Jean Paul Sarte, Freedom & Anguish

Jean Paul Sarte, Freedom & Anguish

2 main ideas:

1. Consciousness is implicitly self consciousness (nature of self-consciousness)

• (sartre defined it as intentionality - consciousness of something, to be conscious is to have awareness of experience or awareness of some other thing. transcendence . absorption - absorbed in the world in some activity). 

• This awareness/transcendence - towards others things always, is implicitly some kind of -- being outside ourselves engaged in something. 

• Example: counting - “what are you doing” you can pause your action, say you’re counting - but that reflective distinction between you and the world and your activity is secondary - the primary factor of your experience is being in the very activity you’re in. Being outside int hew world (Heideggar calls being in the world)

  
  

2. Nothingness causes being. (pg 44) - negation...nothingness causes being

• There’s a reality to non-being

• Extension of the first point - engaged in something beyond ourselves

• Subjects - being for itself - we have the capacity for negation

• Not just saying no (negation) but to go beyond something that’s already there

• Reality is what it is - as subjects, we’re not reducible to something - we’re have the capacity to proceed with absence ...nothingness

• Cafe is a bunch of beings - human subjects, we can be confronted with the lack of Pierre - engaged subject is to be able to look at a bunch of beings and see non-being

• Not just us making judgements of what is not there (“that’s not pierre”) the ability to make those judgements “that’s not pierre” “that’s not what i meant to say” presupposes a prior intuition of non-being or being which we’re in touch with as subjects

• We’re not adding interpretive data - we’re deciphering what’s already there as subjects

  
  

Everything depends on the direction of my attention. When i enter this cafe to search for pierre, there is a formed synthetic organization of all the objects in the cafe, on the ground of which pierre is given as about to appear (Page 41).

• I as a subject is not separate from the world - mistake to think the world is separate on it’s own...rather we’re already apart of the world - but the world can appear to us as nothing

• In terms of being, what is - real nothing does not make sense. Not just a being - a being for itself… there could be a real nothing

  
  

Ends with questions (Page 44)

• Real being in the world, there is a real nothing

• “Where does this nothingness come from? If it is the original condition of the questioning attitude and more generally of all philosophical or scientific inquiry, what is the original relation of the human being to nothingness? What is the original nihilating conduct?”

  
  

Being in the world - will bring us to the idea of freedom (Sartre)

1. Origin of nothingness is freedom. The fact that we’re free - what freedom actually is...there is nothingness. Freedom actually explains we can go through a situation - into a nothing.

2. Freedom is inescapable. “Why would we want to escape it” freedom is actually quite uncomfortable - anguish...not always a comfortable place to be in. in being free - the free beings that we are, it’s going to turn out we’re not exactly settled, assured entities -- encounters with freedom is particularly uncomfortable experience. 

• Sartre - we’re going to be tempted to escape freedom...we should not

  
  

Questions to ponder on Sartre:

1. Think of a commitment you have that has particular importance to you (e.g., to a person, a cause, a role, etc.). What is involved in living out this commitment? What demands and responsibilities does it place on you? Does it change over time? How might what Sartre says about freedom and anguish relate to your experience of being committed?

Some of the most significant things in our lives are our commitments. What does this say about us? How does this speak to being a committed person?

• Page 50 - it’s through us that nothingness comes into being

• Subjects - we are able to detach ourselves from what simply is

• We are that being that nothingness comes into being

• In our freedom - remaking that commitment and coming back to consciousness

• The nature of being free - that subject that nothingness enters reality … you’re already who you are in the next moment

• Commitments that are especially meaningful for those are already made - treat them like nothingness

  
  

Commitments - thing you commit to that create ourselves (marriage, vocation, etc) - they become meaningless if they have been decided once and for all. To treat a relationship … “i’ve committed to that so i’m done” - is to die, the relationship is no more

Anguish makes way for freedom . Consciousness of freedom = anguish.

Anguish provides freedom (gambling...the pain of financial loss is the anguish ...which brings you back to the ability to live in freedom of making the right decision

• Intentional acts of going there and giving food (homeless) - we’re in the process of self-becoming...enable that to happen through continual choice

• Action of going to the homeless (nancy) - changing times...you may not have that passion next week, but that you go and do that is important

  
  

Sartres not excited about the external conditions (policy or structure gets in your way of irradicating homelessness) - it’s the nature of that commitment itself...if it’s genuine (or conscientious) if your conscious chooses it (each time she does it, she choose each time to live it - enact it) 

• We’re the cleavage in being - where nothing intersects with being

• We are the spite of indeterminacy - nothing in our past necessitates anything of our future…

• Not to say we don’t make commitments - it’s that we really need to live them...to respond to their indeterminacy

• Irony of being faithful  - to be faithful...I need to take it up today (re-choose it today)

  
  

Conflicting commitments

• Can’t make any excuses for those commitments… you’re actually choosing one over the other

• The meaning of things actually comes down to us

  
  

Would sartre accept the idea of destiny

• Chance determined by continual choice

• “Destiny” - what does it mean

  
  

