A Critique of Existentialism
by Benjamin Studebaker
There’s a problem with existentialism, specifically Jean Paul Sartre’s concept of “existence precedes essence”. Today I’d like to talk about that concept, why it is flawed, and what implications all of this has for our wider society and political structure.
First “existence precedes essence” needs to be explained. Existence is consciousness, while essence is genetic and environmental makeup. In traditional (by which I mean non-existentialist) western philosophy, essence always precedes existence. We are defined by our genetic and environmental characteristics; they determine our behaviour. Generally shared genetic and environmental characteristics across the species are typically termed “human nature”. Existentialism rejects the existence of a common human nature by proposing that existence comes before essence, meaning that our consciousness has the opportunity to determine how we feel about the world around us independent of our basic genetic and environmental characteristics.
Of course, there are certain limitations to this that existentialists recognise–a person cannot by force of consciousness wish for different genetic characteristics or environmental background. One cannot simply will oneself into a bird or will an abusive childhood away. What the existentialists do propose, however, is that since one’s consciousness comes first, one can choose how to respond to or feel about one’s genetic background or environmental characteristics, both historically and in the present moment. Taken together, genetics and environment are typically referred to by existentialism as “facticity”, the objective facts about the external world that the consciousness can respond to in a variety of ways. Importantly, because under existentialism the consciousness has the opportunity to choose how to respond, there can be no determinism and consequently no prediction of human behaviour based on general principles. It also means that people have personal responsibility for everything that they do and are autonomous individuals, a very popular and comforting belief.
The key problem with this is that if the consciousness, the thing deciding how to respond to facticity, is not itself made up of facticity–of genetic and environmental background and structuring–what is it? Existentialism proposes that existence comes first, but how can a consciousness exist produced from no source with a fundamental facticity? Furthermore, we know scientifically that consciousness is produced by a physical implement–the brain. If you damage a person’s brain, the level of consciousness will decline. Imagine, for example, that a person is confronted with a given situation and asked how to respond to that situation–in other words, how that person’s consciousness will respond to the facticity. The answer the person would likely give would be very different if, prior to asking the question, I removed a portion of the person’s brain known to handle say, critical thinking. What this means is that existence cannot precede essence–in order to have consciousness, one must have a functional brain, and the facticity of that brain–its genetic characteristics and environmental influences, will give one a nature that will limit one’s scope of response to a given situation or stimulus. It is as if one attempts to evaluate the properties of a metal using a lens made of the very same metal–one cannot know what impact the lens is having on the analysis and on the data, but one thing is certain, and that is that, unless the metal is absolutely perfect for use in lenses, the data is going to be both inaccurate and useless.
This is not to say that a person cannot choose to view a situation differently in accordance with existentialist teaching, but it does mean that the extent to which a person can view a situation differently or take personal responsibility for behaviour is dependent upon that given person’s nature. In other words, ability to, from time to time transcend one’s nature must, inevitably, come from a nature that permits occasional self-transcendence. Existentialism is not metaphysical truth, but people can be of a nature such that they are inclined to ethically aspire to it.
This has grave implications. Because existentialism and ethic of personal responsibility appeal to some people due to their nature, those people embrace existentialism and personal responsibility and expect others to do so. Their existentialism by definition precludes them from recognising or acknowledging that non-existentialists are not of a nature such that they can embrace or practise existentialism. This leads to unrealistic expectations on the part of existentialists. Their own seeming transcendence of their nature is in fact an expression of their nature, but they nonetheless expect other people to be able to do the very same thing despite lacking natures favourable to self-transcendence. The typical existentialist response to the existence of these inherently non-existentialist individuals is one of condemnation–their unwillingness to take personal responsibility is deemed an intellectual or moral failing, when in fact it is a consequence of their nature, as immutable as the existentialist’s own ability to decide to see a situation or a fact in a different light. A person inclined to self-transcendence is every bit as locked into that behaviour as a person who is disinclined is locked into disinclination.
What is the result? The widespread belief by those with the inherent natural psychological ability to overcome difficult upbringings or unfavourable genetic backgrounds that those who don’t have failed to take responsibility and are themselves deficient. This leads to a lack of sympathy and a lack of compassion, and our political policies reflect the dominance of the existentialist ideology. Those who are poor are assumed to be lacking in virtue or initiative due to incompetence, immorality, or irresponsibility rather than a nature and upbringing that not only makes success difficult, but makes choosing to transcend said nature and upbringing difficult, if not biologically and psychologically impossible.
This existentialist belief that denies nature altogether either denies neuroscience and asserts that consciousness comes from something immaterial or requires that our brains act independently of their own structure. In either case, it is extremely unreasonable, and leads to equally unreasonable consequential beliefs that require the impossible from one’s fellow man. It is self-delusive and a philosophical dead end. It leads to a total misunderstanding of the nature of man and of man’s possibilities. It would be wise to put it aside and resume the age old discussion of what elements in man’s nature are most critical in understanding what man’s limits are and how man can best organise societies and projects in consequence of and in accordance with those limits. It is no more sensible to reject man’s behavioural limits than it is to reject man’s inability to fly or subsist underwater. Better to recognise those limits and devise tools and structures that help us to surmount them than to jump off of cliffs and hope to will ourselves to survive the splat.
I appreciate your scientific realism and the neurological evidence you provide. It is refreshing to see that such a perspective is not completely lost from the world of philosophy. There are a few flaws, however, with your critique. The most evident of these flaws is that in your attack on existentialism believers, you generalize and assume what their logic will be. If in fact, they are 100% in-line with existential ideology, you would be correct. Realistically, this is rarely the case because most people are “buffet philosophers” in that they pick and choose pieces of idea systems to believe. This means you must consider those who might deny aspects of existentialism yet claim others. For example, is it not entirely improbable that someone could believe “existence precedes essence” yet justify the lack of others’ ability to practice it because of the effects of socialization? I am personally acqainted with individuals of such mind who are accurately described as “Existentialists” though they do not have unrealistic expectations of others. Consequently, it seems like this part of your critique was directed towards a specific person or small group of people rather than the entire population of Existentialists. Additionally, when critquing, it is imperative to consider the perspective of those you are analyzing in its entirity rather than attacking the elements specifically that build your case. No person, existentialist or otherwise would try to argue that the manner in which you behave is affected by brain injury. They might argue, however, that the brain is not the source of personality, rather, the transcriptor of a spiritual being. Thus, when damage occurs to the brain, the personality has not been changed or damaged, that which translates the personality is what is broken. Analogously, think of two cell phones that are calling across dimensions. One cell phone represents the conscious and the other represents the body. The brain represents the cell phone tower that bounces the signal from the spiritual plane to the physical plane. Just because the sound on the physical plane’s cell phone becomes incoherent, does not mean the messages being sent from the spiritual cell phone are any different. Do not take what I am saying as me being in disagreeance with you. You provide solid evidence for your claims and you are thorough in your approach. I hope you continue to provide many more discourses like this to edify mankind, because it is this level of thought that has the power to restore intellectualism to an increasingly ignorant world.
I appreciate your thorough and thought-provoking response. You are correct that my argument assumes systematic existentialism without contradiction. A person who picks and chooses as you describe is hard to define philosophically, especially when what is picked is in contradiction–such as a person who claims existence precedes essence but nonetheless believes that socialisation is excluded from what can be transcended. There are likely many such people as you suggest, though I probably wouldn’t call them systematic existentialists because their argument is not consistent. I should have been more specific and attacked systematic, consistent existentialism rather than all people with any existentialist leaning.The argument concerning the use of the brain as a communicator between the spiritual and the material may indeed be something that a great many people believe in, but it is by its very nature unverifiable, whether one is trying to negate or affirm it. That was the primary reason I left it out, it’s a bit of a deus ex machina, an argumentative get out of jail free card, to which no definitive response can be given. I could only make a contradictory assertion to that kind of argument, I could never disprove it. That was my thought process, at any rate.
I do not see any particularly troubling inconsistency in the existentialist argument. The effects of socialization can indeed be transcended, through education in the field of existentialism; just as many other detrimental behavioural effects have been transcended through more traditional education.
Education is a form of socialization.
Yes education is a form of socialization. And socialization can be transcended, by existentialism education/further socialization. It could also be transcended through a natural non-socialized disposition for existential belief. Some can rely on socialization in order to transcend it, but not everyone must rely on socialization. Where is the problem?
Existentialism requires something that is not reducible to natural traits or socialization. If you can only describe existentialism as yet another form of natural behavior or socialization, what you have is not in any meaningful way transcendence or existentialism, it’s just more natural traits and more socialization.
Transcendence does not necessarily have to be reduced to either genes (natural dispositions) or environmental inputs (socialization). Although a causal determinist may choose to do so. ‘Natural disposition’ for transcendence can be conceived of as something broader than just genes for example.
What other content is possible?
Amongst others, you could consider the cross-dimensional cell phone model as an example of a source of additional content (as described by coalitionofminds). The additional content would solely be the control that one has over their will. In this way, existentialism, much like causal determinism, is non-falsifiable; it is believed on the basis of faith; requiring a “leap of faith” if you will. This is not particularly problematic to epistemologically-trained thinkers; since something as basic as the existence of other minds is also taken on assumption, or faith, by nearly everyone (except the few solipsists and the occasional Trump)
Free will poses special logical problems that make this kind of claim inadequate. Consider Galen Strawson’s basic argument:
(1) Interested in free action, we are particularly interested in
actions that are performed for a reason (as opposed to ‘reflex’
actions or mindlessly habitual actions).
(2) When one acts for a reason, what one does is a function of
how one is, mentally speaking. (It is also a function of one’s
height, one’s strength, one’s place and time, and so on. But
the mental factors are crucial when moral responsibility is in
question.)
