TWENTIETH CENTURY
PHILOSOPHY:
Intellectual Heroes and Key Themes
LECTURES
I.
II.
III.
IV.
V.
VI.
The pariah as rebel.
The hope of the hopeless.
Message in a bottle.
Absolute free.
Human flourishing.
Genealogy as critique.
IV. ABSOLUTE FREE
1. PHENOMENOLOGY
Is there an adequate philosophical method?
2. BAD FAITH AND THE GAZE
What does individual freedom mean for others?
3. EXISTENTIALISM AND MARXISM
How to conceive the relation between agency and
structure?
1. PHENOMENOLOGY
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
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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
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
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 beingdirected-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.
2. BAD FAITH AND THE GAZE
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 (poursoi).
 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-initself; 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.
SARTRE’S DUALISM
IN-ITSELF
FOR-ITSELF
It coincides with itself
It never coincides with itself
It is only what it is
It is walking ahead
It is something, because it has It is nothing (néant), because
a substance
it is not a thing (the empty
consciousness).
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.
3. EXISTENTIALISM AND MARXISM
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 socioeconomic 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
1. Jean-Paul Sartre, Les Mots [translations in
several languages].
2. Jean-Paul Sartre, L’être et le néant
[translations in several languages].
3. Annie Cohen-Solal, Sartre, 1905-1980
[translations in several languages].