This paper critically examines Sartre's argument for the meaninglessness of life from our foundationless freedom. According to Sartre, our freedom to choose our values is completely undetermined. Hence, we cannot rely on anything when choosing and cannot justify our choices. Thus, our freedom is the foundation of our world without itself having any foundation, and this renders our lives absurd. Sartre's argument presupposes, then, that although we can freely choose all our values we (...) have a meta-value that we cannot choose: that values are acceptable only if they are justified by some independent factor rather than by one's free choice. I argue that we need not accept this presupposition: subjectivists may well choose to be 'proud subjectivists' who are pleased with, rather than ashamed by, their subjectivism. Indeed, many subjectivists, including those considering the meaning of life - for example, Harry Frankfurt and Brooke Alan Trisel - adopt this position. (shrink)

In conclusion of his Being and Nothingness Sartre articulated the problem of freedom as a moral one, promising to write a book concerning the problem. The work was published only posthumously. As a consequence of it he was reproached by his critics either for the absence of the moral problematic in his existentialism or for that in the long run the moral problem disappears . Some of them recognized his moral vision, but only in its negative form . In (...) contrast to these views the author tries to show, that the perspective of meaning and values is the core of Sartre’s phenomenological ontology, which is the necessary background of the ultimate objective of the French philosopher: a conception of morals, which would be concrete and historical at he same time. Her argumentation is based on the passages from Being and Nothingness, as well as from Sartre’s posthumous Cahiers pour un morale . A special attention is paid to problems such as the distinction between ethical anxiety and the everyday mo_rals, the spirit of seriousness, understanding man as useless passion and also the problema_tic of the motive and sense of moral conversion, articulated by Sartre. (shrink)

Being and Nothingness argues that in the master–slave dialectic Hegel had a ‘brilliant insight’ contra solipsism, to the effect that each self-consciousness depends on other consciousnesses. Against Hegel, however, Sartre claims that the separation of the for-itself remains an insurmountable ‘scandal’ and that collectivity can at best exist as a ‘de-totalised totality’, never as Subject. In a confrontation with Hegelian Sittlichkeit, Notebooks for an Ethics extends this analysis to the historical modalities of the mutual recognition of freedoms. A ‘concrete ethics’ (...) must be ‘revolutionary socialist’, centrally concerned with ‘the dialectic of the ends and means of revolution’. Finally, Sartre’s analysis of the dialectic of society and the state in the Critique of Dialectical Reason explains why sovereignty can never be the embodiment of an imaginary Subject. Sartre thus ultimately occupies a highly distinctive middle ground between Hegel’s Philosophy of Right and Marx’s critique of Hegel. A fulcrum of the argument, focused on Notebooks for an Ethics, consists in a comparison between Sartre and Trotsky’s Their Morals and Ours. (shrink)

The purpose of the present work is twofold. On the one hand, it attempts to provide a critical exposition of the ethical theory of Jean-Paul Sartre. On the other hand, it strives to explain, and in a limited way to defend, the central thesis of that theory, namely, that freedom is the "highest," or most important, value. ;The study begins with an extensive discussion of Sartre's theory of freedom. Sartre's arguments for the freedom of consciousness (...) are identified and presented, and a number of widespread misunderstandings of Sartre's conception of the nature of freedom are corrected. Specifically, it is argued that, contrary to prevailing opinion, Sartre distinguishes between different senses of freedom, insists that freedom is always limited, and remains substantially consistent, throughout his intellectual career, in his understanding of the nature of freedom. ;The study next takes up Sartre's theory of values. Here the well-known strain of ethical subjectivism in Sartre's thought is presented and criticized, with the main instrument of criticism being a distinction, overlooked by Sartre, between subjectivism as a meta-ethical theory about the status of moral judgments, and subjectivism as an ontological doctrine regarding the existence of moral values. ;The study concludes with an explanation and defense of the theory that freedom is the highest value. Here the presentation of Sartre's ethical theory is brought to completion through a discussion of its neglected objectivist elements, and through a development in regard to ethics of Sartre's general theory of knowledge. It is then shown that the notion of freedom as a value underlies both the subjectivist and the objectivist phases of Sartre's ethical thought, and it is suggested that these two phases can be reconciled in a conception of ethics as a dialectic of invention and discovery. This conception is defended by way of a brief discussion of its advantages over rival ethical theories, which neglect one or the other of the stages of this dialectic. (shrink)

Philosopher Terry Pinkard revisits Sartre’s later work, illuminating a pivotal stance in Sartre’s understanding of freedom and communal action. Jean-Paul Sartre’s Critique of Dialectical Reason, released to great fanfare in 1960, has since then receded in philosophical visibility. As Sartre’s reputation is now making a comeback, it is time for a reappraisal of his later work. In Practice, Power, and Forms of Life, philosopher Terry Pinkard interprets Sartre’s late work as a fundamental reworking of his earlier ideas, especially in (...) terms of his understanding of the possibility of communal action as genuinely free, which the French philosopher had previously argued was impossible. Pinkard reveals how Sartre was drawn back to Hegel, a move that was itself incited by Sartre’s newfound interest in Marxism. Pinkard argues that Sartre constructed a novel position on freedom that has yet to be adequately taken up and analyzed within philosophy and political theory. Through Sartre, Pinkard advances an argument that contributes to the history of philosophy as well as key debates on action and freedom. (shrink)

In this paper, I endeavor to provide a critical examination of a recent pioneering work that engages Jean-Paul Sartre’s insights in analyzing social media interactions – Michael Lopato’s “Social media, love, and Sartre’s look of the other: Why online communication is not fulfilling?”. I shall show that in so far as Sartrean insights are concerned in Being and Nothingness, Lopato misconstrued what Sartre really meant with the Look of the Other and love, and is mistaken in appropriating such insights in (...) arguing that online interactions are not fulfilling. I shall proceed by first discussing Sartre’s third region of being which is being-for-others which will comprise of the Look of the Other and the two attitudes to retrieve one’s freedom. Second, I shall flesh out the arguments of Lopato. Lastly, I shall present my critique of Lopato’s arguments which constitutes my reply to his work. (shrink)

