SARTRE'S CEEATION MYTH

A Thesis

Presented to

The Faculty of Graduate Studies

of

The University of Guelph

by

MARK VANCE VCISLO

In partial fulfilment of requirernents

for the degree of

Master of Arts

October, 1997

O Mark Vance Vcislo, 1997

National tibrary I q I of Canada Bibliothèque nationale du Canada

Acquisitions and Acquisitions et Bibliographie Services services bibliographiques

395 Wellington Street 395. rue Wellington ûttawaON K1A ON4 Ottawa ON K1A ON4 canada Canada

The author has granted a non- L'auteur a accordé une licence non exclusive licence allowing the exclusive permettant à la National Library of Canada to Bibliothèque nationale du Canada de reproduce, loan, distribute or seU reproduire, prêter, distribuer ou copies of this thesis in microfom, vendre des copies de cette thèse sous paper or electronic formats. la forme de microfichelnlm, de

reproduction sur papier ou sur format électronique.

The author retains ownership of the L'auteur conserve la propriété du copyright in this thesis. Neither the droit d'auteur qui protège cette thèse. thesis nor substantial extracts from it Ni la thèse ni des extraits substantiels may be printed or othemise de celle-ci ne doivent être imprimés reproduced without the author's ou autrement reproduits sans son permission. autorisation.

ABSTRACT

Mark Vance Vcislo University of Guelph, 1997

SARTRE'S CREATION MYTH

Advisor: Professor Donald Stewart

This thesis argues that the ethical nihilism of Jean-Paul Sartre's o u e s s is a product of his position that the for-itself exists for the purpose of

founding the in-itself. This position, which 1 cal1 Sartre's creation myth, cannot be supported by either his ontology, that requires that consciousness be spontaneous. nor his theory of value. The creation myth underlies the theses in Sartre's text that bad faith is inevitable and that reflection cannot produce new values. By exposing the workings of the myth as it conflicts with Sartre's work, and especidy his theory of value, reflection is rehabilitated and sorne of the obstacles to an existentialist ethics are removed.

Acknowledgements:

1 would like to thank my parents, Vaclav and Luba Vcislo, and my advisor, Don Stewart, for their years of support. If it were not for their encouragement and their patient trust that this process would have an end, this papa would never have k e n wntten. I have

aiso been supported in this work by an embarrassing wealth of good friends. 1 thank you ail.

This thesis is dedicated, with love, to Jane Lewis.

Table of Contents

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.0Lntroduction 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.1 Existentialism and Ethicd Nihilism 2

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.2 The Critiques, Briefly 6

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.0 Ontology and Ethics 8 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.1 Phenomenological Method 10

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2 Transphenomenal Being 11 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.3Nkgatités 14

2.4Intentionality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.5 Being-in-itself and Being-for-itself 17

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.6 The Being Of Consciousness - 2 1

3.0BadFaith . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.1 1s Bad Faith Ontology or Psychology? 28

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2 Anguish . The Consciousness of Freedom 29

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.0 The Myth of Creation 38

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.0 Absolute Value 42 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.1 deBeauvoir's New Value 44

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.0 The Rehabilitation of Reflection 45 7.1 A Distinction Without a Difference . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 7.2 When Freedom is Absolute. What Matters Reflection? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Bibliography 57

1.0 Introduction

The existentialist, on the contrary, fin& it extremely embmassing that God does not exist, for there disappears with Him al i possibility of finding values in an intelligible heaven.'

This thesis will argue for a new understanding of the infamous ethical nihilism of

Jean-Paul Sartre's Beinp and No-. This nihilism, or the perception of it amongst

readers, has prompted a number of responses led by the author himself, who labored to

clariQ his position in later works, and by Simone deBeauvoir in her text, me E m s of

m i e . This thesis owes a tremendous debt to deBeauvoir's work. Although it is an

imperfect solution to the problem posed by R e u d No-, it is an excellent tool

with which to pry apart Sartre's arguments.

Most varieties of nihilism rely on the inability of proponents of ethics to make

their case convincingly. They are the sort of destructive critiques that reside in the gaps

in ethical arguments - gaps of omission, more often than not. Sartrean nihilism is a

different sort of hurdle. Rather than acquire its sting from the incompleteness of an

ethics, it is the positive product of a carefully elaborated ontology of human being. That

is what makes it such a damning critique of ethics: it brings with it what most ethics

otherwise need or presuppose: an undestanding of their subject matter - narnely, human

beings.

. . 'Sartre, J.-P.. M t e n M , p.33.

1

1.1 Existentialism and Ethical Nihilism

1 have always thought that morality did exist. But it c m only exist in concrete situations, therefore it presupposes man actually involved in a world, and one sees what happas to freedom in it.*

Sartre never thought of himself or his work as nihilistic. In fact, the 1945 lecture

. . which was published as Existentialiçm was an attempt to reply to this

perception in his readers. There it was argued that while existentialism could offer

neither praise nor condemnation on moral grounds, an existentialist could nevertheless

judge whether an action was in error, or futile, or self-deceptive, in light of the

discoveries of an existentialist ontology. While no one could advise an agent on the

horns of a dilemma how to choose, existentialism nevertheless underscored the

requirement to act and, more importantly, perhaps, identified certain ways of acting as

being more authentic than others. In afl its incarnations, however, Sartrean existentialism

tended to be better at identiQing rnistakes than in recommending actions. While

identibing bad faith in its many forms came readily, a definition of authenticity remained

more or less out of reach.) Simone deBeauvoir called the philosophy "gl~orny."~ In spite

of this, Sartre was one of the most vocal social critics in France of his time, where he

' Astmc and Contat, m e B u , p.77. 'In a footnote on p. 70 regarding bad faith and its resolution, he cornments, "But

this supposes a self-recovery of king which was previously compted. This self- recovery we shail cal1 authenticity. the description of which has no place here." This is widely felt to be an unfortunate and premature end to an important discussion among Sartre's readers. The topic is never raised again in the text, fueling speculation that bad faith, as we shall see, is inescapable.

4 deBeauvoir, Simone, m e Ethics of -, Citadel Press, New York (1976), p. 34.

joined the resistance during the Nazi occupation and later was engaged in very public

attempts at political change, including sitting on the Russell War Crimes Tribunal and

manning the barricades during the student upheavals in 1968. Nevertheless,

o t u ended with only the promise of a forthcoming ethics5 based on its ontology,

a promise that was never fulfilled, although not for lack of trying.

He later commented that the ethics he attempted to wnte shortly after &ijg and

o- was "completely mystified ... The notes 1 had on that fmt version I've

relegated to the bottom drawer? Twenty years later, he attempted a second version, but

. . that work was unpublished except as posthumous notes. The book f i i s t e n t i w and

m, which also attempted to situate an ethics in an existeritiaiist context is, by his

own admission, unsatisfactory.

The lecture which was its source "articulated ideas that were not quite clearly

formulated yet, ideas related to the moral side of existentialisrn."' The popularity of the

text, which was widely viewed as a short and accessible primer to existentialism, was

viewed with mixed emotions by its author:

... that always stmck me as a serious error. There were a lot of people who thought they understood what 1 meant by reading only Existentiaiism. Which means they had oniy a vague idea of what existentialism was al1 about.'

Aside from k i n g an interesting insight into what Sartre may have thought of his readers,

Sartre, J.-P., B e a and Nothingness, p.628. Astruc and Contat, Sartre Bv M, p.8 1. ' Astruc and Contat, w r e B r , p.74.

Astruc and Contat, m r e Rv Hi&, p.75.

this suggests that the importance of fi . . is overblown,

especially in its author's estimation.

Its appeal and its flaw is that the book spares its readers the dense philosophical

argumentation of W d No-. This is partly the result of the naturzl

limitations of lectures but, more importantly. it is apparent that Sartre had not rnanaged to

establish the conceptual connections between his existentialism and his ethics. Indeed,

Ronald &onson9 characterized this ethics after Sartre's death as "the ethics he has been

trying without success to develop since W d Nothinpness. V ? 10

Although not a nihilist himself, Sartre had managed to argue himself into a

nihilistic corner in B e i n g d No-ess that he was never to escape. This is in spite of

the fact that he intended to leave discussions of ethics to a later text. It was too late, the

possibility of an ethics was already precluded by the ontology of and N o t w e s s .

It is rny view thar some of Sartre's positions on ontological issues had poisoned the

environment against an existentialist ethics to such an extent that, once the ontology was

done, he could go no further. An unintended consequence of the work, its resolution

evaded its author. A number of atternpts (including deBeauvoir's) to rehabilitate his

existentialism from an ethical point of view have k e n made but most, if not dl, tend to

rely on the freedom of human beings to choose new values. While this is, I believe,

wholly in the spirit of existentialism as Sartre envisioned it, it is a possibility that is

-- Aronson. R.. author of --Paul Swre PMosophy in the W& and Sartre's Second C m (Chicago, 1987).

'O Aronson, R., p.25 of the introduction to Sartre and Levy, Hope Now, University of Chicago Press. Chicago ( 1996).

expressly ruled out by m. We wiil examine this striking restriction,

and offer solutions to it.

The shortcomings of deBeauvoir's solution wiil, 1 anticipate, lead us to the

original difficulties in the ontology that it builds upon. 1 hope to show that the failure of

deBeauvoir's proposal is the result of a basic conflict between concurrent themes in

Sartre's ontology. The first of these themes is that consciousness is the revelation of

Being and, as a result, must be spontaneous in order to be consciousness. The second of

these themes proposes that consciousness exists in order to fuund Being. This theme, 1

will argue, places consciousness back into a causal order of a type whose possibility

Sartre is eager to deny. The latter theme, which I cal1 Sartre's creation myth, contradicts

his own ontology and leads him into the nihilism he was to never satisfactorily (in his

own mind) escape. In punuing this thesis, 1 will draw significantly from his text to

demonstrate both that the creation myth is in conflict with the ontology and that it is the

source of the nihilism with which we, as ethicists, rnust concern ourselves.

We are not without signposts in our travels toward an existentialist ethics. While

he does not and, indeed, cannot venture into an ethics, he does sketch what an

existentialist ethics might look like:

But such a study can not be made here; it belongs rather to an ethics and it supposes that there has been a preliminary definition of nature and the role of puriQing reflection (our descriptions have hitherto aimed only at accessory reflection); it supposes in addition taking a position which can be moral only in the face of values which haunt the for-itself."

Taking Our cue from Sartre and deBeauvoir, we will attend in particular to the issues

' ' Sartre, J.-P., -d No-, p.581.

5

surrounding Sartre's concepts of value and reflection. These concepts in particular, we

will see, emerge significantly changed by Our challenge to the creation myth and form the

basis for a new approach to ethics in a Sartrean context.

1.2 The Critiques, Briefly

There are two distinct critiques of ethics to be found in the text. The fust of these

deals with the subjective nature of values. It is argued that values do not exist in the

world independently of consciousnesses, but rather that they are oriiy values for a

consciousness that chooses them. For this reason, no value can be objective or absolute.

This mies out any number of ethicd systems that reiy on these features.

