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TWENTIETH CENTURY PHILOSOPHY: Intellectual Heroes and Key Themes. LECTURES. The pariah as rebel. The hope of the hopeless. Message in a bottle. Absolute free. Human flourishing. Genealogy as critique. IV. ABSOLUTE FREE. PHENOMENOLOGY Is there an adequate philosophical method?
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TWENTIETH CENTURY PHILOSOPHY: Intellectual Heroes and Key Themes
LECTURES • The pariah as rebel. • The hope of the hopeless. • Message in a bottle. • Absolute free. • Human flourishing. • Genealogy as critique.
PHENOMENOLOGY Is there an adequate philosophical method? • BAD FAITH AND THE GAZE What does individual freedom mean for others? • EXISTENTIALISM AND MARXISM How to conceive the relation between agency and structure?
JEAN-PAUL SARTRE BIOGRAPHICAL DATA: • 1905: Born June 21, in Paris. • 1907: Death of his father. • 1915-1922: Secondary school. • 1924-1928: Studies philosophy at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris where he meets Simone de Beauvoir. • 1931-1933: Teacher at a secondary school in Le Havre. • 1933-1934: Scholarship to study in Berlin. • 1934-1936: Again teacher at a secondary school in Le Havre. • 1936-1937: Teacher at a secondary school in Laon. • 1937-1939: Teacher at a secondary school in Paris. • 1940-1941: Prisoner of war. • 1942-1944: Joins the Paris Resistance Movement. • 1952-1956: Sympathizes with communism and criticizes it. • 1958-1962: Sets his face against the War on Algeria. • 1964: Refuses to get the Noble prize for literature. • 1968: Supports the student movement and sets his face against the Vietnam war. • 1970: Becomes almost totally blind and cooperates with Pierre Victor. • 1980: Died April 15, in Paris.
MAJOR WORKS • La nausé (1938). • Le mur (1939). • Esquise d’une théorie des émotions (1939). • L’être et le néant (1943). • Huis clos (1944). • Les chemins de la liberté (1945-1949). • L’existentialisme est un humanisme (1946). • Situations (1947 etc.). • Les mains sales (1948). • Saint Genet, comédien et martyr (1952). • Questions de méthode (1957). • Critique de la raison dialectique (1960). • Les mots (1964). • L’idiot de la familie (1971-1972).
HEURISTIC VALUE • Psychology (Pontalis amongst others). • Cinematography (Allen amongst others). • Sociology (Goffman amongst others). • Feminism (Beauvoir amongst others) • Literature (Camus amongst others). • Philosophy (Lévi amongst others). • Fine Arts (Giacometti amongst others).
ENGAGEMENT • Sartre was THE intellectual of the 20th century; he was the embodiment of political engagement. • According to him an intellectual should leave his ivory tower; it’s his responsibility to do that. • His political engagement was famous > World War II; Algerian War, Vietnam War, etc. • Sartre description of the intellectual (intellectuel engagé) > “someone who deals with issues that are not his concern.” • Engagement does not only imply involvement (one is nolens volens inescapably engaged in the world), but also public deliberation about the political ends one freely chooses.
PHILOSOPHY AND LITERATURE • Sartre is the author of different kinds of texts philosophical works, screenplays, novels, plays, short stories, manifests, essays and (auto)biographies. • Outside of the academic world, he was mainly operating within three spheres: philosophy, politics and literature. • Although his novels, short stories and plays are not merely illustrations of his philosophical theories, they circle around philosophical issues.
CARTESIAN TRADITION • The philosophy of Sartre belongs clearly to the cartesian tradition > rationalism. • As in the work of Descartes consciousness is also a central concept in Sartre’s philosophy. • However, there especially three other philosophers that influenced Sartre: 1. Husserl. 2 Heidegger. 3. Hegel.