(3) So if one is to be truly responsible for how one acts, one must
be truly responsible for how one is, mentally speaking -at
least in certain respects.
(4) But to be truly responsible for how one is, mentally speaking,
in certain respects, one must have brought it about that one is
the way one is, mentally speaking, in certain respects. And it
is not merely that one must have caused oneself to be the way
one is, mentally speaking. One must have consciously and
explicitly chosen to be the way one is, mentally speaking, in
certain respects, and one must have succeeded in bringing it
about that one is that way.
(5) But one cannot really be said to choose, in a conscious,
reasoned, fashion, to be the way one is mentally speaking,
in any respect at all, unless one already exists, mentally
speaking, already equipped with some principles of choice,
‘P1’ – preferences, values, pro-attitudes, ideals – in the light
of which one chooses how to be.
(6) But then to be truly responsible, on account of having chosen
to be the way one is, mentally speaking, in certain respects,
one must be truly responsible for one’s having the principles
of choice P1 in the light of which one chose how to be.
(7) But for this to be so one must have chosen P1, in a reasoned,
conscious, intentional fashion.
(8) But for this, i.e. (7), to be so one must already have had some
principles of choice P2, in the light of which one chose P1.
(9) And so on. Here we are setting out on a regress that we cannot stop. True self-determination is impossible because it requires the actual completion of an infinite series of choices of principles of choice.
(10) So true moral responsibility is impossible, because it requires
true self-determination, as noted in (3).
The argument you have presented is against a different conception of free-will. In existentialism, one is only responsible for one’s choices. Not necessarily their actions. There is a distinction between freedom of action and freedom of choice. Sartre provides an example: while a prison in-mate may have very limited freedom of action, he always has the freedom to choose. The freedom to choose how he interprets his situation and the freedom to choose among numerous interpretations.
Freedom of choice does not necessarily include freedom of action. In P3 therefore, an existentialist does not claim that “one is truly responsible for how one acts” – rather “one is truly responsible for what one chooses”. The rest of the argument presented does not hold, under this nuanced conception of free-will. Indeed, much of overcoming or transcending one’s facticity is more concerned with the way in which one interprets their facticity; rather than the way one acts on it; since action is far more likely to be constrained to and by extraneous variables.
Interpreting is an action.
If interpretations are actions, then outcomes are intentions. This is clearly not the case in either of these, for outcomes often diverge from intentions and actions often diverge from interpretations. We distinguish between these intuitively and in our day-to-day. Furthermore, entire schools of moral thought depend upon their differentiation (e.g., utilitarianism vs deontology).
“If interpretations are actions then outcomes are intentions.” I don’t understand that statement and don’t see how that follows. Those claims seem to have nothing at all to do with each other.
Let me explain it in terms you may be more accustomed to.
Mental phenomena is not reducible to physical movements of objects, like the composition of a rock might be for example. This is because mental phenomena can determine and change the physical objects that are theorised (by physicalists) to determine that very phenomena (e.g., molecules in your body). For example, a change in one’s perception of life can cause changes in one’s physical well-being, just as a change in one’s physical well-being can cause changes in one’s perception of life. Mental phenomena are irreducible to physical properties alone, since they can determine those very properties. As such, while there may be physical (action-oriented)/neural processes in interpretation, this is not sufficient to explain interpretation.
Typically, action refers to physical actions or movements, which can certainly diverge from mental interpretations and often do so, when people behave inconsistently. Just because I interpret myself as being smart and capable does not mean I will act smartly or capably. My interpretations must be accurate first. Existentialism is in-part about honing your interpretation skills.
I don’t buy the dualism. The mental is physical. Perceptions and interpretations are physical processes. Our interpretations can be mistaken just as our actions can be mistaken, because interpretations are the same kind of thing (i.e. the outcomes of physical processes). Since the mental is physical it is unsurprising that the mental can affect the physical–it is simply the physical affecting the physical. It is unsurprising that the physical affects the physical. But what’s more, even if this dualism held, it would not help your argument, because it would still be impossible to be the uncaused cause of one’s mental state. This mental state would simply consist in some set of properties which we call mental as opposed to physical, over which we again have no control.
You don’t need to “buy the dualism” if you’re disinclined. I mentioned earlier that existentialism requires a “leap of faith”, in that some of the irreducibility of mental phenomena (such as freedom in choice) may have a non-material or metaphysical cause. We can’t know one way or another, for it is non-falsifiable. Likewise, I hope you also acknowledge, that at basis – all of your beliefs are also taken on a leap of faith. Moreover, one may believe in both worldviews simultaneously, since neither are falsifiable at the base level. Grand-standing and parading around as if one particular world-view is wiser, is unwise. Although I consider compatibilists to be in denial of the full implications of causal determinism, and determinists to be in denial of their own subjective experience, I do not wish to imply that somehow my position on the issue of free-will, is the better one. It is only, the better one… for me.
Some leaps of faith are more reasonable than others… (Science doesn’t ‘prove’ anything, anyway: just rules theories out). Advocating total relativism, though, seems odd. But, I guess, there’s no evidence to demonstrate that evidence is worth a damn. So why not believe anything?
I really enjoyed the discussions between Ved and Benjamin. I guess because I have been debating against myself between these two stands: are we (the self) the product of a very complex/sophisticated composition of matter or is there something at the core of it, that is beyond the material world and that is unchangeable? I came about this blog as I was wrestling with the idea of whether we are spirits having human experiences or humans having a “wired” feeling/inclination/disposition for the supernatural and the divine. I guess we have to live with this conundrum for now. It is strange because a truly determinist couldn’t go a about his or her life business thinking he or she is a robot programmed by the environment and genetics to perform in a certain way. He or she will have to suspend that believe and somehow accept the illusion of freedom in order to go about his or her day to day decisions in a world that will hold him or her responsible for most of her or his actions. Likewise, the ones that “choose” to believe in the idea of a spirit behind the complex machinery of the human organism has to admit that the “choosing” could be an illusion when faced with inconsistencies in behaviour and unconscious destructive drives. The problem, the way a I see it, it is that we are trying to solve it using a method that is rational and logical. In this case, both statements can’t be true at the same time. It is a paradox and therefore the problem belongs to the field of the irrational where we are forced to just have both worlds co-existing, simultaneously. Maybe we are not supposed to analyze it rationally as it belongs to another realm where we acquire knowledge differently and we don’t know that other way yet. We are a living paradox I guess.
Existentialism is completely opposed to the body mind duality that you have outlined in your comment.
Excellent. My response to your critique was more of a test to see how you would react. I intentionally left two grammatical errors in my reply and focused on a small, unsubstantial piece of your argument to gauge your reaction. Traditionally, this is enough to propel the cold fingers of bitterness into any conversation, but rather than launch into petty disputations or ignore the points I made, you provided a rational and coherent defense. I thank you for this. I am attempting to establish an open forum for philosophers like you. I am trying to gather a group of people who are able to control their pride and debate by logical principal rather than violent, aggressive and ignorant response. I hope in the future, when discussions begin and I have gathered a large group of members, that you will consider offering your valuable insight on the various topics at hand. Thank you again, and whether you choose to be a part of the Coalition of Minds or not, I still look forward to reading your future posts.
Cleverly played. I am always interested in engaging in rational debates on philosophy, and will be sure to check in.
Wonderful. My goal is to have gathered a qualified group of philosophers by the end of this month and it is at that time that a topic will be posted to discuss. Until then, dear sir, I wish you good happenstance in your daily affairs!
I think you highlight a very real problem with the “existence precedes essence” axiom held by many existentialists. It also seems to me (and I recognize you are not making this argument) that many existentialists place too much importance on Sartre’s statement, and perhaps even on Sartre himself. Existentialism (not the word, but the way of thinking) is too old and broad to be identified with one man and a “chicken-or-egg-came-first” proposition.
Indeed, off the top of my head, Nietzsche comes to mind as someone further back in history who had existentialist leanings. I think arguments about existentialism tend to come back to Sartre because his arguments are more systematic. Nietzsche, for instance, is frequently self-contradictory and can also be classed as a nihilist or even a fascist, depending on the reading. It’s more difficult to isolate his existentialism for the purpose of discussion. It doesn’t justify the tendency for these discussions to focus on Sartre, but perhaps it explains it.
Certainly Nietzsche, but also Pascal, Hegel, Schopenhauer, and Husserl—-even moments in Shakespeare and before. Again, not the word “existentialism”, but the ideas. Sartre may be the most important proponent of the modern strain, but as you note, like all philosophical systems, the influences are usually deep and broad.
Definitely, influences can be difficult to trace, so we have a tendency to settle for disputing the codified version, even though, in the process of codifying, it must necessarily abandon some of its flexibility and become more nailed down and difficult to defend.
Although I agree with part of you statement about Nietzsche, namely that he is often contradictory, I must point out two things about him. Firstly, Nietzsche was not a fascist. He was strongly for individualism, he was anti-nationalism, and he criticized antisemitism—the converse of last two were key aspects of Nazism. He would more accurately be described politically as a libertarian or an anarchist. Secondly, Nietzsche’s form of nihilism is the subset of existentialism, not a unique thing in itself. Nietzsche is commonly referred to as—and I would argue he is more accurately described as—the first existential nihilist.
Additionally, if you want a real fascist existentialist, one need not look any further than Martin Heidegger. As I am sure you already know, Heidegger was a member of Nazi party.
I associate Nietzsche with fascism because Nietzsche’s belief that human beings should be the authors of their own moral codes inspired and contributed to fascism’s justification of “might makes right”. While Nietzsche himself may very well have rejected the Nazi Party had he lived in Germany during that epoch, his ideas played a role in generating those ideas.
Agreed, Heidegger’s fascism is much more direct and visceral.
