Exotic Journeys: A Tourist's Guide to Philosophy
brought to you by Ron Yezzi
Emeritus Professor of Philosophy
Minnesota State University, Mankato
© Copyright 1986, 1993, 2015, 2020 by Ron Yezzi
Exotic Journeys: A Tourist's Guide to Philosophy
brought to you by Ron Yezzi
Emeritus Professor of Philosophy
Minnesota State University, Mankato
© Copyright 1986, 1993, 2015, 2020 by Ron Yezzi
Topics
Jean Paul Sartre
Some Objections and Possible Replies
Thought Exercises
Sources
(Author's Note: The account below is taken from Ron Yezzi, Philosophical Problems: God, Free Will, and Determinism (Mankato: G. Bruno & Co., 1993), pp. 84 - 88.)
The claim that all human actions are completely free is so extreme that few philosophers make any such assertion. The complete free will claim seems to entail the notion that even routine physiological changes such as movement of individual cells within the kidney or dilation of the pupil of the eye result from free choices. To circumvent objections based upon such notions, the "complete free willist" usually reinterprets either the concept of "free will" or of "human actions. The existential philosopher Jean Paul Sartre (1905 - 1980) takes the latter course.
Jean Paul Sartre (1905 - 1980 C.E.), probably the best known existentialist philosopher, was born in Paris. From 1924 to 1928, he studied at one of France's most prestigious schools, the Ecole Normale Superieur. Thereafter, except for brief military interludes and two years in Germany (1933-1934) to study the thought of Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger, he held various teaching positions in philosophy until 1944. (During his second military interlude, he was captured by the Germans in 1940 and was held briefly as a prisoner of war.) During his teaching career, Sartre published a number of works; but he gave up teaching to devote even more time to writing. In 1964, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature; but he refused to accept it, not wanting to take on what he considered to be the confining social role of being a Nobel Prizewinner.
More so than most philosophers, Sartre went beyond the limits of scholarly philosophical writing. He wrote novels, plays, and political journalism. After his release as a prisoner of war in 1941, he became active in the French resistance movement, until liberation. After World War II, he did not hesitate to take political stands and often supported left-wing causes-although he refused to join the French communist party.
His most important philosophical work is Being and Nothingness. His lecture, "Existentialism" (sometimes entitled, "Existentialism Is a Humanism"), is often taken (perhaps inappropriately) as the definitive short statement of what existentialism is. His best known plays are No Exit and The Flies. His best known novels comprise the trilogy, The Roads to Freedom.
For Sartre, an act does not become a human act until a person makes a choice, which is always free; in other words, "a human act" is synonymous with "an act of free choice." Accordingly, a person can do something without a human act occurring. For example, if I am shoved while walking down the street so that I bump into someone else so hard as to cause this individual to fall into the path of an oncoming car, my causing injury or death is not a human act because I did not make a choice. Events of this sort however are rare. In the overwhelming majority of instances, we do make a choice. The identification of choice with human action is so strong for Sartre that, indeed, we define or create what we are as human beings by our choices. We are not born with a particular "human nature." Rather, we are thrust into existence and we create our nature through the free choices we make.
Sartre grants the existence of all sorts of external conditions that are presented to us, but he denies their control over us. In any situation, no condition is simply given to us to be accepted―since we can always choose to reject it. Even in the case of a condition as universal as gravity (my example, not Sartre's), I can choose to reject it and define my life through freely chosen attempts to levitate. But if I accept gravity, then I appropriate gravity―thereby making it one of my freely chosen human activities. Even birth is not simply a condition beyond our control, because we always choose some attitude toward it:1 We can be enthused, ashamed, or astonished at the fact of our birth. In taking up such an attitude, we make a choice and take responsibility for our birth. No matter how much initial conditions are externally imposed or how reprehensible the alternatives presented in a situation, we still must make a choice; and in choosing, we both define ourselves and take full responsibility for what we do. For example, Sartre considers draft mobilization in wartime.2 We can make no excuses when we fight in a war. In particular, we cannot blame our participation on being drafted as a way of escaping responsibility, since we always had the alternatives of suicide or desertion available. By choosing to accept the draft mobilization and to fight, we embrace the war and make it our own. We take responsibility for the war and define ourselves by our participation in it.
In trying to establish his claim that human beings are both wholly free and wholly responsible, Sartre gives special attention to showing that no factual state―for example, a political or economic condition of society, a cause in the natural world, a motive or passion within the psyche―can determine consciousness. For example, an economic condition such as lowered wages cannot of itself motivate workers to revolt. For revolution to occur, they must freely and consciously decide that their present condition is intolerable and that they demand something different. Similarly, in the case of fear, Sartre says,
If I accept a niggardly salary it is doubtless because of fear; and fear is a motive. But it is fear of dying from starvation; that is, this fear has meaning only outside itself in an end ideally posited, which is the preservation of a life which I apprehend as "in danger." And this fear is understood in turn only in relation to the value which I implicitly give to this life; that is, it is referred to that hierarchical system of ideal objects which are values.3
For Sartre, we control our emotions or passions through the values we choose. Even fainting is attributable to an intention to lose consciousness so as to suppress something, for example, the consciousness of danger. Human beings always transcend the factual states presented to them, because they always can and must choose what they will do with respect to these factual states. Accordingly, human beings are wholly free and wholly responsible.
