Tuesday, October 7, 2008
Sartre and Responsibility
Existentialist thinker Jean Paul Sartre said that basically, we are responsible for everything except for the fact that we are responsible for everything. In other words, we do choose--"we alone confer meaning on an alarm clock in the morning, we alone decide what is moral or otherwise; we alone decide on our own future or its significance". What do you think?
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18 comments:
i think i agree with sartre. if you really get down to it, most everything is truly our decision. there are of course social norms that one is expected to follow and we even sometimes take them for granted, but in the end it's our choice. everything from waking up in the morning to sex before marriage.
I agree with this statement. we are responsible and there is nothing we can do about it. YOu can not just say you are not responsible for something because you put the power in anothers hands. We choose to go along with them and we choose to allow the actions to happen. Thus we are responsible for the actions occuring.
I think that this statement holds a lot of water. I find the trend of refusing to take personal responsibility for things alarming (ex. "I'm not addicted to alcohol, it's a disease")
The choices you make have reprecussions, some bearable, some preferred, and others unpleasent.
With the alarm clock example...the alarm clock itself doesn't scream at us in the morning because it has the divine power to wake us up and decide when we should do so. We set the time on the clock, deciding when we felt we could wake up with enough time to get ready.
As for our future...I think we definately influence its significance to a point. If we believe that we have the power to make a huge impact on people, the world, whatever, then we will continue to do so and work hard at whatever career or social path our life takes. However, if you're the kind of person who feels that you'll never really amount to anything then I think you've hindered your future possibilities already.
Personally, I believe God has a plan for me and my desires for the future will adhere to those plans. But, if your views are more secular then I think you can still probably agree that putting too much merit in how much power you have over your own future is fruitless (to a point) because you never know what life is going to throw at you.
I agree with this statement. We make the choices and get the outcome from the choices we make.
I believe that there are many things that we cannot control in life, and it is the choices we make when dealing with these events that shape our lives, and the people we want to be, the people we become, the people we are.
Thinking about the whole "suck it up" philosophy. This statement should be limited. We are irrevocably responsible for our actions. However situations and events that are built in to our body are problems that we can not affect. Should the proper decision become harder to make because of that inborn problem then, while it is true that we are still responsible for the actions taken, we take them not of corruptness but weakness . As Lao Tzu said, "To overcome oneself is greatness."
Those who succumb to their own bodies, people such as addicts, but not out of corruption neccesarily but weakness.
i believe this statement is held too firmly on 1 prospect, or one interpretation of it. Sure, we have the freedom to make our own choices.... but not all the time.
Certain circumstances may give us a limited number of choices, or no choices at all, leaving us with one option... an option we may not all like, nor would we take that option if we had an actual choice.
To take this statement at face value and be all "Yup, we always make our own choices, it's always our own fault" is not looking at the entire picture, or being completely ignorant.
(This was not directed at anyone's comment, please do not take offense)
Hmm, interesting conversation. I've been rereading the famous excerpt from Sartre's Nausea about the tree -- it's really weird. The narrator gets all freaked out about the fact that the tree is nothing, it melts and twists and is "in the way". Very surreal. I think his point is that all meanings and definitions for reality are ascribed to objects by the individual. It's an interesting philosophical exercise and as I was explaining to my lit class, I like the existentialist attitude because I think it keeps us humble and also keeps us on our toes. REality is not a given; it's constantly created by our own decisions. But then there's Grendel -- there's always Grendel! He goes from "I alone exist. All the rest, I saw, is merely what pushes me, or what I push against, blindly...I create the whole universe, blink by blink" to his encounter with Beowulf: "'Feel the wall: is it not hard?' He [Beowulf} smashes me [GRendel] against it, breaks open my forehead." So again -- a useful philosophical exercise but it's hard to deny there's an objective reality made of walls and things that cause accidents: "Poor Grendel's had an accident...So may you all." (and that's Grendel speaking -- not me --I hope you all drive safely, live long and prosper)!
Sooo--the way I understand Grendel, the book, is that it represents many different Western philosophies. Would Grendel claiming that he creates the universe blink by blink be solipsism?
Firts of all, what is solipsism?
