The status of the body in Jean-Paul Sartre's Esquisse d'une theorie des emotions

In this paper I intend to reveal some difficulties surrounding the definition of the status of the body in Jean-Paul Sartre's Esquisse d'une theorie des emotions (Sketch for a theory of the emotions), published in 1939. Such difficulties are fundamentally due to the primacy of consciousness in Sartre's eidetic of emotion, which subordinates the activity of the body to the spontaneity of consciousness. This is a theoretical position that bears resemblance to intellectualism, something which is criticized by Sartre from outset of the work in question. With the purpose of treating these issues, I attempt to explain Sartre's eidetic of emotion by emphasizing the problematic status of the body in this eidetic. First, however, it is necessary to examine Sartre's strictures against psychological theories of emotion, especially that of William James, as well as to examine some of James' main theses on emotion.