I think Sartre was wrong in considering something as absolute just because it is at a stage that precedes thinking. Before thinking there are structures and structures make us non absolute, because they condition us all the same.

I find this passage revealing of Sartre's view of consciousness, which I share..

“It has always seemed to me that a working hypothesis as fruitful as historical materialism never needed for a foundation the absurdity which is metaphysical materialism. In fact, it is not necessary that the object precede the subject for spiritual pseudo-values to vanish and for ethics to find its bases in reality. It is enough that the me be contemporaneous with the World, and that the subject-object duality, which is purely logical, definitively disappear from philosophical preoccupations. The World has not created the me; the me has not created the World. These are two objects for absolute, impersonal consciousness, and it is by virtue of this consciousness that they are connected. This absolute consciousness, when it is purified of the I, no longer has anything of the subject. It is no longer a collection of representations. It is quite simply a first condition and an absolute source of existence.

Sartre
The Transcendence of the Ego

For the Cartesian cogito this implies that both ontologically and epistemologically.the 'I Am' is prior to the 'I think'. As the poet Paul Valery writes, 'Sometime I think, sometimes I am'.

The point being that 'I Am' precedes all other knowledge and is the sufficient and minimum condition for consciousness. But Sartre warns us not to imagine the 'I' of 'I Am' is the individual ego. Both 'me' and 'my world' would arise from a prior condition.

He's called an existentialist but I cannot grasp what this label means. To me he is just agreeing with the Buddha.

Unlike Kant, Sartre is not concerned with determining the transcendental epistemological conditions that make experience possible. He is concerned, instead, with providing an accurate phenomenological description of consciousness, i.e., with providing a description of consciousness as it appears to us, as it is actually lived.

Like Descartes, Kant assumed that the "I think" must be able to accompany all human consciousness as a transcendental pre-condition of its existence; but, according to Sartre this was not the case.

Sartre described something called the non-reflective or pre-reflective consciousness which is a non-positional self-consciousness while simultaneously being a positional consciousness of the object.

Sartre's central contention is that from a phenomenological point-of-view neither Husserl's Phenomenological "I" nor Kant's "Transcendental I" is, to use Kantian terminology, a necessary and strictly universal condition for the possibility of the existence of the pre-reflective, non-positional self-consciousness.

The pre-reflective consciousness, or consciousness in the first degree, is essentially a non-positional self-consciousness, i.e., an immediate consciousness of the subject as a subject. From a phenomenological standpoint, there are no Kantian transcendental conditions required for the pre-reflective self-consciousness to exist or to occur.

The reflected consciousness, or consciousness in the second degree, (Descartes' Cogito) claims to be a positional consciousness of the self, when, in fact, it is a consciousness which falsely posits and misrepresents the subject, which is an absolute inwardness, as if it were an intended transcendent object (the "I" of psychology).

Reflected consciousness is best described as being an always futile, after-the-fact attempt to try to objectify that which is and remains throughout inherently subjective and completely elusive. The pre-reflective consciousness continuously and frustratingly slips out of sight whenever one tries to look at it or grasp it directly (objectify it) - like those stars that persistently disappear when one attempts to view them directly.

Situated at the Present on a timeline which is in constant flux, the pre-reflective consciousness, as Sartre stated, "is what it is not and is not what it is." And the reflective consciousness is powerless to transform the pre-reflective consciousness into an object, i.e., into an Ego that "is what it is."

Descartes' Cogito Sum (the "reflection") can happen any time I wish to perform it (its "certain" quality), but Sartre's non-positional self-consciousness does not depend on my performing it for it to exist.

When and while I am having a positional consciousness of (intending) a transcendent object (which I always do spontaneously), I am simultaneously having a spontaneous non-positional self-consciousness, but I am not "having" a Cogito Sum. The latter is not a spontaneous activity, but a deliberate performance. Thus, noticing the "certain quality" of the Cogito Sum in no way automatically nullifies Sartre's unique insight that the Cogito Sum is an immediate, but second order, reflection (performance) the existence of which depends on a more primordial, first order, non-positional self-consciousness.

This is the broader epistemological context in which Sartre places Descartes' Cogito Sum performance ("Ego Cogito, Ego Sum") and its purported "I."

I wouldn't expect something less confusing and unnecessary complicated than this from Sartre! :grin:

Angelo, I think Albert Camus provided an interesting twist to your observation about thinking when he wrote: "We get into the habit of living before acquiring the habit of thinking."

