4/18/12

One of the biggest concepts that I got out of the reading about Sartre is the distinction between consciousness or "human reality" and the inanimate, non conscious reality. What he is distinguishing are not two substances but two modes of being. He is talking about the differences between the way the conscious being exists and the way that inanimate things exist. Sartre also distinguishes between reflective and prereflective consciousness. For example when you are counting something, you are conscious that you are counting them, but you are not reflectively conscious that you are counting them until someone asks you what you are doing. He is going into the concept that we do things without consciously thinking about them and we only come to the realization that we are doing something when it is pointed out to us by an outside realization.