[…] The pope goes on to attack gender theories as “false” and to claim that homosexuality and gay marriage undermine the family. Legalising gay marriage would seem to me to do the precise opposite–by bringing gay people into marriage, gay people are brought into a traditional family structure, strengthening the family rather than eroding it. The real trouble in gay marriage for the pope has nothing to do with negative consequences resulting from gay marriage because, from a traditional family point of view, there are none. Gay marriage brings gays into the family and into the tradition from which they were previously excluded. It does not kill the family or kill tradition. It is not a form of radical feminism, as the pope asserts when he attacks a straw man and claims that the supporters of gay marriage share the radical views of Simone de Beauvoir, an existentialist who genuinely believed that there is no human nature and that existence proceeds essence, a claim I myself, a supporter of gay marriage, have vehemently attacked. […]
[…] I reject the existentialist view of the existence/essence question, but you don’t have to do so to […]
You greatly oversimplify and misunderstand the conversation about existence and essence by equating them with consciousness and genetic/environmental makeup, respectively. There are a great number of philosophers who would disagree with you on those definitions, and they are most certainly not the definitions prominent existentialists like Sartre are using when they say “existence precedes essence.” You can’t offer a valid critique of a philosophical argument by simply choosing different definitions of the words being used.
What definition do you propose they are using instead? And if you agree with what I’m saying in this piece but believe it is not the existentialist view, wouldn’t you have to also agree with the implication that people are not self-authoring? Does that not contradict Sartre?
I concur. Satre would’ve said that choosing to become a bird is obviously absurd and he termed it “bad faith.” Obviously he didn’t mean that there are *no practical constraints* on the nature of your being. And it would’ve been a gross blunder on his part.
His maxim is a direct inversion of philosophy prior to that point: Essence precedes existence.
A thief steals because he is a thief.
A cat behaves and looks like a cat because it is a cat.
Sartre says that this is backward. Thieves become thieves when they observably steal, they don’t steal because they were thieves all along.
The motivations for theft vary widely and you can steal everything from an apple to a car. And you don’t necessarily go on stealing for your entire life. You can be anything from a burglar, to a mugger to a shoplifter. There is no common “thiefly” essence. The thieving is a description of what already has been demonstrated to exist, whatever the causes of that behavior might be.
A god doesn’t declare an animal a cat and then its behavior and biology then just magically happens fall into place around that. It’s being a cat is an *emergent property.* “Cats” are not a real thing. It’s an abstract category that we put particular species of animal into.
But why does a person steal? Because the person is of an essence X that causes the person to steal under conditions Y. The act of stealing reveals the essence to a third party, but it does not create anything new. The way a being responds to a given stimulus is fixed by that being’s genetic makeup and past experiences.
To put it simply:
The unique genetic profile of a cat, it’s evolutionary lineage, it’s environment and unique personality are all the conditions of its “existence” that determines its description and category.
This is the inverse of what was believed: It’s a cat. Therefore all those things like personality and biology fall in after the fact to conform.
This reads to me like an effort to redefine “essence” as it is commonly understood by traditional philosophy as “existence”. To make Sartre’s conception coherent, it must be deprived of any substantive radical content.
You are still trying to use a definition of essence that was not used in that philosophical discussion. He’s not redefining anything, just using the language as it was understood.
Platonism would’ve said that there is an Ideal Cat that all cats conform to. That this Ideal sits at the top of a hierarchy and therefore imbues cattiness to cats. Everything is a cheap knock off of the Idea.
Essence refers to the idea that once a thief, always a thief. It’s not a question of genetics or environment anymore. That isn’t “essence” as it was used at the time. And people wouldn’t have understood genetics in Plato’s time.
I can shoplift a tube of toothpaste but that’s fundamentally a different crime from grand theft auto. They’re both “thieves” but the fact that they’re both thieves is a *description* not a fact of existence.
Prior to existentialism people confused description for irrevocable essence.
You have to remember that we didn’t always think in terms of genetics or environment. A king was a king. A peasant was a peasant. We would say that that’s a societal construct, but this hasn’t always been the case. No, the king is *essentially* a king, not existentially a king.
If we are to apply this to a modern context, like our hypothetical cat, the cat is still a unique individual that is *DESCRIBED* as a cat because it conforms to our prejudices of what cats are like. But those are EMERGENT PROPERTIES that are a product of its environment and genetics.
This is a straw man account of the philosophical beliefs held by Platonists and others in the western tradition prior to existentialism. Few philosophers have held “once a thief, always a thief”, but most have nonetheless maintained with Plato that essence precedes existence. There have been many thieves throughout history that have stopped being thieves, people who have changed professions/lifestyles, and so on down the line. Philosophers have tried to explain these changes in the past. The difference between the traditional view and the existentialist view is the mechanism by which a person stops being a thief.
For the existentialist, a person stops being a thief through an act of transcendence, in which the person chooses through an act of will to view his facticity (the environmental and genetic circumstances that limit their behavior) differently. This change in view enables a corresponding behavioral change. This is what is radical and different about the existentialist view–because a person comes into existence prior to receiving facticity, the person maintains a will that is independent of that facticity and can influence the way the facticity is interpreted. For existentialists, people are self-authoring.
The traditional essentialist view holds that when a person changes behavior, it is not because he is willing himself to transcend his facticity, but because some aspect of his facticity has interacted with new experiences to yield different behavior. This is outside of the person’s control and does not require an account of free will. Many historical philosophers have believed that people are capable of having their behavior changed, but not of changing their behavior (e.g. Marx, Durkheim, etc.). For these thinkers, a person cannot exist without having baseline hardwired biological/genetic traits. These traits interact with the environment to produce new outcomes, but there is nothing the individual can do to transcend these forces, because all wills are comprised of them and cannot exist independently of them. The forces can be observed, but not transcended. People are not self-authoring, they are authored exclusively by genetic/environmental forces.
It matters which view you have, because if you take the existentialist view, it follows that you expect people to self-modify. If you take the view of someone like Durkheim or Marx, additional social or biological forces are required to induce the change.
>What definition do you propose they are using instead?
In the case of Sartre, here’s a passage from “Existentialism is a Humanism” (note that he doesn’t categorically reject the proposition “essence precedes existence,” he thinks that’s a perfectly valid statement to make about inanimate, man-made objects):
“If one considers an article of manufacture as, for example, a book or a paper-knife – one sees that it has been made by an artisan who had a conception of it; and he has paid attention, equally, to the conception of a paper-knife and to the pre-existent technique of production which is a part of that conception and is, at bottom, a formula. Thus the paper-knife is at the same time an article producible in a certain manner and one which, on the other hand, serves a definite purpose, for one cannot suppose that a man would produce a paper-knife without knowing what it was for. Let us say, then, of the paperknife that its essence – that is to say the sum of the formulae and the qualities which made its production and its definition possible – precedes its existence. The presence of such-and-such a paper-knife or book is thus determined before my eyes. Here, then, we are viewing the world from a technical standpoint, and we can say that production precedes existence.”
So when he’s talking about an object’s “essence,” he’s not talking about the physical stuff that the object is made of at all: he’s talking about the abstract *conception* of the object that precedes its construction and/or use in the real world (i.e., its existence). Sartre’s argument then proceeds to describe the traditional theistic/essentialist worldview that holds God as the divine source of all such essential conceptions:
“When we think of God as the creator, we are thinking of him, most of the time, as a supernal artisan. Whatever doctrine we may be considering, whether it be a doctrine like that of Descartes, or of Leibnitz himself, we always imply that the will follows, more or less, from the understanding or at least accompanies it, so that when God creates he knows precisely what he is creating. Thus, the conception of man in the mind of God is comparable to that of the paper-knife in the mind of the artisan: God makes man according to a procedure and a conception, exactly as the artisan manufactures a paper-knife, following a definition and a formula. Thus each individual man is the realisation of a certain conception which dwells in the divine understanding.”
And then proceeds to characterize the concept of ‘human nature’ still found in (relatively) recent atheistic philosophy as a remnant of this theistic view of man’s existence being the product of a divine mind’s conception:
“In the philosophic atheism of the eighteenth century, the notion of God is suppressed, but not, for all that, the idea that essence is prior to existence; something of that idea we still find everywhere, in Diderot, in Voltaire and even in Kant. Man possesses a human nature; that “human nature,” which is the conception of human being, is found in every man; which means that each man is a particular example of a universal conception, the conception of Man. In Kant, this universality goes so far that the wild man of the woods, man in the state of nature and the bourgeois are all contained in the same definition and have the same fundamental qualities. Here again, the essence of man precedes that historic existence which we confront in experience.”
With this understanding of ‘human nature’ in place, he proceeds to eradicate it by explaining that, without God, there is no divine mind in which the conception of ‘human’ can exist; the only mind with the capacity to make such a conception is the human mind, itself. Therefore, a human being *has* no “essence” until they consciously encounter their already-in-process “existence” and form a conception in their mind of it:
“Atheistic existentialism, of which I am a representative, declares with greater consistency that if God does not exist there is at least one being whose existence comes before its essence, a being which exists before it can be defined by any conception of it. …. What do we mean by saying that existence precedes essence? We mean that man first of all exists, encounters himself, surges up in the world – and defines himself afterwards. If man as the existentialist sees him is not definable, it is because to begin with he is nothing. He will not be anything until later, and then he will be what he makes of himself. Thus, there is no human nature, because there is no God to have a conception of it. Man simply is.”
This the actual argument you have to engage with if you want to specifically critique the “existence precedes essence” concept. A deterministic causality does not conflict with the understanding that we define ourselves by our actions.
>And if you agree with what I’m saying in this piece but believe it is not the existentialist view, wouldn’t you have to also agree with the implication that people are not self-authoring? Does that not contradict Sartre?
