First published in France in 1937, this important essay marked a turning point in Sartre's philosophical development. Before writing it, he had been closely allied with phenomenologists such as Husserl and Heidegger. Here, however, Sartre attacked Husserl's notion of a transcendental ego. The break with Husserl, in turn, facilitated Sartre's transition from phenomenology to the existentialist doctrines of his masterwork, Being and Nothingness, which was completed a few years later while the author was a prisoner of war. This student-friendly edition of The Transcendence of the Ego also includes an introduction and notes/annotations by the translators.
Author
Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre, normally known simply as Jean-Paul Sartre, was a French existentialist philosopher and pioneer, dramatist and screenwriter, novelist and critic. He was a leading figure in 20th century French philosophy. He declined the award of the 1964 Nobel Prize in Literature "for his work which, rich in ideas and filled with the spirit of freedom and the quest for truth, has exerted a far-reaching influence on our age." In the years around the time of his death, however, existentialism declined in French philosophy and was overtaken by structuralism, represented by Levi-Strauss and, one of Sartre's detractors, Michel Foucault.
