by Henry Piper (all rights reserved)
Introduction
Augustine and Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980) both believe in a radical and responsible freedom, and both describe it with their own distinctive accounts of human psychology. For Augustine, to exercise that freedom is to bring the will into union with itself and so to bring the self into its own being, the self that God made it to be—this is the meaning of “integrity,” to be one, at one with oneself. For Sartre, by contrast, there is no God, and thus no given, human “being”; quite the contrary, for Sartre we are nothing, and it is precisely as nothing that we are free to make ourselves something and so be solely and fully responsible for that something. So the difference between Augustine and Sartre is that for Augustine we might be something, namely the image of God, whereas for Sartre we can never be any “thing” because we are constantly immersed in the process of creating ourselves, in each action we undertake, each decision we make, thus we must assume and seize responsibility for what we become, as we become. Harkening back to Plato, we might observe that Augustine adopts Plato’s idealist view of an eternal realm of being, according to which human beings are born with a fixed essence or human nature; by contrast, Sartre rejects Plato’s emphasis on Being to argue that human existence is a matter rather of becoming, specifically the becoming that results from the free actions we take in the course of our lives.
Despite this apparently radical difference between Augustine and Sartre, however, for both philosophers we are somehow split within ourselves; moreover, essential and central to the thought of both philosophers is a radical version of human freedom, with strong emphasis, for both, on the inescapable responsibility for one’s own being that one has as a free being. The split within the self for Augustine, as we have seen, is the split of the will into two wills, which results in the dynamic of the will’s turning away from the will of God to invoke the will of the individual against God and thus against one’s own self—the self God created the individual to be. For Sartre, the split is in consciousness; specifically, it is a split between what he calls “the in-itself” and “the for-itself,” which together constitute the dynamic of consciousness reflecting on itself and which is what makes freedom, the being of man, possible.
The “In-Itself” and the “For-Itself”
The “in-itself” is that aspect of our self that simply is, that is what it is; this is the kind of being to which mere material, inanimate objects are limited. Thus the desk I sit at simply is what it is, “in itself”; its entire being is contained within the boundaries of its physical structure. In principle, we can know what this desk is simply by examining it as it stands before us and taking it apart to see what’s “in” it, what makes it be the way it is. More specifically, when considering the being of this desk we do not ask what it is going to become, much less what plans it has for itself or what it is doing with its life―such questions of the desk are obviously absurd. In short, the desk is only what it is in-itself, it simply is what it is. It has no being for-itself, because it is not conscious of itself and therefore does not exist for itself, it is nothing for itself or to itself because, obviously, it does not know that it is, it is not conscious of itself, it cannot reflect upon itself.
By contrast, the unique characteristic of human existence, for Sartre, is precisely that a human being does exist “for itself,” which simply means that it is conscious of itself and passes through its existence constantly aware, to one degree or another, of itself as a self (though the degree of such self-awareness might often be slight or even, in unconsciousness or inebriation, non-existent). Thus as a human being makes the conscious decisions that mold its character and determine the course of its life, such decisions are precisely made for the purpose of creating that self and determining that life course, thus such conscious decisions are precisely made for or on behalf of the becoming of the self into the self it becomes. When Martin Luther King, Jr. sought to be judged not by “the color of his skin” but by “the content of his character,” he was, in Sartre’s terms, asserting that his given, physical skin color does not tell us the kind of person he is; rather, it is his character by which he should be judged, since his character is what he has made of himself as a free being: his skin color is an inconsequential aspect of what he is, an aspect of his given in-itself, but it is his character that defines who he is, his for-itself, his free being.
“Bad Faith”
So what is essential about human existence for Sartre—what makes us who we are―is not Being but nothingness; that is, though all human beings share a fundamental existential condition, our only essence is that we have no essence, there is no such thing as a fixed, unchanging human “Being,” which is characteristic rather of an inert, physical object whose whole being and purpose is complete and contained within the object just as it is—a “thing” is complete “in-itself.” Human existence, by contrast, is not “in-itself” but “for-itself”: it is not itself in-itself but rather exists as a reflection of, or rather reflecting, of itself―the human condition is thus “reflection reflecting.” So in one sense we simply are what we are, as I might say “I am a man”; however, at the very moment I say this, what really most authentically defines me is the fact that I am saying that I am a man, or that I am reflecting on myself as a man. In other words, what really is notable and unique about me is not my in-itself being “man,” but the fact that I am conscious of being a man, in other words, it is my consciousness, my for-itself, that is what really makes me what I am, not my in-itself “man-ness.”
Thus Sartre claims that, as we reflect on ourselves to ourselves and as we present ourselves to others, we exist always in what he refers to as “bad faith,” or at least under the shadow of bad faith. This idea of bad faith is analogous to Augustine’s condition of two wills in that it represents a failure to resolve the split within ourselves and thus entails a condition in which we lack integrity, in which we are denying the reality of our condition, that is, denying the radical reality of our freedom. To repeat, I am, in a sense, a man, but the being of man is only my being in-itself; but really to exist as a man is to be conscious of my being a man, to be a man for-myself, so really it is my consciousness of my being a man that I really am, and not simply “man.” Does that mean that I am not a man but merely a consciousness? Well, no, surely not, and yet as soon as I say “I am a man” in a sense I am lying, since in that moment what I really am is the consciousness of it. This paradoxical split within the self is for Sartre the very stuff of freedom, for it is precisely because I can be conscious of myself as something I am not yet that I can be free: freedom is precisely the ability to imagine myself as something I am not (yet) so that I can now make the decisions and take the actions that will result in my becoming in reality what I now only imagine myself to be (in the future).
