For Readers of the Manchester Times
Prepared from the Original for Philosophers and Politicians of the United Kingdom.
Lemma I. The genesis of Being for the human is subjectivity, in that each human defines their essence in whatever manner and by whatever terms are appropriate for them. The principle that humans are free in such self-definition from any timeless, objective moral standards, however, places an abundant burden on us (Sartre, 1946). With freedom comes responsibility – the responsibility that God has traditionally held over humankind. Human beings are free to determine their own essences, and consequently responsible for the consequences of such self-definition (Sartre, 1946). Sartre vehemently protests the idea that it is not possible to choose an essence, because in refraining from such determination, one is already acting with a resolve not to act. Sartre proclaims a tyranny of freedom – one cannot choose not to choose freedom, and one has absolutely no excuse for failing to make resolute determinations of one’s essence. There exist no perfectly general guidelines by which one can make such determination; rather, the locus of determination of subjectivity. One can choose an ethics whereby one’s actions proceed therefrom, but it is only in the retroactive interpretation of actions that value or “meaning” can be ascertained from them (Sartre, 1946). Thus, the locus of action is subjective; the subject is the authentic bearer of action; and all actions derive from the existence of freedom to choose any essence but not to avoid such a choice. It is precisely in one’s subjective choice of an ethics that, for Sartre, man makes himself (Sartre, 1938). Since such subjectivity is always present for one, the conditions in which one finds oneself always condition the decision. Thus, one does not choose an ethics to fashion an essence “once-and-for-all;” rather, the necessity of choice is perpetual and continual. Instead of despairing in the endless void of choices for selfhood, Sartre, rather, delights in it; one is, in a sense, constrained by no principle in determining oneself in the proximality of the world.
Lemma II. One could interpret Sartre’s ontology, much like Descartes’, as asserting the primacy of “cogito” over phenomenal existence – or more precisely, as asserting the existence of mental substance over the physical substance of the body. However, this would be a misreading of Sartre, and a fundamental one. For Sartre, life is not a pre-existing Aristotelian essence that animates forms – life does not exist before life (Sartre, 1946). It is in one’s self-realization that one defines one’s existence; and the realization of one’s existence centers it on the body which, with the mind, becomes human, and thus becomes the genesis of choices for one’s nature as such. One can never go beyond the subjectivity of the human mind-body; subjectivity is the human lot and is forced upon one because of freedom (Sartre, 1946). Whether consciously or not, one is always conscious of the freedom of one’s choices and is formulated by an essence to the extent that such formulation is chosen and assumed (Sartre, 1946).
Lemma III. Since one cannot transcend the locus of subjectivity, one cannot escape the truth that one’s choices are what fashions one. One continuously defines one’s nature in the process of making choices and acting upon such choices. Because one is uniquely responsible for the consequences of one’s choices, and one is not determined by any psychic or Divine influences, one should always exist in a “state of anxiety” regarding the choices that one makes are “good” or “bad” choices (Sartre, 1946). There is no objective moral apparatus for determining whether such choices are indeed “good” or “bad;” rather, such distinctions are asserted by one in one’s subjectivity and in the ontological consideration of choices as free choices. Since no gods can be postulated to save one from the freedom of one’s choices, one is continually prone to fall into the “abyss” of choice and lose all sight of ethical or moral boundary – freedom is the prime ethics of homo sapiens in that freedom alone defines any ethics as an ethics, and freedom alone defines one as the sole executor of such ethics (Sartre, 1946). Since it is always for one to construct one’s nature in a state of freedom, one is consequently liberated from any meta-ethics that could judge or convict one of being “good” or “bad.” Nothing is ontologically prior to oneself as a self; before one’s recognition of one’s existence, nothing can be said to exist. Any appellation to an objective standard is false, and one’s interpretation of one’s actions is always reflected to the locus of one’s interiority in choice and as constituted by choice. In Kierkegaard’s milieu, such freedom is monstrous and excessive since it cannot ever be moored in the certainty or objectivity of an ethics beyond the self. Because one exists in community and is proximally and for the most part a social being, one is continually disposed to justify one’s actions to others – although, in freedom, one is not categorically bound to do so.
