Abstract: Emotions and magic? Sounds like a strange pairing, right? But there's real method to this madness. For readers of Sartre, ‘magic’ isn't used in the non-literal sense; it's his term for a phenomenon he considered fundamentally irrational: emotion itself. This idea gets its fullest treatment in Being and Nothingness (1949), but its roots lie in an earlier, more compact work– Sketch for a Theory of Emotions (1939) – which is the focus of this piece. I'll start by laying out Sartre's phenomenological account of emotional experience. From there, I turn to a key objection raised by Richmond, who argues that Sartre's analysis is internally inconsistent. I then examine Hatzimoysis's attempt to defend Sartre against this charge and ultimately argue that his response falls short, leaving the inconsistencies unresolved. On this basis, I conclude that Sartre's account doesn't offer a complete picture of what it's like to feel an emotion. Still, as we'll see, there's more than one compelling idea buried in his theory – even if the overall picture doesn't quite hold together.
Sartre on Emotional Experience
In Sketch for a Theory of Emotions ('Sketch'), Sartre (1993) describes emotional experience as a magical strategy people resort to when they encounter perceived difficulty in their lives. In this way, emotions are solutions that arise, unreflectively, when the perceived difficulty of achieving one's end seems unattainable through normal means. It is precisely through this vein, that emotions have a 'finality' (1993, 29) and purpose, they are a wish-fulfilling device with the aim of reinterpreting a situation deemed as intolerably difficult, allowing one to act even when '[a]ll ways are barred' (1993, 39).
For Sartre, emotions are 'a certain way of apprehending the world' (1993, 52), resulting from a 'transformation of the world' (1993, 58), which involves a bodily response. This is not to imply the material world itself transforms – rather – the subject alters her consciousness of it. The majority of emotions in the Sketch, are framed in this way: transforming our world by altering our consciousness of it. Now, if emotional experience entails changing one’s consciousness in order to alter our situation, then according to Sartre, the way in which the subject does this is through his/her body. For instance, when frustrated the blackberries are out of reach, I alter my perspective on the blackberry to one of disgust – my body 'seize[s] upon the [apparent] tartness’ of the blackberry, deeming them too red, unripe and undesirable (1993, 41). Once again, the material constitution of the world doesn't change – what changes is how it appears and what it means to us. The key take-away here is that Sartre's account revolves around bodily behaviour: that is, through bodily 'incantations' the body acts as an instrument that allows this transition into the magical realm (1993, 47).
Magic
Given the above, one might think magic originates purely from consciousness – that the world changes because our consciousness transforms it. 'I find him hateful because I am angry' (1993, 61). On this reading, we are the wizards ushering magic into the world rather than discovering it. However, in the final section of Sketch, Sartre introduces an episode of horror that departs from this train of thought. The example posited by Sartre involves a person 'in the state of horror' seeing a 'grimacing face' pressed against a window which makes them freeze with terror (1993, 55–57). Here, magic is not a quality we impose onto the world – but the world 'reveals itself to consciousness as magical' (1993, 56). I am horrified because I find the world horrifying; in this instance, horror doesn't require a magical transformation to experience that which is horrible. In this way, Sartre asserts there are two types of emotions: one that 'abruptly transmutes the deterministic world... into a magical one' (1993, 56), and another where 'magic and the meaning of the emotions come from the world and not ourselves' (1993, 58).
Magical Inconsistencies
One question worth asking here relates to the exact role of magic in Sartre's account. On the former view, 'it is we who constitute the magic of the world'; on the latter, 'the world itself... reveals itself suddenly as a magical environment' (1993, 57). Indeed, whether these two views stand at odds with each other is a matter of controversy. For Richmond (2010) this tension is palpable and represents a genuine deficiency in Sartre’s account. She argues that Sartre cannot have it both ways: that emotions is 'to be accounted for in terms of an escapist strategy' a way of distorting the world, but also 'a legitimate way of disclosing the world' (2010, 99). Indeed, Richmond is correct to put this into question; after all, is it our emotional consciousness that establishes a magical world by way of distortion, or is the magical world that which submits us into emotional consciousness, to be disclosed to it?
By way of response, Hatzimoysis (2014) attempts to resolve this conflict by suggesting that when frozen with terror, perhaps one is resorting to a magical strategy central to Sartre’s primary usage. For example when frozen in terror, one 'might wish that the whole scene... "freezes" with himself' (2014, 82), hoping to 'cancel the threat by cancelling its acting at a distance' (2014, 82). Seemingly, this preserves the idea that all emotion involves transformation from the deterministic to the magical world. In response, Richmond (2014) notes, Hatzimoysis simply reasserts how the two lines of Sartrean magic juxtapose each other without removing 'their inconsistencies as explanations of emotion' (2014, 615). In other words, Hatzimoysis’ solution involves reacting to the ‘magical and threatening face’ by ‘working further magic of its own’, emotionally affecting their body to freeze in order to escape (2014, 615). Of course, however, the question still remains on whether the subject's consciousness is 'accurately disclosing the world or wish-fulfillingly distorting it' (2014, 615).
