When1: 1936
When2: 1969
Who: Jean-Paul Sartre [Sartre, Jean-Paul]
What: philosopher
Where: Paris, France
works\ Transcendence of the Ego [1936]; Psychology of Imagination [1936]; Nausea [1938: novel]; Sketch for a Theory of Emotions [1939]; War Diaries [1939 to 1940]; Flies [1943: play]; Being and Nothingness [1943]; No Exit [1944: play]; On Genocide [1944]; Roads to Freedom [1945 to 1949]; Existentialism and Humanism [1945]; Age of Reason [1945: novel trilogy]; Respectful Prostitute [1952: play]; Search for a Method [1957]; Critique of Dialectical Reason [1960]
Detail: He lived 1905 to 1980 and was existentialist.
Epistemology
Things {the absurd} can appear to be subject to reason, but in fact people cannot reason about them. The meaning of existence is such a subject. Reason alone also cannot guide one's choice of fundamental project.
Repression is not possible, because conscious must be aware of what to repress at each instant.
Self-knowledge is impossible, because people are not objects but agents. People can create belief, even if they know it is not true.
Ethics
The main emotion is anguish over life and existence. Moral choices are about how to resolve this anguish.
Neither god nor nature provides moral authority {abandonment}. Moral authority comes only from people's choices.
There is no fate. People shape destiny and are responsible for choices.
One must choose to act. This is the human condition {la condition humaine}. Only people's actions have meaning. Choosing makes one free and creates one existence. Morality lies in making decision to act. Choosing to make no decision is self-deception or bad faith {mauvaise foi}.
Self-essence reveals itself by asserting existence. Existence precedes essence.
People often treat other people as objects, rather than subjects.
People have one or more overall purposes {fundamental project}, which they freely chose.
The imagination is free.
Mind
Understanding consciousness involves three existence or being categories. 1. Consciousness is conscious of objects other than itself {the in-itself}. In-itself exists only in consciousness but is not part of consciousness. It is an object of intention. It is non-physical and does not follow causal laws. In-itself is passive. 2. Consciousness can be conscious of itself as a different thing than in-itself {the for-itself}. The for-itself is separate from the in-itself and is not intentional. This self-consciousness {prereflective self-consciousness} is consciousness that there are intentions and the in-itself. For-itself is active. 3. People's bodies, characters, actions, and history exhibit a consciousness form that other people or same person can perceive as physical-world object {the for-others}. For-others relates its conscious body to other conscious bodies and relates its consciousness to its body. For-other and other for-other relations are perceptive, subjective, and affective and do not involve thought, knowledge, or cognition.
No consciousness type is personal or related to ego.
Mind has something inside {in-itself}, something for both {for-itself}, and something outside {for-others}. Because it is not in-itself, self-consciousness is nothingness, intention without object. As nothingness, self-consciousness causes questioning, imagining, being skeptical, denying, feeling detachment or delusion, and feeling need or lack. Therefore, self-consciousness has freedom. People are conscious of nothingness and freedom but often fear or do not accept them. Such people desire consciousness to be in-itself, rather than for-itself, and do not accept their real being. For-others often compete. Such relations oppose free action and so typically cause or involve conflict. Love, for example, can be a wish to possess another's freedom. Human relationships typically involve control of others and restrictions on freedom, so most human relationships eventually end. Human interactions involve so many factors that people cannot know them, and knowing them makes interactions impossible [Sartre, 1943].
Politics
Preferences in ethics determine political values.
At all human-life phases, from conception to death, something has power over individual {biopolitics}. Decisions taken for other people cannot have rational bases and are always questionable.
Society builds institutions that restrict freedom and increase alienation.
In coming into existence, driven by self or self-states, people's minds can go through transformations in which mental states appear abnormal. However, if transformations continue to completion, result can be clear and balanced mental state. Social contexts can help mentally ill people live independently.
Social Sciences>Philosophy>History>Mind
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Date Modified: 2022.0224