PHENOMENOLOGICAL METHOD • Husserl > consciousness is not a thing, as in the work of Descartes (res cogitans > a thinking thing), but a being-directed-to-something. • Intentionality > consciousness is always consciousness of something. • Phenomenology > the study of the phenomena that appear to the consciousness of an individual. • Phenomenon > being as it appears. • Method > Epoché. • Epoché > putting into parentheses all ideas one has about the existence of the world in order to examine consciousness independently of the question of any worldly existence. • However, Sartre’s focus is on consciousness in-the-world.
THE TRANSCENDENTAL EGO • Husserl pressupposes a ‘transcendental ego’ > an I (ego) orders different activities of his consciousness; without such an I there would be chaos. • Sartres La transcendance de l’égo > Husserl doesn’t take intentionality seriously, when he presupposes an ordering I within the consciousness. • According to Sartre the objects of ones consciousness create an order and not the I. • Because the I transcends consciousness it’s like the objects: a thing.
TYPES OF CONSCIOUSNESS • Sartre’s I is based on the distinction between two types of consciousness: 1. Unreflective consciousness > no knowledge but an implicit consciousness of being consciousness of an object (the pre-reflective cogito). 2. Reflective consciousness > the attempt of the consciousness to become its own object (the reflective cogito). • An I figures only with the reflective consciousness.
FUNDAMENTAL ONTOLOGY • For Sartre phenomenology should reflect on the concrete existence of human beings. • Heidegger’s analysis of ‘das Dasein’ (being-there) inspired him. • Question: what is the meaning of being-there as a conscious being? • Fundamental ontology is about the articulation of the difference between human and non-human beings. • A fundamental ontology should be based upon phenomenological descriptions. • For instance a phenomenological description of the absurdity of human existence, i.e. its unjustifiable contingency. • Nausea (nausée) > the fundamental taste of the contingency and facticity of human being.
THE RELATION BETWEEN THE MASTER AND THE SLAVE • Hegel delivers Sartre the vocabulary to develop his own fundamental ontology. • Sartre translates two of the core concepts of Hegel’s philosophy: 1. An-sich > en-soi (in-itself). 2. Für-sich > pour-soi (for-itself). • These concepts give him not only the opportunity to describe the differences between human and non-human beings, but also to describe the interaction between people in terms of the master and the slave. • To objectify other people means trying to make them to a kind of slave.
A DUALISTIC ONTOLOGY • The core of L’être et le néant is a distinction between two kinds of being: the in-self (en-soi) and the for-itself (pour-soi). • Being-in-itself (être-en-soi) > the non-conscious being; that is as it is. • Being-for-itself (être-pour-soi) > the nihilation of being-in-itself; the consciousness conceived as a lack of being or the desire of being. • The nihilation is based upon the capacity to nihilate (néantir) > the creation of a nothingness by the consciousness between the consciousness and its object. • The for-itself creates a hole (trou) in the in-itself.
MEGALOMANIAC • The title of Sartre’s major philosophical work - L’être et le néant – is the most megalomaniac in the history of philosophy. • A book about ‘Being and nothingness’ is all-embracing. • Being (être) encompasses being-in-itself and being-for-itself. • Nothingness (néant) doesn’t have being, but is supported by it; due to the for-itself it comes into the world.
FREEDOM • The characterization of the for-itself underlies Sartre’s concept of freedom. • Due to the for-itself the human being can transcend everything. • The human being is condemned to be absolute free. • Even during World War II a Dutch or British citizen was free, because it has the choice to collaborate with the Germans or resist them. • Because of this freedom of choice agents are responsible for their actions.
BAD FAITH • Against the background of his ideas about freedom Sartre discusses the value of authenticity (authenticité). • Being not authentic or insincere > bad faith (mauvaise foi). • Bad faith > an individual that lies to itself; it denies in fact its freedom. • Through bad faith an individual seeks to escape its absolute freedom. • Bad faith > a vacillation between facticity and transcendence.
