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| Biografías Jean Paul Sartre |
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"Fue ante todo un hombre público; se mantuvo siempre en la brecha tomando posición ante los avatares políticos contemporáneos y teorizó el compromiso del intelectual con el mundo y la realidad. Pero si su aproximación al partido comunista concluyó abruptamente tras la represión de Budapest, como escritor con los años fue afinando un estilo exquisito que lo hizo merecedor del premio Nobel de Literatura en 1964, galardón que rechazó por razones éticas. Fue profesor en El Havre y en París hasta 1945, fecha en la que renunció para consagrarse plenamente a liderar el movimiento existencialista", dice su biógrafo. Nació en París. Su padre murió cuando él tenía pocos meses de nacido, por lo que vivió su infancia bajo la cuidadosa y suave tutela de sus abuelos. Estudió en el Liceo Enrique IV y en la Escuela Normal Superior y se graduó con distinción en 1928. Ejerció la docencia en Laon, Le Havre y Neuilly, viajó por Alemania, Grecia y Egipto, y estudió las filosofías existencialistas y fenomenológicas de Kierkegaard, Heidegger y Husserl. Adoptó su principio básico de que la existencia precede a la esencia en su primera novela, La náusea, de 1938 y en diversas narraciones cortas, en las que trató de representar la trágica angustia de un alma consciente de hallarse condenado a ser libre. Según sus palabras, esta pavorosa libertad significa que el hombre ante todo existe, se encuentra a sí mismo, se agita en el mundo y se define después, y por lo tanto, está condenado en cada instante de su vida a la absoluta responsabilidad de renovarse. Incorporado al ejército en 1939, cayó prisionero de los alemanes en 1940. Repatriado, intervino activamente en la Resistencia. La primera de sus muchas obras teatrales, Las moscas, es de 1942. Después de la guerra produjo obras dramáticas sobre temas existenciales, Las manos sucias, El diablo y el buen Dios y A puerta cerrada. Entre sus novelas sobresalen La edad de la razón, La tregua y la colección de cuentos El muro. Publicó también El existencialismo es un humanismo, La prostituta respetuosa, Baudelaire, ¿Qué es la literatura?, Situaciones y Crítica de la razón dialéctica. Falleció en París. Había dicho: "Durante mucho tiempo tomé la pluma como una espada; ahora conozco nuestra impotencia... La cultura no salva nada ni a nadie, no justifica. Pero es un producto del hombre, que se proyecta en ella, se reconoce... Ese viejo edificio en ruinas, mi impostura, es también mi carácter; podemos deshacernos de una neurosis, pero no curarnos de nosotros mismos".
INTRODUCCIÓN A SU PENSAMIENTO
Con la filosofía de Sartre se produce un cierto retorno
a la concepción del sujeto como centro de significaciones. Pero le da a esta
teoría del sujeto una inflexión diferente. |
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Un clásico ya: editado en La Pléiade,
ese impresionante panteón literario, summa de las belles
lettres no sólo francesas, y ahora, Sartre revivido y reconstruido
en el magnífico libro de Cohen-Solal
[1],
al que puede agregarse con provecho el de otra mujer, otra Anna: Anna
Boschetti [2],
cuyo titulo no revela la riqueza de un contenido también biográfico,
aunque parcial respecto del de Cohen-Solal, que pretende cubrir la
vida entera de Sartre: 1905-1980. Colette Audry, vieja amiga de ambos, también intentó [3] el esbozo de su pensamiento a través de una selección de sus textos. Para no evocar a Iris Murdoch, que le dedicó dos libros [4], en cierto modo adelantada de las biografías sartrianas. Ahora, estas dos, Cohen-Solal y Boschetti. Cierto que Jeanson es la excepción masculina a semejante dominio matriarcal sobre la vida y obra de Sartre. Por su divulgado librito, Sartre par lui-même, que ya tiene más de treinta años, pero también por otros dos, mezcla ambos de tímida biografía con decidida tarea hermenéutica [5]. Las ventajas de esta biografía de Cohen-Solal son varias: en primer lugar, el hecho de ser la primera post-mortem, pudiendo así disponer del ciclo cerrado de la existencia de Sartre, aunque no de su obra, ya que se ha presentado una extraña situación de competencia, sino de disputa, por ver quién publica más inéditos del filósofo: si la hija, Arlette El Kaim-Sartre, albacea en realidad de Sartre, o la inevitable Beauvoir, el fiel Castor, que también dispone de una buena cantidad de escritos, pues Sartre, como es bien sabido, no hacía economías a la hora de darle a la pluma: «J'ai toujours considéré l’abondance comme une vertu», le escribió un día a Simone. Otra ventaja del libro de Cohen-Solal es que ha podido manejar aún a tiempo ciertos testimonios de gente próxima a Sartre; por ejemplo, recogió bien oportunamente los testimonios de Raymond Aron, y también celebrar diversas entrevistas que, hasta ahora, jamás nadie había logrado (otro ejemplo notable, Dolores Vanetti, la famosa M. del entusiasta viaje de Sartre a los Estados Unidos, aún en plena guerra). Para no mencionar testimonios de personalidades: Giscard D’Estaing, Gallimard, Moravia. También ha podido compulsar Cohen-Solal documentos que acerca de Sartre o su familia se encuentran en archivos de no fácil acceso, como los de la Academia Nobel, en Estocolmo, los de la Marina francesa, en el fuerte de Vincennes, los de las ediciones Gallimard y hasta los del FBI, que cubren los Departamentos de Justicia, de Estado y de la Fuerza Aérea, de los Estados Unidos. Semejantes posibilidades de acceso se explican por la influencia del impulsor original del libro de Cohen-Solal, un editor neoyorquino, que, en combinación con Gallimard, fue quien encargó la obra, saliendo ésta primero en la edición francesa. Pero, con ser de talla, ésas serían apenas las ventajas materiales del libro de Cohen-Solal. Las principales, específicas de la obra, y plenamente atribuibles a la capacidad de la autora, son el poder de síntesis, la facilidad con que se mueve entre terminología y conceptos filosóficos y un cierto sentido del humor, que se traduce más que nada en una separación y aspecto de la figura consagrada de Sartre, en forma tal que crea el suficiente alejamiento como para poder lograr un juicio desapasionado, algo hasta ahora jamás logrado por ninguno de sus biógrafos o comentaristas, probablemente porque todos (Audry, Jeanson, para no hablar de Beauvoir) estaban demasiado unidos al pequeño gran hombre. En ese sentido, es simplemente delicioso el relato de la visita de Sartre a la casa de campo de John Huston, en Irlanda, y la absoluta incomprensión que surgió entre dos personalidades tan distintas.
