Introduction to Existentialism (first published as 'Dreadful Freedom')

DREADFUL FREEDOM

DREADFUL FREEDOM A Critique of Existentialism

By MARJORIE GRENE

THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS

THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS, CHICAGO

37

Cambridge Urnvemty Prl'ss, London. N W I, England W J. Gage 8< Co. LImIted. Toronto 3D. Canada Copyrrght 1948 by The Unll'trslty ofChICago All nghb restrl'eJ Composed and prInted by [HE UNIVl!R~ITY OP CHlCAGO PRESS, ChICago, Illmols, USA

Publl~hed 1948

TO DAVID

FOREWORD

~

lIS

is, in the main, an introductory essay; it is certamly m no sense an attempt at an exhaustive or definitive treatment of existentialIsm. There are numerous techmeal questions-such as Sartre's relation to phenomenology or psychoanalysis, for mstance-whlch might well be dealt with at greater length; so might, m a dIfferent context, such problems as the existential treatment of bme 1D Its relation to other contemporary movements in philosophy and so on It seemed WIser, however, for the reader's, a~ well as for the author's, sake to follow through a smgle, fauly simple theme: existentialism as tIle attempt at a new "revaluatIon of \ alues" and ItS mterprctatIon, m thiS light, of the mdl\'ldual m hnnse1f and in his relation to others. Chapters 11 and vi and parts of chapters IiI and iv appeared as artIcles m the Kenyon RevIew m 1947. My thanks are due to the editors for theu permission to repnnt them, and to them, 3'i well as to Profes~or Ehseo VIvas. of OhIO State Umverslty, and Profcs'ior \Vallaee Fowhe, of the Umverslty of ChIcago. for theIr ad\ice and encouragement. To my husband and to J\lrs Benn Frankfort lowe much more than I can say. Acknowledgment ]S due the followmg publIshers: to Librame Galhmard. for permission to quote from L'J!tre et Ie ncant, to Harcourt Brace and Company. for penmssion to quotc from 'The RepublIc of SIlence; to Fernand Aubier, for pcnl1ls~ion to quote from ~tre ct avon; to George 'Allen and Unwlll, for pernllSSIOIl to quotc from Synge's In \Vlcklow, W cst Kern- and Conncmara; to the editors of PolItIcs, for pernusslon 'to quote l\Iary McCartlly's translation of Simone de BeauvolI's Eye {or Eye; to the edItors of the New Yorker, for permIssion to quote Edmund \VIlson's review of Sartre; and to 1\1:. Sartre, for pernllSSlOn to quote articles in Les Temps modernes. [ Vll ]

TABLE OF CONTENTS ~

I. WHY II.

1

EXISTENTIALISM?

Sj6REN KIERKEGA.-\RD THE SELF AGAINST TIlE SYSTEM

1;

III.

SARfRE AND HEIDEGGER: TilE FREE REsOLVE

41

IV.

SARTRE AND HEIDEGGER. TilE SELF M'D OTIIER SELVES

67

V.

FRENCH EXISrE~TIALISM Arm POLITICS

Tim

VI. VII.

JASPERS AND MARCEL

NEW

95

REVOLUTIONARY THE NEW REVELATlo~

122 141

POSTSCRIPT

150

BIBLlOGRAPlIICAL NOTE

[ix ]

CHAPTER ONE

WHY EXISTENTIALISM? 1 IU more fa!llllonable a plulo!lophy becomes, the more elllm'c IS Its defimtron So the proponenh of eXlsten: hahsm pm c1 auu that, though mJny attack, few understand them. They mmt on the essentral optImIsm of theIr doctnne that "man makes hUllselt" for there IS always, until dcath, another chance. Granted, they would say, that, in theIr \\Idc humamry, thcy c:\plore the far comers of human hfc, thc horrors and perversIOns uncharted by tImorous WIth h ." ruthcaph\'cs of gcntIlIty. Granted, too, t1 lcnc!>!l, thc\' cxpo~e the (" ~f.. fraudulen., stnctly bOurgCOl!l "human (hgmty" 1 • Just becausc of this ve~ hllmanCnC\\, tillS \ cry honcsty, they are dccncd as pen erts and lcono(.·la~h. a~ plulo!loplllc l1lhl1l!lt!l and drhshc freaks. So. finally, a!l the \\Ord goes around, e\cry treatIse that dooms lIl.ln to de!ltruhockmg. the sordId, or the obscene. One mar '\ell agrec WIth the existentialIsts that, so loosely mcd, thc word IS nearl} meanmgless-cxcept perhaps for a vague sensc that tins mO\cment, lIke othcrs, expresses the collapse 111 our time of certain formerly chcmhed COl1venhOIl!l-and that eXllltcnbahstc;, III fichon as well as m philosophy, say a numbcr of thmgs that would undoubtedly have brought a blush to the cheek of the PodsnappiJn young per~on. But in that sense, after all, anyone, from Freud to

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DREADFUL FREEDOM

.

'James Cam, might with more than Justice be called an ~stentlalist.

Nearly as meaningless, too, it seems to me, is the equally general, though much more senous, use of the word in some philosophic discussion, m which nearly every philosopher since Hegel IS shown to be in some sense an existentiabst. Agam, there IS truth m tlus usage, since existentialism is, in one strand of Its development at least, a reaction againsUhe sJ>eculatIve ideahsm of He~l. (Though, on the other hand, one should notIce, Sartre at least takes a great deal from ~) But It IS, agam, only m a very vague and ambiguous sense that nmeteenth-century philosophy m general. from SchellIng to Nietzsche, can be labeled "existentIal." ~, after all, a falIl dcfimte hlstoncal movement m !'t_!JosoP~y, takm its n rd's hrase "existentIal dl~­ l~' Klerkegaard, It IS true, was hImself a nmeteenthcentury phIlosopher, mfluencec;L by Schellwg and, more deeply than he would hImself have granted, even by the archfiend ~ But Klerkegaard was m Ius own tIme completely WIthout fame or mfluence; and to spread the name of his pecuhar brand of dIalectic over an mdefimte number of his predecessors and contemporanes is to spread It very thin. Moreover, as Sartre and numerous others have repeatedly insIsted, there IS, in fact, no need for all this vagueness and obscunty, since an extremely simple, bteral, and precise defimtIon of eXIstential phIlosophy is easy to come by and easy to remember. EXI~tenbabsm is the philos~~ which declares as Its first prmciple that existence is .Erior-to essence. This is, presumably, a technically accurate pnnciplc, yet is simple and intelligible as "2 and 2 are 4." Why, then, all the bewddcrment about the philosophy that follows from it? "Existence is prior to essence" It is as easy as that. Of course, to understand the principle and apply it properly, one mnst make at least one very Important qualification. Takmg literally the simple assertion, "Existence is prior to essence," one

[2]

WHY aXISTENTIALISM?

