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Reading Lecture #5:

Sartre and Existentialism

I. Overview of Existentialism:

• Existentialism was/is one of the major Contemporary Continental philosophic movements.

• Existentialism is the popular name for a strain of philosophy associated with

20th century philosophers such as Jean Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, Martin

Heidegger & Maurice Merleau-Ponty, but with its roots in 19th century thinkers

• It was at once a literary, artistic, cinematic movement as well as a philosophic one.

• As a literary movement, it counts among its ranks: Fyodor Dostoyevsky; Franz Kafka; Albert Camus; Eugene Ionesco.

• As a philosophic movement, it had both a religious wing and an atheistic wing.

1. Religious wing: Soren Kierkegaard; Paul Tillich; Martin Buber; Karl Barth; Gabriel Marcel; Karl Jaspers.

2. Atheistic wing: Friedrich Nietzsche; Jean-Paul Sartre; Albert Camus.

• Existentialists differed widely on many issues, but they shared a concern for:

1. Human freedom;

2. Personal responsibility;

3. The need to each person to face up to his/her choices (Be authentic, not have false consciousness);

4. Confront the meaninglessness of life (“angst”).

• Perhaps the major difference amongst the existentialists is on the matter of religion.

• Theistic existentialism holds:

1. Belief in God is essential for living, but unlike classical philosophy & theology, it believes that there are no rational proofs one can offer for God's existence. (Cf. Aquinas, Paley).

2. Since we must live our lives and living our lives requires faith, we must leap to faith (Kierkegaard's term), that is, fully commit to religion in the face of lack of proof.

3. The ultimate anxiety in life is knowing that God alone gives meaning to life, but not being able to rationally prove God exists, so having to commit on the basis of faith.

• Atheistic existentialists see things differently.

1. Whereas the patron saint of theistic existentialism is Soren Kierkegaard, the patron non-saint of atheistic existentialism is Friedrich Nietzsche.

2. As we saw, Nietzsche attacked religion – Christianity in particular - as being a crutch for weakness, and a weapon used by the herd of mediocre and puny low-life average people against the creative, strong, self-reliant supermen.

3. Christian morality he scorned as slave morality, which prefers modesty, safety, security to personal risk, strength, self-reliance, and glory.

4. Kierkegaard also criticized the Christianity of his day, but whereas Kierkegaard looked at the Christianity of his day, saw it expressing herd instinct & personal weakness, and called for its renewal, Nietzsche saw the same thing and called for its elimination.

5. 20th century atheist existentialists share the view that religious belief is a kind of cowardice, or (in Camus' words) "philosophic suicide."

• Contemporary (i.e., 20th century) existentialism dates from 1927 with the publication of Heidegger's book Being and Time, a dense treatise in which Heidegger reassesses what it means to be human being.

• He felt that the fundamental philosophy concept is "Being there," that is, there is no separation of mind and matter, no consciousness apart from the world. We are all abandoned, by ourselves in the world, and the basic challenge is what to do with ourselves, how to live, what meaning to structure our lives by.

• Sartre, Camus and other post WWII writers elaborated this defining theme.

II. Sartre the man:

• Born in Paris 1905, and would spend most of his life there. He grew up bookish. Graduated from college in 1929, and taught at various junior colleges until shortly after WWII (1945).

• 1938: He publishes early work, a philosophical novel Nausea. The lead character Roquentin works through the major themes of Sartre’s existentialism, such as the meaninglessness and contingency of our existence, and how it makes you feel—nauseated, I guess.

• During war (1940-45) he worked with the French resistance and spent a year in a German POW camp.

• 1943: He publishes his most famous work, Being and Nothingness:

1. It more or less provided the structure for the post WWII existentialist movement.

2. It is modeled on earlier 20th century existentialist thinker Heidegger. I won't bother with the turgid metaphysics of it all - suffice it to say that Sartre felt he proved that the human mind is radically free, not determined by its physical surroundings or social environment.

3. Human beings were proven to be essentially free, and any attempt by an individual person or philosophic theory to believe otherwise is an exercise in self-deception, or in a Sartrean phrase, "bad faith."

4. Compare: Hobbes: man is born with a certain human nature & in a world of limited resources & that dictates a certain type of action - overt strife or submission to a king.

5. But Sartre held that there is no human nature, and you have the power to overcome your environment. This freedom people experience as a burden - in another Sartrean phrase, "man is condemned to be free."

• 1945: He delivers public lecture “Existentialism and Humanism,” to an enthusiastic Parisian crowd. Your reading is from that. It is a manifesto for existentialism as a movement. He devotes himself exclusively to writing & editing a scholarly journal Modern Times.

