Reading notes on BEING AND NOTHINGNESS by JEAN PAUL SARTRE. Pages 619 through 629.
"Part II. Freedom and Facticity: The Situation"
Part 1: The problem is set forth.
"Much more than [one] appears "to make [oneself]," [one] seems "to be made' by climate and the earth, race and class, language, the history of the collectivity of which [one] is a part, heredity, the individual circumstances of his childhood, acquired habits, the great and small events of life" (619 BN).
--
It seems as though we are merely a confluence of circumstances. On one level we really do have a part of us--our habits, our general cooking style, our driving, our voting behavior (?), our outlooks on life--on which we can make attempts at a reduction to class, race, gender, etc. The way I walk, for example, when I am simply walking to the gas station to get Cool Ranch Doritos, I do not choose. Certainly I was taught to walk in a certain way. It's a habit. Likewise gender: who hasn't known through some nice CLA class (or otherwise) that gender and race are constructs? But damn, does our sociality really determine us? Let's keep it simple, first.
Let's say I choose to shuffle my feet when I walk. When I choose to shuffle rather than walk, this puts me in a strange position: on the one hand I'm still aware that I still have a "normal" way of walking, but on the other hand I'm choosing to walk differently. What is this relationship of choice to habit? How would we even try to conceptualize and analyze such a relationship? What's the upshot of doing this? This is Sartre's concern.
Ok, fine. But let's get back to the problem. Let's give an overview of the determinist objection. We can easily imagine it: everything I do is (pre?)determined because I myself am just a product of the world. We imagine Marxist class arguments to this end; we can imagine physicists saying how we are merely particles bouncing off each other. We can imagine some pseudo-psychologist saying that we are "merely a product of our background." Nature vs. Nurture, right? Genetics. Brain chemistry. Everything converges to point to one conclusion: how we act is pre-determined.
How does Sartre deal with this? Let's go through this little chapter piece by piece. What we need to do is re-conceptualize human freedom. Let's start. (Since these are reading notes and not an essay, it may seem messy and not directly tied to the determinist objections [or other objections, whatever they may be]. My real goal is simply to understand Sartre's chapter.)
The first concept Sartre discusses is that of the "coefficient of adversity in things" (620 BN). When I try get a job and don't get it, this can't be an argument again our freedom because it was by a "preliminary positing of an end…that this coefficient of adversity arises" (620 BN). The job, the situation of having the job, the interview--all of this--is in itself neutral. As Sartre says: "…it can manifest itself in one or the other way only within an instrumental-complex which is already established" (620 BN). A job which I cannot get preliminarily limits our freedom because "our freedom itself…must first constitute the framework, the technique, and the ends in relation to which they manifest themselves as limits" (620 BN). This means that I'm assuming that I want the job; the limits of my freedom reflect the ends desired. Thus, if I want to fuck up a job interview (if, for some reason, I want to really fuck it up), I might throw coffee in the HR fucker's face and laugh, laugh, laugh. I'd have to ask for coffee first, or bring it in. But the point is that the job itself is neutral: it is our stance, our way of doing things in relation to it that gives it it's meaning.
Now, one objection I can think of would be something like this. We want jobs. We need jobs to live. As a result, society/economy (our class position, etc), drives us towards certain ends. As in: getting a job, motherfucker. But Sartre somewhat (?) accounts for this with two words: "already established," as we noted above. In his example of scaling a crag there are "picks and piolets, paths already worn, and a technique of climbing" (620 BN). Without techniques that can insert themselves into the instrumental-complex our freedom can't manifest anything whatsoever. These techniques are well established. But let's keep moving: as Sartre points out: "it is our freedom itself which first constitutes…the technique, and the ends in relation to which [a thing] will manifest [itself] as limits" (620 BN). I might wear a clown suit to a job interview. Have you ever seen Step Brothers? Sartre seems to be stating that insofar as we are not mere things, mere habits, we choose our ends and techniques required to manifest the world in the way in which we choose to live in it. They way in which we manifest the world sets the world up with certain limits (I wouldn't feel "free" to wear a clown suit to an interview). The fact that techniques and ends are already established renders them preliminarily non-neutral (the situation decides for us); our freedom, our choice, on the contrary, is what really gives value to a situation.