might find existentialists in very unexpected quarters. For instance, in the thlIteenth-century controversy about proofs of the existence of God, the Augusbnians beheved in- the prionty of essence to existence-in the possIbility of moving from the Idea of God, the mtUltive apprehension of His essence (in so far )as such apprehension of the infinite is possible to fimte minds), to the asserbon of his exIstence. Their opponents, the Christian Anstote1Ians, on the contrary, belIeved 10 the priority, at least for the genesis of human knowledge, of eXistence to essence-in the necessity of start109 With the givens of our sensuous expenence and proceedmg by mductlon and abstractIon to the ultimate mtuitive awareness of essences and eternal truths. 1 Yet, if there is anyone in the whole of \Vestcm philosophy who has never been accmcd of being an existentialist, surely it is S1. Thomasl The necessary quahfication to the existentialist principle eaSily appears, however, jf we look at Kierkegaard's origmal cntIque of HegelIan philosophy. The "logic" of Hegel "mO\ es" 10 Its ponderous way from being and essence to actuahty and exi!ltence-or, rather, from bemg and essence, throug1l eXIstence, to the hIgher synthesis of both in Mind (CC1'it) or Concept (BegnH). But for Kierkegaard, as we shall ~ec, the ",hole notIon of starting With "pure bemg" and of movmg from It to eXistence IS absurd. Out of pure logic, pure thought, can come no movement of any sort, for movement unphes change, hme, nonbemg. Least of all can pure thought produce the movement of emergence into actuality, IOto the lIard, resIstant, senseless fact of \\hat is, forever distmct from the conveniently definable nature of what might be. The Hegehan play with essences is a pompous, professorial game, great 10 pretensions but despicably trivial in its baSIC reahty. But the existence to which I, that the pragmatIsm of James and Dewey, for cxample, was an equally effectIve and much less outlandish rebelhon against the once ommpresent Hegehans There IS certamly, m James, a SimIlar turmng of the phIlosopher's attentIon from spcculatIve system-bUIlding to more pressmg human concerns "The stagnant fchclty of the Absolute's own perfectIon moves me as little as I move It." There IS even, at some pomts, a distmct l!!cencss between the pragmatIc descnptIon of knowledge and the contemporary eXIstentIalIsts' analySIS of human expenence. For example, there IS the well-known description by HeI-

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WHY EXISTENTIALISM?

degger of the function of the "sign" in our everyday experience. Things in our world occur pnmarily not as mdifferently there, hke Cartesian extended substances, but as things "at I hand," thmgs there for this or that use. Among the thingsat-hand, among the ~hoes and ships and sealing wax, are a class of things that pomt, and notably thmgs that pomt as signs. These signs-for mstance, lo Heldegger's example, the mechamcal hand on German buses that showed the dlrechon that the bus was golOg to turn-are themselves thlOgsat-hand, wIth the same funchon of belOg there for something as other thmgs have. ll1elr dIfferenha IS that, as signs point109 to other thmgs, they not only serve a particular practical use but reveal somcthmg of the relations between tlungs and therefore of the nature of things-at-hand in general-still, howcvcr, thmg'i-at-hanc1, mtcrpreted as useful for something not ali mcrely there Thus sIgns are doubly pragmatic. First, thcy arc only one lOn, and meanmg are themselves only subc1J!l own free will and which he wIll not fimsh; It IS not dlstmgmshablc from hIS very engagemcnt at the heart of that cntcrpmc, but, finally, if he becomes aware of hIS freedom, from the depth of hIS slavery, It IS because lIe mcasurcs tllC efficacy of hIS wncrcte actIon. He does not have thc pure Idea of an autonomy that he does not enJoy, but he knows hIS power, whIch IS proportionate to hiS actIon What he establishes, 111 the course of the achon Itself, IS that he goes beyond fdcpasse] the present !>tate of the matenal by a precIse proJcct of dlsposmg of It m such and such a way and. that, thIS proJect bemg Identical WIth the government of means 111 VICW of ends, he, m fact. succeeds 1Jl dlspo'lmg of it as he Wished. If he discover; the relatIon of cause to effect, it is

[6]

WHY EXISTENTIALISM?

not In submItting to it, but m the very act whIch goes beyond the present state (adherence of coal to the walls of the mme, etc ), but toward a certam end whIch, from the depth of the future, Illummates and defines that !ltate. Thus the relation of cause to effect IS revealed m and by the efficacy of an act whIch IS at once project and reahzabon. It IS, 11l fact, the doelhty and at the same bme the reslstanc.e of the UUlVer!le wIueh show hIm at the same hme the comtancy of causal senes and the Image of hiS hberty, for the fact IS th,lt IllS llbcrty IS mdl!.tll1gU1~hablc from the utIlIzation of cau!>J.I sene'> for an end which It Itself sen; 'Vlthout the IllnmmatIon whICh that end prO\ Ides for the present ~ltua· tlOn, there would be m that sItuation neither causal eonnectmn nor rclJ.tJon of means to end, or rather there would be an mdlstmc.t mfimty of meam and ends, of effects and causes, Just as there ,..auld be an undifferentIated mfimty of elfc1es, ellipses, tnanglc~, dnd poh ~om m gcometnc space, wIthout the gencratl' e act of the mathematician" ho trac.es a figure by bmdmg d '>enes of pomts cho'>cn a(cordmg to a certam law. Thus, In work,\ (ktermlOl~m doe., not re"cdl freedom In so far as It 15 an ab.,tract l.m of nature hut III so fdr d~ a human proJect carve'> out and Illu11lmates, m the mIdst of the mfimte mtcrJ.(hon of phenomena, J (crtam parhal dctcnl111u'>m .\nd, 111 tlll'> dm, which I~ proved slInpl) by the effie8c) of hUlll,In actIOn-as the prmclp]e of \rcllllJlcdcubtcnds these meJllS and IS dl\co'ered 111 It'> turn hy thclr ,en (h~P0'>lhOIl. 15 the rcl.atlon of came to effc( t llkc the pnnclple of :\rehllnede~. at once support ,mel content of the tcehmquc of s]lIpbl1lldcrs In tlllS sense, one can .. a~ that the atom" as crcclted b~ the atonllC bomb, "hleh 1~ conceived only m the hf;ht of the Anglo-:\mcncan proJcct of wmnmg a Wdr Thm freedom IS diSCO' cred (lnly J\l the act, IS one With the at t, It IS the foundation of the connection'> and mteractlons which constitute the mternaI structure of the act, It never IS enjoyed but IS rc\ca1cd m and by Its products; It 1')

