Existentialsim

Existentialist Ethics.
Existentialism is normative ethical theory we’ll look at in this
class which is the theory of morality that grows out of
existentialism.

Existentialism is the theory that our existence precedes our

essence. In other words, the existentialist rejects the claim that
human beings exist for a predetermined purpose.
The opposite claim, that essence precedes
existence (or that human beings exist for a
predetermined purpose), is the position of
essentialism.

Essentialism has been incredibly influential from

philosophy’s earliest days. For example, both
Aristotle and Kant were essentialists. They
thought that human beings exist for a specific
purpose.
Aristotle thought that purpose was two-fold:
being rational, and being social. Kant thought
that purpose was to cultivate a good will, and
that our capacity to be rational facilitated this.

Consequently, their ideas of what a good life

looks like(in particular, a morally good life)
involve fulfilling that purpose by cultivating a
particular lifestyle.
The essentialist sees human beings as designed with a
specific function, and so we live our best lives when
we fulfill that function.

This isn’t to say that every essentialist is also a theist,

or someone who believes in a God who designed
human beings this way. Essentialists might credit this
design to a God or gods, or they might attribute this
design to nature or some other force.
 What’s important to note here is that for the essentialist,
our essence (what makes us human) determines how we
should exist in our time on this earth. In other words,
essence precedes existence.

Existentialists reject this claim. They deny that humans

were designed to fulfill a particular purpose. Instead, the
existentialist claims that each of us has to create our own
purpose.
Since existentialism holds that it’s up to us to define who we
are and what our purpose is, it might seem like an existential
ethics would just be moral subjectivism.

Moral subjectivism is amoral relativist theory that holds that:

1.There are no universal, absolute definitions of right and
wrong. Consequently, 2.Each person must determine her or his
own definitions Moral subjectivism is kind of like cultural
relativism on steroids. Recall that, on cultural relativism,
morality is not objective because it is set by one’s culture.
This means that the highest moral authority that exists is one’s
own culture. Members of a society have to follow their
society’s rules and norms. Moral subjectivism goes one step
further. Not only is morality not objective, but it’s also
completely dependent on each person’s preferences and
opinions. I am my own highest moral authority, and you are
yours.

This means that I can’t hold you responsible for anything that
you do, and you can’t hold me responsible either. We’re each
living by our own code, which means that there’s no higher
moral authority than a person’s own personal convictions.
While moral subjectivism might sound appealing, it has some
serious problems. First, it seems like moral disagreements are
about something more than opinions.

Second, it seems like there are cases where we are right to

hold someone accountable for their actions. For example, if a
maniac driver runs over and injures someone in the
crosswalk, you might have the intuition that he should be
held responsible and appropriately punished.
Learning that he doesn’t see anything wrong with what he
did probably doesn’t change that intuition. This is because in
a lot of cases, especially when what I’m doing hurts you, it
seems like my own view of my actions doesn’t really matter.

What matters is how my actions negatively affected you, and

so it’s right to hold me responsible (regardless of how I feel
about it). For these reasons, existentialists like Jean-Paul
Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir wanted to avoid moral
subjectivism.
So while it’s true that existentialists deny the existence of one
moral standard or code, it’s not the case that existentialist
ethics is just moral relativism. We do have to invent our own
morality to live by, but this process is not an ethical free for all.

This is because, while we are completely free to do what we

want and create ourselves, we are also completely responsible
too. This might seem a little weird, or even incompatible. To
see why these two go hand-in-hand, let’s think about a real-life
example.
When you were a little kid, you had to do what your parent(s)
or guardian said. They may have set a bedtime that you
thought was too early, but had to follow anyway. They might
have made you eat healthy food that you thought was too
disgusting.

When you became an adult, you no longer had to do what your

parent(s) or guardian say. In this respect, you are completely
free. If you want to stay up until 3:00 a.m. every night and eat
mounds of junk food, you can do it.But with this freedom
comes responsibility.
When you oversleep and miss a class or a shift at work, or get
sick to your stomach from your diet of sugary (or salty)
processed products, you have no one to blame but yourself.
You are responsible for the predicament you find yourself in.

