Sartre speaks to the churchless

I read some passages from Jean-Paul Sartre's "Being and Nothingness" to my wife recently. Her reaction: "How the heck can you make sense of that?"

Reasonable question. Sartre can be dense.

But I love how he rambles along in his French existentialist intellectual writing style for a while, then throws in a simple clear gem that makes me go Wow! Right on, Jean-Paul.

For example, how he ends these thoughts.

Anguish in fact is the recognition of a possibility as my possibility; that is, it is constituted when consciousness sees itself cut off from its essence by nothingness or separated from the future by its very freedom. This means that a nihilating nothing removes from me all excuse and that at the same time what I project as my future being is always nihilated and reduced to the rank of simple possibility because the future which I am remains out of my reach.

But we ought to remark that in these various instances we have to do with a temporal form where I await myself in the future, where I "make an appointment with myself on the other side of that hour, of that day, or of that month." Anguish is the fear of not finding myself at that appointment, of no longer even wishing to bring myself there.

"Being and Nothingness" is 811 pages long as I noted in a previous post. However, just the two paragraphs above show why Sartre is a patron saint (god, he would have hated that appellation) for the churchless.

He says, correctly in my opinion, that we choose ourselves. This is scary. Also, exhilarating, as I wrote about on my other blog in "Sartre, scootering, and sensuality." 

If someone believes in a religion, that belief is his or hers. Not any one else's.

Believing is an action, not a state. It has to be continually reaffirmed, though often (or usually) we don't consciously realize how free we are to hold onto or discard a belief.

That's why Sartre speaks wonderfully about anguish being the fear that I won't find myself at the apppointment I've made with myself for some time in the future. ("Anguish," to my understanding, isn't so much anxiety as the realization of our freedom to choose.)

Someone believes in Jesus, or a guru, or whatever, for a long time. Then, she doesn't.

When the person was a true believer, she envisioned the appointment with herself that Sartre spoke of: a continued believing that carries on into the future (in the same way as a newly married couple imagines growing old together, not getting divorced some years down the line.)

But nothing comes between our present and our future. For Sartre, this "nothing" doesn't imply unbroken continuity, as when we say "Nothing is blocking the road between here and town."

No, nothing is nothingness. Freedom.

The gap between our subjectivity and things as they are in themselves, or being as it is in itself. The following quote is denser than the preceding one, but it offers a flavor of Sartre's view of nothingness.

But the nothingness which arises in the heart of consciousness is not. It is made-to-be. Belief, for example, is not the contiguity of one being with another being; it is its own presence to itself, it's own decompression of being.

...Thus the for-itself [individual consciousness] must be its own nothingness. The being of consciousness qua consciousness is to exist at a distance from itself as a presence to itself, and this empty distance which being carries in its being is Nothingness.

In this blog post I can't do a good job of explaining what Sartre means here. Here's a short and fairly simple attempt, though.

Things just are. A table is what it is. A table.

It's full of itself. All it is is what it is, a table. This is what Sartre calls Being-in-itself, which doesn't know that it is, because something unconscious isn't anything but itself. Meaning, it isn't aware that it exists. It just exists.

Humans, however, are Being-for-itself. We are conscious, including being conscious of our consciousness. This produces a distance from everything in existence, including ourselves.

Yes, there is a pre-reflexive consciousness that simply is. There has to be, because the nothing that separates Being-for-itself from itself isn't being. It is nothingness. Only being is. The rest is nothingness.

People talk about being one with God, one with the guru, one with Jesus, one with something. For Sartre (and also for me), that's impossible.

Oneness, in the sense of identity or no difference, is death for humans. If you and I aren't two, we're non-existent. I recall an Eastern sage, Ramakrishna, saying "I don't want to become sugar; I want to taste sugar."

Becoming sugar, or ashes, or God, or anything else, is to be non-existent. Unconscious. Dead. Who wants that?

This is what human life is: separateness, choice, freedom, anguish, joy, searching, finding, not-finding. If we were merely being, we would be a stone, a tree, a star, a table.

We are conscious. We are aware of existing. We know that we are free to choose. This is our joy. And also our anguish. Sartre says:

In anguish I apprehend myself at once as totally free and as not being able to derive the meaning of the world except as coming from myself.