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DREADFUL FREEDOM

not an inner power of snatching one's self out of the most urger. situations, for there IS no outside or insIde for man. But It exists, on the contrary, for engagmg one's self in present action and c:onstructmg a future; it IS that by which there IS born a future whIch penmts understandmg and changmg the present. Thus the worker, 10 fact, learns his freedom from thmgs, but precIsely because the thlOgS teach him that he 15 anythlOg m the world but a thIng.8 In the same article, too, Sartre gives an account of the genesis of philosophic systems not unhke Dewey's descriphon, for instance, 10 Reconstruction in PhIlosophy. Philosophies have in the past, accordIng to both authors, served the function of stabIlizmg the norms by which the ruhng class in a society justifies Itself; theIr pretensions to intellectual objechvity or to unIversal truth have been, In fact, the pretensions of the pnvileged to self-perpctuatIon. Sartre's language is in the tradition of Marx rather than in the Humian hne, from which Dewcy's talk of custom, habit, and so on appears to stem; but then accounts of the social ongIn of what purports to be pure speculation are certamly slnIllar. As agaInst such false hypostatIzatIon of Ideas or Ideals, moreover, both of them would in a sense turn the direction of values from past to future from a crystallizatIon of what has been to an aspIration toward what needs to be "What, then, in reality, is a value," says Sartre, "If not the call of that which is not yet?"4 True, one might say it is present more than future that Dewey turns to (see hiS denunciation of the utIlitarians' "hedOnIstic calculus" because of its ex· cluslve dlTectIon to future things wanted rather than to interests and satisfactions felt now). A more important difference, however, in the two accounts lies not in Dewey's lesser emphasis on the future but in the kind of future to 3 Jean-Paul Sarhe, "Mat~nahsme et revolution (lin)," Les Temps modemes, I, No. 10 (July, 1946), 18-20 4. Ibid, p. 12

[8]

WHY EXISTENTIALISM?

-bch each writer wants to shift our attention. To tum alues from past to future is for Sartre to tum from the sanctioning of bourgeois privilege to a vision that sees beyond the sectional interests of the society and hence to revolution. For Dewey the change from what were falsely called "eternal principles" of truth and morals IS to a sort of spontaneous growth of progressive democracy. Sart!e's solution implies, as far as I can see, a philosophy of perpetual revolution. Dewey's, seeing beyond the segments of a past society but remaimng faithfully WithIn the present one, prOVides somethmg like a new dogmatism, less precise in outlIne but just as dogmatic as those It replaces. Such differences WithIn their similarities suggest, moreover, a difference much more fundamental than any lIkeness. For one thing. pragmatism, With its admiration for science and scientific method, In turnIng philosophic emphaSIS from the speculative to the factual, from umversal to particular, turns more generally than e'ClstentIalIsm to facts as such, to the stream of perceptions, In themselves humanly Indifferent, which follow continuously through our consciousness and even, by some accounts, constitute it Pragmatism In thiS regard contInues, though In a different style, the hentage of Locke and Hume, while existentialism substitutes a new and puzzlIng concrete givenness for the indtfferent outer flow of sense-data that constitutes the material for SCientific construction. Therefore, It IS a different kind of eXistence whose pnonty to essence IS proclaimed by the two phllosopll1es. . Nor IS that yet the most Significant difference between them. What IS really essentIal is not so much the kmd of fact each stresses as the relatIon between fact and value envisaged by the two schools. After a fine, "scientific:' "toughminded" account of the democratic man's hberation from false traditional moralities there always comes, in Dewey

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and his followers, a pomt at whIch one suddenly finds that with the elImmatIon of relIgIOus superstItIon and meta physical Ignorance, new values or even old ones have been spontaneously generated out of the bedrock of fact and more fact. So from habit suddenly comes "intelligent habit," from Impulses grow "integrated" Impulses, from each man'!> interest m his own actIvity here and now comes the glonous growth of a harmonIous socIety m \\ hleh all work willIngly and sweetly together for the good of all. And at that pomt pragmatism Itself succumbs to a delUSIOn at least as gncvous as those by which Hegel's pure spcculants deceived thcmselves, for mcre facts will never to all etermty generate values; nor can sCIence-ps}'chology as lIttle as nuclear phYSIcs-by Itself generate eIther good or eVIl Not, as Sartre pomt!! out m the artIcle already quoted, the mec.hamcal mterconnectIons of thmgc; but the free acts of men upon those thmgs create, maintam, and constItute values It IS m the dichotomy between fact and value, between what merely and mao bonally but undcmably IS, and what we aspIre to, yet \\hat as undemably IS not· in what Ibsen's Brand calls "the dJrkly felt splIt between thmgs as they are and tlunge; as they ought to be," that human grcatncs~ :l!> well as human fmlure hes AI!d It IS th.e perception of that dichotomy tlmt IS the central and signJ~cant inSight of existentIal philosophy As agamst such mSlght, pragmatIsm appears rather ao; gh'ing only thc reversc Side of Palmstrom's dIctum III the Morgcmtcrn balladWell, so schlmc; cr mc~~crsch:lrf, Nlcht sem kann \\as llIeht sein darf l'i The inadequacy of sCIentIfically onented plulosophIcs to explain the geneSIS of values IS more conspICUOUS perhaps, '; "For, he concludes, faolor-kecn, What's not suppo~cd to be cannot be II

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WHY EXISTENTIALISM?

though not essentIally dIfferent, in the posItIon of the school now vanously called "logical POSItIvIsm," "scIentIfic empIricIsm," or the like; for here the emphasis on modern logIstic methods, on the one hand, and, on the other, the exphcIt restrictIon of the "facts" that logic or mathematIcs works on, to spabotemporally locatable sense-data have doubly removed the subject matter of philosophy from any relevance to the felt rcahty of the indivIdual conSClOUSne'iS But It I~, for the existentIalIst, only wlthm the confines of that reahty, unwIllmgly flung mto ItS \\-orld, yet freely makmg a world of It, that good and evIl, Importance and ummportance, can ongmate Value.. arc created, mother ,vords, only b)' the free act of a human agent who takes this or that to be good or bad, beautIful or ugly, m the lIght of hIs endeavor to gl\'e sigmficance and order to an other\\-Ise meaningles~ world. Now P~>Slt!VIStIC etlI!c2.~~ J1 VaJJm:~_lts.elf t9_ b~.. d.£~l~ill: bve. nQ!..!10rm.abve; It descnbcs men's value-Judgments as behavlOIlSbc psycholog.y dcscnbed~ paths of rats 111 maze'i. And. although such descnptlOns rna) be detaIled and atcurate, they have, from an eXI~tcnbah~t pomt of VIC", little to do With the problems of moraht)=as little a'i thc pO~I· tiVISt'S mampulatIons of ~rtificlal s'yn~bol-s}stems hm e to do WIth the mfimte shades and subtlebes of meanIl1g or "hat are deprecatingly called "natural languages" \Vh~tc,·er the. .§JlOrtco}nings.ofhis PllI.ltan fanatIcism. 10 QJle..!c!lpect at least ~a.!!!,s_ethiCS was undemably correct there IS no good or (eVil apart from '\'Ill-and ther~ !S.7 f9r the c\:lstentmhst as Ifor Kant. no wIll apart frOl:!! ~c:cQpm. But for posltI\'1sm there arc only two necessItIes: mathematIcal and mechumcal; or rather, more stnctly speakmg, there arc onl), on one Side, the empty necessity of logic and, on the other, the compul. sion of chance which establI~hes, stahshcall\" a kmd of pseudo-necessity. Freedom there certainly IS n'ot, except as the nonsensical babbhng of phllosophers:-such an oriema: - - --- - - -. - --[ 11 ]

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tion in fact or in existence, then, is as much the contrary of existentialism as is the systematic Idealism that they both oppose.

