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The Shift to Collective Responsibility
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- INDIVIDUAL FREEDOM IS ABSOLUTE
The Shift to Collective ResponsibilityFaced with these criticisms, Sartre did the unthinkable, at least for a famous philosopher. He changed his mind. In one essay he writes: “I had written, Whatever the circumstances, and whatever the site, a man is always free to choose to be a traitor or not.. .‘ When I read this, I said to myself: it’s incredible, I actually believed that!.” What Satire realized was that his main points of Being and Nothingness, the major text on existentialism, did not specifically require this complete subjectivism. Instead, they laid down a foundation which, when combined with elements of Marxist and other European thought, could give a coherent account of the tension between individual and collective responsibility. For example, one of the tenants of existentialism is that in making my individual choice, I am affecting the conditions of the rest of humanity. In choosing the person I want to be, I am also choosing the type of humanity I want. In another instance Satire writes that my freedom is largely due to the recognition of that freedom by others. This is not a departure from existentialism; in fact, it is more true to the phenomenological principle that conscious awareness is “intentional”--that is, “awareness” must always be an awareness of some specific object. Since human awareness is to a large degree social, then our “intentional” consciousness is largely made up of encounters with other human beings. If this is true, then it is still possible that we have a great deal of freedom to choose and responsibility for what we choose, as existentialism holds. But it also means that there are collective as well as individual choices, and that not all people who allow collectivist philosophies to influence and justify their choices are acting in “bad faith.” Those who see a contradiction in saying that one is completely responsible and that the external world influences one’s choices suffer from a failure to think dialectically, or “wholistically.” In fact, it is true that my choices shape the world around me, and that the world shapes those possible choices as well. At one point in history I did not have the “freedom” to fly up in the air. But the Wright Brothers made certain particular choices which resulted in changing those conditions. Now I do have the freedom to fly. The relationship between individual choice and the external world is a “circular” or “dialectical” relationship which gives and takes over time. The choices influence the world, which conditions the choices, which influence the world, and so on. Recognizing this is crucial, according to Satire, to avoid falling into the trap of either absolute determinism or absolute subjectivism. A notion of collective responsibility which recognizes the dialectical relationship between person, group and world is necessary for the ongoing fight for liberation from colonialism, racism, class inequalities and so on. Implications for DebateJean-Paul Satire’s works have a great deal to offer to value debate precisely because his career was spent synthesizing such opposing viewpoints. Debaters ought to read commentaries about his work alongside reading the primary texts, since his translated writings are rather obscure and complicated. His fiction and personal essays, on the other hand, are very accessible and can help readers understand even the more complicated points of his philosophy. One aspect of Satire’s philosophy especially appealing to debaters is his ideas about decision-making. Arguing that one individual choice is a choice for all of humanity is particularly compelling in a debate round. Essentially it means that the judge’s ballot has more than just passing importance; it reflects a commitment to one or another way of being for the human race. BIBLIOGRAPHYSatire, Jean Paul. BEING AND NOTHINGNESS. Hazel E. Barnes, trans. (New York: Gramercy, 1994). ________ CRITIQUE OF DIALECTICAL REASON. Alan Sheridan-Smith, trans. (London: NLB, 1976). ________ BETWEEN EXISTENTIALISM AND MARXISM. John Matthews, trans. (New York: William Morrow and Company, 1974). ________ LITERARY AND PHILOSOPHICAL ESSAYS. Annette Michelson, trans. (New York: Crowell-Collier, 1962). ________ SEARCH FOR A METHOD. Hazel E. Barnes, trans. (New York: Random House, 1968).