No, I don’t agree with that implication because the lack of freedom in the libertarian sense does not invalidate the concept of authorship. I may not have “freely” written this passage, but I still authored it because it was still my mind that computed what to type, my hands that typed it, etc., not someone else’s. Likewise, while I may not have “freely” chosen my life in the libertarian sense, but I still have, by virtue of carrying out my actions (i.e., “existing”), created my life and, in Sartre’s view, defined what it is (i.e., conceived of its “essence”) by encountering it in consciousness and conceptually understanding what I have done and, by extension, what sort of person I am.
(also, my apologies for the incredibly tardy reply, I obviously don’t really check this account – I just happened to come across your article again today in a search. Thought it sounded familiar and then recognized my comment from four years ago, heh.)
That’s too neat. You can have facticity that is not absolutely insurmountable. It’s not an either-or question depending on whether you’re a existentialist or not.
I don’t buy into the concept of free will (it’s incoherent), but I do wish people would stop confusing themselves with the cup they’re poured into, as it were. The fact that there is even a concept of facticity sort of damages the assertion existentialists deny . . . biology or culture or whatever.
Again, I cite my example of a king. He’s existentially a king, not essentially a king. Even the cat, with a hard genetic code, is existentially a cat, not essentially a cat. The facticity is less insurmountable in one case than the other. That’s the only real difference.
To be frank:
I’ve never found a compelling account of Idealism that ever came across as utter and abject nonsense. It essentially does boil down into the concept of some kind of metaphysical hierarchy where all things must conform to Ideal Forms which can never be proven to exist in the first place. We can spend all day talking about Ideal Cats and Unicorns, but those are indistinguishable from fiction. As near as I can tell, that’s “essence.” The confusion of description with reality.
I’m not mounting a defense of idealism here–that’s an entirely separate debate. Nor am I asserting that existentialism flatly denies biology or culture–it merely claims that these factors are not insurmountable.
The trouble is, if your facticity is not insurmountable, this necessarily implies that there is something that is doing the surmounting. If it’s not free will that’s doing the work, what is? What exists independently of facticity? Existentialism provides no adequate response to this question, it necessarily takes free will as an assumption.
[…] A Critique of Existentialism (September 5, 2012, 2,100 hits) […]
Dear Ben,
I came across your post accidentally, and wasn’t going to give it a thought after reading it and briefly developing hives, but decided to after all. I think it’s great that you are being thoughtful. sort of. but i think if you become familiar with phenomenology (Husserl) and then read Sartre carefully, not just imbibing catch-phrases, you will find that his thought is not what you think. After Husserl, start on Sartre with The Transcendence of the Ego – it’s short and fascinating. Then really, Being and Nothingness is worth reading too. You might like it. That is all – again, I think it’s great you care about these ideas.
One more thing – I was going to let this go too, but developed something akin to an allergic reaction and must say something. Why the outdated language? We don’t dress like we’re in the nineteenth century anymore, and hopefully don’t retain those race and gender biases, so what’s with the “man” referring to “person”? It’s really not hard to alternate “him” and “her” in a text to make things equal, and it’s really not hard to write “person” or even “human being” or “sentient creature” instead of “man” (i.e. male). Unless there’s a reason not to – a grudge or a hidden agenda that you really do mean “male” and never “female”? But if you don’t intend that, why not adjust the language?
I don’t mean to pick. thanks for the blog, and all best.
Do you have a specific disagreement with the content of the argument?
it is complicated. his work is complicated and deserves to be read carefully. but to start with, if you’ve read The Transcendence of the Ego, a short and easy work to begin with after getting a grasp on phenomenology, you will see that Sartre argues the “I” or the “me” is constituted by consciousness and as such, is an object in the world much like other objects, subject to limitations (physical and social) and causal laws. Sartre really doesn’t claim that a person can just wake up one morning and choose whatever life for herself that she wants. He may try, but if anything, in Sartre’s further works, Sartre not only admits but explicates the sorts of obstacles he will encounter (historical/material conditioning of all sorts, above all the limitations that follow from the existence of other people).
I would start there. I just assume you haven’t read Sartre carefully if you suppose he argues for some unlimited notion of freedom, and if you’ve overlooked the fact that even the “I” that you presuppose, and that popular culture presupposes, doesn’t exist, as such, for Sartre.
You seem to be saying that we should pay more attention to science and the historical/material situation in which we find ourselves. Sure, of course. Existentialism is all about paying attention to the “situation”. That is its hallmark (the “situation” as opposed to some supposed “essence” of a person is what matters). What existentialism does, however, is give us a language in which we can speak of at least some kind of ethical autonomy, which you presuppose by arguing we can help ourselves by looking at hard facts, causes and limitations, but you preclude if you embrace a purely deterministic (apodictic) and scientistic view. How would you, for example, account for any ability to make any real choice, ever? Yet you presuppose it by even imagining that you are thinking for yourself here.
(As an aside, I do think the point you raise about personalities is interesting. It does seem that we certainly are born with inclinations toward certain behaviors. Exploring this would be worthwhile.)
But about my irritation: respect for the discipline of philosophy requires that one do one’s homework – the least one can do, when critiquing a philosopher, is bother to read him carefully, and also have a firm grounding in philosophy in general, particularly the context in which that philosopher wrote. You need more background, and it takes a lot of time and persistence to do all that reading – years and years. Of all the professions, I do think doing philosophy well and responsibly is among the most difficult because of the sheer amount of material one needs to have absorbed. So I don’t want to insult you – I’ve often made arguments and written papers where I’ve looked back and wondered how I could not have known about this or that, how I could have been so superficial and naive, and cringe. One approaches sophistication by degrees and by lots of effort.
And what about the language?
I find it a bit presumptuous that you believe I am not well-acquainted with the works I’m writing about here. When it comes to human freedom and agency, I’m with Galen Strawson–I believe that the concept of free choice is wholly illusory in all aspects of life. This does not necessarily mean our behavior is mechanistically determined (there could be a random component), but it does mean that it is not possible for people to act independently of their facticity. This is significantly different from the view Sartre expresses. He claims that while facticity limits freedom, beings still freely ascribe values to it and are consequently personally responsible for these values. I deny this on the grounds that I believe moral responsibility requires that beings be causa sui, self-determining uncaused causes of their beliefs and actions, and this is not logically possible. Why? Because for a being to be causa sui, it must not only be the cause of its decisions, it must also be the cause of the principles and procedures it uses to make its decisions. And if a being is the cause of those principles and procedures, how did it decide which principles and procedures to act on? It would need to be the cause of that decision, and of the principles and procedures behind it, and so on, in an infinite regress. Strawson explains this position in detail:
Click to access The%20Impossibility%20of%20Moral%20Responsibility%20-%20Galen%20Strawson.pdf
For more, I recommend his book, “Freedom and Belief”.
As far as language goes, I generally use gender neutral words like “person”, “people”, and “human” whenever these terms do not make the writing awkward. In the case of this last paragraph, to replace the word “man” with a neutral term would have generated a lot of awkwardness. Consider the phrase “man’s inability to fly”. Does it sound better or worse if we change it to “person’s inability to fly”? Surely not. “People’s inability to fly” isn’t quite as bad, but it’s still pretty awful. “Human’s inability to fly” sounds terrible. “Man” is the only one of these terms we are accustomed to hearing in the singular to refer to qualities human beings possess in general, and so it is uniquely suitable. When I use it in this context, it refers to people in general, not males specifically. This use is not outdated–the Oxford dictionary’s #2 definition of “man” is “a human being of either sex; a person”:
http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/man
Thought the article was great. Have some differences in opinion, but definitely need to read more in depth on the subject matter. Definitely thought provoking though
I posted my comment here because I wanted to draw attention to the fact, that this article and the responses were so great, I read all the way to when Sarah started posting responses.
Sarah, I wish you had never accidentally stumbled across this article. I wish your body didn’t inflame (hives) in such ways that require you to speak your mind. It’s fairly transparent that you are in love with the tone of your own writing.
I’ll address the language bit first. I personally don’t find it awkward at all. Aesthetically speaking, “person” doesn’t sound any worse to me than “man”. It’s got two more letters, is that a problem?
Suppose i were to refer to a group of two people, yourself, “Ben”, and Lucy. But whenever I refer to the group, I say only, “Lucy”. You object, saying that this excludes you. But I reply that it should be implicitly understood that by “Lucy”, I also include “Ben”. Then you point out that historically, I have repeatedly written very explicitly that “Lucy” never includes Ben (sort of the way, from Aristotle to the present, notions of rationality and agency are linked to maleness and have explicitly excluded femaleness). Then you would be more suspicious about references to “Lucy” including “Ben”. At any rate, it shouldn’t be too much to ask, and should not be that much extra work to write in less offensive ways.
I am familiar with Strawson’s/your point. It is indeed impossible to speak of ethical autonomy with a deterministic/apodictic philosophy. Enter phenomenology, and Wittgenstein too. But I would ask where, exactly, you find that Sartre argues it is possible for people (here, wasn’t that easy? I said, “people”, not “Man”) to act independently of their situation (their emotional, mental if you will, and historical-material conditioning)? Sartre never discounts the situation but admonishes us to pay attention precisely to that, the ways in which our freedom is circumscribed by it. Ideology, false consciousness, and so forth. Sartre has gotten a bad reputation, I’m afraid, in popular culture as espousing some sort of adolescent idea of freedom. But one cannot understand Sartre without a basic understanding of Husserl’s phenomenology, without an understanding of Sartre’s bifurcated notion of consciousness and its implications.
The interesting question, of course, as you say, is, how can we EVER speak in a way that makes sense of having any ethical autonomy, at all? How are we EVER thinking independently, for ourselves, if you will? How are we ever anything more than mechanistic, fully determined cogs in causal wheels? What do you propose? For it’s equally nonsense to argue that we have no freedom, no choice, and therefore can ground no ethics. We contradict ourselves as soon as we begin to reflect.