When meeting a new student in a new school, we ask the person’s name and where the person is from, but this doesn’t tell us anything about a person’s character. For that we go on to ask about the person’s major or career plans, for these represent things about a person that are a function of one’s free choice for oneself, and they tell us much more about the kind of person one is; but, ironically, they concern things that are merely plans for the future, thus things that one is not (yet). But again, clearly the fact that a person is studying to be a doctor tells you much more about the person’s character, about who the person is, than the fact that the person was born in Queens; this is precisely why the for-itself is much more essential to the existence of a human being, as human—that is, as a free being—than the in-itself. And this is why this split within the self between the in-itself and the for-itself is what makes human freedom possible. But this split also inevitably lands us in bad faith, for either we are defining ourselves primarily not by what we are but by what we are not (our for-itself, e.g. “I am studying to be a doctor”); or, when we do define ourselves by what we are (our in-itself, e.g. “I am a man”), we are effectively denying that what we truly are is really a function of what we are making ourselves into—what we are becoming—rather than what we merely are (our being). In other words, to be free is to exist constantly in this split between the in-itself and the for-itself, and thus always in the shadow, as I put it above, of bad faith, even when we are most conscious of our free being and most fully aware of the responsibility that we bear for becoming what we imagine ourselves to be able to be.
Leaving aside for a moment all this jargon, consider, personally, how weird it is to exist as a human being—can you possibly give a true and complete account of what, or who, you are—isn’t any answer you give going to be, in some sense, false? Consider, specifically, your consciousness—it is not only essential and vital to who you are but probably the single most significant feature of you as a human being, yet what is it, where is it, how can it be? It is thus, we can see, that no matter how we describe ourselves or define ourselves we can not avoid in some sense existing in “bad faith”—try as we might to be “authentic,” we are always to some degree playing a role and pretending, to some degree, to be something that we are not (even when we are not posting on social media).
“Condemned to be Free”
So we must make up our own being as we go along, filling in the undetermined future with what we make of ourselves. In other words, we are free, and to be so is precisely to be able to define ourselves according to what we intend to make of ourselves rather than what we just are—to be able to be (in the mode of becoming) what we are not (yet). For Sartre, human beings can’t just “be” since they are not in-themselves because we exist for-ourselves. Sartre refers to his philosophy of human existence as “existentialism,” where the existence he refers to is specifically human existence, which is constituted not by being what one is but by the dynamic of the conscious reflection on oneself that results in this constant, free making of oneself into what one is not (yet). Thus for Sartre to exist as a human being is to exists constantly in the shadow of “bad faith,” since a conscious being is always effectively claiming “to be what one is not and not to be what one is.” As for being “what one is not,” to exist as a human being is to be conscious, and consciousness is intentional—it is always conscious of its “plan,” of what it is making itself to be, which it is not (yet), so, as such, consciousness exists as what it is not. As for not being “what one is,” as soon as one identifies oneself as something—anything—it is self-evident that what one in reality is at that instant of identification is the act of identifying oneself as that thing, which one obviously is not (as noted above, when I say “I am a man” what I really “am” is the reflection on and saying of “man”); thus one is not what one is.
Finally, we must all acknowledge, as a practical matter, that what essentially characterizes us as “human” is the consciousness that makes it possible for us to be free and so to be responsible for ourselves through the decisions and choices that we make. One choice that might seem to be open to us, however, is the choice not to be free. Recall Rousseau’s reference to Pufendorf, who claims that freedom is a commodity that we might surrender for a price; but more importantly recall Rousseau’s refutation of Pufendorf to the effect that to give up your freedom is essentially to give up your very self, since freedom is not a human invention but a natural, in-born quality that you effectively cannot surrender, and you effectively remain responsible for yourself even if you do “sell yourself” (and then there’s our moral responsibility to future generations). Sartre effectively agrees with Rousseau that you cannot surrender your freedom, but Sartre’s argument is a logical one: to give up your freedom is itself a free choice, so to surrender your freedom is “to choose not to choose,” which is a contradiction. In other words, to choose not to be free—for example, by always just going along with the crowd and not thinking for ourselves—is to choose not to be what you are, which, again, you cannot logically do. Thus, in short, we cannot escape our freedom and its burden of responsibility, and so, Sartre says, we are “condemned to be free.”
Facticity vs. Freedom
Sartre is uncompromising in his insistence on the radicality of human freedom―that we are truly responsible for who we are, that is, more precisely, responsible for who we become through the decisions we make and the actions we take. Sartre acknowledges that there are certain factual realities influencing our existence that we are simply born with, certain factual realities that are simply given; the ensemble of such realities Sartre refers to as our “facticity.” Thus the term “facticity” is a key aspect of our in-itself, that part of ourselves we share with inanimate objects like desks that simply are what they are. Thus, for example, we are born to certain parents, we do not choose them, we have certain talents and lack others, we are born at a certain time and in a certain place, etc.; moreover, there are certain realities about the physical universe that we are forced to accept, the basic laws of nature. Such things together make up our facticity.
So numerous and ubiquitous are such elements of our “facticity” that we might be inclined to feel that our “freedom” is sorely limited: I am not free to become Napoleon or Cleopatra, after all, no matter how much I might want to choose such existences, and I am not free to leap to the moon in a single bound no matter how much I might want, or will it. But for Sartre, our facticity should not in any way detract from the total responsibility he insists we must bear for our existence. In short, rather than focus on those aspects of our lives that we cannot control, Sartre insists that we focus on and acknowledge those aspects of our lives that are indeed totally up to us, and these things are precisely the decisions we make concerning what we do with what we are given. In other words, the givenness of our facticity, and our in-itself being generally, may explain something about what we are, but it in no way determines who we are, which is altogether a function of what we make of ourselves through our free actions. I am not free to change my genetic heritage, but what I do with that heritage is totally up to me, and it would never be reasonable to claim, according to Sartre, that I do what I do because of my race, or sex, or parents, etc.; no, I do what I do because I do it, and this is exactly why it is only reasonable that I be judged by “the content of my character” rather than by “the color of my skin.” This is true because I am free, and any claim to the contrary is a denial of my freedom, which is effectively a denial of my very self; it is, in other words, an exercise in bad faith, a form of not being, or refusing to be, what, or who, I am.