I argue that Sartre's Transcendence of the Ego draws on Kant's theory of spontaneity to articulate its metaphysical account of consciousness's mode of being, to defend its phenomenological description of the intentional structure of self‐consciousness, and to diagnose the errors that motivate views of consciousness qua person or substance. In addition to highlighting an overlooked dimension of Sartre's early relation to Kant, this interpretation offers a fresh account of how Sartre's argument for the primacy of pre‐personal (...) consciousness works, and brings the extent of his proximity to idealist models of mind into greater relief. It also affords Sartre the resources to respond to criticisms that his account of self‐consciousness relies on a spurious distinction and that his view of freedom cannot explain how consciousness is conditioned by its world. (shrink)

In this essay, I attempt to remedy the relative neglect that has befallen Sartre’s analysis of social relations in the Critique of Dialectical Reason. I show that, contrary to the interpretation of certain commentators, Sartre’s analysis of social relations in this text does not contradict his earlier works. While his early work focuses on individual-to-individual social relations, the Critique of Dialectical Reason complements this by focusing on the way various group formations constrain or enhance the individual’s practical freedom. To (...) outline my argument, I first discuss the relationship between Being and Nothingness and the Critique of Dialectical Reason before going on to identify the four group formations Sartre discusses in the Critique of Dialectical Reason and the implications each has for the individual’s practical freedom. I argue that while the group formations called the series and the institution constrain the individual’s practical freedom, the open, democratic group formations called the group-in-fusion and, in particular, the organized group, enhance the individual’s practical freedom. Because it is membership of an organized group that best enhances the individual’s practical freedom, I conclude by arguing that Sartre implicitly holds that the individual’s practical and political activity should be directed towards the establishment of a group formation that has the characteristics of an organized group. (shrink)

Sartre’s phenomenological view of consciousness gives primacy to the thesis that all consciousness is nonthetically aware of itself, i.e., pre-reflectively aware of itself but not as an object. Few commentators, however, have explained Sartre’s grounds for holding this thesis, despite his view that the thesis’s truth underwrites the certainty of the Cartesian cogito and thereby the method of Sartre’s own phenomenological ontology. I document three lines of support for the thesis, the most promising of which consists in a proof by (...) cases. Namely, Sartre’s texts contain the argument that the existence of nonthetic consciousness is the only satisfactory explanation of the Cartesian cogito’s certainty. The paper concludes with an examination of whether and how nonthetic consciousness can serve as a foundation for Sartre’s method of phenomenological ontology. (shrink)

The French existentialists Simone de Beauvoir and Jean‐Paul Sartre are renowned philosophers of freedom. But what “existentialist freedom” is is a matter of disagreement amongst their interpreters and, some argue, between Beauvoir and Sartre themselves. Since the late 1980s several scholars have argued that a Sartrean conception of freedom cannot justify the ethics of existentialism, adequately account for situations of oppression, or serve feminist ends. On these readings, Beauvoir disagreed with Sartre about freedom—making existentialist ethics, resistance (...) to oppression, and feminism coherently defensible. This article identifies four conceptions of freedom in order to clarify the questions of whether and how they disagreed, arguing that some incompatibilist readings of Sartre and Beauvoir conflate or confuse these conceptions in ways that render their conclusions unconvincing. However, there are stronger grounds on which to claim that Beauvoir disagreed with Sartre about morality—and the conditions of its possibility. (shrink)

Mill advocated an unqualified defense of the liberty of conscience in the most comprehensive sense, which he understood to include not just the freedom to hold but also to express any opinion or sentiment. Yet considerable dispute persists about the nature of Mill’s argument for freedom of expression and whether his premises can support so strong a conclusion. Two prominent interpretations of Mill that threaten to undermine his uncompromising defense of free speech are considered and refuted. A (...) better interpretation can be founded on Mill’s claim that the liberties of conscience are inseparable in practice. This claim can be defended with modern psychological insight about the nature of cognitive bias, and epistemological insight about why justification of creedal beliefs requires the universal toleration of opinion, insights which are largely anticipated by Mill. This argument is especially vital because it highlights the divide between classical liberalism and progressivism that has become a flashpoint in the current political debate over free speech. (shrink)

In a recent book entitled Free Will and Epistemology. A Defence of the Transcendental Argument for Freedom, Robert Lockie argues that the belief in determinism is self-defeating. Lockie’s argument hinges on the contention that we are bound to assess whether our beliefs are justified by relying on an internalist deontological conception of justification. However, the determinist denies the existence of the free will that is required in order to form justified beliefs according to such deontological conception of (...) justification. As a result, by the determinist’s own lights, the very belief in determinism cannot count as justified. On this ground Lockie argues that we are bound to act and believe on the presupposition that we are free. In this paper I discuss and reject Lockie’s transcendental argument for freedom. Lockie’s argument relies on the assumption that in judging that determinism is true the determinist is committed to take it that there are epistemic obligations – e.g., the obligation to believe that determinism is true, or the obligation to aim to believe the truth about determinism. I argue that this assumption rests on a wrong conception of the interplay between judgments and commitments. (shrink)

In On Revolution and other writings, Arendt expresses her enthusiasm for the council system, a bottom-up political structure based on local councils that are open to all citizens and so allow them to participate in government. This aspect of her thought has been sharply criticized – ‘a curiously unrealistic commitment’ (Margaret Canovan), ‘a naiveté’ (Albrecht Wellmer) – or, more often, simply ignored. How, her readers generally wonder, could Arendt in all seriousness advocate the council system as an alternative to parliamentary (...) democracy? In this paper, I will pursue two distinct but related aims. First, I want to show that Arendt’s ideal of council politics is an integral element of her thought. It is connected to – indeed, follows from – some of her most central notions, namely her concept of freedom, her valuation of ‘public happiness’ and her distinction between opinion and interest. Second, I want to defend the ideal in the face of the criticisms that have been levelled against it. I seek to show that it is a cogent and pertinent proposition, not ‘a curiously unrealistic commitment’. (shrink)