[Later note: I don't like what I have just previously written, though I think much of it is right. The "already established" part seems embarrassing to me while re-reading it. 12/4/09]
Whew. Ok. Now, at this point I think I might want to make a qualification: we are re-conceptualizing freedom starting from the individual. Sartre is not talking people who live in poverty (though I immediately think of the destitute or those without any "techniques" of achieving any ends whatsoever as objections to this view of the individual). Or those whose ends are completely determined likewise. However, on pg. 622 he explicitly states that he is only talking about a "technical and philosophical concept of freedom." But we're moving on right now, because that in fact comes in to bear later (but maybe not here, right now.) We're simply clearing things up a bit.
[Later note: I think Sartre would respond to my objection here by claiming that even the poor without any means or "techniques" still fall into his description. The point isn't to show how their destitution limits their freedom. Rather, the point is to show that within the world, even a destitute world, our freedom actually exists. The two points are separate (that is, the world as it is and our existent freedom), and Sartre is dealing with determinist people first; the political comes later. 12/11/09]
But we are coming to a more decisive point here. Normally we think of freedom as the ability to realize a possible end. However, Sartre wants to distinguish sharply between realizing a possible end and projecting an end as a possible end (620 BN). Being able to project a possible end is necessary for there being a realization of an end in the first place. As Sartre states, "If conceiving is enough for realizing, then I am plunged in a world like that of a dream in which the possible is no longer in any way distinguished from the real" (620 BN). Any distinction between fact (choosing) and fiction (wishing) would disappear if there were no resistance offered back by the world in which I live. As a result, freedom is actually piggybacking on the resistance offered by the world. Without that resistance, the world wouldn't be a real world.
Wishing provides us with a representation which I could choose; choosing attempts to install that representation in to the world. Without this distinction there could be no such thing as freedom.
Sartre very quickly at this stage attempts to bring in certain ideas connected somewhat with what you could call his conception of "identity." I think it would be profitable to wade through it in order to more fully understand how resistance to freedom is actually a prerequisite to our having freedom at all. (This is, after all, exactly what he does.)
Sartre states the following sentence.
We are free when the final term by which we make known to ourselves what we are is an end; that is, not a real existent like that which in the supposition which we have made could fulfill our wish, but an object which does not yet exist (621 BN).
We are projects. We do not drive at absolute things, absolute values or the like. Rather, we are free when we are shooting towards an end (and through that end we make known to ourselves what we are). How do we make known to ourselves what we are through "an object which does not yet exist"? I think we might be able to talk about ways of life. If I am what I do, and I aim at certain things, then in a sense I am always in process, always aiming at the next end. We could also think of it this way: being a farmer is an end, an always unattainable project and never a mere object. If I am a farmer, then "being a farmer" means that I can never attain "being a farmer." That's because what it means to be human is conceptualized in terms of projects. Our continuing freedom in choosing (to be or not to be a farmer?) keeps us from crystallizing into objects. And we would not, repeat, not, like to be reduced to "mere" objects! (Really--that would be a crime.)
Sartre then states the following sentences.
But consequently this end can be transcendent only if it is separated from us at the same time that it is accessible. Only an ensemble of real existents can separate us from this end--in the same way that this end can be conceived only as a state to-come and the real existents which separate me from it. It is nothing but the outline of an order of existents--that is, a series of dispositions to be assumed by existents on the foundation of their actual relations (621 BN).
An end that is unattainable (transcendent), is still accessible as an end (as an unattainable end). Being a farmer is only possible through actual farming--using tractors, plowing, etc. Now, I may be making a mistake in making identity a part of this conversation so early, but "to be a farmer" is always a "state to-come" insofar as I explained above. A person who is a farmer must constantly confirm himself/herself as a farmer. The end (to be a farmer) is "nothing but the outline of an order of existents," as Sartre says. To be a farmer means to have a farming outline: fields, silos, harvests, seasons, etc. The foundation of the actual relations of farming are things like seasons changing, harvests, rain, and plowing. An end is a disposition that "is assumed" by these existents in order to make farming possible--a disposition that flows from my freedom. Basically, my freedom disposes the world to act in a certain way according to a foundation already provided for by the resistance discussed above. And we should note that a real live human being can never completely be a farmer. A farmer is a function, a role; a human being is "infinitely more than what he is" (is that a Heidegger quote?).