We will not take issue with this formulaiion of value, but 1 believe Sartre is only

moderately successful at applying this stricture to his own work for absolute value creeps

back into B e i w d N o t u in spite of his insight. I will argue that the absolute

nature of this vaiue ultimately precludes the possibility of choosing new values, the

prernise upon which this first critique is based. In an examination of the origins of this

new ultirnate value. 1 will show that it is the product of the atheist creation myth tbat

Sartre introduces for very human reasons. In his belief that consciousness must exist for

the purpose of founding Being, Sartre loads consciousness with the value "to-be-

founded" (we will see what this rneans later in this discussion), which is an absolute

value since it is a value for consciousness qua consciousness. Furthemore, 1 wiii show

that Sartre reverses the ontologicd order of value and consciousness described above. so

that he claims both that values exist through consciousness, and consciousness through

the value "to-be-founded." The latter would require that the value would logically

precede consciousness, an outcome that is explicitly denied by his thesis of the

subjectivity of value. 1 argue that if the myth is dispelled, consciousnesses will in fact be

free to choose new values as Sartre claims they cm. This reversal wil1 have the ccrious

effect of rescuing Sartre's first critique of value. This is an odd route for the development

of an ethics to take, but we shall see that an existentidist ethics cannot invoke external

objective values in any case and will instead look to intersubjectivity.

The second cntique deals with the nature of reflection, md it implicates d l ethics,

including existentialist varieties. This critique rests on the position that al1 deliberation is

"after the fact," and oniy expresses value judgements rather than making them. Ail

ethical deliberation. on this view, is illusion and, worse, self-deceptive because it cannot

produce the new values it intends.

This is to be distinguished from the firçt critique above where it is denied that

absolute or objective values exist. The second critique argues that the production or

choosing of what values remain is not possible by certain means, including reason,

deliberation, or reflection of any other kind.

In Our examination of this critique, we find that we have again corne up short

against Sartre's creation myth which gives a causal explanation of human existence as

part of the process which founds Being. This explanation takes place in the context of an

ontology that disdlows such accounts. Now, given that we are discussing ontology, this

uneasy coexistence of the two themes would usuaily be dismissed as a mere "tension,"

simply because the reai-world questions of ethics and value would suffer little. In this

ontology, however, Being and Value are intimately connected, such that this tension has

the efiect of making a reasoned existentialist ethics impossible.

We shall see that reflection, for Sartre, already intends a hidden and fundamentai

value. It is his position that reflective consciousness already intends the value "to-be-

founded," as well as secondary, more transient values, and so cannot freely choose new

ones. This is in apparent contrast to the prereflective consciousness, which is free to

choose values and is responsible for them. It is my view that Sartre's distinction between

the prereflective consciousness, which he says creates values, and the reflective, which he

says only receives values, is artificial and must be set aside. We will examine the impact

of Sartre's account of the purpose of existence on the ontology and on the possibility of

an existentialist ethics. 1 shall argue that what is also needed to found an ethics that is

informed by an existentidist ontology is another look at values in a Sartrean context and

the rehabilitation of reflection.

2.0 Ontology and Ethics

Ethical theories need ontologies. No ethics can escape the requirement to take a

position on each of a list of crucial metaphysical points in order to proceed. These

include the freedom of agents, the attribution of moral responsibility, and the role of

reason in human life. When these positions are assumed and undeveloped, perhaps for

the sake of getting on with the 'ethical' questions, the whole attempt suffers from an

intemal weakness. Sartre's ontology is particularly amenable, at fxst glance, to the

project of an ethics. An insistence on radical human freedom is a primaiy consequence of

the ontology, at least so far as it is of interest to Our ethical inquiry. Freedom is

developed, not as a quality of human beings, but as an ontological category, or way of

being. That is, 1 do not have freedom. 1 am a freedom. We will see that, for Sartre, in

order that there be a world at dl , consciousness must be necessarily and ontologically free

of it. It is a radical formulation of freedom: even if a code of conduct for ethical agents

were to be discovered written in unmistakable terms on the very fabnc of the univene (as

the laws of physics and chemistry might be taken as codes of conduct for physical

bodies), human beings are such that this code could not bind them. This poses a huge

problem for those of us who are interested in a code of ethical conduct, or at least those

who seek one out in the world. The key, therefore, is not to look for an ethics in the

world but in the understanding of consciousness itself.

What could this mean? It is not an ontology of mere wish-fulfilment. The

freedom of consciousness is always freedom within a context. This is the case because

consciousness is not free for freedom's sake, but because it exists in a special relation to

the world of objects. This relation is what we shall explore here.

Sartre's ontologica! investigation begins with the phenomenological precept that

the k ing of phenomena is 'to appear.' That is. phenomena exist when and as they

appear. What, then, is the being of 'appearing?' What must be the case in order to Say

that appearing is the case? It might be tempting to Say that the being of appearing, or the

pnnciple by which d l appearing takes place, is some sort of ontologically primary Being.

Let us consider what we have just proposed to do. If we are serious about

discussing an ontologicai primary such as Being, then we must commit ourselves to

making the sum of al1 that has king, meaning al1 that is, Our object of inquiry. We have

to collapse the distinctions between dl the things we wish to consider and treat them in

common qua beings. For this reason, "Being" does not admit of any interna1 distinctions

or determinations. While 1 do not know the origins of this argument, it is evident that

Sartre was in good Company. Plato. Aquinas, and Hegel al1 subscribed to this view. By

making Being itself Our object, we as consciousnesses demonstrate a remarkable ability to

"step away" from the given (in this case Being as the surn of al1 that is given) in order to

attend to it and consider possible attitudes towards it. This ability io step away from

experience in order to consider it in a different light is of tremendous consequence to

Sartre's work. What is Our relationship to Being if we can ask metaphysical questions?

2.1 Phenornenologid Method

These questions, we shall see, are typical of Sartre's method: given a particular

arrangement of facts, as delivered by experience, the task is to determine what else must

be txue in order that things appear as they do. Let us devote a few words to Sartre's

phenomenological method, since it will becorne clear that it is an invaluable tool and that

its use has consequences of its own for the ontology. In his choice of method, Sartre can

be understood as reacting to the long tradition of philosophers such as Kant and Hegel

that tended to dispense with the contradictory evidence of everyday experience for the

sake of metaphysical systems that were theoretically elegant. Although that might be an

unfair characterization, Sartre was not the only writer to react to this son of

metaphysician in this way: Kierkegaard and Nieizsche preceded him. In any case, early

in 9 we fhd the argument that Kant is unwarranted in his claim that

this phenomenal world under investigation has some other, more red, noumenal world to

thank for its k ing .

Thus, for Sartre, it is the world that human beings actuaily live in that

philosophes ought to atternpt to understand fmt. It is phenomena, as they are

experienced, and not nournena, which comprise and affect human lives. Husserl's, and

now Sartre's, phenomenological method attends to the facts of ordinary existence in order

to discover what else must be the case, ontologically speaking, in order that this present

state of affairs may be the case. It should be obvious that Sartre is no more reluctant to

engage in metaphysics than Kant or Hegel. The differences lie in method and outlook:

Sartre, in allowing phenomenological observations to direct his ontological inquiry, can

only pursue his metaphysics so long as the phenomenological evidence supports him. It

is an agnostic approach towards metaphysical enquiry. This requirement has Sartre

returning to the facts of everyday existence every time his ontology develops a new tum.

in order to check that it is manifestly present there. It should also satisfy those readen

who yeam for a philosophical approach that is more scientific.

This method is, for Sartre, something of a guarantor that he is not engaged in

metaphysical speculation that is unwarranted in light of the facts of everyday life. This

places Sartre in the enviable position of a metaphysician who can muster empirical

evidence to argue his case. Nevertheless, his recourse to the phenomena is not immune

from the usud pitfalls of an empirical investigation. We shall see that he has a tendency

to overestimate the strength of the evidence when it supports his case. We wil explore

his concept of Anguish in particular in this light.

2.2 Transphenomenal Being

For the moment, we will leave this concem aside and retum to the question of an

ontologically primary Being. It is apparent, says Sartre, that human beings can discuss

Being and question the world about it. To the extent that this is possible, Being too must

be a phenomenon, or object of consciousness. The investigation into Being, however,

bears this difficulty: when we approach Being as an object of inquiry, it ceases to be the

active precondition of phenomena revealing themselves (and thereby coming to exist) and

becomes instead something that must itself be revealed. 'Being' is now in need of a

principle of revelation that it has, at the same stroke, been denied. This makes it

exceedingly difficult to deal with ontological questions.

On the one hand. we cannot close Our investigation into the k i n g of phenomena

because we cannot be satisfied by the phenornenon of Being. Such an answer, in this

formulation. would only relocate the question to a 'deeper* k i n g that is the being of the

appearing of the phenomenon of Being. This would lead us, in tum, to another being of

that phenomenon and on further into an infinite regress. On the other hand, we

nevenheless cannot Say anything about Being without in fact referring to the only being

that is manifest to us, which is a phenomenon of Being.

Being as phenomenon, Sartre concludes, requires a transphenomenal basis. His

argument is that we cannot explain how things corne to be revealed (the king of

phenomena) by reference to something (namely, the phenomenon of Being) which we

know only because it is revealed to us. Therefore. the king on which we ground the

phenomenon cannot itself be phenomenal (or existing only to the extent that it appears),

but it also cannot be anything other than the revealed Being because then it, too. would

only be another phenomenon. This new phenomenon and the phenomenon of Being

woutd now both need foundation.

Sartre illustrates the necessity of this conclusion in a discussion of ~ e r k e l e ~ ' ~ , and

the discussion is of interest to us here because of its implications for reflection.

Berkeley's weii-known formula States that to be is to be perceived. hything exists to the

extent that it is k ing perceived. This is too simplistic a solution for Sartre, since one

cannot Say how, for everything that exists. 'Io be" is '70-be-known", or perceived,

without first addressing the king of knowledge or of perception. The king of perception

is not perceptible in the sarne way as the objects of perception. Similarly, the king of

knowledge, insofar as it grounds the possibility of knowing, cannot itself be known and

therefore could not exist (according to the formula: to be is to-be-known). For this

reason. knowing, perceiving, and appearing are possible only on the basis of the king of

the perceiving and knowing subject. At this point. we see the beginnings of Sartre's

position that the reflective. knowing consciousness is only of a second-order that denies it

access to any genuine choice of values.

The king of the subject can ground the king of knowledge so long as it is

j2 Sartre. J.-P., W d Nothingness, p. 1.

13

understwd (for the above reasons) that we are not limited to discussing the subject as it

knows itself. Instead, even self-knowledge is only possible through the enabling

condition of the subject k ing conscious. "We said that consciousness is the knowing

k ing in his capacity as k ing and not as k i n g known."" Sartre justifies this distinction

with the observation that we must abandon the primacy of knowledge if we are to

maintain knowledge at all.14 He is not denying that consciousness can, in sorne ways, both

know things and know itself, but he says that this is one of its functions and not its

ontologicd structure. 1 will argue that the consciousness that underlies knowledge takes

on, for Sartre, a specific meaning that places the knowing consciousness in an unexpected

predicament - it is passive with respect to values. This meaning is Sartre's concept of

"aiiguish" and we will f ~ s t show its development through an examination of the project

of "bad faith."