This paper critically evaluates an objection to introspective arguments for human freedom found within Spinoza's Ethics. The objection-- which we call Spinoza's dream argument -- challenges the evidentiary value of a person's experience of her own freedom by pointing out that some choices made within dreams are experienced as no less free than choices made while awake despite the fact that choices made within dreams are not free. After reconstructing Spinoza's dream argument, we critically evaluate it, (...) concluding ultimately that it fails in two respects. First, we draw upon the results of an experiment we conducted that suggests that dreamt choices are not experienced as free to the same extent as choices made while awake. Second, we argue that there is no compelling justification for the claim that choices made within dreams are not free. (shrink)

In this paper, I examine the relation between Henri Poincaré’s definition of mathematical continuity and Sartre’s discussion of temporality in Being and Nothingness. Poincaré states that a series A, B, and C is continuous when A=B, B=C and A is less than C. I explicate Poincaré’s definition and examine the arguments that he uses to arrive at this definition. I argue that Poincaré’s definition is applicable to temporal series, and I show that this definition of continuity provides a logical basis (...) for Sartre’s psychological explanation of temporality. Specifically, I demonstrate that Poincaré’s definition allows the for-itself to be understood both as connected to a past and future and as distinct from itself. I conclude that the gap between two terms in a temporal series comprises the present and being-for-itself, since it is this gap that occasions the radical freedom to reshape the past into a distinct and different future. (shrink)

In the second half of 1944, Jean-Paul Sartre wrote an essay entitled ‘Anti-Semite and Jew’. He analyses what might be termed the moral pathology of the anti-Semite. Such a person, Sartre suggests, has chosen to enact a passion, a passion of hatred. The motive is the desire for ‘impenetrability’ – a disavowal of reasoned argument – and a pleasure taken in the assertion and re-assertion of what is known to be false. Sartre’s essay was written hurriedly and looking back (...) over 70 years, we can see its flaws. But I suggest that the kernel of his analysis of the anti-Semite is compelling, especially in the context of the growth of anti-immigrant prejudice in the UK and elsewhere. Using Sartre as a starting point, I discuss the nature of prejudice and suggest that to counter prejudices, a civic education is needed that emphasises a narrative of liberty. (shrink)

This article will offer an alternative understanding of managerial decision-making drawing from Sartre’s Critique of Dialectical Reason rather than simply Being and Nothingness. I will begin with a brief explanation of Sartre’s account of freedom in Being and Nothingness. I will then show in the second section how Andrew West uses Sartre’s conception of radical freedom from Being and Nothingness for a managerial decision-making model. In the third section, I will explore a more robust account of freedom (...) from Sartre’s Critique of Dialectical Reason. I will attempt to show that freedom is not simply a matter of choosing (or not choosing) to perform an action, but entails external constraints—including other people. Finally, I will provide the implications of this account of freedom for managerial decision-making. I will show that it’s unreasonable to place full responsibility and/or blame on managers given their constraints. This does not absolve them from responsibility, but better accounts for the way in which we ought to hold them responsible. (shrink)

The role of freedom in assigning moral responsibility is one of the deepest problems in metaphysics and moral theory. _Incompatibilism’s Allure_ provides original analysis of the principal arguments for incompatibilism. Ishtiyaque Haji incisively examines the consequence argument, the direct argument, the deontic argument, the manipulation argument, the impossibility argument and the luck objection. He introduces the most important contemporary discussions in a manner accessible to advanced undergraduates, but also suited to professional philosophers. The result (...) is a unique and compelling account for incompatibilism’s continuing allure. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Hazel E. Barnes BEAUVOIR AND SARTRE: THE FORMS OF FAREWELL There ARE MANY forms of farewell. The formal interview may be one of them, an autobiography another, the biography written by a relative or close friend of the deceased a third. In The Words Sartre bade farewell to his childhood. He thought he was saying goodbye to literature at the same time, though this adieu turned out to be (...) more in the nature of au revoir or even à bientôt. In an extended interview on the occasion of his seventieth birthday and in a three-hour documentary film, Sartre commented on the events ofhis life, his writings, his hopes and aspirations, his political judgments. Each of these was a summing up, and a selfappraisal, a final statement, too, inasmuch as Sartre's ill health and near blindness made it clear to him that he would not be writing anymore. Simone de Beauvoir obviously drew up some kind of final reckoning in the last volume of her autobiography, Tout comptefait {Account Closed). All of these are farewells of a sort, official valedictories. They have been much discussed, and I will not dwell on them here. Two other works bearing Beauvoir^ name are farewells in a different sense. They are preparations for leave-taking and records of remembrance for the bereaved. They have been combined in a volume published in late 1981, a year and a half after Sartre's death. The first of these is La Cérémonie des adieux (The Ceremony ofFarewells).? This is an account of the decade preceding Sartre's death. The title is itself a recollection of a poignant moment, as Beauvoir explains: "Then this is the ceremony of farewells!' Sartre said to me as we were leaving each other for a month at the beginning of one summer. I had a presentiment of the meaning these words would one day assume. The ceremony lasted ten years. It is these ten years that I recount in this book." The record is annalistic, the same kind of detailed year-by-year account of events and her reactions to them 21 22Philosophy and Literature mat Beauvoir employed in the first three volumes of her autobiography. But there her stated intention was to keep herselfas the center offocus and to speak of Sartre only insofar as his existence was intertwined with her own. In the preface to The Ceremony of Farewells she states that she has recorded these ten years as she had lived them, but that the book is devoted wholly to Sartre. Ifshe has spoken also ofherself, it is because "the witness is a part of what he witnesses." The book is dedicated "To those who loved Sartre, love him, will love him." Indeed, it has been written for them by one who is of them. The second work is Entretiens avecJean-Paul Sartre, a collection of interviews she herself conducted with Sartre in the summer of 1974. These have been subjected to superficial editing but by no means reworked into literature. Beauvoir wanted to give to readers the opportunity "to follow the meanders of his thought and to hear his living voice." Here she uses the method adopted in the fourth volume ofher autobiography, where she grouped her reminiscences by topics. Sartre responds at length to her questions on a vast variety ofsubjects, ranging from food likes and dislikes to his changing concepts of freedom, from sexual preferences to politics; there are comments on schoolboy fights with Merleau-Ponty, and later arguments with Camus, thoughts on literature, on death, on God. A reviewer has remarked that these interviews represent "a worthwhile approximation to the autobiography [Sartre] never wrote."2 Thus we have a work that falls in between biography and autobiography, because of the author's close involvement with her subject, and we have a set of autobiographical interviews. In both Beauvoir is recorder and commentator, Sartre central subject and actor. The two may serve for mutual corroboration and correction. Together diey express Beauvoir^ and Sartre's farewell to each other and his farewell to life. I will begin with the Interviews and focus my discussion on a few selected items which seem to me especially... (shrink)