The existentialist thinks that our situation as human beings is

kind of like that of a newly-minted adult. What we should do
isn’t dictated by a divine being, nature, or an abstract moral
code. In this respect, we are totally free to do what we want.
However, with that freedom comes responsibility.
We cannot blame God or the universe when our freely-made
bad decisions have unpleasant outcomes. We’re responsible
for ourselves because no one else is. This means that, as
totally free but totally responsible individuals, we have to
make our decisions wisely.

We need to consider and weigh our options carefully, keeping

in mind that our actions are our own and so the consequences
of them are, too. It is ultimately up to us to create a world that
is good and promotes wellbeing, rather than one that is bad
and filled with suffering. No one else can make this happen
for us.
Sartre’s Theory of Ethics In the excerpt from Existentialism
that you read this week, Sartre offers some ways of thinking
through this existentialist ethics.

His project here is not solely concerned with ethical theory–

he’s mainly working out the position of existentialism more
broadly–but he does want to pay attention to existentialism’s
implications for morality. Sartre thinks that understanding
existentialism requires us to start with the concept of
subjectivity.
 Be careful–he’s not talking about moral subjectivism here!
Rather, Sartre defines subjectivity as the existentialist idea
that a person is nothing else but what s/he makes of her or
himself. This ties back to the essentialism vs. existentialism
debate. Are people created with a particular purpose, or do
they create it for themselves?
In this reading, I will approach what could be argued as the
core of a theory of action in Jean-Paul Sartre’s thought,
tackling its ethical implications. Throughout the analysis, I
will outline elements that allow for an integrated perspective
of Sartre’s ethical thought.

I will explore a few significant passages, mainly from Sartre’s

masterpiece – L’Être et le Néant, his phenomenological
ontology of 1943 – and occasionally from other works, both
earlier and later.
My examination stems from two ontological considerations
and develops along a set of points primarily delineating a
Sartrean theory of action and ultimately a Sartrean ethics.

These two underlying premises pertain to Sartre’s thought

on freedom and will, both quite originally defined from his
phenomenological point of view. Both also frame the
ensuing critical thoughts on Sartre’s theory of action and
Sartre’s ethics.
I. Freedom, not free will
It is perhaps wisest to begin by precluding a misinterpretation
of Sartre’s understanding of freedom. For Sartre, freedom is
ontological, which means that it is the very being of
consciousness, of the for-itself (pour-soi). Conscious grasping
of this free condition comes about through the experience of
angst (angoisse).
This suggests at least two things: first, that Sartre’s concept of
freedom does not fit any of the usual options in the
philosophical debate on free will.
Sartre is admittedly not a determinist who proposes that
present mental states would be caused by preceding mental
states. On the contrary, for Sartre, present consciousness is
determined only by itself, in its very presence.

He sees past consciousness as inert, void of power to

determine present consciousness. Might he instead be a
compatibilist, believing determinism to be compatible with
free will?
He is not a compatibilist either, as that position implies an
acceptance of determinism. The compatibilist perspective
assumes the truth of determinism and investigates the role of
free will in a deterministic world.

But, precisely, determinism is outright rejected by Sartre. And

he rejects it not merely the sense in which different effects
could follow from the same causes, but from a more radical
perspective whereby no cause/effect relation whatsoever is
relevant to the phenomena of consciousness.
Neither determinist, nor compatibilist, Sartre is no libertarian either on
the matter of free will. According to the libertarian view, the admission
of free will implies a refusal of determinism. While Sartre would agree
that freedom implies such a refusal (at least as regards subjective
existence), he quite simply does not equate freedom with free will.

In fact, for Sartre, freedom as an ontological concept is rather removed

from the idea of free will. Consciousness is free regardless of human
will. Freedom is a transcendental condition for conscious being. That
is not, for Sartre, the case with will. As such, the concept of free will
makes little sense within Sartre’s ontological frame.
II. Will is witness, not agent
The second consideration is related to the agential status of
will. Yet again, Sartre disagrees with the more obvious
representations.

Namely, that of will (free or otherwise) as determining

one’s choice, deliberation and action. For Sartre, when will
comes into play, “les jeux sont faits”, evoking Julius
Caesar’s Alea iacta est, the die is cast.
“We tend to believe that the hidden is the source
of the expressed. Besides, we know that as far a
(...)

In so considering will, Sartre diverges from a traditional

representation of human action according to which, since
action is rational, it is primarily determined by the reflective
subject in a deliberative process involving will.