2.3 Négatités

It is in the prelirninary discussion of knowledge that Sartre raises the question of

negative judgements. It canot be that negation is only a qudity of judgement. he says,

because negation also plays a role in such human activities as questioning and expecting,

l 3 Sartre, J.-P., B e i n p d No-. p. li. 14 Sartre, J.-P.. Be-d No thineneçs, p. lvi.

which are pre-judicativdS Indeed, in every question we might find negations on two

sides. First, in every act of questioning there is a 'pulling back' of the questioning

consciousness from the world as it presents itself to tum to face other possibilities. This

is one sense in which Sartre uses the term "nihilation." Second, there is in every question

the possibility of a negative reply. Questions are not the only source of nihilations by any

means, nor even the primary one: Our expectations influence the world to the extent that

we cm experience an absence as readily as a presence, and perceive a lack of something

as readily as a collection of things. Sartre calls these experiences of negation négatités.

The rnost significant of the négatités for us is value. Since value is specifically

apprehended as that by which the given is judged, it is apprehended as Seing beyond the

given. We should not take this to mean that values are more real than the given in some

Platonic sense - quite the opposite: the given has Being and values exist as nihilations

of the given. In pursuit of these négatités, Sartre cornes to argue that even such basic

structures as spatiality (specifically, distance) and temporality (specifically, duration) are

these sorts of negationd6 His conclusion is that experience is essentially nfe with

instances of negation that cannot be accounted for by Being alone.

We must corne to this conclusion because Being, we have seen, can contain no

differentiation or determination in itself. This includes values since, as determinations of

being, they are nihilations of Being as well. So our argument has taken us from

phenomena, or beings, to a phenornenon of Being that h a to be founded by a

"~artre, J.-P., N o m , p.6. I 6 Sartre, J.-P., B e i n g d Nothinpness, p. 107, on temporality, and p. 184 on

spatiality.

bbtransphenomenal" k ing that is the consciousness of a subject. Having discovered that

something other than Being is also at work in the world, he names this other-than-Being

"Nothingness." While this term is appropriate for both its associations with negativity

and its semantic distance from "Being," it is also probably mie that "nothingness" in

English falls short of Sartre's meaning in the translation. "Nothingness" does not convey

a sense of the active and constitutive role in the world that consciousness enjoys even

though ii is apart, according to the ontology, from Being. "Non-Being" or "Other-than-

Being," while not so elegant, would probably be better labels for something that, while

lacking Being, nevertheless is the condition of the appearing of Being.

2.4 Intentionality

Phenornena, we have said. exist by appearing to consciousness. Consciousness is,

according to Sartre, following Husserl and Brentano, intentional. That is to Say,

consciousness is always consciousness (of)'' some object. It therefore has no 'contents,'

as Freudian psychology would understand hem; there are no hidden drives. A

consciousness considered apart from its object is not conscious since there is nothing for

it to be conscious of. While it may seem simplistic, this conclusion founds an

" ~ h i s construction is how Sartre expresses that the consciousness of an object should not be considered the joining of an independent consciousness to an independent object. The parentheses illustrate that while the "of' in the phrase is a grammatical requirement of the language we are using, it is necessary to suppress the "of' in order to convey that both consciousness and object exist in an interna1 relation to each other. Sartre does not use this notation throughout the text for the sake of readability but it is implied in each use of " ... consciousness of [blank] ..." 1 will not use this construction either for the sarne reasons, but it is implied in each sirnilar phrase.

"ontologicai proof' that places Being as a second transphenomenal ontological category.

Sartre believes that the objects of consciousness (e.g. a table) are prior to the knowledge

we have of them. Unwilling to accept that consciousness can bestow on its objects this

son of presence because to do so would be to court a potentially solipsistic idealism, he

concludes that the presence of the objects of consciousness to consciousness requires that

they have their own Being after dl.''

Consciousness is only the act of the objects of consciousness king revealed.

Again, this implies that there is something to be revealed. We have aiready seen, as well,

that the objects of consciousness reveal themselves as both positivities and négatités. Not

only is negation a requirement for everyday human actions but also for everyday hurnan

perception. In short, consciousness is necessary for the appearance of determination of

any kind. Consciousness is not only the principle of the revelation of phenomena, it is

constitutive of phenomena in this sense.

2.5 Being-in-itself and Being-for-itself

The result is evidently that king is isolated in its king and that it does not enter into any connection with what is not itself. Transition. becoming, anything which pennits us to Say that king is not yet what it will be and

'8~artre, I.-P.. No-, p. Ixiii.

17

that it is already what it is not - al1 that is forbidden on principle ... It can support no connection with the other. It is itself indefiniteiy and it exhausts itself in being.I9

He proposes to distinguish transphenornenal Being and Non-Being in this way:

Being is en soi, or "in-itself," and can only be what it is." That it is transphenomenal and

complete is nicely communicated by Sartre's use of the phrase de trop, which means,

roughly, that Being is superfluous - it is too much. He also calls it "Selbstcïndigkeit," to

emphasize that it is independent and self-sufficient, in a reference that is full of irony for

us:

The theory of perpetuai creation, by removing frorn k i n g what the Germans cal1 Selbstadigkeit, makes it disappear in the divine subjectivity. If k i n g exists as over against God, it is its own support; it does not preserve the least trace of divine creation. In a word, even if it had been created, king-in-itself would be inexplicable in terms of creation; for it assumes its k i n g beyond the creation."

It is clear that when Sartre wishes to refute the Divine, the thesis that Being is

dependent is one he utterly refuses. Being, lacking complete independence on such a

thesis, would disappear. Whatever one thinks of this argument, it is clear that Sartre

rejects the Christian Creation Myth and insists on a Being that itself nvals the Creation in

its Selbstandigkeit. If this is Sartre's position, then 1 shall argue that his own creation

myth, which says that Being is founded by human subjectivity, contradicts the

understanding of Being as independent on which his ontology is based. Being can require

nothing else to found it, since there is strictly nothing else than Being.

'9Sartre, J.-P., m d No-, p. h i . "~artre, J.-P., p. lxii. "~artre, J.-P., Nothingness, p. ixiv.

Nothingness. on the other hand, is nothing in itself but the revelation of Being

where Being is revealed as a world of particular beings? It is in this sense only

derivative. Consciousness, which is consciousness of objects. phenomena. things. or

particular beings. is, as a result. identified with Nothingness. It is also pour soi. or "for-

itself." which is to recognize that it can also be an object for itself and is so at the same

time as k i n g a subject as well. This is one reason why Sartre says of consciousness, that

it '3s what it is not and is not what it is.""

That is not to Say that consciousness is a different sort of being than Being.

because this would make consciousness merely another phenornenon and disquaiifi it as

the pnnciple of the revelation of phenomena. Rather, consciousness is the denial of

Being and, in so far as it can make an object of itself for itself, it must be a denial of

itself as well. In this sense, consciousness is apart from Being because it is not identical

with either Being or itself.

The presence of the for-itself to the in-itself can be expressed neither in tems of continuity nor in tems of discontinuity, for it is pure denied identity."

The distinction between self-identical and non-self-identical existence, and

objective and subjective being, corresponds for Sartre to the nonhuman and human modes

of being. This emphasis on the human components of existence is the hallmark of

"On those rare occasions where one apprehends Being qua Being, and not in the usual mode of a collection of beings in a world, the apprehension takes the form of an "ignoble mess," a "gross. absurd being" This from page 134 of Sartre's novel musea.

%hrtre. J.-P., No-, p.127. 2J~artre, J.-P., Beine_and No-, p.178.

existentialism in d l its variety? It is also an indication of where we rnight expect to find

our ethics: not in the objective world of things, but in the human world - in subjectivity

itselfZ6.

So far, our ontological account has only incorporated two modes of king. A hil

exploration of a Sartrean ethics would include at least two more. which are the

intersubjective modes. These are being-for-othen and being with-others. If the ontology

offered only accounts of king-in-itself and being-for-itself then we would have nowhere

to go, ethicaily speaking, but into nihilism. hdeed, we would be speaking of a solipsism

within which ethical questions would be meaningless. But Sartre is aware that the iwo

original modes of k i n g are inadequate for a complete description of human being since

we exist in a world that is also populated and made meaningful by Others. Being-in-itself

and being-for-itself can only deliver an impoverished account, and Sartre is not interested

in describing a solipsistic world-view.

Nevertheless, we will not deal with these here. For the sake of brevity, certain

major themes will oniy make cameo appearances in our discussion. These include

. . %ee Walter Kaufmann's introduction to Existeniialism Fromostoevsky to Sartre

for a discussion of the challenge of developing a content for the term "existentialism" that is broad enough to catch all these existentialist writers.

2 6 ~ o pun intended. This is a good example of the tricky nature of a discussion of subjectivity that must often use the phraseology of an objective viewpoint. since no other is readily available. In using language that usually deals with objects. we tread dangerously close to misrepresenting subjects as things which have 'selves,' objective being, and qualities. This is precisely the viewpoint that Sartre seeks to challenge (he calls it "bad faith") but even he must work within its confines in order to comrnunicate. So. the consciousness of freedom is written as "consciousness(of)freedom," in an awkward attempt to underline that freedom is not the object of a pre-existing consciousness. but is the consciousness itself in its apprehension of k i n g a freedom.

temporality and the intenubjective modes of being. While the latter in particular will be

of paramount importance to the substantive development of an existentialist ethics. we

are here only concerned with restoring the metaethical possibility of an eihics to an

ontology that was intended to support it. The details of the ethics will be dealt with

another time.

Ontology itself c m o t form ethicai ~recepts."

In light of the fact that Sartre advocates the radical freedom and responsibility of

agents, it is surprising how much trouble he bas accommodating an ethical framework.

At first glance, this is fertile ground for an ethics. This curious tension is the original

reason for this thesis. The ethical questions that become compelling upon the appearance

of the Other in the world have so far been unanswerable in a Sartrean context because his

analysis of being-for-itself precludes them. That is not to Say that the questions

evaporate, but that the ontology cannot deliver answers. In some ways, this is not so

surprising considering that he oniy introduced intersubjectivity on the b a i s of a more

fundamentai subjectivity. The darnage had already been done by this point. and now we

must devote ourselves to an anaiysis of the for-itself to attempt a resoiution. Heidegger.

Merleau-Ponty. and perhaps deBeauvoir, on the other hand, treated the intersubjective

mode as fundamental to the subjective. In beginning with only objective and subjective

being, Sartre derives much of his ontology and its consequences for ethics from an de

facto original solipsism. 1 do not wish to make too much of this point, but it does seem

likely that Sartre was bound to encounter more difficulties with ethics than some of his

philosophical colleagues for whom the problems of Living with Others figured into the

ontology from the start.

