|
Re: Re: Re: philosophy
| quote: | Originally posted by Epicurus
Several comments are in order here:
I would appreciate if, when you quote from text, you don't quote out of context: |
That first part is incidental. I'm willing to concede to you that it may have used in a different context to the one we're discussing here, but it was the second part that I was interested in. I'm not sure that there's anything ambiguous or context specific about the sentence "[Existentialism] declares, rather, that even if God existed that would make no difference from its point of view". As I said, given this sentence alone (to say nothing of the rest of the body of Sartre's work that I am familiar with) I would disagree with your claim that "it does indeed matter whether God exists or not to an existentialist atheist".
| quote: | | Clearly then, the non-existence of God does matter in his philosophy, in the sense that Man does not have recourse to God in order to justify choices as "good", "rational", or what have you, but has only himself to "fall back on". |
But man does not have this option anyway, regardless of whether God exists or not. To invoke God as an absolute subject, as an absolute instance of "the Other" (rendering the self, therefore, an object of judgement) is to engage in "bad faith". If we are, as Sartre says, an instance of "Being for-itself", then we can not ever inherently be "good" or "rational", because "Being for-itself" is man's inexorable condition of constantly "becoming", without ever actually "being". Therefore, to invoke God as a "reason" for one's "goodness" or "rationality" is to misunderstand the nature of human consciousness by rendering it as "Being for-itself" (that is, a fixed object) rather than "Being for-itself" (that is, a transcendental subject). Given this, in the context of Sartre's philosophy, invoking God as a means of escaping one's anguish at being confronted with absolute "freedom" is an instance of "bad faith" in the sense that it is a consciously futile attempt to escape the inescapable. If this freedom - which is central to Sartre's theory of consciousness - actually is inescapable, then invoking God will not change in the slightest the reality of our existence.
(The only way that the introduction of God would change Sartre's philosophy, is if such an introduction were to eliminate the possibility of free-will. Given that I'm not familiar with any religion which states that God does not permit the possibility of free-choice in his subjects, I'm not sure that this is an issue.)
| quote: | | This is of critical importance in his attempt to articulate a system of ethics. |
Again, the existence of God would make no difference in the context of Sartre's ethics. Man is still condemned to choose for himself (and - by extension - for all men) whether we invoke the existence of a God or not.
| quote: | Now, with regards to the last paragraph that you quoted, your explanation is accurate but severely incomplete, which leads me to disagree with your conclusion:
To be fair, if one reached that conclusion based solely on his/her reading of "Existentialism is a Humanism", then one cannot be fully blamed for that considering the fact that within philosophical circles, that text is considered ambiguous at best, and furthermore too condensed to do justice to Sartre's positions on many things (including God, his ethical system etc). |
I'm not sure if this was an implication that I'm not familiar with Sartre outside of that essay I quoted, but I can assure you that I am familiar with Sartre's philosophy and that is precisely why I feel that - given what I have read both by and about Sartre - I can state authoritatively, that while Sartre was sometimes "concerned" with the issue of God (again, only to the extent that he sometimes contrasted his own ideas with the religious perspective) it is ultimately inconsequential, in the context of determining the veracity or applicative scope of his ideas. As Sartre himself put it with regards to atheistic existentialism, "even if God existed that would make no difference from its point of view".
Also, when I say that Sartre often contrasted his theory against the religious perspective, I do so with the understanding that, as an atheist, Sartre was often necessarily going to have to define his ideas in the context of God's absense. So long as there was a dominant train of though that suggested God existed and that Sartre's ideas were deemed to be antithetical to that train of thought, then Sartre was going to have to address it.
To quote from Being and Nothingness (Conclusion, p.792):
| quote: | | Everything happens as if the world, man, and man-in-the-world succeeded in realizing only a missing God. Everything happens therefore as if the in-itself and the for-itself were presented in a state of disintegration in relation to an ideal synthesis. Not that the integration has ever taken place but on the contrary precisely because it is always indicated and always impossible. |
So, as Sartre says, the "ideal synthesis" (i.e. that of God) is always indicated (either by the human apprehension of the state of the world, or merely by others - Sartre isn't clear here, but it amounts to the same thing) and, as such, Sartre's theory may therefore look like an attempt to "disintegrate" this synthetic union of the "for-itself and the in-itself" (Sartre's conception of the nature of God) and as such, Sartre has to justify on what grounds he can "disintegrate" this union within his philosophy. Sartre's point, however, is that he didn't "disintigrate" any synthesis at all, as there was never a synthesis there to begin with. Therefore, it's not as though he is defining his stance on opposition to the theory of God (in which case the existence of God would matter) but rather he defines his stance independently from and in the complete absense of any "possible" theory of God.