On language, I agree with you in principle that it is best if terms are inclusive (I consider myself something of a feminist, I’m sensitive to the issue and aware of it), but sometimes convention overrides this concern. In French, for instance, if a group of people contains any number of men, the group is referred to with the male plural pronoun “Ils”. French has no gender neutral plural pronoun that people are accustomed to using in that context, and if you make one up it’s distracting. I think it’s very important when writing that the words serve to illustrate the point rather than distract from it, and these means I sometimes use conventional phrases rather than the phrases I might choose if I were inventing the language for the first time. The Lucy/Ben case is different, because there is no long-standing convention. If there was such a convention, I would immediately understand that “Lucy” included me, and would only feel offended if the content of the argument was in some way substantively anti-Ben. I might resent the convention, I couldn’t reasonably resent an individual for following that convention, particularly if doing otherwise would result in distracting awkwardness. I understand that you don’t think those other terms would be awkward there, but they felt awkward to me and I suspect that they would feel awkward to many people.
My trouble with Sartre is, as you go on to say, that he does not explicitly propose a persuasive conception of freedom yet maintains that freedom exists. By speaking of our freedom as circumscribed rather than illusory, Sartre necessarily implies that we still have freedom in some relevant sense, and I don’t see any relevant sense in which this freedom exists, or any way that a person can realistically act in “bad faith”. I would explicitly say that freedom is logically impossible and that personal responsibility is also logically impossible. I don’t think freedom or personal responsibility are required for ethics. We can still speak of people being made better or worse off by actions, we just can’t blame individuals for those actions but most locate their causes entirely in wider systems. By regarding ourselves as completely part of these systems in every respect rather than as external agents acting upon them via freedom (even in circumscribed ways), we can see that our systems change themselves through their own parts, they are always self-deconstructing and self-reconstructing. So when we try to persuade one another to change moral views, we are performing our systemic roles, we are parts talking to other parts. As Parfit would say, we are the beings that respond to reasons. We cannot choose not to respond to them or choose which to respond to–the ones that we take to be more persuasive (because of our heredity and environment and any random component that may be involved) will inevitably move us to action. Instead of a plurality of free beings, I see a unitary whole guided by the same essential objective moral imperatives–the experience of benefit and the avoidance of harm, both broadly conceived.
eh, three more letters 🙂
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/Man?s=t
Man
noun, plural – men. 1) an adult male person, as distinguished from a boy or a woman.
The second definition in your link says:
“a member of the species Homo sapiens or all the members of this species collectively, without regard to sex”, using the example of the phrase “prehistoric man”. It’s a convention. It has sexist origins, but its use today need not necessarily be sexist, just as users of the French term “ils” is not necessarily sexist or offensive even though the system that created the term certainly is & was.
sigh, i don’t mean to quibble, but why continue such a dismal tradition? i was just so surprised you wrote that way, because these days, no one in serious scholarship does.
philosophy is has such a terrible vein of misogyny that people are tempted to throw out the baby with the bathwater. i personally love doing philosophy, so we wouldn’t want that…
there are also complex and compelling reasons why philosophy’s biases cripple it, destroy it from within, turn it from love of inquiry into its opposite. what might seem a harmless “aesthetic” choice to you has deep roots with political consequences. no time now to discuss… but will later if you wish.
quick note on Strawson’s main argument, the one he’s famous for: you do what you do because of how you are and you can’t be responsible for that. But just for fun… because for many reasons i find this argument flawed… just for fun, what if you don’t know what you are because you can be many different things? I can imagine myself as the serial killer Dexter… i know i’m capable… but also i can imagine myself as never being Dexter, being a nun for example. who’s to say “what I am”? how am i to know?
that’s just road-kill… in a hurry now… but if you have a clever rejoinder, i’d enjoy it.
best
The words we use are the symptoms of injustices and inequalities, not the causes of them. I maintain that it is a matter of taste, provided that the content does not constitute a substantive endorsement of the system that brought it about. There are much more important things to worry about, and I’ve seen it written the way I wrote it in many places, both formal and informal, serious and non-serious. I absolutely agree that biases within philosophy are terrible and need to be challenged, but the words themselves are not doing the biasing, they reflect historical biases but do not necessarily embody them. By all means language should evolve to reflect new paradigms and values, but this should happen of its own accord, it does not require that we try to force the adoption of awkward terminology, and to the extent that philosophers have done this, it has harmed the readability of their work for a general audience and done nothing at all to diminish the biases that remain.
We don’t have to know what we are to act based upon what we are. I may be able to imagine myself as a serial killer, but this does not in any way establish that I am one or could be one. Subjective self-knowledge is not a prerequisite for objective state of being. The fact that I can imagine myself as something I am not does not establish I have the freedom to be that thing by choice. If I can be that thing, it is due to hereditary, environmental, and random factors. Indeed, the fact that I can imagine myself as that thing is due to those same factors. There’s no obvious scope for free choice here.
one won’t get far as a writer if one thinks that language doesn’t matter, nor how one comes across. good luck with the blog.
Oh, language matters–good writing needs to be clear, and it needs to make its point without generating distractions. If it becomes more awkward to use “man’s inability to fly” because readers make it awkward by starting arguments about it, I eventually will switch, whatever my personal aesthetic views.
true, thinking and writing should be clear. but “man”, if it is sometimes to mean “man” to the exclusion of women, as it has historically, and sometimes to include women, is highly ambiguous. How is one to know in which sense you mean it? unless you add a disclaimer. which can be awkward and tedious. and from a purely aesthetic point of view, it sounds old-fashioned, which i guess is fine, if that’s what you’re going for. but if one tries to sound old fashioned, one may be taken for actually being old fashioned – for embracing old fashioned norms. is this what one intends? the reader must wonder. why not just be clear (unambiguous) from the outset?
agreed. but wait – are you worried about being forced into using a different terminology against your – um, free will? by all means, you have the free choice, the self-determination, to use any kind of language you want. 🙂
Those are two very different senses of the term freedom. Metaphysically unfree beings can certainly nonetheless have political freedom.
1) please explain your distinction between metaphysical and political freedom
2) it sounds like your argument for no freedom is this, and correct me if I’m wrong please: a) freedom means “not caused”. b) everthing seems to be caused c) therefore there is no freedom.
is that your argument?
1) Metaphysical freedom means the ability of a being to self-determine not merely its own choices, but the principles and procedures it uses to make those choices, and the principles and procedures underlying the choice to choose those principles, and so on in an infinite regress. Political freedom can be either positive or negative. Negative freedom is freedom from coercion from other beings, positive freedom is freedom to do or have access to something specific (like healthcare, education, etc.). These two kinds of freedom are not related. Political freedom is about the extent to which our choices are limited or widened by other people, metaphysical freedom is about the extent to which our choices are limited or widened by the nature of existence in itself.
2) Freedom does not mean “not caused”, it means “self-caused”. I’m with Strawson, the term he uses is “non-self-determinist”, i.e. I do not believe that beings can be self-determining. I think personal responsibility requires freedom and that freedom requires self-determination.
‘Free will’ as a subjective illusion that is necessary for the decision making process is distinct from ‘free will’ as a real, non-illusory component of an externalised account of reality, for which the concept is fundamentally incoherent and also redundant.
There are no events or features of the natural universe for which a concept of ‘free will’ is indispensable. The concept of ‘free will’ is supposed to explain the notion of responsibility, but does not since it is unable to explain why anyone might be responsible for their free will (or even their soul if that is the manner of thinking), without referring back to who a person might be, the sum of his or her experiences and genetic constitution.
My problem is with the words ‘existence’ and ‘essence’. Presumably Sartre’s uses of these terms are non-materialistic, so it is hard to have a discussion about them from a point of view in which materialism is assumed.
and further to that, another question about your argument. you state above that everything a person is, has as its cause environmental, genetic, or other contingent factors. am i getting you right? correct me if not. and this is your reason for arguing against responsibility or agency or free choice.
one might however ask, what evidence there is to choose one kind of cause over another. “cause” (aition) just being a word for “explanation of how a thing comes about” (Aristotle) now, Aristotle argued for four types of cause: material, efficient, formal, and teleological. So even supposing all my behavior is caused, which is just another way of saying there is an explanation for it, it can be an open question what the cause might be. a material cause would be my genetic material, an efficient cause might be someone pushing me, a formal cause might be – this is more tricky when talking about people – but it might also be my genetic blueprint. and then, a teleological cause of my behavior might be the goal i have in mind – an image, an idea, a value.
and so, just because everything may be caused, doesn’t entail that everything has only a material cause. further, if we talk about teleological causes, then the question arises as to how those ends, or goals, are determined. our ends, or goals, are also known as our values.
so the question of free will can turn, interestingly, into a question of how we have our values – where they come from, how they are formed, what they consist in.
further, if “cause” is just a term for an explanation, then the argument looks like this: we can never have autonomous agency because we are able to explain it. the free will question – whether we have it or not – declines into nonsense. but the question of how our values come about, remains valid. so perhaps, that is the only important question?
I am not at all claiming that everything is caused, I am only claiming that no being can be self-caused or self-causing. The universe could very well be entirely random/indeterminate/uncaused, but this would not in any way substantiate that beings can be self-causing.
and not only how our values come about, but what they should be. perhaps the question of free will is just a question, after getting through the nonsense, of what our values should be.
The free will question is a descriptive question–how is it that beings come to act the way that they act. The question of what our values should be is a normative question of moral theory, not a metaphysical question about what is.
ah, but the normative is always embedded in the descriptive. in what we decide to turn our attention to, in the first place, what energy we devote to descriptions, what methods we choose. ultimately, our methods and descriptions always follow upon value judgements.