In sections 2.21.23-25 of An Essay concerning Human Understanding, John Locke considers and rejects two ways in which we might be “free to will”, which correspond to the Thomistic distinction between freedom of exercise and freedom of specification. In this paper, I examine Locke’s arguments in detail. In the first part, I argue for a non-developmental reading of Locke’s argument against freedom of exercise. Locke’s view throughout all five editions of the Essay is that we do (...) not possess freedom of exercise (at least in most cases). In the second part, I argue that, when Locke asks whether we possess freedom of specification, his question is intentionally ambiguous between two readings, a first-order reading and a higher-order reading. Locke’s view is that, on either reading, we do not possess freedom of specification (at least in any interesting sense). (shrink)

As seen in his enthusiastic praise of John Dos Passos's 1919 , Sartre evaluated literary works by how effectively they aim to play a role in fundamental social change. This essay has two goals. One is to show that Sartre's endorsement of committed literature is not undercut if literature fails to play a role in fundamental social change and the other is to show at least some of the ways in which committed literature is successful. Both goals are pursued (...) through a consideration of the literary works of Kurt Vonnegut and Don DeLillo. The former was mentioned briefly but favorably by Sartre in 1971 and the latter, while lacking such direct ties to Sartre, was accused of “sandbox existentialism.” I read both writers as arguments in favor of Sartre's instrumentalist take on literature. (shrink)

Freedom after Kant situates Kant's concept of freedom in relation to leading philosophers of the period to trace a detailed history of philosophical thinking on freedom from the 18th to the 20th century. Beginning with German Idealism, the volume presents Kant's writings on freedom and their reception by contemporaries, successors, followers and critics. From exchanges of philosophical ideas on freedom between Kant and his contemporaries, Reinhold and Fichte, through to Kant's ideas on rational self-determination in (...) Hegel and Schelling, we see Kant's original arguments transformed through concepts of autonomy, freedom and absolutes. The political aspect of Kant's freedom finds further articulation in chapters on Marx and Mill who developed their own notions of political freedom after Kant. Revealing how Kant's concept of freedom shaped the history of philosophy in the broadest sense, contributors chart the development of an ethics of freedom in the 20th century which brings Kant into conversation with Heidegger, Beauvoir, Sartre, Levinas and Murdoch. This line of thinking on freedom signals a new departure for Kantian studies which brings his ideas into the present day and traverses major schools of thought including Idealism, Marxism, existentialism and moral philosophy. (shrink)

The plural, impure or discordant nature of time has become an important theme in recent critical social and political theory. Against Althusser’s dismissal of Sartre’s presumedly Hegelian understanding of time and history, this article establishes Jean-Paul Sartre as a key figure in this debate on the plurality of temporalities. Especially in the Critique of Dialectical Reason, Sartre understands history and the social in terms of a multiplicity of uneven and non-synchronous temporalisations, rejecting an notion of time as a universal container (...) within which events take place. The originality of Sartre’s approach is that it establishes a link between the notion of the plurality of temporalities and the problem of freedom and domination. His mature social and political theory allows us to understand temporalisation as a strategy for domination, and objective social temporality as key to a form of anonymous or structural domination. A reconstruction of this highly complex and sophisticated approach to thinking domination through time can also shed an original light on the temporal dimension of democracy and totalitarianism. (shrink)

Shortly after he was banished for heresy from his nation-state of Prussia in 1723, Christian Wolff published an overview of his philosophical system, known in English as the Preliminary Discourse [1728]. In the last chapter of this work, Wolff gives an extended argument for the importance and necessity of academic freedom. In the paper, I reconstruct and evaluate Wolff’s argument and maintain that the strength of Wolff’s view resides in his naïve optimism for intellectual discourse.

This essay raises some questions concerning the method and conceptual structure of Sartre's Being and Nothingness. Three substantially different types of interpretation of this text have been put forward. One of the main issues separating the three interpretative strategies is the relationship that they each establish between Sartre's three fundamental concepts: consciousness, nothingness and freedom—each of which can be seen to play the fundamental role in the argument. It therefore seems crucial for any interpretation of Being (...) and Nothingness to determine the exact relationship between these terms. However, Being and Nothingness presents a hybrid argument that interweaves metaphysical deduction, phenomenological description and moral-existential argument in a way that makes it almost impossible to decide which of the strands of the argument should be seen to dominate the others. It is therefore perhaps equally difficult to ascertain which of its principal concepts has the most central place in the system. One could therefore argue that a reading of Being and Nothingness should aim to account for (rather than dismiss) the hybridity of the argument and then seek to assign relative functions to its different strands. The following remarks are intended as a step in that direction. (shrink)