Likewise, Sartre says: "By the internal negation, in fact, the [the person] illuminates the existents in their mutual relations by means of the end which [the person] posits, and it projects this end in terms of the determination which it apprehends in the existent" (621 BN). Or: "There can be a free [person] only as engaged in a resisting world" (621 BN).
Part 2: Choosing as Acting
On pg 621/22 Sartre mentions the notion that freedom is "the ability to obtain the ends chosen." However, he quickly reduces choosing and freedom to acting as opposed to ability. If ability to obtain ends where really the foundation of freedom, then we would again fall into a quagmire described above: wishing and choosing would be the same thing. In a sense everyone is free because we can always act--and to act is to choose (622 BN). We have a technical point here that will blow up in our collective face.
Because there is no distinction between acting and choosing, there can be no distinction between intention and action. Sartre has the following to say about this situation:
The intention can no more be separated from the act than thought can be separated from the language which expresses it; and as it happens that our speech informs us of our thought, so our acts will inform us of our intentions--that is, it will enable us to disengage our intentions, to schematize them and to make objects of them instead limiting us to living them--i.e., to assume a non-thetic consciousness of them (622 BN)This quote is a whopper. It's a whopper because it touches on the fundamental difference between levels of behavior that I've talked about above. This act of disengagement demands to be mentioned, but first let's talk about intention and action.
Why would I separate intention and act in the first place? I believe we do usually because we miss the mark so often: I intend to make my bed without doing it; I intend to show up for work without actually doing it.
If I full-well intend to make my bed, I make my bed; my choices, of course, depend on the resistance of the world, and so I may not end up making my bed (I took a shower instead, and had to go to work). But all this is irrelevant to our discussion simply because our freedom would not be freedom if it always succeeded. Then it would be the dream world. A separation between intention and action is not needed for a concept of freedom and in fact impedes it in the sense that leads us to think of the success/failure of intentions to actualize, when what's needed is a correct understanding of how intentions actually work.
This is where it becomes crucial to understand: when I choose something--when I act--I make of my intentions objects which I can then deal with as objects. Normally I am unintentionally living; but when I actually make a choice my intention becomes an object held before my eyes: I become aware of the end(s) I've chosen and thus can organize my life accordingly. I can choose to go to work at three o'clock. If I do so, and I may well not go to work at all today, what I've done is initiated an "act of disengagement" that allows me to see my intentions as intentions (as intentions amongst other intentions). They become what they are through an act of disengagement, through my act of choosing.
"Non-thetic consciousness" for Sartre means unreflective consciousness of something: we are aware that we are driving but we are not aware that we are aware that we are driving (which would be "reflection"). When I choose to walk my dog, I am aware that I am choosing to walk my dog, and my choosing to walk my dog allows me to see "walking my dog" as an intention (wait…does it work like this?). Thus, I could choose otherwise. Intention and act are the same because usually there is no distinction; only through our actions (choosing), can we disengage our intentions and see them as intentions, as something separate from the act. In a sense our choosing creates intentions. Or maybe it just allows us to see them.
Sartre now moves on to say the following.
To show that the coefficient of adversity of the thing and its character as an obstacle…is indispensable to the existence of a freedom is to use an argument that cuts two ways; for while it enables us to establish that freedom is not invalidated by the given, it indicates, on the other hand, something like an ontological conditioning of freedom. (BN 622?)As we have seen from above, the first part was largely successful. The second needs some explication. "An ontological conditioning of freedom" means something like the following (I think). Freedom is ontologically conditioned in the sense that its being is determined by the actual state of the world. As we discussed above, freedom uses a means-end relationship to determine how to "dispose" the world. Freedom is thus contingent on the world. However, Sartre mentions that this only "indicates" this possibility of freedom piggybacking on the world: "there seems to be here a kind of ontological priority of the in-itself over the for-itself" (622/23 BN). What this means is exactly what I just explained: the world seems to condition our freedom and not the other way around. "Therefore we must consider the previous remarks as simple attempts to clear the ground, and we must take up again from the beginning the question of facticity" (623 BN).