EXISTENCE AND ESSENCE • Sartre argues that existence precedes essence (existence précède l'essence). • Herewith he criticizes traditional philosophy that declares essence as more fundamental. • Existence > the concrete individual here and now standing out from itself (being in ecstasies). • Essence > what has been made by individuals. • Through the pour-soi people can transcend the essence. • Simone de Beauvoir argues in this line: “One is not born a woman, but becomes one".
BEING-FOR OTHERS • Besides the being-in-itself (être-en-soi) and the being-for-itself (être-pour-soi) Sartre also talks about the being-for-others (être-pour-autrui). • The being-for-others > the self that is an object for others. • This implies a perpetual conflict, because people can’t reduced to an object. • Nevertheless the for-itself wants to make out of the other for-itself an in-itself. • This will lead to a fiasco (echec), because this is impossible.
BEING OBJECTIFIED • It is especially due to the gaze that an individual experiences the existence of others. • The gaze triggers the experience of being objectified by someone else, becoming some-thing. • At the same time one becomes aware that the other is a subject. • Shame is an emotion that often results from being objectified in an embarrassing situation. • For instance, when an individual becomes aware that another person sees that he is looking as a voyeur through a keyhole. • Such an embarrassing situation makes the individual conscious about the existence of the other.
AGENCY AND STRUCTURE • Sartre tries to deal with a classical issue: the agency-structure problem. • Central question: how to reconcile the freedom of the individual an its facticity? • In other words, how to bridge the gap between existentialism and Marxism? • Existentialism > emphasizes the freedom of the individual, i.e. its agency. • Marxism > emphasizes the socio-economic structures that limit the freedom of the individual.
HISTORICAL MARXISM • Sartre wants to rescue Marxism from lazy dogmatism. • Dogmatism implies a kind of reductionism > to reduce all individual behaviour to socio-economic inequalities, i.e. class relations. • From a political perspective Sartre defends a kind of ‘libertarian socialism’. • Marxists have to figure out the constraints of a specific historical situation.
DIALECTICAL REASON • The aim of Critique de la raison dialectique is to use a Hegelian dialectic to integrate the idea of individual responsibility in a Marxist analysis of class relations. • Sartre developed a progressive-regressive method. • This method encompasses: 1. A regressive analysis of static socio-economic structures. 2. A progressive analysis of the active permutation of these structures by the actions of individuals and groups.
THE PRACTICO-INERT • Practice (praxis) > the actions of individuals that transcend the given constraints. • The practico-inert (practico-inerte) > the results of practice that become constraints for individuals, i.e. the sedimentation of their previous actions. • Point of departure of any practice > deficiency (manque), scarcity (rareté) and need (besoin). • The mediating third (tiers régulateur) > being an individual in a group that is involved in a struggle of recognition. • Sartre denies the possibility of a dyad of an individual and a group > although they stay outsiders to each other they can become a mediating third.
SOLIDARITY • Sartre makes a distinction between collectives and groups. • Collectives > individuals who are gathered and miss the unity for mutual recognition and collective action. • Threatening circumstances can trigger the transformation of collectives into groups. • This can be the basis of solidarity.
GROUP STRUGGLE • Sartre argues that group struggle is the driving force in human history. • Basic ontological distinction: 1. Individual praxis: the actions of individuals. 2. Group praxis: the actions of groups. • Although a group can be characterized by a collective intentionality it is not an organism. • Individuals are organisms that can create a group. • Types of groups: fusing groups, fledge groups, organizations and institutions.
FLAUBERT • L’idiot de la familie consists of several volumes about the life and times of the French novelist Gustave Flaubert from a existentialist-marxist perspective. • He applies his progressive-regressive method. • Sartre tries to reconstruct how Flaubert incarnates (i.e. internalizes) the major events and values of his time and gives expression to it. • He is again dealing with the agency-structure problem.
RECOMMENDED • Jean-Paul Sartre, Les Mots [translations in several languages]. • Jean-Paul Sartre, L’être et le néant [translations in several languages]. • Annie Cohen-Solal, Sartre, 1905-1980 [translations in several languages].