“Existentialism is a Humanism”
The essay of this name was originally presented as a public lecture in Paris in 1945, to wide acclaim. Although Sartre himself was ultimately unhappy with its publication, it sets forth in clear and substantially non-technical terms what we might reasonably refer to as his “philosophy of freedom.”
The entire essay presents itself as a defense of the very idea of existentialist philosophy; Sartre’s basic claim in the essay is that critics of existentialism have simply failed to understand it clearly, if at all, and his essay seeks to set them straight. As noted above, the term “existentialism” refers specifically to human existence; it is not a type of philosophy devoted to the traditional field of metaphysics, which, as we have seen, concerns the nature of reality, or the nature of Being. Existentialism, rather, concerns itself only with the reality of what it is to be human, thus its focus is on consciousness and freedom.
The essay begins with a statement of the kind of “charges” that various groups have leveled against existentialism. On the one hand, progressive political activists backing socialist or communist agendas had claimed that existentialism leads to “quietism,” that is, an attitude of resigned withdrawal from the active affairs of society; from the other side of the political spectrum, conservative Christian critics had accused existentialism of “dwelling on human degradation” and “denying the reality and seriousness of human undertakings.” “Both sides,” says Sartre, “charge us with having ignored human solidarity, with considering man as an isolated being.”
Sartre argues that all these critics have it completely wrong. Sartre’s existentialism, he asserts, constitutes “a doctrine which makes human life possible,” the emphasis here being on the term human: in essence, Sartre claims that it is his critics, on both sides, who degrade and devalue humanity, and that it is precisely Sartre’s existentialism that fully respects and dignifies what it is to be human and, specifically, free. Thus existentialism is uniquely and unapologetically humanistic, though Sartre’s insistence on the seriousness of human responsibility, individual and political, places demands on the individual which his critics, perhaps, are reluctant to accept. In what follows we shall see how Sartre refutes both sorts of criticism. In brief, to the political activists Sartre will point out that existentialism is all about action and both personal and collective responsibility, since freedom means precisely that we create who we are by our actions in the world and so make ourselves responsible for what we become. To the religious conservatives Sartre will argue that it is not he that “degrades” human existence by denying that we are given by God to be good; rather, Sartre will claim that it is he who truly respects the value of human beings by insisting that we have the complete power, and responsibility, to make ourselves “good” through our free actions.
There is No “Human Nature”
As we have already noted, Sartre takes issue with the ancient philosophical notion that human beings are endowed, by nature or by God, with some given essence or nature. Going back to Plato, a basic philosophical notion of reality asserts that all things, including human beings, are what they are by virtue of some given idea or form or essence; thus, in the case of Sartre’s example of the paper-cutter, “here is an object which has been made by an artisan whose inspiration came from a concept.” The being of the paper-cutter is what it is by virtue of its having been “determined” by the prior conception of the artisan, just as, for the religious, God, the ultimate artisan, has created all that is, including human beings. Thus for the paper-cutter, as for human beings under this religious or Platonic view, their “essence precedes existence,” that is, before they even exist, what they are has already been determined for them, and this is what we refer to as their “essence” or “nature.”
By contrast, the basic motto of existentialism is the opposite, namely, “existence precedes essence.” This means, says Sartre, “that, first of all, man exists, turns up, appears on the scene, and, only afterwards, defines himself.” Thus we human beings are neither born with nor given anything in the way of a “nature”―for us there is no given “way to be.” For the human individual, says Sartre, “at first he is nothing.” Only after I have lived, or existed as a conscious, free being, will I have created the “I” that I am, thus only after existing will the human being “be something, and he himself will have made what he will be.” While it may seem to his religious critics that Sartre’s idea that we are “nothing”—that we have no essential human “nature”—paints a dark or gloomy or hopeless picture of what it means to be human, Sartre responds that, on the contrary, it is precisely because we are nothing that we might become something, and more specifically, the something that we ourselves make ourselves to be, and it is only thus that we might exist as truly free beings.
Indeed, says Sartre, those who insist that there is some given human nature effectively deny the reality and responsibility of human freedom. Thus, for example, it is frequently said, when one is trying to account for or excuse someone’s bad conduct, “it’s only human.” Such a statement implies that the person who acted badly had no choice because she was only acting in accordance with the nature she was given, and thus that she was not really free to do otherwise. Such a statement, we might observe, is analogous to what we say to excuse the child who spills the milk―"he couldn’t help it, he’s only a child." Now in the case of the child, of course, this is perfectly reasonable, but that is because we do not hold children responsible for their actions since they really don’t “know better” or they aren’t mature or knowledgeable enough to control themselves; but to make essentially the same excuse for ourselves or other adults is an instance of bad faith, for Sartre, as it is essentially to deny the reality of freedom as such. Now that is surely the truly “degrading” attitude, and perhaps, suggests Sartre, the problem is that his critics are afraid to admit the truth that we really are free: “Can it be that what really scares them in the doctrine I present here is that it leaves to man a possibility of choice?”
Sartre adds an additional, and crucial dimension to the meaning of human freedom, namely that human freedom is not merely a matter of the personal choice of the free individual, but, on top of that, to be a free human being means that we are each of us, in essence, representatives of the entire human species. Thus, although Sartre’s existentialism is very much based upon the notion of individual human subjectivity, nonetheless, when a person makes a personal choice, that choice essentially represents a universal, moral claim to goodness. It may seem that Sartre is being relativistic when he says, “we can never choose evil” as if he is agreeing with Thomas Hobbes that there is no objective basis for “good” and that, rather, such terms are merely empty names representing one’s own, subjective perspective; but this is not what Sartre means at all. Sartre would agree with Hobbes that there is no given, spiritual realm of eternal ideas or essences; however, Hobbes’s point of view is based on his materialist metaphysics according to which human being is completely determined by physical forces, and Sartre completely disagrees with Hobbes since for Sartre we are not fixed and determined beings, physical or otherwise, rather we are beings who determine ourselves by our actions, in other words, free beings, and it is Sartre’s view that the free actions of human beings serve to define the meaning of the good in a way that can be positive and meaningful and, indeed, universal. Thus unlike Hobbes, for whom no human action has universal meaning, for Sartre all human actions have universal meaning; for Sartre, it matters very much what we do, for the destiny of humanity collectively rests on the decisions each of us makes individually. So it is not just merely the case that “man is responsible for what he is”; it is also the case that “he is responsible for all men.”
