This post is a little late, but I’ve been kicking around these ideas for a while. When reading Sartre, I really identified with the existentialist sense of radical freedom and radical responsibility. But when we read Foucault and I really started thinking about what this meant, I came up against some barriers. Like Nietzsche, who was doing a genealogy of morals, Foucault is doing a genealogy of truth. To me, the idea of doing such a genealogy of truth cannot make sense. I don’t understand how what is truth can change. For example, it could be legal to own slaves yesterday and illegal today, and as long as I free my slaves today, I can’t be held legally responsible for having owned them today. But just because I am not held legally responsible doesn’t mean that my being a slave owner yesterday was still wrong. Human perception of truth may have changed but Truth as such hasn’t. It has never actually been ok to own slaves; we have just decided as a society that it was ok. Social norms don’t determine what is true; they can only determine what people get punished for. This gets back to Aquinas’ argument against positive law as absolute.
But while Aquinas’ has an out (natural law is dictated by God), I don't think I can give myself that luxury. God hasn’t told me any natural laws and I am not ready to take anyone else’s word for it. So in a way I agree with Sartre in that we are responsible for figuring out our own choices. But I don’t see how I could possibly make that choice. Sartre says that a system that promotes freedom for others is a correct one, but it seems like there are still many of those systems to choose from. Which one is true? To get back to Sartre’s example, his student (who is torn between staying home with his mother and going to war to revenge his brother’s death) still needs an answer even though Sartre is unwilling to give him one. Can both options be equally correct? I don’t understand how this could possibly be true. How can the student going to war and the student not going to war both be true? Doesn’t this go against the law of non-contradiction? If I am right and both options cannot both be right, one must be better than the other. If this is true, how is the student supposed to choose? How is anyone supposed to choose? How do I justify my actions over any of the others I could have taken?
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In Sartre's example I do not think that the question is whether or not either of these options are true. What Sartre presents is simply two different choices. Although these two options are oposite each other they can be equal. Meaning that both can have there moral justifications. One does not need to be wrong in order to for the other to be right. I think if we look at it with an extremely basic example this becomes clearer. Like when its time for lunch I can chose to eat the shit they serve us on campus or I can prepare my own meal. So to opposite choices, eating on campus or not eating on campus. Neither of these choices is right or wrong. Sartre would say that it is the individuals decision and either way it is right. So i realize this is a rather stupid example but its the best I could think of. Point is having several options of what is right does not go against the law of non contradictions
ReplyDeleteI agree with Claire. No choice can really be considered better because both have very different consequences. Individuals have to make a choice on which one they believe is the true answer. Both can be right but one has to be chosen. Generally people make decisions based on their own interests so I would say to pick the one that is best for you. I could be completely misinterpreting the texts but the idea is that we are radically free to make our own choices and therefore, we cannot have anyone deciding it for us (not Sartre and not even natural law). Sadly, we cannot do everything (or be in to places at once in the case of the student)
ReplyDeleteI understand your food example Claire, but I would argue that there is a right and wrong decision when it comes to more important choices. Yes maybe ultimately it doesn't matter whether or not you eat on campus, but what about when it comes down to whether or not I kill someone? Or whether or not I should try and stop someone from killing someone? In that situation it seems perhaps multiple answers, but one of them at least has to be 'the best' of not the 'right' one.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you Elise that Sartre is telling us that we have to decide for ourselves, and also that ultimately we do have to make that decision. I just don't know how we are ever supposed to make it. How we justify our choice? Sartre tells us that our choices can't be justified by some external set of laws or principles.
In reference to the statement about how truth can change, I believe it is incorrect to say that everyone has always had the same standard of truth. How are we to say what we now believe is truth is the actual truth? If there was a society that believed slavery wasn't wrong, a society would believed African slaves were property and not humans, than how do we know our truth is correct? It seems we only discover "truth" when a previous truth is disproved and this becomes the new truth. If you say that God hasn't given us natural laws or truths to live by, then how do you define Truth?
ReplyDeleteI don't know Jessie, I guess that is my general question. I agree with you that society's idea of truth is not necessarily the correct truth. But how do you know what is?
ReplyDeleteSadly, I do not think there is an answer. As a rule, people tend to make decisions based on laws or social norms. I think that is the best we can do.
ReplyDeleteLet me clarify something: Even though this post may just sound like me wanting to 'stick my head in the sand' and reject what Sartre is saying, it is not. I accept what Sartre is saying, I am just trying to understand where I go from there. Sartre (for obvious reasons) doesn't give a road map. In fact he can't. But for any of us to try and get somewhere, we need some kind of guidelines, whether they come from ourselves or from somewhere else. I accept Sartre's (and I suppose Nietzsche's) argument that they cannot come from somewhere else, so they must come from the self. I guess I'm just having trouble figuring those out.
ReplyDeleteLike you said Sartre cannot tell you what you should do nor can anyone else but he does give guidelines. There are certain things that everyone can agree upon as wrong such as murder. For Sartre this is based on what is essentially the same thing as the categorical imperative. However I think your question is what to do when the right thing is not so evident or when there maybe many morally sound options. This is where Sartre can't give any you any guidelines since it is your decision. So long as what you decide is moral there is no such thing as a wrong decision since the value in what you decide is decided upon by you. Meaning you decide how to value each option. Sorry I realize I am being really wordy. Anyway, this does not really make any decision any easier but its the best i could do :)
ReplyDeleteI'm slightly confused about this as well. I understand that we have a radical freedom of choice that comes from within. I understand that in the example of whether or not to go to war that both options are true in that they both would result in a specific, morally sound outcome. I also understand that if asked for advice, Sartre would not give his opinion. He would tell you to decide for yourself. This is the part I'm having trouble with. I get that we should figure things out for ourselves, but I think we need some sort of guidelines, like Ben said.
ReplyDeleteI think this kind of got confusing because the whole point of existentialism is that no one is telling you how to live your life and in a way everyone is an existentialist because in the end we end up making the decisions.. we can later say that "oh I did that because my parents/God/my school or whatever told me to." There's a difference between having guidelines for what is right and what is wrong and having guidelines for your actions.
ReplyDeleteThe key phrase I remember from learning about existentialism in high school is "because life is meaningless it is vitally important how you choose to live it." So basically in the situation Ben stated above about the soldier torn between going to war and staying home whichever decision he made would be defining his life in a way. If the most important value to him was serving his country then he should probably go to war, but if he held his family life higher then he would most likely stay home.. the point is it's up to the individual to determine it and each person can have their own opinion about this, and other situations, but in the end it's only the individual's actions that matter.
I think when looking at what system of truth one should choose, there cannot be just one correct answer. It differs from person to person, depending on their values and belief systems. I do not think it is so much about justifying your actions to others as it is justifying your actions with yourself. As long as you are coming to understand the idea of truth for yourself, I think this can be reconciled.
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