2.6 The Being Of Consciousness

Let us not stray too far afeld from the ontology of the for-itself yet, as we have

more to uncover conceming its odd mode of being. It is still as vdid to ask about the

preconditions of consciousness as it was to ask for the preconditions of phenornena. For

Sartre, the being of consciousness is the "consciousness of being." That is, consciousness

of any object can be said to exist so long as, and to the extent that, it is conscious of itself

as this consciousness.28

It may appear that Sartre is led into an infiite regress here, since if we need to

guarantee the existence of consciousness through another consciousness which is

specifically a consciousness of it, then do we need a third consciousness to guarantee the

second, and so on? This raises the question of the structure of consciousness itself. We

have said that it is nothing other than the revelation of Being, but what does this mean?

He does not suggest that there is first a consciousness that, once its king cornes into

doubt, then has its king guaranteed by some second consciousness. If consciousness

were as independent as to exclude what we have suggested is a secondary consciousness,

2?his seems to me to be a sort of backhanded "Berkeley-ism," since here it seems that to be is to be perceived after dl, even for the perceiver, who perceives hirnself.

it would be a consciousness that is not even aware of its own consciousness. This

amounts to an "unconscious consciousness" which, for Sartre, is nonsense.

The conceptual separation of a consciousness of an object from its own irnrnediate

consciousness of king this consciousness. if it could be reaüzed, would destroy the

consciousness. "Consciousness of self is not dual. If we wish to avoid an infinite

regress, there must be an imrnediate, non-cognitive relation of the self to it~elf."'~ This is

what Sartre temis the "prereflective" consciousness. It is the pre-judicative

consciousness of lived experience that is also a consciousness of itself.

It may be the case that, on this level, the subjectlobject split is not yet in action.

Under this view, the mode of k ing of prereflective consciousness is only as a "reflection-

reflecting." In this light, it is the function of the reflective consciousness to effect an

even greater nihilation of itself by positing consciousness itself as its object. 1 believe

this position is problematic, since it implies that a different formulation of consciousness

other than "consciousness(of)object" is in play at the prereflective level. While the

reflective consciousness is directed at a certain special class of objects. it does not seem

to follow that Sartre meant that objects thernselves are only available on the basis of a

reflective consciousness. We cm set this question aside, however, since it suffices for

our purposes to Say that the prereflective consciousness nihilates Being in order that there

may be phenornena and experience, and the reflective consciousness nihilates the raw

experience of the prereflective so that, in stepping back, judgements can be made about it.

This Iast description does not seem to be in dispute.

- -

29Sartre, JO-P.. 9, pp. Lii-Liii.

23

That judgements are the province of the reflective consciousness suggests that we

have aiready corne across a connection between Being and value. In fact. "reflective

consciousness can properly be called a moral consciousness since it can not arise without

at the sarne moment disclosing value^."^ We shall retum to this in our discussion of the

k ing of Value.

Even when reflective consciousness posits consciousness as its object. this is not a

case of a second consciousness attending to an original consciousness. Instead, it is:

an intra-structural modification which the for-itself realizes in itself; in a word it is the for-itself which makes itself exist in *e mode reflective- reflected-on, instead of k ing simply in the mode of the dyad reflection- reflecting ..."

Reflection, then. is not a case of one consciousness looking at another but still one

conxiousness looking at itself. We will return to the argument that consciousness must

be unitary in an examination of his later position that two sorts of consciousness might be

so ontologically different that one can create values that the second only receives. If we

agree with Sartre that consciousness is not an aggregate of consciousnesses but a unit, we

will conclude that such a distinction must be invalid. As a result. we would expect that

both reflective and prerefiective consciousness have access to new values because they

are not separate consciousnesses. If so, we can legitimately apply reason to the business

of what we as agents are. in moral terms, to do. This makes an enonnous ciifference so

far as the possibility of developing a communicable and defensible approach to moral

action is concerned.

So each consciousness is both consciousness of its object and of itself. From this

we can infer that consciousness does not, and even cannot, rely solely on its appearing for

its existence because it is, even to itself, both that which appears and that to which it

appears. This distinction, that consciousness is not subject to the phenomenal condition

because it is self-conscious, satisfies Sartre's ontological requirement for the being of al1

phenornena, which is that it must exist beyond its appearing.

The for-itself not only reveals, but is revealed at the same t h e . In so far as the

being of consciousness is its consciousness of being, the for-itself is the foundation of its

own being. Although consciousness is nothing other than the revelation of Being, Being

cannot be the foundation of this revelation. To be so would require Bcing to found not

only what consciousness "is" but, in light of the fact that consciousness is perpetually

beyond itself and being, to found the surpassing of consciousness. This is expressly what

Being cannot do, since it is a plenum that is exactly what it is, and no more. "Being cm

not be causa sui in the rnanner of consciousness."32 In a limited sense, consciousness is

self-caused. This is not to Say that consciousness chooses to be bom, since this would

amount to saying that it pre-exists itself. Rather, Sartre favors the Heideggerian image of

"abandonment" in the world, such that the hurnan condition is to find oneself in a world

burdened with an absolute responsibility for oneself. While things simply are,

consciousnesses rnust make themselves to be.

We cm see how this fits into the ontology. If consciousness qua nihilation qua

freedorn must be the king of the deterrnination of Being and hence of the phenomenal

32Sartre, J.-P., Being and Nothingness, p.lxiv.

world, it is apart from any causal order simply because it is both non-self-identical and

logically prior to it. That is because logicaily prior to consciousness, there is only

undifferentiated Being that is Selbstandigkeit and nothing else. For this reason,

consciousness cannot be brought into the world as part of a process, it must be a

"spontaneous upsurge" into being. Given the lack of available justification for that which

is the foundation of ail justification, we must conclude that an explanation of freedom

cannot be made. This means that we could reasonably content ourselves with a thorough

description. However, Sartre does attempt an explanation in spite of this. While we do

not yet have al1 the conceptual tools we need in order to deal with this, 1 wiil again

underline the influence of the creation myth. It is by the uneasy coexistence of the Myth

and an ontology that denies extemal justification to man that the possibility of an

existentialist ethics is aborted.

3.0 Bad Faith

It appeared to us both that the transcendent being could not act on consciousness and that co~sciousness could not 'constnict' the transcendent by objectivizing elements borrowed from its s~bjectivity.~~

Since consciousness is consciousness of itself, it is conscious of its existence as a

nihilation of that which is (Being) and that which it is (its past). These nihilations result

in the radical freedom of conscious agents since they are set apart from the determinism

of things. That is not to Say, once again, that this is an ontology of wish-fulfilment - as

derivative beings, consciousnesses do not originally choose the givens that they are

- - -

I3 Sartre, J.-P., Beina and Nothinpnese, p.171.

26

nihilations of, whatever they might be. This is the facticity of consciousness, and it forms

the context within which choices are made. While facticity qua phenomena cannot in

principle cause a free consciousness to choose in a particular way, facticity qua facticity

sets Iimits on the kinds of choices that are available to be made. These facts are not Iost

on the for-itself, which must be self-conscious and so be conscious of its activity of

nihilating what is given. While it can be an object of knowledge, as Our investigation

conveniently demonstrates, the self-consciousness of freedom is not just what one knows,

but what one is.

Once the concept of the special Seing of consciousness has k e n developed, Sartre

must look for evidence of it in the phenomena. He finds it in the act of self-deception,

which he identifies as not just an isolated bad habit, but a widespread and concerted effort

on the part of consciousnesses. By self-deception, the for-itself seeks to insulate itself

from responsibility for its choices by manufacturing the fiction that it is just another thing

in a world of things. He calls this universal project "bad faith."

Bad faith is a particularly apt demonstration of the for-itself s lack of self-identity,

since seif-deception requires that one consciousness be both the deceiver and the

deceived at the sarne time. One cannot underestimate the extent to which Sartre believes

bad faith must structure our everyday behaviour and thought. Bad faith is not merely a

matter of consciousness agreeing to believe something and then going on with its

ordinary business. The deception becomes consciousness' ordinary business. It is the

ongoing projecr of manufacturing evidence for oneselfin supporr of this view. As with

al1 evidence, there are related judgemenü about what satisfies the criteria of sufficient, or

even good, evidence. Since no evidence could suffice to convince consciousness (which

is consciousness of itself as freedom) that it is unfree, consciousness decides to aiiow

itself to be persuaded by evidence it knows to be unpersuasive. As a result, we are

constantly identifjring ourselves and others by attitudes, expenences. accomplishments, et

cetera, when al1 of these are phenomena and cannot address consciousness in its

subjectivity (that is, as we have shown in section 2.6, precisely phenomenal).

Psychological determinism, before k i n g a theoretical conception, is first an attitude of excuse, or if you prefer, the bais of al1 attitudes of e x c ~ s e . ~

For Sartre, consciousness is that which surpasses itself. For this reason, any

descnption is insufficient. When consciousnesses insist on reducing themselves to their

descriptions, this is symptornatic of an attempt by consciousness to hide its responsibility

from itself. By becoming "something," consciousness accounts for its actions by some

other power than its own choice of the moment. in other words, this practice provides a

ready justification to the content of the decision that coincides with "What do 1 do now?"

or worse, "Why am 1 doing this?" It is an answer of the fom, "1 shall do this because I

am a [blank]," such that what I am to do is readily explained by what I am.

No factual state whatever it may be (the political and econornic structure of society, the psychologicd 'state,' etc.) is capable by itself of motivating any act whatsoever. For an act is a projection of the for-itself toward what it is not, and what is can in no way determine by itself what is not."

At this moment, however, 1 am already a nihilation of any descnption 1 care to profess. In

practice, these descriptions tend to surnmarize consciousness by what it has been and

" SaNe, J.-P., W d N-, p.40. 35 Sartre, J.-P., Being and Nothinaness p.435.

sometimes by what it intends to be. In describing itself, however, consciousness has

already ceased to be what it was. even to the extent of not king bound by its strongest

pnor intentions. There are any number of ways of being in bad faith but al1 bad faith

arnounts to consciousness arguing for its own limitations.

3.1 1s Bad Faith Ontology or Psychology?

Bad faith, 1 have said, is consciousness' flight from freedom, frorn itself. Since

consciousness is ontologically free, however, the fiight is futile. This futility is complete:

consciousness cannot, even for a moment, relieve itself of its responsibility by becorning

determined. When 1 am in bad faith, 1 am not really making myself into an object on an

ontological level. 1 just believe that I am -- hence the term "bad faith." So "bad faith" is

a pathologicai belief that consciousness insists upon in spite of its futility.

