Consciousness does not know its own character — unless in determining itself reflectively from the standpoint of another's point of view. It exists i… - Jean-Paul Sartre

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Consciousness does not know its own character — unless in determining itself reflectively from the standpoint of another's point of view. It exists its character in pure distinction non-thematically and non-thetically in the proof which it effects of its own contingency and in the nihilation by which it recognizes and surpasses its facticity. This is why pure introspective self-description does not give us character. Proust's hero 'does not have' a directly apprehensible character; he is presented first as being conscious of himself as an ensemble of general reactions common to all men...in which each man can recognise himself. This is because these reactions belong to the general 'nature' of the psychic.