Poststructuralism - Reader-response/Brief Essay Questions

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

SARTRE (1905-1980) - EXISTENTIALISM

I. Background

A. Definition of Existentialism

B. Examples of Existentialists

Theistic existentialists - Kierkegaard (1813-1855 Dane), M. Buber, R. Bultmann, K. Jaspers, Gabriel Marcel.

A - theistic existentialists - Sartre, de Beauvoir, Camus, Heidigger

C. Sartre's Biography - Philosopher, Novelist, Playwright No Exit, Les Jeux Sont Fait, Nausea, Being and Nothingness

Born in 1905 in Paris.  Lived there most of his life. Participated in the French Army in WWII, captured and then when repatriated participated in the Resistance. Against French colonialism in Algeria in 50's and with leftist students in 60's. Ended as a Marxist - although never joined the Communist Party. Adult, lifelong partner of Simone de Beauvoir, another well known French intellectual. De Beauvoir is the author of The Second Sex , The Ethics of Ambiguity.and The Mandarins

D. War Experiences:

Sartre in Edel, Flower, O'Conner: "The Republic of Silence (trans. Ramon Guthrie in The Republic of Silence; ed. A.J.. Lieblmy (NY: Harcourt, Brace, 1947),   498-500):"

"We were never more free than during the German occupation...every accurate thought was a conquest...everyone of our gestures had the weight of a solemn commitment...and the choice that each of us made of his life and of his being was an authentic choice because it was made face to face with death, because it could always have been expressed in these terms: 'Rather death than...'" Always conscious of the necessity of choice and responsibility. - "...whether it is by the kind of death or the kind of life that ultimately morality is to be understood." (E.F.O'C , 562)

II. Existence Precedes Essence

A. "...man first of all exists, encounters himself, surges up in the world - and defines himself afterwards. ...Man is nothing else but that which he makes of himself ' (Sartre in Solomon and Greene, 410). No essence-no human nature, no distinctive purpose or reason that defines human existence.

B. No human nature in the mind of God (Example: God as supernatural artisan compared to paper-knife artisan)

There is no human essence or nature in the mind of God. Paper knife artisan has an idea of the paper knife beforehand. God = artisan. Idea=essence. BUT there is no God. Therefore, there is no human essence that exists prior to our actions.

C. No human nature, essence, no universal "man-ness" apart from God either (No form of Platonism acceptable)

There is nothing in common no universal conception of Man as Kant would argue.   "In Kant, this universality goes so far that the wild man of the woods, man in the state of nature and the bourgeois are all contained in the same definition and have the same fundamental qualities" (Sartre in Solomon and Greene, 410.  There is no essence that precedes historic existence. Individuals create their identity through their actions.

D. "If God does not exist, then  there is at least one being whose existence comes before its essence .... "(Sartre in Solomon and Greene, 410) - each man.

III. Complete Freedom - Complete Responsibility

A. If there is no God and no essence(if existence precedes essence) one is free to create oneself - no rules, no givens, no ultimate values, no human nature - determines you. There is no God or human essence to base them upon. Not to decide is to decide. "...Man is condemned to be free." (Sartre in Solomon and Greene, 413).

Dostoevsky - "If God did not exist, everything would be permitted." Sartre says existentialism takes this seriously in a way some who want to abolish the nation of God do not. In this sense, theists are more honest.

"Everything is permitted if God does not exist, and man is in consequence forlorn, for he cannot find anything to depend upon either within or outside himself. He discovers forthwith, that he is without excuse." (Sartre in Solomon and Greene,413). No way to legitimize our behavior.

B. No determinism - Also - everything which happens to me is mine. There are no accidents. There is no determinism. No compulsion.