Let us understand clearly that there is no question of a reflective, voluntary decision, but of a spontaneous determination of our being. One puts oneself in bad faith as one goes to sleep and one is in bad faith as one dreams. Once this mode of k ing has been realized, it is as difficult to get out of it as to wake oneself up; bad faith is a type of being in the world, like waking or dreaming, which by itself tends to perpetuate itself, although its stnictiire is of the metastable type. But bad faith is conscious of its structure, and it has taken precautions by deciding that the metastable structure is the structure of k ing and that non-persuasion is the structure of dl conviction^.^^

A case can be made for the view that living in bad faith is a mode of ontological

36 Sartre. J.-P., Reina and Nothinam, p.68.

29

king rather than simply a psychological act. This is suggested by the passage above. It

is aiso the case, however, that Sartre describes bad faith as futile, implying that whether it

accomplishes some particular ontological mode of king or not, it does not result in its

intended end: to render consciousness a thing. Later in the text, Sartre seems to settle the

issue in favor of the psychological thesis, with the following:

Human reality may be defined as a king such that in its k ing its freedom is at stake because human reaiity perpetually tries to refuse to recognize its fseedom. Psychologically in each one of us this arnounts to trying to take the causes and motives as things. We try to confer permanence on them."

We have implied above that the king of consciousness is its self-awareness and

that this consciousness exists as a nihilation of itself. The consciousness of this cleavage

of consciousness from itself and its past is neither intermittent nor contingent only on the

subject becoming interrogative or depressed. For consciousness, there is a continuous

experience of king its own nihilation. There must be, on this view, at al1 times a mode

of consciousness that is a consciousness of freedom. Sartre says that this mode is

anguish.

3.2 Anpish, The Consciousnw of Freedom

Anguish, abandonment, responsibility, whether muted or full strength, constitute the quality of our consciousness in so far as this is pure and simple freedom."

We also understand that bad faith, for ail its popularity, takes a great deai of

effort. Although we will avoid a detenninistic formulation of this, it nevertheless bears

37 Sartre, J.-P., W d N o t u , p.440. " Sartre, J.-P., W d No-, p.464.

saying that bad faith must have an equally great motivation or value. To Say this is to step

outside of the bounds in Sartre's game somewhat, since consciousness cannot be

compelled even by its own values. So 1 will suggest that a signifiant value piays a role in

bad faith without causing it. I will decipher this claim in a discussion of Sartre's theory

of value.

In the discussion above, it developed that consciousness founded the k i n g of al1

phenomena. Since it exists as a nihilation of what has being, this implies that whatever

consciousness is, it is neither created, nor changed, nor kept from changing by any

phenomena. While the world of phenomena may be wholly determined, in order for this

world to be, there must be consciousness that is, moreover, necessarily free of it. This is

not only a quick summary of Sartre's case against general determinism but also his case

against psychological determinism (a specifically human determinism) as well: past

consciousnesses are quite simply past. and have being. like any phenomena, as objects for

present consciousness. "There is no inertia in consciousness."3g Human phenomena,

then, are equally incapable of detennining consciousness, by virtue of being phenomena.

This said, we will look closely at Sartre's treatment of human detenninistic

concepts such as the motive, since these are of particular interest to us as possible

instances of a determinism that refer to values. The relationship of anguish to bad faith

may be of this type. For now, we can iake this to mean that human institutions, habits,

religions, and traditions al1 lack any of the sons of imperative in themselves with which

their advocates seek to imbue thern; lack them, that is, but for the free and undetennined

39 Sartre, J.-P., Beine ando-, p.61.

3 1

choice of those imperatives by their advocates for themselves. The consciousness of

freedom is always a consciousness of unjustified personal responsibility.

This state of affairs, says Sartre, is intolerable for a consciousness that must, at al1

times, be aware of the arbitrary condition of al1 its choices. As 'moral' agents, we lack

any sort of pnor extemai justification for the choices we make. Our choices, and our

king, are in this sense "absurd." This is not the only term existentialists have chosen to

express this predicament. While, for Sartre, the human condition is absurd, deBeauvoir

prefers instead to characterize it as "ambiguous." So what is in a word? Here, we see it

reveals an author's whole viewpoint.' In a, we see consciousness'

self-detennination abandoned to an ironic fatalism, where the lack of external

justification is taken to imply the impossibility of any justification at ail. This is in tum

the impetus for the project of bad faith, which is more or less universal and futile. In The

Ethics of Ambi~uity. we understand that man is such that the question of his justification

is unresolved. For consciousness, according to deBeauvoir, the chips are not yet down.

She argues that if man is lacking extemal justification because he is the condition

on which al1 justifications are based. then there is no sense in clinging to the idea that

?ln a way, the disclission above is a wonderful bit of vindication for the thesis of existential psychoanalysis. This special branch of psychology, introduced in

O-, proposes to divine a person's fundamental choices by an examination of their personal acts and meanings since each of these, to the srnailest and least considered, are made equally on the bais of their Original Project. For Sartre perhaps more than anyone, then, a careful scrutiny of his words is an eotirely appropriate and reasonable strategy. In this case, to speak of the "absurdity of human existence" implies a good deal more than the lack of prior justification. It is a reference to the unavailability of justification from any corner and, quite pessirnisticalIy. of the wasted efforts expended in seeking it.

extemal justification would be better than what is a~ai lable .~~ Quite simply, it is not the

case that extemal justification is out of reach -- on this view, it is simply impossible and

nonsensical for man. Nevertheless, the pessimism of Sartre's perspective is of a man

who, at the outset of seeking justification, finds hirnself summarily damned by the denial

of extemal justification. If consciousness can rid itself of the prejudice that self-

justification, the only justification that is possible for man, is only second-rate, then the

attempt at justification can really begin. Otherwise, dl of the tremendous effort that is

devoted to bad faith in order to diminish one's pesonal responsibiiity (in order to

diminish the need for justification) is wasted in a misguided striving towards an

impossible goal. We will retum to deBeauvoir's text at other points in Our examination

of the ontology. We will find then that her solutions, while enlightening, cannot yet be

grounded in the Sartrean ontology because they rely on the reasonable choice of a new

value. We shall see that, for Sartre, both value and reason cannot support such a solution

until the creation myth has been dealt with.

The equation of anguish with the consciousness of freedom has always seemed

countenntuitive to me. It is not only shockingly negative, but also restrictive, as Sartre

will admit of no other options Save one, which he is quick to dis mis^"^. It is an odd

situation when an advocate of the radical freedom of human beings argues that no choice

is possible. We shall return to this. It is, however, a compelling association. "Anguish"

incorporates a number of features that make its equivocation with the consciousness of

. . "De~eauvoir, Simone, n e mies of -, p. 15. i 2 ~ h i s alternative to anguish is the playful attitude, which is dismissed as only

another form of the desire which underlies anguish, the desire to be.

freedom tempting.

Anguish evokes a number of associated themes: it is a moment of agonizing

indecision; it implies that a decision musf be made; and that I must make it without relief

from my responsibility. It aiso implies that 1 must choose without knowing the right

choice. and that the consequences I suffer will therefore be of my choosing. In this way,

"anguish encapsulates the human condition of king without justification and

nevertheless king required to choose.

If existentialism teaches us anything, it is to be wary of descriptions that

'encapsulate' the human condition. Let us note that in agreeing that "anguish" does

express the character of freedom of consciousness, we have made a judgement about its

meaning. This brings us back to Sartre's own statement that anguish is the qualiîy of our

consciousness of freedom. In the text, anguish is the motive for Our engagement in bad

faith. "Everything takes place, in fact, as if Our essentiai and irnrnediate behaviour with

respect to anguish is flight.""

The term "motive" has a specialized meaning in the context of

ot-, where accounts of motive are excuses told after the event of a decision in

order to justify it to oneself. "Motive" is for Sartre one of the concepts that promotes

psychological determinism and, as a result. bad faith. 1 have used motive in this

specialized sense deliberately. There cm be no doubt that Sartre feels that the project of

bad faith is a response to anguish. We shall also see, however. that Sartre's anaiysis of

meanings leads us to suspect the simplicity of the comection between anguish and the

43 sartre. &P., Being and no th in an es^, p.40.

34

consciousness of fieedom.

We wished only to show that there exists a specific consciousness of freedom, and we wished to show that this consciousness is anguish. This means that we wished to estabiished [sic] anguish in its essential structure as consciousness of freedom."

Sartre would have us believe that anguish sirnply is the consciousness of freedom.

This simplistic account is exactiy the sort of detenninistic excuse that Sartre is so wary

of, since it has no reference to choice. That is. he seerns to be saying that the

consciousness of freedom is anguish, and anguish leads to fiight. Since the consciousness

of freedorn is consciousness of freedom from determination, it appears precisely on the

ground of our motives givirzg way. We cannot. on this view, accept anguish as a motive

for the fiight. This makes the conflation ironic. dthough Sartre must feel he has escaped

irony because the motive here is consciousness itself. For Sartre, it is the fact that we

free from determination that we apprehend in anguish. It is my view that he disregards

his own insights into the nature of values and meaning. Anguish is not the consciousness

of freedom itself, but rather a meaning that the consciousness of freedom has for us.

Anguish is the consciousness of freedom when we suffeer this consciousness.

Nomally, this might be properly considered hair-splitting, but in

O- we find a theory of meaning that Sartre manifestiy fails to apply to his own

ontological discovery. Values, we have said, are not values in themselves but rather rely

on consciousness for thei. k ing qua value. We are now prepared to explore the content

of this assertion: meanings and values reveal themselves in the light of chosen ends.

"Sartre, J.-P., Beine Nothinpness. p.33.

4.0 The Behg of Value

We will begin with Sartre's understanding of action. We shall here use physicd

action as the model, but there is little reason to doubt that our observations will be tnie of

other kinds of action, such as speech. He distinguishes action from other kinds of

movement by its purposefulness. We already understand that phenomena cannot cause

consciousness to act. This means that motives are only a fiction that serve the purpose we

identified above: to convince ourselves that we are mere things at the mercy of

deterministic drives or external forces. For this reason, he argues that motives qua motive

do not precede the actions they motivate. That is not to Say that the experiences that we

cite as motives are generated de novo as we speak of them, but raiher that their character

as motivations only appears in light of the action I take in their narne. Prior to this action,

my experiences were simply past. Now, 1 must recover them in order to have them play a

role in my action as its meaning and justification.

Sartre maintains that this holds tme for d l meanings. In some cases, like utility, it

is easy to see the predication of meaning on purposes. Sartre offers this exarnple as a

further illustration: For a climber, a mountain can be a challenge or an opportunity. For a

traveler who must cross the mountain or go around it, it is an obstacle or a delay. For a

businessman in Paris, the mountain is only part of the vast undifferentiated background

against which his concems in the city play themselves out. For each of these, the

mountain may inspire terror, awe, greed, indifference, or any of a large set of affective

States. In all three cases, the brute fact of the mountain is the sarne, but its meaning varies

widely with each agent's ends.

Purposefùlness requires a goal, which is a state of affairs that is apprehended as

possible. This apprehension is accomplished on the ground of the given, like al1

apprehensions, and in so far as it requires the agent to withdraw from the given and turn

towards a non-king that is a desirable possibility. we see that the given must be

perceived as lacking the possible. We already know that the given, the in-itself that is

what it is, cannot be lacking anything in iwlf. It is a "plenum." This lack, then, must be

introduced into the given from without by the nihilation of consciousness. It should be

apparent that in so far as meanings rely on the surpassing of the given towards some end,

meaning relies on the k ing of the for-itself as a surpassing.