Throughout the entirity of Being and Nothingness, there are plenty of little asides about God like this, but they are never central to his argument, nor are they used as examples of antitheses that could make or break his philosophy depending on their veracity. If Sartre defines himself as an "atheist", then some aspect of his philosophy is necessarily going to be defined in opposition to "theism" (as that is, after all, what atheism is) but there is no aspect of his philosophy that is dependent on the assumption of the non-existence of God, hence my continuing assertion that - to Sartre - the existence of God really doesn't "matter" to his philosophy.
| quote: | | At any rate, you are right to state that within Sartrian philosophy, whether God exists or not, Man would still have to choose his moral system (either to accept a currently existing one, whether it be secular or theistic, or create a new one), but wrong in concluding that therefore, God's existence "does not matter" within Sartrian philosophy. I wish I had more time to get into this in detail, but I don't, so I'll simply quote Frederick Copleston's explanation of my position, since I happen to fully agree with his interpretation of God's role in Sartrian philosophy and its connection to his ethical system, based on all my readings and understanding of Sartre (this is taken from "A History of Philosophy, Volume IX, page 365-366") |
So Sartre's essay about his own philosophy is "too condensed" and too geared towards the "layman" to avoid possible "misinterpretations" of his said philosophy, but two pages from a book entitled "The History of Philosophy" is complete enough to stand as an authoritative exposition of Sartre's ideas? Vous sérieux, mon ami? 
From the bolded part:
| quote: | | At the same time, if there is no God, there can obviously be no fore-ordained divine plan. There can be no common ideal of human nature which man has been created to realize through his actions. He is thrown back entirely on himself, and he cannot justify his choice of an ideal by appealing to a divine plan for the human race. In this sense the existence or non-existence of God does make a difference. It is true that if a man accepts the ethical norms which he believes to have been promulgated by God, this implies that he has freely projected his ideal as that of a God-fearing man. The point is however that if in fact there is no God who has created man for a purpose, to attain a determinate end or goal, there is no given moral order to which he can appeal to justify his choice. |
Let us, then, presume that there is a God who has a "fore odained divine plan", a "common ideal of human nature" and who promulgates "ethical norms". Presuming that this God does not choose to impinge on human free-will (and that, therefore, Sartre's conception of humanity as a "Being for-itself" remains valid) how does this in any way change man's cirumstances as a being-in-the-world that is both condemned and responsible to choose "for itself"? Of course, if God were to be revealed, along with these said expectations he has for humanity, some (probably most) will decide to "appeal" to him as a reason for deceiving themselves into believing that they have anything but absolute free-choice. But how is that any different, in the context of Sartrian existentialism, from appealing to any other authority (be it religion, another human being, a letter box, or anything else) as justification for the abdication of his responsibility? How does the positing of an "absolute other" in any way change the nature of man as a "being for-itself"?
Sartre even addresses this in Being and Nothingness (Part Three, Chapter One IV, p. 385):
| quote: | | [S]hame before God [...] is the recognition of my being-an-object before a subject which can never become an object. By the same stroke I realize my object-state in the absolute and hypostasize it. The position of God is accompanied by a reification of my object-ness. Or better yet, I posit my being-an-object-for-God as more real than my For-itself; I exist alienated and I cause myself to learn from the outside what I must be. |
In other words, if we accept the existence of God and then "hypostasize" our existence as "Being in-itself" rather than "For itself", then we are indulging in mauvais fois by defining ourselves as a type of object, in deference to our relation to some "outside" instance of "the Other". Therefore, even if God does exist, defining ourselves in relation to him would, for Sartre, still be an inauthentic mode of existence, meaning - yet again - that nothing is changed whether or not God actually exists. In all cases, man is still free and man is not a fixed object.
| quote: | | Note that, again, this is an explanation of the Sartrian position, not a attack or a defense of it. If you agree with it (which I do), then his belief that God does not exist does indeed play a role in his philosophy, specifically as it pertains to his ethical system. Hope this helps in clarifying my position. |
Yes, most enlightening.
___________________
http://eschatonnow.blogspot.com/
|
