Sartre

Sartre paper – freshman year:

Existentialism is the philosophical movement that proposes that individuals create the essence and meaning in their own lives, as opposed to the conventional belief that God or other authorities created this meaning. Unlike prior philosophies such as rationalism and empiricism, which seek to uncover ultimate order in the universe, thereby discovering universal meaning; existentialism proposes that meaning is created by the individual’s freedom. At first, the idea that humans are responsible for creating their own life meaning was a horrifying idea. However, existentialists like John Paul Sartre showed that the very fact that life is meaningless gives us the profound opportunity to give it meaning. It is through this freedom that each of our lives then becomes a unique work of art.

            Sartre’s early years had a strong influence on the philosophy he would later develop. His father died from fever when he was an infant, and Sartre felt greatly confined by his stepfather growing up. Longing for freedom, Sartre was forced to reinvent himself and he quickly learned the importance of his freedom of choice. He later studied philosophy at university and left to study phenomenology under  the philosopher Edmund Husserl. Phenomenology is the reflective study of the essence of consciousness as experienced from the first-person point of view. After studying under Husserl, Sartre was drafted into WWII where he served as a meteorologist. He was captured by German forces and held captive for nine months, where he had unlimited time to think and write. After World War II, the French felt an air of excitement and rejuvenation, and with this new beginning people began to reject traditions such as Christianity. By renouncing these traditions, individuals began to take the responsibilities of their lives into their own hands. This post-war environment was very welcoming and accepting of Sartre’s radical philosophy. In his work, The Transcendence of the Ego, Sartre examines and criticizes both Husserl’s phenomenology as well as Descartes’ dualistic view of the self – a scrutinizing task that helps give rise to existentialism.

            Perhaps as a result of France’s occupation during World War II, Sartre came to the conclusion that freedom must be the central feature of the human condition. According to Sartre, freedom is the ability to say no. In The Transcendence of the Ego, Sartre explores the idea that freedom and consciousness are essentially tied up with each other. It was conventionally believed that the human being was made up of a mind and body. This doctrine, known as Cartesian Dualism, proposed that the mind and body were separate entities and that the mind resided in the body but could transcend the physical world after the death of the body. Cartesian Dualism went hand in hand with religious doctrine, which proposed that if one lives justly, his mind or soul can be saved in the afterlife. In his Mediations on the First Philosophy, Descartes concluded that the only thing he was sure that existed was his consciousness because he would need consciousness in order to go through his method of doubt. Studying Descartes, a hero of Sartre’s, he concluded that Descartes’ conclusion is mistaken. Sartre points out that before his certainty of the existence his consciousness, Descartes consciousness had negated or abolished all beliefs in the world including bodies, memories, and other people for example. So consciousness had previously been an agent of negation and therefore must be the embodiment of negation, or “nothingness”. Sartre wishes to prove that there is no consciousness insofar as it both has no place in the world and transcends the world. He set out to radically prove that the idea of the self is a myth. What we and what Descartes had originally thought the self to be is a mere delusion. Sartre doesn’t mean to say that there is no consciousness however. The very fact that we are aware of our surroundings and actions are evidence enough that some sort of consciousness is present. Sartre agrees with Descartes by saying that, “indeed, the existence of consciousness is an absolute”. But Sartre believes that Descartes’ conception of consciousness is mistaken. Descartes thought consciousness to be a thing or entity that radiates from the self and entertains ideas. However, Sartre contended that consciousness was a “nothingness”, not a thing. Instead, consciousness is the action of pointing and negating. This “revealing intuition” is an openness that creates the world we live in by pointing or directing our attention towards objects. Consciousness is “a great emptiness, a wind blowing toward objects” and to be conscious of something is to relate to an item in the world rather than to relate to some inner representation of the item. Unlike those before him, Sartre believed that the self is not fixed in the mind, but rather who you are is directly a function of what you do (or where your consciousness points). He claims that the ego is “neither formally nor materially in consciousness: it is outside, in the world. It is a being of the world, like the ego of another.” Therefore, the self is not a fixed item but rather a chronically unstable function. And insofar as the self is not a thing, it indeed becomes a nothingness. .  There is no self, thus there can be no self-reflection – rendering Husserl’s phenomenology flawed and impractical.