While this deep burden of responsibility is what makes human life meaningful and is the basis for humanity’s unique dignity, it can also be a heavy load to bear; thus, says Sartre, freedom inevitably leads to feelings of anguish, forlornness and despair.
Freedom Entails Anguish
Sartre readily concedes that freedom, while denoting liberation, carries with it also a deep sense of anguish, for “the man who involves himself and who realizes he is not only the person he chooses to be, but also a lawmaker who is, at the same time, choosing all mankind as well as himself, cannot escape the feeling of his total and deep responsibility.” Some people may deny, or indeed sincerely not experience, such an actual feeling of anguish, says Sartre, but “they are fleeing from it,” hiding from the burden of their own freedom. They may think of freedom along essentially Hobbesian lines, that is, as being a matter simply of unconstraint and thus doing whatever they want, as if what they do does not matter to anyone else. Thus, if challenged about the hypothetical implications of an uncivil action, such as public littering for example, with the question, “What if everyone acted that way,” they would reply, “Everyone doesn’t act that way.” Now this idea that I am independent and what I do is my own business, not affecting others, may seem to be a declaration of freedom and independence and autonomy—but is it really? Consider, does such “freedom” really constitute a genuine power if it doesn’t affect anyone else? The clever rejoinder “everyone doesn’t act that way,” which is intended to mean that “I’m different, I’m above everyone else,” is arguably really an assertion that my actions do not matter, that no one cares what I do, that I have no effective power in the world. But if freedom is to mean anything—if it even matters—then it must have an effect in the world, so this attitude of indifferent independence—of “who cares what I do”—is really a claim of powerless meaninglessness rather than of freedom; it is thus that Sartre asserts that, in freedom, I am charged with committing “exemplary acts,” meaning precisely that my actions do matter—it maters so much, in fact, that Sartre claims that how each of us acts, in freedom, represents an example of our own view of humanity itself, which makes us responsible not just for ourselves but “for all men.” If this seems to overstate our personal power or influence, consider: isn’t the future simply made up of what we do today?
So, superficial appearances to the contrary notwithstanding, to say that what I do doesn’t matter because I’m different and “everyone” doesn’t act as I do is a declaration not of freedom but of powerlessness; it is not a statement that affirms one’s own value or significance but an assertion that one makes no difference in the world; it is not a statement of self-love but of self-loathing. So if one is aware of the power, along with the burden of responsibility, of one’s freedom, then one is aware of one’s anguish; if one pretends not to feel it, this is bad faith, a profound denial or misunderstanding of the true, positive meaning of freedom itself. We might note that this Hobbesian attitude toward freedom seems very prevalent in contemporary society. Thus, shouldn’t I be “free” to text-message during class, or while having lunch with friends?―why should anyone care, “it’s my own business, I’m not affecting anyone else”; again, this is to assert that I don’t matter, that no one notices or cares what I do, that I’m invisible. This is not an assertion of my power of freedom, it is not an affirmation of self-love, but the reverse. Sartre, of course, insists that what you do does matter, to us all, because your actions create the world in which we all live.
Finally, we might note that the notion that “everyone doesn’t do it” is ironically analogous to the apparently contradictory notion, considered previously in the context of Augustine’s “two wills,” of the common excuse kids use for bad conduct pursuant to peer pressure, “I did it because everyone else was doing it.” As we noted, this is simply a lie, because what “everyone else” does does not cause or determine what I do, rather my actions are caused by my own free choice. But this “everyone does it” is essentially analogous to “everyone doesn’t do it,” I suggest, because both statements are essentially claims that I am not free—they seek to avert personal responsibility by effectively denying freedom; thus, at root, they have in common a resort to personal delusion and falsehood, a repudiation of the hard truth of freedom, and thus constitute examples of bad faith. As we’ve seen there are innumerable examples of such claims, like “I have no choice,” “it’s beyond my control,” “I couldn’t help it,” which are almost invariably false, if not outright lies: they are claims that I’m not free, that my own choice is not my own choice, and are further indications of our conscious or unconscious anguish about the heavy burden of responsibility that human freedom entails.
Freedom Entails Forlornness
To feel forlorn is to feel lost, forsaken or abandoned. To be free, indeed, is to be aware of one’s separation from oneself, through reflection on oneself, as well as from nature and from other people. Sartre’s atheistic existentialism, in denying God, asserts that we are truly alone in our individual consciousness with no ultimate reality or idea of the good to guide us or tell us what to do or how to live. We have no given essence or nature to fulfill; human existence comes with no instruction manual. Moreover, says Sartre, his view does not mean to celebrate the non-existence of God: “The existentialist, on the contrary, thinks it very distressing that God does not exist, because all possibility of finding values in a heaven of ideas disappears along with Him; there can no longer be an a priori Good, since there is no infinite and perfect consciousness to think it.”
The term “a priori” means “prior to,” or “independent of experience,” thus an “a priori Good” refers to Plato’s eternal Ideas which are known strictly by the mind or soul, directly, rather than by physical experience, and we can know them, according to Plato, because we, through our eternal souls, are ourselves part of the eternal, unchanging realm of Being. But if there is no God, says Sartre, there is no eternal realm, no unchanging Being, thus we are left utterly alone to create our own world and our own value through our own actions and experience. “Dostoevsky said, ‘If God didn’t exist, everything would be possible.’” For Sartre, unlike for Dostoevsky, this is the sad truth, but it also signals the opportunity for the ultimate meaningfulness of our lives, for this is precisely the inescapable condition of genuine freedom.