Se ha dicho que el Sartre de Cohen-Solal se lee como un libro de aventuras y es cierto, pero ése viene a ser su único defecto notable. Ha insistido demasiado en las peripecias de una vida ciertamente rica en avatares y sucesos, pero al elegir destacar éstos, se tiene la impresión, probablemente falsa, de que toda la vida de Sartre no fue sino una continua agitación mundana, una serie de acontecimientos extraordinarios, un vaivén entre sus múltiples amores y sus numerosas polémicas y compromisos políticos y culturales. Una vida de héroe bien repleta. Y no deja de ser explicativo de esa visión el que Cohen-Solal haya elegido el símbolo de Pardaillan, el personaje de las lecturas infantiles de Sartre, para ponerle corno continua referencia a su inagotable quehacer literario. Qué duda cabe de que Sartre fue un ser batallador y lanzado hacia la búsqueda de la gloria, como él mismo ha confesado en Les mots. Pero conviene no olvidar que alcanzó la notoriedad, y no pequeña, relativamente pronto, a los 33 años, y con la primera novela (La Nausée), que se publica en 1938. Y que, a partir de ahí, sin dejar de publicar y de estrenar, todo fue camino triunfal, en particular desde 1945. Sólo que eso sería lo de menos: cuesta arriba o con facilidad, hubiera podido ser una vida de héroe y nada más. Porque no hay que olvidar que este héroe es un pensador de talla y un escritor de gran aliento y nada de eso se consigue de la noche a la mañana ni dedicándose a conceder entrevistas, conocer bellas mujeres y viajar por medio mundo. Hay un Sartre oscuro, escondido, trabajador incontenible, que es el que explica y alimenta al Sartre público y brillante. Sin el Sartre normalien, sin ese rigor que se adquiere (o se adquiría) en aquella impresionante fábrica de profesores que era la École Normale Supérieure, en donde sólo el primer año estaba dedicado a «hacerse la mano», esto es, a llenar página tras página de copias al azar, con el fin de adiestrarse, adquirir músculos y poder resistir los larguísimos exámenes escritos, que duraban por lo menos ocho horas; sin ese Sartre bûcheur, trabajador, tenaz, hormiguita, no hubiera existido el otro Sartre, el Sartre heroico y exterior que tanto ha atraído a Cohen-Solal. A veces, parece darse cuenta de que también existe aquel Sartre, la máquina, como ella lo describe, trabajando a pleno ritmo cuando le dejan (ejemplo máximo: la drôle de guerre, que le hizo feliz, pues sólo escribía), pero en general pasa a su lado sin la suficiente insistencia. Para sólo poner un caso: nos cuenta la harto sabida adicción de Sartre a los estimulantes (anfetaminas) con el fin de acelerar su trabajo. Pero no nos dice que es el precio que tuvo que pagar por vivir las dos vidas: no se puede impunemente ser célebre y trabajador; el tiempo no da para tanto. En otra ocasión, Cohen-Solal revela un aspecto poco conocido del Sartre juvenil: su dedicación al boxeo; se entrenaba durante horas en ejercitar y desarrollar los músculos de los brazos y del tórax y hasta llegó a participar en algún combate de aficionados. Pero hubiera valido la pena indagar un poco más: es muy posible que detrás de esa momentánea entrega al deporte, y por lo tanto al culto del cuerpo, de la contingencia, incomprensible para el filósofo mentalista que en realidad fue Sartre, se encontrara un recurso material para acrecentar su poder de trabajo, su capacidad material de escritura. Sartre no escribió a máquina, sino a mano, y eso cansa; de ahí, primero, el entrenamiento de la rue d'Ulm (se faire la main) y, luego, el afán por el boxeo. No daba puntada sin hilo. Y el hilo de Sartre fue siempre el mismo: escribir, escribir, pues el día en que no escribía se le prendía el tatuaje que, como no ha dejado de contarnos, llevaba marcado a fuego. Claro que el acceso a ese Sartre es muy difícil y quizá imposible; primero, porque formaba parte de su modo de ser que se llevó al sepulcro y, luego, porque sus próximos tienden a destacar los otros aspectos, los resultados, la personalidad controversial, el hombre del café y no el hombre del estudio, aunque muchas veces coincidieran uno y otro.
Que Sartre fue un auténtico homme à femmes es algo que comenzamos a saber a través de las Cartas al Castor y por los Carnets de la drôle de guerre, escritos íntimos publicados después de su muerte; ahora, Cohen-Solal ha descubierto más de la intensa vida amorosa de Sartre y ha revelado ciertos nombres (como el de la bellísima guía rusa, Lena Zonina), aunque, por razones de comprensible discreción contemporánea, aún vele otros. Y no deja de llamar la atención el paralelo que en este punto pudiera establecerse entre los dos grandes pensadores del siglo, por lo demás tan separados en sus concepciones filosóficas: Sartre y Russell. Ambos «consumieron» (si las feministas permiten el brutal término) gran cantidad de amantes. Hay una carta de Russell, de 1948 (por lo tanto, cuando ya tenla 76 años), dirigida a una alumna que, al parecer, le había manifestado algo impulsivamente su admiración, en la que Lord Russell le advierte que está dispuesto a llegar hasta las últimas consecuencias en esa relación.. También Sartre coleccionó alumnas. Y actrices y amigas de sus amigas, comenzando por Beauvoir, y hermanas de sus anteriores amantes, hasta llegar a formar, aunque no sólo con ellas, una extraña «familia», medio harén, medio sociedad en comandita. Y hasta exaltar a una de esas alumnas-amantes al papel de hija adoptiva, con lo que pudo ver realizada su fantasía del incesto, exaltada en Los secuestrados de Altona y confesada en Les mots. El que Sartre, el que Russell, el que hombres tan prolíficos literariamente, tan creadores, hayan tenido semejante intensa vida amorosa no parece casar muy bien con aquella simplista explicación de la sublimación de la libido a través del arte y la literatura. Al contrario, cuanto más amaban, más producían, y quién sabe si no era más bien a la inversa. Por supuesto que todos esos amores encajaban en la famosa relación necesario/contingente que Sartre le presentó desde el principio a Simone de Beauvoir, y que revela que era un tanto aficionado al elementalismo del modelo heliocéntrico, a la Bohr: el sol rodeado de planetas, da igual que se aplique al átomo, a las mujeres, o a los sistemas filosóficos, ya que eso mismo es lo que dice en Cuestiones de método respecto del marxismo (sol, desde luego), en torno al cual giran todas las demás filosofías contemporáneas. Sin embargo, lo de unos amores «esenciales» y otros «accesorios» parece que no funcionó muy bien, pues en más de una ocasión, como no deja de subrayarlo delicadamente Cohen-Solal, el Castor se rebeló ante alguna peligrosa rival «esencial» (casos de Olga y Dolores). A su vez, todo esto, tan chismoso y secundario, va encuadrado en la categoría sartriana de la «transparencia», trasunto de la autenticidad de la conciencia, para combatir mejor su natural tendencia al auto-engaño o ejercicio de la «mala fe». Así, en nombre de la fulana «transparencia», Sartre le cuenta a Beauvoir, con pelos y señales, lo que había hecho con ésta o con aquélla. Y de paso, el Castor, al publicar sin recato alguno esas cartas tan personales, ha permitido que se entere todo el mundo. No tiene mayor importancia, pues, bien vista, esa transparencia de Sartre encaja perfectamente en la «vividura» francesa: desde Descartes, que comienza por unas confesiones, hasta el matrimonio Jouhandeau al que le tuvimos que, soportar el relato menudo de sus aburridísimas peleas, los franceses no dejan de exhibirse sin pudor alguno. Literatura de diarios, de confesiones, de sinceramientos, de exposición de la vida interior. O al menos eso nos parece a los que pertenecemos a otra «vividura» muy diferente, en la que el recato, el pudor y aun el secreto forman parte de nuestro modo de ser y de nuestra tradición. Que si la referencia emblemática francesa son las confesiones cartesianas, la nuestra, contemporánea de aquélla, iníciase por un ejercicio deliberado de amnesia biográfica: «... de cuyo nombre no quiero acordarme».
