Consciousness–object intentional relation

The Consciousness–object intentional relation is the structure by which consciousness is consciousness of something without becoming identical to that thing. In Sartre’s account, consciousness is not a self-contained inner object: it is the transcending For-itself, whose directedness toward an object depends on a pre-reflective awareness of its own activity and on a nihilation that separates it from what it intends.

Consciousness as directedness

Like Husserl, Sartre insists that consciousness is always consciousness of something. Its being is therefore not sealed within itself: consciousness concerns an object other than itself, and its being is in question through that relation. The intentional structure holds together two moments that cannot be collapsed into one: consciousness reaches beyond itself toward an object, yet the object remains distinct from the consciousness directed toward it.

This directedness need not be divided into separate inner acts for every kind of experience. Sartre sometimes distinguishes consciousness by its psychic object, as in pain-consciousness or shame-consciousness. Those examples show how the same basic relation can take different forms according to what consciousness is conscious of; they do not make the object a component identical with consciousness.

The pre-reflective basis

Unreflective consciousness, also called non-thetic or non-positional self-consciousness, is the pre-reflective cogito. It is not knowledge of consciousness as an object. Rather, consciousness implicitly registers that it is consciousness of an object while it is directed toward that object. This implicit self-awareness is the basis for the Cartesian cogito, not a reflective act that must first turn consciousness into something known.

Reflective consciousness, by contrast, is thetic or positional self-consciousness: it takes consciousness positionally, in the mode associated with reflection. The distinction clarifies how consciousness can be directed outward without being wholly unaware of itself. Its self-awareness is already present in the unreflective act, while reflection makes consciousness itself a theme.

Nihilation and the object's independence

Sartre’s account of nihilation explains how intentional consciousness exists. Consciousness makes nothingness arise between itself and the object of which it is conscious; this non-being is not a separate object or a substance lodged between the two. It is the separation through which consciousness is not the object it apprehends. To nihilate is, in this account, to encase with a shell of non-being: consciousness exists as consciousness by maintaining this difference.

Nothingness itself does not have Being, although it is supported by Being. It comes into the world through the For-itself as a recoil from the fullness of self-contained Being, making consciousness possible without erasing the object’s distinctness. The intentional relation thus depends neither on a fusion of subject and object nor on an independently existing nothingness; it is the For-itself’s separating activity that opens the relation.