For the existentialist, action is determined subjectively,

through and by the very living of consciousness.
But, according to Sartre’s phenomenology, in reflection mode
consciousness cannot be a direct agent. In reflection,
consciousness merely witnesses reflected consciousness,
becoming aware of choices lived in that reflected
consciousness.

This collides with traditional perspectives on the powers of

deliberation. But, more significantly, it also signals something
of a Copernican revolution. Indeed, what Sartre proposes is to
shift human reflection from a stance of agency to a stance of
awareness.
 And this shift resonates significantly in another Copernican-
like revolution down the line, from a distinct angle. I refer to
António Damásio’s inflection of the traditional relation
between emotions and feelings.

Damásio critiques the traditional representation of the relation

between emotion and feeling, whereby an inner and private
feeling is understood to cause a visible, even public, emotion.
In Looking for Spinoza (2003) Damásio exemplifies this
representation with a quote from Shakespeare’s Richard II:

Say that again.

The shadow of my sorrow! ha! let's see:
'Tis very true, my grief lies all within;
And these external manners of laments
Are merely shadows to the unseen grief
That swells with silence in the tortured soul;
In a way parallel to Sartre’s understanding of will, Damásio
puts forward that it is not emotions that are the shadows of
feelings, but the other way around. It is feelings, rather, that
are the shadows of emotions, in that the former are a
conscious perception of the latter.

Of course, there is at least one important difference between

these two revolutions – for Damásio, consciousness is not a
direct role player, whereas for Sartre consciousness certainly
is the direct and actually the sole role player of human agency.
In the end, both Sartre and Damásio advance a similar claim:
that a voluntarist and intellectualised centrality needs to be
demystified in our subjective living. Although emotional living
is necessarily conscious for one but not for the other, both
authors posit that emotional living has significant priority over
reflective consciousness.

These two facts – an ontological freedom that must be

distinguished from free will, and a reflective will that must be
distinguished from the subjectivity that determines action – are
obviously decisive in Sartre’s conceptualisation of human
action, as we will see.
VI. Emotions and action
The small revolution convened by Sartre would not be complete if it
focused only on the movement of expelling psychological states and
qualities from inner consciousness to transcendence. It was also
necessary to reveal the crucially active aspect of emotions, which are
not doomed to passive condition of expression.

That is precisely what Sartre intended to do in the third and final part
of his Sketch for a Theory of Emotions (Esquisse pour une théorie des
émotions), where a perspective on emotional life of a consciousness is
given in terms of a transformation of how the world presents itself to a
subject.
The world presents itself to consciousness as obstacles and
difficulties that must be overcome, always involving a
coefficient of adversity.

According to Sartre, emotions introduce an element of

modulation to the meanings of how worldly objects present
themselves to consciousness, softening, bypassing, or adapting
to adversity. Sartre provides a very simple example of this
plasticity: when perceiving that a bunch of grapes is not, after
all, at hand, reachable, consciousness transforms its
relationship with the world emotionally.
The bunch of grapes becomes less attractive – now, it is just a
bunch of unripe grapes. Consequently, the world’s adversity is
mitigated by this emotional divestment.

Another example: an emotion like joy is a foretaste of the

fruition that the overcoming of distances and adversity will
bring, and sadness translates an inhibited relationship to the
world, thus inhibiting adversities that potentiate frustration.
This plastic modulation changes not so much the world in its
objective adversity, but the way we live it.
Since it is not possible to isolate a meaning of the world
or of part of it from a reference to a subject’s experience
of it, and since it is not possible to speak of an adversity
of the world except by reference to those who suffer such
adversity, emotional life, according to Sartre, in fact
introduces a magical ingredient to the relationships with
the objects of the world.
The duty of character
Somehow, even from a Kantian perspective, there is a sensitive
issue around the character. Following the categorical
imperative should be a rule assimilated by moral agents as a
trait of their character.

We could put this idea in very simple terms: for Kant, there is
a concern in promoting a character of duty. But for Sartre,
quite the opposite is at stake: not a character of duty, but a duty
of character.
Not in the sense of a certain character instead of another –
of course there are bad characters – but rather in the sense
that radical investment in pursuing a choice, undertaking a
project, and developing a singular character is
fundamentally an ethical realisation.

Perhaps this is just wishful thinking, but it is also probably

the deepest legacy of existentialism to ethics.