Yes, but this is not the aim, the aim of descriptive investigation is to get at something like objective truth. To the extent that the normative comes into play, this is a defect of descriptive research methods, not a virtue.
so, if you follow me thus far (let me know if not), then we can say: there is no question that values motivate behavior, though not always with success or without obstacle; and clearly we can deliberate about and choose or reject our values. insofar as we can do this, we can have free will, even if we are caused, because this is a teleological cause.
our ultimate end, however, would have to be one not contingently determined. it would have to be an end in itself, and not a means to any further end. that is why Kant could only establish freedom, and hence morality, by use of the notion of the “end in itself” and aptly said that if there were no God, we would have to create one for this purpose.
and of course we have created God for this purpose. (but there might be another way)
that’s it for now. your thoughts are welcome.
I firmly disagree with the claim that when we choose our values we act freely in any morally important sense, because our choices are based on principles, desires, and beliefs that we do not choose. We can only choose our values freely if we can also choose the process by which we choose our values freely, and we can only choose that process freely if we can choose the process by which we choose that process freely, and so on in the aforementioned infinite regress. Moral responsibility requires that we are truly self-causing, self-determining beings, and this conception of freedom does not satisfy that criteria.
okay, you state that clearly. just so i understand you now: you are saying that our values and beliefs are NEVER the result of rational deliberation, of conversation, of dialectic, if you will. correct?
the direction I’m going is this: it seems to me that a person’s behavior is under-determined by material/efficient causes (genetics, predispositions, circumstances, etc.). It seems to me that teleological causes (ideas about purposes, goals, values) influence behavior, and that these different kinds of causes do not rule each other out. For instance, I might be predisposed genetically to be stubborn (indeed), but the specific action I take can be different, depending on my values and beliefs.
so far so good?
then: you claim our beliefs come from many previous instances of choosing which in infinite regress come from causes outside of myself. well enough. but this is an issue of contingency which only takes material and efficient, perhaps formal, causes into account. if the cause of my behavior is a value or goal which motivates me and around which I organize my mean-end activities, then that goal is the cause of my behavior.
the question of free will, as mentioned, then becomes an inquiry into where our goals come from, whether they can ever be freely chosen.
as Kant points out, only a goal which is an end in itself, and not a means toward another end in an infinite chain of values determined by other values, can make us free. in other words, if the end is an end in itself, and simultaneously the means, then there is no regress. the cause is teleological and that cause is not a link in a series of other causes.
this end in itself, for Kant, was the human being. modification: it was the human being qua rational being. insofar as we are rational, we are self-determining, and otherwise never.
a problem that people have pointed out with Kant is that his idea of what it is to be rational (in the practical, moral sense) is to make use of his first formulation of the categorical imperative. if this succeeds, we can be free insofar as we adhere to it. again, the rational being is an end in himself, not an end in a chain of further ends; and she is an end in herself insofar as she is rational (i.e. moral, i.e. acting according the the maxim-making and universalizing formulation of the categorical imperative).
Kant’s argument is very compelling, and has influences generations of very smart people.
If, however, the categorical imperative fall through (if it is shown not to accomplish what it is purported to accomplish, philosophically), then we cannot use it as a basis for moral freedom. I believe the writers you read (I have not read Strawson, but know of his argument second-hand and know of the sort of argument he makes generally, as it’s been argued many times) find themselves here. Correct me if you disagree.
Let me call your attention to the title of your blog: making the world better by writing things. The presupposition here is not only that you can make the world different by writing (reasoning), but that you can make it better in a qualitatively positive way. Is that not your presupposition? Why otherwise would you bother?
So either you are not being sincere, and really believe that you write because it’s in your genes and will make no difference to anyone or in any way; or you believe that the process of reasoning, of writing as conversation with other people, can accomplish something.
what does it accomplish?
i think this is the question. i think it is extraordinarily important. it is a complex issue, with much to work out, but the central idea is this: we can, a la Kant, base our freedom on our rationality, on our capacity to be rational. we can, a la Kant, consider ourselves free as long as we are rational. but if being rational is not the kind of abstracting of the categorical imperative, then what can it be? what could be both a final end for us, and the means by which we achieve that final goal?
so the issue of free will becomes an issue of Value in the most ultimate sense. they become the same issue.
i have written extensively on this already, and am only presenting parts of my position here, because you, with your strong conviction, make an excellent foil. what I’m getting at is a kind of rationality which is not necessarily Kant’s formulation of the categorical imperative, but which could still do its work. the hint is in the title of your blog.
and, a word on your previous comment that the free will question is a description question: description in terms of causal explanations in time can only describe past events, not future ones. As Hume argued in his Enquiry Concerning Human Nature, patterns in the past are only just that, and never determine with certainty what will happen in the future. The leaves the future open. Hume leaves us with something Sartre would like – a radical freedom.
sorry that was in Hume’s Enquiry Concering Human Understanding. his works all run together for me now after all these years.
There are a lot of things I don’t agree with here.
To start, you’re right that I don’t agree to the categorical imperative–I class myself with the consequentialists, and correspondingly I firmly disagree with Kant’s position that freedom is simply following his moral law. There are also many cases in which we make decisions that are matters of taste (e.g. should I wear the red shirt or the blue shirt?) and this theory of freedom does not account for those cases. I also think that a being with free will must be free to act immorally and irrationally. If morality and rationality dictate free action, then “acting freely” means nothing more than “acting in accordance with a specific procedure”. The procedure is not freely chosen, so this concept of freedom rings hollow to me.
I absolutely believe that people can change other people’s minds by making arguments, but I don’t believe this happens in a free way. Rather, I hold that we are, essentially, beings that cannot help but respond to reasons by our very nature, and that the reasons we find persuasive will depend on our heredity, environment, and random factors (HER). When I make an argument, I do not believe myself to be acting freely, I believe myself to be making arguments I cannot help but make because of HER. To the extent that they persuade others, I believe they persuade others because those other people’s HER make it impossible for them to not find the argument compelling, and to the extent that they fail to persuade others, I think the inverse is true, that their HER makes it impossible for them to find the argument compelling. So I deny the premise your argument here–it is very possible to believe that argument accomplishes something while simultaneously believing that the process by which it accomplishes something is not a free process.
I agree with you that our goals are determined by our values, but I do not think our values are freely chosen, but instead result from HER, such that we cannot truly be responsible for them, and correspondingly we cannot be truly responsible for our goals or the actions we take to achieve our goals.
Hume is correct that empiricism can only tell us the explicit causes of past events and cannot predict future events with certainty, but this has nothing to do with free will, because my claim is not that all events have causes that can be known ahead of time, but merely that it is not logically possible for beings to be self-determining and that there does not exist a persuasive account of freedom sufficient for true moral responsibility that does not require this kind of self-determination.
good answer.
let me throw this out there: it seems that much in your explanation depends on your definition of “self”. If freedom is something accomplished intersubjectively, everything changes.
i like your answer (ok, thanks for the HERs, it’s okay 🙂 but don’t think you’ve addressed my point about intersubjectivity. if freedom is something we create intersubjectively (i.e. as conversation, dialectic, the giving and accepting and interpreting of reasons) it can be an end in itself that is an ultimate value (not a link in a chain of other causes). this solves the regress problem. it also established the ground for an ethics of interpersonal respect, etc.
as for taste, Kant wrote a book on it! the third critique. it’s very cool, and even if one develops issues with it, a timeless work.
Gadamer’s hermeneutics on taste also might interest you. taste is an issue of self-community reference, and it is essential to any ethics.
anyway.
how would you ground ethical decisions? how do you determine your values?
if i may, let me add something else (i write this between chasing after my several kids and a hectic job, sorry for the writing in bits).
it sounds as though you are still saying, it is logically impossible for individuals to be self-determining because, qua individuals, we are necessarily contingent creatures (not self-sufficient). i agree.
that is why freedom needs to be defined intersubjectively, as a contextually embedded, intersubjective, regulative ideal. as such, it is highly compatible with stuff like capability theories of social justice and gives the latter some metaphysical legitimacy.
this is ultimately something like an aesthetic ideal. and if you find a way to ground your values without any notion of freedom, then you’ve found something to do the ethical work that a notion of freedom would do, and that is all we were ever looking for: a way out of nihilism. (which, phenomenologically speaking, would be impossible to sustain sincerely)
I think that once we change the definition of freedom to something that has nothing to do with self-determination but is instead related to how one acts as a non-self-determinated being, we’re no longer talking about the same concept. Rather we are applying the word “freedom” to something else, and it’s not clear to me how this something else could be “freedom” in the way the term is generally understood in the context of the free will debate.The something else could still have normative value (perhaps as some kind of political freedom), but it can’t do the specific work that self-determination freedom does (e.g. establishing that we are truly personally responsible for our actions).
As an aesthetics aside, I am not convinced that taste choices are morally important provided that they do not yield any discrete benefits or harms to other people. I’m inclined toward the “de gustibus non est disputandum” view. If a matter of taste does yield benefits or harms to others, I think it ceases to be a matter of taste.
