One
of the most stressed and important aspects of Sartre’s philosophy is the idea
of taking FULL responsibility for one’s actions through recognizing that those
actions, though limited by facticity in some ways, are products of our choice
in transcending such facticity. Sartre
realizes how difficult such responsibility is to bear and says that one cannot
help but feel “anguish” due to the “total absence of justification accompanied,
at the same time, by responsibility towards all” (55). Now this anguish, I believe, is not really a
bad thing; in fact it seems to be the goal here. And I don’t think it necessarily implies the
misery that it seems to, just a kind of awe-ful and constant awareness of
oneself. But I did have two inquiries
about this gigantic responsibility that each individual is supposed to take on.
My
first question came up when Sartre initially states that “When we say that man
is responsible for himself, we do not mean that he is responsible only for his
own individuality, but that he is responsible for all men” (23). Now if the human existence precedes its
essence, then it follows that there is not one particular stable essence of
humans because they must exist as individuals in order to decide individually
those essences for themselves. But I
have a little bit of a hard time trying to figure out how this freedom that we
have to transcend our facticity means that each person“…in choosing [one]self…
is choosing for all [humankind]” (24).
Sartre sheds a little light on the subject when he recommends asking: “What
would happen if everyone did what I am doing?” (25). Perhaps he means that in making choices and
defining ourselves, we inevitably affect the choices of others in ways that we
cannot control. And since each
individual contributes to the choices of humankind as a whole, each person must
not see him or herself as an exception or as in a vacuum that has no effects.
Did
anyone else think immediately of Kant’s first formulation of the categorical
imperative: “Act only in such way that you can will the maxim of your actions
to be universal law” ? Kant also seems
to believe in human freedom, but his idea of freedom is in the will, which we
must habituate in the practice of being good.
But Kant, in creating a categorical imperative to begin with, does
believe in the idea of a universal and absolute morality. This, I think, is where the two mainly
differ: while Sartre believes that the way we define our systems and the
meaning of our existence is constantly changing, Kant believes that a system of
morality must be universal. Are there
other important ways in which the two differ?
Is the recommendation from Sartre as similar to Kant’s categorical
imperative as it seems?
I too saw the connection between Kant and Sartre, and I completely agree that they suggest almost the same idea, yet apply it in different ways. Kant states that all men should act in a way in which they would wish to be a universal standard or law, whereas Sartre simply explains that man must remember that his actions serve as examples for the rest of humanity. I see Sartre's point of view as much more applicable than Kants'; Kant's philosophy sets up a sort of Utopian world (which, given human condition, is nearly impossible to achieve), but Sartre gives man a chance to develop individually, and through that development, affect the rest of humanity.
ReplyDeleteWell thanks to both of you for making me feel foolish for not seeing the connection which now seems obvious. But, I would agree that the two are remarkably similar. The key difference for me is the direction from which each approaches the idea. For Kant, a moral absolutist, there is only one right answer, whereas Sartre thinks that we as humans have the power to efine the right answer. The question then becomes, for me at least, how much do these different starting points affect the practical application of this idea?
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