On a closer reading, however, Hatzimoysis’ point may be subtler than what Richmond allows for. To explain, Hatzimoysis isn't trying to remedy the individual inconsistencies but merge both accounts to offer a solution that (1) coherences with Sartre's remarks, and (2) is more phenomenologically accurate and enjoys wider 'phenomenological support' (Hatzimoysis 2020, 166). But, of course whether this remains faithful to Sartre is another question. A key division worth making here relates which emotions the two Sartrean accounts apply. In the first account where magic is constituted by consciousness applies to fear, joy, and frustration; the second account where magic is discovered in the world applies to 'horror and wonder' (1993, 55). With this division in mind the issues of Hatzimoysis’ solution becomes salient. As, Elpidorou (2016) notes Hatzimoysis operates 'under the assumption that during horror the instrumental world is transformed into an emotional [one]' (2016, 216) — but this 'runs contrary to Sartre's initial understanding of horror', which holds that horror is presented to us as already magical, not imposed by transformation (2016, 217). Hatzimoysis' interpretation therefore departs from Sartre's view and on these grounds cannot be rendered successful.
The Limits of Sartre’s account
This consideration brings to fore a paradox in Satres’ account: either Sartre abandons his 'insistence that horror is an emotion' or his 'claim that all emotions are magical transformations of the world' (Elpidorou 2016, 222). If emotions are cognitive transformations of the deterministic world, horror cannot be an emotion. Alternatively, if horror is an emotion, not all emotions fit the cognitive-transformation model Sartre applies to difficulty (2016, 211).
Horror isn't the only troublesome case. Consider awe, an emotion that arises when 'we perceive or conceptualize vastness' to be differentiated from wonder, which arises from 'the unknown... which lies just beyond the fringes of our current understanding' (De Cruz 2024, 4). This emotion is equally problematic for Sartre. For example consider a person gazing at the night sky who, upon the sudden emergence of the Northern lights, becomes transfixed in awe and frozen by its sheer vastness and beauty. In the same way with horror, there is no time to transform the world – awe is immediate. Additionally, awe is insoluble to the type of cognitive transformation when faced with difficulty, as there is no obvious finality when in awe. We are not attempting to escape a perceived difficulty; we are simply overwhelmed and frozen by the immense vastness and beauty of the world.
Perhaps these inconsistencies reflect the Sketch's status as a work in progress. Sartre's aim wasn't a full phenomenological account of emotion, but an alternative to psychological theories treating emotions as passive states, overlooking their intentionality and direction toward objects. Here his analysis has merit: as Whitten (2023) notes, 'when terrified by a threatening object we do sometimes seem to engage in acts of wishful thinking' to make it seem less threatening (2023, 230). To this extent, Sartre's account of cognitive transformation is plausible.
Conclusion
Overall, Sartre’s account provides a plausible analysis of certain aspects of emotional experience. For instance, we can recall instances where we do engage in acts of wishful thinking to avoid a situation we deem as intolerable. Think to a time where we failed a job interview we so desperately wanted to succeed in, and in order to cope we shrugged our shoulders and told ourselves ‘I didn’t want it anyways’. In any sort, although much can be questioned whether it is apt to say that when experiencing positive valence emotions we are attempting to overcome a perceived difficulty, the more glaring difficulties found within Sartre’s account is the inconsistent treatment of magic which leaves much to be desired and resolved by his champions. Anyhow, due to these inconsistencies, it seems to me, that it preclude Sartre’s account from providing a complete analysis of emotional experience. As either Sartre must abandon his insistence that all emotions are cognitive transformations of the world in the face of difficulties, or that horror, awe and wonder are emotions.
Bibliography
De Cruz, H. (2024). Wonderstruck: How Wonder and Awe Shape the Way We Think. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Elpidorou, A. (2016). ‘Horror, Fear, and the Sartrean Account of Emotion’. Southern Journal of Philosophy, 54(2), pp. 209-225.
Hatzimoysis, A. (2014). ‘Consistency in Sartrean analysis of emotions’. Analysis, 74(1), pp. 81-83.
Hatzimoysis, A. (2020). ‘Jean-Paul Sartre’. In Szanto, T., Hilge, L. (eds.) The Routledge Handbook of Phenomenology of Emotion. London: Routledge. pp. 159-167.
Richmond, S. (2010). ‘Magic in Sartre’s early philosophy’. In Webber, J. (eds.) Reading Sartre. London: Routledge. pp. 145-161.
Richmond, S. (2014). ‘Inconsistency in Sartre’s Analysis of Emotion’. Analysis, 74(4), pp. 612-615.
Sartre, J. P. (1939). Sketch for a Theory of the Emotions. London: Routledge Classics, 2004.
Whitting, D. (2023). ‘Sartre, James, and the Transformative Power of Emotion’. In Morag, T. (eds.) Sartre and Analytic Philosophy. New York: Routledge. pp. 225-243.