All of this said, I fully agree with you on nihilism (completely untenable and must be avoided). Here’s how I deal with it:
I hold that while we cannot freely will different moral outcomes, we are still affected positively and negatively by these outcomes. So while it is true that when we say “X should happen instead of Y”, we must acknowledge that we do not have any independent power to ensure this happens, it is still the case that it will be good for us if it does happen and that our unavoidable belief that it is good may be part of what inevitably makes it happen. This follows on what I said before about using argument in an unfree way. We are still causal in a morally important sense, we are just not the final causes and so cannot be individually blamed for the outcomes. The outcomes can only be evaluated in terms of their consequences for beings and not in terms of blame/responsibility. I think this is morally very useful, because much of what goes wrong in our society today does so because we have a tendency to hold individuals personally responsible for outcomes rather than try to see their larger systemic & structural causes. For example, Bob is a classist, but instead of blaming Bob for being classist, we need to ask what it is about Bob’s HER that has made Bob a classist and how Bob’s HER and the HER of future people can be in future constructed differently to yield a result that is better than what we anticipate will happen if we are unable to do this. In so doing, we adjust one another’s HERs and cause this to happen, albeit not in an individually responsible or self-determinist way. In sum, if we recognize that we are unfree, this helps us to think about HER more often, and the act of thinking about HER changes our own HER, thereby changing our behavior, thereby changing outcomes, thereby changing the resulting benefits and harms. That said, whether or not any of this is useful depends on whether our HERs permit us to find it persuasive and whether people can get themselves to care about morality independent of the notion that they might be held personally responsible for failing to do so. That I find it persuasive but care about morality anyway unavoidably makes me think it might be possible that others might be able to do this, and thereby causes me to espouse the view. While I’m an anecdotal case, I have found that since I adopted it I have found myself feeling less judgmental and hostile and more compassionate and imaginatively empathetic than I was when I regarded individuals as free and pluralistic. It has helped me to see that everything in the universe is connected in many more ways than I can possibly understand alone, and that everything and everyone is much more like myself than I might have conceded before. We are really just part of one great big system, none of us control it, and once we are convinced of this we cannot help but think that we must do the best we can to truly understand how it works so that we will all contribute to one another’s HER in a way that will yield better consequences relative to what we imagine will happen if it turns out I am wrong and this cannot be thought about in this way by enough of the people in the system no matter what random permutations accompany it..I think this is a lot better than doing what most laypeople do now, which is look for villains to blame for things that happen without addressing underlying causes, and then to use retributive justice to hurt these poor, blameless individuals. Does that make any sense?
it does make sense. you are looking for a way to affirm human agency (quoting you, “the act of thinking about HER changes our own HER, thereby changing our behavior, thereby changing outcomes”) without affirming individual “free will”. you want it to be the case that a person thinking, striving to understand, and acting on that understanding, can bring about positive change. you just don’t think we need a concept of individual responsibility for this. did i get you?
and the reason you can’t abide the concept of individual responsibility is because you think it is based on the idea that a person exists in a vacuum, is sufficient unto himself; whereas, as you correctly point out, she is part of a greater whole, caused and causing alike, but never operating independently. did i get you here, too?
i agree with all that. i am fine with forgoing the “personal responsibility” notion as you define it – a person responsible because he is self-sufficient. she is never self-sufficient, but part of all sorts of causal chains and conditionings. ergo no “individual responsibility”. i am okay with that, and you have your point there. i was never claiming that (i do not think that Sartre does either).
what i was trying to propose was an intersubjective notion of both freedom and self. it’s not as crazy as you might think. I believe Sartre was going for this, which was why i feel has has his finger on something – NOT because i want to uphold the notion that a person exists in a self-sufficient vacuum.
but without claiming i exist alone – i am thoroughly conditioned and affected by my history and heredity, etc. – i make choices. i make the choice not to abuse my child. really it is a choice. my evidence to you that it is a choice is phenomenological description. when a child of mine is being difficult, i see one version of myself beating the child senseless. i see it like watching a movie. other parents i speak to have the same experience. then we put that movie aside and choose another movie, where we are patient and deal with the child in more understanding and constructive ways. this is experienced, it is lived, as a moment of choosing. that is all the evidence i claim that one needs for our power of agency.
as for “ultimate” ends and “self-determination”, they need not be located in the singular person, and should not be. you and i can agree there. but we can each participate in the ultimate end of each of us participating in the ultimate end. no that is not a typo, it’s meant to sound funny and means what it says. the means and end are the same, and thus the regress is avoided. the Means IS the End. being able to make a real choice depends upon our capability. “should” does not always mean “can”. this is why something like a capability theory of social justice works – in upholding and furthering each person’s capability to be good (making sure they have the nurturing, education, economic resources, health and leisure, etc. to become a person capable of both recognizing and choosing good). you’d like Amartya Sen, if you’re not familiar with him already. my work, such as it is, is about establishing the metaphysical/philosophical basis that social and economic theories like Sen’s needs.
what’s missing here, and what we can’t accomplish in this small space, is a more sophisticated explication. such an explication would not be about imagining people as sui generis. it would involve sophisticated notions of intersubjectivity, and would not rule out agency or responsibility but would locate them in a different context than what you have in mind. again, that is a long story. i am only hinting at it. among other things, it is never all or nothing. we can make choices that support our capability to make further choices. or we can make choices that lead to a curtailing of our ability to make choices, that lead us into traps of our own making. or perhaps we are in traps that others have devised for us, and they may or may not be responsible. i believe that at times, we are in fact in the position to be responsible, and a good social justice theory aims to put us in positions where we are capable of responsibility. only a fortunate and highly evolved person can act responsibly, and this is a communal, not an individual, effort. He cannot achieve it alone.
what you say about sometimes needing irrationality – i do understand that as well. i think you’re reacting to a narrow version of rationality that is out there. as such, it’s a good instinct in you. but there are other notions of “rationality” or rather, legitimate “thinking.” if i manage to publish my latest piece, you would probably like it. a lot about that.
(your use of the HERs, through palpably clenched teeth, was sweet and aesthetically awful. please stop 🙂
i have never trolled (is that what you call commenting in the comment section of a blog?) before, and hope will never again. I feel like a recently divorced person scouring bars for cheap pickups under a pretend name, instead of doing something constructive – the real research and writing that I’ve been procrastinating. but your points are valid and it was a good casual – eh, workout. many thanks.
all my best,
I’d only call it trolling if the intent was to agitate rather than to have a meaningful intersubjective exchange. I’ve enjoyed it, and you correctly understand the position I’m advancing. I certainly understand the phenomenology of feeling like we have legitimate choices and that things really could go one of several different ways, but I’m not convinced this experience is genuine. Thanks for reading and sharing your thoughts, it’s been fun. 🙂
haha, then i feel less guilty! likewise, been fun. you leave us with the central question, then, of how to distinguish between truth and illusion 🙂 and the pitfalls of the self-fulfilling prophesy. but for another occasion. take care!
Generally, I agree with your critique. If I am not mistaken Existentialism also denounces identification or adoption of any system. If so, and correct me if I am wrong:
I find it interesting that existentialism is a system of thought which aggressively criticizes the notion of a adopting any.. system of thought. Which leads me to my next point.
I think critique of traditional systems furthers philosophical discussion and our search for meaning, value, and truth. But, to dissolve these political, legal, economic (etc) systems is completely absurd. Sure these systems seek to control and contain human behavior, but the identification and implementation of these boundaries allow for order. I, for one, do not think the world would be a better place if everyone was left to their own devices, free to define themselves as they wish without regard for the rational.
In regard to “existence precluding essence”, yes, this seems absolutely absurd. Although, I think it a silly when we use today’s eyes to examine yesterday’s systems. Consider the birth-time of existentialism. Origin of Species was published in 1859, and the Existentialist Movement began in the late 1800’s. Even if we include Existentialism as a Humanism (published in the late 1940’s), Darwinism and similar genetic and epi-genetic determinism was theorized but remained, for the most part, absent of any hard evidence to support it.
But, genetic conditions (or even lobotomies, as an extreme example) set boundaries for our behaviors; they make it predictable to a point. Within these boundaries there is an entire spectrum of emotions, feelings, and perceptions that we can experience. Initial conditions cannot perfectly predict outcomes: they only serve as a general guideline with a margin of error. Within this margin of error, our individualism remains.
Sorry, but I have an additional comment. I think it’s far too easy to support any deterministic system without room for individualism.
Ultimately, everything in our universe, and what we know to be “true” or “valid” is governed by the laws of physics. We do, in fact, live in vacuum governed by these constants, and, are completely puppets on a string controlled by the chemical interactions which the system controls. Sure, you can introduce chaos theory into the equation, but just because we do not fully understand the system does not mean the system is not predictable. All of our behaviors, including the seemingly entropic regress of cause-and-effect, can be seen as written far before humans even came into existence.
Again, this is too easy; we need ways to validate our search for meaning and value, which is why thought-systems like Existentialism, as flawed as they are, need to exist.
Again, sorry, I promise this is my final thought. To support the above, here is what I mean by this deterministic system:
Social Behavior is governed by Psychology, which is governed by Biology, which is governed by Chemistry, which is governed by Physics, which is a constant (and yes, can collapse at any minute lol).
Hello, having read through the comments I’d like to take a step back. Existentialism is not an exact philosophy it is more of a significant-ethos. The poor existentialists who wanted to spread the word had a load of objective philosophers to deal with and slipped too far into their ontology, whilst trying to establish their own position. Existentialism is a tool for dealing with life and you have to be able to operate the tool skilfully before it starts working for you. It is no worse than the other thought-out models in it’s degree of validity, if there was one that was absolutely “correct” then the debate would be over. It is an imperfect humanist position with a history. We should be developing it, just as it says, by taking responsibility for itself. Whilst I’ve been around, there is some evidence for hope in a better future, taking the existentialist position is an optimistic belief in the possibility of man becoming more civilised, and a thinking tool to help that development. To escape being an ignoble savage we have to ‘want’ not to be an ignoble savage. Wanting to be a certain way has the benefit of being a self-fulfilling prophecy, for a mostly emotional creature with a curious mind; trying to make safe sense out of chaos. (You may call that description human). nature . Remember that old hippy saying, what if they gave a war and nobody came. People do not do that which what they do not want to do, if they can. Existentialism is a way of generating civilised doing, because you want to be and do civilised living. The “wanting” bit is a non-conscious (unless you call it to consciousness) decision maker/influencer. A part of your emotional makeup, previously called human nature. Existentialism offers a route to building this “being” through choice and extended responsibility to make a more civilised world. The difficulty is the journey from here to there. You do not know what to do better if you do not know what you are doing now, is not better. You do not want to do better if you do not know that what you are doing now is not good enough. The problem with the human nature argument is that it is intrinsically “sticky”. You can get to good/better via human nature thinking, but it is not that productive a route in my opinion. Sartre might say that you were more inclined to be rowing the boat rather than rocking it. You might even do it with a god thing, but it seems that has turned out to be too sticky by half. I would say to other philosophers:- relax and try to understand the meaning and use, rather than finding the inconsistencies. Let Hume release you from cause/effect thinking. Let’s decide that it takes a whole world to bring up a child, to whom we can teach the growing of essence-by-choice to become the person you want to be: by choice despite certain deterministic drivers. Bearing in mind the overtly contradictory point made by Mr Camus, “when everything is permitted, it does not mean that nothing is forbidden”. The world could and would be a better place if people were wandering about, wondering more about what it the best way “to be”. Luck and happiness. M.
