Jean-Paul Sartre: The Libertarian Perspective

Jean-Paul Sartre: The Libertarian Perspective

The question of free will, as it is understood as a metaphysical problem, typically involves an investigation into causal necessity. Such an inquiry splits philosophers many ways and the number of interpretations of human agency numbers the stars. Jean-Paul Sartre, though, is not so concerned with causation. As it is a part of the metaphysical discussion, it of course plays a role in some sense. Ilham Dilman characterizes Sartre’s philosophy by saying, “The world affects man only through his consciousness of it and this consciousness is not a causal link in a chain of causes” (192). Rather, Sartre primarily uses a phenomenological investigation into consciousness to come to a conclusion about free will and whether or not it is something which human beings possess. In short, he avoids the problem of causality by investigating the nature of human consciousness. His phenomenological ontology allows him to conclude that we are radically free on the basis of the transcendence of consciousness, the existence of nothingness as it arises in thinking, and our existence as one that has no nature. It is this depiction that allows us to call Sartre a libertarian.

Sartre and Phenomenology

The primary text for Sartre’s investigation into the nature of consciousness is Being and Nothingness. Even the title of the book represents the paradox that Sartre elucidates within its pages. That is, there is being, and coupled with it is nothingness. Before we can reach this conclusion we must first discover the foundation of Sartre’s philosophy.

The beginning is not unfamiliar. Just as Aristotle said that our rationality is that which sets us apart from all other beings on Earth, Sartre agrees—though he takes it a step further. He splits all being into two categories, Being-in-itself and Being-for-itself; the first being pure matter, the second, human consciousness. Human beings, then, are the only things which exist as both Being-in-itself and Being-for-itself.

As we will see when the paradox becomes clearer, Being-in-itself stands in radical opposition to nothingness. It is pure matter, or “full positivity”, as Sartre describes it (Being 56). Perhaps the best way to understand Being-in-itself, is by its opposite.

Being-for-itself, first and foremost, depends on Being-in-itself. There must be pure, simple, positive being in order for Being-for-itself to exist. In short, Being-for-itself, on the other hand, is consciousness. However, this simple characterization needs qualification; for animals have consciousness, though they are not what Sartre would call a Being-for-itself. “Consciousness is a being such that in its being, its being is in question in so far as this being implies a being other than itself” (Being 24). The distinction illustrates a phenomenological point about intentionality. It is a peculiar aspect of our consciousness that it is about something other than itself (Transcendence 44). Hence, human beings are unique in that we are the only beings which can be conscious of our consciousness. This kind of self-consciousness, however, is not normal consciousness; it is fleetingly transcendent. “Insofar as my reflecting consciousness is consciousness of itself, it is non-positional consciousness” (Transcendence 44-45). Sartre explains, “To say that consciousness is consciousness of something is to say that it must produce itself as a revealed-revelation of a being which is not it and which gives itself as already existing when consciousness reveals it” (Being 24). For example, when I perceive an apple, not only am I conscious of its placement in space and time, I am also transcendentally aware of my consciousness of the apple. This awareness, however, is fleeting—it cannot be grasped by the “I” in the same way that the apple can (Transcendence 45). This un-graspable aspect of our being constitutes a “nothingness” which Sartre will use to affirm that we are free.

Having established the peculiar construction of consciousness and our formulation through it into Being-for-itself, we have set up the first foundation crucial to understanding Sartre’s ideas about freedom. For, it is through consciousness, through our existence as not merely Being-in-itself, but also Being-For-itself, that nothingness arises. This is where Sartre is able to say that man is a nothing.

Nothingness and Freedom

First, it is important to understand that nothingness cannot exist in merely Being-in-itself. For, as it is shown, Being-in-itself is full positivity (Being 56; Dilman 191 ). In our consciousness, though, nothingness arises. This idea is first characterized by Sartre in his investigation into Being-For-itself. He writes, “Man is the only being by whom a destruction can be accomplished” (Being 39). His example is that of a terrible storm which makes landfall destroying homes, flooding streets, and causing landslides. All of this happens and we say that the storm has destroyed the homes we have built, ruined the streets and made them unusable, and eroded mountains. However, the point that Sartre wants to make is that being has only been rearranged. The matter that makes up the building which now lies in a heap of rubble on the ground still exists, but not in the form that we recognize as a building. To put it in a statement that reveals the free nature of our existence, we posit the world as we like. We make it what it is through our consciousness (Being 39). This point will come up again as we continue.

