Abstract

Edmund Husserl has certainly been one of the first important sources of Sartrean philosophy. Despite having been very critical of many aspects of Husserl’s thought once adopted his positions, the French philosopher has a great debt with the father of phenomenology. In this paper, which is a development of a section of our doctoral thesis, we will firstly try to explore Husserl’s key concepts, so that the fundamental aspects of his philosophy can be clarified and understood in their own meaning. Secondly, we will explain why Sartre adopted some of them, refusing others instead. Once done that, in a third moment we will be able to comprehend that Sartre was not only trying to criticize, but he strongly wanted to re-elaborate Husserlian phenomenology, in order to explore consciousness in an original way. In the end, we will discover why intentionality is the key element of this Sartrean turn, thanks to which the concepts of Ego and consciousness became the roots of his later thought.