RT Journal Article
T1 Sartre on action: decentering the will
T2 Inglés
A1 Rae, Gavin
A2 Taylor & Francis, 
AB The Western philosophic tradition has tended to tie the question of action to that of freedom, with the relationship structured around the free will/determinism opposition. In contrast, I show that in Being and Nothingness, Sartre offers a stringent and radical critique of these approaches. I briefly outline the conceptual parameters of Sartre’s early ontology, before showing that he rejects the free will tradition because of its underlying conception of freedom and insistence that action is reflective and will-based. According to Sartre, consciousness is not a sum of parts, with one aspect (will) guiding the rest. Consciousness is a differentiated whole, divided between reflective and pre-reflective levels. Will is tied to the reflective level of consciousness and so cannot be said to be foundational given that reflectivity depends upon pre-reflectivity. Instead, it is an expressive effect of consciousness’s spontaneous, pre-reflective, projection of itself towards a particular end and value.
PB Taylor & Francis
YR 2024
FD 2024
LK https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/106105
UL https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/106105
LA eng
NO Rae, G. (2024) "Sartre on Action: Decentring the Will", Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, 55(3), pp. 201–220. doi: 10.1080/00071773.2024.2332200.
NO Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (España)
NO Comunidad de Madrid
DS Docta Complutense
RD 24 abr 2025