3 ExistentIahsm does not, then, tum to existence in the , sense that It finds human values emergent from mere facts, as pragmatism or posltlVlsm try to do. It is a reaction as much agamst the claIms of sCIcotific philosophIes as it IS against the more hIgh-sounding but no more ambitious systems that preceded them. But 10 that case one may wonder how eXIstentialism dIffers from other contemporary movements that claim to redeem a lost humamty by rescuing us from, not through, SCIence There are, notably, t",o dIrectIons for such revolt agamst the intellcctual and spmtual predommance of the sCIentIfic temper. One may demand, hke Remhold NIebuhr, a return to Christian faIth; or one may rely, as, for example, such WrIters as Brand Blanshard or R M. Hutchins vanously do, on truths of reason accessible to all who are willmg to understand them. As dIstInct from the simple naIvete of pragmatist and POsitIVISt, what all these wnters have to say agamst our faIth, our phIlosophy, our educatIon, or our pohtIcal unwisdom is entirely convmcmg. But agamst both sorts of remedy-the rehglous and the metaphyslcalthere are at least two objectIons in the light of which existentIahsm appears, at any rate, a plausible alternative. In the first place, one can take it as given that thIS is, in the sense of tradItIonal ChristIanity, a faithless generation. But simply to assert to such a generation that faIth is what It needs is-even should It be true faith-to talk, hke Zarathustra, to a deaf and unheeding multItude: "this is not the mouth for these ears." Faith is not to be had by fiat but only by much more devious and difficult, and certainly unpredIctable, ways. And the same holds for metaphysical "knowledge," which is-Blanshard's brilliant expositions to the con·

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WHY EXISTENTIALISM?

trary notwithstandmg-as deeply based on faith as is any supernatural knowledge. The framers of our Constitution conceived, some of them at any rate, that they were found· ing a government on the eternal truths of reason. To us who have lost the Newtonian-Lockean sCIentIfic basis for their pnnclples, our behef 10 those same pnnciples has become an act of faith, not an mSIght of reason-of faIth m reason itself, perhaps-but nevertheless an act by whIch we believe, not an argument by whIch we know. The world-vIews, whether ThomIstic or Cartesian, in the hght of which these truths could be demonstrated and conveyed hke mathematical theorems to docIle pupIls, are dead and gone; and, however deeply we may belIeve m the doctnne of the brotherhood of man, we can neIther prove ItS universal truth nor persuade If we could prove. That is not a specifically existentIalIst obJcction. And, of course, for some existentlahsts, lIke the CatholIc Marcel· (or ~ m a very different sense for the first eXIstentiahst, Kierke· gaard) a return to faIth m a Chnstian God is a possIble and even necessary way out of our present moral chaos. What an atheIstic eXIstentIalIst lIke Sartre asserts, however, of eIther the religious or the metaphysIcal solutIon IS that we have here only another cndeavor, hke the posItivistic and as frUlt-, less, to found values not in free human actions but in objectIve facts. True,"the facts thIS bme are not sense-data but supernatural mysteries or eternal tmths of reason. Yet they stIll are facts, which we dIscover eXIstmg obJectively outsIde ourselves and on which we can rely, m blIssful dependence, to guide our actIons toward the good and the right. So both these attitudes, equally With matenalistIc or posItIvistIc theories, exemplIfy what Sartre calls "the SpIrit of seriousness"· they seek to escape OUT ultimate, inexplicable, and terrible responsibIlIty for the values that we lIve by. by gIving them a cosmic rather than a human, a necessary rather than a libertarian, source.

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How existentIahsm fares in Its endeavor to save us at once from all these false Idols we shall try, m the succeeding chapters, to dIscover. We shall find m It, I thmk-in some of Its proponents at least-a bnlhant statement of the tragIc dIlemma If not of man, at least of man m our time. And we shall find in It, also, relentless, even extravagant, honesty m thc rejectIon of easy solutIons or apparent solutions to that dIlemma. Whether such honesty Itself, heroically mamtamed agamst every mtellectual temptatIon, can m Its splendId, self-nghteous IsolatIon, of Its own forte prove the solutIon of Its own problem-that IS at first, and perhaps wIll be to the end, an open qucstIon

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CHAPTER TWO

S~REN

KIERKEGAARD. THE SELF AGAINST THE SYSTEM

1 TIIINKER who hates the abstract complexIty of metaphysical sY5tems, yet whose thought IS persistently. m fact, s}stemahcally, dHected to workmg through a smgle all-Important problem-such a thmker's work should be relatIvely easy to summanze or evaluate. But Kierkegaard's one problem was so specifically rehglous m character and so complex in itS hterary presentatIon (complex out of all proportlOn to Its phdosophic scope) that to assess it philosophiCally is a difficult task indeed In the lIght of Klerkegaard's growmg mfluence, however, the task must be attempted-and that despite thc ObVlOUS fact that Klerkegaard himself would have conSidered it melevant and imposSible. A philosophic, as dIstinct from a lIterary or rehgious, assessment? Fantastic! Any assessment by anyone except that rare person whom Klerkcgaard calls "hIS reader" (and I confess, thankfully I fear, I am not he)? Fantastic agaml Yet one must try to make somethmg of thIS apparently stImulatmg, certamly lIntatmg, figure; and if the attempt itself is absurd, that at least might have pleased the apostle ~f absurdity.l 'J Kierkegaard's problem, as he puts it m the PhIlosophical Fragments, was "to find out where the misunderstandmg lies between speculation and Christianity." It is, he belIeves, in the nature of personal eXistence that this nllsunderstandmg has its roots, and so his thought centers m the problem of the

A

1. For some accounts of KICrkcgaard's life see Bibliographical Note, p. 150.

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individual and his personal or subjective existence, his ex· istence as "inwardness"; that is what speculation overlooks or Tadlcally mlSlnterprets, and that IS what the approach to ChnstIan truth requires that one understand. "Sub)ectlVlty," then, IS what Klerkegaard sets himself to thmk about; but his VIew of It is never divorced from the problem of ChristIan faith and seldom from the task of refuting speculative error. So the statement of the Fragments seems a faIr one to take as fundamental. If It be so taken, however, Klerkegaard's thought must be conSidered as determined by hiS conception, on the one hand, of speculation and, on the other, of ChristIamty.