Sartre literato
Porque el destino de Sartre quedó marcado desde el momento en que tomó, con su inseparable Nizan, la decisión de no ser profesor; mejor dicho, «de ser cualquier cosa menos profesor, de evitar ser profesor; de no terminar sus días como aquel «Jésus la Chouette», el mediocre y disminuido profesor de provincia, casado con alguna de las damiselas de la región y lleno de hijos: otro pequeño burgués de los muchos que llenan este mundo, aquel mundo. Por eso, sus ataques, sus bromas pesadas en la École Normale, su desprecio al director o, como apunta Cohen-Solal, la división establecida entre la República de los Profesores a la que se enfrentaba la República de las Letras. Probablemente antes, en el hogar, en el enfrentamiento, primero, con su abuelo Schweitzer y, luego, con su padrastro Mancy, había nacido el Sartre provocador, irrespetuoso y subversivo, cuestionador del orden burgués, tan bien representado en la sociedad por el cuerpo académico. Por supuesto, que el mundo profesoral siempre que pudo le devolvió la moneda y lo trató con similar capacidad de rechazo; basta leer el oficio del rector colaboracionista de la Academia de París, expurgado por Cohen-Solal, para darse cuenta de lo irreconciliable de ambas posiciones; allí el Sr. Rector, nombrado por el gobierno de Vichy, asevera que Le mur et La Nausée, las dos obras publicadas hasta entonces por Sartre y que tanta fama le habían comenzado a proporcionar en el mundo de las letras, «por mucho talento que testimonien, no son obras que resultaría deseable ver escribir a un profesor, es decir, a alguien que tiene almas a su cargo. Que M. Sartre medite... y que saque en consecuencia beneficio para su carrera y su existencia». ¡Menos mal que no lo hizo! Claro que Sartre no necesitaba del texto protocolar y hueco de un Rector cualquiera, ni de Vichy ni de la República, para mandar al diablo a todo el cuerpo profesoral y sus almidonadas costumbres. En el poco tiempo en que, por razones pecuniarias, no tuvo más remedio que plegarse al sistema y dar clases en varios liceos, de provincias y de la capital, se distinguió por su rebeldía, por su capacidad de provocación, por su tendencia a trastocar las relaciones alumno-profesor, a no respetar las costumbres instituidas, a ser en suma, siempre, un profesor distinto. De ahí, también, el enorme entusiasmo que despertó entre la mayoría de sus alumnos. Es algo que llega hasta Mayo del 68: Sartre no fue nunca el tipo de profesor estirado, ni siquiera serio, distante, como, por el contrario, debió serlo su camarada y amigo de I’École Normale, Raymond Aron. Esa es la gran diferencia entre ambos y no Hegel o la fenomenología o la política: Aron siempre quiso ser profesor, plegarse al establishment, ser parte de él. Muy propio del judío asimilado, que lleva la asimilación al extremo, a la mímesis perfecta. Mientras que Sartre abominó desde muy joven de la noble institución profesora¡ y luchó contra los salauds que la representaban: era el hijo de esa clase y podía darse el lujo de rebelarse contra ella. Y lo hizo. Y la literatura fue su medio de expresar su desagrado, su asco, su rechazo por quienes concebían la vida como algo serio, lleno de obligaciones, normas y valores. Pero todo eso es únicamente el punto de partida de Sartre, la razón de su total dedicación a la literatura, primero y, en general, a escribir siempre. En el camino surgen los demás factores: el encuentro con la novela norteamericana, la aplicación de ciertos recursos de la fenomenología y el hallazgo del teatro como medio expresivo de mayor fuerza. Cohen-Solal tiene el mérito de haber buscado un texto poco conocido de Butor, en el que éste recuerda haber asistido en 1944 (otoño: ya liberado París) a una conferencia de Sartre acerca de «Una técnica social de la novela» y, como confiesa el mismo Butor, «es la primera vez que oí hablar de Virginia Woolf, de Dos Passos, de Faulkner ... ». Inclusive antes ya había comenzado la tarea informativa de Sartre: en sus artículos para la Nouvelle Revue Française, en los años que median entre la publicación de La náusea y la ocupación de París, Sartre había presentado a los grandes novelistas norteamericanos y había declarado su admiración literaria por ellos, en particular por el empleo del tiempo narrativo. Así se formó el Sartre escritor que viene a culminar en Les mots, su obra maestra, y que confiesa haber encontrado «le travail du sens par le style», que es mucho más que el manido «el estilo es el hombre». Porque lo que Sartre proclama es la subordinación del significado (espacio semántico) a la ordenación de las palabras (espacio sintáctico); la verdad en función de la belleza; la filosofía al servicio de la literatura. Tales fueron al menos sus propósitos, su «douce folie», su extraña neurosis, de la que viene a despertar, a curarse, según declara, sólo pasados los cincuenta años. Aunque la verdad literaria es que únicamente en Les mots se cumplieron tan hermosos propósitos; la paradoja sartriana, y no de las menores, es que, pese a todas sus buenas intenciones de creador de belleza, la filosofía se le atraviesa en el camino e invierte la relación: sus obras (novelas y teatro) son la expresión de sus ideas, la corporización de sus filosofemas. Obligado en 1972 a explicar la relación entre su teatro (en particular, Huis clos) y su filosofía (específicamente, El ser y la nada), al momento de publicar el volumen noveno de Situations, no pudo ser más claro: «Mon gros livre se racontait sous forme de petites histoires sans philosophie». En efecto: sus obsesiones metafísicas, la contingencia, la libertad, la conciencia, jamás le abandonan ni a la hora de hacer filosofía ni a la de hacer literatura. El hombre es una conciencia (por tanto, una nada, un agujero, un vacío permanentemente abierto y buscando inútilmente llenarse) perdida en la selva fáctica y viscosa de lo contingente (de lo «óntico», diría Heidegger); o lo acepta y entonces se priva de su libertad, se aliena en el mundo de lo práctico-inerte; o ejerce su libertad en cualquier forma, pero siempre suya, para construir otro mundo, siempre factual y viscoso, pero en el que las relaciones, las normas, los valores los invente y cree el hombre. Annie Cohen-Solal comienza su impresionante biografía narrando una subasta reciente en la sala Drouot, en la que, entre bibelots, cuadros diversos, notitas de Nerval, libros dedicados y antiguas cartas de amor, se comienzan a vender (sic transit) manuscritos de Sartre. Cuatro años después de su muerte, ya empezó la dispersión de sus reliquias. Y lo más triste es que Sartre se cotiza mal, a bajos precios; no por falta de interés sino por exceso de oferta. Consecuencias de haber sido tan generoso, de haber escrito tanto y, sobre todo, de haber regalado sin ton ni son, a diestra y siniestra. Cohen-Solal se preocupó en particular por un viejo y nunca publicado texto de Sartre. Aquella novela que escribió a los veinte años (Une défaite) y de la que todos han hablado y muy pocos leído o ni siquiera visto. Cohen-Solal al fin la consigue y nos regala la trascripción de un pasaje, unas cuantas líneas que pertenecen a un cuento central de aquella novela inédita, titulado, nada originalmente, «Un cuento de hadas». En él, Frédéric es preceptor de dos niñas de una familia burguesa, y para recreo de sus pupilas y de su madre, a la que buscaba seducir, inventa el cuento de hadas. Es la historia de un príncipe, «de una maravillosa inteligencia y de una exquisita belleza», pero frío, impasible y aun cruel; por no creer que los hombres tuvieran alma, vivía rodeado de autómatas, pero un día, el príncipe malo se pierde en un bosque. Merece la pena traducir al menos parte del pasaje que nos ha trascrito Cohen-Solal:
Ensilló el príncipe a su caballo y partió al galope. Entonces cruzó por su mente un horrible pensamiento: «¿Tienen todas las cosas un alma?». Pasó junto a un prado en el que se agitaban las altas yerbas. «¿Tienen las cosas ... ?» ¿Qué era ese estremecimiento que las recorría como un alma? ¿Qué oscura vida habla en ellas? Ante semejante idea, le acometió un asco infinito. Espoleó a la bestia que, asustada, partió al galope. Agitados los árboles por la velocidad, se le echaban encima para desaparecer como si fueran cuadros... Y todas las cosas parecían vivir, vivir con una vida oscura, odiosa, que le causaba bascas, una vida dirigida hacia su vida. Creía estar en el centro de un mundo inmenso que le espiaba. Se sentía vigilado por los arroyos, por los charcos del camino. Todo vivía, todo pensaba. Y de pronto, se acordó de su caballo: también esta dócil bestia... Sosteniéndose con dificultad en la silla, el príncipe contempló esos seres inmensos y oscuros que tan bien creía conocer y que ahora le parecían monstruosas apariciones: los árboles. Comenzó a gritar...