This paper articulates a new understanding of Sartre’s philosophical methodology in his early publications up to and including Being and Nothingness. Through his critique of Husserl across these works, Sartre develops an original and sophisticated variety of transcendental phenomenology. He was attracted to Husserl’s philosophy for its promise to establish the foundations of empirical psychology but ultimately concluded that it could not fulfil this promise. Through the analyses that led him to this conclusion, Sartre formulated a new kind of phenomenological (...) reduction and a distinctive kind of transcendental argument to draw conclusions about mind-independent reality from phenomenological premises. His aims were to dissolve the traditional distinction between mind and world, to establish that the mind is accessible to empirical study, and to formulate the conceptual framework required to study the mind systematically. Sartre’s philosophy of psychology, therefore, drove the philosophical development of the methodological foundation of his philosophical project. (shrink)

Sartre’s memoir Words turns on his mid-life realisation that, although he had abandoned belief in God, he had hitherto based his work on a religious model. From this point God no longer appears as a primary reference in his writings. This is in sharp contrast with the pervasive presence of God in earlier works, especially in his ontology and related reflections on ethics. In ontology Sartre was particularly concerned with the Cartesian idea of the creator God as ens causa sui. (...) Adapting this to his own system, he uses the idea of causa sui to mark the absolute (but non-substantial) existence of for-itself being (consciousness) as separate from the uncreated plenitude of in-itself being. He then argues that the idea of God as a consciousness that founds its own being is an impossible synthesis of the for-itself and the in-itself. The idea nonetheless remains fundamental for consciousness, for desire, which arises in response to lack, ultimately the lack of in-itself being, reflects an original choice that leads to constant striving towards the impossible goal of being God. This theme haunts the ontology from beginning to end. Sartre offers a system to rival Descartes or Leibniz, but adopts a quasi-religious framework of salvation in which, apart from the promise of a possible escape from ontological destiny, human beings are condemned to futility. In ethics he explores the idea of conversion from original choice to an authentic choice of freedom, but fails to break out of the closed framework set by the ontology. (shrink)

Sartre’s description of violence from his often-neglected Notebooks for an Ethics can be analyzed from a psychological point of view in relationship with other negative passions like hatred, fury, pain and sufferance. Literary characters such as Seneca’s Medea or Anouilh’s Antigone seem to embody this fundamental characteristic of violence: the alliance with an ontological striving for destruction. In this paper we provide an interpretation of the Sartrean portrait of the violent man, analyzing its connections with his existential doctrine from Being (...) and Nothingness, and its affinity with modern nihilism (Nietzsche and Cioran) and Gnostic dualism (Catharism and Manicheanism). (shrink)

It was to correct common misconceptions about his thought that Jean-Paul Sartre, the most dominent European intellectual of the post-World War II decades, accepted an invitation to speak on October 29, 1945, at the Club Maintenant in Paris. The unstated objective of his lecture (“Existentialism Is a Humanism”) was to expound his philosophy as a form of “existentialism,” a term much bandied about at the time. Sartre asserted that existentialism was essentially a doctrine for philosophers, though, ironically, he was about (...) to make it accessible to a general audience. The published text of his lecture quickly became one of the bibles of existentialism and made Sartre an international celebrity. The idea of freedom occupies the center of Sartre’s doctrine. Man, born into an empty, godless universe, is nothing to begin with. He creates his essence—his self, his being—through the choices he freely makes (“existence precedes essence”). Were it not for the contingency of his death, he would never end. Choosing to be this or that is to affirm the value of what we choose. In choosing, therefore, we commit not only ourselves but all of mankind. This book presents a new English translation of Sartre’s 1945 lecture and his analysis of Camus’s _The Stranger_, along with a discussion of these works by acclaimed Sartre biographer Annie Cohen-Solal. This edition is a translation of the 1996 French edition, which includes Arlette Elkaïm-Sartre’s introduction and a Q&A with Sartre about his lecture. (shrink)

A relation between Sartre's phenomenological ontology and the German idealist tradition is frequently assumed in the secondary literature on Sartre. The literature that confronts this question usually adopts a piecemeal approach, treating individual philosophers, usually Hegel, in the mode of comparison and contrast. This approach, though fruitful in a limited fashion, obscures the broader question of Sartre's relation to German idealism as a whole. This study attempts to place Sartre in the context of an internal debate within idealist (...) thought, as one player in an ongoing dialogue. Its task is the establishment of Sartre's phenomenological ontology in Being and Nothingness as essentially idealist in both form and content. ;This work proceeds primarily through interaction with primary texts, beginning with Sartre's early piece, Imagination: A Psychological Critique. From this book we abstract a critical methodology that we discover is ubiquitous in Sartre's early works. In particular, we examine the application of it to the idealists in Being and Nothingness, learning both its failures in terms of representational accuracy and its successes in advancing Sartre's argument. These discoveries lead us to explore the distinction Sartre draws between metaphysics and ontology, which is critical to understanding the nature of Sartre's entire project. Having clarified this distinction, we return our attention to the critical methodology, which displays both an intimate connection to, and important distinctions from, Hegel's dialectical logic. Notably, if Sartre's position is best understood as an ongoing 'moment' in the developing narrative of idealist thought, we conclude that the profound nature of Sartre's relation to Hegel is that of opposition. Sartre's opposition to Hegel in turn may be seen as analogous to the Kantian project of establishing intellectual space for ethics in the face of scientific rationalism. Sartre, I argue, reinstitutes Kant's "Copernican revolution" on the ontological level as a response to the necessitarianism issuing from Hegel's dialectical logic. This response intends to place the realm of ethics forever beyond the possibility of doubt by forbidding metaphysical speculation any functional relevance to human existence. To live as anything other than free moral agents is to live in bad faith. (shrink)

