The paper studies the divergent theories of choice spawned within the larger question of freedom in J.P. Sartre’s Being and Nothingness as well as the Critique de la raison dialectique and P. Ricoeur's Freedom and Nature: The Voluntary and the Involuntary.All the key features of Sartre’s and Ricoeur’s theories of choice are reviewed while accounting for their similarities and differences. It is argued that Sartre’s theory is best understood if distinctions are made between ontological freedom, freedom of choice, and freedom (...) of execution. In the light of Ricoeur's position, Sartre's description of choice is shown to be phenomenologically inaccurate while his theory of motivation emerges as onesided in that it submerges all the receptive or involuntary aspects of choice in the act of resolution. The sources of Sartre's voluntaristic one-sidedness are traced to his premature leap into ontology, to his existential naivete in seeking direct description of man’s prereflexive experience, and to his rejection of the results of empirical investigations of man.The conclusion argues for the superiority of Ricoeur’s position over both the determinists' interpretations of choice and Sartre's voluntaristic existential interpretation. (shrink)

I discuss how criticism of social sciences taken up in Sartre's ‘Critique of Dialectical Reason’ is conditioned by Sartre’s own assumptions concerning nature, the mind-matter relationship, human beings’ bodily dimension. Although he looked at Husserl’s ‘Crisis of the European Sciences’ as a model for his own criticism of the social sciences, he didn't consider the criticism of the concept of nature undertaken by Husserl himself. Such criticism eventually leads to overcome Cartesian dualism. Sartre, on the contrary, superposes phenomenological ways of (...) thinking to an unavowed Cartesian ontology which he never challenged. The consequence is that he looks at the subject and the object, or mind and matter, as radically opposite. Sartre's own vindication of methodological dualism between natural and social sciences – closely following Lukacs – is flawed by heavily relying on an uncritically presupposed ontological dualism. (shrink)

InBeing and Nothingness, Jean-Paul Sartre affirms a circle of relations between oneself and another. This circle moves between the relations of love and desire and results from the fact that both love and desire are attempts to capture the other who always remains out of reach. Sartre denies that there can be a dialectic of such relations with others: never can there be a motivated movement beyond the frustrations and failures of each of these attempts to relate to the other. (...) The only way out of this circle is, therefore, according to Sartre, a radical conversion.Like the master in Hegel'sPhenomenology of Mind, each individual caught in this circle wants what cannot be attained: the assimilation or the negation of the freedom of the other. He is thus, like Hegel's master, impervious to any reasons that could count against what he is seeking; his failures cannot in any way motivate him to want what can be. From the point of view of such desires, any negative evaluation of these desires must seem arbitrary. Therefore, to the extent that Sartre's earlier writings indicate no other possibilities of human existence except those premised on such impossible demands, Sartre's negative evaluations concerning the bad faith of these individuals must seem arbitrary.My conclusion is not, however, simply negative since I argue that inSaint Genet Sartre presents Genet's life as a dialectical movement beyond failure to triumph. This is not a dialectic of bad faith. Rather it is a dialectic based on a very different desire from the desire for what cannot be. If Sartre thus develops another level, another fundamental desire, from which the level of bad faith can be judged to be wrong, then at least from this level the judgment is not a merely arbitrary one. (shrink)

It is argued that in beginning ``being and nothingness'' with the absolute ontological distinction between the for-itself (pure nothingness) and the in-itself (pure being), sartre makes it impossible to understand how the phenomenological account of experience which comes later in the work could be correct. attention is paid almost entirely to the critique of sartre implicit in the chapter of merleau-ponty's ``phenomenology of perception'' titled 'the cogito'. merleau-ponty's divergence from sartre is seen to center around his critique of sartre on (...) the nature of the in-itself, the world, and the pre-reflective 'cogito'. (shrink)

As debate continues1 we hope to shed some light on the development of Sartre's thought by returning to his philosophical beginnings, to his phenomenology, confident that it is here, in its origins, that we will find what has always been the very center of his thought.

How, if at all, could a person intentionally persuade himself into believing something he knew to be false? Acting upon his intention would apparently require that he knowingly use his grasp of some truth in the very act of concealing that truth and in getting himself to believe the opposite falsehood. Sartre's elaboration of this problem as well as his examples of self-deception are widely acclaimed, yet too often the remainder of his account has been dismissed as hopelessly riddled with (...) paradox and obscure jargon. I first provide an exegesis of the account that displays its coherence and rich suggestiveness. Next I argue that the account falls short of fully resolving the problems to which it is addressed, but that nevertheless a satisfactory resolution of the problems does emerge from a close examination of Sartre's examples. (shrink)

Since the publication of Being and Nothingness in 1943, readers of this work of Jean-Paul Sartre have debated whether, within the description of the human being given there by Sartre, positive human relationships based on the mutual respect and promotion of freedom are possible. There are those who insist that Sartre's contention that conflict is the essence of human relationships applies to all possible relationships in which the Sartrean man could engage; there are others who insist that, through a "radical (...) conversion" hinted at by Sartre, the Sartrean man can extend beyond relationships based solely on conflict and engage in ones based on respect for human freedom, Sartre himself promised to throw light on this problem in a later work on ethics, but such a work was never published, and the controversy has continued. Most often ignored in this context is the philosophical work of Sartre's long-time colleague and close friend, Simone de Beauvoir. This neglect is unfortunate because de Beauvoir set out to do what Sartre left unfinished, namely, the task of showing that positive human relationships are possible within the Sartrean philosophy of man, And she succeeded in providing the best argument for human beings respecting and promoting one anther's freedom within that context, This solution to the Sartrean problem can he seen through an examination of her works Pyrrhus and Cineas, The Ethics of Ambiguity, and The Second Sex. This dissertation begins with an exposition cf the r,philosophy of man given by Sartre, and accepted and reinforced by de Beauvoir, in order to provide the context for an examination of human relationships. Those relationships which flew easily from Sartre's description, negative relationships, are explored first, using the examples of love, hatred, and vengeance, Then the possibility of positive human relationships in this context is shown beginning with the early work of Sartre but more clearly explained through the work of de Beavoir. From the possibility of positive human relationships we move to justifications for them, the best being that offered, by de Beauvoir in Pyrrhus and Cineas. Finally, some critical evaluation is offered for both de Beauvoir's justification itself and for the Sartrean premises on which it is based. I conclude that de Beauvoir's argument for positive human relationships, although it is the best that has been offered within the Sartrean context, fails to justify freedom for all human beings, as any argument within that context must. (shrink)

The vicissitudes of the concept of original choice illustrate the change, and yet the continuity, of Sartre's existentialist thought as he gradually changed the focus of his attentions from psychological to sociological aspects of "the human condition." The relationship of the doctrine to Sartre's own "existential psychoanalysis" is described. The point at which Sartre explicitly repudiated the earlier doctrine of original choice and the general characteristics of his revised doctrine are explicated. In general, Sartre's current position is that the goal- (...) directed structure of human endeavor is a freely-created variation upon the conditioning imposed by society, aiming at liberation from such external determinism. Sartre continues to reject the notion of a causal determinism, psychological or social, which makes the person a product—a "thing"—and which reduces human freedom to the status of illusion. (shrink)