Read the whole Chapter and notes to pass this Quiz. 

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10 questions True or False 

person must be serious and responsible for these answers to get me an “A”

I V . F r e e d o m

N o n – e x i s t e n t i a l i s t T h e o r i e s

To judge by the use to which the word “freedom” is most
often put in ordinary discourse, a man is free in the measure
that he can achieve chosen goals with a minimum of effort.
Conversely, in the measure that he discovers obstacles in his
way he is not free. If one has chosen to become a doctor, then
one is free to do so on condition that one has been accepted
by a medical school, has the money to pay the tuition,
possesses the native endowment required to pass the courses,
and so on. If, however, one does not have the mental
equipment to pass the courses, cannot pay the tuition, or
cannot find a medical school that will accept one, then one is
not free to become a doctor.

In political discussion this sense of the term “freedom” is also
the one which most often comes to the fore. If a man has
freedom of speech or freedom of assembly, this means that if
he chooses to speak or to assemble with others for political
purposes he will encounter no legal obstacles. He will not be
clubbed by the police or thrown in jail. When the socialist
criticizes capitalistic societies by declaring that in these
societies the rich man is as free as the poor man since both
could starve to death in a public park if they so chose, he is at
one and the same time implying that the laws of capitalistic
societies place no obstacles in the way of the person who
chooses to starve to death and that in a truly free society no

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one would ever encounter serious obstacles in the effort to
acquire a decent subsistence.

Despite the fact that the most common meaning of freedom
both in ordinary discourse and in political discussion is ability
to achieve chosen goals, traditional philosophers rarely used
the term that way. The most common meanings of the term in
traditional philosophizing are known technically as “freedom
of self-realization” and “freedom of indeterminism” or
“freedom of the will.” The common source of both of these
concepts of freedom is Christian doctrine. And although they
are apparently antithetical it is not uncommon to find them
linked together in a single philosophical system. It would not
be wholly correct to say that ancient philosophers knew no
problem of freedom, but the problem of freedom which most
Western philosophers claim to have discovered among the
ancients is undoubtedly their own.

One arrived at the notion of freedom of self-realization in
roughly the following way. Since God is both omniscient and
omnipotent, God both foreknew and foreordained that
whatever happens would happen. What a man does may thus
have as its immediate cause the man’s own individual choice,
but its ultimate and only true cause is the will of God. It is as
if a man’s individual history were originally an idea in God’s
mind, to which God gave physical reality by an act of
creation. Man, of course, cannot and ought not attempt to
tinker with God’s handiwork. Freedom, therefore, cannot in
fact and ought not by right consist in an active effort to
achieve individually chosen goals. This is impossible and
impious. True freedom can only exist for the man who
humbly acknowledges the individual history or nature which

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God gave him and who observes with wholehearted approval
the temporal realization of God’s eternal idea of him.

The theory of freedom of self-realization has many different
versions, some of them secular. The existentialists would
probably argue that the secular versions, most of which were
developed in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, are
merely hangovers from an earlier day, a result of the fact that
after God’s death men tried to go on living as if nothing had
happened. Be that as it may, only one specific version of the
theory need be considered here. It is that of Leibniz.

First, however, it should be noted that when with the birth of
the Christian God Platonic Ideas and Aristotelian essences
were absorbed in the divine intellect, the concept of essence
was gradually enlarged. For the ancient world essences were
always and only of universals; individuals could not be
known in the strict sense of the term precisely because there
were no individual essences. Christian philosophers, however,
were bit by bit led to the concept of individual essences. The
Christian God is after all a personal god who supposedly sees
into each individual’s mind and heart.

Let us then assume that at the moment of creation God has
present to mind a complete catalogue of all possible
individual essences, and let us further assume that of the
many possible individual essences only certain combinations
can logically coexist. Which of these combinations will God
allow to pass into concrete existence? Obviously the best of
all possible combinations! This, in brief, is Leibniz’s doctrine
that the physically existing world is the “best of all possible
worlds.” But of interest in connection with the problem of
freedom is the fact that the individual essences which God
chose for physical incarnation must have that history and only

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that history which God foresaw for them. If after creation
individuals decided to alter the course of their divinely
appointed history, they would completely upset God’s
calculations. God has to know down to the last detail what
each of these individuals will do in order to be sure that they
are logically “compossible” and also to be sure that he has
chosen the best possible combination of compossibles. God
knew in advance, to use two of Leibniz’s own examples, that
Adam would eat the apple and that Caesar would cross the
Rubicon. He even knew the exact moment at which these
events would occur.

It follows that the serf who complains he is unfree because he
cannot realize his personally chosen goal of enjoying
privileges reserved by his master is simply attempting to
upset God’s plan. It is for him to accept his status by
recognizing that there is no other logically possible role for
him than that of a serf and that he is a part of the best of all
possible worlds. His individual history, harsh though it may
be, is merely a temporal unfolding or historical realization of
his very own individual essence. To wish that his life had a
different pattern would be like wishing for the logically
impossible. It would be as if Adam wanted to be Eve without
ceasing to be Adam.

Some philosophers have argued that if God had to choose for
creation from a limited set of uncreated individual essences
and that if furthermore God was limited to choosing one or
another set of compossibles from within the larger set, he
would not be omnipotent. The answer was in part that a
limitation upon any being’s power is by definition an external
obstacle and that since uncreated essences are ideas in God’s
own mind he cannot be limited by them. The other part of the

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answer is that so-called logical limitations are not genuine
limitations. Who, for instance, would lament the impossibility
of believing that the product of one plus one is three or feel
that his power had thereby been diminished? God’s power is
no more limited by the fact that he must observe the
principles of logic than by the fact that he cannot through an
arbitrary act of will make virtues out of wanton murder and
incest. If God’s will were not subordinate to his intellect, he
would not be God. He would be a monster.

One arrived at the notion of freedom of indeterminism or
freedom of the will by arguing from the premise that if God
foreordained that we would sin then we are not responsible
for our sin and that if we are not responsible for our sin, then
it is unjust of God to punish us eternally in hell. God,
however, does punish many of us with eternal torment in hell,
and God is not unjust. Our sin cannot, therefore, have been
foreordained. Our sin must be the result of individual volition.
It is we as individuals who by our own undetermined choices
sin.

The problem for Christian defenders of the freedom of
indeterminism was to explain how free will is compatible
with God’s omniscience or foreknowledge. The answer is
owed to St. Augustine, who declared that God does not
literally foreknow. God is outside time; for him there is only
one ever-present moment. He sees all things—past, present,
and future—non-discursively and sub specie aeternitatis in a
single glance. To foreknow he need not therefore foreordain.
That St. Augustine should have argued in this way is
somewhat surprising, since he is the most famous of all
defenders of the dogma of predestination, which seems to
imply complete foreordination. But as remarked at the outset,

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it is not unusual for a philosopher to hold both to a doctrine of
freedom through self-realization and a doctrine of free will.
Christian philosophers like St. Augustine who wish
simultaneously to uphold the omnipotence of God through the
doctrine of predestination and to uphold the justice of God by
regarding man as the true cause of his sin are almost
compelled to adopt some version of both theories of freedom.

Despite the enormous importance which they attribute to
human freedom, Sartre alone among the existentialists has
elaborated a systematic and detailed theory of freedom.
Fortunately, the brilliance and originality of his theory
compensates for the relative neglect of the problem by others.
There is some question as to whether other existentialists
would accept Sartre’s views on freedom. This much,
however, can be said with certainty. There is little in Sartre’s
theory which contradicts anything said on the subject by other
existentialists, and there is nothing in it incompatible with the
major premises of existentialist thinking. Moreover, as with
all existentialists, Sartre’s position is closer to that upheld by
defenders of freedom of indeterminism than to either the
common-sense position or the position of those who uphold
freedom of self-realization, and it is doubtful whether any
contemporary philosopher who took the pains to develop a
detailed theory of freedom based on the idea of undetermined
choice could come up with anything better.

The term “freedom” is as ambiguous as the term “happiness”
and the term “rationality.” It does not, however, have a single
generic meaning from which the others have been derived,
even though the several specific meanings of the term are
loosely associated. Nor have the existentialists decided to
abandon the word because of its popular and historical

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connotations. All of them use it, and all of them use it to refer
to something which they consider to be a genuinely existing
and valuable feature of the human condition. In this respect
the existentialists are like the rest of us, who consciously or
unconsciously select from the several meanings of the term
the one which we believe to stand for a reality of great human
importance. If we believe that one of the established
meanings of the term either does not stand for a reality or
does not stand for a reality of great value, we reject that
meaning as improper. The best introduction to the
existentialist theory will, therefore, be a consideration of the
reasons which induced the existentialists to reject
non-existentialist concepts of freedom.

The existentialists do not deny that man has the power to
achieve chosen goals by his own efforts. Underprivileged
workers do sometimes achieve better working conditions,
prisoners do sometimes escape from prison, would-be doctors
do sometimes become doctors, and so on. What Sartre calls
“the coefficient of adversity,” i.e., the resistance presented by
the external environment, is not always insuperable. What
leads the existentialists to reject or ignore the common-sense
conception of freedom is their belief that the power to achieve
particular goals is not itself a great value. And that belief rests
upon three others.

First, man is a being who exists only by projecting himself
beyond the present into the future. To exist is to posit goals
and to pursue them. There is no escape from our condition as
flight or pursuit toward projected values. This means that if
one empirical desire is fulfilled, we will and must replace that
desire with another. A state of complete desire fulfillment
would be equivalent to death. A part of the tragedy of the

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human condition is that man is a desiring being and that
desire is a state of lack or incompletion. “That the human
reality is lack,” says Sartre, “the existence of desire as a
human fact could suffice as proof.”1;2 This argument derives,
of course, from traditional Platonic and Aristotelian
metaphysics. The gods, it will be recalled, cannot desire,
because desire is lack, and the gods lack nothing. A state of
lack is incompatible with a state of perfection. According to
the existentialists the common man has defined freedom on
the basis of a mistaken notion that there is a state of
happiness, satisfied desire, or absence of frustration which
can be achieved by fulfilling empirical desires. But in so far
as human consciousness is always characterized by lack, there
can be no suspension of the unhappy consciousness. Man
must desire in order to exist, and in the act of desiring he
constitutes himself as incomplete and unfulfilled.

Moreover, this incompleteness or unfulfillment is necessary if
man is to be free even in the sense of being able to overcome
obstacles. This point was made effectively by Nietzsche, who
asked: “How is freedom measured?—By the resistance which
has to be overcome, by the effort it takes to maintain oneself
on top.” Sartre expresses the same point in his own language.
Freedom, he says, “itself creates the obstacles from which we
suffer.” An insignificant public official in Mont-de-Marsan
without means may not have the opportunity to go to New
York if that be his ambition. But the obstacles which stand in
his way would not exist as obstacles were it not for his free
choice of values: in this case, his desire to go to New York. It
is freedom itself

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which in posing its ends—in choosing them as
inaccessible or difficult of access—causes our
location to appear as a . . . restriction upon our
projects. . . . It is therefore of no avail to say that I
am not free to go to New York because of the fact
that I am an unimportant functionary in
Mont-de-Marsan. It is on the contrary with respect
to my project to go to New York that I situate
myself at Mont-de-Marsan.2

Sartre makes the same point in still another way:

In order for the act to be able to allow a realization,
the simple projection of a possible end must be
distinguished a priori from the realization of this
end. If conceiving is enough for realizing, then I am
plunged in a world like that of a dream in which the
possible is no longer in any way distinguished from
the real. . . . If the object appears as soon as it is
simply conceived, it will no longer be chosen or
even wished for. Once the distinction between the
simple wish, the representation which I choose, and
the choice is abolished, freedom disappears too.3

Second, even if man could succeed in fulfilling all his
particular, empirical desires, he would still not achieve
happiness; for the desire of particular, empirical objects in the
world is always suspended from and merely a specification of
an overarching desire for the impossible. This point was

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developed in the chapter on the human condition. Man’s
fundamental project to be God, to be an in-itself-for-itself
without any duality between the two aspects of his being, can
no more be satisfied through empirical desire than a man’s
Oedipus complex can be resolved by dreaming that a soldier
kills a czar. The argument here is not simply that the
satisfaction of one empirical desire requires us to take up a
new goal or that we are necessarily committed to a “round of
desire.” The argument here is that a satisfied desire in the
sense of an achieved desire does not bring satisfaction in the
sense of pleasure or happiness.