Más tarde, cuenta Cohen-Solal, descubridora del texto, el príncipe poco a poco se cura: se acostumbra a vivir en un mundo rodeado de almas. «Se hace un hombre como los demás», escribió el Sartre de los veinte años. Tiene toda la razón Cohen-Solal: ese extraordinario cuento es La nausée al alcance de los niños. Es más: ahí están in nuce todos los componentes de la literatura filosófica sartriana: no sólo la náusea ante la existencia plena del en-sí, sino la posibilidad de escapar a la contingencia a través de la libertad de la conciencia. Si es cierto que Sartre siempre supo que iba a ser novelista, no lo es menos que también, desde su juventud, supo cuál era el tipo de filosofía de la que se alimentaría su imaginación de escritor. Ha inventado Cohen-Solal una cómoda categoría para explicar los cambios radicales que fue experimentando el pensamiento de Sartre a lo largo de su vida, tanto en el orden de las ideas como en el de la acción: pensar por ciclos: «la logique de la non-contradiction n’avait jamais été la sienne, il pensait par cycles, pratiquait la technique du mouvement perpétuel...». Esa «lógica cíclica» es una magnífica excusa para entender los violentos cambios de posición que sobre temas fundamentales sufrió la concepción literaria o filosófica de Sartre. Así, el gran escritor, el hombre destinado a poseer el mundo por la magia de su pluma, el novelista permanentemente impulsado por Beauvoir, que no dejaba de recomendarle que escribiera relatos en lugar de perder el tiempo en hacer filosofía, es el mismo que comete un doble atentado contra la literatura. Primero, poniéndola al servicio de la lucha política o, cuando menos, encadenándola a la cotidianidad de lo circunstancial. Finalmente, negando su valor, su importancia ante la triste realidad social de que se compone este mundo injusto y desigual. Literatura comprometida, por una parte, y aquello otro, tan traído y llevado de «En face d'un enfant qui meurt La Nausée ne fait pas le poids». Lo primero es más importante («hace más peso») que lo segundo en la concepción literaria sartriana; lo del niño que muere no deja de ser un ex abrupto ante una situación social exasperante. Pero exigir de la literatura un «engagement» es algo más seria Se encuentra perfectamente expresado en e famoso editorial del primer número de Les Temps Modernes, a lo que ese «compromiso» responde es a la concepción filosófica de Sartre. Su horror por la subjetividad pura (su rechazo de Proust, finalmente) y, sin embargo, su impotencia por salir de una filosofía mentalista y subjetivista que privilegia la conciencia le exigieron compensar el desequilibrio metafísico en favor de la mente con un permanente añoranza por el mundo, la alteridad, lo concreto, lo contingente, el dominio del Ser. Recuérdese otra expresión no menos manida: lo de que e hombre es una pasión inútil. Pasión en el doble sentido, de padecer pasivamente la presencia atosigante de las cosas, y de sufrir, como en la mitología cristiana, la muerte de sus proyectos y sus intenciones. Inútil, ciertamente, por cuanto jamás alcanzará el absoluto, lo lleno, la paz del en-sí. está condenado a la libertad de ese agujero que es la conciencia, ni siquiera inerte, sino que tiende siempre (para eso le sirvió la fenomenología y su noción de «intencionalidad») hacia algo fuera de ella, distinto a ella. ¿Qué de extraño, entonces, que la literatura que se construya sobre semejante esquema metafísico exija un permanente «compromiso» con lo circundante? Pues no hay que entender necesariamente ese compromiso en el sentido político o social; basta con leer la clave filosófica que rechaza los estados de ánimo, las interioridades de la conciencia, el onanismo del sujeto feliz contenido en sí mismo, cosificado. Donde se ve que no es inocente hacer filosofía al mismo tiempo que se quiere ser un gran escritor. Sartre pudo aprender de Hemingway y de Faulkner y en Manhattan Transfer ciertas técnicas narrativas, pero su aplicación estuvo do minada por una metafísica fenomenológica, en la que la conciencia, además de estar permanentemente privilegiada, exige consumir todo cuanto la rodea necesita «comprometerse», esto es, proyectarse, llenarse de contenidos pasajeros. Bastará con algo tan sencillo como eliminar el sujeto narrativo para que al desaparecer la conciencia, desaparezca el problema del «compromiso» literario: es lo que hicieron los escritores experimentalistas del Nouveau Roman, por algo Sartre se apresuró a calificarlo de «anti-novela». Probablemente Proust hubiera empleado el mismo término de haber llegado a conocer La náusea. Notas1. Annie Cohen-Solal, Sartre, Gallimard, Paris, 1985 2. Anna Boschetti, Sartre et «les Temps Modernes», une entreprise intellectuelle, Les Éditions de Minuit, París, 1985. 3. Colette Audry, Sartre et la réalité humaine, Seghers, París, 1966. 4. Iris Murdoch, Sartre, Collins, London, 1953: Sartre, Romantic Rationalist, Yale University Press, Yale, EE.UU., 1953. 5. Francis Jeanson, «Un quidam nommé Sartre», que es un apéndice de Le problème moral et la pensée de Sartre, Éditions du Seuil, 1966; Sartre dans sa vie, Éditions du Seuil, París, 1974. Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980): Existentialism - Christian J. Onof - University College, London Sartre's philosophical career focuses, in its first phase, upon the construction of a philosophy of existence known as 'Existentialism'. Adopting and adapting the methods of phenomenology, Sartre sets out to develop an ontological account of what it is to be human. The main features of this ontology are the groundlessness and radical freedom which characterise the human condition. These are constrasted with the unproblematic being of the world of things. Sartre's substantial literary output adds dramatic expression to the always unstable co-existence of facticity and freedom in an indifferent world. After a brief summary of Sartre's life, we shall look at the main themes characterizing Sartre's early philosophical works. The ontology developed in Sartre's main existential work, Being and Nothingness will then be analysed. Finally, an overview is provided of the further development of existentialist themes in his later works.
1. Sartre's life
Sartre was born in 1905 in Paris. After a
childhood marked by the early death of his father, the important
role played by his grandfather, and some rather unhappy
experiences at school, Sartre finished High School at the LycÈe
Henri IV in Paris. After two years of preparation, he gained
entrance to the prestigious Ecole Normale SupÈrieure, where,
from 1924 to 1929 he came into contact with Raymond Aron, Simone
de Beauvoir, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and other notables. He passed
the 'AgrÈgation' on his second attempt, by adapting the content
and style of his writing to the rather traditional requirements
of the examiners. This was his passport to a teaching career.
After teaching philosophy in a lycÈe in Le Havre, he obtained a
grant to study at the French Institute in Berlin where he
discovered phenomenology in 1933 and wrote The Transcendence
of the Ego. His phenomenological investigation into the
imagination was published in 1936 and his Theory of Emotions
two years later. During the Second World War, Sartre wrote his
existentialist magnum opus Being and Nothingness and
taught the work of Heidegger in a war camp. He was briefly
involved in a Resistance group and taught in a lycÈe until the
end of the war. Being and Nothingness was published in
1943 and Existentialism and Humanism in 1946. His study
of Baudelaire was published in 1947 and that of the actor Jean
Genet in 1952. Throughout the Thirties and Forties, Sartre also
had an abundant literary output with such novels as Nausea
and plays like Intimacy (The wall), The flies, Huis Clos, Les
Mains Sales. In 1960, after three years working on it,
Sartre published the Critique of Dialectical Reason. In
the Fifties and Sixties, Sartre travelled to the USSR, Cuba, and
was involved in turn in promoting Marxist ideas, condemning the
USSR's invasion of Hungary and Czechoslovakia, and speaking up
against France's policies in Algeria. He was a high profile
figure in the Peace Movement. In 1964, he turned down the Nobel
prize for literature. He was actively involved in the May 1968
uprising. His study of Flaubert, L'Idiot de la Famille,
was published in 1971. In 1977, he claimed no longer to be a
Marxist, but his political activity continued until his death in
1980.
Sartre's early work is characterised by phenomenological analyses involving his own interpretation of Husserl's method. Sartre's methodology is Husserlian (as demonstrated in his paper "Intentionality: a fundamental ideal of Husserl's phenomenology") insofar as it is a form of intentional and eidetic analysis. This means that the acts by which consciousness assigns meaning to objects are what is analysed, and that what is sought in the particular examples under examination is their essential structure. At the core of this methodology is a conception of consciousness as intentional, that is, as 'about' something, a conception inherited from Brentano and Husserl. Sartre puts his own mark on this view by presenting consciousness as being transparent, i.e. having no 'inside', but rather as being a 'fleeing' towards the world. The distinctiveness of Sartre's development of Husserl's phenomenology can be characterised in terms of Sartre's methodology, of his view of the self and of his ultimate ethical interests.
Sartre's methodology differs from Husserl's in two essential ways. Although he thinks of his analyses as eidetic, he has no real interest in Husserl's understanding of his method as uncovering the Essence of things. For Husserl, eidetic analysis is a clarification which brings out the higher level of the essence that is hidden in 'fluid unclarity' (Husserl, Ideas, I). For Sartre, the task of an eidetic analysis does not deliver something fixed immanent to the phenomenon. It still claims to uncover that which is essential, but thereby recognizes that phenomenal experience is essentially fluid. In Sketch for a Theory of the Emotions, Sartre replaces the traditional picture of the passivity of our emotional nature with one of the subject's active participation in her emotional experiences. Emotion originates in a degradation of consciousness faced with a certain situation. The spontaneous conscious grasp of the situation which characterizes an emotion, involves what Sartre describes as a 'magical' transformation of the situation. Faced with an object which poses an insurmountable problem, the subject attempts to view it differently, as though it were magically transformed. Thus an imminent extreme danger may cause me to faint so that the object of my fear is no longer in my conscious grasp. Or, in the case of wrath against an unmovable obstacle, I may hit it as though the world were such that this action could lead to its removal. The essence of an emotional state is thus not an immanent feature of the mental world, but rather a transformation of the subject's perspective upon the world. In The Psychology of the Imagination, Sartre demonstrates his phenomenological method by using it to take on the traditional view that to imagine something is to have a picture of it in mind. Sartre's account of imagining does away with representations and potentially allows for a direct access to that which is imagined; when this object does not exist, there is still an intention (albeit unsuccessful) to become conscious of it through the imagination. So there is no internal structure to the imagination. It is rather a form of directedness upon the imagined object. Imagining a heffalump is thus of the same nature as perceiving an elephant. Both are spontaneous intentional (or directed) acts, each with its own type of intentionality.