Lemma IV. Heidegger fundamentally rejects Sartre’s proposition that homo sapiens can will himself into an essence. For Heidegger, mental existents (thoughts; attitudes; expectations; etc.) arise from Being; Being itself is mediated by thought, which is the epistemic connection between Being and the human essence, which is as a being capable of reflective thought (Heidegger, 1962). Mental action produces an intrusion of Being into the human essence. Cartesian metaphysics, and its appearance in Sartre’s identification of the “cogito,” is a violation of Heidegger’s reflective and teleological account of thinking – that the essence of Being itself is thought, and thus that homo sapiens determine an “irruption” of Being into an action of its own purpose (Heidegger, 1962). It thus follows, in Heidegger’s terms, that thinking (and thus auto-subjective identifications referencing thinking as an act of Being) are both formally derivative of Being itself. In other words, for Heidegger, it rings true that one is and therefore one thinks.
Lemma V. Sartre’s disagreement with Heidegger’s “inversion of the cogito” is fundamental and profoundly characteristic both of Sartre’s dualistic metaphysics and Heidegger’s irruptive one. For Sartre, Being is derivative of thinking; agency, a fundamental constituent of Being, cannot be founded except by choice, which is of necessity a conscientious mental action (Sartre, 1946). For Sartre, the essence of choice must be found in a self which is, at least, capable of choosing Reason for any effort or action to elect alterior modes of Being (Sartre, 1946). Even the avoidance of choice is a choice. Sartre’s neurotic avoidance of any mode of Being which could impinge upon self-initiated choice as the characteristically human essence (including, for instance, the Freudian subconscious or the Jungian concept of archetypes) is very notable. Since freedom is the essence of man, Being itself is of secondary ontological significance to the subjective Man, who exerts will in the throes of his freedom. Sartre, who as previously discussed sees the “cogito” as the necessary condition of freedom, views each human subject as constitutive of choices that cannot be detached from phenomenological experience (Sartre, 1965).
Lemma VI. Heidegger does not reject the existence of thinking as a fundamentally human enterprise, but he warns of the ability of the “cogito” to focus on Dasein’s thoughts only, as opposed to Dasein’s participation in Being. Heidegger’s subject partakes in Dasein not from the “cogito,” nor from the identity of the thinker as a conceptual category. The human subject, by its very statement, is an object about which thought has been, and thus is “inter-alia” a categorical subject of thought and is a concept before it is an experience (Heidegger, 1962). To postulate (as Sartre) that the subject exists by thinking, and does not think by Being, renders the human subject cut off from the experience of Being. Man cannot find his essence apart from the “epoche” – that of a suspension of all nihilating non-Being through the momentary embrace of Being. The “epoche” is destructive of the Cartesian self because the bracketing and observation of the phenom causes both a loss of phenomenological existence for the subject and, aporetically, the participation of the subject in its own essence (Heidegger, 1962). For Heidegger, Sartre’s subject cannot exist without being parasitic upon objects as choices of his own that are over and above him; Heidegger’s man will only become himself by suspending himself in Being and not seeking to be anything or anyone.
Works Consulted in the Series.
Clooger, J. The Guise of Nothing: Castoriadis on Indeterminacy, and its Misrecognition in Heidegger and Sartre. Critical Horizons (Acumen Publishing) 2013, Vol. 14 Issue 1, p1-21.
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Figueiredo, L. O Abismo da Liberdade: Arendt vs. Kierkegaard e Sartre. Revista Portuguesa de Filosofia, T. 64, Fasc. 2/4, Horizontes Existenciários da Filosofia / Søren Kierkegaard and Philosophy Today, 2008, pp.1127-1140.
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