Third, even if man could escape from the round of desire and
could find pleasure or happiness in a state of total desire
fulfillment, this could only be at the cost of intensity and the
existentialist values. And, of course, the intense life with the
existentialist values would be superior to a state of
contentment or happiness.

The existentialist argument against freedom through
self-realization rests primarily upon the belief that man has no
ready-made or prehuman nature, no divine essence which is
to be automatically realized. Sartre has even defined
existentialism as the view that “existence precedes essence.”
In Leibniz’s view, says Sartre, “Adam’s essence is for Adam
himself a given; Adam has not chosen it; he could not choose
to be Adam. Consequently he does not support the
responsibility for his being. . . . For us, on the contrary, Adam
is not defined by an essence since for human reality essences
come after existence.”4 In other words, man makes his own
history by his own choices, and his true life history or
individual essence could not conceivably be known or defined
until after his death.

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Here, too, however, questions of value as well as questions of
fact are involved. Believers in freedom of self-realization
belong to the Platonic tradition. Their chief interest is in an
eternal object—in the case of Leibniz, God. One of the things
they hope to achieve by their theory of freedom is to preserve
the dignity of the eternal object: in Leibniz’s case, it was a
matter of exalting God by demonstrating his omnipotence.
The existentialists, on the contrary, are perfectly willing to let
God and other eternal objects take care of themselves. They
are interested in the dignity of the individual person; and
according to them a being who does not personally support
the responsibility for his individual history, who does not
choose himself, is without dignity.

The existentialist elaboration of the theory of freedom of
indeterminism is and has to be very different from classical
versions. But it will be helpful at this point before discussing
the differences to indicate how the existentialists meet the
chief common-sense objection to any theory of freedom of
indeterminism. That objection was stated with great literary
skill by Voltaire in Candide. Voltaire maneuvers his hero
Candide into a position such that he must choose between
thirty-six series of lashings or a dozen bullets in his brain. At
this point Voltaire writes: “Although he protested that man’s
will is free and that he wanted neither one nor the other, he
had to make a choice; by virtue of that gift of God which is
called liberty he determined to run the gauntlet thirty-six
times.”

Voltaire wrote Candide as a satire on Leibniz’s doctrine that
this is the best of all possible worlds, and since Leibniz is
well known as an advocate of freedom of self-realization it
might be thought that this particular attack is misdirected. In

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fact, however, Leibniz shares with St. Augustine a general
theory of freedom in which freedom as self-realization and
freedom as undetermined choice both figure. It was,
therefore, entirely appropriate that Voltaire ridicule the latter
concept of freedom in a satire on Leibniz.

The whole point of the quoted passage is to emphasize that
what man most wants is, not the power to choose, but rather
the power to accomplish chosen goals, and that a theory of
freedom which fails to take this into account rests upon a
faulty sense of values. The privilege of choosing is as nothing
compared to relief from the necessity of choosing between
unpalatable options imposed by the environment. The secure
and tranquil life is one in which the individual faces no
extreme situations requiring that a difficult choice be made.

Although Voltaire himself does not go this far, it could even
be argued that in so far as one must choose between various
courses of action, it is better that the choice be compelled than
free. If every time one tried to figure the sum of two plus two
one had to choose an answer, it would be impossible to get
anywhere; we should be grateful that we are compelled by the
laws of logic to accept four and only four as the correct
answer to the problem. Similarly in more important matters of
human concern. There is a story of a Greek mother who was
obliged to choose which one of three sons held as hostages
was to be executed. It would, perhaps, be better for her if she
did not have to choose at all. But she must. What makes her
problem of choice so terrifying is that nothing apparently
compels or determines her to choose one son over the others.
Presumably she loves all three sons equally well. If one of
them were a black sheep whom she hated with all her heart,
the choice would be less terrifying. In fact, given hatred of

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one and love for the others, it is a nice question in what sense
she could be said to choose at all. She would probably “have
no choice.” It would be impossible for her to select any but
the son she hated.

Of course, Voltaire was an Enlightenment thinker, and like
the ordinary man, he believed that the route to happiness lies
in the elimination of external obstacles to the accomplishment
of human desires. If, however, one is an existentialist, if one
believes that life is ineradicably tragic, if one believes that the
external environment poses nothing but difficult options and
that whatever option one chooses one is still unhappy, if one
believes that the fundamental problems of life are like those
of Candide or the Greek mother, then almost the only value
which can be salvaged is dignified choice. And the more
difficult the choice, the greater is the opportunity to
demonstrate one’s dignity.

It will be remembered that for the existentialists man is free
by ontological necessity and that any attempt to escape from
freedom is necessarily self-defeating. In one sense, then,
freedom is a universal human phenomenon which does not
permit of degrees. At the same time, however, the
existentialists have an axiological doctrine of freedom.
According to this doctrine, one is more or less free depending
upon the extent to which one is aware of freedom as an
ontological necessity and ceases to project escape from
freedom. An individual exposed to a situation which obliges
him to become conscious of his freedom is thus more free
than the individual not so obliged.

A rather famous Sartrean text, often regarded as
incomprehensible or stupid, is merely a logical extension of

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these ideas. Writing of life in France during the war years,
Sartre says:

We were never more free than during the German
occupation. We had lost all our rights, beginning
with the right to talk. Every day we were insulted to
our faces and had to take it in silence. Under one
pretext or another, as workers, Jews, or political
prisoners, we were deported en masse. . . . And
because of all this we were free. Because the Nazi
venom seeped even into our thoughts, every accurate
thought was a conquest. . . . At every instant we
lived up to the full sense of this commonplace little
phrase: “Man is mortal.” And the choice that each of
us made of his life and his being was an authentic
choice because it was made face to face with death,
because it could always have been expressed in
these terms: “Rather death than. . . .” All those
among us who knew any details concerning the
Resistance asked themselves anxiously, “If they
torture me, shall I be able to keep silent?” Thus the
basic question of liberty itself was posed, and we
were brought to the verge of the deepest knowledge
that man can have of himself. For the secret of man
is not his Oedipus complex or his inferiority
complex: it is this limit of his own liberty, his
capacity for resisting torture and death.5

The existentialist is thus at the opposite pole from the
ordinary man. The ordinary man believes he is most free
when he is not obliged to choose or when circumstances

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clearly dictate which choice is best. The existentialist believes
that man is most free when he recognizes that he is obliged to
choose. The ordinary man says that freedom is valuable
because it leads to happiness, security, contentment. The
existentialist says that freedom is valuable because through it
man may realize his own dignity, and triumph over the
unhappiness to which he is irrevocably condemned. The
ordinary man tries to ignore the unpleasant facts of life, and if
he is exposed to an “impossible situation” where no choice
could conceivably be a choice of happiness, he is without
recourse. The existentialist refuses to ignore the unpleasant
facts of life, and he spends most of his time trying to find
some technique by which to triumph over them.

M o d e r n V e r s i o n s o f D e t e r m i n i s m

One difference between existentialists and classical exponents
of freedom of indeterminism parallels a difference between
existentialists and exponents of freedom of
self-determination. Both of these classical positions were
inspired by a desire to justify the ways of God to man and to
buoy up the authors’ faith in God. In order to accomplish their
goals Leibniz and those who adopted his solution tended to
reduce the individual to hardly more than a figment in God’s
imagination. The exponents of freedom of indeterminism, on
the other hand, accomplished the same goals by making man
responsible for his sins. Logic, of course, requires that a being
responsible for his sins be also responsible for his virtues. But
this logical consequence of the theory was rarely drawn.
Calvinists expatiate at great length about the individual’s
personal responsibility for his sinfulness while at the same
time stressing that the good a man does is done by the grace
of God. The intent of exalting God and humbling man is as

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apparent in classical statements of the freedom of
indeterminism as in classical statements of freedom of
self-realization. No such intent will be discovered among the
existentialists.

This difference between existentialists and their predecessors
in theory of freedom is, however, of little importance so long
as the problem at hand is that of determining whether
undetermined choice is a genuine feature of the human
reality. The differences relative to this problem are of a
different order. Since these differences derive from an attempt
to revamp the classical theory in order to meet modern
objections, they will be most easily grasped after a brief
restatement of the classical theory and of the objections to it.

The first thing to observe is that in the classical theory not all
of an individual’s choices are free. Ordinarily the individual’s
choices are determined by an objective situation together with
a subjective motive. To take a prosaic example, if a person
chooses one apple over another, it is usually because there are
ready at hand a certain number of apples one of which is
redder and juicier than the others (objective situation) and
because the person likes or enjoys red and juicy apples
(subjective motive). The question of free choice arises only
when the objective situation and a subjective motive
determine or dispose one to act in a manner which one
apprehends in some way to be wrong or injurious to one’s
own best long-range interests. If, for instance, a starving
beggar came along or if the doctor had ordered one not to eat
apples, then one might decide to resist the determining
influences of the empirical situation and the subjective
motive; and it is at this point alone that the question of
undetermined choice arises.

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How, then, can one resist the determining influences? The
apprehension that an envisaged act is wrong or injurious
cannot by itself do the job. This mental apprehension is an
item of knowledge; it belongs to the rational faculty of man
which in some way participates in the immutability and
imperturbability of the eternal objects. Knowledge, being
eternal, cannot move us to act in the finite world. Besides,
there are cases in which people know that something is bad
for them and decide not to do it without having any success at
all in executing their decision. Alcoholics and dope addicts
know this; and so does anybody who has tried unsuccessfully
to quit smoking. Neither can the passions or emotions do the
job; these are among the very determining influences which
we are trying to resist. There must, then, be a third faculty,
which like the passions can move us to act but which unlike
the passions is in the service of reason. This faculty is called
the will.

An individual’s choice is then free when it is in accordance
with a decision by reason and has been executed by the will.
It should be noted that the term “choice” as used here denotes,
not the decision of the rational faculty, but the act of the
reasoning being. Moreover, the choice or act is free only in
the sense that it is not determined by external circumstance or
by passion; for it is determined by a decision of reason and a
movement of the will. This would seem to destroy the case
being argued for. But the reasoning is that since man is by
definition a rational being with free will, an act determined by
reason and will is determined by the actor and is free in the
sense that the individual is the author of it. By contrast, an act
inspired by external environment or by passion, the latter
being merely an accidental feature of the human personality,
is not free because the determining factors are not properly

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parts of the individual’s own person. Since the aim of the
classical theory was simply to show that the individual may
legitimately be held responsible for his behavior and since an
individual was assumed to be responsible for behavior of
which he is or could be the author, exponents of the theory
usually rested their case here.

It is not necessary for an understanding of the existentialist
theory to review all the many objections raised against the
classical view. Those urged by medieval and early modern
thinkers have almost no interest for us, in so far as they are
based upon much the same premises as those of the thinkers
against whom the criticisms were directed. The so-called
faculty psychology or tripartite division of the human psyche
into reason, will, and passion was one of these. So was the
assumption that reason or the knowing faculty of man is
sharply opposed to the passions and could not move man to
act without the aid of the will. So, too, was the assumption
that man is essentially a reasoning being and that the function
of reason is to keep the passions under control.

Since Hume it has become customary to regard reason as “the
slave of passion,” its function being to satisfy human desires,
not to keep them in check. Since the time of the Romantic
movement it has become customary to regard passion as an
essential and perhaps even more important attribute of the
person than reason. And since the time of Freud the tripartite
division of the soul into reason, will, and passion has been
replaced by a tripartite division of the psyche into id, ego, and
superego. Furthermore, throughout this whole period there
has been relatively little interest in proving that man is the
ultimate author of his actions, but a great deal of interest in
proving that the methods of modern science which

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presuppose determinism can be applied to the area of human
behavior.

