OK, I lied. Or more accurately, I changed my mind.
After saying in my previous post about Sartre's Being and Nothingness that I didn't feel like re-reading (or re-re-reading) the 798 pages of dense philosophical prose, choosing to only read the 44 pages of the translator's introduction again, I've found myself plowing further into the book.
Because I'm enjoying it.
I sort of figure that rather than attempting the New York Times crossword puzzle, I'd rather exercise my aging brain by reading passages that often simultaneously stretch my ability to comprehend them, while presenting me with fresh ways of looking upon reality.
What I admire about Sartre is how he is determined to view the world afresh from a bottom-up perspective founded on what he considers to be facts about how things are, the realm of ontology (and science), rather than why things are, the domain of metaphysics (and religion).
So in this post I want to try to convey in a broad-brush fashion what I find appealing and interesting about Being and Nothingness, which as noted in my other post about the book is Sartre's attempt to systematize the philosophy that he conveyed in previous works of fiction.
As mentioned before, consciousness is central to Sartre's project. It should be, since without consciousness, there is no world, and no us. It's impossible to consider the universe without consciousness, because all of our considering occurs within, or as, consciousness.
Sartre divides reality into two large clumps: unconscious Being-in-itself and conscious Being-for-itself. Mostly it's easy to distinguish the two. The chair I'm sitting on while I type these words is Being-in-itself. The person doing the typing, me, is Being-for-itself.
Currently philosophy and neuroscience express Being-for-itself as having something it is like to be that entity. There is something it is like to be me or you. Also, to be our dog. Almost certainly there is nothing to be like to be a chair. It simply is.
That's the defining characteristic of Being-in-itself. It simply is. We who are Being-for-itself have a complicated relationship with Being-in-itself, which occupies a large part of Being and Nothingness. For while Being-in-itself simply is, we can imagine things that are not.
Unicorns. Fairies. God (in the opinion of Sartre, along with myself). The future. The past.
Sartre uses as an example going to a coffeehouse to meet a friend, Pierre. As he enters the coffeehouse, he looks for Pierre. Failing to see him, Sartre thinks, "Pierre is not here." Out of all of the people and objects in the coffeehouse, he creates a bit of nothingness -- the non-presence of Pierre.
Even though Sartre says that consciousness always is consciousness of something, we humans can make nothingness into something. A lack, an absence, becomes something noticed. I suspect our dog can do something similar, since she clearly notes the absence of a chew stick when I forget to give her one after her dinner.
But Sartre makes clear that Being and Nothingness are not equals. This points to the absurdity of the Christian notion of creatio ex nihilo, creation out of nothing. Obviously, says Sartre, Being has to exist in order for Nothingness to exist, since nothing is the negation of something, Being.
We can't say, "there was nothing before God created the universe," since that assumes the Being of God. And if we say simply, "there was nothing before the universe came into being," this still confers upon nothing an illusory solidity, a substance, a being.
So I'd guess that if Sartre could comment on modern theories of the big bang, he'd hold that matter/energy always have existed in some form -- which makes the most sense, since why assume that an unseen God always has existed instead of visible matter/energy?
Subjectivity is the nature of Being-for-itself, conscious entities such as we humans. This is why we find disasters such as the recent wildfires that devastated Lahaina, a town on Maui, so disturbing, a subject I wrote about yesterday on one of my other blogs.
Sartre points out that in a disaster of that sort, the Being of the world is unchanged, which reflects the scientific fact that matter/energy can neither be created nor destroyed. It just changes form. All of Lahaina still exists in the form of rubble, smoke, ash, heat, and such.
However, that is no consolation to those who were in Lahaina when the wildfire struck, some of whom died. This creates a certain tension between our envy, if that's the right word, of Being-in-itself which always is, and those of us who are Being-for-itself, conscious entities who seek the permanence of Being but aren't able to find it.
Lastly, for this blog post, Sartre speaks of another tension embodied in the notion of the Other.
This arises because the only Being-for-itself that we know directly is our own self, our own consciousness. Everyone else is a Being-in-itself from our perspective -- a physical body that certainly appears to be conscious just as we are, yet which lacks the subjectivity, the sense of something it is like to be, that we know directly.
In other words, we know ourself from the inside but everyone else only from the outside.
Thus another person is the Other to us, while we are the Other to them. The dream, or fantasy, of bridging this unbridgeable gap is what gives rise to love, poetry, conversation, dance, music, books, all the many and varied ways we humans try to make our subjectivity a reality for others who can really know us only as an object, not a subject.
Well, after spending almost a thousand words trying to explain why I enjoy reading Sartre so much, I feel like I've mostly failed. But that's the nature of life. No matter how hard we try to convey what it is like to be us, the divide between us and the Other remains.
This seems to explain the longing people have for mystical union, for the possibility that on some other plane of existence a sense of oneness dissolves our essential subjective isolation. I have a lot of sympathy for that longing, as it motivated me to embrace a strong pursuit of mysticism over fifty years ago.
I just have come to view that quest as doomed to failure, even as I understand why so many find it attractive.
“As mentioned before, consciousness is central to Sartre's project. It should be, since without consciousness, there is no world, and no us.”
“Even though Sartre says that consciousness always is consciousness of something, we humans can make nothingness into something. A lack, an absence, becomes something noticed.”
Interesting statements; is the first statement saying that we create the world? In one sense that is true, true in that our brains have been shown to shape reality into a world that we are able to navigate solely to enable survival.
And yes, consciousness is always conscious of something, conscious of its contents – even if those contents are just thoughts and images. Extreme cases from prisoners who had spent long periods in solitary confinement with minimum stimulation; they described the imaginary worlds they created. So, where there is a brain, there are images to be conscious of – even imaginary ones. ‘Making nothingness into something’ – some meditation practitioners may be susceptible to this trap.
It often seems to me that consciousness falls into the same vague category as the mind and self concepts; in fact, the totality of all our cognitive faculties (memory, perception, thought, etc.) all of which are crucial components to our conscious experiences of the world and ourselves. In fact, just to confuse matters, the cognitive faculties are often said to be the faculties of the human mind and the mind is often said to be the seat of consciousness.
Surely this needs sorting out. The simple answer is that all the cognitive faculties, including mind and consciousness are manifestations of the brain/body organism. Mind, as far as I understand is simply our accrued information and experiences that are disgorged as and when needed.
One could say the same for awareness, awareness being a function that involves the senses, that is the entire body that finds expression finally through the brain. Or is awareness more fundamental – perhaps as Nisargaddata puts it: -
“Awareness is primordial; it is the original state, beginningless, endless, uncaused, unsupported, without parts, without change. Consciousness is on contact, a reflection against a surface, a state of duality. There can be no consciousness without awareness, but there can be awareness without consciousness, as in deep sleep. Awareness is absolute, consciousness is relative to its content; consciousness is always of something. Consciousness is partial and changeful, awareness is total, changeless, calm and silent. And it is the common matrix of every experience.”
Posted by: Ron E. | August 12, 2023 at 09:01 AM
Yes, we DO have free will. If we didn’t we should all just drink the kool aid and be done with it.
Nothing is more disempowering than the belief that there is no such thing as free will.
Posted by: Practical | August 14, 2023 at 05:30 PM