, material givens that seem to be immune from, and independent of, our intentionalities. — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 63 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Th e body makes its fi rst appearance in Sartre’s Being and Nothingness as he discusses the concept of bad faith. To illustrate how one may be in bad faith, he describes the situation of a woman at a romantic rendezvous. Th e man grabs her hand, and she abandons it to him: “but she does not notice that she is leaving it. She does not notice because it happens by chance that she is at this moment all intellect… . And during this time the divorce of the body from the soul is accomplished; the hand rests inert between the warm hands of her companion— neither consenting nor resisting— a thing” (BN, 97). If Sartre was a self-proclaimed Cartesian dualist and had presented the for-itself as an amalgam of mind and body, two radically diff erent substances, this example would not come as a surprise. It would indeed be possible for the woman to divorce herself from her own body. However, Sartre claims that the for-itself is its body. — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 96 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Sartre’s own bad-faith example presupposes a body-mind dualism his ontology denies — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre: The Riddle of…, 96; Sartre rejected Cartesian dualism by treating material givens as meaning-sedimented facticities — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre: The Riddle of…, 63; For Sartre a thing’s qualities constitute the thing itself, not subjective additions — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre: The Riddle of…, 361

Broader Connections

• Sartre rejected Cartesian dualism by treating material givens as meaning-sedimented facticities #corroborates (0.85) — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 63
• Sartre’s own bad-faith example presupposes a body-mind dualism his ontology denies #complicates (0.80) — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 96