Sartre's view also diverges from Husserl's on the important issue of the ego. For Sartre, Husserl adopted the view that the subject is a substance with attributes, as a result of his interpretation of Kant's unity of apperception. Husserl endorsed the Kantian claim that the 'I think' must be able to accompany any representation of which I am conscious, but reified this 'I' into a transcendental ego. Such a move is not warranted for Sartre, as he explains in The Transcendence of the Ego. Moreover, it leads to the following problems for our phenomenological analysis of consciousness.
The ego would have to feature as an object in all
states of consciousness. This would result in its obstructing
our conscious access to the world. But this would conflict with
the direct nature of this conscious access. Correlatively,
consciousness would be divided into consciousness of ego and
consciousness of the world. This would however be at odds with
the simple, and thus undivided, nature of our access to the
world through conscious experience. In other words, when I am
conscious of a tree, I am directly conscious of it, and am not
myself an object of consciousness. Sartre proposes therefore to
view the ego as a unity produced by consciousness. In other
words, he adds to the Humean picture of the self as a bundle of
perceptions, an account of its unity. This unity of the ego is a
product of conscious activity. As a result, the traditional
Cartesian view that self-consciousness is the consciousness the
ego has of itself no longer holds, since the ego is not given
but created by consciousness. What model does Sartre propose for
our understanding of self-consciousness and the production of
the ego through conscious activity? The key to answering the
first part of the question lies in Sartre's introduction of a
pre-reflective level, while the second can then be addressed by
examining conscious activity at the other level, i.e. that of
reflection. An example of pre-reflective consciousness is the
seeing of a house. This type of consciousness is directed to a
transcendent object, but this does not involve my focussing upon
it, i.e. it does not require that an ego be involved in a
conscious relation to the object. For Sartre, this pre-reflective
consciousness is thus impersonal: there is no place for an 'I'
at this level. Importantly, Sartre insists that self-consciousness
is involved in any such state of consciousness: it is the
consciousness this state has of itself. This accounts for the
phenomenology of 'seeing', which is such that the subject is
clearly aware of her pre-reflective consciousness of the house.
This awareness does not have an ego as its object, but it is
rather the awareness that there is an act of 'seeing'.
Reflective consciousness is the type of state of consciousness
involved in my looking at a house. For Sartre, the cogito
emerges as a result of consciousness's being directed upon the
pre-reflectively conscious. In so doing, reflective
consciousness takes the pre-reflectively conscious as being
mine. It thus reveals an ego insofar as an 'I' is brought into
focus: the pre-reflective consciousness which is objectified is
viewed as mine. This 'I' is the correlate of the unity that I
impose upon the pre-reflective states of consciousness through
my reflection upon them. To account for the prevalence of the
Cartesian picture, Sartre argues that we are prone to the
illusion that this 'I' was in fact already present prior to the
reflective conscious act, i.e. present at the pre-reflective
level. By substituting his model of a two-tiered consciousness
for this traditional picture, Sartre provides an account of self-consciousness
that does not rely upon a pre-existing ego, and shows how an ego
is constructed in reflection.
An important feature of Sartre's phenomenological work is that his ultimate interest in carrying out phenomenological analyses is an ethical one. Through them, he opposes the view, which is for instance that of the Freudian theory of the unconscious, that there are psychological factors that are beyond the grasp of our consciousness and thus are potential excuses for certain forms of behaviour. Starting with Sartre's account of the ego, this is characterised by the claim that it is produced by, rather than prior to consciousness. As a result, accounts of agency cannot appeal to a pre-existing ego to explain certain forms of behaviour. Rather, conscious acts are spontaneous, and since all pre-reflective consciousness is transparent to itself, the agent is fully responsible for them (and a fortiori for his ego). In Sartre's analysis of emotions, affective consciousness is a form of pre-reflective consciousness, and is therefore spontaneous and self-conscious. Against traditional views of the emotions as involving the subject's passivity, Sartre can therefore claim that the agent is responsible for the pre-reflective transformation of his consciousness through emotion. In the case of the imaginary, the traditional view of the power of fancy to overcome rational thought is replaced by one of imaginary consciousness as a form of pre-reflective consciousness. As such, it is therefore again the result of the spontaneity of consciousness and involves self-conscious states of mind. An individual is therefore fully responsible for his imaginations's activity. In all three cases, a key factor in Sartre's account is his notion of the spontaneity of consciousness. To dispel the apparent counter-intuitiveness of the claims that emotional states and flights of imagination are active, and thus to provide an account that does justice to the phenomenology of these states, spontaneity must be clearly distinguished from a voluntary act. A voluntary act involves reflective consciousness that is connected with the will; spontaneity is a feature of pre-reflective consciousness.
Is there a common thread to these specific features of Sartre's phenomenological approach? Sartre's choice of topics for phenomenological analysis suggests an interest in the phenomenology of what it is to be human, rather than in the world as such. This privileging of the human dimension has parallels with Heidegger's focus upon Dasein in tackling the question of Being. This aspect of Heidegger's work is that which can properly be called existential insofar as Dasein's way of being is essentially distinct from that of any other being. This characterisation is particularly apt for Sartre's work, in that his phenomenological analyses do not serve a deeper ontological purpose as they do for Heidegger who distanced himself from any existential labelling. Thus, in his "Letter on Humanism", Heidegger reminds us that the analysis of Dasein is only one chapter in the enquiry into the question of Being. For Heidegger, Sartre's humanism is one more metaphysical perspective which does not return to the deeper issue of the meaning of Being. Sartre sets up his own picture of the individual human being by first getting rid of its grounding in a stable ego. As Sartre later puts it in Existentialism is a Humanism, to be human is characterised by an existence that precedes its essence. As such, existence is problematic, and it is towards the development of a full existentialist theory of what it is to be human that Sartre's work logically evolves. In relation to what will become Being and Nothingness, Sartre's early works can be seen as providing important preparatory material for an existential account of being human. But the distinctiveness of Sartre's approach to understanding human existence is ultimately guided by his ethical interest. In particular, this accounts for his privileging of a strong notion of freedom which we shall see to be fundamentally at odds with Heidegger's analysis. Thus the nature of Sartre's topics of analysis, his theory of the ego and his ethical aims all characterise the development of an existential phenomenology. Let us now examine the central themes of this theory as they are presented in Being and Nothingness.
Being and Nothingness can be characterized as a phenomenological investigation into the nature of what it is to be human, and thus be seen as a continuation of, and expansion upon, themes characterising the early works. In contrast with these however, an ontology is presented at the outset and guides the whole development of the investigation. One of the main features of this system, which Sartre presents in the introduction and the first chapter of Part One, is a distinction between two kinds of transcendence of the phenomenon of being. The first is the transcendence of being and the second that of consciousness. This means that, starting with the phenomenon (that which is our conscious experience), there are two types of reality which lie beyond it, and are thus trans-phenomenal. On the one hand, there is the being of the object of consciousness, and on the other, that of consciousness itself. These define two types of being, the in-itself and the for-itself. To bring out that which keeps them apart, involves understanding the phenomenology of nothingness. This reveals consciousness as essentially characterisable through its power of negation, a power which plays a key role in our existential condition. Let us examine these points in more detail.
In Being and Time, Heidegger presents the phenomenon as involving both a covering and a disclosing of being. For Sartre, the phenomenon reveals, rather than conceals, reality. What is the status of this reality? Sartre considers the phenomenalist option of viewing the world as a construct based upon the series of appearances. He points out that the being of the phenomenon is not like its essence, i.e. is not something which is apprehended on the basis of this series. In this way, Sartre moves away from Husserl's conception of the essence as that which underpins the unity of the appearances of an object, to a Heideggerian notion of the being of the phenomenon as providing this grounding. Just as the being of the phenomenon transcends the phenomenon of being, consciousness also transcends it. Sartre thus establishes that if there is perceiving, there must be a consciousness doing the perceiving.
How are these two transphenomenal forms of being
related? As opposed to a conceptualising consciousness in a
relation of knowledge to an object, as in Husserl and the
epistemological tradition he inherits, Sartre introduces a
relation of being: consciousness (in a pre-reflective form) is
directly related to the being of the phenomenon. This is
Sartre's version of Heidegger's ontological relation of being-in-the-world.
It differs from the latter in two essential respects. First, it
is not a practical relation, and thus distinct from a relation
to the ready-to-hand. Rather, it is simply given by
consciousness. Second, it does not lead to any further question
of Being. For Sartre, all there is to being is given in the
transphenomenality of existing objects, and there is no further
issue of the Being of all beings as for Heidegger.