Sartre's goal so far has been to "clear the ground" and arrive at a preliminary conception of freedom that is protected from the determinist objection that freedom is invalidated by a given situation. In fact, as we have seen, the opposite is true: if there is no given situation, there can be no freedom. This conclusions flows from a distinction between dreaming and freedom, and presumes an actual world with real objects and states of affairs.
Part 3: Condemned to Freedom
Sartre uses an interesting argument that may or may not be worthwhile to go through, but we will anyway. We are free, of course, but our freedom is not its own foundation. It could not be it's own foundation because then freedom would have to "decide the existence of its being" (623 BN). We quickly run into a problem. Freedom cannot be its own foundation because if it were then it would have to choose itself. Freedom would be the result of a prior freedom that chooses to be free or not-free. This leads to an infinite regress. Freedom cannot be founded on a free choice because then there would need to be a prior freedom to choose to be free or not free in each instance--backwards to infinity. I don't really like this argument. But Sartre's conclusion is that we are "condemned to freedom…or thrown into freedom" (623 BN). This isn't the first and only argument that he uses to "condemn us to freedom" but it is the one he uses here, and this argument seems unconvincing to me, though I don't necessarily disagree with the conclusion. I feel critical of the "infinite regress" part: first of all, why would we assume that freedom would be it's own foundation in the first place? And second, why use an infinite regress argument to show that the concept of freedom cannot be its own foundation? Something smells fishy here. When talking about what it means to act like a real live human, infinite regress arguments designed to show how our concepts of what it means to be human are incoherent tend to be…well…unconvincing?
He concludes this argument like this, though. "…we can see that this abandonment [or condemnation] has no other origin than the very existence of freedom. If therefore, freedom is defined as the escape from the given, from fact, then there is a fact of escape from fact. This is the facticity of freedom" (623 BN).
Sartre here starts playing a weird little game. Perhaps sensing that the prior infinite regress argument doesn't seem that convincing, he switches tactics.
Assuming that freedom is not its own foundation will lead us to the same conclusions (the conclusion that we are originally free) (623 BN). "…if freedom decided the existence of its being…it would be necessary….that my absolute non-existence be possible" (623 BN). Assume I choose to clean my apartment. The end determine the causes. I put away my clothes strewn about and throw away the trash. Easy enough. However, if freedom is "its own foundation, then the end must in addition turn back on its existence and cause it to arise" (623 BN). Freedom, as an end (as a foundation), must itself turn around and cause itself to begin. So it can't be its own foundation. In my example, to choose to clean my apartment I must first choose to choose or not choose to clean my apartment. The includes the possibility of my not choosing to choose at all…which I suppose is impossible here? Let's move on and see what Sartre says.
Sartre says something weird here: "The for-itself would itself derive from nothingness in order to attain the end which it proposes to itself" (623 BN). This is a consequence of the result of freedom being its own foundation. I'm not quite sure what to make of it. The for-itself is what brings nothingness into the world through the sense of disengagement, as stated above (very broadly speaking--there's more to that). Freedom cannot be its own foundation because then it would mean we would possibly not exist in the sense that we are actors (always freely acting). Freedom flows from us and not from itself; if it flowed from itself then we would derive from nothingness in order to act. I have to keep in mind a means-end relationship here as constitutive of freedom. If freedom flowed from itself then I would merely be along for the ride (my choice would completely determine me--I would be a mere function, as he complains about), I would propose something but freedom would found itself. (What does this even mean?)
[Later note: I suppose freedom "founding itself" means exactly what it sounds like: freedom choosing to choose rather than not choose. My non-existence is then made possible because my freedom could choose for me not to choose, which would be an abolishment of Sartre's concept of the human. That's why the for-itself would derive itself from nothingness: it's own being would be a nothingness, a question mark, made possible only by a prior freedom. 12/4/09]
Well, he continues: "This existence made legitimate by means of its end would be existence by right but not in fact" (623 BN). So in a sense, we would demand that we have a right to exist that is somehow more than fact. I would have a right to exist in the sense that freedom determines both the ends and itself as legitimate. Because we are originally contingent beings--we didn't have to be here--we sometimes insist that we have a right to exist; if my ends determine me completely, then I would say I have a right to be whatever I am.