I think that an element that makes Sartre's reasoning incorrect is the implicit assumption that it is possible to make a clean-cut distinction between thinking and non thinking, consciousness and non consciousness. These things exist by degrees and kinds: there are many degrees and kinds of thinking, many degrees and kinds of consciousness. As a consequence, it is impossible to have a precise idea of what thinking is and of what consciousness is. This is a general problem of all philosophy: human words and ideas were born in a context of instinctive human experience, completely devoid of any precision. Then philosophers started using this language to get precise concepts, which implies a lot of inconsistencies and contradictions. I think that philosophy should just accept this essential limit: 100% precise and 100% consistent concepts and ideas are impossible for several reasons. One reason is the one I have just described. Sartre's reasoning seems to ignore this situation of philosophy.

Angelo, a very clear explanation of your skeptical position.

Your "target" in this regard happened to be Sartre, but I suspect that the ideas espoused by any other philosopher, past or present, would be vulnerable to your critique. Am I correct? Unless, of course, there is a philosopher, or a philosopher came on the scene, with new ideas that somehow respected and incorporated your cautions/limitations into their world view.

Yes, essentially I am a relativist / skeptic / postmodern, although I have got some criticism against these positions as well.

The reflected consciousness, or consciousness in the second degree, (Descartes' Cogito) claims to be a positional consciousness of the self, when, in fact, it is a consciousness which falsely posits and misrepresents the subject, which is an absolute inwardness, as if it were an intended transcendent object (the "I" of psychology).

How is it that an absolute inwardness is not positional ? Does an inwardness not presuppose a content or a negation thereof for it to be directed to?

As per Sartre, the pre-reflective consciousness cannot grasp, intend, or posit itself as an object. If it tries to it falsifies itself. It is essentially a subject which can grasp itself as a subject, a self-consciousness, only when and while it is grasping, intending, or positing objects as objects.

This presupposes a subject-object dichotomy, since we have already classed the positional subject as ‘not object.’

It seems to me, the central issue for Sartre is not so much the subject-object dichotomy (he himself separates all of Being into two kinds, viz., Being-for-Itself (consciousness) and Being-in-Itself (the non-conscious) as it is trying to unravel and elucidate the true nature of consciousness.

One might think by consciousness we are talking about all that proceeds from human existence and perception. Whether that be conditioned by existence, passed through it, or otherwise. To me, starting upon consciousness in this manner bears more of a resemblance to the cogito than a difference, because it seems to take as given the scientific understanding of humanity, which is itself a kind of subjective point of view.

To me it is quite apropos that the Frenchman Sartre, having been thoroughly immersed in the French philosophical tradition, would begin by reflecting (no pun intended) upon the Cartesian Cogito and the nature of the Ego. However, it does not necessarily follow from this that Sartre simply adopted uncritically all of Descartes' epistemological assumptions. For example, the idea of a non-positional pre-reflective self-consciousness is no-where to be found in Descartes' written works.

And, for Sartre, the Cartesian I, Ego, or Self is not a substantial being, not a thing that thinks.

The pre-reflective consciousness, or consciousness in the first degree, is essentially a non-positional self-consciousness, i.e., an immediate consciousness of the subject as a subject. — charles ferraro

For me this is no different than saying that consciousness is consciousness of the ego or self. I'm on board with the idea of generalized, diffuse pre-reflective consciousness, but I don't understand it as being "consciousness of the subject as a subject", because I see the latter as necessarily reflective and linguistically mediated.

I think that Sartre tries to address your point by the following distinction:

We may therefore formulate our thesis: transcendental consciousness is an impersonal spontaneity. It determines its existence at each instant, without our being able to conceive anything before it. Thus each instant of our conscious life reveals to us a creation ex nihiio. Not a new arrangement, but a new existence. There is something distressing for each of us, to catch in the act this tireless creation existence of which we are not the creators. At this level man has the impression of ceaselessly escaping from himself, of overflowing himself, of being surprised by riches which are always unexpected. And once more it is an unconscious from which he demands an account of this surpassing of the me by consciousness. Indeed, the me can do nothing to this spontaneity, for will is an object which constitutes itself for and by this spontaneity. The will directs itself upon states, upon emotions, or upon things, but it never turns back upon consciousness. — Transcendence of the Ego, Sartre, Conclusions, translated by Kirkpatrick and Williams

This matter of creation at each instance plays a prominent role in Descartes' Meditations as the activity of God. But in this passage, it is presented as an unsurpassable limit of experience.