As we have seen, both consciousness and the being of the phenomenon transcend the phenomenon of being. As a result, there are two types of being which Sartre, using Hegel's terminology, calls the for-itself ('pour-soi') and the in-itself ('en-soi'). Sartre presents the in-itself as existing without justification independently of the for-itself, and thus constituting an absolute 'plenitude'. It exists in a fully determinate and non-relational way. This fully characterizes its transcendence of the conscious experience. In contrast with the in-itself, the for-itself is mainly characterised by a lack of identity with itself. This is a consequence of the following. Consciousness is always 'of something', and therefore defined in relation to something else. It has no nature beyond this and is thus completely translucent. Insofar as the for-itself always transcends the particular conscious experience (because of the spontaneity of consciousness), any attempt to grasp it within a conscious experience is doomed to failure. Indeed, as we have already seen in the distinction between pre-reflective and reflective consciousness, a conscious grasp of the first transforms it. This means that it is not possible to identify the for-itself, since the most basic form of identification, i.e. with itself, fails. This picture is clearly one in which the problematic region of being is that of the for-itself, and that is what Being and Nothingness will focus upon. But at the same time, another important question arises. Indeed, insofar Sartre has rejected the notion of a grounding of all beings in Being, one may ask how something like a relation of being between consciousness and the world is possible. This issue translates in terms of understanding the meaning of the totality formed by the for-itself and the in-itself and its division into these two regions of being. By addressing this latter issue, Sartre finds the key concept that enables him to investigate the nature of the for-itself.
One of the most original contributions of Sartre's metaphysics lies in his analysis of the notion of nothingness and the claim that it plays a central role at the heart of being (chapter 1, Part One). Sartre (BN, 9-10) discusses the example of entering a cafÈ to meet Pierre and discovering his absence from his usual place. Sartre talks of this absence as 'haunting' the cafÈ. Importantly, this is not just a psychological state, because a 'nothingness' is really experienced. The nothingness in question is also not simply the result of applying a logical operator, negation, to a proposition. For it is not the same to say that there is no rhinoceros in the cafÈ, and to say that Pierre is not there. The first is a purely logical construction that reveals nothing about the world, while the second does. Sartre says it points to an objective fact. However, this objective fact is not simply given independently of human beings. Rather, it is produced by consciousness. Thus Sartre considers the phenomenon of destruction. When an earthquake brings about a landslide, it modifies the terrain. If, however, a town is thereby annihilated, the earthquake is viewed as having destroyed it. For Sartre, there is only destruction insofar as humans have identified the town as 'fragile'. This means that it is the very negation involved in characterising something as destructible which makes destruction possible. How is such a negation possible? The answer lies in the claim that the power of negation is an intrinsic feature of the intentionality of consciousness. To further identify this power of negation, let us look at Sartre's treatment of the phenomenon of questioning. When I question something, I posit the possibility of a negative reply. For Sartre, this means that I operate a nihilation of that which is given: the latter is thus 'fluctuating between being and nothingness' (BN, 23). Sartre then notes that this requires that the questioner be able to detach himself from the causal series of being. And, by nihilating the given, he detaches himself from any deterministic constraints. And Sartre says that 'the name (...) [of] this possibility which every human being has to secret a nothingness which isolates it (...) is freedom' (BN, 24-25). Our power to negate is thus the clue which reveals our nature as free. Below, we shall return to the nature of Sartre's notion of freedom.
The structure and characteristics of the for-itself
are the main focal point of the phenomenological analyses of
Being and Nothingness. Here, the theme of consciousness's
power of negation is explored in its different ramifications.
These bring out the core claims of Sartre's existential account
of the human condition.
The analysis of nothingness provides the key to the phenomenological understanding of the for-itself (chapter 1, Part Two). For the negating power of consciousness is at work within the self (BN, 85). By applying the account of this negating power to the case of reflection, Sartre shows how reflective consciousness negates the pre-reflective consciousness it takes as its object. This creates an instability within the self which emerges in reflection: it is torn between being posited as a unity and being reflexively grasped as a duality. This lack of self-identity is given another twist by Sartre: it is posited as a task. That means that the unity of the self is a task for the for-itself, a task which amounts to the self's seeking to ground itself. This dimension of task ushers in a temporal component that is fully justified by Sartre's analysis of temporality (BN, 107). The lack of coincidence of the for-itself with itself is at the heart of what it is to be a for-itself. Indeed, the for-itself is not identical with its past nor its future. It is already no longer what it was, and it is not yet what it will be. Thus, when I make who I am the object of my reflection, I can take that which now lies in my past as my object, while I have actually moved beyond this. Sartre says that I am therefore no longer who I am. Similarly with the future: I never coincide with that which I shall be. Temporality constitutes another aspect of the way in which negation is at work within the for-itself. These temporal ecstases also map onto fundamental features of the for-itself. First, the past corresponds to the facticity of a human life that cannot choose what is already given about itself. Second, the future opens up possibilities for the freedom of the for-itself. The coordination of freedom and facticity is however generally incoherent, and thus represents another aspect of the essential instability at the heart of the for-itself.
The way in which the incoherence of the dichotomy of facticity and freedom is manifested, is through the project of bad faith (chapter 2, Part One). Let us first clarify Sartre's notion of project. The fact that the self-identity of the for-itself is set as a task for the for-itself, amounts to defining projects for the for-itself. Insofar as they contribute to this task, they can be seen as aspects of the individual's fundamental project. This specifies the way in which the for-itself understands itself and defines herself as this, rather than another, individual. We shall return to the issue of the fundamental project below.
Among the different types of project, that of bad
faith is of generic importance for an existential understanding
of what it is to be human. This importance derives ultimately
from its ethical relevance. Sartre's analysis of the project of
bad faith is grounded in vivid examples. Thus Sartre describes
the precise and mannered movements of a cafÈ waiter (BN, 59). In
thus behaving, the waiter is identifying himself with his role
as waiter in the mode of being in-itself. In other words, the
waiter is discarding his real nature as for-itself, i.e. as free
facticity, to adopt that of the in-itself. He is thus denying
his transcendence as for-itself in favour of the kind of
transcendence characterising the in-itself. In this way, the
burden of his freedom, i.e. the requirement to decide for
himself what to do, is lifted from his shoulders since his
behaviour is as though set in stone by the definition of the
role he has adopted. The mechanism involved in such a project
involves an inherent contradiction. Indeed, the very
identification at the heart of bad faith is only possible
because the waiter is a for-itself, and can indeed choose to
adopt such a project. So the freedom of the for-itself is a pre-condition
for the project of bad faith which denies it. The agent's
defining his being as an in-itself is the result of the way in
which he represents himself to himself. This misrepresentation
is however one the agent is responsible for. Ultimately, nothing
is hidden, since consciousness is transparent and therefore the
project of bad faith is pursued while the agent is fully aware
of how things are in pre-reflective consciousness. Insofar as
bad faith is self-deceit, it raises the problem of accounting
for contradictory beliefs. The examples of bad faith which
Sartre gives, serve to underline how this conception of self-deceit
in fact involves a project based upon inadequate representations
of what one is. There is therefore no need to have recourse to a
notion of unconscious to explain such phenomena. They can be
accounted for using the dichotomy for-itself/in-itself, as
projects freely adopted by individual agents. A first
consequence is that this represents an alternative to
psychoanalytical accounts of self-deceit. Sartre was
particularly keen to provide alternatives to Freud's theory of
self-deceit, with its appeal to censorship mechanisms accounting
for repression, all of which are beyond the subject's awareness
as they are unconscious (BN, 54-55). The reason is that Freud's
theory diminishes the agent's responsibility. On the contrary,
and this is the second consequence of Sartre's account of bad
faith, Sartre's theory makes the individual responsible for what
is a widespread form of behaviour, one that accounts for many of
the evils that Sartre sought to describe in his plays. To
explain how existential psychoanalysis works requires that we
first examine the notion of fundamental project (BN, 561).
If the project of bad faith involves a misrepresentation of what it is to be a for-itself, and thus provides a powerful account of certain types of self-deceit, we have, as yet, no account of the motivation that lies behind the adoption of such a project.
As we saw above, all projects can be viewed as
parts of the fundamental project, and we shall therefore focus
upon the motivation for the latter (chapter 2, Part Four). That
a for-itself is defined by such a project arises as a
consequence of the for-itself's setting itself self-identity as
a task. This in turn is the result of the for-itself's
experiencing the cleavages introduced by reflection and
temporality as amounting to a lack of self-identity. Sartre
describes this as defining the `desire for being~ (BN, 565).
This desire is universal, and it can take on one of three forms.