[Later note: This talk of rights means something like this: if a prior freedom determined that I should exist, that I should choose to choose, then my existence owes itself to that freedom. I have a "right" to exist in relation to that prior freedom that made my own freedom exist. As a result, my own freedom would conceptualize its ends in terms of "rights," which are themselves dependent on that prior freedom. 12/4/09]
"Freedom cannot determine its existence [as freedom] by the end which it posits" (624 BN). Freedom is indeed a choice but freedom does not create itself as a freedom (624 BN). We simply are free.
This argument attempts to show that freedom, if conceived as its own foundation, would lead us to conclude that freedom determines itself through its ends [which would be already set up by the prior freedom], while in fact freedom means precisely the opposite. Freedom is original, spontaneous, open: it's ends undefined. If freedom determined itself, legitimized itself, then we would have specific ends that determine who and what we are [Later note: we would not necessarily have concretely specific ends, but our existence would owe itself to a prior freedom (like the State) that does determine our own existence as a freedom. 12/11/09]. Sartre rails against those who hide from their original contingency by placing themselves in functional roles within the State (624 BN). Or any functional role whatsoever. Our existence is never justified by our ends. Choosing to be a mother does not justify one's existence: it merely hides the fact that there can be no justification whatsoever, that to be a mother you must choose to be a mother originally, without justification.
[Later note: If someone uses a functional role to define their life as a human being, then indeed we would be faced with the preceding situation. A prior freedom, choice, (role), has decided their freedom for them and as a result legitimized their own freedom to be a mother or a statesmen or whatever. They would be defined by a functional role. 12/11/09]
Right. Not sure. Really struggling with some of this. I think if I were Sartre I would smoke a cigarette right now. Or I would have been smoking the whole time.
Part 4: Freedom as a Lesser Being
As Sartre says on 624, one does something "with or to something." Freedom, therefore, is a "lack of being in relation to a given being; it is not the upsurge of a full being." To shovel a shovel, I must use it; it is not a "whole being" until I shovel. My choice to shovel is needed by the shovel: it is dependent on me. In fact anything I choose is dependent on me in that way--and therefore freedom is a lack. I conceive of this lack as a disengagement, a space, an opening that allows choices to appear. I stand back from my shovel, stuck in the mud, and choose whether to continue. Our disengagement with the shovel is what actually allows me to shovel in the first place. I need to be able to disengage myself from the world in order to choose in the first place.
Freedom is a lesser being which supposes being in order to elude it. Freedom is itself not able to choose to be not free or free. Freedom is the escape from an engagement in being; it is the nihilation of a being which it is (625 BN). Those are direct quotes. So me making a nothing out of my shovel is what freedom in relation to shoveling actually is. I get that. That's what I tried to just say.
Well, some of this stuff with Nihilation gets really tough, so I think I'm going to try to avoid it right now.
Part 5: Freedom and it's Relation to the Situation
"The given is the plenitude of being which freedom colors with insufficiency…by illuminating it with the light of an end which does not exist" (626 BN). Basically, Sartre is saying that the world, which is a plenitude of being--beings among beings, Nature, indifferent, full in-itself--withdraws from me in such a way that I am in the midst of this plenitude of being, and that my freedom, for emphasis, is a WITHDRAWAL from this plenitude such that a relationship to that plenitude is made possible. That is how choice is possible: by destabilizing the world as it actually is and by disrupting my engagement in it. My choice makes the world appear as "one"; my choice, in light of the "end which it…[chooses]…" makes the world appear in the "unity of a single nihilation" (626 BN). So, by withdrawing from the world in order to be a farmer, which is my end, my choice colors the whole world. I am a farmer: I farm the world.
"We shall use the term situation for the contingency of freedom in the plenum of being of the world inasmuch as this datum, which is there only in order not to constrain freedom, is revealed to this freedom only as already illuminated by the end which freedom chooses." My choice to be a farmer is this "datum," which is re-conceived as a cause. That is why I myself I am the cause of my choice of farming. This datum always seems like a cause because it is only illuminated in terms of its end--farming. "Situation and motivation are really one," Sartre states, and this is because I choose to farm, and the ends that stem from farming "discover the state of things which surrounds it as a cause for…reaction" (627 BN). Motivation and situation are one and the same thing because I freely decide the ends; thus, the actual value of the situation is determined by my free choice. We must meld this conclusion with the conclusion above, that of the resistance of the world. We really are engaged in a world. But my choice freely decides what to do in it.
