Luiseach

My first formal encounter with philosophy was when, in Grade 13, I was asked to give a seminar on Jean-Paul Sartre and Existentialism.

My strongest memory of Sartre was being blown away by the idea that we are free.

Okay. So I was naive!

However, at that time, I had never thought of myself as completely free before...the notion that I always had a choice, no matter what, was wonderful. I remember telling my mother all about it...bubbling over with enthusiasm...as she drove me to school (my mom is a supremely patient woman, thank goodness...and I was always the kind of kid who would ask her those endless questions about how it would feel to be a tree or a blade of grass; why the sky was blue and not red or purple; is there a big brick wall at the end of the universe; what did stones think about... )

As I kept looking into existentialism for my class project, I also remember being somewhat surprised that there was supposed to be feelings of 'angst' and 'nausea' and 'ennui' associated with the responsibility that comes along with freedom.

I never felt any of these things in relation to the idea that freedom entails responsibility.

I still don't.

It seems logical to me that freedom and responsibility go hand-in-hand. The more freedom we have, the more responsibility.

The idea that we get to decide who we are, to define what it means to be human...I still think of this as a great opportunity for human beings to progress, evolve, make things better.

Am I still being naive about Sartre and Existentialism?

I would be interested in what others here think about the philosophy...

As always, thank you very much in advance for your thoughts...

xorbie

I think basically what he was talking about was that the idea of ultimate, total freedom comes with certain emotion. There is a certain helplessness in that no matter what you do, you cannot really affect anything.

Also, it is troubling to many people to know that whatever they do, they have nobody whatsoever to blame. Essentialy, they are responsible not just for their own life, but for the um of humanity (remember, man defnies man), and every action we make contributes to the sum total that is makind. I think that if one where to truly understand and totally accept these principles (which I do not), they would no doubt be troubled, at least at first, by these overwhelming emotions.

jpbrooks

Hello Luiseach!

I tend to agree with you. I never understood why existentialists associate freedom with anxiety and dread. However, in my efforts to understand existentialist psychology, I came across this article that may contain some relevant information about why existentialists associate freedom with such "negative" emotions.

velvetfinger

Liuseach, you may find this interesting. It's from the magazine, Philosophy Now, June/July 2001 edition. The article is titled 'The Forgotten Existentialist', by Matther Coniam. The existentialist in question is Colin Wilson.

This New Existentialism of Wilson's was charted through a cycle of novels beginning with 'The Outsider' (1956) but apparently these books are out of print. However, during the 1970s Wilson drifted towards all things mystical and occult and, hence, unscientific.

Luiseach

My understanding of existentialism diverges from the view that we cannot affect anything...actually, from my perspective, it seems to be quite the reverse. Interesting.

Ah...the notion of 'responsibility' seems to be part of the negative emotions (of nausea, ennui or angst) that some existentialistic thinkers associate with the philosophy.

However, I think the idea of responsibility being tied to freedom is a necessary moral/ethical ingredient. Without responsibility for our fellow and sister humans, or for the environment, other animals, and so on, freedom seems both meaningless and potentially destructive.

In other words, responsibility seems to be the check and balance in the use of our freedom. What say you?

Hi jp! Thank you very much for the linked article. I'll read it, and respond to it in a separate post...an 'existentialist psychology'...yes, absolutely, the article should be enlightening!


Thank you for the excerpt, velvetfinger. I agree with Wilson's optimistic (or emotionally neutral) take on existentialism...it has been my view that the pessimism Sartre, Camus et al tend to attach to existentialism is less a reflection of an inherent problem with the philosophy, and more an indication of reservations that the thinkers themselves have with the moral/ethical implications of an existentialistic approach. After all, defining what it means to be 'human' is a big responsibility...not for the faint of heart.

What a shame Wilson drifted away from science!

Perhaps I'll understand better the negative emotions often associated with existentialism after I read the article jpbrooks posted (thanks again, jp).