One popular modern position, closely associated with
scientism and epiphenomenalism, may be called the theory of
determinism by the passions. On this view there is no free
will. The classical argument for freedom of the will was
based on the apparently observable fact that decisions of
reason do often lead man to resist the solicitation of passion
plus the classical premise that reason, the immortal and
eternal faculty of mankind, is incapable of participating
directly in the finite world of everyday affairs. Those who
hold to the theory of determinism by the passions retain the
classical philosophical premise involved but deny that
decisions of reason influence conduct in any way. The actual
causal determinant of behavior is passion. For instance, a man
may have a passionate interest in being a doctor and at the
same time a passionate interest in being a lawyer. After long
deliberation the man may decide to become a doctor and
subsequently actually become one. But the decision was not
the cause of his behavior. At the very most it will be regarded
as a link in a causal chain going back to the passions and
ultimately to external circumstances. But more usually it is
regarded as an epiphenomenon, that is to say, a reflection or
ratification in consciousness of a causal process to which it
does not belong at all. What happened according to the theory
of determinism by the passions is that the passionate desire to
become a doctor was stronger or weightier than the passionate
desire to become a lawyer, with the result that the desire to
become a doctor finally triumphed. Leibniz once spoke of the
uncreated individual essences as if they had certain weights
and as if they were all trying to push themselves into
existence. Those with the greatest weight were physically

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incarnated. Similarly, the desires or passions have relative
weights, and when an individual acts on one rather than
another it is because the one adopted has more weight than
the one rejected.

In arguing against the classical theory persons who hold to the
doctrine of determinism by the passions will often point out
that the concept of the will is vague and useless. If reason
cannot move man to act by itself and if reason does none the
less in some way determine man to act, then the concept is
indispensable. But what direct empirical or scientific reason is
there for believing that the will exists? Frequently, rational
decisions do not result in overt behavior. Frequently, a man
decides to do something but finds that he is unable to act on
his decision. Consider again the case of the man who decides
to quit smoking but fails to do so. Various names exist for
such cases: compulsion, incontinence, weakness of the will.
Now, the argument is that if the will were an observable or
knowable entity, there ought to be some reasonable criterion
by which one can decide whether the person who decides to
quit smoking but fails is a victim of passion or is simply
weak-willed. But no such criterion exists. There is no way of
knowing whether a person who fails to execute a rational
decision has failed to do so because he is compelled by the
passions or because he has not tried hard enough. The concept
of the will cannot, therefore, stand for an observable entity or
serve any useful purpose in the analysis of human motivation.

Sartre accepts this argument against the classical theory of
freedom of the will, pointing out that neither the Stoics nor
Descartes nor anyone else who has preached control of the
passions by the will has ever explained how this control was
to be achieved. But Sartre uses a similar argument against the

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doctrine of determinism by the passions. What, asks Sartre
can possibly be meant by saying that one passion is stronger
or has more weight than another? Passions are not physical
objects, and physical objects alone can be weighed. The only
conceivable reason for saying that one passion is stronger
than another in any given individual is that the individual
actually chooses to act on one rather than the other. If the
passions had observable weights, then the individual would
know in advance what choices he would make by simple
introspection of his passions. The fact, however, is that he
does not know what choice he will make by any such method.
It is a mistake to talk about passions as having weights in the
first place, but if one must use this language then it should be
recognized that “passions have only as much weight as we
give to them.”6

Freudianism is another modern position which arose as a
reaction against the classical theory of indeterminism and
with respect to which Sartre defines his own views.
According to Freud, the human psyche has three parts. The id
consists of congenital drives or instincts such as the libido or
love impulse, the instinct of aggression, and the death wish
plus repressed desires, i.e., once fully conscious but now
forgotten desires. The superego is that dimension of the self
which internalizes parental commands and social precepts.
The ego is the rational and deliberative level of the human
psyche. The id and superego belong to the unconscious; the
ego alone is conscious.

The Freudian theory may be called the theory of determinism
by the unconscious, since according to it the primary
determinants of human behavior are the drives, instincts, or
desires residing in the id. Freud does, however, attribute some

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efficacy to the ego, i.e., the conscious and deliberative side of
the human personality. In view of the knowledge it possesses
about the physical and social environment, the ego, usually
with the cooperation of the superego, does often prevent
impulses of the id from expressing themselves in overt
behavior. In the normal personality the ego acts on the
unconscious whenever unconscious desires would lead to the
performance of an act which the ego recognizes to be
destructive or injurious to the total personality. It is, for
instance, the ego which restrains an individual from acting out
aggressive impulses against his father in Oedipus-complex
rivalry. It does so because it knows that overt expression of
that impulse could lead to his own destruction or to some
damaging deprivation.

The restraint placed upon damaging unconscious impulses
does not, however, result in their disappearance. Either the
unconscious impulse is sublimated, that is, directed toward a
different object from which the individual has less to fear, as
when love for the mother is converted into a love of poetry, or
else the unconscious impulse is repressed, in which case the
impulse will find expression in dreams or some form of
neurotic behavior. Furthermore, Freud was very dubious
about the extent to which techniques of sublimation may be
employed and also about the degree of satisfaction which the
individual could derive from the sublimation of unconscious
drives. Like the existentialists, Freud is a part of the
anti-Enlightenment.

The major disagreement between Freud and the existentialists
has to do with the role of choice as opposed to unconscious
impulse in determining human behavior. Despite the
qualifications discussed above, unconscious impulse is for

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Freud the original and major determinant of human behavior.
For the existentialists the original and ultimately the only
determinant of human behavior is free and conscious choice.

Sartre uses two principal arguments against Freudianism. The
first of these has to do with the phenomenon of patient
resistance. It often happens, according to Freud, that the
patient resists the analyst, often even refusing to continue
therapy, just as the analyst is on the verge of discovering the
true cause of the patient’s neurosis. Sartre does not deny that
this phenomenon occurs; on the contrary, he accepts
psychoanalytic reports to this effect implicitly. He says,
however, that if the human personality were constituted in the
manner Freud claims it is, this phenomenon could not occur.

Which part of the self, he asks, does the resisting? It cannot
be the unconscious complex or impulse in the id. “The
complex as such is rather the collaborator of the
psychoanalyst since it aims at expressing itself in clear
consciousness.”7 Neither can it be the ego which “by a
conscious decision is in pursuit of psychoanalytic therapy.”8

Finally, it cannot be the unconscious superego or, as Freud
also calls it, the censor. “The censor in order to apply its
activity with discernment must know what it is repressing. . . .
The resistance of the patient implies on the level of the censor
an awareness of the thing repressed as such, a comprehension
of the end toward which the questions of the psychoanalyst
are leading, and an act . . . by which it compares the truth of
the repressed complex to the psychoanalytic hypothesis which
aims at it. These various operations . . . imply that the censor
is conscious.”9

The second argument has to do with the fact that
psychoanalysts frequently offer as evidence of their analysis

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an intuitive sense of its correctness on the part of the patient.
Again, Sartre does not deny the reality of this phenomenon or
the evidential value of the patient’s intuitive grasp of his own
problem. What Sartre contends is that so long as one holds to
the Freudian concept of the human personality one can
explain neither the phenomenon itself nor its evidential value.
At a certain state in treatment, says Sartre:

the resistance of the subject suddenly collapses and
he recognizes the image of himself which is
presented to him as if he were seeing himself in a
mirror. This involuntary testimony of the subject is
precious for the psychoanalyst; he sees there the sign
that he has reached his goal; he can pass on from the
investigation proper to the cure. But nothing in his
principles or in his initial postulates permits him to
understand or to utilize this testimony. Where could
he get any such right? If the complex is really
unconscious—that is, if there is a barrier separating
the sign from the thing signified—how could the
subject recognize it? Does the unconscious complex
recognize itself? But haven’t we been told that it
lacks understanding? . . . Shall we say on the other
hand that it is the subject as conscious who
recognizes the image presented? But how could he
compare it with his true state since that is out of
reach . . . ? At most he will be able to judge that the
psychoanalytic explanation of his case is a probable
hypothesis, which derives its probability from the
number of behavior patterns which it explains. His

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relation to this interpretation is that of a third party,
that of the psychoanalyst himself; he has no
privileged position.10

In sum, “the psychoanalyst doubtless has some obscure
picture of an abrupt coincidence of conscious and
unconscious. But he has removed all methods of conceiving
of this coincidence in any positive sense.”11

Still a third position with respect to the issues under
consideration has made its appearance since the Western
world rejected the fundamental premises in terms of which
the classical doctrine of freedom of indeterminism was
formulated: Since, however, Sartre has not explicitly dealt
with this third position, it will be best to reserve discussion of
it until after Sartre’s own theory has been presented.

T h e E x i s t e n t i a l i s t T h e o r y

The chief difference between Sartre’s and classical theories of
free choice can be summarized in a single sentence: “Man,”
says Sartre, “cannot be sometimes slave and sometimes free;
he is wholly and forever free, or he is not free at all.”12

According to classical theories, human behavior is most often
determined by an objective situation and a subjective motive;
it is only when reason indicates that behavior so determined is
morally wrong or injurious to one’s best long-range interests
that free choice comes into play. Sartre, on the contrary,
denies that either objective situations or subjective motives
ever really move us to act. The objective situation moves us
to act only in so far as we apprehend it, and our apprehension

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of an objective situation is itself determined by a free choice
of goals. Similarly, passions or subjective motives can be said
to move us only in a derivative sense, since passions have
only the weight we give them. We are not playthings of our
passions; it is we who choose them.

No great harm is done at the level of popular discourse if we
say that the conversion of Clovis is to be explained in terms
of his subjective passion, that is, his ambition for fame and
power, together with an objective situation, that is, the
existence of the Church as a powerful political ally. In the
same way no great harm is done if we explain that a man
joined a socialist party because he believed that in the years to
come socialism “will become the principal historical force”
(objective situation) and also because he has certain
subjective motives such as “a feeling of pity or charity for
certain classes of the oppressed, a feeling of shame at being
on the ‘good side of the barricade,’ . . . or again an inferiority
complex, a desire to shock his relatives.”13

It is obvious that passions or subjective motives do in some
sense exist. The mistake consists in regarding them as “little
psychical entities inhabiting consciousness”14 and exercising
an original causal influence rather than as manifestations of a
prior choice. It is also obvious that there are objective,
environmental situations. The mistake consists in believing
either that these objective situations can move us to act
independently of the way in which the reflective or
deliberative consciousness apprehends them or that
consciousness simply mirrors an already structured reality. It
would be nearer the truth to say that the world mirrors
consciousness than that consciousness mirrors the world; and

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it is of course our personal apprehension of the world, not the
world itself, which effectively determines behavior.

Deliberation, says Sartre, is merely “an evaluation of means
in relation to already existing ends.”15 Clovis no doubt had an
objective appreciation of the political and religious state of
Gaul, the relative strength of the episcopate, the great
landowners, the common people, and so forth.

Nevertheless this objective appreciation can be made
only in the light of a presupposed end and within the
limits of a project of the for-itself towards this end. .
. . In a word the world gives counsel only if one
questions it, and one can question it only for a
well-determined end. Therefore, the objective
appreciation, far from determining the action,
appears only in and through the project of an action.
It is in and through the project of imposing his rule
on all of Gaul that the state of the Western Church
appears objectively to Clovis as a cause of
conversion. In other words the consciousness which
carves out the cause in the ensemble of the world
has already its own structure; it has given its own
ends to itself.16

The true cause, the real motive of human behavior is thus an
original project of being freely chosen at the moment one
wrenches oneself away from the in-itself to create one’s own
world. And it is in terms of this original project of being and
it alone that human behavior receives its ultimate explanation.
“Heredity, education, environment, physiological

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constitution” are “the great explanatory idols of our time,”17

but they explain nothing. The only genuine cause of human
behavior is the individual’s fundamental project of being.
And that project is a “choice, not a state”;18 it is not buried in
“the shadows of the subconscious.” It is rather a “free and
conscious determination”19 of oneself.

Great care must be taken to avoid misinterpretation. Freedom,
for Sartre, does not consist, as it did for Dostoyevsky, in mere
caprice. The individual’s fundamental and freely chosen
project of being expresses the “totality of his movement
toward being, his original relationship to himself, the world,
and others.” Man, Sartre says, “is a totality, not a
collection.”20 An act of caprice by which the individual belies
his original choice and renders his behavior inexplicable is
totally impossible. On the contrary, given knowledge of an
individual’s fundamental project of being, it is possible to
understand “the most insignificant and the most superficial
aspects of his conduct.”21

For Sartre, as for Leibniz, “the problem of freedom is placed
on the level of Adam’s choice of himself,”22 not on the level
of Adam’s choosing or not choosing to eat the apple. Given
Adam’s choice of himself, he could not but eat the apple.
Furthermore, for Sartre, as for Leibniz, a different subsidiary
choice of Adam would imply another Adam, which in turn
would imply another world. “But by ‘another world’ we do
not mean a particular organization of compossibles such that
the other possible Adam finds his place there, but rather that
the revelation of another face of the world will correspond to
another being-in-the-world of Adam.”23 The individual’s
choice of himself is, of course, subject to change in moments

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of anguish. None the less Sartre agrees with Leibniz in
rejecting a conception of freedom as mere caprice.