(Note About Objections and Possible Replies: You should look upon the objections and possible replies as opportunities for further thought rather than as definitive statements. Holders of the original position are not likely to be overwhelmed by the objections; and critics of the original position are not likely to be convinced by the possible replies. These objections and possible replies accomplish a proper goal if they push you to think more deeply about an issue, leading you to seek more clarity and justification in drawing your own conclusions.)
We cannot claim complete free will or total moral responsibility when externally imposed conditions fundamentally affect what we do. For example, if the external conditions presented offer war, desertion, and suicide as alternative courses of actions, we are not totally free to do whatever we want; rather, we are limited to just those alternatives. Consequently, external conditions give some direction to human actions, and total free will does not exist. It also follows that we are not totally responsible for our actions and subsequent situations. Hence Sartre's assertions about taking full responsibility for a war and one's participation in it do not make much sense.
A Possible Reply: We must be clear about what constitutes a human action. While it is true that external conditions give some shape to events, they do not in any way control human actions―because human actions are synonymous with acts of free choice. Hence the externally imposed condition is never a part of the human action; it is the free choice that constitutes the human action. Human actions are totally free, and human beings are totally responsible for their actions.
Although a single condition, such as lowered wages or fear of dying from starvation, is insufficient of itself to motivate action, we must not overlook other motives that are present. If workers must judge a situation of lowered wages to be intolerable before they revolt, we can always seek out the motives for such a judgment without presuming that it rests upon some absolute act of free will. Similarly, if we must value life for fear of death to be significant, we can always seek out what motivates us to value life. If we examine judgments carefully, we always find an ensemble of motives capable of explaining the judgment without reference to free will.
A Possible Reply: No matter how many motives we discover or how far we push back the search for motives, they are never sufficient to explain human actions completely. Behind any motive is a choice that makes it significant.
According to Sartre, human beings are thrust into existence and they create their nature by the free choices they make, for which they are totally responsible. But can we seriously maintain that a young child, one-year old, has been thrust into existence and now makes free choices that define the child's nature and entail total responsibility? Similarly, we can doubt that insane persons make free choices for which they are totally responsible. Therefore Sartre's account of free will is seriously defective.
A Possible Reply: To the extent that small children and insane persons do not make free choices then, to that extent, what they do does not constitute a human action. We must be wary, however, lest we overlook the choices involved in their actions―as we so often do when we attribute emotions or passions to some uncontrollable niche within the psyche.
In another sense though, we must question the intention lying behind this particular objection. Presumably, the objectors are neither children nor insane. So why should they hide behind children and insanity to deny free will and responsibility? Perhaps they themselves are engaging in bad faith so as to evade responsibility for their actions.
Sartre's contention that we control our passions and emotions completely through our choices cannot be taken very seriously. Ample evidence exists to show the relevance of biological and environmental factors to our passions and emotions. For example, emotional reactions to a situation may be traceable to some trauma in early childhood. Or native biological endowments, such as great physical vigor, can affect our emotional responses to situations. Even chemical imbalances in the body can affect our emotional states―as physiological studies increasingly indicate. The effects of alcohol and other drugs on emotional states are well-known.
A Possible Reply: If we look carefully enough, we always find some choice underlying a passion or emotion. For example, the person whose emotional state has been altered by alcohol has chosen that state in deciding to drink. The absence of physical vigor does not compel us to feel any particular emotion such as depression, because we can always choose to deal with the absence of physical vigor differently. Similarly, there is nothing compelling about a trauma in early childhood, for it is our choice that establishes the significance of such an event in our lives.
2.11 Consider what Jean Paul Sartre's claims regarding a human action, responsibility, and the treatment of external conditions and factual states. Would you disagree with any particular aspect of his position? Explain.
2.111 If you received a draft notice (presuming that both men and women are called), would you look upon the situation in the same way as Sartre does? Why or why not? If you previously served in the military after being drafted, do you think that Sartre analyzed your situation properly? Why or why not?
2.112 Is fainting attributable to an intention to lose consciousness, as Sartre maintains? Why or why not? If it is not an intentional act, do you think that Sartre's position on free will is thereby seriously in doubt? Explain your answer.
2.113 How would you evaluate the various Objections to Sartre's position on free will? Be sure to consider the Possible Replies, in making your evaluation. Which is the strongest objection? The weakest? Would you offer other objections besides those mentioned in the text? If so, what are they?
1. See Jean Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness (New York: Philosophical Library, 1956), p. 556.
2. See ibid., pp. 554-555.
3. Ibid., p. 437.
(Note: The 1986 copyright was initially held by University Press of America, Ron Yezzi, Directing Human Actions: Perspectives on Basic Ethical Issues--but was then transferred to me.)
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