            Sartre’s major disagreement with Husserl focuses on a single question: “whether consciousness can be found after a reduction to be presided over by a transcendental ego” or in other words, whether there is a self that is the subject of the functions of consciousness. Sartre points out that there are major issues and inconsistencies with Husserl’s philosophy. First, if there is a self at the center of consciousness, everything in the world becomes a mere subjective interpretation, rendering “objects dependent for their various characteristics upon the activity of the ego.” Husserl also believed that consciousness was “intentional” and pointed towards objects. However, Sartre pointed out that if there is an intentional ego, “then the ego must make contact with some reality different from itself. Otherwise, of course, the ego is simply caught up in the circle of its own subjectivity.” The idea of a stable self residing in consciousness also presents the problem of understanding how such contact between these realities is possible. Likewise, if there is an ‘I’ in consciousness, then “there would be two I’s: the I of the reflective consciousness and the I of the reflected consciousness.” Again, Husserl fails to suggest how these two entities would make contact or how they would “achieve identity into one unique I.” Instead, Sartre proposes that there is no ego in or behind human consciousness, but rather “there is only an ego for consciousness.” Consciousness, as a function, contains neither an ego nor anything else. “It is simply a spontaneity, a sheer activity of transcending towards objects.” Thus, without the ego in consciousness, phenomenology becomes “directly occupied with human existence in its concrete relations to the world” rather than merely a reflexive study of the self.

            This idea, that the self is always in the making, gives people a tremendous responsibility by condemning them to freedom. People are projecting towards futures that are essentially blank or unwritten. It becomes the individual’s task to use this freedom to create meaning. This freedom of choice is both wonderful and daunting, often leading to severe anxiety. The individual becomes uncomfortable with the fact that no one else can live his life for him – not even God. Sartre completely eradicates God from the equation because if God exists then man cannot be free. And likewise, if man is free, God cannot exist. People often fear this autonomy and seek to escape the burden of creating their selves. Sometimes we escape by answering to a celestial dictator in going to church, or by filling roles through our relationships and occupations. This avoidance of responsibility by letting others manage us is what Sartre calls “bad faith”. Instead, we must live life in the moment, choosing and being responsible.

            In a strange way, Sartre implies that the biggest threat to this freedom of consciousness is other people. He said, “Hell is other people.” According to Sartre, there is an inherent conflict in all human relations. This conflict is a result of our self-consciousness. When we attempt to construct ourselves as an item or object being viewed by others, we often feel overcome by shame. There is no way for people to be comfortable with relationships because it is impossible to both think of yourself as a free agent in the world and also as an object in someone else’s. Sartre believed it is only in relating to other people’s worlds that the self really comes into being. In the unreflective experience, there is absolutely no I. Sartre says, “When I run after a streetcar, when I look at the time, when I am absorbed in contemplating a portrait, there is no I.” There only exists an “I” or ego when one considers himself as an object. And insofar as one reflects upon himself as an object, he gives up his ability freedom to be an autonomous agent in the world.  So for Sartre, the idea of self-reflection is simply impractical in pratcie or in real life because it constrains freedom. Interestingly, Sartre never married and actually had relations with many women because he that being in a relationship with render him an object in another person’s world. Getting married would simply be fulfilling a societal standard. This act of bad faith would be giving him the label of husband and thus limit his freedom. Sartre seemed to view all male-female relationships as sadomasochistic. That is, the relationship is full of inherent power struggles and insofar as one partner has to comply, it becomes a constant slave-master struggle. In giving into the partner’s wish, the now subservient partner sacrifices his or her freedom, thus becoming like a slave.

            At first glance, Sartre’s philosophy may seem a bit depressing. He condemns us all to a God-less freedom and claims that it is impossible to maintain relationships with others. He even goes so far as to say that other people are hell. Yet, he only does so to reduce our experience to the choices of consciousness. He says that we chose God and we choose relationships – in essence creating our own hell. Sartre seems to overlook the fact that human beings are very similar in nature, however. We all have similar needs and desires and are forced into contractual like relationships with one another to fulfill these desires. Sartre would claim these freedoms are limiting our individual autonomy and should be discarded. However, he also seems to have a sort of utopian ideal that the world would be full of existentialists who would treat each other as equals. It is far more likely that with such freedom, the world would be full of egomaniacs who treat each other like dirt. It seems we must sacrifice some of our freedom for security.