Another misinterpretation to be avoided consists in confusing
the consciousness which makes the choice of an initial or
fundamental project of being with the reflective or
deliberative consciousness, which is subsequent to that
choice. Sartre does not accept the Freudian division of the self
into conscious and unconscious. He does, however, himself
distinguish between what he calls the “reflective” and what he
calls the “nonreflective” consciousness; and he insists that it
is at the level of the nonreflective consciousness that we make
our fundamental choice of ourselves. “It is necessary to stress
the fact that this [man’s original choice] is in no way a
deliberate choice. This is not because it would be less
conscious or less explicit than a deliberation, but on the
contrary because it is the foundation of all deliberation and
because . . . a deliberation requires an interpretation in terms
of an original choice.”24

It follows that “a voluntary deliberation is always a
deception.” When I deliberate, “the die is already cast.” If I
find myself deliberating, “it is simply because one of the
features of my original project is to make myself aware of the
motives of my conduct by deliberation rather than by some
other form of discovery (by passion, for example, or quite
simply by action).”25 It will readily be seen that Sartre goes
even farther than Freud with respect to the ultimate inefficacy
of the reflective consciousness.

Sartre recognizes, however, that the reflective consciousness
can decide to set itself up in opposition to the nonreflective
consciousness and that sometimes it can succeed in thwarting
the aims of the nonreflective consciousness, just as Freud

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recognized that the ego can oppose the id and by so doing
alter the individual’s behavior. To explain these facts without
compromising his belief in the ultimate inefficacy of
reflective consciousness, Sartre reasons as follows: A man, he
says,

can make voluntary decisions which are opposed to
the fundamental ends which he has chosen. These
decisions can be only voluntary—that is, reflective. .
. . Thus, for example, . . . I can . . . decide to cure
myself of stuttering. I can even succeed in it. . . . In
fact I can obtain a result by using merely technical
methods. . . . But these results will only displace the
infirmity from which I suffer; another will arise in
its place and will in its own way express the total
end which I pursue. . . . It is the same with these
cures as it is with the cure of hysteria by electric
shock treatment. We know that this therapy can
effect the disappearance of an hysterical contraction
of the leg, but as one will see some time later the
contraction will appear in the arm. This is because
the hysteria can be cured only as a totality, for it is a
total project of the for-itself.26

Sartre’s ultimate proof that an individual’s behavior is fully
determined by a free, prereflective or nonreflective choice of
himself is, of course, the experience of anguish in which the
individual finds himself compelled to reconstitute his being in
utter isolation and without external help. But he offers three
additional arguments. One of these is contained in the
statement: “A deliberation requires an interpretation in terms

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of an original choice.” The point is that if an individual is
trying to decide whether to be a doctor or a lawyer, his final
decision can be explained only on the assumption that there
was an overarching value or desire which guided the process
of deliberation. In the pamphlet “Existentialism Is a
Humanism” Sartre tells of a young man who came to him
during the war for advice. He wanted to know whether he
should stay in France with his mother who had no other
means of support or to leave France to join Free French forces
abroad. Sartre says that he did not advise the man because one
person can no more decide for another than the individual can
decide for himself at the purely reflective level of
consciousness. The man, he says, had already made up his
mind; it was in terms of his original choice that he chose an
adviser.

The second argument is based upon “the frequent upsurge of
‘conversions’ which cause me totally to metamorphose my
original project. These conversions, which have not been
studied by philosophers, have often inspired novelists. One
may recall the instant at which Gide’s Philoctetes casts off his
hate, his fundamental project, his reason for being, and his
being. One may recall the instant when Raskoinikoff decides
to give himself up.”27 The point of this argument appears to
be, as an American philosopher who on this score holds a
position similar to Sartre’s has put it, that “when we repudiate
our constitutive values altogether and forge an entirely new
personality, a naked, empty self must do the choosing.”28 In
other words, radical conversions do exist and cannot be
explained as a product of rational deliberation, passion, or
environmental circumstances.

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The third argument is based upon “the twofold ‘feeling’ of
anguish and of responsibility.” For most persons
“consciousness” means what Sartre calls “reflective
consciousness,” and they might very well argue that if we are
not aware of having made a choice of ourselves on the level
of the reflective consciousness, we could not be aware of it at
all. Moreover, we are not aware of choosing ourselves on the
level of the reflective consciousness. To the reflective
consciousness our behavior appears to be determined largely
by passion and environmental circumstance. Sartre is aware
of this possible line of attack. “We are fully conscious of the
choice which we are,” he says. “And if someone objects that .
. . it would be necessary to be conscious not of
our-being-chosen but of choosing ourselves, we reply that
this consciousness is expressed by the twofold ‘feeling’ of
anguish and responsibility.”29

By the sense of responsibility Sartre means the sense of being
“the incontestable author” of one’s being.30 The feeling of
anguish is an awareness either “muted or full-strength” that
“an abrupt metamorphosis of my initial project is always
possible.”31 Now, for the person who has known the
full-strength experience of anguish there can be no question,
according to Sartre, that one is the free author of one’s actual
behavior or that one could by a subsequent free choice totally
change one’s initial project. Sartre comes close to defining the
experience of anguish as one which brings a realization of
these facts to the very surface of consciousness. But how is
the person who has not personally had the full-strength
experience of anguish to know that it is possible? Sartre’s
answer is not as clear as might be wished; but it appears to be
as follows. The prereflective or nonreflective awareness of
anguish and responsibility is manifested on the surface of

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consciousness in the sense of pride or shame; and it is
perfectly clear even to the reflective consciousness that we are
often proud or ashamed of features of our behavior which we
have not chosen at that level of consciousness.

The homosexual, for instance, often insists that he is
compelled to behave as he does, that he is not the author of
his homosexuality. On the reflective level of consciousness
there is no awareness of having chosen this behavior, and
often the reflective consciousness is actively engaged in
resisting the homosexual inclinations. At the same time,
however, the homosexual experiences a strong and fully
conscious sense of shame. Why, however, should he feel
ashamed of his behavior if he has not chosen it? And if he has
not chosen it on the reflective level of consciousness, must he
not have chosen it on the nonreflective level of
consciousness? What is his shame but a muted consciousness
of anguish and responsibility? Is it not an implicit awareness
that he is the incontestable author of his behavior and that it is
possible for him, if he so chooses, to abandon his
homosexuality? Shame under these circumstances is an
indisputable fact; and once the inescapable logical
consequences have been made explicit, it is no longer
possible to deny the facts which the existentialists claim to be
revealed in the full-strength experience of anguish. Speaking
of the person subjected to torture, Sartre writes: “No matter
how long he has waited before begging for mercy, he would
have been able despite all to wait ten minutes, one minute,
one second longer. He has determined the moment at which
the pain becomes unbearable. The proof of this is the fact that
he will later live out his abjuration in remorse and shame.
Thus he is entirely responsible for it.”32

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C r i t i c i s m

The third non-existentialist position on the problems under
discussion is widely held by Anglo-American philosophers.
Most of the theory underlying this position was worked out
by the pragmatists, and for lack of a more precise or
convenient label it will be referred to here as the pragmatic
position.

For the pragmatists, as for the ordinary man, freedom consists
in the power to achieve chosen goals. The pragmatists do not
deny that there may be some undetermined choices, but this
question does not much interest them. What matters is that
man be able to achieve the goals he has actually set for
himself, regardless of whether his decision to pursue these
goals was determined or undetermined. The pragmatists are
not interested in God or sin. And, as they see it, human
dignity consists not in the anguished sense of total
responsibility for one’s being but rather in the full exercise of
those faculties by which the individual can hope to achieve
well-being for himself and his fellow men. The question of
determinism arises in this connection only because in order to
achieve general well-being human behavior must be at least
partially determined. If it were not, prediction and
consequently control over the future course of events would
be impossible.

The pragmatists are not the least bit disturbed by the
existentialist contention that happiness is impossible of
achievement and that freedom even in the sense of power to
achieve goals has as its logical condition the existence of
external obstacles. If by happiness one means a state of
complete desire fulfillment and if by freedom one means a
state of being such that the external environment offers not

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the slightest resistance to human effort, then happiness and
freedom are impossible of achievement. The existentialist
arguments are unassailable. But the pragmatists do not
believe in either the desirability or the possibility of happiness
and freedom so conceived.

Happiness for the pragmatists is not a state of sated desire. It
is a state of being such that a man can look forward to the
realization of his desires with relative ease. The existentialists
have taken over from the classical tradition the idea that
desire as such is a state of lack or imperfection. Perhaps so,
say the pragmatists; it depends upon what you mean by lack
or imperfection. But it is certain that a state of desire is not
necessarily a state of unhappiness, misery, or psychic distress.
A man who is only moderately hungry and who can look
forward to eating a good meal at no great sacrifice to purse or
health is not unhappy. Some people enjoy the anticipation of
a good meal more than the actual eating. Similarly, the
student who is working for a college degree need not be
unhappy because the goal is as yet unachieved; some students
deliberately prolong their student days because they find
student activities pleasant. Moreover, there is no reason to
define happiness so narrowly as to bar the pleasures of pursuit
and risk. Some people find happiness in danger; that is their
privilege. But it is clear that most men’s well-being would be
promoted if the number of obstacles presented by their social
and natural environment was considerably reduced.

Dewey was so displeased with the traditional associations of
the word “happiness” that he abandoned it altogether. He
agrees, none the less, with other pragmatists in holding that
the object of human striving is a state of being which permits
the satisfaction of desire with relative ease, “relative ease”

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being defined differently for each individual according to the
nature of his desires, the nature of his environment, and his
own temperamental bias.

The mistake of the existentialists is similar to that of
philosophers in the classical tradition. They pushed a concept
to its very limits and found themselves with nothing but a
meaningless and self-contradictory concept on their hands.
Had the existentialists, however, exercised a little more care
and had they taken seriously their own strictures against
empty abstractions, they would not have found themselves
with a concept requiring to be rejected.

On the question of freedom the pragmatists make out a
similar case. By freedom they do not mean the possibility of
doing anything at all that comes to mind. As Justus Buchler,
the most profound of contemporary American thinkers in the
pragmatic tradition, has pointed out, the degree of freedom
and the degree of restraint are roughly equivalent. To be able
to achieve chosen goals, one must first be able to choose. But
if the environment is not well structured, i.e., if the range of
choice is not limited and determined by external
circumstances, then one hardly knows what one wants. One
can, of course, wish for anything at all, as a child may wish to
jump over the moon. But a wish does not become a want until
one has determined that and how the goal may be achieved. In
a state of complete anarchy or disorder the environment
would be so complex and the result of one’s behavior so
unpredictable that one could have little adequate knowledge
of means to ends, consequently few well-defined wants, and
consequently only a small degree of freedom.

The mistake of the existentialists was once again to push the
concept of freedom as ability to achieve chosen goals to its

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furthest limits, only to discover that it was empty. Had they
remembered the elementary fact of both private and political
life that the desirable state of affairs is one with a maximum
of order and a maximum of freedom and were they less
disposed to think in terms of rigid antitheses, they would have
taken care not to empty the word “freedom” of its
concreteness. We are not less but more free because there are
laws against murder and because there are police around to
enforce them. If we want to kill someone, laws and police are
obstacles which limit our freedom. But if, as is more often the
case, we want to walk without fear down the streets, these
“obstacles” liberate us. Freedom to achieve chosen goals thus
implies, not the absence of obstacles, but the existence of the
right kinds of obstacles in the right amounts.

The most important pragmatic tenet, however, concerns the
role of what Freud called the ego and what Sartre called the
reflective consciousness. The pragmatists agree with almost
all modern thinkers in regarding man as fundamentally a
desiring or passionate being. It would be impossible to
understand any major human pursuits or even to define them
without taking human affectivity into account. Happiness and
freedom are not just abstract concepts, they are states of being
toward which men passionately strive; and it is as such that
they must be defined. None the less, the pragmatists differ
from the existentialists, the Freudians, and the proponents of
determinism by the passions in attributing substantial efficacy
to rational reflection.

It is not that the pragmatists are under any illusion as to the
extent to which men do in fact employ their intelligence; nor
are the pragmatists excessively optimistic about the
possibility of humankind ever making full use of intelligence.

