The feelings

To understand emotion, says Sartre, we must understand its function. When consciousness cannot bear the world as it is and is unable to change it in practice, it rushes to conceive it differently. Unable to truly change the world, consciousness magically transforms it.

In this classic essay, Sartre attempts to bring the tools of phenomenology to the study of emotion, while at the same time criticizing both the dominant psychological theories of his time and psychoanalysis. Through masterful descriptions of emotional experience in general, but also of individual emotions in particular—fear, anger, sadness, or joy—Sartre proposes here a new philosophical foundation for psychology.