A major event in the history of twentieth-century thought, Notebooks for a Ethics is Jean-Paul Sartre's attempt to develop an ethics consistent with the profound individualism of his existential philosophy. In the famous conclusion to Being and Nothingness , Sartre announced that he would devote his next philosophical work to moral problems. Although he worked on this project in the late 1940s, Sartre never completed it to his satisfaction, and it remained unpublished until after his death in 1980. Presented (...) here for the first time in English, the Notebooks reveal Sartre at his most productive, crafting a masterpiece of philosophical reflection that can easily stand alongside his other great works. Sartre grapples anew here with such central issues as "authenticity" and the relation of alienation and freedom to moral values. Exploring fundamental modes of relating to the Other--among them violence, entreaty, demand, appeal, refusal, and revolt--he articulates the necessary transition from individualism to historical consciousness. This work thus forms an important bridge between the early existentialist Sartre and the later Marxist social thinker of the Critique of Dialectical Reason . The Notebooks themselves are complemented here by two additional essays, one on "the good and subjectivity," the other on the oppression of blacks in the United States. With publication of David Pellauer's lucid translation, English-speaking readers will be able to appreciate this important contribution to moral philosophy and the history of ethics. Jean-Paul Sartre (1906-1980) was offered, but declined, the Nobel Prize for literature in 1964. His many works of fiction, drama, and philosophy include the monumental study of Flaubert, The Family Idiot , and The Freud Scenario , both published in translation by the University of Chicago Press. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Kant famously claims that we have all freely chosen evil. This paper offers a novel account of the much-debated justification for this claim. I reconstruct Kant’s argument from his affirmation that we all have a price – we can all succumb to temptation. I argue that this follows a priori from a theoretical principle of the Critique of Pure Reason, namely that all empirical powers have a finite, changeable degree, an intensive magnitude. Because of this, our reason can (...) always be overpowered by sensible inclinations. Kant moreover holds that this necessary feature of our moral psychology should not have been the case: We ought to instead be like the divine human being, for whom the moral law yields a greater incentive than any possible temptation. On Kant’s view, we are thus responsible for having a price, and the synthetic a priori fact that we do proves that we each made an initial choice of evil. (shrink)

From the beginning to the end of his philosophizing, Sartre appears to have been concerned with "bad faith"—our "natural" disposition to flee from our freedom and to lie to ourselves. Virtually no aspect of his monumental system has generated more attention. Yet bad faith has been plagued by misinterpretation and misunderstanding. At the same time, Sartre's correlative concepts of "good faith" and "authenticity" have suffered neglect or insufficient attention, or been confused and wrongly identified by Sartre scholars, even (...) by Sartre himself. Ronald E. Santoni takes on the challenge of distinguishing these concepts, and of showing whether either or both existential "attitudes" afford deliverance from the hell of Sartre's bad faith. He offers the first fill-scale analysis, reconstruction, and differentiation of these ways of existing as they develop in Sartre's early works. Although he attempts to redeem Sartre's slighted concept of good faith, Santoni warns that it must not be viewed interchangeably with authenticity. Further, in one of the earliest and most sustained studies of Sartre's _Notebooks for an Ethics_ available in English, Santoni shows how Sartre's posthumously published notes for an "ethics of Salvation" confirm his differentiation and argument. The way out of Sartrean hell, Santoni insists, is authenticity—living "with fidelity" to our unjustifiable freedom and assuming responsibility for it. (shrink)

Philip Kitcher argued that the freedom to pursue one's version of the good life is the main aim of Mill's argument for freedom of expression. According to Kitcher, in certain scientific fields, political and epistemological asymmetries bias research toward conclusions that threaten this most important freedom of underprivileged groups. Accordingly, Kitcher claimed that there are Millian grounds for limiting freedom of inquiry in these fields to protect the freedom of the underprivileged. -/- I explore (...) Kitcher's argument in light of the interpretation Helen Longino gave to Mill's argument. She argued that free critical dialogue in the community allows bias to be overcome, through intersubjective criticism of hypotheses and the background assumptions that frame them. I suggest that Longino's approach allows for the identification of the fundamental problems of the research programs Kitcher targeted, and for the rejection of their claims to knowledge. Thus it is possible to address Kitcher's problem without limiting freedom of speech. (shrink)

An easily recognizable feature of Sartre’s phenomenological existentialism is his conception of freedom. According to a popular interpretation, we are absolutely free, not only from factual constraints, but also free to create and pursue our own values. In this respect, Sartre appears to continue in a radical direction the Kantian project of making room for freedom in a world colonized by scientific determinism and dogmatic moralism. This chapter challenges the popular reading. It argues that Sartre extends the implications (...) of Kant’s conception of freedom, especially concerning the constraining character of imperatives and principles; yet he acknowledges the need for some limitation on a legitimate account of freedom. This limitation is given by the higher-order values expressed by our free actions. (shrink)

In chapter 6 of An Essay on Free Will Peter van Inwagen presents an influential argument that we are justified in believing we are free. He does so by claiming that the determinist’s objection to the argument for the belief in freedom fails in the exact same way that the skeptic’s argument fails to prove that none of our empirical beliefs are justified. I show that this strategy to defend the belief in freedom fails due (...) to a disanalogy. The failure of his attempted defense raises the question whether there are any other arguments available to him for his target conclusion. I answer this question affirmatively by presenting an interesting argument for belief in freedom that van Inwagen gestures toward without ever explicitly formulating. Namely, that “If you deliberate about what to do while believing you’re not free, then you have inconsistent beliefs.” Alongside this conclusion, van Inwagen suggests that (1) inconsistency is an epistemic defect and (2) it is implausible that some truth is such that your simply believing it would make epistemically defective your engaging in so basic an activity as deliberation. In this way, the above conclusion plays an important role in van Inwagen’s overall argument for the thesis that we should (epistemically speaking) believe in free will. Finally, I show that this argument fares no better than the other. (shrink)