2 By "speculation" Klerkegaard means Hegelian speculatIon. That is not to deny that he sometImes contrasts the inSight sought by the subjective thmker with the empty objectIVity of sensory and hlstoncal knowledge, as well as With plulosophlc (I e , HegelIan) speculation One can find in the Papers, for mstance, a strong mdlctment of empmcal sClence-m partIcular, phYSIOlogy, as applied to the human species' In our tIme It IS cspecIally the natural tem for never attaInmg the state of systematic complebon that it promlscs. I am wIllmg to fall down adonngly before the System, If only I can catch sIght of It. UntIl now I have not succeeded in so domg, and, although I have young legs, stIll I am almost bred of runmng from Herod to PIlate. Several bmes I have been ql1lte near to adoration, but 10, at the moment when I had already spread out my handkerclucf 10 order not to SOlI my trousers 10 kneelmg, when for the la1>t time I gUilelessly Said to one of the ImtJate, "Now tell me honestly, IS It really qUite fimshed? For 10 that case I shall prostrate m) self, even though I should rum a pau of troU1>crs"-for by rcason of the heavy traffic to and from the System the p.lth IS not a little smled-I always got the answer "No, as yet It IS, 10 fact, not qUIte completed." And so It was postponed agam-both the SYlltem and the kneelmg S ..., The fanta1>be cl,mlls of the System over agamst eXIstence are shown up agalll by KlCrkegaard's theory of thc lcap. The "ab1>olute begmlllng" bccomes, If we observe the process of thought honc!>tly, an illusIOn The bcginnmg of phIlosophy, hke any other acbon, has, III KlCrkegaard's VIew, a specIfic f.lctual scttmg; and It malllfcsts the radIcal dIscontInUIty charac.tenl>tIc of the commcncement of evcry Intellectual as wcll as moral proc.ess· It begms not from "pure Being" or any 1>uch nonscnse but from a suddcn flash of understandmg, best dcscnbed as a "leap " ""Vl~Q.has forgott~n/, K!-~~ g~rd .3.l'ks.the Dalllsh Hegchans, "the lovely Easter morning ~ ~n Profe~§9r Heiberg arose to undcrstand the_ .HegelI~~ phI1~soJ?.!!Y;Y'§ he humel£ baJ! ~o. .!!1..~Iringly e~p!~jne~ IJ-_ was noJ that E-leaE? Or was there someone who had dreamed about It?~'4 -' - - --• -- Or the unrcalIty of the Hegehan procedure is pointed, 3 Sfilren KlerllgJJrd, SJlIJlec1e Vaerker, ed A B Drachmann, I L Helberg, and II 0 Lange (2d cd , Copenhagen, 1920-31), VII, 95 (referred to hereafter as "5").

4. P, V, C, 3.

[18 ]

THE

SELF

AGAINST

THE

SYSTEM

as was mentIoned m the prevIOus chapter, by reference to the hfe of the philosopher himself m relatIOn to his system. "Most sys_~eIP~t!.zcrs in !.eJ~!~~!1 to theIr sys~em fare," .he say~ "l!k~_ the _1l!'!!Lwho bmlds E-l:t~alace JIJ1c1 ]lj!I!sel~ JIve~ next dQor tQ.It m a barn "1\ He never hres of contrastIng the "lIttle dmgle-d:mgle of an eXIstIng Herr Professor who wrItes the system"O to his grandlD!lC metaphysIcal edIfice, and ridIculmg the Il1lphclt reducaon of the speculant's own existence to abstractIon, whIch the prac.tIce of HegelIan phIlosophy !leems to lum to mvolve. "A phIlosopher," he says. "has gradually _1?

5 It may be saId, of coursc, that It IS unnecessary to go back to Klerkegaard for a new Impulse m phIlosophy, that such a movement as pragmatism, as we suggested earlier, has already effected what eXIstential phIlosophy aIms at-that is, It has rebelled agamst the arid technicahty of metaphySICS and has brought phIlosophy closer to the lIv10g problems of real people. The sense 10 whIch pragmatism falls to accomplIsh at least the second of these alms and the sense m whIch Klerkegaard points at least to a dIrection more appropnate for dealing with them may be indIcated by an example, slIght in Itself but suggestive of a larger contrast. Death IS certamly an Important fact in every man's life; look at the way m whIch Klerkcgaard and a pragmatist lIke Dewey treat it. In the course of hIS argument agamst the tradItional means-end conception 10 Human Nature and Conduct, Dewey analyzes the SItuatIon of a man building a house. The man IS not buildmg the house 10 order to hve 10 It, Dewey says, for he mIght dIe before it was fimshed; so he is bUIldmg it for the sake of the present activity itself. Compare this

[ 26]

THE SELF AGAINST THE

SYSTEM

glancing reference to the continual imminence of death with Kierkegaard's conceptIon of the way in which death constantly determines or should determine the manner of our lives. The conception of "bemg glad over 70,000 fathoms," of hvmg constantly in the face of death, in the awareness that here and now may be the last moment-that is for Kierkegaard, as for contemporary exIstentIalism, a central and ternbly senous motIf m the mterpretatIon of human hfe I am not sure whether "das Sein zum Tode" is really the fundamental detcrmmant m our expenence, pushed back but never canceled by the tnvmhzmg demands of every day, or whether, though recurnng conspIcuously at moments m our bves, it assumes an all-Important place only m certam situatIonssuch SItuatIOns as the underground movements, a main source of French existentIalism, had to face. In either case death and the dread of death do at least form a recurrent thread in human bfe, a thread suffiCIently conspICUOUS that a phIlosophic account of man's nature needs to take serious notIce of It Yet m Dewey's argument the conceptIon of death is something to be toyed WIth as a convemcnt logIcal device for refutmg somebody else's theory of somcthmg else. That is but one example, of course, but It Illustrates well, I thmk, the lmutatIons of the pragmatIc movement as a phIlosophic rebelbon. PragmatIsm was duected agumst a number of tlungs, but It contamed nothmg pOSItIve beyond the pleasant deSIre to make tlungs comfortable Whatever IS uncomfortabledeath, sm, despaIr-It passes by on the other SIde. As has been smd a number of tImes, pragmatIsm is afraid to face evIl. 16 And It IS afraid, too, to face the ultImate puzzle of human mdlVlduahty. To be sure, the mdividual and the actIvities of the mdIvidual are what pragmatIsm, lIke existential phIlosophy, is supposed to devote Itself to. But it is the 16 See, e g, Hans Morgenthau's general clltique of the intellectual basIS of the hberal tradition In SCientific Man versus Power Politics (ChJ(:ago. Umverslty of ChJ(:ago Press, 19"6)

(271

DREADFUL

FREEDOM

"adjusted" indIvidual, the stereotyped mdlvidual, the indio vidual who has forgotten how to be an mdivldual, that pragmatIsm celebrates. PragmatIsm is, indeed, the phIlosophy of our soclety-a society whose cult is to forget all unpleasantnesses and thereWIth most realItIes, a society in which "tIll death do us part" becomes "as long as we lIve" and the bIg bad wolf refrains wIth mcredible decency from eatmg up the lIttle pIgS. By comparison WIth thIS phIlosophy of glamour, Klerkegaard's wntmg, 10 all ItS narrowness and WIth all ItS drawnout introspectIve agomzmg, possesses, nevertheless, an mtenSIty of emotIon that Impre!.ses one With its power and that both fnghtcns and Illummates by the II1slghts that It now and then displays, for Klerkegaard does try to face the puzzle of the human mdlVldual, sometImes, mdeed, in hackneyed and tediOUS contrasts between tIme and eternity, mfimte and fimte, but often 111 a charactcr sketch or parable that sharply stresses some aspect of the general problem that forms the m:lIn preoccupatIon of existentIal phIlo!.ophy-the theme of the contmgcncy of human life, Gcworfenhelt, as IIeldegger I calls It. Death IS the most dramatic, perhaps the ultImately detennuung, example of such contmgency, and the dread of death the most dramatIc, perhaps even the ultImately deterHUlling, attItude Impellmg human actIons. But, more generally, what KlCrkegaard and eXistentIalIsm are concerned With IS the stubbornness of fact not as data to be understood but as the neceSSIty for free bemgs to be ju!.t this and not that; the Impmgement of the sheer brute glVenness f each person's hIstory on hiS aspIratIons as an mdlvldual, the desperate conflict m the individual's nature establIshed by such Impmgement, the extreme IsolatIon and mcommuDlcablhty of that conflIct m ItS sheer Immediate qualItative character. Conrad's Lord JUll, for example, seems to me in tIus sense an existentIal character, stakmg hIS whole life, as he does, on the refutation of a smgle past action. And in this connection