Indeed, everything is permissible if God does not exist, and as a result man is forlorn, because neither within him nor without does he find anything to cling to. He can’t start making excuses for himself. If existence really does precede essence, there is no explaining things away by reference to a fixed and given human nature. In other words, there is no determinism, man is free, man is freedom…. So… we have no excuse behind us or justification before us. We are alone, with no excuses.
We have “no excuse behind us” because we cannot (in good faith) blame the past for what we do today, and we have no “justification before us” because what we become in the future is a function not of nature or God but of our choices. Admittedly, our freedom is hardly unlimited and does not remotely extend to undoing the past; we are saddled, in a real and concrete sense, with our “facticity”―the unavoidable factual reality of the situation into which we are born and which, strictly speaking, we do not choose; but what happened yesterday in no way determines what we do today or renders us any the less responsible for it, for the choices we make today are strictly our own and are what will determine our future. It is thus, as we have noted above, that we are “condemned to be free. Condemned, because he did not create himself, yet, in other respects is free; because, once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does.”
Indeed, in a certain sense, says Sartre, we can even be held responsible for our own births, since, though we did not cause them, nonetheless we affirm them through our acceptance of them every day that we go on living; in other words, we take up, assume and thus at least implicitly validate our own facticity. One does, after all, have the option to repudiate one’s birth by suicide, and if one were to complain that this seems unfair, since that would deny me the one life I possess, Sartre would presumably reply, on what basis have you earned or deserved any life at all? Life, on any terms, is nature’s free gift, thus it is our own choice to accept it and, furthermore, having done so, we must bear the responsibility to make of it what we will.
Sartre offers an example of a young man struggling to decide whether to stay to help his ailing mother or go off to fight for freedom. As Sartre explains, there are good, moral reasons in support of both choices, but, in any event, a choice must be made (we have no choice but to choose) for the young man cannot do both. The young man comes to Sartre for advice, hoping perhaps for an easy solution to the burden of the decision confronting him, but Sartre argues that no ethical formula can give him a definitive answer. Sartre criticizes the very notion of a universal ethical formula, like that of Immanuel Kant for example, claiming that such a formula would purport to shift the burden of decision from our shoulders, leaving our choice to the determination of our ethical system; but this, Sartre asserts, is to deny the ultimate reality of our freedom and the ultimate burden of our power of choice. Nor, says Sartre, can one expect a divine omen to give us our answer; we may indeed experience such an “omen,” concedes Sartre, but it is up to us to interpret it, and the burden of that interpretation is our own and constitutes our own choice, and to claim otherwise is to flee in the face of our own freedom. “No general ethics can show you what is to be done; there are no omens in the world. The Catholics will reply, ‘But there are.’ Granted―but in any case, I myself choose the meaning they have.”
Freedom Entails Despair
I can depend on no one but myself and my actions, says Sartre; thus I despair. Despair “means that we shall confine ourselves to reckoning only with what depends upon our will, or on the ensemble of probabilities which make our action possible.” Just as I cannot blame the past for my present predicament, I cannot look to some rational system or divinely ordained formula to tell me what I must do. “I am left in the realm of possibility”: the future is where my freedom lies, and it is unwritten, until, that is, I write it. I cannot count on the world to adapt to me, I cannot control the actions of others, I cannot know what is to come. Though Sartre does not use the word, I must live, in some sense, by faith; but it is a faith not in a divine plan, but in myself and my freedom. In my public actions, in particular, “given that man is free and that there is no human nature for me to depend on, I cannot count on men whom I do not know by relying on human goodness or by man’s concern for the good of society.” Sartre was deeply involved in the French resistance to the Nazi occupation of France during WWII and later in the activities of the communist party, and was, as his philosophy of freedom indicates, personally dedicated to freedom’s demand for action; but no one can be assured of the efficacy of that action, no one can be assured that one’s efforts, however devoted or “right,” will achieve their goals. Still one must act, for we are “condemned to be free.” It is thus that I suggest Sartre essentially counsels an attitude of “faith.”
Thus , in response to his progressive critics, Sartre rejects the attitude of “quietism,” asserting that his atheistic existentialism “is the very opposite of quietism, since it declares, ‘There is no reality except in action.’” And this attitude, suggests Sartre, may well explain “why our doctrine horrifies certain people. Because often the only way they can bear their wretchedness is to think, ‘Circumstances have been against me.’” As we have already noted, Sartre’s version of freedom brooks “no excuses,” but how often, it seems, are we all inclined to make them! Don’t we all constantly complain about the parking ticket, or our teachers or bosses or the government, always with the idea that things would be different if only we could catch a break? The fact is, I chose to park illegally, I registered for this course and sorely covet my eventual degree, I accepted this job and cherish the paycheck, and I don’t involve myself in public affairs, or even inform myself of government activities, indeed I may not even vote―and yet I complain about it! In other words, when things go badly for us, we often tend to look at everything but ourselves as the reason for our misfortune while seldom failing to take personal credit for our successes; surely this implies a deeply dubious analysis of our own affairs. Indeed, here again is “bad faith,” which is essentially a denial of freedom and personal responsibility, a denial of truth, and a denial of my own self as a free being.
Thus we are wont to explain our cowardice by resort to the excuse that I was born with a “cowardly constitution” while I don’t hesitate to seek credit for my heroic action. Sartre insists, however, “he has made himself a coward by his acts. There is no cowardly constitution.” In this we see perhaps an echo of Augustine’s account of bodily habits according to which I am responsible for my habits, though I feel and assert that “I can’t help it” or “I have no choice” or “it’s beyond my control”; thus, in Sartre’s words, “What the existentialist says is that the coward makes himself cowardly, that the hero makes himself heroic.”