Another famous example Sartre uses to articulate the arousal of nothingness by consciousness is Pierre in the Café. When he walks into the café, expecting to find his comrade who is not present, nothingness arises that is created by both the non-being of Pierre and also the expectation of Sartre’s consciousness (Being 63). The task, then, is to show that nothingness, as it exists only through the Being-for-itself which is human consciousness, constitutes freedom. Sartre writes, “What we have been trying to define is the being of man in so far as he conditions the appearance of nothingness, and this being has appeared to us as freedom” (Being 60). Freedom, as it is connected to nothingness, must again be described in terms of consciousness. As will be shown, the transcendence of our consciousness is precisely that which makes us free.
“If someone asks what this nothing is which provides a foundation for freedom, we shall reply that we cannot describe it since it is not, but we can at least hint at its meaning by saying that this nothing is made-to-be by the human being in his relation with himself” (Being 71). Sartre’s clue is to a reflection upon consciousness—in particular, our own Being-for-itself. To say that our being is inherently transcendent means that when we investigate our identity we never find a positive solution, we only discover nothingness—an empty non-being full of pure potential. The best way to understand this is through Sartre’s discussion about the past and future: “Consciousness confronts its past and its future as facing a self which it is in the mode of not-being” (Being 72). When we stand opposite our past and our future we find that we have infinite possibility (and often find ourselves in a state of anguish, according to Sartre). Nothingness has slipped in when we say, “I am not the self which I will be [or have been]” (Being 68).

Furthermore, in the way that we can separate ourselves from who we were and who we will be, we can separate ourselves from the rest of the world—from Being-in-itself and its significance to us and its causal determinism. That is, as Sartre says, we give meaning to things in the world—and to ourselves. The alarm clock goes off and we must wake up, but it is us who gave meaning to the alarm clock in the first place as something which orders us to wake up. When we receive an order from a boss, it is us who has first given him the authority and recognized him as someone whom we must obey (Being 77). Simply put, Sartre writes, “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” (Being 78). We create the world, and more importantly, we create ourselves, as we want. This is freedom.

Degrees of Freedom

To simply say that we have freedom is not enough. For there are varying degrees of freedom according to different interpretations of what is meant by the term “free” and according to the philosophical foundation that has gone into finding human nature as one that is free. Within the notion of freedom are a number of implications about what freedom means, what kind of notion of origination is entailed within it, and to what degree it is intelligible. Each of these distinctions allows for a new interpretation of what it means to have free will.

In his book, Neurophilosophy of Free Will, Henrik Walter explains that for each of the three considerations implicit in the notion of freedom there are three interpretations.

The first consideration concerns the definition of Freedom. According to Walter’s distinctions, it at first seems that Sartre’s definition of freedom fits a moderate interpretation: we are free if we are able to do otherwise “in accordance with higher order volitions” (Walter 43). For Sartre, part of avoiding anguish and embracing the freedom that is intrinsic to our being is creating our own “projects,” as he calls them. Then, within the framework of the project which each man and woman create for himself and herself, choices are determined. For example, for a man who has made it his life project to be a good mailman, he is not free to choose not to show up to work when he does not feel like it. He must deliver the mail quickly and accurately—he has no other option if he wants to be a good mailman. It seems, then, that Sartre’s projects are Walter’s higher order volitions and that his interpretation of freedom is, in Walter’s terms, a moderate one.

Returning to Dilman, his discussion of Sartre’s projects again seems to fit what Walter would call a moderate interpretation: “Sartre sees commitment for the future to be a tie which lacks substance and whose only strength is the strength of the person’s determination in the sense of resolve” (191). The future self, as it is a goal which we have made it a project to become, serves as the higher order by which our choices must be made.

However, what Sartre actually has to say about this suggests a different position. In Existentialism Is a Humanism, he explicitly states that “there is no determinism—man is free, man is freedom” (Kaufman 349). This sentence alone warrants significant investigation.

First, the claim “there is no determinism,” as it stands by itself, needs to be qualified. What Sartre means is that there is no determinism for Being-for-itself. Dilman explains, “A thing that exists in itself has no say in what happens to it [and] Sartre attributes this to its lack of consciousness” (190). In other words, pure being is subject to causal law. But as human beings are more than simple matter, they are not bound by causation. “Committing oneself for the future differs radically from causal determinism” (Dilman 190).

Second, the remaining portion of Sartre’s statement is an ontological one, not a metaphysical one. He does more than say that man is free, he says that “man is freedom.” In other words, it is intrinsic to our being—as Being-for-itself—to be free. This is exemplified by the investigation into the way that nothingness arises in consciousness described earlier. Then, Sartre fits into a maximal interpretation—meaning that in identical circumstances, all human beings are free to do otherwise than what they actually do—making him a libertarian in favor of a philosophy that is capable of supporting a radically free will (Walter 43).

The second consideration in qualifying free will is intelligibility. Due to the way that Walter distinguishes between interpretations it is clear that Sartrean freedom is not defined according to a maximal interpretation which says that “acting for understandable reasons is guided by supernatural reasons” (Walter 43). It is inconsistent with the existential atheism to which he ascribes. We turn to Dilman to find that Sartre fits a moderate interpretation where we are intelligible of our freedom in as much as it revolves reflection upon oneself.

Men cannot escape their freedom, Sartre holds, since it is part and parcel of their existence as conscious beings. But the responsibility that goes with it is something they can avoid accepting. Indeed, it is part of man’s freedom that he does not have to accept or shoulder this responsibility. Sartre’s view is that whichever way a man turns he is inevitably responsible because he is free. But he is free not to accept it. Because the responsibility is there as a consequence of his freedom, not accepting it is an evasion and a deception of oneself. Sartre calls it ‘bad faith’ (199).