• Late 1940s,-1950s: Sartre produces a number of novels & plays that illustrated his basic philosophic theory. These include plays like No Exit, and an influential book on literary criticism, What is Literature? which argued that all literature should be committed, engaged politically and philosophically.

• 1950s-60s: always leftist, Sartre becomes an activist Marxist:

1. In 1957 he publishes Search for a Method, and in 1960 The Critique of Dialectical Reason.

2. He attempted to show how existentialism is compatible, indeed, supports, Marxism.

3. This, I believe, struck a lot of people as odd—Marxism is a view which emphasizes how economic class shapes consciousness, while existentialism emphasizes how nothing controls our consciousness - it is radically free.

4. I don't think he was successful in that regard.

• He grew less influential in the 1960's & 70's, although he was awarded a Nobel Prize for literature in 1964. He refused the prize, to show his contempt for bourgeois values.

• This period saw the rise of a group of philosophers called “post modernists,” who viewed his thought as naïve or wrong-headed, and just plain old-fashioned.

• Thus the radical of one generation was viewed as too tame by the next generation of radicals.

• Died in 1980.

III. On to our selection.

• S begins (p. 343) by telling us that existentialists come in two varieties - religious and atheistic. But both have in common the belief that "existence precedes essence."

1. That is one of Sartre's obscure slogans. He clarifies it by an analogy: in a tool, its essence precedes, comes before, its existence. We design the tool to accomplish a purpose, and we then go on to manufacture it - bring it into existence.

2. Well, Sartre continues, traditional rationalistic philosophy—Descartes and Leibniz—viewed man that way: designed ahead of time by God, and brought into existence for a purpose.

3. Existentialists disagree—especially the atheistic ones, who believe that if "God is dead" (Nietzsche's phrase), that is, if God does not exist, then people exist before they can be defined by any concept - with human beings, existence precedes essence.

4. Man appears first, and only then defines himself. "There is no human nature, since there is no God to conceive it." p 344.

5. You are what you conceive and will yourself to be, that is the first principle of existentialism.

• To the charge that this view means existentialists is subjective, he agrees – and says that this subjectivity is what dignifies humans.

1. A dog is a dog and a stone is a stone, but a person can choose to make his life what he wants.

2. Indeed, this means existentialism emphasizes personal responsibility: every one of us is responsible for his own individuality and for everyone else’s (p 345).

3. This last point seems puzzling, but S explains:

"When we way that a man chooses his own self, we mean that everyone of us does likewise; but we also mean by that that in making this choice he also chooses all men. In fact, in creating the man that we want to be, there is not a single one of our acts which does not at the same time create an image of man as we think he ought to be." (p.345)

4. This is universalizability with a passion! When you choose, ask what if everyone chose your way...

• Sartre goes on to explain what existentialists mean by anguish:

1. Facing your own responsibility to choose and worse the fact that you are choosing for the human race, you can't help but feel anxiety. An army officer who makes a decision that he knows will send some men to their deaths knows this.

2. Some people don't consciously feel existential anxiety, but that is because they aren't facing up to it!

3. Existential psychologists - therapy is getting you to face your repressed anxiety.

• Sartre next addresses existential loneliness.

1. God doesn't exist & we must face the lonely consequences of that fact.

2. This means that we can't say okay, God doesn't exist but there are certain moral absolutes that are knowable a priori.

3. God doesn't exist in heaven, says Sartre, and neither do eternal moral truths. (p. 346).

4. There is no God, no human nature, no determinism - people have radical free will. "Man is condemned to be free."

• Sartre points out (p 346) that existentialism is a philosophy that hates excuses -particularly, that we never had a chance to live up to our potential because circumstances are against us.

1. A man is just the collection of his acts.

2. He is a genius if he does genius things, and he isn't if he doesn't. Forrest Gump: "stupid is as stupid does."

3. To say: "I could have written better books if I had more leisure time." is to cop out.

4. This Sartre admits is a harsh thing to someone whose life didn't work out, but on the other hand it can prompt people to actively seek what they themselves chose to value, as opposed to dream or make excuses.

5. Sartre says this isn't pessimism but optimistic toughness.

6. You are not condemned to be a coward by your genes, upbringing, environment, or anything else but your own choices, i.e. acts of cowardice, which you do not have to make.

• On pp. 346-7, Sartre hits upon the concrete nature of choice, and the unhelpfulness of general rules in making a choice.