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Their position is simply that the exercise of intelligence is
almost always a necessary condition of general human
well-being and that, barring unfavorable environmental
conditions it would also be a sufficient condition. If men have
not utilized their intelligence to create a substantially better
world, it is largely because so few men believe in it. Either in
the manner of traditional philosophers and the world’s major
religions they seek a short cut to happiness through eternal
objects; or else like the Roman plebs and America’s Beats
they settle for cheap sensations and kicks rather than more
solid satisfactions requiring an expenditure of mental effort;
or else again they wallow in the sense of their own
helplessness, calling it the tragic sense of life, like the
existentialists. It is the flight from intelligence, not the human
condition, which is truly tragic.

The first major argument against the efficacy of the reflective
consciousness was that the only proper objects of human
thinking are eternal and immutable objects and that since like
alone knows like, the mind itself must be eternal and
immutable, consequently unable to act in the finite world of
everyday affairs. This argument has little cogency for
twentieth-century man and need not detain us.

The second major argument was based on the fact of
compulsion or incontinence. Here the problem is not to
explain how man the thinker can relate to the nonthinking
world but rather how man the thinker can act upon his
passions. It is clear that often he cannot. According to the
theory of determinism by the passions he never does. If,
however, the classical philosophical premise that the mind
cannot move us to act is squarely rejected, what grounds are
there for maintaining that conscious human decisions never

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act upon the passions? The empirical fact that they sometimes
do not do so proves only that. And if we admit as evidence of
a noncausal relationship between conscious decision and
passion the fact that a decision to stop smoking is sometimes
not successful, then one must also admit as evidence of a
causal relationship between conscious decision and passion
the fact that a decision to stop smoking is sometimes
successful.

To say that A is the cause of B is to assert simply that A and B
are two natural types of events which have been observed to
be correlated in certain types of circumstances. The only
problem then is to find out what types of decisions correlate
with what types of affective experience and under what
circumstances. There can be no empirical, much less
philosophical, barrier to construing the reflective or
deliberative consciousness as a genuine cause of human
behavior.

Empirically we have nothing to go on but what we actually
observe either through introspection or through the physical
senses. And what we actually observe, says the pragmatist, is
that just as a decision to lift one’s arm is followed by the
lifting of the arm except in cases of physical paralysis, so a
decision to stop drinking is followed by the execution of the
decision unless we are paralyzed by habit or some other
empirically describable obstacle. The nonalcoholic who
decides not to drink does not drink; it is only the man who has
been drinking heavily for a long time and under very special
circumstances who cannot act on a decision to stop drinking.
Moreover, there is good reason to believe that most actual
limits of rational decision have been produced by a past
failure to exercise reason and that these limits may someday

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be removed by the future exercise of reason. Had the
alcoholic fully reflected upon the possible consequences of
his drinking when he first noted the symptoms of alcoholism,
he might never have found himself so hopelessly in the grip
of the habit. And if modern research into the problem of
alcoholism is successful, it may one day be possible to cure
even the confirmed alcoholic.

Of course, limits to the power of rational decision are many
and varied; habit is only one of them. But if the limits have
actually been observed, they are in every case empirical, not a
priori. And if it is reasonable on pragmatic grounds to believe
that the course of nature will remain constant, it is also
reasonable on pragmatic grounds to believe that man can
triumph over empirically observed limits of reason by a more
persistent application of reason. Both assumptions are
required to promote scientific inquiry, and there is not the
slightest shred of evidence to the contrary. In fact, the belief
that man can triumph over empirically observed limits of
reason is not simply an assumption; it is an empirically
founded generalization. By the use of reason man has
obviously overcome many limits imposed upon him by the
natural environment; no less obviously he has learned to
control some aspects of human behavior.

It can be plausibly argued that these past triumphs of reason
have not brought man happiness; but the pragmatist can
plausibly argue that this is not because of an intrinsic defect
in reason. On the contrary, there is nothing reasonable about
using scientific knowledge to build atomic bombs instead of
hospitals or to sell toothpaste instead of books. If reason has
failed to benefit us, it is simply because men have misused it.

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No extensive criticism of existentialism from the pragmatic
point of view exists, but it is not difficult to see what form
that criticism would take. Consider the three arguments for a
fundamental choice of oneself which Sartre offers to the
person who has not known the full-strength experience of
anguish. The first was to the effect that the process of rational
deliberation in which the individual attempts to choose
between two or more envisaged lines of conduct cannot have
a successful issue unless there be an antecedently given
overarching desire in the light of which he can evaluate the
envisaged lines of conduct. Why, however, the pragmatists
would ask, should it not happen that the process of
deliberation itself be a means by which the individual shapes
his desires? If, for instance, in the process of deliberation the
person who is trying to choose between a career as a doctor or
a career as a lawyer discovers that there is a third profession
which combines most of the advantages he had hoped for in
the first two professions, one might be tempted to say that this
third profession is the one he had always really wanted to
pursue from the beginning. Would it not, however, be more
correct to say simply that a new desire had emerged as a
result of rational reflection?

In Being and Nothingness Sartre made a concession to the
pragmatic point of view. In discussing existential
psychoanalysis, the method for discovering an individual’s
fundamental project of being, Sartre declared that the
“principle of this psychoanalysis is that man is a totality and
not a collection; he therefore expresses himself in his totality
in the most insignificant and the most superficial aspects of
his conduct.” It obviously follows from this principle that all
reflective choices as well as all overt acts are rigidly
determined by the fundamental choice. Later, however, Sartre

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qualified this principle. There are, he says, certain voluntary
choices which he calls “indifferents.” If, for instance, I
become fatigued on a camping trip, this is because of my
original project of being, but “to relieve my fatigue it is
indifferent whether I sit down on the side of the road or
whether I take a hundred steps more in order to stop at the inn
which I see from a distance. This means that the apprehension
of the complex, global form which I have chosen as my
ultimate possible does not suffice to account for the choice of
one possible rather than another.”33 The example Sartre
gives, as also his use of the term “indifferents” to describe
choices of this kind, would indicate that the concession is not
an important one.

The passage quoted, however, concludes as follows: “There is
not here an act deprived of motives and causes but rather a
spontaneous invention of motives and causes, which placed
within the compass of my fundamental choice thereby
enriches it.”34 Now, if one grants that a reflective decision
can enrich one’s fundamental project, there is no reason to
deny that it can also alter it. The example of the young man
who had to choose between remaining in France or joining
the French forces abroad was introduced earlier to illustrate
Sartre’s contention that when one begins to deliberate the die
is already cast. The man could not, said Sartre, even decide
whom to consult for advice unless he had already made his
choice. Significantly, however, Sartre also uses this example
to illustrate the necessity we are under to “invent.” And
indeed why not? If the man had already decided, why was it
so difficult for him to decide? If there was an overarching
choice which demanded that he choose one possibility rather
than another, why did he not know it? And certainly in this
case the choice is not aptly described as an “indifferent.”

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The second argument was based on radical conversions. But
are there radical conversions? Does it ever happen that an
individual rejects all of the values and desires which had
hitherto constituted his being? Unless this can be shown,
conversion phenomena can always be explained as the end
products of a long struggle between competing scales of value
or competing desire systems. Moreover, a choice of oneself
made by a naked and empty nothingness in the face of a
massive, undifferentiated, meaningless in-itself would appear
to be as impossible as lifting oneself up by one’s own
bootstraps.

Sartre seems to have come around to this view himself. In the
Critique of Dialectical Reason, where he attempts to
reconcile his doctrine of total freedom with his Marxism,
Sartre introduces the expression “field of possibilities” and
tells us that freedom must operate within this field. “The field
of possibilities,” he says, “is the end toward which the agent
surpasses his objective situation. And this field, in its turn, is
closely linked to historical and social reality. . . . We ought
not to regard it as a zone of indetermination but, on the
contrary, as a highly structured region, which depends upon
the entire historical situation.”35

The third argument was based on the experience of shame,
guilt, and pride. The homosexual and the person who yields to
torture have no reflective awareness of having chosen their
behavior; yet they experience shame because of it. Must it
not, therefore, be assumed that they have chosen their
behavior on the nonreflective level of consciousness? There
is, however, another explanation of feelings of shame. One
could say with great plausibility that the homosexual and the
person who has yielded to torture feel ashamed not because

195Olson, Robert G.. An Introduction to Existentialism, Dover Publications, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central,
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they have a prereflective awareness of being the authors of
their behavior, but rather because they are aware that others
do or may despise them for it. And the fact of their being an
object of contempt for others may very well be something for
which they are in no way responsible. Sartre himself offers
this alternative explanation of shame. “It is,” he writes,
“before the Other that I am guilty. . . . But this guilt is
accompanied by helplessness without this helplessness ever
succeeding in cleansing me of my guilt.”36

There remains, then, only the most basic of Sartre’s
arguments, that founded on the full-strength experience of
anguish. On the pragmatic view the ultimate external realities
are individual beings presented to the physical senses:
mountains, trees, houses, airplanes, dogs, human beings, and
so forth. These objects are related to one another in a variety
of ways, and although there is much confusion in the external
world a number of regularities may be discovered. Man
comes into this world as one being among others, but during
the course of his existence he discerns causal patterns among
natural events and gradually becomes an active, desiring
being. These things the pragmatist claims to know by simple
observation or common sense. For Sartre, on the other hand,
the ultimate external reality is an undifferentiated mass, the
in-itself, and man comes into the world as a pure nothingness
face to face with the in-itself. This Sartre claims to know
through the experience of anguish.

What, then, is the validity of anguish as opposed to daily,
common-sense observation? Why should anguish be said to
be revelatory of the nature of things? Christian mystics often
claim to have had a direct experience of the divine presence in
much the same way that other people have a direct experience

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of physical objects. As a rule, pragmatists have not denied the
reality of the mystic experience. They have simply denied that
the experience had revelatory value. The feeling of a divine
presence does not prove the existence of God. It often
happens that we have an almost palpable sense of the
presence of another person in the same room with us even
though that person left unobserved several minutes earlier.
Why should the feeling of a divine presence not be a
phenomenon of the same order? In like manner, the
pragmatists would probably not deny that Sartre and others
have had an experience in which the world of ordinary objects
and the personal values which they say sustain that world are
dissolved. What they would deny is that this experience has
weight as evidence of the true nature of man and external
reality.

Because it is impossible to observe colors at night, it does not
follow that colors have no real existence. Because a person
with jaundice sees an object as yellow, it does not follow that
the object is in fact yellow. Similarly, because in the
experience of anguish the world disappears from view, it does
not follow that the world is merely a thin crust of meaning
imposed upon an in-itself or that the ultimate external reality
is really an undifferentiated mass. When in ordinary discourse
we say that something appears to be A but is really B, we
confirm our statement by recourse to one of two criteria. A
thing, we say, is really what it appears to be to the normal or
standard observer under normal or standard conditions. The
real color of an object, for instance, is the color the object has
for a person with ordinary vision who observes it in ordinary
light. Here the criterion is the democratic one of how a thing
usually appears to the majority of human beings. Other times
we have recourse to a second criterion. We say that the real

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color of an object is the color it has for the person with
exceptionally good vision who observes it under a strong,
pure white light. Here the criterion of reality is that of the
specialist, who wishes to make the maximum number of
possible discriminations. By either of these criteria the
experience of anguish must be rejected as a means of
discovering the nature of reality.

The existentialist would point out in answer that the criteria of
reality employed by the pragmatist presuppose his own
system of values and his own ontological commitments. It is
because pragmatism is essentially a philosophy for the
ordinary man that the democratic criterion is employed; and it
is because the ordinary man believes in the value of science
and has in the modern age entrusted himself to the experts
that pragmatism also uses the specialists’ criterion. At the
same time, it is because the pragmatist has already decided
that physically observable objects are the ultimate realities
that he frames his criteria of reality with respect to individual
physical objects. His criteria of reality are, therefore, no better
than his system of values and his ontology; and to employ
these criteria to refute a rival system of values and a rival
ontology is merely to beg the question.

One could, as many members of the analytic movement have
done, attempt to show that the pragmatic criteria of reality are
among the rules governing the usage of terms such as “real”
and “reality,” and that it is therefore an abuse of language to
employ these terms in any other sense. But again the
existentialists would retort that the rules governing ordinary
discourse are merely reflections of the ordinary man’s values
and unconscious ontological commitments. The person who

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rejects the ordinary man’s values and ontology is, therefore,
under no obligation to observe them.

