Jean-Paul
Sartre is the philosopher of human freedom. He build
an existentialist philosophy,
where man loneliness and responsibility is absolue. Despite this
fragile condition, man has to invent his way to define who he is.
Among
his philosophical works and literature, Jean-Paul Sartre wrote
in particular:
– Imagination
(1936)
– Nausea
(1938)
– The
Wall (1939)
– Being
and Nothingness (1943)
– Existentialism
and Humanism (1946)
– Baudelaire
(1947)
– What
is literature? (1947)
– Critique
of Dialectical Reason (1960)
– The
Words (1964)
– The
Family Idiot (1971-1972)
Human
consciousness, according to Sartre,
is the power of nihilation (explanation to come) and freedom: it is
opposed to the in-itself (explained below), a being full, solid and
opaque. Thus, condemned to absolute freedom, the man should invent
himself.
Contents
Sartre, Nausea and Contingency:
The
starting point of Sartre’s philosophy does not it would fall in
“Nausea”, feeling privileged and has a quasi-ontological
significance?
– Antoine
Roquentin, hero of the famous story Nausea, experiences himself as
something unnecessary in the middle of the world (as a thing among
things) is having “Nausea.”
– What
I take, then, is the contingency of existence, deprived of reason and
necessity, never by itself, its raison d’etre.
The
world of existence is not the explanation and reasons.
– To
exist is to be here, simply, without any necessity.
Sartre
applies also to the existence unnecessary artificiality of the term:
it means that things are there, as they are, unnecessarily and
without reason.
– I
am there among them, and discovers my original facticity.
But
on the merits of this first experience, something else will emerge:
the awareness of the human project, building freely the meaning and
values within the free and the absurd, the absurd defining
itself as the which is beyond all reason, which can not be justified
rationally.
Sartre and Freedom:
Human
creation is, indeed, free. Sartre, I exist and I am free, two
proposals are rigorously synonymous and equivalent.
– What
is that to exist in the vocabulary of Sartre?
► exist
is to be there, and in an absurd universe and contingent, build and
put his stamp on things.
► There
is no human essence fixed and predetermined essence that precede
existence.
► The
man appeared in the world and there drew his face
– But
how this equivalence of the existence and freedom is possible?
► Human
freedom means, in Sartre, the opportunity given to us to remotely at
any moment, the infinite chain of causes.
► Freedom
is the power that is held continuously, the consciousness of
annihilation, that is to say nothing of the show on any substantive
reality, of breaking the various determinations, or mobile units to
choose – the idea of defining choice, basically, with him, by
that of consciousness.
► The
ability to say “yes” or “no” to choose, can hardly be
distinguished under these conditions, consciousness, seizure of
ourselves, beyond any reason and any mobile.
This
freedom we all experience anxiety in a true metaphysical sense
reveals our total freedom, where seizure reflexive consciousness is
dizzy before she and her infinite powers.
– Anguish
means so that the shock of consciousness to itself, this sense of
giddy potential.
– Of
course, consciousness can choose pretending not to be free: the lie
to self and self, where I fight against anxiety, where I hide my
freedom has a name is bad faith.
► Is
bad faith, the consciousness that makes a lie to oneself, to escape
the anxiety and the difficulty of freedom, who goes blind in his
infinite freedom.
► The
bad faith and the spirit of seriousness constantly threaten
consciousness.
► If
bad faith means, in effect, a lie to oneself, by which consciousness
seeks to escape its freedom and anxiety, may the spirit of
seriousness, too, we are “petrified”.
► What
is he? in this attitude by which, banishing the anxiety and anguish,
we prefer to set from the object:
→ The
spirit of seriousness believes that values are not created,
they are independent of human subjectivity
→ Values
are in the world before man, it would only pick them.
→ Bad
faith and spirit of seriousness: as many leaks in front of our
infinite freedom.
► It
is in this perspective that we must define the bastard, the Sartrean
sense of the word, as one who, in bad faith, hiding the gratuitous
and unjustifiable existence:
→ The
bastard sees his existence as necessary so that all existence is
unjustified and gratuitous
All
these analysis on the anxiety, freedom and bad faith refers to the
mode of being of the existing human, this for-itself which is opposed
in every respect to the in-itself:
– While
the in-itself is a fullness of being (it means that things are as
they are devoid of conscience) …
– … The
for-itself is the way to be an existing one which never coincides
with itself.
► Exhaust
permanent himself, he is never quite itself.
► Without
stopping, he separates himself.
– While
the in-itself is opaque to itself, full of himself …
– … The
for-itself is the user be aware of a vanishing forever, simple
movement of transcendence towards things.
Consciousness
is nothing but the outside of itself and it is this absolute leak,
this “refusal to be substance” which is as consciousness.
Thus,
the for-itself is a being that is characterized as a movement and
project to be. This project concept is, indeed, central
– We
exist as projects;
– We,
we cast perpetually ahead of ourselves, to the future, towards what
is not.
– The
project (the verb projicere, throw away) is the instrument by which
we strive, with all our freedom, to the future and possibilities.
So
are we totally free and totally responsible: the responsibility is,
in Sartre, the full support of his fate by the existing human nature
that creates and creates the world. But in this invention and that
this outpouring is the permanent freedom of the for-itself, I seem
constantly under threat, one that arises from the presence and
emergence of others in the world.
Sartre, the Other and collective action:
That
is, for me, others? It basically means, the Other, the different,
that is to say, “a self that is not me.”
Another
is, in fact anyone who is not me and I’m not. Is there not here the
announcement of a threat, even an original fall? That’s what
happens in reality according to Sartre.
– The
very fact that I offer in the world as a “quasi-object” under the
gaze of others, I “fall” truly at things, and this because of the
freedom of the subject who looks at me and judge me … “Hell is
other people”, according to the famous formula of the camera.
However,
if our lives are often “twisted” and “flawed” because of
“dual” of consciousness that arise, the man can always find
reciprocal relationships with others, especially at the historical
action.
– In
the Critique of Dialectical Reason, Sartre focuses, in fact, common
historical praxis, where the subjects come together and look alike.
– This
means an excess free praxis collective material conditions and this,
in the context of historical action.
► Sartre
is indeed close to that time, the Marxist doctrine and praxis is in
this perspective, a project organizer common where different minds
are working together to achieve an end.
► Within
this overall vision, Sartre attaches to the group, gathering unified
by a common praxis, a community of action.
→ The
crowd stormed the Bastille as a group.
→ On
the contrary, social gatherings without true unity, without unifying
under internal (eg a queue of passengers waiting for the bus),
represent what Sartre calls the series, collections of separate
individuals and atomized.
The
group embodies the historical project free while the series is living
under the sign of praxis mired in a world where freedom, without
being lost, is still threatened.
The
merit of Sartre is to have attached to historicity, defined as
objective belonging to an era. The man is a history, which are
temporally and collectively. This interest in human historicity, it
appeared very early in the writings of Sartre, is particularly clear
after 1960.
Any
Sartre’s work revolves around the notion of freedom, described
individually, but also in its collective dimension or historical.
Sartre
is the philosopher of freedom at work in the world and things,
responsibility constructing values and human worlds.
Great website, very simple and easy to follow, and great way of explaining philosophy, congratulations.
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