We want to escape into “reassuring myths” - destiny

Non-identical repetition - building up to one’s identity

• We’re always becoming

• Instead of ontological absolute

  
  

Being for itself - is nothing

• Negate others to choose it’s own identity, where freedom lies

• As soon as being consumes the other as it’s own identity, then being for itself flips into being to itself (then flips) and that’s it...nihilism -- the moment we commit to something, we lose this commitment to constantly re-crete ourselves

• Use this commitment in such a way that we can use this thing to committing ourselves to - instead we are narcissistically feed into this thing

• Sartre --- suggesting possibility of continuous/repetetive repetition, recomittment to others so that being for itself does not die out - being for itself can stay engaged with the outside world so there’s a beautiful dance between being for itself and being to itself

• Re-checking of our choices, re-commitment we can persist in our existential struggle/anguish, but we’re still free

• Freedom is not one of consumption (negation)

  
  

To understand - being for ourselves, we’re kind of defined by nothingness

• While we’re always related to being in itself...attempts we make to turn ourselves as for ourselves to in itself - is a denial of what we are

• Sartre's idea of nothingness doesn’t suggest we can create things out of nowhere

• Transcendence - self transcending light toward something else

• Transcendence is related to facticity - hand in hand...never reducible to our situation .. we’re always responsible to defining the meaning of where we are.. Always in a situation --- but what he calls bad faith...attempt to escape freedom/anguish

• Deny that you’re a transcending subject “life just made me this way” that’s a denial of transcendence

• “I’m giong to start over tomorro w i don’t want those relationships” - that’s a denial as well

  
  

Commitments - as a free person you’ve made commitments to things.. Can’t suddenly deny them “bad faith” - or deny how it’s shaped who you are...you’re responsible for shaping the future but you can’t just deny them

We’re in the middle of - future oriented and past oriented

--- meaning only coming from yourself...no authority 

Commitment - things we define ourselves with...are never settled

• Continually re-assess the conditions of those things

• No necessity or obligation to that value (nietzsche...trans-valuation of values)

  
  

Anguish - confronted with a charged decision...real  significance for your commitments

• Arbitrary → to be confronted with one’s freedom is an arbitrary decision

• Knowing the choice is arbitrary - there’s no wrong decision

• Antidote to anguish is indecision - neither one of these options is going to give me a clear answer...relief that it’s up to you

  
  

Vertigo (page 68) - we are in the present what we will not be “I am not the self which I will be”

• We are always not that...but we will be that self

• sometimes we do try to hide from that arbitrary - we tell stories to ourselves as to why we made the right decision

  
  

“My past is always open” - 

• Future is indeterminate...past is open too 

• Page 69 - sartre - you’ve already made your decision you just need validation for it

  
  

Meaning is coming from self - 

Everything is arbitrary - weighing options as one being more valuable...no way to evaluate because everything is self-determined

Sartre - anguish about the future and anguish of the past

• Julia’s wrestling with future decisions - anguish of the future...who i’m going to be, what i’m going to study

• Sartre talks about - inner debate with respect to the past

• Gambler decided who he wants to be in the past - that resolution has fallen flat

• Past selves - living out of a commitment we’ve made in the past

• We might characterize gamblers decision and temptation he’s confronted with in the future - sartre...that anguish in the past isn’t the same inner debate - it’s more (calling the past resolution but it doesn’t help him) - what he apprehends is the total inefficacy of the past resolution

• Sartre's point -to there's no point..he’s convinced he wants to not gamble… it’s just that the resolution doesn’t have the efficacy that it used to have

• Not anxiety of pros of cons - it’s that i know i don’t want to gamble...but the reason why it’s anguish is because that commitment doesn’t have that same power (page 70) - I must re-discover the fear of financial ruin or of disappointing my family - reassert that commitment again

• Memory of a feeling rather than idea

• I perceive with anguish that nothing prevents me from gambling

  
  

2. On p. 78, Sartre writes: "In anguish I apprehend myself at once as totally free and as not being able to derive the meaning of the world except as coming from myself." Interestingly, anguish is said both to be the experience of one's total freedom and of one's inability to avoid being the centre of meaning. How should we understand this tension? More generally, how do you make sense of the claim that the experience of anguish is the consciousness of freedom? And how does Sartre's understanding of freedom differ from the idea of freedom as a "property" of the human being (p. 60)?

Discover the nothingness which separate my freedom from this essence: nothingness which separates my freedom from this essence (essence = language explaining where you’re at): I have been “wanting to write” but nothing, not even what I have been can compel me to write it. Finally I must discover the nothingness which separates me from what I shall be: I discover that the permanent possibility of abandoning the book is ithe very condition of the possibility of writing it and the very meaning of my freedom. .. (page 75)

3. At a few points in the reading, Sartre makes critical comments about psychological determinism (e.g., p. 67-8, p. 78). Why do we appeal to psychological determinism, according to Sartre, and why is it unhelpful?