1. Ex. of War  (Solomon and Greene, 418-19)

"If I am mobilized in a war, this is my was; it is in my image and I deserve it. I deserve it first because I could always get out of it by suicide or by desertion;...For lack of getting out of it I have chosen it." (Sartre in Solomon and Greene, 419)

2. Each person exists in a certain epoch inescapably, 421. "Each person is an absolute upsurge at an absolute date and is perfectly unthinkable at another date. . . . I am not distinct from this same epoch; I could not be transported to another epoch without contradiction." (421)

C. Complete Responsibility - For Self and All Humanity

1. If existence precedes essence, if we have complete freedom, then "man is responsible for what he is. Thus, the first effect of existentialism is that it puts every man in possession of himself as he is, and places the entire responsibility for his existence squarely upon his own shoulders. And, when we say that man is responsible for himself, we do not mean that he is responsible only for his own individuality, but that he is responsible for all men (Sartre in Solomon and Greene, 410).

In choosing for ourselves, we choose for all: we create an image of what "man" in our epoch ought to be. We choose values for our epoch. To join a Christian or Communist Trade Union. To marry and have children ('I am thereby committing not only myself, but humanity as a whole, to the practice of monogamy. I am thus responsible for myself and for all men, and I am creating a certain image of man as I would have him to be. In fashioning myself I fashion man (411)."

We act as universal legislators: "...one always ought to ask oneself what would happen if everyone did as one is doing; nor can one escape from that disturbing thought except by a kind of self-deception (411)." ex. lying , 411

Lying: "the act of lying implies the universal value which it denies." (411)

2. Comparison to Kant

3. "I did not ask to be born." In a certain sense I choose to be born and choose an attitude toward my facticity. "Thus facticity is everywhere but inapprehensible; I never encounter anything except mt responsibility. That is why I can not ask, 'Why was I born?' or curse the day of my birth or declare that I did not ask to be born, for these various attitudes toward my birth--i.e., toward the fact that I realize a presence in the world--are absolutely nothing else but ways of assuming this birth in full responsibility and of making it mine." (Sartre in Solomon and Greene, 420).

III. Anguish (Anxiety, Angst) and Abandonment (Forlornness)

A. Man is in Anguish due to complete freedom and responsibility.

"When a man commits himself to anything, fully realizing that he is not only choosing what he will be, but is thereby at the same time a legislator deciding for the whole of mankind - in such a moment a man cannot escape from the sense of complete and profound responsibility. (409)"

B. Examples

1. Kierkegaard's Story of Abraham and Isaac (411-12)

2. The madwoman and God on the telephone (411)

3. Military leaders who send men to their deaths (412)

"There is no proof, no outside justification. Who, then, can prove that I am the proper person to impose, by my own choice, my conception of man upon mankind? ...Am I really a man who has the right to act in such a manner that humanity regulates itself by what I do?" (412) The world is not rational or meaningful. We create meaning.

4. Far from preventing action it is its precondition.

C. Abandonment (Forlorness)

"...God does not exist; and that it is necessary to draw the consequences of his absence right to the end.

1. Example - Sartre's pupil in WWII. ( 413-14)

2. Birth and all other conditions are opportunities and chances (422 )

IV. Bad Faith

A. l'en-soi - being in itself (the being of things) and le pour-soi  -being for itself (a conscious subject, human consciousness - with an open past and future) Man not only creates himself, but is responsible. The world is divided into two kinds of being. People have a "double property" the facts about ourselves and our use and/ordenial of those facts - facticity and transcendence (Solomon and Greene, 408)

Kierkegaard - two men in a wagon, one who holds the reins but is asleep and the other fully awake - in some sense both exist, - but only the conscious driver exists in sense of conscious parties. Only a person engaged in conscious activity of will and choice can truly be said to exist.

B. BAD FAITH.

1. General definitions

a. To deny we are free and responsible; to deny our abandonment and anguish is BAD FAITH. No to decide is to decide.

b. Blaming outside events, persons, God, or appealing to external authority of any kind. is BAD FAITH..

c. To deny our facticity and our transcendence

2. Examples:

a. woman on date, pretends in a sense she doesn't know what the man wants and that she doesn't have to decide, 415-16

b. waiter - in some sense he is playing at being a waiter(a thing). He both knows what a waiter is(facticity) and that he is playing at being one(transcendence). To say, I am a waiter and could not behave other than I am behaving, would be bad faith, 416-17

c. Homosexual,  418-19

d. Problem: Is anything we do outside of acknowledging our freedom and responsibility bad faith?