According to the Central Argument the relationship between consciousness and self bears the same structure as that between consciousness and world. The self and the world are thus linked together as “two objects for the absolute, impersonal consciousness” (Ibid, 57). As a philosophy of human experience7, this account of the relationship between self and world seems to leave out too many aspects of our actual experience to provide a satisfying theory. As we look at the counterexamples above – the reading example and the up-bringing example – it seems quite clear that consciousness is not a function disconnected from the rest of the person; and that the complexity of the human person cannot be reduced to the relation ‘consciousness of the self’. Rather than thus simplifying the interplay between consciousness, self and world into an intelligible geometric structure (Bachelard [1958] 1994, 215), let us have a look at an example which may further blur those distinctions.
1. The Poetry Example
Consider the following lines from Wallace Stevens’ poem “The Idea of Order at Key West” ([1923] 1993, 62):
It was her voice that made
The sky acutest at its vanishing.
She measured to the hour its solitude.
She was the single artificer of the world
In which she sang.
We will look at two different agents that are involved here; the person in the poem, and the reader or recipient. But let us first analyze this example from the perspective of the Central Argument of Sartre’s theory. These lines, then, form an object in the world; call it x. Now consider a person A, who is confronted with x for the first time. In order to explain this through the Central Argument we would have to split A into the consciousness (C) and the self (a) of person A, and...
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...s choice, we must look at the human being in its entirety. Sartre’s theory of consciousness fails to recognize that, despite our similarities, we are all particular beings, and that circumstance shapes not merely an object which he calls the ‘self’, but the whole conscious person. This conscious person is what we typically refer to as our selves. As such we relate to the world in many different ways, but hardly as to an object without power to make its mark on us as conscious beings.
Works Cited
Bachelard, Gaston ([1958] 1994), The Poetics of Space, Boston, Beacon Press.
Camus, Albert ([1955] 1991), The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays, New York, Vintage International.
Sartre, Jean-Paul ([1965] 2003), The Philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre, edited by Robert Denoon Cumming. New York, Vintage Books.
Stevens, Wallace ([1923] 1993), Poems, New York, Alfred A. Knopf.
From the start, the body is “posited as a certain thing having its own laws and capable of being defined from outside.” Consciousness, on the other hand, is “reached by the type of inner intuition which is peculiar to it.” Additionally, Sartre associates it as when a person, such as himself, encounters difficulties stemming from “the fact that I try to unite my consciousness not with my body but with the body of others (401).” Sartre adds that after the surgeons who have operated on his body may have had “direct experience” with the body he himself does not know as much about. Instead of disagreeing with the physicians, he takes the facts of what he knows about his body, e.g., the brain, stomach, heart, etc.… This then leads to the being’s opportunity of morally choosing the “order of bits” of knowledge. To the extent in which a person is conscious of existing rather than being in the world of others as well as knowing your own facticity of the being in-itself, Sartre is saying that it is your choice to shape your consciousness to being aware of your facticity of being with the notion arguing that people, as beings, can become more aware of themselves only when encountering the gaze of others. When there is a woman walking to see a doctor, she expects to be told the best news, while actually anxiously worrying about what her true diagnosis is and the chart results. It is until after she
Schlipp, Paul Arthur ed. The Philosophy Of Jean-Paul Sartre. The Library of Living Philosophers Vol. XVI, La Salle, Ill: Open Court 1981.
Now what is the reader to make of all this? A brief summary of Sartre's description of consciousness may help. According toSartre man exists on the level of being-in-itself(as a body in a world of objects) and on the level of being-for-itself(consciousness ). The key to understanding Grendel's view of the world is this distinction between the in-itself and the for-itself.Since, for Sartre, being-in-itself is uncreated(he can find no evidence of a creating God) and superfluous("de trop"), it reveals itself as a sort of absurd, meaningless outer reality. But being-for-itself, on the other hand, is the awareness that consciousness is not the being of the in-itself. Its being is revealed in a more paradoxical way-- as an emptiness in the center of being. How can it be aware of itself as an object?Impossible says Sartre. Simply put, the for-itself is the absence or the lack(thus Grendel's "lack") of the objectness of the in-itself . It reveals itself as the nothingness that remains when you realize that your consciousness is not an awareness of an object(such as your body), but rather an awareness of the lack of an object; or,to put it another way, it is an awareness of a nihilated presence.Grendel is proof that only an
Thody, Philip, and Howard Read. "Saint Genet." Introducing Sartre (2005): 130-131. Humanities International Complete. EBSCO. Web. 30 Mar. 2011.
Jean-Paul Sartre claims that there can be no human nature, or essence, without a God to conceive of it. This claim leads Sartre to formulate the idea of radical freedom, which is the idea that man exists before he can be defined by any concept and is afterwards solely defined by his choices. Sartre presupposes this radical freedom as a fact but fails to address what is necessary to possess the type of freedom which would allow man to define himself. If it can be established that this freedom and the ability to make choices is contingent upon something else, then freedom cannot be the starting point from which man defines himself. This leaves open the possibility of an essence that is not necessarily dependent upon a God to conceive it. Several inconsistencies in Sartre’s philosophy undermine the plausibility of his concept of human nature. The type of freedom essential for the ability to define oneself is in fact contingent upon something else. It is contingent upon community, and the capacity for empathy, autonomy, rationality, and responsibility.
