ABSTRACT
Rather than thinking about consciousness in essentially mental, Cartesian terms Sartre presents us with a radical alternative. Consciousness for him, whether one experiences oneself as an object or a subject, is always embodied. In establishing this point of view, Sartre relies heavily on the work of the Gestalt Psychologists. Their ideas pervade his work: the lived body as opposed to being a passive object of experience; my relationship to others; personal identity over time; plus a detailed understanding about embodied subjectivity and the flow of experience in relation to world and others for both healthy and neurotic cases. Again, all of this relies heavily on what he both takes literally and elaborates on from these psychologists. Concomitantly, all this work has important consequences for ontology when it comes to providing an alternative for both idealism and realism.