1. He imagines a kid trying to decide whether to go off to war, or stay with his single mother to help her out.

2. He claims neither Christian doctrine nor Kantian principles help: p. 347.

3. Notice the act deontologist view here. You can’t (contra intuitionist and agapist) rely on feelings, because feelings are formed by or follow your actions.

4. Nor can your rely on choosing an advisor—because when you choose an adviser, you are inevitably choosing what advice you want, so really just refusing to take responsibility for the choice. Nice point BTW...

• This existential necessity for self-definition is universal—Sartre doesn't believe in human nature, but he does believe in a common human condition.

1. We may not exactly know what life was like in Mongolia of 12th century, but we can understand what it was for the Mongol to either surrender to his surroundings or grapple with them.

2. As he puts it, p. 349: a choice is always a choice in a situation.

• Sartre adds that the existentialist doesn’t think that values are meaningless because we choose them.

1. If there is no God, someone has to invent values!

2. Moreover, to say we invent values is just to say to say there are no values true a priori, life has no meaning a priori—it’s up to you to give it meaning, and that way create a community.

• Sartre finishes the section by discussing humanism.

1. If you mean by humanism the view that human beings are created by God to do what is ordained to be done, then no, existentialism is not humanist.

2. But there is a more important sense in which existentialism is humanistic: there is no universe besides the one of human striving, of setting up values and projecting ourselves to achieve those transcendent goals.

3. Existentialist humanism reminds man that there is no lawmaker but himself, and no fulfillment other than seeking goals outside of himself.

IV: Critical probes:

• What do we make of this?

1. About the need to take responsibility for our own actions, I couldn't agree more.

2. Especially today, when everybody seems to be claiming to be victims & products of society.

• But there are problems w/Sartre:

1. How does it follow that if there is no God to define human nature, than there is no human nature? Specifically: maybe we have human nature that is biologically defined which doesn't dictate life's values, but shape them or constrain them. Evolutionary psychology here: over millions of years humans evolved with certain tendencies innate: can be bucked, but with a cost in happiness. If human nature is to be social, can I happily choose to be a hermit?

2. Sartre is right to emphasize that we can choose whether to be overcome by our limitations or fight them, but it isn't true unconditionally. I can choose to try to overcome poverty - & that is a valuable insight – but can’t bad government choices hinder my abilities (e.g., forced to go to failing lousy government monopolistic schools). And can I choose to be a great basketball player? Don't we need to distinguish some limitations from others?

3. That last comment brings up a second point. P. 344: "Man will be what he will have planned to be. The oddness here concerns "choice." What is it to choose something? Roughly, you look at your options & select the best one with respect to certain goals. E.g., choose to go to college because value money, more interesting job, etc. But how choose your basic values? On basis of earlier values? When do you make the basic choice? The original plan? At age 2??

4. Furthermore, what is existential choice of this sort? A random leap? Sartre with regard to life plans is like Kierkegaard with regard to religion - we seem to leap to faith or leap to basic value system randomly. But Kierkegaard leapt from Protestantism to Protestantism! Sartre from leftist secularism to leftist secularism!

5. These last two points are tough issues, ones surrounding a controversy we discussed after our survey of theories of the right: the problem of free will. If our actions grow out of our genetic structure & upbringing, how can they be free? But if our actions aren't based upon our nature & nurture, how can they be more than random acts?

6. It’s unclear to me why Sartre thinks that if God exists, that somehow lessens the anxiety of free will. Let’s say God expects certain behavior—why does that make living up to those standards easy?

7. Finally, consider the case of Eichmann. According to the existentialist, choice of action is good iff authentic, i.e., done with clear awareness of your freedom and acceptance of responsibility. Clearly, if this is so, could there be authentic Nazi? Indeed, Sartre’s main influence, Heidegger, was in fact a Nazi. Sartre addresses this in places, seems to hold that it is an oxymoron, because choices that oppress or exploit others deny others freedom. So is this sneaking in a version of utilitarianism? Act is good iff it maximizes freedom for everyone? Highly unclear. I find this characteristic of Sartre: lots of turgid prose about our state, our nature, etc., but sneaks in what smells to me like Kantianism (when you choose, you choose for everyone) or utilitarianism/NRE, or stoicism (face the absurd).

V. Existentialist movies

• This is a hard genre to define...just google it...

• My view: The driving idea is that the lead characters are in some sense doomed, but find meaning in committing to a moral project for which they fight deeply.

• My three favorites:

1. Ikiru Kurosawa 1951;

2. Seven Samurai (Kurosawa 1954); (Later remade as a Western...).

3. The Train (Frankenheimer 1964).

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