r 28 1

THE

SELF AGAINST THE SYSTEM

the devious "indirect communication" of Conrad's novels bears a significant lIkeness to Klerkegaard's kInd of lIterary techmque. The tragIc conflict that lIes at the core of personal eXIstence is somethIng completely private, completely hIdden at most tImes from public view, and revealed only In glImpses as the story-teller develops hIS tale. The maximum of conflict, the maXImum of isolation, are what Conrad, lIke existentiahsm, stresses in the experience of the mdlvldual person. A better example, for that matter, because it comes from the current eXIstentIal school itself, IS the character of GarcIn In Sartre's Huis-c1os, who has not just his lIfe but all etermty to puzzle out the question of his cowardIce Or take an example m Kierkegaard hImself hIS favonte Old Testament theme of the sacnfice of Isaac. This, though a vcr} dIfferent SItuation, is marked by the same agony of inner conflIct., Here IS Abraham, hftmg the kmfe to slay Isaac whom he· lovcs; the momcnt IS mescapable, yet ItS necessIty IS at onc~ dlvme WIll and sorc temptatIon Or, again, a favorite character wIth Klerkegaard IS the Homc IndIvIdual, In whom appcarance and reality arc at the extremest odds with each other The novel cmph:lSIs In eXIstential phIlosophy, in short, IS ItS attention ever}wlIcre to the meanmglcssncss tlIat contInually underlIes sigmficance in human lIfe-a substratum of nothmgne~s ,IS clcarly e'i:hibited in contingency as such as m death, the ultImate contmgcnt There is m thIS kmd of conceptIon, bIzarre and hmited though it seems, a dynamIc really novel in \Vestern thought; and thIS dynamIc Klcrkcgaard does genuinely contnbute as a fresh source of phIlosophizIng, ImplYIng not merely a reorgamzatIon of phIlosophIc categones but a renewal of phIlosophic VIsion.

6 But what of the phIlosophic implementation of Klerkegaard's thought? He calls himself a "dIalectical poet": "I am

[ 29]

DREADFUL FREEDOM

a poet, but of a peculiar kind, for the dialectical is the natural determination of my essence."17 What, then, has Kierkegaard the dialectician to offer, technically, for those queer souls who have to express their perspecbve on human ex· perience not in poetry or painbng but in abstract categories and logical inferences? A little, I think. though not much. For one thing. 10 Kierkegaard's analysis of the modalities there is a rather interesting constructIon of modal spheres. The merely posslble equated to the necessary IS contrasted with the actual equated to the contingent; the necessary as the lOgically posslble to the nonnecessary, actually pOSSlble; the actually posslble to the actually real; and so on. This con~tructIon is used partly 10 the analysls of loglC as the sphere of the merely possible by wluch Kierkegaard refutes the Hegelian conception of a logic eqmvalent to ontology; partly lD the analysis of freedom as the nonnecessary and of subJectivity as the actual, therefore more than merely posslble, therefore nonloglcal, and, directly at least, incommunicable. On some special points in thls general context-for example, the conceptIon of the past as equally nonnecessary with the future and of the histonan as a "backward prophet"-there are some provocative, if not entirely plaUSible, passages. In general, however, Iponslblbty In total solItude" IS here undemably genume In the Remtance the freedom of onc dId mvolve, unmedlatcly Jnd herOIcally, the freedom of many It wa!> as humelf Jud JS J Frcnchm,lll that each man had to ask, "If they torture me, !>hall I be able to keep SIlent?" -Just as, conversely, It was hImself as much as France that each collaborator betrayed But It IS here, too, that the theoretical questIon becomes mSlstent The situatIon of the ResIstance, m wInch each man does mdeed deCIde for everyone, was made a conSIStent whole by the dramatic force of ItS actual eXIstence But when this SItuation I!> elevated to the status of an abstract system, what lmk IS thcre to bmd, theoretIcally, the sohtude WIth the responsIbIlIty, the one WIth the all? 'The pIcture of the mdlVldual VIS-a.-VIS hIS torturer remams as the human, lnstoncal foundation of Sartre's theory of the relabon to another as confhct. But what concepbon of commumty, country, or humamty prOVIdes, in CXIS-

[ 100]

THE NEW REVOLUTIONARY

tential theory, the lOgical equivalent for the other side of the Resistant's solitary and dangerous decision?

2 Before lookmg at Sartre's explICIt formulation of polItical or social theory, however, we should notice, short of such general theoretical statements, a kmd of analysIs of human types or behaVIOr patterns to wluch eXIstentialIsm lends Itself WIth conspICUOUS success. That IS Illustrated, for example, as we have already secn, 111 such analyses as those of vamty, sadIsm, or masochIsm 111 V£tre et Ie ncant. TIle broader social ImplIcations of some of thcse dIScussIons-as of the concept of total, yet penlous, freedom on wInch they are founded-arc ample. In part, for example, Sartre's mterpretatIons of sadIsm and of hate arc utIlIzed III Ins "PortraIt of the Anb-Scnute,"5 or III SIlllonc de BeaUVOlr's discussion of revenge and pumshment m "Eye for Eye "b Take such a paragraph as tIllS, in the latter essay. "He Will pay for It"-the word IS tcllmg, to pay IS to furnish an eqUivalent for \\hat one has received or taken. The deSire for eqUivalence IS expressed more cxactl)' m the famous lex tal1011IS or law of retahatIon "An C} e for an eye, a tooth for a tooth" Doubtlesf>, thIS law retams, cven at present, a magIcal after-taste, It tends to satisfy f>ome unknown, somber god of symmetry, but first and foremost It wrresponds to a profound human reqUirement Once I heard a member of the maqms tellmg how he had retahated on a National Guard who had bcen gUIlty of torturmg a woman. "He undertood," he concluded, soberly TIllS word, whIch IS frequently med m thiS vIOlent and elhptIcal sense, IS a declaratIon of the pnnciple of vengeance, a ~tatcment of ItS profound mtcnbon No abstract conception IS mvolved here, but exactly what HeIdegger IS talkmg ahout when he speaks of 5 Sartre, "Portr3lt de l'anhsemltc," Lcs Temps modemes, I, No. 3 (December, 1945), 442-70.11l1s essay also appeared In translatIon as No 1 In PartIsan RevIew's pamphlet ~enes 6 SImone de Bcauvou, "Ocll pour (£11," Les Temps rnodcrnes, I, No 5 (February, 1946), 813-30. Translated by Mary McCarthy In POlItICS, JulyAugust,1947, pp. 134-40.