Comments

[tAo]

Well said. Another great post Brian. Thanks.

[yogendra]

becoming sugar doesn't mean becoming unconcious or dead. At least not this. Let's follow an example.
A newly married couple wants to explore the infinite possibilities of love and beauty in the other half. As the love grows mature, the two halves start getting transformed into each other and the possibilities start turning into realities(or, certainties).At the peak point both become one. That's becoming sugar.
But the excitement of first date is incomparable. What if it never ends? You want to taste the sugar.
What will you choose?

[Jen]

Right on Brian, love this post, sometimes you explain things very well and I get it... thanks

[Brian]

yogendra, what you say isn't true. Two people never really become one. How would this be possible? They are still two individuals with distinctly separate subjective consciousnesses.

We never know what is like to be another person from the inside, so to speak, only from the outside. Two people never can become one. That's just a poetic way of speaking, not reality.

[tAo]

yogendra, your notion is utterly faulty.

Different individuals can never "become one". So your supposed "example" is not real, its an illusion. People have mutual loving relationships, but never oneness.

[ImPressed]

Brian - how the heck do you understand Satre? You really are the man!!!
Now we all can know how great you are !!

[Terrified Tess.]

Absolute nonsense - this sort of ignorant rot should be outlawed.

A total and complete misunderstanding of Sarte, its actually laughable.

Worse misinformation than any Satguru could ever disseminate.

[Brian]

ImPressed, thank you! Your praise, which I choose to accept as sincere (because we existentialists relish our freedom to choose) makes me so very, very happy.

Terrified, thank your for your considered criticism of my blog post. One suggestion: you forgot to include any considered criticism. Next time, add some content to your comment. It will make more sense then.

It's always amusing to me, as a long-time blogger, when someone says "You're full of shit!" But when pressed to show some evidence of my shit-fulledness, they can't do it.

I've studied Sartre both as a youth and now, as a non-youth. He's dense, but I feel that I understand his basic existentialist stance. If you have a different understanding, please share it. I'm open to honest criticism. Otherwise, I'll take your comment for what it's worth at the moment: nothing.

(Ooh, that's so Sartre'ian...nothing!)

[walker]

Humans make themselves what they will, it is human nature, except there is no human nature, but it leads to the understanding of what human life is: separateness, choice, freedom, anguish, joy. So finally we can understand the child sacrifice parents, simply being human, having freedom to choose, joy or anguish, the latter in this case I assume?

[Walker]

This is a particularly lackluster post, so lets liven it up a bit. Have a look at the comments for the post on November 21st, 2004, yes, this is the welcome to Church of the Churchless first post. Does it not seem strange that right at the outset, we have posts from tAo and tuscoN, taking the exact same AI stance (AI = Agressive Ignorant) in response to the first few newcomers. How very odd that tAo and tuscoN, both use capital letters unconventionally, both appear at day one, coming out of their corners in same fighting mood as we see today.
Brian, your followers may be closer than you think, like -- shh now, dont want to cause to much of a shock, -- but your demons within fighting your internal struggles for all to see on this blog.
You have my sympathies !!!

[Brian]

Walker, you're losing it, my man. Are you actually suggesting that tAo and tucson are my own personas, my own inventions? If so, you truly are deluded.

[Walker]

Authors create characters to participate and liven up their work, you are an author, right?
It would, theoretically, be very easy for you to create 'characters' and have them post to this blog. But of course, any reasonable person would ask why would you do such a thing? Well, first you always have someone who can post supporting your comments, there is strength in numbers. You can comment in as aggressive manner as you wish to other commenters, and Brian still looks good. You can make yourself look good in the eyes of genuine readers, so boosting you self acknowledged ego, and, you can put down others without damage to your own credibility. These are but a few reasons why you might do such a thing. I am sure you have really good reasons why you cannot create such characters and equally good reasons why you would not do such a thing, or will you reply with your usual enlightening replies: " I do not post comments under another name, and walker, you must be losing it!"

Come on Brian, lets hear the truth !!!

[tAo]

Walker,

Unfortunately for Walker, he has made one very critical ERROR. And what is that error?