“To be sure,” says Sartre, “this may seem a harsh thought to someone whose life has not been a success.” But it is his view of freedom, insists Sartre, in response now to his conservative religious critics, that truly exalts the value and possibilities of human beings. Thus, “what we [existentialists] are accused of, at bottom, is not our pessimism, but an optimistic toughness.” In other words, it is only with “no excuse behind or justification before us” that we can assume the true dignity of what distinguishes human beings from all other creatures; and it is only by so assuming our responsibility as free beings that we might deserve to assert some “right” as a human being.
From Subjectivity to Community
Reviewing his response to “the charges concerning existentialism,” Sartre suggests that he has “answered a number” of them.
You see that [existentialism] cannot be taken for a philosophy of quietism, since it defines man in terms of action; nor for a pessimistic description of man―there is no doctrine more optimistic, since man’s destiny is within himself; nor for an attempt to discourage man from acting, since it tells him that the only hope is in his acting and that action is the only thing that enables a man to live. Consequently we are dealing here with an ethics of action and involvement.
Sartre says further, however, “we are still charged with immuring man in his private subjectivity,” that is, existentialism is claimed so heavily to emphasize individual freedom and action that it may seem to wall the individual off from others and thus ultimately to make a community ethics impossible. But this Sartre flatly denies. Following Descartes, Sartre does insist that the Cartesian cogito, the “I think,” must be the basis for any consideration of human existence: “Subjectivity of the individual is our point of departure, and this for strictly philosophic reasons…. There can be no other truth to take off from than this: I think; therefore, I exist.” As for Descartes, Sartre asserts that this is the only firm ground from which a beginning in existence can sincerely and truthfully be made, and this beginning is indeed a purely subjective one: “There we have the absolute truth of consciousness becoming aware of itself.” But by no means is individual consciousness trapped in itself and isolated from others, insists Sartre, for it is only in the presence of and through others that our consciousness of ourselves is possible: “the subjectivity that we have thus arrived at, and which we have claimed to be truth, is not a strictly individual subjectivity, for we have demonstrated that one discovers in the cogito not only himself, but others as well.” This we “discovered” when we observed that my own choice is not merely my own but stands for the choices of all human beings as such. We may not be consciously aware of this, and we may indeed, as we noted above, actively deny this with such statements as “everyone doesn’t do it”; but we wouldn’t be so intent to make excuses for ourselves if we didn’t know, on some level of consciousness, that this is true and that I cannot escape my freedom if I am to be honest with myself and truthful about myself.
It is thus that Sartre can say, “The philosophies of Descartes and Kant to the contrary, through the I think we reach our own self in the presence of others, and the others are just as real to us as our own self. Thus, the man who becomes aware of himself through the cogito also perceives all others, and he perceives them as the condition of his own existence.” As Sartre sees it, Descartes would leave us stuck in the “I think” as an isolated “thinking thing,” independent even of our own bodies, and Kant would leave our ethical decisions to the isolation of individual reason (but see my chapter on Kant’s ethics); but for Sartre, “in discovering my inner being I discover the other person at the same time.” It is commonplace that one who is narcissistically stuck in one’s own head is incapable of being honest with oneself, incapable therefore of truly knowing oneself, and thus, we might add, incapable of genuinely loving oneself, let alone others; therefore, “In order to get any truth about myself, I must have contact with another person. The other is indispensable to my own existence, as well as to knowledge about myself.”
In considering the myth of Narcissus in the chapter on Augustine we noted how Narcissus falls in love with his own image without being consciously aware that it is he with whom he is in love: that is narcissism―to think that one is engaging in love, when one has not even left the comfort of one’s own inner being. We noted that narcissism thus closes us off from love because it closes us off from the other as such; and there is no love of self here, either, because the self whom we love is not our true self but an image we mistake for that of another. Truth being a fundamental condition of love, as for freedom―for the two are inextricably linked―we cannot exercise the power of freedom, or of love, from a position of personal delusion. One cannot truly love an illusion, and illusion renders free action impossible; therefore, there can be no freedom for one trapped narcissistically in one’s own subjectivity, and freedom intrinsically implicates, in the universality of “exemplary” acts, respect for the freedom of others and thus can only exist in the company of other subjectivities.
This acknowledgement of the truth of “intersubjectivity”—the reality that my own subjectivity is lost and blind absent the subjectivity of others—leads to the recognition of what Sartre refers to as a “universal human condition.” It is not a human nature or essence he refers to here, for these terms refer to something fixed and given whereas this human condition “is not given, it is perpetually being made.” This human condition is no more than the awareness that all human beings share the same condition of existence—that is, that we are all trapped in our own, individual subjectivity unless and until we learn to respect the subjectivity of others through the awareness of the ultimate responsibility I bear for my own choice. “I build the universal in choosing myself; I build it in understanding the configuration of every other man….”
From Subjectivity to a Sartrian Ethics: The Making of a Work of Art
In the last pages of his essay, Sartre establishes the outline, at least, of an ethical theory. We have just seen that the subjectivity that is at the root of freedom, starting with the Cartesian “cogito,” is in fact connected to and dependent upon the subjectivities of others and thus offers the basis for community; however, it remains to see how Sartrian subjectivity can be compatible with objective ethical norms. Thus, says Sartre, existentialism faces three additional, if closely related, ethical objections. First, rather than there being any basis for ethical guidance for our actions, it would seem “you’re able to do anything, no matter what,” and thus existentialism would seem to doom us to anarchy, making ethics impossible; next it is objected that existentialism denies us a basis for ethical judgment; finally, all choice would seem to be utterly arbitrary and without value.