If, of course, the pragmatist must presuppose his own
axiology and ontology in order to argue against the
existentialists, then the existentialist will have to presuppose
his axiology and ontology to argue against the pragmatist. It
would appear that we have at this point reached an ultimate
impasse. What is certainly clear is that no simple arguments
of either a logical or an empirical character will provide an
exit. As Buchler has shown, an escape from an impasse of
this kind between rival philosophical schemes can only be
effected by providing a philosophical framework sufficiently
broad and generous to permit thinkers in both schools to
incorporate whatever they still consider to be true and
valuable after they have traced the full implications of their
initial beliefs and value orientations.

199Olson, Robert G.. An Introduction to Existentialism, Dover Publications, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central,
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Existentialism: From Sartre

In our text, Sartre, in effect, provides three ways to understand Existentialism:

“Existentialism is nothing else than an attempt to draw all the consequences of a coherent atheistic position.”

· Atheism is Sartre’s starting point.

“There is no human nature. . . . Man is nothing else but what he makes of himself. Such is the first principle of existentialism.” Again, Sartre says about this claim, that it is a “given that . . . there is no human nature for me to depend on.”

· Atheism generates the claims that no human nature exists.

“Existential philosophy is above all a philosophy that asserts that existence precedes essence.”

· This third claims is probably the most well-known, and the most fundamental to Existentialism. Thus, let’s add a few points:

For Sartre, both “essence” and “existence” mean what they have always meant in philosophy: by essence, Sartre refers to the qualities that enable one to “define” a given X: “the ensemble of . . . the properties which enable it [the given X] to be defined.” By “existence” Sartre means that which is actually present in the world: existence is “presence . . . in front of me.”

So, what is so unique about Sartre’s formula: the uniqueness derives from Sartre’s way of relating these two traditional concepts: traditionally the formula was: “Essence precedes existence.” Hence, this formula radically converts the traditional formula, the result of which, transforms the traditional, philosophic view of the world.

To explicate his claim, Sartre introduces the manufacturing of a paper cutter: the maker of the tool knows in advance what he or she plans to make; he or she is aware of “what” a paper cutter is; he or she knows the “essence” of a paper cutter, thus, the “essence” of the paper cutter precedes its “existence.” Hence, the one who designs the object is the one who knows best the essence or nature of the thing being made.

Now, let’s relate this to the first two formulas above: the traditional religious view of the world posits God as the designer of the human being and, because there is a designer, the thing being designed must possess an “essence,” one that precedes its “existence.” Thus, note the following three points:

· “What is meant here by saying that existence precedes essence? It means that, first, man exists and only afterwards, defines himself.”

· “Man . . . is indefinable.” Thus, the definition of the person “remains forever open.”

· “There is no human nature.” Hence, the claim that no human nature exists follows from the rejection of God’s existence: “There is no human nature, since there is no God to conceive it.”

So, let’s now ask: What, then, is the human being? Sartre: “At first, he is nothing.” And, later? Later, the person is “nothing else but what he makes himself.” Hence, human beings invent themselves without the benefit of any pre-given design. And, here, we encounter a key notion in Sartre: freedom.

Yet, this freedom is not the sort associated with liberal politics, but is, instead, a freedom “from” any sort of pre-determined essence, hence, Sartre’s freedom opens an abyss of nothingness out of which emerge the experiences of:

· Forlornness: “We are alone, with no excuses.” And “forlornness implies that we ourselves choose our being.”

· Anguish: “Forlornness and anguish go together.”

· Despair: “The term has a very simple meaning. It means that we shall confine ourselves to reckoning only with what depends on our will.” And, “to say that we invent values means nothing else but this: life has no meaning a priori.”

Now, with all of this in place, let’s step back and note a few additional points:

· The rejection of God is akin to a rejection of any sort of philosophical system. Why? Because philosophical systems are abstract, while existence is concrete. The horse I ride is the only real, existing horse, not the abstract, universal horse.

· Abstraction does not, as a rule, correspond to reality – abstraction “resides” in the other world. Yet, only in the abstract do concepts exist and philosophical systems are constituted by concepts which leads to the claim that Existentialism is tragic; it can’t make arguments; it must both be abstract and concrete. We reason with concepts, but concepts do not exist in reality.

· Philosophical systems, as a rule, generate truth in advance of the system. Hence, the choice of concepts utilized by a given system are not generated from an argument; they are chosen in advance: reasoning, then, serves only to justify a previous choice.

Three Fundamental Characteristics

· Self-Consciousness

· Self-Interpretation

· World-Interpretation

Chapter 1: Value Orientation

What is a value?

A value might also be called an “ideal.” An ideal or value is that which gives one’s life its model of success. It, therefore, provides the activities of a life with purpose, unity, truth, and hence meaning.

PUT in Triad

· As noted by our author, Aristotle long ago declared that the ordinary person considered the good life to consist of physical pleasure, wealth, or honor.

· Later, Spinoza reaffirmed Aristotle’s claim except he used the word “fame” in place of honor.

Many philosophers endorse this description of the ordinary person’s values. Yet, many have denounced these values and have sought to substitute for them a mode of life that overcomes the frustrations that tend to accompany the pursuit of such values.

· The Existentialists, generally, endorse the above. Yet, they tend to focus their attention upon certain values that both the ordinary person and the traditional philosophers overlook.

Traditional Philosophy

Within the framework of traditional, Western philosophy, the pursuit of the values of the ordinary person have been condemned in three ways:

· First is the claim that the values pursued: wealth, honor, fame depend too much on external circumstances beyond the reach of the individual’s will. These external circumstances might interfere at any moment with the individual’s pursuit of his or her ideals.

· Second is the claim that even if the individual does obtain these ideals, he or she can’t be secure that these values will remain.

· Third is the claim that even if the individual did obtain these values he or she would soon be dissatisfied and would then revert to a life of painful striving. The values of the ordinary person are values that bring brief satisfaction.

Within the framework of traditional, Western philosophy, the means to free oneself from the ordinary person’s values consists of the Stoics, the Enlightenment, the Eternal.

The Stoics

· The Stoics advocated, somewhat like Buddhists, a renunciation of the desires that move the ordinary person to pursue the values of wealth, honor, and fame.

Epictetus: “Seek not that the things which happen should happen as you wish; but wish the things which happen to be as they are, and you will have a tranquil flow of life” (p. 4).

· The Stoics were pessimistic about what a person could achieve in the world, but they were optimistic about what a person could achieve within himself or herself. Their aim was a radical mode of independence through the self-discipline of the will.

The Enlightenment

· The Enlightenment thinkers may have agreed with the Stoics that the individual can’t achieve and secure the ideals of wealth, honor, and fame. They, however, disagreed that the solution was then to renounce those desires.

· The Enlightenment thinkers, instead, advocated for a rational and concerted effort to reshape the very world that prohibits the ordinary person from fulfilling his or her desires. Hence, the aim should be to act to modify the world instead of acting to modify human desires. Read second paragraph on p. 6.

The Eternal

Many philosophers have taken this path: Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Thomas, Spinoza, and Hegel.

· If, as noted above, the values pursued by the ordinary person are fleeting, then why not pursue a value that is not fleeting, that is, in fact eternal?

· Let’s abridge a great deal from this category: most of the philosophers in this category, following Plato, divided the “world” or “reality” into two categories: Being and becoming. In the realm of becoming things come and go; in the realm of Being belong those things that are immutable, self-sufficient, and eternal.

· Hence, for Plato the Ideas were the objects of greatest value; for Thomas it is God; for Spinoza it is “nature;” for Hegel it is “Absolute Spirit.”

Now, it is precisely the presumed failure of these “highest values” of the philosophers that led Nietzsche to announce the “death of god.” And it out of the “death of god” that the Existentialists generate their unique form of philosophy.

Existentialist Values

Now that we know the ordinary person’s values, the critique of those values, and the means to overcome those values, we can shift our attention to the values on which the Existentialists’ focus.

· The Existentialists consider life to be tragic. The ordinary person can’t refrain from pursuing the world’s values and can neither achieve the detachment advocated by the Stoics.

“Frustration, insecurity, and painful striving are the inescapable lot of humankind, and the only life worth living is one in which this fact is squarely faced” (p. 14).

· Now, if this is true, then this claim itself is one that generates its own values and hence these values are values that one might actualize.

Read second paragraph: p. 14

· The Existentialists’ critique of both the ordinary person and the traditional Philosopher is grounded in the Existentialists’ claim that both groups misunderstand the fundamental nature of reality: both groups desire some state of happiness or well-being that the world itself can’t deliver; if it could, it would reduce human beings to unconscious brutes.

· It is important to add: for the Existentialists, generally, it is not political circumstances, technology, nor lack of wisdom that prevents humankind from achieving its highest good: it is simply the human condition and the reality in which it is found that prevents the human being from achieving the happiness it seeks.

The happiness against which the Existentialists argue is the sort that the ordinary person pursues. This sort of happiness is the sort that recommends a state of being desirable for humankind. This sort of happiness emphasizes a sort of harmony, a sort of contentment.

Thus, the Existentialists embrace both anguish and suffering; and along with this an emphasis is placed on personal love, creative activity, freedom of choice, and individual dignity. These values lead the Existentialists to assert three claims:

· An acceptance of anguish and suffering is the condition within which the above values are experienced.

· For the ordinary person and the traditional Philosopher who reject or fail to take up the inevitability of anguish and suffering, this very anguish will still manifest itself in apathy, fear, and boredom.

· Existentialists, thus, value “intense consciousness,” aroused passions, and actions that will stimulate and engage a person’s total energy.

Hence, as noted on p. 18: The Existentialists value a common source: the inherent tragedy inherent in the human condition; a common function: the liberation of the tedium, fears and frustrations of daily life; and a common characteristic: intensity.

Defense of Existentialist Values

Note: Recommend the reading of the first paragraph p. 19.

Now that we know the values of the Existentialists, we need to consider the justification for these values. The justifications take two distinct forms:

· The argument that claims that both the values of the ordinary person and the traditional philosophers are impossible to realize.

· The argument that claims that even if the values of the ordinary person and the traditional philosophers were achievable, their realization would be at the expense of superior values.

Our author claims that the second argument is the more important because the Existentialists spend more time on it, and because if it is sound, it basically negates the first.

· The inability to achieve happiness is the key to the Existentialists’ tragic view of life and is the key reason for the claim that the supreme value in life is “intensity” without the promise of happiness.

· It is the Existentialists’ emphasis on this tragic condition that generates their elevation of individual freedom to its lofty status. Moreover, it is precisely this notion of freedom that reinforces their objection to the Enlightenment hope of remaking the world: read Dostoevsky quote on p. 21.

The Dostoevsky quote states well one of the key tenets of Existentialism: that if human beings are free, then their free choices will thwart the Reformers plans, and if freedom of choice is one of the highest human values, then its sacrifice would be unjustified, even if its sacrifice would lead to universal well-being.

Chapter Two: Human Condition

The concept and experience of anguish is central to Existentialism. The Existentialists’ approach to anguish begins with intuition: the claim is that the experience of anguish is direct and intuitive. Moreover, the experience is complex: it consists both of terror and exhilaration, resulting in an intense experience.

The Anguish of Being

Being = Existence.

The anguish generally associated to Being is the anguish of knowing that Being is contingent. That is, Being did not have to come into Existence; Nothingness could have prevailed. In fact, Nothingness might still prevail.

Moreover, this anguish is the result of the fact that you, me, and everyone else could have just as easily not have existed; and/or, that you, me, and everyone else just might go out of existence.

Read Unamuno quote: p. 31

The key here is the relation between “contingent” and “necessary.”

The human quest for the ground of reality has always been a search for some necessary mode of being. Here, necessary refers to a mode of being that is stable, enduring, beyond change, and unalterable. This sort of being, it has been claimed, is the only sort that is able to generate the stability of meaning desired by human beings.

“The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God remains forever.”

“The heavens will vanish like smoke; the earth will wear out like a garment. . .but my salvation shall last forever, and my justice have no end.”

“There was something formless and perfect before the universe was born. It is serene. Empty. Solitary. Unchanging.”

On the other hand, human beings exist in contingency. They do not have the power to create themselves, nor the power to assure their existence. Human beings participate in a temporal order whose law is that of coming-to-be and passing-away.