Amos

Well, isn't that interesting. My strongest memory of Sartre is the "Theory of Negation" wherein the determined cause that awakens the "absurd" must be denied before some sort of freedom can be found. I always thought that Sartre would have us ignore the responsibility we have to ourselves and just pretend to be free.

Luiseach

Hiya, Amos...

Yes, the notion of the 'absurd' does indeed come into a discussion of Existentialism.

I hadn't realised that Sartre thought we should ignore responsibility...I also didn't know that he thought that we should 'pretend to be free' rather than be free. How odd!

Amos

Hi Luise, sorry and maybe I am pushing my conclusion to soon. For me his theory of negation was profound and that would be just opposite to "to thine own self be true" or "do not go gently into the night" or "my whole life I punish myself, my whole life I punish"(etc). The Greeks would have called it a theory for cowards because the unknown that is to be negated by Sartre comes to us so that we may be transformed by it (in the end).

So yes, his freedom comes a price that we should never afford or the unexamined life would be worth living. But then, I am also a defender of "essence precedes existence."

exnihilo

I think that for people who are more liberated from things such as religion may find Sartre's idea a bit suprising. I think, however, it is important to understand the radical position that sartre was taking. People familar with his work will know that one of the fundamental principles in Sartre's lexicon was that existence preceeds essence, i.e., that the essence of humanity (what many refer to as soul) isn't an infinitely extending force/being, but comes about as a result of our individual interactions with the world. As a result, this essence is not immortal but is also extinguished when the body dies. Implicitly, such an ontology presupposses that metaphysics in the christian/religious sense is little more than fantasy and wishfulfillment. This is where the idea of responsibility is most important because if anything the type of metaphysical telos that Christianity imposes is precisely one that reduces personal responsibility in the noumenal world because of the overwhelming emphasis placed on the hereafter. The idea of belief only makes this distinction more apparent because even one's actions become largely irrelevant as a result.
Stripped of this comforting mythology humans are faced with the absurd reality of having to make their own lives meaningful without any reference to higher metaphysical destiny. Thus, the idea that our life's meaning is completely contingent upon what we as individuals make out of it can be very distressing to some.
Camus confronted just this problem in many of his works by posing the question that if there is no objective meaning is life itself even worth living. The Stranger, The Fall and The Myth of Sisyphus was his attempt to answer this in the affirmative.
De beauvoir in the Second Sex extended this line of inquiry to issues of gender and responsibility.
I think that if we consider the problem in such a way it is easier to see how such an array of problems are interconnected and manifest in such ideas of justice and freedom to begin with.

Mexicola

Just a little 'thought' experiment for anyone wondering about the 'angst' Existentialists often discuss:

Sartre makes much of the idea that human freedom depends on possibilities for action being 'live', meaning that they are considered not just as something someone could do, but what you could do now. With this in mind, next time you're in a public place (on a bus, in a crowd, lecture, etc) try thinking about all the actions you could take, and specifically try to think of things that you wouldn't want to actually do. For example, consider stripping off naked, shouting something crazy, passionately kissing a random stranger of the same sex, punching some big butch guy, etc, etc. What you'll probably feel is something similar to the vertigo Sartre discusses, in which what you are afraid of when looking over a precipice is not the possibility of accidentally falling off but rather the possibility of throwing yourself off. The 'freedom' part of this is that there is of course nothing stopping you from going to do these things. There's no law which states that you can't do them. In fact, according to Sartre there is also no sufficient justification you can give for choosing not to do them. Simply saying 'I don't want to' doesn't work, because it is precisely this judgment which is being questioned. No fact about your past history can justify your future action; there's always another option which can't be ruled out. This is often considered a 'negative' emotional reaction because it's scary to be confronted by the contingencies of your choices, self, etc, and by the immense possibilities available to you. It's also a liberating experience though, because it helps stave off the 'stuck in a rut' feeling of simply going through the motions. It makes things a bit more interesting. Even if you don't strip naked and thrust your tongue down the throat of the nearest guy/girl particularly often...