Well first, right here above Walker has stated:

"Have a look at the comments for the post on November 21st, 2004, yes, this is the welcome to Church of the Churchless first post. Does it not seem strange that right at the outset, we have posts from tAo and tuscoN, taking the exact same AI stance (AI = Agressive Ignorant) in response to the first few newcomers. How very odd that tAo and tuscoN [...] both appear at day one, coming out of their corners in same fighting mood as we see today." -- Posted by: Walker | August 07, 2009 at 11:02 PM

Now if you will notice more specifically, Walker has both assumed and stated the following:

"the comments for the post on November 21st, 2004"

"this is the [...] Church of the Churchless first post."

"right at the outset, we have posts from tAo and tuscoN"

"How very odd that tAo and tuscoN [...] both appear at day one"

But unfortunately Walker's assumption is totally incorrect and erroneous.

Tucson and tAo (myself) did NOT post any comments at all on "day one", which was November 21st, 2004.

My (tAo's) first posted comment under the "Welcome" topic was on April 09, 2008... and tucsoN's first post under that topic was on April 29, 2008 !!! And then the last posts by tucsoN and I under that topic were shorlty after on April 30, 2008.

So clearly, Walker has failed to notice the very significant and crucial fact that both Tucson's and my own comments were posted more than 3 years AFTER November 21st, 2004... and so they were NOT posted on "day one" as Walker has so mistakenly assumed and stated.

To prove it here are assembled all the post dates for Tucson and myself (tAo) that were posted under that topic which Brian had titled as "Welcome to the Church of the Churchless", and which Brian posted on November 21, 2004.

The Comment Dates:

Posted by: tAo | April 09, 2008 at 03:00 PM

Posted by: tucson | April 29, 2008 at 07:11 AM

Posted by: tucson | April 29, 2008 at 08:35 AM

Posted by: tAo | April 29, 2008 at 02:19 PM

Posted by: tAo | April 29, 2008 at 02:57 PM

Posted by: tAo | April 29, 2008 at 03:53 PM

Posted by: tAo | April 29, 2008 at 05:18 PM

Posted by: tucson | April 30, 2008 at 01:20 PM

Posted by: tAo | April 30, 2008 at 03:22 PM

Posted by: tAo | April 30, 2008 at 06:06 PM

So... so much for the astuteness and credibility (or rather the lack of) of this joke named Walker.

[Brian]

Walker, here's the smoking gun that destroys your credibility: I guess you didn't realize that IP addresses are associated with every comment made on my blogs. So I could tell that the person who left a comment as "walker" and the person who left a comment as "Brian" used the same Internet connection.

You've been leaving posts as "Brian" that I've been deleting, because I don't appreciate someone masquerading as me. That's cowardly and, yes, wrong -- a word that you have difficulty understanding the meaning of. But until today I hadn't checked to see if that lying commenter was you.

So after I deleted your last comment from "Brian" where you pretended that I'd banned you because I can do whatever I like on my blog, I'll make your fantasy reality. You're banned from my blog.

Not because you're an idiot troll. But mainly because you left comments under my name, hoping to lead people to believe that I was saying stuff that I never said.

This shows how hypocritical true believers can be, since you accused me as doing just what you have been doing. I've never left a comment on my blogs, or any blogs, under a different username. Never. Ever.

Truth can be simple, walker. I hope one day you realize that.

[Brian]

Walker, I do think you are full of shit. Again, the smoking gun:

At 11.58 pm "walker" posted a comment using IP address 212.227.103.74

At 1:21 am "Brian" posted a comment using IP address 212.227.103,74

You're a liar. End of story.

Because I believe in open commenting, I don't approve comments before they're posted as many bloggers do. So you may be able to have comments up for a while before I delete them.

From now on, readers of this blog know that you are a lying troll who won't even admit to being caught in a lie when he is caught in a lie by TypePad's commenting system. Your lies are recorded in my account files, walker/Brian.

Give it up. Take your trolling elsewhere, because you have zero credibility on this blog. I advise others to ignore you, because lying trolls feed on attention, lacking the capacity to get enjoyment from normal human activities, I guess.