La Transcendance de l’ego: Esquisse d’une description phénomenologique [The Transcendence of the Ego, A sketch for a phenomenological description] is Sartre’s first significant published theoretical work. It was written in 1934 and published in 1937, first in the review Recherches philosophiques and, many years later in 1965, in book form. It is inspired by the work of Husserl, whom Sartre discovered during his stay in Berlin from September 1933 to June 1934. During those years, Sartre was working on his first novel, La Nausée [Nausea] published in 1938, and on the short stories comprising Le Mur [The Wall] (1939). He had also published L’Imagination [The Imagination] (1936) in which he developed his first conception of consciousness.
La Transcendance de l’ego is a criticism of both Kant’s and Husserl’s theories of the “I”. It is an...
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Citation: Malinge, Yoann. "La Transcendance de l'ego". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 25 October 2016 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=20283, accessed 16 December 2025.]