At the core of Jean-Paul Sartre’s views was that existence precedes essence. This contrasted with the Aristotelian and Scholastic views that individual existence is an expression of essence or being (Brennan, 2003). Instead, Sartre believed that existence defines the essence of an individual such ...
Lee, Sander H. "The Central Role of Universality in a Sartrean Ethics," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research. Vol. XLVI, No. 1, September 1985.
(5) Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness translated by Hazel Barnes(New York: Washington Square Press, 1956), pp 432-434.
We choose, act, and take responsibility for everything, and thus we live, and exist. Life cannot be anything until it is lived, but each individual must make sense of it. The value of life is nothing else but the sense each person fashions into it. To argue that we are the victims of fate, of mysterious forces within us, of some grand passion, or heredity, is to be guilty of bad faith. Sartre says that we can overcome the adversity presented by our facticity, a term he designs to represent the external factors that we have no control over, such as the details of our birth, our race, and so on, by inserting nothingness into it.
In order to explicate Sartre’s notion of intersubjectivity I will follow the progression that Sartre takes in Being and Nothingness. I will first distinguish between “being-for-itself” and “being-for-others”. Second, I will provide an explication of the subject’s encounter with the Other as an object. Third, I will explain the significance of “the look”. Here I will show how the look provides the foundation for the self. I will also show how the look of the Other affects the subject’s freedom.
Jean-Paul Sartre was a notable French philosopher and writer of the 20th century whose literary works have strongly influenced the world of academia and spurred intellectual contest in the Modern era. In Sartre’s 1945 publication, “Existentialism and Humanism,” Sartre had argued extensively about the notion of abandonment – the notion that we live freely in this world without purpose, and his stance on atheistic existentialism. His main argument was that existence precedes essence so humans acquire meaning through lived experiences since humans are free to choose and decide for themselves. From this, he concludes that there exists no such thing as ‘a priori’ morality and that “God is a useless and costly hypothesis” (28). In this paper, I will be rebutting Sartre’s moral nihilism argument since it lacks apparent linkage between the notion of freedom of choice and the idea that ‘a priori’ morality does not exist.
Existentialism could be defined as a philosophical theory that focuses on the individual person being a free and responsible person who determines his or her own development through acts of will. Existentialism is a thesis that has been discussed by some of the greatest philosophical minds ever to live. Minds such as Kierkegaard and Nietzsche all had their own view on what existentialism was and major impact on the development of this thesis. Each of these philosophies played a huge influence on a great mind that would come later on in history. That was the mind of Jean-Paul Sartre. Sartre, who is considered one of the great philosophical minds, based many of his ideas around the idea of existentialism and phenomenology. Throughout this paper we will take an extensive look into the life and mind of Jean-Paul Sartre.
ABSTRACT: Of all the German idealists, Jean-Paul Sartre refers the least to Fichte-so little in fact that there have been long-standing suspicions that he was not even familiar with Fichte's writings. It is perhaps ironic, then, that Fichte's writings are as helpful as they are for clarifying Sartre's views, especially his views on subjectivity and inter-subjectivity. Here I want to look closely at a key concept in Fichte's mature writings: the concept of the Anstoss, a concept which Dan Breazeale has called "Fichte's original insight." Fichte introduces the Anstoss, or "check," to explain why the I posits the world as it does. In effect, the Anstoss is the occasion of the facticity of the I. I will show that his concept can be uniquely helpful in understanding the role the body plays in Sartre's theory of inter-subjectivity. The importance of Sartre's account of the body for his theory of subjectivity and inter-subjectivity has been chronically under-appreciated by his interpreters; this comparison is the beginning of an attempt to rectify that. In turn the concept of the Anstoss provides a means for analyzing the necessary differences between any Sartrean and Fichtean ethics based on their respective accounts of inter-subjectivity.
...have struggled with the nature of human beings, especially with the concept of “self”. What Plato called “soul, Descartes named the “mind”, while Hume used the term “self”. This self, often visible during hardships, is what one can be certain of, whose existence is undoubtable. Descartes’s “I think, therefore I am” concept of transcendental self with just the conscious mind is too simplistic to capture the whole of one’s self. Similarly, the empirical self’s idea of brain in charge of one’s self also shows a narrow perspective. Hume’s bundle theory seeks to provide the distinction by claiming that a self is merely a habitual way of discussing certain perceptions. Although the idea of self is well established, philosophical insight still sees that there is no clear presentation of essential self and thus fails to prove that the true, essential self really exists.
This paper attempts to discuss the main features of existentialist views as well as dissect Sartre's Theory into two parts, analysing its merits and consequent demerit.