Sartre’s discussion of the body is completely different from some rationalist views, to which, for instance, belongs Descartes, that see the body as an instrument controlled and moved by the mind and thus following the orders of the mind.
These views argue that the mind controls and directs the body in the same way a hand may move, use, control, or direct a tool toward achieving a certain outcome.
Consciousness is its body
Sartre, on the other hand, says that the “for-itself” is itself what is embodied; it is an embodied being. This means that human consciousness is itself the body. That is, human consciousness is conscious of the world in which it is a body, or human consciousness is constantly related to, and always belongs to, the world through the body that it is.
Sartre’s thinking of the body as the embodying and situating of consciousness in the world means that there is no dualism or opposition in which the body and consciousness are placed over against each other, and that there exists no distance separating the body from consciousness.
That is, to that which forms the whole being of the “for-itself” does not belong body and consciousness as separate, detached, or individual parts. Body and consciousness are both one and the same, for Sartre.
Consciousness is a body situated in, and belonging to, the world. Being is a being-in-the-world of a body. This means that the being of the “for-itself” is a “being-in-the-world” of the body and not the soul.
Consciousness, according to Sartre, is always conscious of something and, in its being conscious of something, must always be in the world. This means that consciousness becomes conscious of something only if it is both embodied and situated in the world.
According to Sartre, the body is “the contingent form which is assumed by the necessity of my contingency”. This means that one must have a body, but it is contingent that one must have a certain or a specific body, this body or that body. The body marks the situated-ness and contingency of the individual in the world. That is, it is only through our bodies that the world appears, shows itself for us, and invites us into it.
The body is not a mere tool or an instrument that the individual might use or direct, but rather the center and origin of the being of the “for-itself” which is an embodied “being-in-the-world”.
It is through the body that the “for itself” arises and turns toward the things constituting the world and affects them by acting. Sartre says that we are our bodies, yet at the same time we are not them. This means that the beginning of our actions and acting are our bodies, yet we are not this beginning because we surpass it and leave it behind in our acting toward a certain outcome through our bodies.
Consciousness is its body in the world; consciousness is embodied. Sartre discusses the example of eye pain in order to show that consciousness is embodied. He says that if one is reading whilst suffering from and experiencing eye pain, then one’s experience of the world and one’s experience of oneself as conscious of the world become shot through with the pain in one’s eyes. This means that one becomes a painful consciousness. One experiences and lives one’s pain; the pain of one’s eyes is one’s lived consciousness, one’s embodied consciousness.
This example shows that what is contingent is that I have this specific body rather than another body, but what is necessary, on the other hand, is that I have a body. Having a body renders possible my own consciousness, its existence, its being-in-the-world. My consciousness exists and is in each case my consciousness because only I have a body, my body.
For more articles on Sartre’s philosophy, read Sartre on Anguish: “We are anguish”, or What does Sartre mean by “being in-itself”?, or Why did Sartre refuse the Freudian Unconscious?