Sartre, however, specifically denies that the free action of existentialism is thus reduced to “caprice,” which is essentially what the three objections amount to: to act from “caprice” is to act purely according to personal, subjective whim without necessity of thought, without the possibility of judgment and without consideration of value. Here Sartre invokes an invaluable comparison of existential “moral choice… to the making of a work of art.” Has anyone, asks Sartre rhetorically, “ever accused an artist who has painted a picture of not having drawn his inspiration from rules drawn up a priori?” This question makes the point that it would be absurd to suggest that a painter must use some fixed, rational formula based on a priori rules to decide on the subject of her next painting. The very nature of the artistic enterprise, obviously, is that it is free, that is, the painter can paint anything―whether portrait, landscape, still-life or history painting, figurative, abstract or whatever―and it would be simply nonsensical to say she painted “the wrong thing,” for there is no such thing as a “wrong” or “right painting.” That does not mean, however, that the painter’s decision as to what to paint has no reason behind it: “We never say that a work of art is arbitrary.” Clearly, at least in principle, some paintings are better than others, however fluid such judgments might be and however widely opinion may vary. Specifically, in viewing a painting we naturally consider the “coherence” of the painting, within itself, as well as the “correspondence” of the painting to the presumed intent of the artist.
As for the notion of coherence, we consider a painting’s composition, for example, within the four corners of its surface and whether the composition is harmonious, balanced and aesthetically pleasing. Clearly there are no fixed rules that firmly distinguish “good” composition from “bad,” yet, to some extent at least, we know good composition when we see it, and there are natural forms on which our own artistic compositions are based; moreover, there is, over time, considerable general agreement as to the value of the compositions of certain paintings which leads to their being considered “great” or otherwise. Tastes vary among people and cultures and over time, of course, but such variation is neither absolute nor arbitrary; at the least there are patterns of consensus, and the generally acknowledged value of some paintings endures and in some cases only increases over time, which is why some paintings spend years and even centuries on museum walls and some never even arrive there.
As for the term correspondence, Sartre himself mentions the intent of the artist and whether the finished painting successfully fulfills that intent. That is a perfectly reasonable standard for a painting’s success, perhaps, though it may appear overly subjective with respect to the artist herself; but I suggest that we might fruitfully understand this term much more broadly and variously. A simple example is to consider, in the case at least of a representational painting (one that seeks to depict or represent a specific physical object, whether portrait, landscape, still life or historical scene), the correspondence between the painting and the thing represented; thus, for example, we would naturally consider whether a portrait offers a good “likeness” of its subject. Admittedly this is a very limited and narrow criterion for the judgment of a portrait’s value, and we would hardly propose to limit a portrait’s quality to the simple “copying” of a natural image; still, we can agree, at least to a point, that a portrait that looks nothing like its subject is not likely to satisfy us aesthetically nor to be considered a “good” portrait.
More interestingly, we can consider whether the painting corresponds to its cultural or historical setting. It is often overlooked, by those unfamiliar with the history of art, how much artists and their works, in a given time and place, owe to the other artists and works that exist before and around them, and that is as true today as ever. To begin with, clearly artists traditionally learn a tremendous amount from prior artists for there is a limitless wealth of artistic wisdom to draw on. But in addition to the obvious instruction and influence that affect the making of a particular work of art, there is a deeper sense in which an artist, as an artist, is a participant in the ever-unfolding process known as the history of art. The poet T. S. Eliot once said, “The immature poet mimics, the mature poet steals.” What he meant is that all poets, like all other artists, depend, for their own, unique artistry, on the art of others, and moreover that a “mature” artist, who is secure in her style and the mastery of her craft, can “steal” the ideas of others because her own art is strong enough to appropriate the old art without losing her own, whereas immature artists, lacking a confident style of their own, can only “mimic” the old. Moreover, art is valuable only to the extent that it finds its place in, and is intelligible to, the community of people and art works of which it becomes a part. An artist makes reference to, or plays off of or borrows the art of others as a way of making her own art understandable, thus the greatness of certain art is surely a function, at least in part, of how effectively it corresponds with, or “speaks to,” the world and culture in which it lives. “Great art” is of course original and offers something new; but the greater art is also firmly rooted in the tradition of which it forms a part, and the greatest art is precisely that which contributes most decisively to the perpetuation of that tradition, however radically it alters or even undermines it.
Life as a Work of Art
So human existence, if lived consciously and honestly and thus in accordance with freedom, is itself, in essence, a work of art. “What art and ethics have in common is that we have creation and invention in both cases.” Just as a painter has a virtually unlimited choice of possible paintings she can paint, so there are a virtually unlimited number of ways I might live my life; moreover, just as no one painting is intrinsically “right” or “wrong,” precisely the same can be said of the choices available to us in life. We create our lives, through the choices we make, as a painter creates a painting. Having pointed out these clear parallels between the free choices of life and the free expression of art, however, it is equally true that both life and art are subject to analogous kinds of limitations. Thus, just as a painting is limited by the availability of various paints and surfaces and just as paint and color behave in certain given, natural ways, so my life is subject to the given realities of facticity; the painter has certain media at her disposal, and the physical laws that govern its use, just as I have the materials of my body and mind and talents and the rules, physical and social, that govern their application.
Moreover, for all the freedom an artist enjoys in her expression, nonetheless there is little that is arbitrary, at least in the case of the serious art that withstands the tests of time and taste; and the same can be said for the person who lives her life with consciousness and seriousness and thus in freedom. We can choose to do “anything;” but the successful, fulfilled and admired person does not do just anything. The successful person must be honest enough with herself to be aware of and measure her own talents, and though there is an indispensable individualistic dimension to this, it is also impossible to do it fully without reference to and in consultation with others; and the same goes for the artist in the creation of her art. Thus there is a basis for the judgment of good and bad, that is, for the ethics, of one’s life, just as there is a basis for the judgment of art; indeed, we have already made a strong start on this in our previous discussion of coherence and correspondence. Ultimately, however, the basis for judgment must come down to honesty and truth.