Bernstein, Richard. PRAXIS AND ACTION (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1971). Cumming, Robert Denoon, ed. THE PHILOSOPHY OF JEAN-PAUL SARTRE (New York: Random House, 1965). DeBeavoir, Simone. ALL SAID AND DONE. Patrick O’Brian, trans. (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1974). Heidegger, Martin. BEING AND TIME. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson, tans. (New York: Harper and Row, 1962). La Capra, Dominick. A PREFACE TO SARTRE (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1978). Poster, Mark. SARTRE’S MARXISM (London: Pluto Press, 1979). Sheridan, James F. SARTRE: THE RADICAL CONVERSION (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1973). Stack, George 1. SARTRE’S PHILOSOPHY OF SOCIAL EXISTENCE (St. Louis: Warren H. Green, 1978). Suhl, Benjamin. JEAN-PAUL SARTRE: THE PHILOSOPHER AS LITERARY CRITIC (New York: Columbia University Press, 1970). Warnock, Mary. EXISTENTIALIST ETHICS (London: Macmillan, 1967). “A Commemorative Issue: Jean Paul Satire, 1905-1980.” EROS 8:1 (1981). JOURNAL OF THE BRITISH SOCIETY FOR PHENOMENOLOGY 1:2 (May 1970). INDIVIDUAL FREEDOM IS ABSOLUTE1. FREEDOM IS INEVITABLE--HUMANS CANNOT AVOID MAKING CHOICES Thomas R. Flynn. SARTRE AND MARXIST EXISTENTIALISM, 1986, p. 8 Saitre argues that original choice is not arbitrary; every action is intentional and so has a meaning-direction. Original choice is not a random, purposeless event like the “clinamen” of Epicurus. To be sure, it is criterion-constituting and hence is without antecedent reason or necessity. But Satire’s claim is that any appeal to prior reasons or motives conceals a more basic “choice” of such standards beforehand. The decision to deliberate upon a proposed course of action rather than simply rushing into the breach, for example, presupposes the prior choice of being “rational” in the first place. “When I deliberate,” he summarizes in a well-known remark, “the chips are down.” When the will intervenes, it is merely for the purpose of “making the announcement”.
Jean-Paul Sartre, philosopher. BEING AND NOTHINGNESS, 1994, p. 436 Thus at the outset we can see what is lacking in those tedious discussions between determinists and proponents of free will. The latter are concerned to find cases of decision for which there exists no prior cause, or deliberations concerning two opposed acts which are equally possible and possess causes (motives) of exactly the same weight To which the determinists may easily reply that there is no action without a cause and that the most insignificant gesture (raising the right hand rather than the left hand, etc.) refers to causes and motives which confer its meaning upon it. Indeed the case could not be otherwise since every action must be intentional; each action must, in fact, have an end, and the end in turn is referred to a cause. Such indeed is the unity of the three temporal ekstases; the end or temporalization of my future implies a cause (or motive); that is, it points toward my past, and the present is the upsurge of the act To speak of an act without a cause is to speak of an act which would lack the intentional structure of every act, and the proponents of free will by searching for it on the level of the act which is in the process of being performed can only end up by rendering the act absurd. But the determinists in turn are weighing the scale by stopping their investigation with the mere designation of the cause and motive. The essential question in fact lies beyond the complex organization “cause-intention-act-end”; indeed we ought to ask how a cause (or motive) can be constituted as such.
jean-Paul Sartre, philosopher. BEING AND NOTHINGNESS, 1994, pp. 444-5 Actually it is not enough to will; it is necessary to will to will. Take, for example, a given situation: I can react to it emotionally. We have shown elsewhere that emotion is not a physiological tempest; it is a reply adapted to the situation; it is a type of conduct, the meaning and form of which are the object of an intention of consciousness which aims at attaining a particular end by particular means. In contrast to this conduct voluntary and rational conduct will consider the situation scientifically, will reject the magical, and will apply itself to realizing determined series and instrumental complexes which will enable us to resolve the problems.
Jean-Paul Satire, philosopher. BEING AND NOTHINGNESS, 1994, p. 462 And as our being is precisely our original choice, the consciousness (of) the choice is identical with the self-consciousness which we have. One must be conscious in order to choose, and one must choose in order to be conscious. Choice and consciousness are one and the same thing.
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