Sartre: Existentialism 2018, session 2        

To do:

• Back-up plan (integrate new-comers)

• Suss out students on experience with essays

• Bring a few extra copies of EH

• Exercise

• For next time:

• Finish reading Existentialism and Humanism

• Projection, action, responsibility

Themes:

• What does existence precedes essence mean?

• What does existence mean?
• What does essence mean?

• Identity, quiddity, whatness

• subjectivity

Introduce Sartre and this book

• Immensely popular in his lifetime

• 50k people attended his funeral

• dismissed by academic philosophers for decades, but now being reassessed
• EH delivered to a pop audience, very popular

• six months after the war in Europe ended

• accessible (and so necessarily incomplete)
• focused on defending existentialism against the accusations of its enemies

• heavily criticized by Heidegger in “Letter on Humanism”

Existence precedes essence p. 20

• a definition of existentialism?
• Why not, “there is no essence”
• Specifically, humanity’s existence

• Because other things do have prior essences

• S’s examples: book, paper knife

• What does essence mean?

• Identity, quiddity, whatness
• Production and concept
• We aren’t used to thinking in these terms

• Essence sounds philosophically sophisticated
• But we use essences all the time, even if we don’t think about them

• it is the essence of this thing to be a desk

• it is the essence of a desk to have a smooth surface
• is it even a desk if it’s been left in the rain all winter and is warped?

• If I tried to sell it to you, saying its just a warped desk, would you even consider it for your desk needs?

• Third-wave coffee story

• Why would we think that humans, or humanity, has an essence at all, let alone a prior essence?

• Is this a natural thought?

No human nature p. 21-22

• Sartre accuses the secular/atheist philosophers who hold onto an idea of human nature of maintaining the role of God without  God

• “18th century atheistic philosophers suppressed the idea of God, but not, for all that, the idea that essence precedes existence.”
• if there were a creator god, then it could be that we were designed by god the way that this desk was designed by a furniture maker

• if that were so, then we could conceivably say that as humans we are created according to an idea of our creator

• and that would mean we have an essence, a human nature

• We think in terms of human nature when we talk about being made in God’s image
• But also when we talk about the animal rationale

• that our purpose is to be rational

• it is not just a trait, but our purpose

• also, when we say that the best form of society is capitalism

• capitalism is founded on the conception of humanity as self-interested

• it is thought to work because each of us pursues incentives

• or that history is a path of progress

• this presupposes that an innate goodness steers us towards betterment

• or when you assume that people will cheat you, because people are evil

No personality

• you are also free
• you are not defined by your career, your politics, your personality
• personality is a trap that keeps you from recognizing your freedom

• whether good or bad

• do your friends like you because you’re funny
• have your teachers always told you that you’re stupid?

• Or, even worse, that you’re smart?

• Does your life have to be successful, rich, powerful?

• do you have to have a family?

• What will happen if your life goes in another direction?

• how much of a burden are these? To think that you would no longer be you if your grades started to slip, or you wanted to be serious about your dog dying?

Activity:

• What to you seems essential to your being yourself?

• What is there about you that without it you would not be you?

• This is a real question, because the transformation here is not easy
• It should not be easy to recognize your absolute freedom

Remaining questions:

• isn’t this overstating my freedom for self-determination?

• Clearly I have objective characteristics: my height, my IQ, the colour of my skin, my gender
• why am I not defined by these?

• This is explained by the subjective point of departure

• Why not get rid of essence altogether?