Jean-Paul+Sartre+--+Freedom+and+Determinism

= FREEDOM = ​

Existentialism begins with the premise that “existence precedes essence.” This simple phrase contains within it a radical change from the previous archetypes of Western philosophy. To accept this premise is to both deny the existence of human nature and open the doors to true human freedom. Jean-Paul Sartre rigorously examines the implications of this premise with a focus on the roles and definitions of both freedom and determinism.

This philosophy demands that the highest moral value of man is freedom, which is to say that all values are revealed through choices and subsequent actions. To focus on actions is to create a sense of responsibility in man: one has no excuses in the world because one always faces a free choice. This is not to say that choices, or responsibility, are always easy. In fact, the recognition of responsibility creates what Sartre called a feeling of nausea : man trembles before the weight of his responsibility; it is a crushing realization to understand that one is abandoned in the world and must take credit for both one’s successes and failures (Killinger 309).

To have freedom is to instill anguish in the individual. Sartre declares that our freedom is a fact, that determinism of any sort is a lie and an excuse, and that the consequences of this reality are that man has both responsibility and dignity (Freedom 330).

HISTORY

Sartre developed his philosophy during the first half of the 20th century in response to the philosophies that had been postulated since the days of Descartes. The process of systematically doubting all things lead Descartes to a realization which would shape the train of Western philosophy in the years to come; he proclaimed that the one absolutely knowable truth was that he existed, and this was proved by the fact that he is aware of thinking. His claim was that “I think, therefore I am.”

This powerful statement would cause German philosopher Hegel to declare that man is characterized by the ability to reason: man is first a thinker. Descartes’ statement also creates a philosophical vacuum called the Mind-Body Duality (Killinger 306). With Descartes' strict standards about what qualifies as proof for a concept, philosophers found themselves entrapped within the mind. Accepting Descartes’ premise implies that one cannot find a way to prove that the physical world actually exists. Together, these ideas claim that man’s essence is that he is a thinking being separate from the world.

This highly logical assertion still did not sit well with the next generation of philosophers. The Danish philosopher Kierkegaard denied Hegel’s assertion that man is first a thinker with the counterargument that man is primarily defined by his actions. Kierkegaard’s interpretation of the nature of man concluded that man is first a “volitional actor” (Killinger 306). This put man’s actions at center stage.

The German philosopher Husserl took issue with Descartes' contention about the nature and isolation of consciousness by declaring the Mind-Body Duality to simply be incorrect. Instead, Husserl argued, consciousness could not be perceived at all if not in context to some other thing. Consciousness can only be recognized when one has something to be conscious of. This new philosophy of 'phenomenology ' connects mind and world intrinsically and demands a new analysis of man’s responsibilities and actions now that he can be literally //in// the world.



Heidegger and Sartre were both students of Husserl and sought to expand this new philosophy of phenomenology. Heidegger took this new interpretation of consciousness and attempted to create a system by which man can figure out what it means to exist. This was perhaps an irrelevant question under Descartes' philosophy, but with man //in// the world one must evaluate how one should behave.

Heidegger asserts that man must consider his values and being because man is a unique type of being: man is //Dasein//, being-there, rather than //Sein//, which is simple objective being (Killinger 307). Being-there implies that man transcends other beings because of man's consciousness: he has the ability to make choices, he has freedom. Sartre takes up the reins of phenomenology at this point and analyses the repercussions of freedom to man's existence: man is responsible for his actions in the world.



Sartre's Freedom To understand the consequences of freedom, Sartre first explores what freedom is and how man comes to have it. Freedom itself simply means the ability to choose: man comes to have this ability thanks to his having consciousness. The statement "existence precedes essence" combined with man's freedom implies that the classical idea of human nature is false (Existentialism 7). Sartre equates essence to human nature, it is what human beings //must// be.

As an atheist, Sartre claims that there is not a model for moral behavior humans might call upon. This gives rise to a certain subjectivity: "Everything is indeed permitted if God does not exist, and man is in consequence forlorn, for he cannot find anything to depend upon either within or outside himself" (Existentialism 13). Since there is no human nature by which one is limited, and one is truly free, then a person's actions are what determines their individual nature.