This very flight confers on the given state its character of enptiness or lack; in the past the lack could not be lack, for the given c m be "lacking" only if it is surpassed towards [blank ] by a k ing which is its own transcendence. But this flight is a flight towards [blank] and it is this "towards" which gives flight its rnea~ling~~

In the passage above, we see that Sartre has reversed the explanatory order that is

normally used to connect meanings to purposes. Conventionally, we are said to choose

ends based on our values. but for Sartre. values only have meaning in light of those ends.

Values qua value cannot be prior to the ends. So. while we would nomally say that the

consciousness of freedom motivates a flight called bad faith, we now see that, having

formulated a project of flight, consciousness confers upon itself the meaning "to-be-fled."

This is not to introduce anything new to Sartre, but to apply his own theory of value

strictly. We shali examine an example of his own, where Sartre discusses the condition

of a potentially revolutionary worker. prior to forming the revolutionary project:

"Sartre, J.-P., and Nothinpness, p.203.

37

He suffen without considering his suffering and without confemng value upon it. To suffer and to be are one and the sarne for him. His s u f f e ~ g is the pure affective tenor of his nonpositionai consciousness, but he does not contemplate it. Therefore this suffering cannot be in itself a motive for his acts. Quite the cont rq , it is after he has formed the project of changing the situation that it will appear intolerable to him?

For now, it is not the consciousness of freedom that concens us - rather, it is its

apprehension as intolerable. Consciousness is not consciousness of its own freedom in

indifference. Rather, we suffer the fact that we are wholly free and without justification.

We see that, in Sartre's view, the affective motivation of an experience must be the doing

of consciousness which freely chooses to formulate a project and cannot be in the object

in itself. For the same reason that there can be a mgative reply to any question, there is

always the possibility of an indifferent reply to experience. This is one of the reasons that

not al1 workers are revohtionaries. Consciousness is a cornmitment, but to choose to do

nothing is also a choice. That is not to advocate an indifferent reply, but to Say that one

must be possible. The key point here, and it is one that Sartre hides from himself (in

apparent bad faith), is that if consciousness suffers its freedom, it is in the light of a

chosen project, and not because consciousness is suffenng in itself.

If motives and other phenornena cannot in principle suffice to account for human

action, then what do we make of Sartre's account of bad faith? Following Sartre's

thinking, we must agree that if much of human existence is engaged in flight, we cannot

rely on the consciousness of freedom as Anguish to explain it. Rather, we see how the

consciousness of freedom gets its character as "Anguish" - it is given it in light of the

' Sartre, J.-P., W d No-, p.435.

38

project of Flight - it is to-be-fled. And yet, bad faith is so pervasive and so futile that it

begs for expianation. On one level, no explanatory account can be made in principle

because any project, even bad faith, refers to an individual unjustifiable choice. This

suggests to us that there is a problern with the unequivocal negative value of the

consciousness of freedom, the consciousness that freedom has of itself, since in principle

values cannot be unequivocal according to Be in~ @ N o t w e s s . If consciousness

were to have a meaning guaranteed for itself simply by virtue of king consciousness then

this meaning would be its essence. For the existentiaiist, however, human king is

precisely the being for whom existence precedes essence."

That value, we see, mut be derived from a particular project that human beings

choose. More importantly, its meaning must be expected to Vary as different ends are

chosen. Nevertheless, Sartre does not allow that other projects that are not in bad faith

are possible. For Sartre, "good faidi" is only another instance of bad faith such that each

passes into the other, and "authenticity" is never defined. If the flight from freedom is

futile, why do consciousnesses, who are self-consciousnesses, choose it exclusively? We

now know that it cannot be because the consciousness of freedom is anguish, since it is

only anguish qua anguish in the context of the flight.

5.0 The Myth of Creation

The ongin of the project of bad faith is the subject of a rather unexpected bit of

ontology. Above, we saw that in order for consciousness to be the principle of revelation

47 . . Sartre, J.-P.. mten-, p. 26.

39

of being, it has to be non-self-identical, a surpassing both of Being and of itself, and

noncontiguous with Being. That is to Say, it is a revelation of Being on the grounds of a

nihilation between it and Being such that it posits itself as not k i n g this Being. Al1 this

is said on the level of pure description. albeit in the language of ontology.

The for-itself is the in-itself losing itself as in-itself in order to found itself as consciousness.48

In an argument that owes much to Hegelian dialectic, Being nihilates itself in

order to pass through into a synthetic foundation. We also find a tension in the text on

this point. The affirmation of the in-itself is an event that happens to the in-itself like an

adventure. In each case, however, it is noteworthy that it is by the for-itself that the in-

itself receives its affirmation. Does the in-itself need affirmation? Can it become the for-

itself in order to affirm itself? If the for-itself happens to found the in-itself, is this only

accidental?

But then in the quasi-totality of Being, affirmation happens to the In-itself; it is the adventure of the In-itself to be affirrned. This affi iat ion which could not be effected as the affirmation of self by the In-itself without destroying its being-in-itself, happens to the In-itself as the affirmation is realized by the For-it~elf.'~

The for-itself cannot be the adventure of the in-itself to be founded, sirnply

because Being is precisely that which cannot have adventures. Being is not subject to

change, and cannot form projects. Nor can it produce the nothingness that nihilates it,

since there is in principle no nothingness in Being. We must agree with Sartre's earlier

position that nothingness is a "spontaneous upsurge." 1 have already shown that the utter

48 Sartre, J.-P.. B e i n g d No-, p. 82. " Sartre, J.-P., B e i n p d N o t u , p. 2 17.

independence of Being sufficed for Sartre in his critique of the theory of Divine Creation.

This insistence is what protects him. philosophically, from the charge of a pure solipsistic

idealism that he is careful to refute in the Introduction.

Now we know that the for-iüelf appears in the original act by which the in-itself nihilates itself in order to found itself?

Perhaps Sartre feels that to Say that Being founds itself through the for-itself, he is

engaged in a description and not a justification. That is, given that Being is founded, his

account is merely of how it is founded and not why. It is apparent. however, that he

means more than this. Sartre does not mean that Being fmt is and, by the felicitous

accident of nothingness. is aiso founded. He means that the for-itself exists to found the

in-itself.

The in-itself cannot provide the foundation for anything; if it founds itself, it does so by giving itself the modification of the for-itself. It is the foundation of the for-itself in so far as it is already no longer in-itself, and we encounter here again the origin of every foundati~n.~'

It must be apparent, however, that foundation is not an ontological requirement so much

as a logical one. Being simply is. It cannot be the case that Being needs foundation. To

Say that it is founded nevertheless is to apply judgement to that which is, in principle,

beyond affirmation and negation and to imply, further, that this requirement of foundation

precedes the existence of the being of judgements, which is consciousness. It is to Say

that. for Being, to-be-founded is a value that explains the appearance of evaluation in the

world.

' Sartre, J.-P., -es, p.118. Sartre. J.-P., Beina and Nothinpness. p.82.

The obvious conclusion is that unless we wish to entertain the concept that the

being of the requirement for foundation for Being is fundamentai to the k ing of value

and judgement, we should not indulge in causal accounts of Being or of existence. Sartre

cannot, on this view, explain consciousness as the product of anything, let alone of the

process of Being founding itself. While the for-itself reveals Being. this is for the sake of

the for-itself alone. The for-itself does not, by revealing Being, found it because Being is

only reveaied by the introduction of determïnations. Being, the independent,

undifferentiated plenum, could not be touched in itself. The issue here is not whether

consciousness exists as a nihilation of Being or not, but whether an explanation can be

made of it.

If the for-itself exists in order to found the in-itself, then that must be predicated

upon a value of k ing justified or founded that Being could not, in pnnciple, sustain.

More importantly, it also implies that justification is a value in spite of consciousness and

not because of it. If consciousness exists to justib itself, it is as a result of this value.

The for-itself, however, is only a derivative being at best and is nothing more, we have

said, than the revelation of Being. We have aiready seen that by revealing Being, the for-

itself cannot found it, but we also see that it cannot found itself.

It is of no use to Say that Being is founded becnuse it is beyond foundation. It

simply is. The for-itself can never have extemal justification of its existence because it

has no reai k ing to justify. Now we have arrived at an explanation of bad faith. By

virtue of the original value of k i n g founded. consciousness apprehends its lack of

extemal justification with a negative affective content. It suffers its existence, since it is

not Being.

It cannot be the case that the value of having foundation is a value in itself for

Sartre, since values are only predicated upon chosen projects. In this case. if the value of

being founded is to account for the k ing of consciousness, then it must be a value

predicated upon the projecr of the in-itself to found itself. Whether the in-itself can found

itself or not is not even an issue; the in-itself, we know, cunnot have projects. Being

simply is, it cannot want or need to be. The argument collapses, and the for-itself is

thereby freed from the burden of an absolute Value..

The result of this is that we see that the creation myth by which S m e explains the

existence of consciousness is the grounds for the pessimism that pervades his work. That

pessirnism makes bad faith an inescapable doom, emasculates reflection, and renders a

genuine existentiaiist ethics unworkable. Now we have shown that the inevitability of

bad faith cm only be the consequence of Sartre's own project to found Being and thereby

explain the existence of consciousness, which relied on an indefensible thesis of a Value

for Being. That is not to Say that bad faith is no longer rampant in the choices of

consciousnesses in the world, but that they can choose otherwise if they wish. This is a

significant step for the project of the development of an ethics, since such an undertaking

m u t rely upon the ability ro choose new values.

We have now dealt with bad faith, so let us address the possibility of a genuine

reflection. If we can xhabilitate reflection, then the project of deliberating the values by

which consciousness should conduct itself can begin.

6.0 Absolute Value

Again, our examination of being leads us directly to value. Sartre argues that the

for-itself does not view itself as lacking the in-itself and so seeks to rejoin it, since this

would amount to the destruction of the for-itseif qua for-itself. To become in-itself is

death. Rather, the totality that human reality aims for is the Self, which is apprehended as

the for-itself 'imbedded' (for lack of a better term) in the in-itself. The for-itself does not

seek oblivion, but a guarantee. The concept of the Self is a for-itself that is also in-itself,

and so enjoys the guaranteed king that things have. It is an "impossible synthesis;" the

subject cannot be collapsed into self and preserved, since the self only is for-

consciousness. Nevertheless, this explains why bad faith commonly involves

identification with one's Self. The "in-itself-for-itself," a consciousness which is

guaranteed, which does not need to make itself be, which is justified, is Sartre's definition

of God.

These considerations suffice to make us admit that human reality is that by which value arrives in the world. But the meaning of king for value is that it is that toward which a being surpasses its being; every value- oriented act is a wrenching away from its own king toward [blank]. Since value is dways and everywhere the beyond of al1 surpassings, it c m be considered as the unconditioned unity of ail surpassings of being. Thereby it makes a dyad with the reaiity which originaily surpasses its king and by which surpassing cornes into king -- i.e. with human reaiity. We see also that since value is the unconditioned beyond of al1 surpassings, it must be origindly the beyond of the very king which surpasses, for that is the only way in which value can be the original

beyond of al1 possible surpa~sings.~~

This passage outlines a number of important implications, some familiar by now.

and some new. First, human beings are the means by which value appears in the world.

