‘Subjectless’ Subjectivity: Anscombe and Sartre on Self-Consciousness
Problemos December 1, 2025 Zhi-Hua Li
Anscombe famously argues that ‘I’ is not a referring expression, otherwise, a ‘Cartesian Ego’ would inevitably appear. She thinks the form of self-consciousness expressed in ‘I’ is ‘subjectless’: it is consciousness that does not involve a self-object (or Ego). Sartre’s theory of consciousness offers a strikingly parallel and mutually illuminating framework. He similarly denies the presence of...