Of course before any choice can be made, one must exist. It is only in actual beings that this ability to choose arises. The existentialist viewpoint says that "you must exist as a person before it can be said of you that you are such and such type of person" (Killinger 304). The first principle of existentialism is that man is only what one makes of himself, in the beginning he "is nothing" (Existentialism 10). Sartre eloquently describes this process when he says "We mean that man first of all exists, encounters himself, surges up in the world -- and defines himself afterwards" (Existentialism 10).

According to Sartre, man is not an object, but is a subject. This quality is what gives him his dignity, which derives from our freedom to choose. If man were trapped into a certain //nature//, then his choices would be mere chance and not intentional. It is only through intentional choices by which a man can come to live a dignified life, granted that he made good choices for himself. This compels a value system to the existentialist: "Sartre urges self-determination and insists upon the equivalence of human dignity and autonomy of the will" (Olson 107).



The existentialists further claim that this capacity exists only in man. A stone, what Heidegger would consider to be a //Sein// type of being and what Sartre would call being-in-itself, is not capable of making choices and therefore it is not free. A stone is restricted to its position in the world. Likewise, a non-human animal, like a capybara, is a being-in-itself. Where the capybara moves about the world and seems to be making choices, those choices can never make the capybara something other than a capybara. The animal will never train for a marathon or make a fire, a capybara will never deliberately change its genetics through science.

Man, on the other hand, is not restricted: he may choose to buy and cage a capybara or to throw the stone at it or let it be. Sartre writes that man himself "as freedom, as possibility and openness to the future, as indeterminate potentiality. Man's nature is not 'fixed' as a stone's or a tree's is; he is a creature with the ability to choose, and decides what he shall become" (Killinger 304). This last part is the key to the consequences of freedom: man decides what he shall become, and he is responsible for the choices which come to define him.

To be responsible, to Sartre, is to have that feeling of nausea. Freedom is entangled with responsibility because the conscious being, the being-for-itself or //Dasein//, has made the actual choice. He offers many metaphors to elucidate this anguish. In one example, he offers the scenario in which a young man might either go fight for his country in war or stay home and care for his sick mother. Existentially, he is free to choose and must make a choice in the wake of time's passage. Both choices come with consequences; in the former he is a man who abandons his sick mother, in the latter he is a man who evades the dangers of war. The factual reality of the world has put the young man into an impossible position: he cannot be all of the things he wants to be. Forcing him to make a choice, to define himself, causes the existential anguish.

Sartre says that "[this] is freedom with suffering, contrary to their idea of what freedom ought to be" (Killinger 305).

Kierkegaard, Husserl, Heidegger and Sartre all recognized that many people, when faced with this dialectic, choose not to make choices or to fall into a pattern of placing blame on others and the world in order to avoid the responsibility of defining themselves. The existentialists claim that "the peculiar character of human-reality is that it is without excuse" (Freedom 331). To make excuses and place blame is contradictory to the fact of man's freedom, because the individual is //choosing// to not be free.

This type of behavior, because it is against the freedom of man, is considered to be actions made in bad faith. Kierkegaard was so concerned with this disingenuous behavior that he claimed his "whole life is an epigram calculated to make people aware" (Killinger 307). To make people aware of their freedom and responsibility would be to return "them to themselves as individuals" (Killinger 306). Heidegger feared that "pragmatic concerns" would replace "ultimate concerns" (Killinger 308).

Sartre makes the boldest statement when he comments that people "choose slavery without suffering. They would rather live as objects, devoid of true humanness, than face the consequences of self-determinism" (Killinger 305). When a person acts in bad faith, Sartre claims that they are not being authentic. He is robust in his belief that one should behave in honest, good faith. Sartre says that "to exist authentically in the highest degree ... is the aim that existentialism sets before every man. And it is tantamount to real human freedom" (Killinger 313).

Freedom is the defining characteristic of man, each individual is free to add to their essence but cannot change that fundamental aspect. Because freedom defines man, man is obliged to act upon his freedom through his choices and then to take responsibility. Sartre claims that man must admit th​at he is self-determined.