Our freedom is intelligible to us in so much as in self-reflection we find that we are free. However, being capable of self-reflection is one problem that people have in finding their freedom intelligible to them; and choosing to accept or avoid the intelligibility is another.

Critical Analysis

The third consideration in qualifying free will is origination. There is considerable room for dissent from the idea that consciousness is able to separate itself from the causal determination of the natural world of Being-in-itself. However, Dilman points out that Sartre borrows from the Cartesian understanding of the will that is “immune from causal determination, and therefore, is self determining” (194). He continues, saying, “the environment or circumstances of our life do not impinge on us causally, but through what we make of them in our appraisals, through the significances we attribute to them” (193). It is undeniable that there are certain aspects of our lives set up for us as we enter the world and that we did not choose: our parents, the way we are raised, our physical features, etc. The point that Dilman makes is that what we make of the pre-established circumstances of our surroundings determines our choices. Then, our freedom becomes a kind of self-determined autonomy. We are both the source of our choices and the ones who carry them out, meaning that in terms of origination as it qualifies the free will, Sartre fits into a maximal interpretation. Not only does the “originator equal the executor;” not only do our actions originate “in accordance with one’s self;” but we experience an “initial causation by a transcendental self” (Walter 43).

Much of Sartre’s philosophy rests on his atheism which turns out to be an important part of his notion of freedom. For, part of the nothingness of man is that we are made with no nature. That is, there is no infinite, all-powerful consciousness which created us with a plan. Such is the famous catchphrase, “existence precedes essence.” Sartre uses a counter example to show how we are not goal-oriented beings a priori. A human being creates a knife with the specific purpose of making it so that it is able to slice through bread, or butter, or whatever object he or she desires. So, the design of the knife occurs in accordance with its intended purpose. Human beings, on the other hand, are not made in this way because there is no God which has designed us as such (Kaufman 348).

His argument for the non-existence of an infinite consciousness, again, relies on phenomenology. Suppose there was a consciousness that preceded all other beings. If that is so, then that consciousness does not depend on any other beings. However, consciousness is always a consciousness of something other than itself. This is something that Edmund Husserl, who is largely considered one of the founding fathers of phenomenology, would agree with: the most peculiar and identifying characteristic of consciousness is that it points to something other than itself (Transcendence 44, 51). Then, returning to the argument, the supernal consciousness would both depend and not depend on other existing things at the same time which is impossible (Being 24).

With that said, Sartre’s atheism is a subject of much criticism. One popular argument against atheism is the first cause theory. That is, in the search for the origination of all existing things, there must be some first cause—the unmoved mover. Without a metaphysical entity that is itself immutable and un-caused, philosophical inquiry into the origination of all things falls into an infinite regress. It seems, then, that Sartre has a problem explaining how his atheistic ontology is consistent with the very fact that there is such a thing as pure being. For, Being-in-itself, even as lump-less matter is subject to the first cause theory.
The solution, it seems, is that Sartre’s atheism and the first cause theory are not incompatible. In fact, Sartre may not necessarily deny the potential truth of the idea that there is a first cause prior to all other things which exist in the world as we know it today. Rather, the point he wants to make is that whatever it is, it is not a conscious being. In this way, Sartre upholds the most important consequence of his atheism: the lack-of a consciousness which has created us in a teleological manner.

Conclusion


We are human beings, so we are free. This is not a conclusion from metaphysical premises, but from an ontological investigation into the phenomenology of consciousness. That is, it is intrinsic to the non-positional consciousness that occurs in self-reflection that our true “self” flees from us. Its transcendence causes a nothingness which is, according to Sartre, freedom in a radical sense: freedom to do otherwise in identical circumstances; freedom not only to act within our own “projects,” but to choose them for our self; and the freedom to understand the level of our freedom.

Naturally, such a construction has important ethical consequences. The point of the phenomenological ontology is not to say that we posit the world and are, therefore, not responsible for our actions. Rather, our existence implies moral responsibility from the beginning. If man is free to do as he wishes, then every action is not only a free choice, but a statement that all other men ought to act in the same way (Kaufman 350). “In fashioning myself I fashion man” (Kaufman 351). The libertarian perspective of Jean-Paul Sartre says that not only are we radically and unequivocally free, but moral responsibility is an ontological part of our being.








Works Cited
Sartre, Jean-Paul. Being and Nothingness. New York: Washington Square Press, 1992.
Sartre, Jean-Paul. Existentialism is a Humanism. Ed. Kaufman.
Sartre, Jean-Paul. The Transcendence of the Ego. New York. Noonday Press, 1957.
Dilman, Ilham. Free Will. New York. Routledge, 1999. 190-205.
Kaufman, Walter. Existentialism: From Dostoevsky to Sartre. New York. Penguin Group, 1956.
345 – 368.
Walter, Henrik. Neurophilosophy of Free Will. London. MIT Press, 2009. 1-73.