Philosophy & Social Criticism, Volume 48, Issue 7, Page 1014-1034, September 2022. The plural, impure or discordant nature of time has become an important theme in recent critical social and political theory. Against Althusser’s dismissal of Sartre’s presumedly Hegelian understanding of time and history, this article establishes Jean-Paul Sartre as a key figure in this debate on the plurality of temporalities. Especially in the Critique of Dialectical Reason, Sartre understands history and the social in terms of a multiplicity of uneven (...) and non-synchronous temporalisations, rejecting an notion of time as a universal container within which events take place. The originality of Sartre’s approach is that it establishes a link between the notion of the plurality of temporalities and the problem of freedom and domination. His mature social and political theory allows us to understand temporalisation as a strategy for domination, and objective social temporality as key to a form of anonymous or structural domination. A reconstruction of this highly complex and sophisticated approach to thinking domination through time can also shed an original light on the temporal dimension of democracy and totalitarianism. (shrink)

Relaying reflections from Les Mouches, Morts sans sépulture, Les mains sales and Huis-clos to some important arguments concerning death in L’Etre et le néant, the author discusses the relation between death and freedom. Criticizing Martin Heidegger’s views on Sein zum Tode, Jean-Paul Sartre argues that one’s relation to death deeply implies relations with the others, the living, but also the dead ones. The experience of death being absurd, the others are those who can make it meaningful, in the same (...) way that I do for their own death. Sartre’s philosophy of freedom defends the original choice of the ones that I will remember and cherish, in a community that is more important than the living one: the community established beyond death. (shrink)

This article is a response to critiques of my book Rethinking Existentialism in this symposium. It begins with a reflection on the nature of this discussion. Then it reformulates Eshleman's ‘bridge problem’ to defend my view that eudaimonist arguments cannot establish that we ought to respect freedom. Next, it shows how my interpretation of Beauvoir's argument for authenticity can incorporate Kirkpatrick's reading of Beauvoir's ethics. Then it uses Romdenh-Romluc's description of Fanon's therapeutic methodology to present a comparative reading (...) of Fanon and Sartre, followed by an argument that Romdenh-Romluc's reading of Fanon can be incorporated into my interpretation to the benefit of both. The penultimate section incorporates Beauvoir's theory of femininity into my account of her theory of gender sedimentation. The final section considers how Eshleman's emphasis on social interdependence might enrich Sartre's picture of authenticity. The article closes with brief comments on the value of reading these texts together. (shrink)

This article maintains that Jean-Paul Sartre’s early masterwork, Being and Nothingness, is primarily concerned with developing an original approach to the being of consciousness. Sartre’s ontology resituates the Cartesian cogito in a complete system that provides a new understanding of negation and a dynamic interpretation of human existence. The article examines the role of consciousness, temporality and the relationship between self and others in the light of Sartre’s arguments against “classical” rationalism. The conclusion suggests that Sartre’s departure from modern foundationalism (...) has “postmodern” implications that emerge in the areas of ontology, existential analytics and the ethics of human freedom. (shrink)

The most promising way of responding to arguments for the incompatibility of divine foreknowledge and human freedom (in one way or another) invokes a claim about the order of explanation: God knew (or believed) that you would perform a given action because you would, in fact, perform it, and not the other way around. Once we see this result, many suppose, we'll see that divine foreknowledge ultimately poses no threat to human freedom. This essay argues that matters are (...) not so simple, for such reasoning threatens also to reconcile divine prepunishment with human freedom. The question here is this: if you have already been ( justly) punished by God for doing something, how then could you avoid doing that thing? As we'll see, there is a strong argument that seems to show that you couldn't. However, this essay argues that if divine prepunishment rules out human freedom, then so does divine foreknowledge. The arguments are exactly parallel in certain crucial respects. At any rate, investigating the issues surrounding prepunishment can help to throw into relief the various different strategies of response to the foreknowledge argument and can bring out what their costs and commitments really are. In particular, investigating prepunishment can help to bring out the inadequacy of the “Ockhamist” reply to the argument, as well as the sense in which God's past beliefs need to depend on what we do, if we are plausibly to have a choice about those beliefs. (shrink)

Sartre’s thinking in L’être et le néant is driven by a conceptual choice that radically breaks with the philosophical spirit of Sein und Zeit and, in the same gesture, problematizes it. This rupture involves three moments. The first moment appears when Sartre transforms Heidegger’s emphasis on ‘being and time’ into ‘being and nothingness’. The second moment occurs when that transformation effectuates a conceptual shift which results in the inversion of the relationship that Heidegger establishes between anxiety and freedom: whereas (...) in Sein und Zeit anxiety is the precondition of freedom, in Sartre freedom becomes the precondition of anxiety. Finally, in the third moment, the absolute primacy of spontaneity in L’être et le néant ultimately serves as the cornerstone for Sartre’s reevaluation of truth, challenging the fundamental concept of ‘Geworfenheit’ in Sein und Zeit. Unlike Heidegger’s view where truth (alètheia) coincides with existence, in L’être et le néant, truth is portrayed as an ongoing struggle: consciousness must consistently fight against it in bad faith or forcefully liberate it from bad faith. Together, these three moments constitute the primary components of Sartre’s originality in relation to Heidegger’s fundamental ontology. (shrink)

Jean-Paul Sartre’s failures in Black Orpheus have been widely and rightly explicated by a number of theorists, most notably Frantz Fanon and Aimé Césaire. Sartre has rightly been criticized for imposing a white gaze onto his reading of colonized African poetry. It would seem that his work offers us no tools for anti-racist work today. For this article, I read his failures in the text alongside his work in The Imaginary and Being and Nothingness to argue that we can learn (...) from his failures and that his failures do offer us conceptual tools for anti-racist work today. I argue that Sartre’s main contribution ought to be understood as a provocation to white people. He is provoking white people to confront how whiteness works in their imaginary. The imaginary is nothing but what one puts into it, and what one puts into it is imbued with the historical, social and cultural. The image is imbued with the individual’s experiences within a historical, social and cultural situation. If this is the case, then the confrontation with and critique of the image is a political act. In confronting and critiquing the image, one is confronting and critiquing the situation in which the image emerges. The hope is that in doing so, white people could transcend the facticity of their whiteness in particular situations for the better, which in turn would have positive consequences for the larger sociopolitical situation. (shrink)