We must, we must! stress that this free choice in a given situation, the free choice that gives value to a situation or an end, must of course respond to the resistance of the actual world. Different objects (farmlands) manifest themselves differently depending on the person (non-farmer vs. farmer). This is a reconciliation of subjectivity of the person and the objectivity of the world.
Sartre then starts concluding: "There is no obstacle [to freedom, to choice] in an absolute sense, but the obstacle reveals its coefficient of adversity across freely invented and freely acquired techniques" (628 BN). This coefficient of adversity, as a result, reveals to me to the world in relation to my ends (628 BN).
He gives a wonderful sentence (quoted below). This whole time he has been talking about how a rock climber vs. a non-rock climber would value a rock or a crag. Then he says:
"For the lawyer who has remained in the city and who is pleading a case, whose body is hidden under his lawyer's robe, the rock is neither hard nor easy to climb; it is dissolved in the totality 'world' without in any way emerging from it" (628 BN).
He even reduces weak vs. strong bodies in relation to the end of mountain climbing--they would, in light of all this, value the rock differently. The coefficient of adversity would be different depending on the freedom, on the person, on the ends desired.
Part 6: CONCLUSION AND REACTION
"Thus we begin to catch a glimpse of the paradox of freedom: there is freedom only in a situation, and there is a situation only through freedom. Human-reality everywhere encounters resistance and obstacles which it has not created, but these resistances and obstacles have meaning only in and through the free choice which human-reality is" (629 BN). The ways in which the fact of freedom manifests itself are various: Sartre quotes a few: place, body, past, position insofar as it relates to others, and "finally my fundamental relation to the Other" (629 BN).
Situations are complex, structured states of affairs. He wants to continue on with his book, examining all these in detail. I think would rather stop here. This was tiring reading.
Perhaps the biggest thing I have done in this reading is realize how nicely and smartly Simone de Beauvoir reduces without simplifying all this in The Ethics of Ambiguity, which is an attempt to connect this concept of freedom to ethical responsibility. (She specifically equates the aforementioned movement of disengagement, which is freedom, to the movement of morality, which has the exact same structure of disengagement.) Also, Heidegger, when speaking of this same type of disengagement in "The Essence of Truth", uses language as his means towards attaining disengagement and the "presencing" of the world. (Sartre explicitly reduces this to action.)
For Heidegger (to switch authors), language separates but keeps us in contact at the same time. That's why questioning is so important for him: it is an act which both disengages us from what is asked about while also presenting the subject asked about to us. Questioning is a function of language, but is also an act. And it seems Sartre is saying something very similar in his little quote above about intention and action. For Sartre, our actual acts allow us to disengage our intentions from mere behavior. Driving a car allows us to disengage from our mere act of driving a car home to our intention of driving a friend home: this is where the moment of human meaning happens.
Also interesting: the resistance of the world seems to have very much to do with that Heidegger calls "letting be". To let something be is to let it something be as it presents itself in the way that it presents itself. (This is extremely general ontology.) Recognizing [what is the role of "recognition" here? This seems absolutely crucial!!!] the resistance of the world as involved in freedom is in a way similar to Heidegger's idea of "letting be": our freedom piggybacks on the resistance of the world, and this is due to our being involved in the world in a free way. Our freedom, to speak Sartre through Heidegger, must "let things resist" in order that the world may truly manifest itself to us as freely determinable. The world must be let to resist, and this letting-resist is what Heidegger is talking about (really?) . Now, Sartre does indeed have different concerns. He seems more concerned with the ways in which our freedom actually appropriates or changes, effects or organizes the world (it's precise structure)--but wait! Heidegger??? ---
Just look at "The Question Concerning Technology" by Heidegger: questioning builds a way, a free way in exactly the way described above. It separates us from technology by questioning it so that we may actually come to see what technology actually is (questioning lets it "resist"). Doing so allows us to reorganize/reorder/re-conceptualize our relation to the resistance of the world (which, in Heidegger's essay, is the modern implementation of technology [this modern implementation has roots in how we disclose the world through our freedom…which points backwards towards a ancient heritage]). Interesting. (Of course, it's more complicated.) And I'm probably wrong.
About everything?
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