Second, value is tied to a surpassing of being. Third, value can be considered as the

'beyond' of dl surpassings. We can take this to mean that value is. for Sartre. the unity

of dl surpassings. And now we find the most controversial point: if vaiue is the unity of

al1 surpassings, then it can be considered the absolute end of the king which surpasses.

If vaiue is originally the 'beyond* of the for-itself, and the 'beyond' of the for-itself is also

the Self, or the ideal in-itself-for-itself, that consciousness intends in bad faith, then the

in-itself-for-itself is Value. This is the argument that cements, for Sartre, the connection

between man's "useless passion" for the Godhead and dl value for man. But Sartre's

argument is spurious, since it relies on the notion that the sum of dl value cm be given

content based on the evidence of bad faith.

Tt is also of no small concem that Sartre even considered that Value (the beyond

of al1 surpassings) was a workable idea. Chosen by none, it is nevertheless inhented by

al1 consciousnesses. This is at odds, we know, with an understanding of value as strictly

subjective. We have shown aiso that bad faith is only one project among many, and

primary to none. Its goal, the Self, can only be considered one possible vaiue. The

equivalence of Value, the being of al1 surpassings, to an impossible Godhead, the in-

itself-for-itself, relies squarely on the creation myth we have revealed as just that - a

myth.

- -

52 Sartre, &P.. Being and Nothingness, p.93.

45

In Our discussion of the phenomenological method, 1 suggested that we might

identiQ points where the significance of certain evidence was overestimated and discuss

iheir implications for the ontology and an ethics. In pursuing the phenomenological

manifestation of both the consciousness of freedom and the lack of self-identity of

consciousness, Sartre needed to find examples of these that were always tme. It could not

be the case that these ontological categones could be expressed in the phenornena only

some of the time, since his claims can only be confirmed on the basis of

phenomenological evidence. Therefore, it seems to me that when Sartre discovered that

anguish expressed the character of self-consciousness that he sought, he was willing to

accept that this phenornenon was as constant as his ontological discovery. As a result,

although Sartre considers the possibility of an escape from bad faith, this possibility is

never given substantive content. Its most obvious opposite, good faith, is reformulated as

bad faith, and its other alternative, authenticity, is never explored. 1 suggest that bad faith

was developed without real possibility of resolution because Sartre mistakeniy assumed

that anguish is the consciousness of freedom. Instead. 1 will suggest that anguish, while

al1 too common an apprehension of one's freedom, passes into other meanings as well.

These meanings center on creativity.

6.1 deBeauvoir's New Value

But on the other hand if there is a world, it is because we rise up into the world suddenly and in totality. We have observed, in fact, in that sarne chapter devoted to transcendence, that the in-itself by itself alone is not capable of any unity as a world. But our upsurge is a passion in this sense that we lose ourselves in nihilation in

order that a world may e ~ i s t . ~ ~

In the Ethiçs of A-ity . . , deBeauvoir argues that if an existentialist ontology

informs us that it is through consciousness that there is a world, and that consciousness

makes itself a nothingness in order that the world exist, why not make freedom itself a

value? This is an attractive solution because it was suggested in the final pages of

and itself. In deBeauvoir's view, if it is required that consciousness be a

nothingness in order that the world may be, then consciousness should will its own

nothingness in order to will its world. Her view denies the futility of S a r t ~ ' s account.

It is not in vain that man nullifies being. Thanks to him, k i n g is disclosed and he desires this disclosure. There is an original type of attachment to k i n g which is not the relationship "wanting to be" but rathcr "wanting to disclose k~eing."~'

That is to Say, consciousness need not expend itself in a futile atternpt to achieve

the being of the in-itself, but rather it can choose to will its existence as the k i n g by

which there is a world. In this way. what was suffered as the unfortunate state of man is

re-apprehended as joy in creating the world. What was a failure is now seen, in the Iight

of the constitutive role of consciousness, as a triumph of creation. (This reversal alone

should convince anyone of the subjectivity of value and bad faith.)

7.0 The Rehabilitation of Reflection

In a word, reflection is in bad faith in so far as it constitutes itself as the

53 Sartre, &P., m d Nothinmess, p.461. . . "De~eauvoir, Simone, -CS of -, p. 12.

revelation of the object which 1 make-to-be-me."

Freedorn already has a value for Sartre. It is anguish. But anguish is oniy a

meaning in light of the project of flight, as we have seen. Nevertheless, deBeauvoir's

solution cannot work given the ontology as it stands. Where deBeauvoir's thesis rests

squarely on the reasonable selection of a new value based upon a reflective understanding

of the ontology, Sartre has salted the earth against the possibility of reinterpreting the

human condition on the basis of refiection. 1 do not refer here to the revelation of Being

as a reflective act, but to the choosing of a new value on the basis of a reflective

appreciation of one's own role in constituting the world. According to Sartre, however,

we can neither choose new absolute values nor genuinely deliberare about them. We

have already dealt with the possibility of choosing new values in Our discussion. If the

creation myth were tme. then consciousness would inherit the value by which it suffers its

existence simply by virtue of being consciousness. Now we will see that reflection, as

Sartre formulates it. cannot allow us to escape the necessity of this inherited value

because it, too, hides the value of founded, guaranteed king within its workings.

Sartre overstates the limitations of reflection drastically. While a commitment to

values always underlies reasonable reflective judgement, it is a public and nonexclusive

cornmitment to the principles of cornmunicability, consistency and justifiability of value

claims and other propositions. While the observance of these values is a choice, these

choices do not exclude in principle any of a large range of value judgements. This fact

has been recognized by a number of authors including deBeauvoir and Barnes. Each saw

" Sartre, J.-P., Being and Nothinaness, p.161.

48

that the questions of ethics c m only be questions of value to an agent on the bais of that

subject's choice to be ethical. Once that choice has been made, then the recourse to

reason as a tool for apprehending justification can not be mled out on the grounds that,

for reason, value has already k n decided. This restriction, that the project of ethics

relies on an unjustifiable choice to live a justified life, is not unique to existentialism. In

fact, it is m e of any ethical system, if only its proponents would admit it. Ethics must,

after dl. rely on freedom. It is the capacity of existentialism to accommodate the freedom

of subjects that prompts deBeauvoir to write that existentialism is "the only philosophy in

which an ethics has its place."56

Sartre's position that refiective consciousness is impotent in the face of choosing a

new value is the result of an interesting twist in his thinking on the distinction between

voluntary and involuntary action. Conventionaily, involuntary actions are viewed as

being unfree. This distinction, however, relies on an understanding of the free will,

according to Sartre, as k i n g beset by the determined and determining forces of passions,

needs, etc. Under this view, we subscribe to a picture of a single consciousness at war

within itself, with the reasonable will struggling to keep mastery over its many beasts.

Sartre's understanding of freedom, we have seen, is at odds with this formulation of

human being. First, consciousness must be either wholly free or wholly determined, he

says, since any hybrîd form would have consciousness split into two or more

independent, incommunicado modes of being. Furthemore, consciousness must be

either wholly free or wholiy determined and we have seen that a detemiined

56~e~eauvo i r , Simone, m e m c s of Ambiguitv . *

, p. 34.

49

consciousness could not produce the nihilations necessary for its king as a consciousness

which is the k ing of determinations. The for-itself must be, by definition, a denial of

Being or else it cannot be the condition of questioning, determination, or perception -

and we have also seen that no other k ing could play this role.

We are free when the final term by which we make known to ourselves what we are is an end; that is, not a real existent ..."

Second, the freedom of consciousness, which was taken above to be the nihilating

'power' that consciousness has in the face of the world, is as much in play in the case of

an involuntary or passionate act as it is in the case of a cautious and carefully reasoned

deliberation. Either way, human action is goal-directed, and so is predicated upon the

nihilation of the given situation in the light of some possible outcome. So the distinction

between involuntary and voluntary consciousness, whatever it may be, is not a distinction

between unfree and free human action. Sartre concludes that d l human action. by virtue

of its reliance on a nihilating consciousness, is free.

The goal of the reflective scissiparity is, as we have seen, to recover the reflected-on so as to constitute that unrealizable totality "In-itself-for- itself," which is the fundamental value posited by the for-itself in the very upsurge of its being?

Now this fairly straightfonvard argument about the relative freedom of voluntary

and involuntary action takes an interesting tum. If voluntary and involuntary action are

both equally free, he argues, then reasonable and deliberate decision-making is only a

style of conducting oneself in the world that is fûnctionally equivalent to, say, acting on

" Sartre, &P., Being and no th in an es^, p.483. Sartre, J.-P., W d No-, p.45 1.

impulse, whim or panic. Each of these, so far as they are goal-directed, must be equaily

free. Al1 that diffen is the means to the end and the means, for Same, simply reflects the

values that are chosen dong with the end. That is to Say, 1 do not act according to my

reason or my passions because of the circumstances of my situation, but because 1 have

chosen one or the other style of action for this pariicular end. This means, for Sartre, that

it is in pnnciple impossible for a consciousness to decide on values through deliberation,

since to deliberate is, under this analysis, oniy an application of values that have aiready

been chosen.

The result is that a voluntary deliberation is always a deception. How can 1 evaiuate causes and motives on which 1 myself confer their value before al1 deliberation and by the very choice which 1 make of 1nyself?5~

The implications of this position for ethics cannot be understated. U thoughtful

deliberation cannot decide values, then ail ethical inquiry, understood as more or less

careful thinking about values, is futile. Worse, it is self-deceptive. since for Sartre

reflection is aimed at realizing the impossible in-itself-for-itself and so al1 reflection is

performed under the rubric of this absolute value.

The consequence of his position on reflection is that al1 activity and al1 choices are

detemiined by the absolute Value of Being (which, we have seen. is the ba is of the

creation myth) before any reflection or any consideration of values is possible. This is

crucial since it blocks ethics in principle. 1s this distinction of Sartre's, that reflective

consciousriess only receives the values that the prereflective consciousness chooses,

warranted?

59 Sartre. &P., Being and Nothinaness, p.450.

7.1 A Distinction Without a Difference

Let us examine whether there are any grounds for the denial of new values to

reflection. There are two possible grounds on which Sartre could make a distinction

between reflective and prerefiective consciousness. Fint, reflective and prereflective

consciousness are directed at different sorts of objects. Roughly speaking. the

prereflective consciousness is the consciousness of lived expenence, while the reflective

is a consciousness directed toward pnor consciousnesses. This cannot be the bais for an

argument that there is an ontologicd difference between the two, however, because in al1

cases the objects of consciousness are phenornena. As such, they cannot act on

consciousness in principle. That is the substance of Sartre's refutation of determinism.

Our conclusion must be that a distinction between the two modes of consciousness cannot

be accounted for by their different objects.

The second possibility is that each of the two modes of consciousness apprehends

its objects differently. In fact, he says that this is precisely the case. Reflective

consciousness "thematizes" its objects. It seems that Sartre means that reflective

consciousness adds a layer of meaning to its objects. It is in this sense that 1 understand

Sartre's comments on memory. In that discussion, he refers to reflection as thematizing,

by which he intends to explain the qualitative difference between memory and the

richness of an experience at the moment of its appearance. Memory dws not resumect

the lived experience in full, he says, because reflection thematizes it.