This paper intends to give a critical reading of Jean-Paul Sartre’s treatment of inter-consciousness relationship as presented in his work L'être et le néant, namely in the chapter L'existence d'autrui. Our main objective is to understand the treatment Sartre gave the referred issue in that particular work, but also to show that his theoretical standpoint falls short on a true determination of the meaning of the experience of Otherness for consciousness. Our method for approaching Sartre’s views stands on a detailed (...) reading of the author’s own analyses, trying to show their limited scope and providing a different, less conflictual treatment and interpretation for the presented data. In Sartre’s view, consciousness is not inhabited by an ego, that is, it doesn’t have an ego until one becomes an object to it, similar to the remaining objects of the world, which occurs with the Other’s entry in the world. That being, Sartre’s fundamental problem is to know how is it possible for consciousness to constitute an ego as an object - as an object among other objects, but whose experience is, for consciousness, different from the one it makes of all other objects -, and, on a second step, to state its identity with that ego, i.e., to be that ego, without loosing, in the process, its subjective spontaneity and freedom. Taken as a subject/object kind of relation, as Sartre affirms it, the inter-consciousness relationship is condemned to failure, doomed to be a permanent struggle for domination of one over an other. Our analysis of the sartrian data as put forward in L'Être et le néant will show that Sartre’s thesis about inter-consciousness relationship is one-sided and that a more comprehensive interpretation of the above-mentioned relationship is possible, an interpretation based in the view that envisaging the Other as an object is founded on an anticipation of its subjectivity and of consciousness’ own subjectivity, that is, on a founding intersubjective relationship. According to our viewpoint, if it is true that an ego can be an object, it is already as a degraded ego and not as the ego properly said, born out of a relationship between subjects. The experience of Othemess shows consciousness, originally and immediately, what it can and should be, and that being has a positivity that remains an other for a concrete, knowable ego. That founding experience, which takes place at an affective level, has the meaning of an experience of the limits which, when surpassed, will allow consciousness to reach a higher dignity of being. Therefore it is as anticipation and project, as desire, as afectivity, that the relationship to an other takes place, as a pure relationality without masks, and not as a dialectical conflict, as Sartre intends to show with his occasionally convincing arguments. (shrink)

Easy to understand philosophy papers in all areas. Table of contents: Three Short Philosophy Papers on Human Freedom The Paradox of Religions Institutions Different Perspectives on Religious Belief: O’Reilly v. Dawkins. v. James v. Clifford Schopenhauer on Suicide Schopenhauer’s Fractal Conception of Reality Theodore Roszak’s Views on Bicameral Consciousness Philosophy Exam Questions and Answers Locke, Aristotle and Kant on Virtue Logic Lecture for Erika Kant’s Ethics Van Cleve on Epistemic Circularity Plato’s Theory of Forms Can we trust our senses? (...) Yes we can Descartes on What He Believes Himself to Be The Role of Values in Science Modern Science Kant’s Moral Philosophy Plato’s Republic as Pol Potist Bureaucracy Schopenhauer on Human Suffering Bertrand Russell on the Value of Philosophy The Philosophical Value of Uncertainty Logic Homework: Theorems and Models Searle vs. Turing on the Imitation Game Hume, Frankfurt, and Holbach on Personal Freedom Manifesto of the University of Wisconsin, Madison Secular Society Michael’s Analysis of the Limits of Civil Protections Bentham and Mill on Different Types of Pleasure Set Theory Homework Aristotle on Virtue Nagel On the Hard Problem Wittgenstein on Language and Thought Camus and Schopenhauer on the Meaning of Life Camus’ Hero as Rebel without a Cause My Little Finger: Camus’ Absurdism Illustrated Are Late-term Abortions Ethical? Does Mathematics Assume the Truth of Platonism? The Self-defeating Nature of Utilitarianism and Consequentialism Generally What is The Good Life? Bentham and Mill regarding types of pleasures Kant’s Moral Philosophy Five Short Papers on Mind-body Dualism Tracy Latimer’s Father had the Right to Kill Her: Towards a doctrine of generalized self-defense Arguments Concerning God and Morality Goldman, Rousseau and von Hayek on the Ideal State J.S Mill on Liberty and Personal Freedom A Kantian Analysis of a Borderline Date-rape Situation Living Well as Flourishing: Aristotle’s Conception of the Good Life Three Essays on Medical Ethics: Answers to Exam Questions on Elective Amputation, Vaccination, and Informed Consent Hobbes, Marx, Rousseau, Nietzsche: Their Central Themes De Tocqueville on Egoism Mill vs. Hobbes on Liberty Exam-Essays on the Moral Systems of Mill, Bentham, and Kant Kant’s Moral System Aristotle on Virtue Plato’s Cave Allegory An Ethical Quandary Superorganisms The Tuskegee Experiment A Rawlsian Analysis Why Moore’s Proof of an External World Fails A Defense of Nagel’s Argument Against Materialism A Utilitarian Analysis of a Case of Theft The Paradox of the Self-aware Wretch: An Analysis of Pascal’s Moral Philosophy Jean-Paul Sartre: Decline and Fall of a Marxist Sell-out A One Page Proof of Plato’s Theory of Forms Plato’s Republic as Pol Potist Bureaucracy The problem of the one and the many Four Short Essays on Truth and Knowledge What is ‘the Good Life?’ The Ontological Argument Different Political Philosophies: Plato, Locke, Madison, Rousseau, Hayek, and Mill on the State What do I know with certainty? Skepticism about skepticism Neuroscience and Freewill Operant Conditioning What makes us special? Are Late-term Abortions Ethical? No Two Papers on Epistemology: Gettier and Bostrom Examination Nietzsche on Punishment God’s Foreknowledge and Moral Responsibility . (shrink)