Second, I do believe that we always have choices. Circumstances may prompt our minds to limit us, but in reality I don't think that there is ever one option. The way that our minds work is a product of the society we were raised in. This causes our minds to adhere toa certain basic thought process with many variations. But, if we are put into a situation where only one option would make sense in our society, we may feel like we have no choice. However, we actually have more that we just don't see. I'm one of those people that believes that we all posess the answers to our problems, we just have to find them. It's like they're lost in a messy closet in our minds. But they are there. This is just my personal philosophy, but I truly believe that ever action we take, every thought we have,. every word we say is ultimately our own choice.
i agree with sartre because i dont believe in the whole God plans for me kinda stuff (I just said kinda stuff? nice). People make mistakes and those mistakes are a result of their own individual choices. What Sartre failed to explain is that HOPEFULLY these mistakers of people learn from their mistakes and grow as a person. I just don't see how "God" has time to predestine all of us, nor do I think he does.
So... 'it's not our fault that everything's our fault.'
well, i agree. the way your life turns out depends on how you live it. if you think there is a god, you're going to (probably) act differently than if you do not think there is a god. you'll get rewarded/punished for what you do, but you never decided that you will get rewarded/punished. society did, the government did, or god did. just depends how you look at it.
But yes, all that paragraph says that is important is "i agree".
I like constant questions messy closet analogy -- I can relate. And yes, I'd never really thought of applying the term solipsism is Grendel but it certainly seems to apply to that quote. OK -- so solipsism is the belief that only the self is knowable and/or that the self is the only reality. Kind of overlaps with the Sartre quotation -- if we alone decide these things, I think you could argue that existentialism is solipsistic (I think that's a word), but existentialism also acknowledges the reality of others. I think in common usage though, people almost use it to mean self-centered and egotistical. Any thoughts on the differences?
I thought existentialism very much acknowledged the existence of others, especiallly when you talk about the whole I-thou relationship. The thing is, Christian existentialists see hope in others where atheistic existentialists like Sartre see nothingness. Think "No Exit". Hell is other people, baby.
Yes and no.
Yes, I choose to get up in the morning. I choose to go to school. I choose to go to college. I choose to be a writer. And so on and so forth. If I choose to go out and get drunk, I chose to go out and get drunk. I do firmly agree with the idea of personal responsibility.
But there are limitations. It's not just what you're choosing, but how it interacts with everyone else choosing things as well. Or maybe, rather than social, it's biological. I choose to be 5'7". That's not going to happen, ever. And honestly, I believe there are things you can't choose. Take murder. Everyone can decide whether or not it's wrong based on the situation or the psychological state of the person - still doesn't make the act right. The reasons can be right. Or maybe the person had no control over it. It's still wrong. If I press a button that unawares to me drops a nuke on London, dropping the nuke is still wrong, even if I'M not necessarily in the wrong.
Though personally, I believe in fate. Yeah, I choose to do what I do, but I would always choose to do it - at least with big things.
Oohhh -- I think my last post suffers from an unclear pronoun reference -- by "it" in my last sentence, I meant solipsism, not existentialism. Sorry -- that's what happens when you don't proofread.
esbee brings up one of my pet peeves these days. I'll use a politically unpopular example and hopefully won't upset anyone too much. Esbee says the ACT is still wrong even when the intention is not. That's why I'm against capital punishment -- it may be practical but it's still wrong. That's also why I won't put a "Support our troops" sticker on my car. I believe the war in Iraq is wrong so I don't support our troops. I don't wish bad things to happen to them but I don't support them in their current role. I think many people confuse extenuating circumstances with moral right. We're protecting our country so bombing people is OK (even if it includes bombing innocent people). Sometimes we may choose to bomb with the knowledge that we'll kill innocent people and I'm not a pacifist and wouldn't say that's ALWAYS a morally wrong choice but I agree with Esbee that the result is always a moral bad.
Esbee pretty much hits the nail on the head for me (why do you people always take the best words first?). There are still things that are beyond our control in life, and then there are things that we do control in life, and whether or not we choose to do them, we take the consequences, good or bad.
I think our personal level of responsibility kind of varies from situation to situation. However, the general outcome is, if we did it, we're responsible for it in the big picture, regardless of our will at the time.
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