We cannot accept that thematizing per se is only a reflective act. In so far as

consciousness is constitutive of its world, prereflective consciousness projects meanings

onto its objects as rnuch as reflective consciousness. Othenvise, we should be surpnsed

to find in Beine No- the revival of Locke's failed theory that some piimary

qualities inhere in the objects of experience and other secondary qualities are merely

supplied by the subject. This possibility is quite obviously not what Sartre has in mind

when he argues that consciousness is the ba i s for any determinations of Being. So the

prereflective consciousness must also thematize.

In addition to the sense of adding meanings, "thematizing" implies that the

experience is tmncated by the act. This would seem to suggest that it is not the adding of

meanings that reflection does uniquely, but the abstracting of experience iowards

generalities. However, we aiso cannot accept the possibility that while the prerefiective

consciousness does thematize lived experience, the refiective goes one better by

abstracting i t.

In this sense there is no such thing as an operation of abstraction if we rnean by that a psychological afFirmative act of selection effected by a constituted rnind. Far from abstracting certain quaiities in terms of things, we must on the contrary view abstraction as the original mode of k ing of the for-itself. necessary that there may be, in generai. things and a world. The abstract is a structure of the world and is necessary for the upsurge of the concrete only in so far as it leans in the direction of its abstraction, that if it makes itself known by the abstraction which it is. The being of the for-itself is revealing-abstrac ting."

We have already established in section 2.6 that consciousness cannot really be

- - -- - --

a Sartre. J.-PsI Beina and Nothimess, p.194.

53

separated into two or more concurrent consciousnesses. We also see that there is no

reason to expect that a real difference exists between these two norninally different

consciousnesses, based upon either their different sets of objects, or on their conduct

towards those objects. We have also already demonstrated that the absolute value of the

in-itself-for-itself, whose absolute nature guaranteed the inevitability of bad faith, could

not be grounded in Sartre's own theory of meaning. In light of al1 these considerations,

we will set aside the distinction that denies reflection the creation of values in principle as

a merely artificial fabrication.

7.2 When F d o m is Absolute, What Matters Reflection?

But the man who acts in this way, whose end is the liberation of himself and others, who forces himself to respect this end through the means which he uses to attain it. no longer deserves the name of adventurer .... One is then in the presence of a genuinely free m a d 1

It is a little dishonest to argue that reflection assumes value, and to insist that it

does not exhibit the sarne freedom in the face of value as the prereflective. when

reflection has so profound an effect on freedom. While nothing c m determine the

specifics of choice, reflection can nevertheless touch the situation. which is the context

for choice. Sartre argues that since consciousness is the precondition of the determination

of the world, no situation can be more or less free than any other. Victirns of torture, he

says, remain free even in the context of their final surrender to the torture. "The proof of

this is the fact that he will later live out his abjuration in remoae and shame. Thus he is

6' DeBeauvoir, Simone. -CS of . . , pp. 60.6 1.

54

entirely responsible for it.""

This underlines the fact that absolute freedom is nevertheless not practical

freedom. This limitation probably explains Marxism's appeal for Sartre. There, at least,

the promotion of practical freedom was a supportable aim. Within the context of

d No-, however, we shall touch upon the largely unacknowledged role that

reflection plays in structunng the situation. It is unacknowledged, 1 believe. because to

allow that refl ection could affect the situation, Sartre would have slid closer to a

solipsistic idealism than he would like. Given that consciousness is a freedom because it

is a nihilation of this situation, freedom is contingent on the facts of the case. This is its

facticiîy .

The for-itself does not exist subsequently to know; neither can we Say that it exists only in so far as it knows or is known. for this would be to make k ing vanish into an infinity regulated by particular bits of knowledge. Knowing is an absolute and primitive event; it is the absolute upsurge of the For-itself in the rnidst of being and beyond being..?

On one hand, we know Sartre's position that, for reflection, values have already

been decided. Sartre tends to treat reason and knowledge, then, as if they have nothing to

do with freedom. On the other hand, there is an equivocation k i n g made in Beiw and

O- between the situation and the knowledge one has of it. To make this

distinction requires that we observe from an intersubjective perspective (which we have

not yet explored) but it is also tnie that in the confines of subjectivity there are

experiences of ignorance or cornpetence that rely on this point. Although reflection,

" Sartre, J.-P., Being, p.403. 63 Sartre. J.-P., Being and NothiLlpness, p.216.

reason, and knowledge are already the product of the freedom that chooses values, they

are nevertheless cntical in the perception and understanding of particulars. We saw this

in Sartre's example of the pre-revolutionary worker. So knowledge does determine the

context of freedom to the extent of limiting the possibilities that are available for the

choosing .

Perhaps this is only to underline Sartre's own thesis that the meaning of a

situation is dependent on consciousness. At points in the text, Sartre does acknowledge

the interplay between freedom and the concept of an action.

A worker in 1830 is capable of revolting if his salary is lowered, for he easily conceives of a situation in which his wretched standard of living would be not as low as the one which is about to be imposed on him. But he does not represent his sufferings to himself as unbearable; he adapts himself to them not through resignation but because he lacks the education and reflection necessary for him to conceive of a social state in which these sufferings would not exist. Consequently, he does not act?

in this passage, we find that actions require the conception of ends in order to be

actions, making this practical freedom contingent upon reflection. Reason and

knowledge, then, may be "after the fact" of a particular choice but they are also among

the preconditions of the next. It is premature to dismiss reflection as bad faith, since it is

a determinant of new values as well as a consequence of the project of bad faith.

J.-P., Peing and Nothirlgness, p.435.

8.0 Conclusion

We have found that, according to Sarue's text, the ontology requires that

consciousness must be spontaneous. free from determinism, and discontinuous with

Being. Being, for its part. is In-itself, a plenum and complete. It is Selbsthdigkeit. On

the other hand, we are also given an account of the Original Project of consciousness to

found the In-itself. This account gives human existence a Purpose, to provide foundation

to Being, and a correspondingly impossible value, the ideal of guaranteed being.

By bestowing on consciousness the Original Project to found the In-itself, he has

gifted consciousness with an absolute value - absolute because it is a value for

consciousness qua consciousness. This is the case because consciousness springs forth

ready-made with a purpose, and, for Sartre, values only appear in the world on the basis

of projects. Since the project to found Being is logically, if not temporally, prior to the

existence of the for-itself, it is certainly not chosen but rather inherited. Once again, this

is only to Say that no one chooses to be bom, so these are a project and a value for

consciousness without choice. In this sense, the responsibility for this value rests on

consciousness in only a causative sense. the same way that matter is responsible for

gravity. The moral dimension of responsibility has been erased since consciousness does

not choose its value.

For Iack of getting out of it, 1 have chosen it?

Perhaps this is d l well and gwd with Sartre, so long as we agree that

consciousness must choose to sustain its values in order for these to be values. The

conscientious objector, for example, must desert or kill hirnself or else take responsibility

for the war. This might be a Saruean version of Original Sin: we are each of us bom with

a value that we must either sustain or not by our choices. Even this concession is

unworkable, however, since Sartre wili not allow that consciousness can refuse this value

and choose some other, since any refusal participates in bad faith. So much for freedom

and responsibility. if we accept this account.

In his creation myth, Sartre forgets his own insight that valries exist because of

consciousness and instead asserts that consciousness exists because of this value: the

value of being founded. This places consciousness squarely within a causal order because

it is the result of a process, and so denies its spontaneity and itsfreedom. It also

introduces the odd notion that the In-itself, a plenum that is what it is, and is

Selbstihdigkeit, needs foundation after dl.

While the creation myth is a denial of the better-argued ontology that requires

consciousness to be spontaneous, we cm nevertheless divine its appeal. [t is religious.

Where the ontology details how the world is put together, it cannot, in principle, address

the question of why. Existentialists, Sartre wmed us, find the absence of God

"extremely embarrassing." That is to Say the least, since Sartre is willing to condemn al1

consciousnesses to the etemal effort to replace

65 Sartre, J . P . , v, 58

the missing Godhead. If Same could

p.554.

argue that God could not exist, and recognize that Creation continued in spite of this, then

it is unfortunate he could not rid hirnself of the conceit that creation is the province of the

Divine. There is, as an existentialist ontology informs us, nothing more human.

Rather than subscribe to Sartre's attractive but wrong-headed explanation of the

ongin of h m n existence, it is time to rescue the insights that human beings are self-

creating, value-creating, and world-creating. The creativity of human beings is a

degraded version of something higher that nevertheless cannot exist. Ln ndding ounelves

of this unnecessary and unattainable absolute value, we are free to retum to the strengths

of the existentialist analysis. We now have a groundwork for the attribution of moral

responsibility to agents and a tool for examining value. While we are limited to

discussing the moral responsibilities of actors in the context of their choice to be ethical.

this is by no means unique to an existentialist perspective.

By rehabilitating reflection as a legitimate tool for examining value, we have

removed the greatest obstacle to a Sartrean ethics. Now, a deliberation of value and

action can be made upon the recognition of a common human condition that includes

freedom, creativity, mutual dependence, and, yes, even self-deception.

Bibliography

I l .

Sartre, Jean-Paul, m d nd- (1956), Philosophical Library, New York, tr. Hazel Barnes.

. . Sartre, Jean-Paul, E&entiaiism and Hu- (1990), Methuen, Reading, UK, tr. Philip Mairet.

Sartre. Jean-Paul, 9 ( 1 Wî), University of Chicago Press, Chicago, tr. David Pellauer.

Sartre, Jean-Paul, Nausea, New Directions Publishing, New York. tr. Lloyd Alexander.

Sartre, Jean-Paul, and Levy, B e ~ y , Hope Now (1996)- University of Chicago Press, Chicago, tr. Adrian van den Hoven.

. . DeBeauvoir, Simone, me Ethics of 1976), Citadel Press, New York, t . . Bernard Frechtman.

Astruc, Alexandre, and Contat, Michel, Sartre (1 W B ) , Urizen Books, New York, tr. Richard Sever.

* .

Barnes, Hazel, An F v (1967). Aifred A Knopf, New York.

Cattarini, L.S., I o Bu= Sartre Not to Praise fIim (1986), privately published, Toronto.

Cranston, Maurice, n e O u w c e of Sa- (1970), Harvest House, Montreal.

Fullbrook, Kate and Edward, &one deBeauvoir and Jm-Paul S m (1994), Harper Collins, New York.

Husserl, Edmund, of Phenamenoloev 973), Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, tr. William P. Alston.

Ed. May, Rollo, -(1967), Random House, New York.

IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (QA-3)

APPLIED A IMAGE. lnc - = 1653 East Main Street - -. - - Rochester. NY 14609 USA -- -- - - Phone: 71 61482-0300 -- -- - - Fax: 71 6/288-5989

O 1993. W i e d Image. tnc.. All Rigtro Reserwd