[ 101 ]

DREADFUL FREEDOM

"understandmg"-an operatIon by whIch our whole being realIZeS a SItuatIon; you understand a t!,ol by usmg it; you understand a torture by expenencmg It. The butcher feels, 10 hIS tum, what the vIctim felt, but thIS 10 Itself cannot remedy the ongmal evIl. It is not enough for the suffermg to be rehved or revIved, the totahty of the SItuatIon must be revIved also. The butcher, who saw hImself as sovereIgn conSCIousness and pure freedom con· frontmg a wretched tortured thmg, IS now a wretched tortured thmg hImself, expenencmg the tragic ambigUlty of the human condItIon. What he has to understand IS that the VIctim, whose abjectIon he now shares, shared somethmg else With him toothe very pnvIleges he thought he could arrogate to hImself. And he does not understand thIS mtellectually, m a speculative manner. He reahzes concretely the turnabout of SItuatIon, really and concretely, he reestabhshes the state of reCIproCity between human conSClOusnesses, the negation of whIch IS the most fundamental mJustIce An object for others, e"ery man IS a subJect to hImself, and he lays the ~harpc~t claim to being recogmzed as such. 1 Sartre's theme of the self-defeat1Og character of the paSSIOns, moreover, and, more broadly, of the double-faced paradoxical character of our freedom itself recurs 10 Mlle de BeauVOIr's explanatIon of the contradictory nature of both vengeance and ItS abstract substItute, pumshment. In the case of vengeance: What IS mvolved IS nothing less than the coercIOn of freedomthe terms are contradIctory. Yet there can be no true revenge except at tillS pnce. If the butcher should deCIde, WIthout external pressure, to repent hIS error, and even were to go so far, 10 the zeal of remorse, as to retalIate on himself, he might posSIbly dlsann revenge, but he would not gratIfy it, because he would remam pure freedom, and in the very suffenngs that he' might mfllct on hImself voluntanly he would stIll, 10 spite of hImself, be makmg mock of hIS VIctIm. What IS reqUIred IS that he should feel hImself as VIctim, he should undergo VIOlence. But VIolence, by Itself, IS not enough eIther; ItS only pomt IS to give nse in the gUIlty person to an acknowledgement of his true condition, the very nature of freedom, however, makes the sue7 POlItiCS, P 136.

[ 102 ]

THE NEW REVOLUTIONARY

cess of this dubious. Violence can be an inducement, a temptation, but never an absolute compulsion. What we really want is to cast a spell on the enemy's freedom, to seduce It like a woman: the alien conscIOusness must remam free With regard to the content of its acts; It must freely acknowlcdge Its past faults, repent, and despair; but an external necessity has to force It to thiS spontaneous movement. It must be led from Without to extract from Itself feelings nobody could Impose upon It Without ItS own consent. 1111s contradiction IS the reason that revenge's alms can never be satisfied. 8 In punishment there is a more complex problem, for we have no longer the concrete struggle of one freedom against another but the substitution of an abstract pattern in which the condemned man, though he must suffer in his own flesh and his own spirit, is at the same time, for his judges, rather the symbol than the actualIty of the wrongdoer. ThiS difference of punishment from vengeance was particularly evident, Mlle de Beauvoir says, in the trial of petam. In vengeance, the man and the cnmmal are blended m the concrete realIty of a umque freedom By bcmg able to discern in Petam both a traitor and an old man, condemnIng the one, pardomng the other, the HIgh Court merely demonstrated, up to the hIlt, one of the tendenCies of socral Justice It doce; not view the gmlty man m the totalIty of hiS beIng, It does not engage m a metaphYSical struggle WIth a free conSCIence that a body of flesh and bone Impnsons, It condemns hIm insofar as he IS a substract and a reflection of certaIn bad acte;. The pumshment, therefore, takcs the form of a symbolIc display, and the condemned man comes close to beIng secn as an expIatory VIctim, for, after all, It IS a man who IS gomg to feel m hIS consciousness and hiS flesh a penalty Intended for that SOCial and abstract reahty-the gUIlty party.9 But such dualIty is mevltable, S1l1ce it is implICit in the very nature of human acbon and hum~n freedom: .... evcry attcmpt to counterbalance the absolute event whIch IS a cnme mamfests the ambIgUIty of the condItion of man, who 8. Ibid.

9. IbJd., p. 137.

[ 103 ]

DREADFUL FREEDOM

IS sImultaneously freedom and thmg, UOlty and dIspersion, iso-, Iated by subJectIvIty and yet coexIstent wIth other men In the world's bosom-hence all pUDlshment IS one part defeat. But love and actIon too-qmte as much as hatred and revenge-always mvoIve a defeat, and that does not stop us from loving and actmg, for we have not only to ascertam our condItion; from the heart of Its ambIgUIty we mnst choose It 10 Or agam, in the "PortraIt of the Anti-Semite:' Sartre apphes partly hIS conceptIon of ~adlsm, partly the existentIal conceptIon of the free project itself to a difficult sOCIal problem. Wilson lIkens thIS essay to some of the portraiture of the elghteenth-eentury encyclopediSts. It should also be dlstingUl~hed from the cIghteenth-century intellectualist tradition that stIll, m Its scmle decay, dominates most of our discmsions of "prejudice," "mtolerance," and the lIke Surtre IS not, he makes It clear at the start, dlscussmg "anb-SemltIsm" as an opmlon; for the antI-SemIte is not just a man who, beSIdcs bCIng a good husband and father, an astute politICIan, or what not, happcns In addItion to hold such and such regrettable or mIstaken opimons He IS a man who, In no rclabon at all to the whole problem of evidence and the opimons formed from It, has dlOsell hate as his way of hfe It IS the character of that baSIC chOIce, not a lIst of humanly rIdiculous or histOrIcally plaUSIble opmlOns, that has to be understood For Hume and hIS pragl1latIc-po~lhvlst descendants there IS no es~entIal differcnce between reasonable OpInIOn and prCJudlce, only prejudIce is an opmlOn founded on a narrower, rathcr than a WIder, range of evidence So If, WIth the mce, senSIble cool-headcdness that all men possess whcn beyond the spell of rabble-rousers, the mtolcrant arc ~ho",n the SCIentific eVIdence for tolerance, they WIll, of course, alter theIr "antIsocIal" attItude to a more "constructl\'e" one. Logically, SCientIfic 0plDlOn is only broadminded prejudice, and prejudice IS narrowness of 10 IbId., p liO

[ 104]