I enjoyed reading your criticism of Sartre and existentialism. I’m new to philosophy and recently learned of his philosophy. But having taken a lot of classes in biology and reading material on neuroscience I couldn’t really accept it. I couldn’t get around the idea of existentialism that people have free will. Because of the reasons you listed. I mean, if we do have free will. It only exists to an extent.
That and were animals. Just like for example the bees, and the bees do have an “essence”. Besides reproduction, their purpose is to pollinate plants.
Although I’d have to say accepting that free will doesn’t exist is just as bleak of a philosophy as existentialism.
[…] A Critique of Existentialism (September 5, 2012, 11,008 hits) […]
One of my mentors, the novelist Paul West, humorously reduced Existentialism to three words: “It’s your fault.”
I respectfully suggest the three words should become, “it’s my fault and here is what I am going to do about it”.
[…] A Critique of Existentialism (September 5, 2012, 19,972 hits) […]
THE PROBLEM, I THINK, WE HAVE WITH SARTRE’S EXISTENTIALISM IS THE CONFUSION ABOUT HIS ANCHORAGE ON SUBJECTIVE FREEDOM. WE CAN HELP OURSELVES BETTER IF WE READ SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR’S “THE ETHICS OF AMBIQUITY” WHERE SHE DELINEATED THREE TYPES OF FREEDOMS – ONTOLOGICAL FREEDOM, THE TYPE SARTRE SAYS EVERY HUMAN POSSESSES: POWER, WHICH IS FREEDOM FROM ECONOMIC AND MATERIAL CONSTRAINTS, AND MORAL FREEDOM, WHICH SHE CONSIDERS THE HIGHEST FORM OF FREEDOM EVERY HUMAN SHOULD ASPIRE TO ATTAIN. I THINK IF WE ARE ABLE TO DISTINGUISH THESE FORMS OF FREEDOMS WE WOULD HAVE VERY WELL UNDERSTOOD SARTRE WELL. THE PROBLEM, I THINK, IS NOT ABOUT EXISTENTIALISM AS A PHILOSOPHY BUT SARTRE’S CONCEPTION OF IT. WE MUST ALSO REMEMBER THE CONCEPT OF THE SITUATED SUBJECT. SARTRE WROTE OUT OF THE EXPERIENCES OF WORLD WAR 11 AND WAS AVERSE TO THE OPPRESSION THAT CHARACTERIZED THAT ERA. SO, THE FREE WILL EXISTS. HOWEVER, IT CAN BE DIMINISHED. THE PROBLEM WITH SARTRE IS THAT HE THINKS IT CANNOT BE DIMINISHED!
Very nice. Though free will to judge anything true or false freely indicates something immaterial at least in part, no?
Paul
I think that it’s important to get clear on exactly what’s going on here. Sartre is by no means talking about a metaphysical free will. Otherwise, this passage in Being and Nothingness would simply make no sense: “It would be vain to object that the sole condition of this anguish is ignorance of the underlying psychological determinism… From this point of view the existence of a psychological determinism could not invalidate the results of our description” (p. 70-71). Sartre is on the level of phenomenology, not metaphysics. Freedom is simply the experienced ability to transcend facticity at any given moment. This results from his understanding of consciousness itself as inherently split. There is consciousness of this computer, but there is also a non-positional consciousness of this consciousness of this computer. Consciousness is thus already beyond the intentional contents of which it is aware through what Sartre calls the pre-reflective cogito or (self)-consciousness as opposed to the reflective cogito or self-consciousness of Descartes. It’s the fact that consciousness is always at an ideal distance from its own finite self (a presence-to-self) that transcendence can surpass facticity. Facticity, on this view, is understood in terms of the empirical ego and its ego-logical structures (“I am x”) while transcendence is consciousness not being what it is (being x in the mode of being beyond it). The being of consciousness as discovered through phenomenology would not change simply because we know it emerges from the perhaps mechanistic brain. Thus, freedom and responsibility are reconcilable with metaphysical determinism. They simply result from a phenomenological description of consciousness’s being. This admittedly makes Sartre’s phenomenology of transcendence and facticity limited in descriptive scope, but not necessarily wrong.
Therefore, when you say, “Existentialism is not metaphysical truth,” this doesn’t make much sense given Sartre’s philosophical goal of producing a phenomenological (not metaphysical) ontology.
Also, it’s important for Sartre that facticity (various ego-logical commitments) and transcendence are dialectically mediated. Facticity can be created by our freedom, but our facticity reciprocally orients that very free consciousness as well. There’s also a larger story to tell about being-for-others in which both our facticity and freedom are limited, molded, and instrumentalized by the looks of others. This seems to support a view that if one’s ego-logical commitments are inculcated into someone from a young age through their material and social environment, we can expect them to make specific choices down the road, even if it’s not for certain. Thus, the later Sartre is able to make the claim that existentialism and marxism go together and human freedom is limited by economic scarcity.
I can see we are born as different things, I see my children and I see one like me, existential in core, but I know it will fade. I didn’t know how much instinct was true until I watched two people the same age see and react differently. I felt for the first time real and honest and not stupid and also didn’t understand how the other couldn’t see things. I can see that life if different brains. They will change and adapt. But from the first breath, some see and feel and hear in different ways to other people. Only social systems give voice to titles of what is. Life is whole by both types. They exist to provide a full picture. We discuss it all day long, but intellectual descriptions and studies don’t capture what is. We are different species. Some see and feel a certain way, some don’t. We are a compliment to each other. No point arguing. The ones that feel will give up talking. No one will ever be able to see through the others eyes. I only know this by seeing the children. It’s clear cut. Conditioning comes later.
I like turtles.
same.
When one abandons naive realism, all contradictions fall. Berkeley’s master argument is that one can conceive of nothing outside of one’s mind. Too simple to be accepted, but irrefutable. The arguments against it can only appeal to some coincidental weirdness stemming from the consistency of scientific law, or perhaps the correspondence of sense to physicality (which is then extrapolated all the way to the cause of consciousness). Both of these arguments assume inherent traits of consciousness (namely, complete consistency or an inherent sense of probability), which are necessary when one assumes naive realism, and completely unnecessary otherwise. Science is consistent? Entirely, but only as a set of related predictions. The bias that tells me this needs further explanation or a cause is only a result of scientific training which hilariously turns out to be a bias when extrapolated past its point of validity. I can accept that consciousness is not subject to scientific consistency and unify the entire world (in terms of epistomology and value), or I can apply a limited schema to my entire existence and be hurt and dumbfounded by the cruelty of the universe and every modern, unsolved philosophical “problem”. Had I been capable of doing so, I might have even abandoned naive realism for the sake of utility alone before I came to understand that it is thoroughly sensible.
That doing so is thoroughly sensible, that is.
When Sartre speaks of essence he basicaly meens the porpose for the creation of somethimg and not that somethings ability to feel or umderstand its existance thus his example with the knife. A knife according to Sartre has an essence (but no consciousness) that comes before its existance..a knife has a blade, a handle and its made for cutting things. The essence is given to the knife by a creator but since humans have no creator they have no esence preexisting themselves they have to chose one. No one said that the consciousness of a person is not linked to the their brains or their physical body but the existance of that body itself serves no purpose more than existing thus having completed that goal has no goal whatsoever..
Nah. Right from the jump, you reduce the claim “existence precedes essence” to human consciousnesses allowing humans to be independent from genetics and environmental conditions. This is completely wrong. Please read “Hell is Other People”
Studebaker is right. There are also serious effects: Existentialism has much to answer for. The ‘consumerist’ West seems obsessed with ‘here and now’ existential hedonism (greed is good), while the East offers ‘there and then’ Dharma, Ahimsa, having kids, etc. Sure the East is also getting more and more infected by optimising greed, but can the West survive long term? Hope it can, but Social Darwinist ideas bring the Law of the Jungle inside community, with all its services to make life for the individual easy. It supports living for now, (‘everyone for himself’) and does not seem to care about tomorrow. Example: eating animals makes some people behave like animals, just like alcohol and drugs influence behaviour. (think of the fears of a cow in adrenaline as the Abattoir nears) Yes, taste is taught by nurture and personality is a gift of birth, but acting as a predator has no long term benefits. It serves now. While benefitting from competition and individual excellence, mankind also succeeded through cooperation. It is not survival of the fittest person but survival of the smartest team. Humanity are not Apex Predators. We needs new Ethics for the Space Age. Like we outlawed duels, family marriages and other asocial habits to build society. People like Einstein, Steiner and Paul McCartney did not become herbivore for nothing. Their health improved, it was cheaper, it makes the planet sustainable.
The future offers zillions of people in the galaxy, but it takes a path of non-violence, lest people consume exoplanets bare like the economy of Now, Existentialism, is destroying our habitat on Earth. Greed is bad.