First, it may be aimed at a direct transformation of the for-itself
into an in-itself. Second, the for-itself may affirm its freedom
that distinguishes it from an in-itself, so that it seeks
through this to become its own foundation (i.e. to become God).
The conjunction of these two moments results, third, in the for-itself's
aiming for another mode of being, the for-itself-in-itself. None
of the aims described in these three moments are realisable.
Moreover, the triad of these three moments is, unlike a Hegelian
thesis-antithesis-synthesis triad, inherently instable: if the
for-itself attempts to achieve one of them, it will conflict
with the others. Since all human lives are characterised by such
a desire (albeit in different individuated forms), Sartre has
thus provided a description of the human condition which is
dominated by the irrationality of particular projects. This
picture is in particular illustrated in Being and Nothingness
by an account of the projects of love, sadism and masochism, and
in other works, by biographical accounts of the lives of
Baudelaire, Flaubert and Jean Genet. With this notion of desire
for being, the motivation for the fundamental project is
ultimately accounted for in terms of the metaphysical nature of
the for-itself. This means that the source of motivation for the
fundamental project lies within consciousness. Thus, in
particular, bad faith, as a type of project, is motivated in
this way. The individual choice of fundamental project is an
original choice (BN, 564). Consequently, an understanding of
what it is to be Flaubert for instance, must involve an attempt
to decipher his original choice. This hermeneutic exercise aims
to reveal what makes an individual a unity. This provides
existential psychoanalysis with its principle. Its method
involves an analysis of all the empirical behaviour of the
subject, aimed at grasping the nature of this unity.
The fundamental project has been presented as motivated by a desire for being. How does this enable Sartre to provide an account of desires as in fact directed towards being although they are generally thought to be rather aimed at having? Sartre discusses desire in chapter I of Part One and then again in chapter II of Part Four, after presenting the notion of fundamental project.
In the first short discussion of desire, Sartre
presents it as seeking a coincidence with itself that is not
possible (BN, 87, 203). Thus, in thirst, there is a lack that
seeks to be satisfied. But the satisfaction of thirst is not the
suppression of thirst, but rather the aim of a plenitude of
being in which desire and satisfaction are united in an
impossible synthesis. As Sartre points out, humans cling on to
their desires. Mere satisfaction through suppression of the
desire is indeed always disappointing. Another example of this
structure of desire (BN, 379) is that of love. For Sartre, the
lover seeks to possess the loved one and thus integrate her into
his being: this is the satisfaction of desire. He simultaneously
wishes the loved one nevertheless remain beyond his being as the
other he desires, i.e. he wishes to remain in the state of
desiring. These are incompatible aspects of desire: the being of
desire is therefore incompatible with its satisfaction. In the
lengthier discussion on the topic 'Being and Having', Sartre
differentiates between three relations to an object that can be
projected in desiring. These are being, doing and having. Sartre
argues that relations of desire aimed at doing are reducible to
one of the other two types. His examination of these two types
can be summarised as follows. Desiring expressed in terms of
being is aimed at the self. And desiring expressed in terms of
having is aimed at possession. But an object is possessed
insofar as it is related to me by an internal ontological bond,
Sartre argues. Through that bond, the object is represented as
my creation. The possessed object is represented both as part of
me and as my creation. With respect to this object, I am
therefore viewed both as an in-itself and as endowed with
freedom. The object is thus a symbol of the subject's being,
which presents it in a way that conforms with the aims of the
fundamental project. Sartre can therefore subsume the case of
desiring to have under that of desiring to be, and we are thus
left with a single type of desire, that for being.
So far, we have presented the analysis of the for-itself without investigating how different individual for-itself's interact. Far from neglecting the issue of inter-subjectivity, this represents an important part of Sartre's phenomenological analysis in which the main themes discussed above receive their confirmation in, and extension to the inter-personal realm.
In chapter 1, Part Three, Sartre recognises there is a problem of other minds: how I can be conscious of the other (BN 221-222)? Sartre examines many existing approaches to the problem of other minds. Looking at realism, Sartre claims that no access to other minds is ever possible, and that for a realist approach the existence of the other is a mere hypothesis. As for idealism, it can only ever view the other in terms of sets of appearances. But the transphenomenality of the other cannot be deduced from them.
Sartre also looks at his phenomenologist
predecessors, Husserl and Heidegger. Husserl's account is based
upon the perception of another body from which, by analogy, I
can consider the other as a distinct conscious perspective upon
the world. But the attempt to derive the other's subjectivity
from my own never really leaves the orbit of my own
transcendental ego, and thus fails to come to terms with the
other as a distinct transcendental ego. Sartre praises Heidegger
for understanding that the relation to the other is a relation
of being, not an epistemological one. However, Heidegger does
not provide any grounds for taking the co-existence of Daseins
('being-with') as an ontological structure. What is, for Sartre,
the nature of my consciousness of the other? Sartre provides a
phenomenological analysis of shame and how the other features in
it. When I peep through the keyhole, I am completely absorbed in
what I am doing and my ego does not feature as part of this pre-reflective
state. However, when I hear a floorboard creaking behind me, I
become aware of myself as an object of the other's look. My ego
appears on the scene of this reflective consciousness, but it is
as an object for the other. Note that one may be empirically in
error about the presence of this other. But all that is required
by Sartre's thesis is that there be other human beings. This
objectification of my ego is only possible if the other is given
as a subject. For Sartre, this establishes what needed to be
proven: since other minds are required to account for conscious
states such as those of shame, this establishes their existence
a priori. This does not refute the skeptic, but provides Sartre
with a place for the other as an a priori condition for certain
forms of consciousness which reveal a relation of being to the
other.
In the experience of shame (BN, 259), the
objectification of my ego denies my existence as a subject. I
do, however, have a way of evading this. This is through an
objectification of the other. By reacting against the look of
the other, I can turn him into an object for my look. But this
is no stable relation. In chapter 1, Part Three, of Being and
Nothingness, Sartre sees important implications of this
movement from object to subject and vice-versa, insofar as it is
through distinguishing oneself from the other that a for-itself
individuates itself. More precisely, the objectification of the
other corresponds to an affirmation of my self by distinguishing
myself from the other. This affirmation is however a failure,
because through it, I deny the other's selfhood and therefore
deny that with respect to which I want to affirm myself. So, the
dependence upon the other which characterises the individuation
of a particular ego is simultaneously denied. The resulting
instability is characteristic of the typically conflictual state
of our relations with others. Sartre examines examples of such
relationships as are involved in sadism, masochism and love.
Ultimately, Sartre would argue that the instabilities that arise
in human relationships are a form of inter-subjective bad faith.
If the picture which emerges from Sartre's
examination of human relationships seems rather hopeless, it is
because bad faith is omnipresent and inescapable. In fact,
Sartre's philosophy has a very positive message which is that we
have infinite freedom and that this enables us to make authentic
choices which escape from the grip of bad faith. To understand
Sartre's notion of authenticity therefore requires that we first
clarify his notion of freedom.
For Sartre (chapter 1, Part Four), each agent is endowed with unlimited freedom. This statement may seem puzzling given the obvious limitations on every individual's freedom of choice. Clearly, physical and social constraints cannot be overlooked in the way in which we make choices. This is however a fact which Sartre accepts insofar as the for-itself is facticity. And this does not lead to any contradiction insofar as freedom is not defined by an ability to act. Freedom is rather to be understood as characteristic of the nature of consciousness, i.e. as spontaneity. But there is more to freedom. For all that Pierre's freedom is expressed in opting either for looking after his ailing grandmother or joining the French Resistance, choices for which there are indeed no existing grounds, the decision to opt for either of these courses of action is a meaningful one. That is, opting for the one of the other is not just a spontaneous decision, but has consequences for the for-itself. To express this, Sartre presents his notion of freedom as amounting to making choices, and indeed not being able to avoid making choices.
Sartre's conception of choice can best be
understood by reference to an individual's original choice, as
we saw above. Sartre views the whole life of an individual as
expressing an original project that unfolds throughout time.
This is not a project which the individual has proper knowledge
of, but rather one which she may interpret (an interpretation
constantly open to revision). Specific choices are therefore
always components in time of this time-spanning original choice
of project.