The Existentialists hold that a significant aspect of human beings’ response to the reality of “necessity” and “contingency” is anxiety or anguish: human beings are compelled to diminish the fragility of life, to seek a connection to a “necessary” mode of being, to gain a surer foothold in being.

Hence, it is this very problem that philosophers have sought to overcome. The Existentialists, however, hold that no solution to the conflict exists. Hence, they designate the existence of human beings as “radically contingent,” not just “contingent.”

Read paragraphs on p. 37.

Anguish Before the Here and Now

Our author argues that human beings have attempted to escape the “here and now” by two means: a special sort of knowledge and an identification with humankind (p. 46).

Knowledge as a Means of Escape

· Read Pascal quote: p. 41 (characterizes the anguish before the here and now)

We know that Plato and those who follow him have sought escape by redirecting themselves from the world of “becoming” to the world of “Being,” that is, to the world of eternal being known through the mind or intellect.

The Existential attack on this mode of escape: read quote: p. 43.

Our author claims that this quote generates a couple of arguments:

· First against Spinoza, Hegel, and Marx. The key to the argument against these thinkers is the notion of the “observer and the observed.”

· That is, this argument focuses on the fact that the observer, that is the person, is part of the observed, that is, nature, world, history. Thus, the observer is never able to extricate himself or herself from the observed, and this extrication is precisely required to obtain the view of eternity.

“The existentialists, on the contrary, say that the duality of man the viewer and man the observed cannot be overcome and that consequently man can never rise to a vision of things sub specie aeternitatis” (p. 44).

· The second argument that derives from Kierkegaard’s quote is based on the Ancient dictum that “only like could know like” (p. 44). This means, basically, that only an item like another item is able to know that item.

· For example: if Plato’s Ideas are eternal and therefore necessary, then the faculty by which the human being knows them must also be eternal and therefore necessary. From this assumption the human being was then defined as “a rational animal” and that the aspect that is “rational” is, like the Ideas, eternal, immaterial, and thus immortal.

· The existentialists attack this argument by pointing out that the human being nature includes not only his or her mind, but his or her body and passions.

Read Unamuno quote: p. 45

Read last paragraph: p. 45

· The third argument asserted by the Existentialists to show that the human being can’t escape its historical limitations is based on the idea of “free choice.”

· The Existentialists argue that if the human being possesses “free choice” then the future itself is undetermined. Thus, if this is so, then the human being can never rise to the level of “eternal vision” since the future would not be part of that vision because the future has yet to be determined.

Identification with Humanity as a Means of Escape

The second mode by which human beings have sought to escape their historical limitations has been to identify “with a race of mankind or a large social unit such as a nation” (p. 46).

· Examples: humanism and theoretical communism = humanity at large

· Examples: fascism and virulent patriotism = larger social units

Humanism has its roots in Aristotle. This is based on his conception of “matter and form.” Form is universal; hence, the form of the individual is that which defines the “essence” of every human being.

Yet, at a certain point, and for several reasons, this notion was rejected. In its place, thinkers argued that the identification of the human being with humanity took place by means of empathy and imagination. The singular being, in this context, is urged to suppress his or her own personal interests for the sake of humankind as such.

The Existentialists attack on this argument takes a couple of forms:

· If, as noted above, the human being is a being tied to his or her time and place, then he or she simply can’t identify with humankind at large. This notion generates a basic mistake called: Hypothesis Contrary to Fact.

· If the human being is free to choose, then the future, as noted above, is unknown, and hence, because one can’t identify with the unknown, one can’t identify with future generations.

· Both love and respect are generated within and out of specific relations. Human beings love individual beings; human beings respect individual beings.

· Nietzsche’s assertion regarding respect: p. 50

· Marcel/Jaspers assertions regarding love: p. 50

The Anguish of Freedom

Begin with the “in-itself” “for-itself” distinction: Sartre tells us that two sorts of Being exist:

· Being-in-itself, that is, the being of things.

These things only point to themselves; they do not point to any value.

· Being-for-itself, that is, the being of things such as human beings.

That is, being with consciousness, which always points to purpose.

Being-in-itself is the being of that which lacks consciousness: all non-human animals; lamps; cups; bottles; roaches and bees. A human being may exhibit the characteristic of being in itself: “He is as he is.” That is, he or she is fixed, reified, or at least his or her essential property is fixed.

Hence, for Sartre, the “in-itself” is “what it is;” the “for-itself” is what it is not and is not what it is” (p. 55).

Freedom, in this context, refers to the necessity that one must choose. The anguish of freedom refers to the anguish that accompanies this realization. This realization claims that the meaning of being is meaning that comes through individuals: a dying body is, from one perspective, a dying body; from another perspective, it is the dying body of one’s mother; a profound dying of a significant part of one’s world.

It is this realization of the necessity of freedom that brings to light “being-in-itself.” That is, one realizes that the world is, at its core, “being-in-itself.” At the same time, one realizes one’s own being is empty until one is choosing, that is, choosing value.

Hence, choosing is always choosing from within a given situation: choosing implies the recognition of a state of affairs in relation to what one perceives as a better state of affairs. These two components are always parts of choosing, and, hence always parts of one’s freedom.

So, the “in-itself” and “for-itself” plays a fundamental role in the Existentialists’ understanding of life. The human being is fated: it is both its “matter of fact” and its “ideals and values”: “it is man’s fate to be simultaneously both types of being” (p. 56).

Therefore, “man is both in-itself and for-itself, but the two dimensions of his being are radically different. There is a deep rent in his being, and it will never be closed” (p. 57).

We, then, have one aspect of the human being. A second aspect argues that the human being desires, as a value, the “in-itself.” This is another way of saying that the human being desires to annihilate the inherent conflict within itself, that is, to transcend the “rent in his being.”

And, this transcendence, then aims at “in-itself-for-itself without duality.” That is, the human being desires, above all, to be a “fact-sive-value.” She wants consciousness, but without risk; he desires the properties of God or Being: serenity, eternity, immutability (p. 58). The human being, then, wants to be Christ: the perfect synthesis of both God and Human being.

Read: p. 59: top. . . .

Sartre’s Salvation

pp. 60-61: The human being’s aim to be God is a necessary and universal aspect of her being, and hence, her highest motive. Yet, Sartre argues that it is not the exclusive aspect of her being; she is also capable of saying “no;” of defying her desire to be God. Here, Sartre says the internal being of a person might experience a “radical conversion.”

This radical conversion leads to the embrace of one’s dualism “and for them coincidence with self or fullness of being consists in joyfully accepting or assuming one’s finitude” (p. 63).

Ch. 3

Introduction

Chapter 3 shifts gears from a macro, world analysis to a more limited concept, the concept of “reason.” As noted, the Existentialists have been accused of lacking reason, first by liberals and then by Marxists. Both these “isms” based their judgment, to a degree, of the Existentialists’ general rejection of the behavioral sciences and of the idea of historical progress.

Our chapter will approach the question of reason by looking at three distinct philosophic schools: rationalism, empiricism, and existentialism. His approach is governed by three questions, each of which emerges from an aspect of philosophy:

1. The question of ontology: how much is it reasonable to claim that a human being can know?

2. The question of epistemology: what methods are necessary to acquire whatever knowledge is available?

3. The question of value: how valuable is this knowledge to the aim of living a good life?

The difference between rationalism and empiricism concerns the extent to which we are dependent upon sense experience to gain knowledge. Rationalists claim that significant ways exist by which concepts and knowledge are gained independently of sense experience. Empiricists claim that sense experience is the ultimate source of all concepts and knowledge.

Rationalists generally develop their view in two ways. First, they argue that cases exist that show that the content of our concepts or knowledge goes beyond the information that sense experience provides. Second, they construct accounts of how reason in some form or other provides that additional information.

Empiricists present complementary lines of thought. First, they develop accounts of how experience provides the information that rationalists cite. Second, empiricists attack the rationalists’ accounts of how reason is a source of concepts or knowledge.

Rationalism

Our author begins by providing brief answers to the above three questions:

1. The eternal: that which is necessary, immutable and universal.

2. Through the intellect.

3. Two-fold response: knowledge, for its own sake, is valuable; knowledge is essential to living a good life in the world of becoming.

Now, I’m going to deviate a bit from our text. To be a rationalist, one will hold to something like:

The Intuition/Deduction Thesis: Some propositions in a particular subject area, S, are knowable by us by intuition alone; still others are knowable by being deduced from intuited propositions.

Intuition is a form of rational insight. Intellectually grasping a proposition, we just “see” it to be true in such a way as to form a true, warranted belief. Deduction is a process in which we derive conclusions from intuited premises through valid arguments, ones in which the conclusion must be true if the premises are true. We intuit, for example, that the number three is prime and that it is greater than two. We then deduce from this knowledge that there is a prime number greater than two. Intuition and deduction thus provide us with knowledge a priori, which is to say knowledge gained independently of sense experience.

We can generate different versions of the Intuition/Deduction thesis by substituting different subject areas for the variable ‘S’. Some rationalists take mathematics to be knowable by intuition and deduction. Some place ethical truths in this category. Some include metaphysical claims, such as that God exists, we have free will, and our mind and body are distinct substances.

Thus, and here we return to our text (p. 68), the concepts grasped intuitively are located where? First, in the realm of Being which transcends becoming. Second, in the mind of God or in some universal consciousness. Third, in nature: not the nature that one’s grasps with one’s senses, but nature in the sense of Being, the realm that is accessible only by the intellect.

Now, to complete this section, our author offers a second argument employed by rationalists. It is the argument that is often called “the one and the many.” Our author employs words: consider a word, say, fruit. Then consider all the unique items that one places within this one term. Or, to be more provocative: consider “love” and all the varieties of actions that are placed beneath this singular concept.

For the rationalists, to achieve knowledge is to grasp the meaning of the singular concept, which is immutable, singular, and necessary. To only experience the myriad of items that are placed within the concept is called opinion (p. 71). Knowledge, or at least most of it, is “a priori” and opinion, or at least most of it, is “a posteriori” (p. 71).

Empiricism

Our author answers the above three questions this way:

1. Particular beings and the relationships that obtain between them.

2. Through the physical senses.

3. For the sake of power/control especially of both nature and society.

Our author refers to three of the key aspects of Empiricism, all generated from Hume:

a. Outside of mathematics and logic, no “a priori” knowledge exists. All knowledge is knowledge of particular things and the relationships between and amongst them.

b. Hume argued that all purported knowledge of fact is based on “induction” which is the observation of a repeated relationships between two or more entities.

c. Hume argued that all general knowledge is probable. No matter the number of times one observes a phenomenon to work in a particular way, one can never be certain it will work that way the next time.

Hence, Empiricists’ claim:

The Empiricism Thesis: We have no source of knowledge in S or for the concepts we use in S other than sense experience.

Now, regarding the Rationalists’ claim about mathematical and logical truths, the Empiricists claim that the Rationalists have misinterpreted the ground of those claims. The Empiricists’ argue that the “a priori” truths pointed out by the Rationalists, are truths, but not truths grounded in some suprasensory source; they are simply a result of a series of decisions to use terms in specific ways. That is, human beings are responsible for these truths, not God or Nature.

For the Empiricists, knowledge is valuable, primarily, because it equals power. This notion of power translates into two concrete claims: first, the power derived from knowledge facilitates greater acquisition of material goods; second, it facilitates “progress.”

The Existentialist Alternative

Our author answers the above three questions this way:

1. One can know the human condition.

2. Through intuitive insight.

3. To experience Existential values, the only values available to human beings.

Because Existentialism is a theory of value, many of its critiques of both Rationalism and Empiricism argue that their claims are insignificant. For example, the Rationalists claim that one can the eternal, but the Existentialists claim that even if one could know the eternal, that knowledge would have little if any significance. For, in the end, the Existentialists will claim that one still must choose one’s values and that this choice is one’s full responsibility.

The Existentialists make the same basic claim against knowledge of the laws of nature and against the claims of behavioral science. Knowledge of the laws of nature have not made human beings more responsible; happier; less anxious. Knowledge derived from the behavioral sciences has not brought a peace of mind to people; it has not increased one’s knowledge of the human condition.