DETERMINISM Determinism is the belief that every event has a particular cause that makes it happen exactly as it does (Frame). The varieties of determinism are vast ranging anywhere from: “(1) Plato, who held that one’s ethical choices are determined by his view of what is good, (2) B. F. Skinner, who believed that stimuli, dispositions and motives govern all human behavior. (3) Democritus, Hobbes, Spinoza, and many others, who have held that every event in the universe is determined by a physical cause. Of special interest to us are (4) theological determinists, who hold that all events occur exactly as God has foreordained them. These would include Calvin and others in his tradition (Frame).”

It is through the various ideas of the philosophers mentioned above, that the ideas by William James are formed. Through him will the ideas of soft determinism and hard determinism come, with a more detailed concept of what indeterminism is. He will have a rather difficult explanation ahead, as the most dominant problem with determinism in general are two very ambiguous words, freedom and chance.



SOFT DETERMINISM Soft determinists believe that all events, including human decisions, are determined, but that some kind of freedom and moral responsibility do exist. The key to the idea of soft determinism lies in the idea of chance. While chance and free will are not considered by James to be the same concept, they are fairly similar. Chance is in regards to the ideas that are probable, not the impossible. There is a possible argument that could arise from people directly denying the possibility of determinism, the ideal of fatalism. Fatalism is the concept that no matter what a person chooses to do; their actions had no bearing on the situation that they were attempting to fix. As with any idea, there is a direct counterpart to it, the idea of hard determinism.

HARD DETERMINISM Hard determinists believe that because human decisions are determined for us, this would require us to reject the concept of moral responsibility (James). The idea of hard determinism is in direct conflict with the concept of free will. To these people, free will is just an illusion that some people choose to use. Morality to the hard determinist is based on genetics and environment. It is important to state that while they are based on these things, it does not negate emotions or morality from existing; it is merely providing the source to where humans will ultimately fall back on. Indeterminism is the idea that an actual form of determinism, no matter what it may be is ultimately insufficient as they rule out the concept of chance. This implies that all bases in determinism are merely metaphysical.

Indeterminism relatively works like this: “Of two alternative futures which we conceive, both may now be really possible; and the one becomes impossible only at the very moment when the other excludes it by becoming real itself. Indeterminism thus denies the world to be one unbending unit of fact (James).” This means that once a person makes a choice to make one reality real, the other then becomes impossible in itself.



Sartre himself is not a determinist. He believes that through several different venues, we choose to hide the idea of absolute freedom from ourselves. Soft determinism is to some degree reflective of Sartre’s idea of freedom. Morally speaking, Sartre states that human beings have the choice to do whatever they want. They are still responsible for their actions and their consequences.

Hard determinism is in direct conflict with his statement that human beings have absolute control over their actions. While hard determinists do not deny the ideas of emotions and of morality, they do not allow them to make an impact on any situation. It is possible that determinism can lead to fatalism, if people begin to believe that their actions have no bearing on reality as they perceive it to be.

If any possible semblances of determinism exist in Sartre’s arguments, they would be embedded in the ideas of indeterminism. The idea that human beings have free will to do what they choose, only in so acting on one account, can they change the probable to the impossible. This means that until an idea or action is chosen, human beings have what appears to be absolute freedom.

By all accounts, there is no set idea on determinism that Sartre completely agrees with. From a philosophical standpoint, he tends to pick portions of ideas that greatly coincide with the each other, while their flaws are left behind. With existentialism and Descartes to guide him in his journey to be a thinker first, while following very close with action Sartre’s ideas echo loudly in later men such as William James and John M. Frame.



Works Cited

· Frame, John M. [“Determinism, Chance and Freedom,” for //IVP Dictionary of Apologetics//.] · Killinger, John. "Existentialism and Human Freedom." //JSTOR//. Web. 9 Apr. 2010. . · Sartre, Jean-Paul. //Existentialism and Humanism//. Trans. Philip Mariret (Brooklyn: Haskell House Publishers Ltd., 1977), pp. 23-56. · Sartre, Jean-Paul, and Stephen Priest. // Jean-Paul Sartre: Basic Writings //. London: Routledge, 2001. Print. · Olson, Robert G. "Authenticity, Metaphysics, and Moral Responsibility." // JSTOR //. Web. 9 Apr. 2010. . · William James. "The Dilemma of Determinism"