Determinism gives way to detachment (freedom) - but Sartre says (pg 79) “by itself determinism would not suffice to establish distraction since determinism is only a postulate or an hypothesis. This process of detachment is a more complete activity of flight which operates on the very level of reflection. It is first an attempt at distraction in relationto the possibilities opposed to my possible…”

Page 75-76 paragraph at the end and at the top 

• “Now at each instant we are thrust into the world and engaged there…”

• What of our freedom is being overlooked in our everyday non-anguished lives

• Respond to the alarm clock…questions come “should i go to work” “should i get up” we ignore all the questions to the alarm clock

• Paraphrases our lived reality

• Immediately and intuitively struck -- in already meaningful way

  
  

In large part - we are passive about our experience...unproblematically go about our day

• We don’t make decisions about making breakfast, going in our car - we’re just doing what we need to get done

We are the ones giving meaning behind this

Absorption of the world in activity

• I’m the one that’s licensing them as the free being whos enacting all of them

Certain situations - automatic behaviour is interrupted...forced into action

• I am the one giving license to these things

anxiety/fear

• Internal fear - fear of oneself

• Fear is an apprehension - object out there coming at you somewhere

• Anguish is fear of yourself...mistrust of yourself (I want to be this person, but am i going to be this person) - can i trust myself to be faithful

• Fear - tangible object

• Anguish - uncertainty itself (the burden of nothingness)

  
  

Fear 

Anguish - active relation to possibilities

• Fear of fear...fear is fear of living up to what you want to be (anxiety)

• Confronted with a decision or choice - we don’t know which choice we’re going to do

You could just as easily not act in order to save yourself from danger.

Condition of being a reflective subject - inevitably you’ve already chosen from one of those series of choices

• Even if you appeal to the psychological account that led to your decisions - action...you’ll always confront yourself as the one chosen

• No motive - even if you identify a series of motives...no motive on it’s own will prompt you to act

• Even if you can identify the motive -- you can’t escape that you’re the one making those decisions

  
  

As creative and innovative freedom will be - it ‘s not a total libertarian freedom - it’s rather the freedom to bestow significance on your situation

• Anguish is recognition to make decisions on your freedom

• Can’t escape the source of being

  
  

Freedom isn't this powerful ability to remake everything - rather it’s the inability to get out of the fact that i am the source of meaning - page 78

• “In anguish I apprehend myself at once as totally free and as not being able to derive the meaning of the world except as coming from myself”

  
  

I only beceom aware of the anguish as i step towards it… obligations first derive from me

• Brought to respond in the moment - reflection could include reflecting later on - but also, in the moment of action and inaction

anxiety - takes shape as inaction...dehabilitation - anxiety leads to inaction

• Stress gets you out of bed

• Anxiety - what’s the point, i can’t do any of it

  
  

You can’t treat a resolution as a cause - if your resolution is going to mean something...you have to actually give detail to it

Ethical anguish

• We are the deciding factors in all our actions

• Raises the question of value (Waht am i going to be about, what am i going to decide is valuable, what kind of ethics will i employ)

• Ethical decisions aren’t always about applying a rule - about which ethics to apply

  
  

Circumstantial - something might arise in each given day in a different way

• You do have to choose a particular set of options --- but you have to stick to that choice...and the choice rests with you

• What are ethics and value -- they are codes of conduct that dictate action

• The whole point of an ethical system is to NOT decide, but to do what it says

• Many social spheres in our lives can be understood as a particular situation of values

• For the most part we treat values like the alarm clock

• These are the norms of every day conduct -

• Sartre - this is not absurd but just as we are authorizing things ...we are implicitly choosing things - 

• So if there is a conflict of ethics/values...that’s when we’re in a situation of anguish -- confronted with the fact that i am the one that grants authority to the people under me (family, work)

  
  

Existentialism - young soldier...serve or take care of sick mother - sartre...can’t help you because you have to decide which of those ethical obligations is the one (no one else can answer that question) - not cause we don’t want to but because we don’t want to … only answered by the free subject

Sartre - you are the chooser...you went to the priest (by choosing to go to the priest you have already chosen ...this is your authority) - by choosing that authority you have ultimately already chosen your direction

PAge 77 “but as soon as the enterprise is held at a distance from me, as soon as I am referred to myself because I must await myself in the future, then I discover myself suddenly as the one who gives its meaning to the alarm clock, the one who by a signboard forbids himself to walk on a flower bed or on the lawn, the one from whom the boss’s order borrows its urgency, the one who decides the interest of the book which he is writing, the one finally who makes the values exist in order to determine his action by their demands.”

• It is us who give it authority in the end, and we can’t escape that

• It is I who sustains value in being.

  
  

Our being is our freedom.

• Our being is the fact that we are never just what we are (being/nothing) -- “nothingness” -- concrete reality...the reality that we live as free

• This places certain requirements of us - if we want to live honestly, we can’t hide those experiences of anguish -- we answer up that we live in that site of indeterminacy -- living that tension well

• As free beings we’re confronted with living the tension well - the unsettled nature...to notice the depths of that freedom - freedom at a fundamental level