We have already indicated, on a number of occasions, how freedom and truth are logically interconnected. At the end of his essay, Sartre effectively asserts that freedom depends on truth. Recall, at the outset, an example we have mentioned previously concerning the truth of things like 2+3=5: all human beings are endowed with the power of reason along with the power of freedom, which together enable us to perceive truths like this. I exercise these powers of reason and freedom when I use reason to know that 2+3=5 and then exercise my freedom to choose to believe that 2+3=5. I might say that I am also “free” to believe that 2+3=6 if by “freedom” I am thinking of the “negative” freedom of Hobbes, since nothing is restraining me from believing that 2+3=6; but in choosing falsity I cannot sincerely claim to be exercising my powers of freedom and reason since I am proving myself to be in bondage to falsity and ignorance! In short, the power that my freedom represents is established not by resisting the truth and doing or believing anything I happen to want, but by perceiving and following the truth. Thus, from a strictly logical point of view thought has no power, and thus cannot be free, unless it is true, and nothing is so pitiable as a person who knows and is capable of truth and goodness but who nonetheless chooses falsity and evil. We might add that, from an ethical point of view, ignorance takes away our power, since I cannot have full power over my actions—I cannot deserve credit for them—if I do not know the truth of their circumstances; if I act without knowing what’s happening then I’m acting blindly and so can not be responsible and free. Otherwise stated, a choice that is based on error is a choice that I would not have made if I had known the truth and thus not a fully empowered choice and so not fully free.
No One Can Be Free Unless Everyone is Free: Freedom, Truth and Love
So it is true that I can, in principle, paint anything I like, since nothing is stopping me, just as I can believe that 2+3=6, since “everything is permitted”; however, this does not mean that life is a matter of pure “caprice” since no one can reasonably dispute that we all take what we do very seriously indeed and thus presumably do not countenance, in ourselves or others, doing or believing “just anything” Moreover, we are by no means left without a basis for judgment, since, just as a painting’s value is a function of its inner-coherence as well as its correspondence with its world and other art works, so we innately value and seek the inner coherence of personal integrity and we seek to correspond successfully to the exigencies of the natural world and to the lives, freedom and dignity of ourselves and other human beings. Thus, it should already be clear that it is not at all the case that art and life, simply because they are essentially media of total freedom, are pointless or meaningless and in short lacking in concrete value. On the contrary, freedom means precisely that life will have whatever value we choose to give it. “Before you come alive, life is nothing; it’s up to you to give it a meaning, and value is nothing else but the meaning you choose. In that way, you see, there is the possibility of creating a human community.” And, notwithstanding those misinterpretations of Sartre’s existentialism that lead to “the charges against it” according to which there’s no hope and no point to life, this human community is for Sartre really the whole point. This is because the supreme value of human being is freedom, but freedom is not a matter of isolated, individual subjectivity but of a shared and communal intersubjectivity. Once we acknowledge that it is our solemn responsibility to create values, which freedom imposes upon us, we
can no longer want but one thing, and that is freedom, as the basis of all values. That… means simply that the ultimate meaning of all of the acts of honest men is the quest for freedom as such…. And in wanting freedom we discover that it depends entirely on the freedom of others, and the freedom of others depends on ours…. Consequently, when, in all honesty, I’ve recognized that man is a being in whom existence precedes essence, that he is a free being who… can want only his freedom, I have at the same time recognized that I can want only the freedom of others.
As a purely rational matter, in recognizing myself as a free being (which is simply true), and in recognizing other human beings as beings like myself (also simply true), I cannot rationally deny that we all have the same claim to freedom, so I must, logically, desire and strive for the freedom of all; moreover, I cannot be free myself if those around me are not free, since freedom, as we have seen, must be based on truth, and a society that rests on the enslavement of anyone is a society that is thus dependent upon the lie that would permit some of its citizens to be denied the freedom they deserve. So for Sartre, the community enabled by our “intersubjectivity” is precisely the organization of free and independent human beings according to the bonds of our shared acknowledgement of the truth of our common freedom, which entails (per the terms of Erich Fromm) a society of mutual care, knowledge, responsibility and respect; and it is only in community with others, as well as in communion with ourselves, that the positive power of freedom is even possible.
Conclusion
Like Augustine before him, Sartre is a philosopher of freedom, and though he is a self-styled atheist, his view of freedom is remarkably similar to that of Augustine in terms of its uncompromising insistence on personal responsibility. Sartre’s atheism is a central tenet of his existential view of freedom since it is precisely the acceptance that there is no God-given human nature that forces us to accept the notion that we are responsible for the creation of our lives, and thus truly and fully free, just as the artist is responsible for the painting she paints. However, Sartre also says, “Existentialism isn’t so atheistic that it wears itself out showing that God doesn’t exist. Rather, it declares that even if God did exist, that would change nothing;” so for Sartre, the existence or non-existence of God is effectively irrelevant, “the problem of His existence is not the issue.”
In fact, I suggest that one can, as a practical matter, say the same for Augustine and for any religious believer whose God is genuinely transcendent and for whom personal freedom, and the possibility of sin, are central tenets of the faith. In principle, of course, the religious believer asserts faith in an ultimate source of power and goodness, which Sartre denies; but if the believer’s religion is genuinely devoted to human freedom in the radical sense espoused by Augustine, then freedom means that we are effectively cut off from that transcendent God and left to our own devices. As I have suggested, we are like Adam and Eve, who upon acquiring the freedom of judgment and decision by gaining the knowledge of good and evil, are banished from the Garden and prevented from turning back by angels with flaming swords; so even if you believe in God, those flaming swords are a reminder that there’s no going back and you are now, just as Sartre would have it, “condemned to be free.” The knowledge of good and evil is the very meaning of freedom since now that we have it we cannot deny that we are capable of good and responsible for bad. From the religious standpoint, as we have seen in our discussion of Kierkegaard in the chapter on Augustine, God permitted us this knowledge and then cast us from the garden out of love, to let us be free, just as a parent removes the training wheels from the child’s bicycle. And for Sartre, analogously, our freedom, though originating in our individual subjectivity, is in fact connected, intersubjectively, with the freedom of all others, meaning that freedom is only possible in a community of fellow free beings.
So, the ultimate truth, for both the religious and atheistic points of view, is that our freedom renders us responsible for the good of ourselves and of our communities, and, for both the religious and the atheist, our freedom leaves us “without excuses.”
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