Documenti di Didattica
Documenti di Professioni
Documenti di Cultura
No Excuses
Novels
Sartres Writings
Autobiography: Words (1963) Philosophical works
(1937)
Nausea (1938)
The Wall (1939)
The Age of Reason (1945); The Reprieve (1947); Troubled Sleep (1950) (3
parts of a 4-part series)
The Transcendence of the Ego The Psychology of the Imagination (1940) Being & Nothingness (1943) Existentialism is a Humanism Search for a Method (1957) The Critique of Dialectical Reason
Plays
The Flies (1943) No Exit (1944) The Condemned of Altona
(1960)
(1946)
which he REFUSED on the grounds that such honors could interfere with a writer's responsibilities to his readers.
Simone de Beauvoir
She, too, was an exponent of Existentialism. Among her numerous works are The Mandarins (1955), a novel; The Second Sex (194950), a profound analysis of the status of women; The Coming of Age (1970), a study of society's treatment of the aged; and two collections of memoirs, Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter (1958) & The Prime of Life (1960). To make oneself an object, to make oneself passive, is a
very different thing from being a passive object.
(1908-1986)
Existentialist themes: focus on absurdity of certain lifestyles and belief systems, the necessity of our choosing who we want to be without reason as a guide, individual choice, giving life our own meaning, total engagement in a project we decide upon
Sartres Response
constraints on consciousness.
Our choices are not unlimited, but we always have choice. We determine our emotionsour behaviour is not determined by our emotions.
Assignment
Phenomenology
From Descartes to Sartre:
This requires a phenomenological reduction .standing back, bracketing the experience (epoch). I suspend my nave or natural view of the world I then describe my experience as experiencewith no presuppositions or values added.
Existential Phenomenology
Martin Heidegger (1889-1978)
German existentialist/phenomenologist Student of Husserl Being and Time (1927)
Human Existence= Dasein or being there The world must be understood in relation to Daseins experience of it.
Existential Phenomenology
To understand the world is not to understand it merely in terms of material objects around us. Our there is more than our physical there. It includes the constellation of roles, expectations, hopes, desires, fears, emotions, relations to others,etc. which shape the character of each experience from moment to moment.
A hammer is not just an object in the world. What is important is how it fits into Daseins world. It is a tool. It has a use.
Sartres Phenomenological Ontology It is phenomenological because it holds to the subject matter of experience and the firstperson standpoint. Cartesian distinction Being-in-itself (tre-en-soi) = the existence of things Being-for-itself (tre-pour-soi) = the being of consciousness (Being-for-others = ones essential relationships with other people)
I find a difference
between subjects & objects, between persons & things, between beings that are conscious & beings that are not conscious.
I exist first and then I take on an essence through my own actions, through my own manner of existing and acting.
"What is meant here by saying that existence precedes essence? It means that, first of all, the human individual exists, turns up, appears in the world, and, only afterwards, defines himself. If the human individual, as the existentialist thinks of him, is indefinable, it is because at first he is nothing. Only afterward will he be something, and he himself will have made what he will be. Thus, there is no human nature, since there is no God to conceive of it. Not only is the human individual what he conceives himself to be, but he is also only what he wills himself to be after this thrust toward existence." (217)
The human mind just finds itself in a certain situation, that is, it finds itself existing But what the human mind is is of its own choosing. The mind is consciousness, but consciousness is a "nothingness", a room/space/void for other things to enter. Consciousness is not itself a something. It is not complete and self-contained the way that being-in-itself is... we are always conscious of something else. We are conscious of a certain fact, of a certain emotion, of a certain object, of a certain desire, of a certain value, etc. By making choices with regard to how to direct our consciousness, we define and determine the nature of our consciousness, and thus the nature of our reality.
Human Existence is both being-in-itself and being-for-itself. As consciousness, we have what Sartre calls transcendence. We transcend the facts. Desires or plans reach beyond facts (our facticity). We transcend the present for the future We are described by our personalities and our plans. I am what I am not. I am not what I am.
Our facticity limits us. Our transcendence is our freedom. Confusing facticity for transcendence is what Sartre calls bad faith(mauvaise foi) This is a form of self-deception about ones self, about who one is. Sartres examples:
Parisian waiter Nazi soldier Hesitant homosexual
Objects (things)
have no freedom, are not self-creating, & thus have no responsibility for what they are or for how they function.
According to Sartre
What I am (my essence) is a product of my choices & actions (my manner of existing). Thus, since I freely create myself (my essence), I am responsible for my choices & actions and what I have created. But Sartre also claims that my choices have universal import. In choosing [for] myself, I am choosing [for] humanity. This leads to anguish and despair. Why? We are entirely responsible.
Sartre on Emotions
In an early essay Une esquisse dune thorie des emotions, Sartre argues that emotions are choices, magical transformations of the world. They are not mere physiological disturbances or brute forces. Emotions have finality , they are purposive strategies for coping with a difficult world. They are pre-reflective. Example: fainting to avoid an intolerable situation
Existential Anguish
a response to the burden of responsibility
Being-for-others
Hell is other people. (No Exit)
We are necessarily influenced by how other people see us. Being-for-others is being objectified according to the judgments of others. Bad faith is seeing ourselves only as others see us. Our relations with other are essentially confrontations and relations of conflict.
A Philosophy of Action
Each of us has a plan of being, a pattern of choosing into which all our day-to-day choices and desires and values fit Consider how much of who you are and what you do is determined by the sorts of long-term goals you have. Why are you sitting in this class? Different reasons, for most, to get a high school diploma? Why? To get a job? Why a job? Think about how everything you do fits into your individual plan of life, a pattern of choosing and imagining yourself in your future.
Sartre suggests that what you are, your essence, resides in your relationship towards this pattern of choosing. Each of us must determine our own plan, our own project Sartre calls this our "original project", "original plan", "original choice" or "fundamental project", etc. Our being is always directed into the future and ultimately towards death--the milestone that completes the pattern of our existence. The contradiction of our existence as for-itself is that our essence only becomes complete when our existence is no more.
The Unavoidability of Choice & the Call of Freedom We can either accept freedom and make choices with the absurdity of each choice in mind, or we can try to pretend that the choice is not totally free. To do the former is to live authentically.
The Unavoidability of Choice & the Call of Freedom To pretend as if there is no choice, that we could not help being in the situation we are, to blame it on environment or genetics is to live in bad faith.
The Unavoidability of Choice & the Call of Freedom Is there anything bad about living in bad faith? Not absolutely. There are no moral absolutes. Nothing is moral or immoral except relative to a certain person's choices. Can I choose to live in bad faith? Wouldn't that then be good for me?
Existentialism in the Face of Contemporary Western Industrialized Civilization Are your actions based on a plan by parents? the education system? your peers? the media? How do you define yourself? As a consumer of goods and services? Through how much of life are you sleepwalking?