Sartre
B96202043 哲學二 黃晨軒
Sartre is a modern philosopher, whose thought was influenced by existentialism.
Existentialist philosophy had been developed since nineteenth-century. The main
point about existentialist philosophy, on contrary to classical philosophy, tended to
think that general theories about human nature leave out precisely what is most
important─the uniqueness of each individual and his or her life situation. Therefore,
existentialist concerned with the subjective experience rather than objective truths and
put strong emphasis on individual freedom. Sartre’s early philosophy which is
indebted to existentialist focuses almost obsessively on individual freedom, but in the
later phase he tended to explored the social and economic limitations on human
freedom, and became to admit there are some objective values about human beings. In
the following paragraph, I will introduce Sartre’s main idea in two phases and give
my interpretation about why Sartre thought up these philosophical ideas.
Sartre’s early phases:
Sartre thinks there is neither transcendent objective value set for human beings,
nor the general truth about what we want to be and what we ought to be. So the
meaning or purpose of a person is determined by his or her own choice. Sartre’s
central assertion is human freedom. We are ‘condemned to be free’; there is no limit
to our freedom except that we cannot cease being free. In any situation, we always
have the potential to imagine new possibilities and try to actualize them.
However, the consciousness of our freedom, which is mentally painful, and we
typically try to avoid it. Sartre thinks we would all like to achieve a state in which
there are no choices left open for us, so that we would ‘coincide with ourselves’ like
inanimate objects and would not be subject to ‘anguish’. To show this, Sartre first
identified two modes of being, conscious beings (being-for-itself) and inanimate
beings (being-in-itself). Being-for-itself has awareness of itself and tendency to
distinguish other things from itself as object. In contrast, being-in-itself involves no
awareness of anything, and no conception of itself. Anguish, which we want to avoid,
just comes from the self-awareness about our freedom. It is the uneasy awareness of
the ultimate unpredictability of one’s own behavior. For example, a soldier fears
injury, pain, or death, but he feels anguish when he wonders whether he is going to be
able to ‘hold up’ courageously in the coming battle. Because when he reflective
apprehends of his freedom, he can’t predict what he will choose in coming every
moment, so he feels anguish. Sartre’s gloomy description of our life is ‘an unhappy
consciousness with no possibility of surpassing its unhappy state’.
In order to escape anguish, people try to represent one’s attitudes and actions as
not determined by one’s own choices, but determined by one’s situation, one’s
character, one’s relationship to others, social role, and so on. Sartre calls this ‘bad
faith’. However, on the other hand, the concept ‘good faith’ presents a conceptual
problem. Sartre displays an inordinate fondness for the paradoxical formula that
‘human reality must be what it is not, and not be what it is’. According to this idea, a
man is in good faith should always try to become different form who he is, but it is
almost impossible and foolish. A comprehension of this paradoxical sentence is
‘people are not necessarily what they are, but must be able to become what they are
not yet’. So ‘good faith’ means we are free to try to become different from what we
are. We must accept our responsibility for everything about ourselves.
Sartre’s later phases:
Sartre came to recognize more explicitly how human freedom is situated in the
midst of what he calls ‘facticity’, the facts about oneself and one’s situation that
constrain the ways in which one can express one’s freedom. Therefore, the freedom of
individual thus becomes Sartre’s basic value. Every conscious being is free in the
abstract sense. However, human society should be changed in the direction of making
this a reality for everyone that everyone be able to exercise his or her freedom in
concrete ways. And the responsibility for one’s own free choices must involve
respecting the freedom of all other conscious beings.
Sartre now defines man, not as a free consciousness, but as an embodied animal
with rational thought. And there is a dialectical relationship between human beings,
the nature world, and the social world. We are strongly influenced by the past of our
culture, by the social class we are encultrued into, and by the idiosyncrasies of our
family. Accordingly, Sartre looks to social action in particular to organized, ‘pledged’
groups committed to social and political change, to concrete human freedom for the
oppressed. On the other hand, Sartre also hoped to find a level of ethical thought
about society that is not merely conditioned by the prevailing economic structure, yet
not totally abstract and unrelated to social reality. Hence he focuses on human needs,
as setting us objective values that ‘demand’ to be fulfilled. The concept about Human
needs is flexible enough to cover several levels, including physiological needs,
psychological needs, education and culture, individuality recognized, to contribute to
society, and finally seeking the meaning and purpose to their lives. Sartre now
identifies human’s religious instinct not as the aspiration to become God, but the
desire for our lives that could only come from an almighty loving God. However,
Sartre continues to hold that this is an illusion and that only we ourselves can confer
meaning and purpose on our lives and on the world.
To sum up, in Sartre’s early phase, he thought freedom as curse. People want to
lose freedom but they can’t. In the later phase, he thought freedom as gift. However,
People want to get freedom but they can’t.
In my interpretation, I guess that in Sartre’s early phase, he was unhappy and
lack of normal needs. Nevertheless, to complain about circumstances or other people
is useless. So to inspire himself, he should claim that he has responsibility for
everything about himself. Hence he thought freedom as curse. In his later phase, his
some needs became fulfilled, thus he acknowledge there are objective values about
human beings. And because he had enough resources and social supports, he
sympathized his early phase. He objectively comprehended the situation which limits
his freedom and then looks to social action. The idea run through his philosophy is
that we should use our freedom to change ourselves for the better. However, for an
unfortunate man, he should struggle as if he is free and he has responsibility for
everything about himself. On the other hand, for the upper class in the society, they
should work toward an ideal society in which all people can exercise their freedom.