SARTRE THE EXISTENTIALIST

Jean Paul Sartre is the best existential thinker. His thought was very deep and somehow assuring.
 
Descartes held that self is in essence self-consciousness. Sartre denied that there can be no object in consciousness and hence no self identical to it. In other words it is just there like eyesight and thus you cannot call it a person.
 
Sarte noted that self is ‘ out there’. You make it outward looking so that things around you seem to be a part of you. You look at them that way. In other words you externalise your self or sense of self. But your self is not what money you have or where you work or any other material thing. That is what Sarte means by saying that the self has no material being in itself but being for itself only.

Sartre insists that our consciousness is not a materially determined thing and is not part of the causal order. Does damage to the nervous system damage consciousness? Sartre says it doesn’t because the nervous system is not being for itself and anyway how can matter have ideas? Matter is a thing not a person or anything like a person.

Sartre says we have a god shaped hole for we want to be god. In a sense, if you let your desires tell you what God should be and what he is then that is indeed you making yourself a God and the creator of the creator. That is your intention. I would say that as each person seems to know better than God what God wants the worship of God is really an idol. Idolatry is just a way of man trying to control what is thought of God and what God should do.

Sartre wrote, “man is condemned to be free; because once thrown to the world, he is responsible for everything he does.” One might say that that is true but there is also the condemnation to take responsibility and to take the consequences of what he chooses. For that reason, many say that liberty and free will are different things. Free will is making the choice but you have no real liberty for you are trapped by what you choose for yourself for it always has consequences. There is no ultimate freedom. Even doing nothing is a choice and has consequences. By the way we feel that it is not a choice which is good ammunition for those who point out that there is so much self-illusion over free will and when we think we use it that we cannot guarantee we have it at all, not even to ourselves.  I would add that if you act and things happen it is easy to see these as consequences but if you do nothing the consequences can be even bigger and you barely notice that they are even there!

Sartre held that real freedom is to be had without an an–controlling God. A God creating all around you is a controller. Christians say that God does not fear your sin and your sin only harms yourself simply because you only wield free will because of God and he creates all the circumstances you think you can manipulate.  So you are free because of God and never in spite of him.  Sarte in denying God linked and grounded free will to randomness.  Now, Sarte was told by believers in God that this freedom Is not freedom at all. It is resignation to valueless randomness. Randomness and freedom are not the same thing. Freedom that is grounded in nothing but itself is not about you even if you try to make it be about you.  So it is not your freedom.  “God made morally responsible beings. But for you, responsibility exists in a void.  Your account of why freedom is real does not explain why it is real. For you it is just an idea that you want but wanting it does not make it valid or true."  The bottom line is Sartre is held to be mistaking how randomness looks free for real freedom. He thinks he creates his actions without God from nothing and that is random and that gives him freedom.  There is a glaring contradiction in the criticism of his position.  If God creates my free will from nothing that only takes us back to where we started.  If Sartre can create free will from nothing and that is random that is no better.  It's worse.  It is trying to bring in God to complicate things and present a non-solution as as solution.  If free will needs complications and lies like that then it is offering with one hand what it is taking away with another.  A will trapped in lies is never free.

Sarte pointed out that I have limits.  I cannot exceed myself.  If you do better than you thought at a race that does not mean you exceeded yourself but that you had more work done to prepare and so well than you realised.  I can't be more than myself so freedom is the lack of power to do this. Sartre arrives at the paradoxical definition: freedom is really synonymous with lack. Sartre's idea of freedom seems odd. Our instinct is to think of freedom as unrestricted liberty of action. But he says the way your consciousness is not a thing and its being not a thing is the reason you are free. Being a thing would limit it too much. The more something is a mere thing the less freedom it has. A rock cannot go for a walk. He is consistent in identifying the nothingness of one's consciousness with freedom. Your consciousness being a kind of nothing is free to penetrate reality which is a thing. What do we do with this insight? Sartre wants us to lose not our minds but to be open to stopping them from holding us back. Get out of your head so you can be other than what you are.
 
For Freud, the emotion you have indicates what is lurking in the unconscious mind. But emotion and the conscious mind are totally separate. Sartre rejects this as nonsense. He said that if you choose to repress some feeling or thought, you have to know what is in the unconscious in order to do that. So it is not really unconscious after all. For Sarte, self-deception does not really exist. Self-evasion and self-distraction are behaviours that are described as self-deception when in fact they are not. Every emotion has an object so emotions are intentional ways of perceiving and understanding what happens around you and in you. Emotion is directed towards something. To love is not just to love. It is to love someone. Fear is always fear of something. Emotion is a way of dealing with a scary existence in a scary world. By hating an enemy you think you magically change the situation so that it is no longer as dangerous and that you can handle it. Emotion is that which makes you feel you can magically weaken or destroy the danger and thus you feel safe. Emotions are about serving this function.

Sartre advocates a form of virtue ethics wherein morality is not about rules and laws and abstract principles but about living in a way that lets your human potential flourish. Virtue is getting on with people and not about how you adhere to principles such as kindness or compassion.

Sartre is helpful for those who wish to cultivate gratitude. This is his understanding. Nothing is really your own which is why gratitude is possible. So you must not relate to any person or thing in a possessive way. These teachings show you must let others be themselves and accept these differences as something to be gratefully celebrated. You must also let you be free to be yourself instead of trying to possess yourself.
 
I would point out that if God owns all things then he can make whatever you have belong to you. Thus true gratitude and the strongest gratitude can only arise in so far as you ignore God.
 
He says that Christians are arguing that if you sin and are unrepentant and get damned in Hell forever then you force God to damn you so God's power is limited. God wants to save you and you won't let him. The point here is that God is limited by being unable to do anything about it. Who knows what other limits God has and if there is any point in wanting his salvation. The God thing does not automatically fix the problem of the meaning of existence.

Too many confuse ultimate goal with eternal goal. Looking for meaning in the here and and now could be the ultimate goal. A goal that is ours by accident or luck is no less a goal. The most important goals depend on accidents and the power of chance.