The one and only thing one ought to know, and can know, is the human condition. And, knowledge of the human condition is knowledge of certain traits of human existence that are found in all cultures:

· Human contingency

· Human particularity

· Human freedom

· Human beings’ fundamental aspirations

· Basic modes of human relating to the world and to other human beings

These aspects are sometimes called “ontological necessities.” These “necessities” must be distinguished from “biological necessities.” The human being, for the Existentialists, is moved not by “biological necessities” but by his or her choices, choices that seek meaning.

More on Rationalism, Empiricism, and Existentialism

· The Existentialist is irrational but is one who attempts to describe everyday experiences closely.

· Yet, the Existentialist is not a rationalist. A rationalist, generally, holds that the intellect is inherently designed to apprehend certain sorts of truth about the world.

· Yet, the Existentialist is not an empiricist. An empiricist, generally, holds that knowledge is a product of experience.

· The Existentialists reject both schools of thought because both are based on the same assumption: the assumption, which the Existentialists, claim is false is that the mind and world are logically independent of one another, like a spectator observing the world before him or her.

For the Existentialists human beings are beings-in-a-world: this means that “being-in” is what it means to be a human being. Moreover, “world” here means the place where we live, the meaningful setting of our lives.

Thus, both Sartre and Heidegger generate new concepts to refer to human beings. For Sartre, as we have noted, human beings are referred to as “Being-for-itself,” for Heidegger, human beings are called “Da-Sein.”

Here, we might be helped by a return to the notion that “existence comes before essence.” Both the rationalists and the empiricists suppose “thick” elements of human being. We are, in essence, rational or sense-based beings. For the Existentialists we are “beings-in-the-world,” hence we lack a fixed character or nature.

Ortega: “the stone is given its existence: it need not fight for what it is. . . . Man has to make his own existence at every single moment.” Hence, I am neither rational nor empirical, but a constellation of the free choices I have made.

Ch. 4: Freedom

Let’s consider “freedom of choice/will” this way:

Suppose at time A, person X is faced with a moral choice: to commit murder or walk away. At this moment, assume person X is aware of the reason for deciding one way or the other and is mentally competent.

Ten seconds later, at time B, person X pulls the trigger and kills his victim. Assume that nothing interferes with his or her mental decision-making process between times A and B. The concern here is with person X’s “being” and the choice he or she makes.

If the sum of the contributions to person X’s decision at time A is sufficient to determine, at time B, that he or she commits murder, then “freedom of choice” does not exist. He or she can’t be blamed for his or her act. Why? Because the factors present at time A, determined his or her act at time B.

On the other hand, if the sum of the contributions to his or her choice at time A are not sufficient to explain his or her choice at time B, then it is possible, but not entirely certain, that he or she acted freely and is responsible for his or her choice.

So, this is how the problem of freedom of choice is being conceived. The only comment I need to add here pertains to “sum of the contributions” to a person’s choice. As a rule, most thinkers will note the one variable they are testing. For example, in place of “sum of the contributions,” they will insert “neurobiological interactions” to test whether or not that single variable might account for one’s actions. In our case, you can substitute any single variable, or simply think of many: one’s neurobiology, one’s society, one’s economic circumstances, etc.

Let us now turn to the notion of freedom in Existentialism:

We are told that two sorts of Being exist:

· Being-in-itself, that is, the being of things.
· Being-for-itself, that is, the being of things such as human beings.
Being-in-itself is the being of that which lacks consciousness: all non-human animals; lamps; cups; bottles; roaches and bees. A human being may exhibit the characteristic of being in itself: “He is as he is.” That is, he or she is fixed, reified, or at least his or her essential property is fixed.

Being for itself is, oddly, nothingness, formed in two parts which enable it to be conscious of itself as a being:

· The human being is, because of its body, a thing.

· The human being is a thing because he or she is a fact: one has one’s past, etc.

· The human being is a thing by his or her situation, which limits his or her freedom. The human being is always in a situation.

The human being is, thus, conceived as dual: his or her situation and the nothingness out of which his or her freedom emerges.

More on Freedom

What man wants is simply independent choice. . . . And choice of course, the devil only knows what choice. Dostoevsky

The most tremendous thing which has been granted to man is choice and freedom. Kierkegaard

At heart what existentialism shows is the connection between the absolute character of freedom, by virtue of which every man realizes himself. Sartre

At its core, this notion of freedom argues that human beings create their essence through our ongoing projects and choices. Our of one’s choices, one emerges: a student, a parent, a caring friend. And, these elements of one’s identity, are never secure; one must continue to choose.

Existentialist freedom consists of the following characteristics:

1. It rejects the psychological notion of freedom which associates freedom to a type of inner entity called “free will.” This notion of freedom assumes that the human being has transparent access to its own mind or will.

The Existentialist’s view of freedom does claim that a great deal of action is pre-reflective; that is, a great deal of human action is a result of “involuntary instincts” and “habits.”

2. Existential freedom is not the sort of freedom “to obtain what one has wished.” The notion that one can do whatever one wants to do is not freedom, but the lack of freedom: one would then be subservient to one’s desires; one would simply be responding to one’s wants, the strongest want governing one’s actions.

For Existentialists, freedom is best understood as freedom of “intention.” This derives from one’s capacity to “self-interpret” both one’s self and one’s world. That is, it derives from one’s ability to imbue one’s self and world with value.

Hence, freedom is an ontological condition of being human: even one decides to “go with the flow of my immediate desires, I am still making a choice by envisioning a certain kind of life, assigning meaning to a particular identity and making myself who I am.” (Sartre)

3. The Existential notion of freedom is not related to any sort of universal moral entity. It is, as noted above, a structure of being human: freedom cannot be preserved, diminished, or increased: it can only be accepted and faced as a given of the human condition.

No moral ideal or ethical measure, is responsible for one’s choices: “I continue to believe that this world has no higher meaning, but I know that the something in it has meaning and this is man; for he is the one being to insist on having a meaning.” (Camus)

Yet, this freedom is not the sort associated with liberal politics, but is, instead, a freedom “from” any sort of pre-determined essence, hence, Sartre’s freedom opens an abyss of nothingness out of which emerge the experiences of:
· Forlornness: “We are alone, with no excuses.” And “forlornness implies that we ourselves choose our being.”
· Anguish: “Forlornness and anguish go together.”
· Despair: “The term has a very simple meaning. It means that we shall confine ourselves to reckoning only with what depends on our will.” And, “to say that we invent values means nothing else but this: life has no meaning a priori.”

Non-Existentialist Theories of Freedom

In the first section of our text, two theories of freedom are introduced: “freedom of self-realization” and “freedom of indeterminism.” Each is briefly explained and then critiqued from the perspective of Existentialism:

1. Self-Realization: read paragraph on p. 101; belongs to Platonism; Eternal: p. 107

2. Indeterminism: read paragraphs on p. 103: We will not deal with the critique

The Existentialist responds to these two theories:

The key claim of the Existentialist is that the obtaining of particular goals is not particularly significant. And, this claim is based on three additional premises:

1. The human being is already the being who projects herself beyond the present. Existence is just this: the projection of goals; one fulfills one and then must generate another. Hence, Sartre defines reality: “That the human reality is lack, the existence of desire as a human fact could suffice as proof.” Thus, as we noted in an earlier chapter, the ordinary person defines freedom on the mistaken notion that a complete state of happiness is possible; yet, if existence is lack, then no such state exists.

2. As we have already noted, even if one is able to fulfill one’s desire, one would not enter a state of happiness.

3. As we have already noted, even if one is able to satisfy one’s desires, one would not be happy for one would have to forgo the intensity of the Existentialist values.

Hence, the Existentialist critique of “self-realization” is based on both its understanding of the human condition and the nature of the world: the human being lacks an essence which is to be realized.

Objections to the Standard Theory

The standard theory of human freedom consists of two components: the objective situation in which one finds oneself and the subjective motive of the one in the objective situation.

Here, Sartre objects, claiming that the objective situation motives acts only to the degree that one apprehends it; the subjective aspect only moves one to act in a secondary way based on the way one chooses to relate to the feelings.

For the Existentialist, the true motive of behavior is an “original project” freely chosen as the individual separates herself from the in-itself to the for-itself: “’Heredity, education, environment, physiological constitution are the great explanatory idols of our time’ but they explain very little. The only genuine cause of human behavior is the individual’s fundamental project of being (p. 119).

This fundamental project of being is a result of “nonreflective consciousness.” It is here that the person, not through deliberation, makes the fundamental choice out of which all deliberation emerges. Deliberation takes place on the “reflective” level: once deliberation begins one has already begun the move away from one’s original choice.

Three Further Objections

· p. 121 “overarching value”

· p. 121: “conversion”

· p. 122: “two-fold feeling”

Radical Freedom

To gain some understanding of Existential freedom, one needs to begin with intention:

· Human consciousness is intentional: this means that HC is always of something.

· HC, thus, is relational: it is a process, an activity.

· HC is always pointing beyond itself; HC is, thus, intentionality.

Next, one needs to understand the nature of the action of consciousness:

· HC is a meaning-giving-activity. Acts of consciousness are not passive; they are not simply representations of things in the world. They, instead, are the acts that endow objects with the meaning and significance that they have.

· HC “sees” things as “this” and “not that.” Hence, acts of HC inject a “not” or “nothingness” into the world. Hence, acts of consciousness make things meaningful.

· I see the tree as a source of shade, not a source of firewood. Hence, acts of consciousness carve up and order reality “for-us”.

· Thus, the “I” shapes the world around itself through its meaning-giving activities; “I” then am responsible for what matters to me and how things matter to me.

Finally, one needs to understand the relation of “facticity” and “transcendence”:

· Facticity refers to one’s situation; transcendence refers to one’s going beyond one’s facticity.

· One’s constraints, that is, one’s facticity is subject to an interpretation, one that could lead one to interpret it in a way that moves one to overcome it.

· Thus, a gap exists between one’s “in-itself” and one’s “for-itself.”

Situated Freedom

A few existentialists thinkers have modified the radical nature of freedom. They have done so by emphasizing that the meanings with which one endows things is meaning that is historically situated.

· To make a choice one must first be familiar with one’s historical situation.

· One’s historical situation is the location of the meanings from which one might choose. These meanings exist prior to any person’s choice.

· Ortega: “man lives in view of the past. Man, in a world, has no nature; what he has is history. Expressed differently: what nature is to things, history is to man.”

· Hence, one is both self-making and self-made. One makes oneself, yes, but out of the historical situation in which one finds oneself.

Ch. 5

The term “authentic” derives from a Greek word that means “original” or “genuine.” The notion, then, of an “authentic self” is one that is “one’s own” and not simply a reflection of the values and mores that govern one’s social situation.

The “authentic self” is one that comes to know itself not from abstract theorizing about something called the “self” but through moods and/or intense experiences that have real affects on one’s finite existence.

As we have seen, for most Existentialists, this confrontation emerges in the experience of “anxiety,” “dread,” “anguish.” For Nietzsche, this sort of experience affects us when both language and reason fail and our world reveals itself as finite, disordered, and unreliable. For Karl Jaspers, these experiences are called “limit” or “boundary” situations “when everything that is said to be valuable and true collapse before [one’s] eyes.”

It is important, before turning to our text, to head-off a common mistake. When the Existentialists talk about “authenticity” as “original,” they are not talking about notions such as “being true to one’s self” or “getting in touch with one’s feelings.” These popular claims suggest that somewhere within oneself lurks one’s “true self.” This true self is the essence of human nature, and, generally, it is assumed that this nature is good.

For the Existentialists, no “true self” exists. And, certainly, no “true self” that is essentially good. The Existentialists do not deny that humans express emotions such as love and compassion; unlike most modern claims, however, the Existentialists claim that human beings equally express such emotions as hatred, and as a result, derive profound pleasure from cruelty and terror.

One penetrating thinker here is Dostoevsky. Throughout his novels he depicts scenes of extreme violence and cruelty. He does so because he is intent on revealing the myriad “forces” that constitute the human being.

“There is, of course, a beast hidden in every man, a beast of rage, a beast of sensual inflammability at the cries of tormented victim, an unrestrained beast let off the chain.”

Thus, for the Existentialists, to be “original” is to experience and interact with both the tenderness and cruelty that percolate within us.

Things to Know for Quiz

Quiz 4: Ch. 4

· Being-in-itself; Being-for-itself

· Existential Dualism

· The three “moods/feelings” that accompany Existential freedom

· Freedom of “intention”

· Sartre’s three arguments that a person’s choice is free. . . .

· Radical Freedom: key points will be presented in class

· Situated Freedom: key points will be presented in class