With this notion of freedom as spontaneous choice, Sartre therefore has the elements required to define what it is to be an authentic human being. This consists in choosing in a way which reflects the nature of the for-itself as both transcendence and facticity. This notion of authenticity appears closely related to Heidegger's, since it involves a mode of being that exhibits a recognition that one is a Dasein. However, unlike Heidegger's, Sartre's conception has clear practical consequences. For what is required of an authentic choice is that it involve a proper coordination of transcendence and facticity, and thus that it avoid the pitfalls of an uncoordinated expression of the desire for being. This amounts to not-grasping oneself as freedom and facticity. Such a lack of proper coordination between transcendence and facticity constitutes bad faith, either at an individual or an inter-personal level. Such a notion of authenticity is therefore quite different from what is often popularly misrepresented as a typically existentialist attitude, namely an absolute prioritisation of individual spontaneity. On the contrary, a recognition of how our freedom interacts with our facticity exhibits the responsibility which we have to make proper choices. These are choices which are not trapped in bad faith.
Through the practical consequences presented above, an existentialist ethics can be discerned. We pointed out that random expressions of one's spontaneity are not what authenticity is about, and Sartre emphasises this point in Existentialism and Humanism. There, he explicitly states that there is an ethical normativity about authenticity. If one ought to act authentically, is there any way of further specifying what this means for the nature of ethical choices? There are in fact many statements in Being and Nothingness which emphasise a universality criterion not entirely dissimilar from Kant's. This should come as no surprise since both Sartre and Kant's approaches are based upon the ultimate value of a strong notion of freedom. As Sartre points out, by choosing, an individual commits not only himself, but the whole of humanity (BN, 553). Although there are no a priori values for Sartre, the agent's choice creates values in the same way as the artist does in the aesthetic realm. The values thus created by a proper exercise of my freedom have a universal dimension, in that any other human being could make sense of them were he to be placed in my situation. There is therefore a universality that is expressed in particular forms in each authentic project. This is a first manifestation of what Sartre later refers to as the 'singular universal'.
If Being and Nothingness represents the culmination of Sartre's purely existentialist work, existentialism permeates later writings, albeit in a hybrid form. We shall briefly indicate how these later writings extend and transform his project of existential phenomenology.
The experience of the war and the encounter with Merleau-Ponty contributed to awakening Sartre's interest in the political dimension of human existence: Sartre thus further developed his existentialist understanding of human beings in a way which is compatible with Marxism. A key notion for this phase of his philosophical development is the concept of praxis. This extends and transforms that of project: man as a praxis is both something that produces and is produced. Social structures define a starting point for each individual. But the individual then sets his own aims and thereby goes beyond and negates what society had defined him as. The range of possibilities which are available for this expression of freedom is however dependent upon the existing social structures. And it may be the case that this range is very limited. In this way, the infinite freedom of the earlier philosophy is now narrowed down by the constraints of the political and historical situation.
In Critique of Dialectical Reason, Sartre
analyses different dimensions of the praxis. In the first volume,
a theory of "practical ensembles" examines the way in which a
praxis is no longer opposed to an in-itself, but to institutions
which have become rigidified and constitute what Sartre calls
the 'practico-inert'. Human beings interiorise the universal
features of the situation in which they are born, and this
translates in terms of a particular way of developing as a
praxis. This is the sense Sartre now gives to the notion of the
'singular universal'.
In this book Sartre redefines the focus of
existentialism as the individual understood as belonging to a
certain social situation, but not totally determined by it. For
the individual is always going beyond what is given, with his
own aims and projects. In this way, Sartre develops a 'regressive-progressive
method' that views individual development as explained in terms
of a movement from the universal expressed in historical
development, and the particular expressed in individual projects.
Thus, by combining a Marxist understanding of history with the
methods of existential psychoanalysis which are first presented
in Being and Nothingness, Sartre proposes a method for
understanding a human life. This, he applies in particular to
the case of an analysis of Flaubert. It is worth noting however
that developing an account of the intelligibility of history, is
a project that Sartre tackled in the second volume of the
Critique of Dialectical Reason, but which remained
unfinished.
Sartre's existentialist understanding of what it is to be human can be summarised in his view that the underlying motivation for action is to be found in the nature of consciousness which is a desire for being. It is up to each agent to exercise his freedom in such a way that he does not lose sight of his existence as a facticity, as well as a free human being. In so doing, he will come to understand more about the original choice which his whole life represents, and thus about the values that are thereby projected. Such an understanding is only obtained through living this particular life and avoiding the pitfalls of strategies of self-deceit such as bad faith. This authentic option for human life represents the realisation of a universal in the singularity of a human life.
"Intentionality: a fundamental ideal of Husserl's phenomenology" (1970) transl. J.P.Fell, Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, 1 (2), 4-5 Psychology of the Imagination (1972) transl. Bernard Frechtman, Methuen, London Sketch for a Theory of the Emotions (1971) transl. Philip Mairet, Methuen, London The Transcendence of the Ego: An Existentialist Theory of Consciousness (1957) transl. and ed. Forrest Williams and Robert Kirkpatrick, Noonday, New York Being and Nothingness: An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology (1958) transl. Hazel E. Barnes, intr. Mary Warnock, Methuen, London (abbreviated as BN above) Existentialism and Humanism (1973) transl. Philip Mairet, Methuen, London Critique of Dialectical Reason 1: Theory of Practical Ensembles (1982) transl. Alan Sheridan-Smith, ed. Jonathan RÈe, Verso, London The Problem of Method (1964) transl. Hazel E. Barnes, Methuen, London
Caws, P. (1979) Sartre, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London Danto, A.C. (1991) Sartre, Fontana, London Howells, C. (1988) Sartre: The necessity of freedom, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge Howells, C. ed. (1992) Cambridge Companion to Sartre, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge Murdoch, I. (1987) Sartre : Romantic Rationalist, Chatto and Windus, London Natanson, M. (1972) A Critique of Jean-Paul Sartre's Ontology, Haskell House Publishers, New York Schilpp, P.A. ed. (1981) The philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre, Open Court, La Salle Silverman, H.J. and Elliston, F.A. eds. (1980) Jean-Paul Sartre: Contemporary Approaches to his Philosophy, Harvester Press, Brighton Biography - Storm Heter - sheter@po-box.esu.edu - East Stroudsburg University French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980), the best known European public intellectual of the twentieth century, developed a highly original political philosophy, influenced in part by the work of Hegel and Marx. Although he wrote little on ethics or politics prior to W.W. II, political themes dominated his writings from 1945 onwards. Sartre co-founded the journal Les Temps Modernes, which would publish many seminal essays on political theory and world affairs. The most famous example is Sartre’s Anti-Semite and Jew, a blistering criticism of French complicity in the Holocaust which also put forth the general thesis that oppression is a distortion of interpersonal recognition. In the 1950’s Sartre moved towards Marxism and eventually released Critique of Dialectical Reason, Vol. 1 (1960), a massive, systematic account of history and group struggle. In addition to presenting a new critical theory of society based on a synthesis of psychology and sociology, Critique qualified Sartre’s earlier, more radical view of existential freedom. His last systematic work, The Family Idiot (1971), would express his final and most nuanced views on the relation between individuals and social wholes. Sartre’s pioneering combination of Existentialism and Marxism yielded a political philosophy uniquely sensitive to the tension between individual freedom and the forces of history. As a Marxist he believed that societies were best understood as arenas of struggle between powerful and powerless groups. But as an Existentialist he held individuals personally responsible for vast and apparently authorless social ills. The chief existential virtue—authenticity—would require a person to lucidly examine his or her social situation and accept personal culpability for the choices made in this situation. Unlike competing versions of Marxism, Sartre’s Existentialist-Marxism was based on a striking theory of individual agency and moral responsibility. In addition to class analysis Sartre offered critiques of anti-Semitism, racism, violence and colonialism. His theoretical account of oppression re-worked Hegel’s master/slave dialectic, arguing that oppression is a concrete, historical instance of mastery. To oppress another is to attempt to validate one’s sense of self by denying the freedom of another. The self-contradictory nature of oppression led him to the optimistic conclusion that oppression is not an inevitable, ontological condition, but a historical reality that should be contested, through both self-assertion and collective action. As a social-political thinker, Sartre defended a large number of innovative methodological and substantive theses. He steered a middle path between reductive individualism and ontological holism. He answered the perennial question “What defines a social group?” with an ingenious re-working of Hegelian recognition. His account of the fusion and disillusion of social groups remains unique to this day. Both broad and original, Sartre’s social-political theory is one of the great contributions to twentieth century philosophy.
1. Texts 1. Texts Sartre’s prolific writings span multiple genres and have variously been divided into two or three major phases (early and late; or early, middle and late). Sartre’s political writings began in earnest after World War II. In prewar works like Nausea (La Nausée, 1938) and Being and Nothingness (L’Etre et le Néant, 1943) Sartre wrote almost exclusively about individual psychology, imagination and conscio |
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