The purpose of this research is to provide an analysis
of the treatment of the concepts of consciousness and freedom by Sartre and Heidegger in their works Being and Nothingness and Being and Time.
Sartre's Being and Nothingness is in fact entirely a study of consciousness, of its existence and its absence. As such, the book qualifies as, and can truly be understood only as, a work of phenomenological psychology. At the heart of this specific psychology is the belief that much of what man perceives to be immanent and "within" his consciousness is in fact an illusion. The event we perceive as immanent is in fact not the event itself, but rather our consciousness of the possibility of that event occurring. Such subtle distinctions provide the structure of Being and Nothingness. Without an understanding of those distinctions one cannot begin to see the grand portrait of human consciousness constructed in the book.
Both Sartre's book and Heidegger's Being and Time are ponder-ous works utilizing the phenomenological method of investigation and both exert to the last degree their philosophical muscles in exploring the relationship between consciousness and freedom. Writing first, Heidegger influenced Sartre (and Sartre is open about that influence), but whereas Heidegger was concerned primarily with Being, and with the individual only insofar as the existence of that individual is a means for understanding Being, Sartre was concerned almost exclusively with the existence of the individual. Out of Sartre's concern came the principle "existence precedes essence," which is a complete reversal of the principle of Heidegger, that was based on the approach that existence (of the individual) comes out of, or follows, essence. In fact, what Sartre did attempt in Being and Nothingness was to reverse not only the tenets supported by Heidegger in regard to the essence-existence riddle but the tenets supported by every traditional metaphysici...