THE

NEW REVOLUTIONARY

opimon; the exposition of relevant eVIdence wIll, as a matter of course, substitute the more for the less deSIrable of the two. As against sueh a highly abstract, totally unreahstIc, and therefore, I suspect, almost totally ineffective conception, the incisiveness and penetration of Sartre's "PortraIt" is a welcome, even If not a cheenng, antIdote. The anh-Semlte, he says, has, first and foremost, chosen hate. lIe has chosen "to hve in the impassioned mode": It IS not rare that one chooses a passIOnate Me rather than a ,reasonable one. But that IS usually became one lovc~ the obJects of the passIOn' women, glory, power, money. Smce the antISemite has chosen hate, we are oblIged to conclude that It IS the ImpassIOned state tllat he loves. Usually, thIS kmd of affectIon does not please at all, he who pa~slonately deme~ a woman is ImpassIoned because of the woman and 10 spite of the passIOn; one scorns passionate rcasomngs, which try to demonstrate by every means opmlOns that love or jealousy or hate have dictated; one scorns passIOnate distractIOns and what has been called "mono'ldclsm " That IS, on the contrary, what the anh-Semlte has chosen first. But how can one choose to reason falsely? Because one yearns for Impermeablhty. The sensible man seeks, groamng, he knows that hiS reasonmgs are only probable, that other consIderations WIll occur to call them 10 doubt, he never knows vcry well whcre he IS go 109, he IS "open," he can pass for hesltJnt But there arc people who arc attracted by the permanence of stone. They want to be ma~~lVe and Impenetrable, they do not want to change. where could the change take them? It IS a matter of an ongmal fear of self and of a fear of truth. And what ternfic~ them IS not the content of the truth, which they do not even m~peet, but the very form of the true, that ob/eet of mdefimte approxlmahon. It IS as If then own eXistence were forever 10 suspense But they want to eXist all at once and Im-, med13tely They do not want acqmred opmlOns, they want mnate ones, because they arc afraid of reason109, they want to adopt a way of hfe where reason109 and mveshgahon have only a subordmate role, where one never seeks except for what one has already found, where one becomes nothmg but what oue wa~ already. There IS no such thmg except passIOn. Only a strong emobanal commItment can gIve a hghtnmg eertamty, It alone can

t

[ 105 J

DREADFUL

FREEDOM

hold reasomng by the leadIng-strIngs, It alone can remam Impenneable to expenence and SUbSISt through a whole life. The antI-SemIte has chosen hate because hate IS a faIth; he has chosen, at the outset, to devaluate words and reasons. How much at ease he feels now, how futIle and shght seem to him the dIScussIons on the nghts of thc Jew he IS sItuated from the first on a dIfferent plane. If he consents, by courtesy, to defend hIS POInt of VIew for a moment, he lends but does not gIve hImself, he SImply tnes to project hIS mtmtIve eertamty onto the plane of dIscourse. 1 quoted earhcr some "mots" of antI-SemItes, aU absurd' "I hate the Jews because they teach want of dIsclplme to servants, because a JeWIsh furner robbed me; etc." Don't think the antISemItes deceIVe thcmselves In the least about the absurdIty of th~e replIes They know theu arguments arc ~hght, conte'ltable, but they are amused by them It IS theIr adversary who has the duty to use words senously because he belIeves m words, as for themselves, they have the ng1lt to play. They even lIke to play WIth arguments because, by gIVmg clowmsll reasons, they throw discrecht on the scnousness of theu 111terlocutor, they are of bad f.lIth and dehght m It, for WIth them It IS a questIon not of persuadmg by good arguments but of mhmidatmg or dI~onentmg. If you press them too bnskly, they close up, they let you know WIth a haughty word that the tIme for argumg has passed, It I~ not that they are afraId of bemg convmced, they fear only that they may look ridIculous or that thelI embarrassment may have a bad effect on a thud person whom they want to attract to theIr party If, then, the anti-SemIte IS, as everyone has been able to observe, Impermeable to reason and to expenence, It IS not became hIS convIction IS strong, but rather hIS conVIction IS strong because he has chosen 111 the first place to be Impenetrable 11 Moreover, in Ius impenetrablhty, he ha~. Sartre contmue~, chosen to be tcrnble' to be the objective Image of In111self that mspires fear In others. He has chosen mcdIOcnty-agam because Ius medIOcnty can be chenshed as a thmg, not fought for m hazardous freedom; for he possesscs the mystic hentage of blood and soil against the corroslve~ of a rootless mtc1hgence. And in that possessIOn he has found an obJective Good, which he shares equally WIth all Frenchmen, all II. Sartre, "PortraIt de l'antlscmltc," p 448

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Aryans, or the like, by their opposition to the detested Jew, who is, as the object of hate, the embodiment of pure evil. In this "manichaelsm" there IS no need to search out, in dread, the sigmficance of one's values, to wrest a precarious good from entanglement in ill: good and eVIl are given, to I destroy the evIl is the mission of the good. So, finally, the anti-SemIte appears as destroyer and sadlst-smce hIs good demands as its expression the suffering and, finally, the destruction of the victIm that he has marked as evil. In all thIS it IS the fixity, the objectIvity of himself and hIS good, that he has chosen True, he has chosen hate, which is a passion not a thing; but his hate carnes hIm beyond himself, takes him from the penl of self-questIoning, from doubt, dread, and nsk, to certainty: He chooses, finally, that the Good be ready-made, beyond questIon, beyond attack, he dares not look at It for fear of bemg led to contest It and seek another The Jew is here only a pretext: elsewhere one makes use of the Negro, elsewhere the yellow races. HIS [the Jew's] eXistence Simply allows the antI-Semite to stIfle hIS anxIetIes m the egg by persuadmg lumself that hIS place m the world has always been marked, that It awaIts hIm, and that he has, by tradItIon, the fight of occupymg It AntI-SemItIsm, In a word, IS fear of the human condItIon. The antI-Semite IS the man who wants to be pltIle!>s rock, funous torrent, destroymg thunder, anythmg but a man. 12 There are, of course, Sartre says, so-called "anti-SemItes" who do not conform to thIS pattern. There are all those who have taken on the attItude of "not beanng the Jews"-or the Negroes or who not-merely to seem to be somebody to theIr assocIates. He menbons a man who, otherwise entIrely undIstInguished by conduct or conversation, has always been known to hIS acquaintance as "unable to abide the English" so his presence becomes noticeable by everybody'S aVOldance of the hatcd subJect. Tins character, 10 Its antI-SemitIc form, 12 IbId, P 470

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Sartre hllnself has depicted with ghastly success in the long concludmg story of Lc Mur, "L'Enfance d'un chef." The complete emptmess of the boy's and young man's life, the lack of any slgmficant passIOn m It, is compensated for at last when he has got away with his refusal to shake hands with a Jew at a party Thcre was no overpowenng hatred back of his act, It was, If anythmg, Just a capncious attempt to be dIfferent, but It succeeded, hIS host on theIr next meetmg apologizcd; and he was establIshed as someone. someone who detcsts the Jews. In all these Instances, of course, It may be just the shrewdness of the particular wnters, wIthout much rcgard to thcIr eXIstentialism, that makes the analyscs apt or mtcrcstmg. That would seem to be so, for example, of some of Sartre's comments 111 hIS editonal mtroduetIon to the Umted States ISSUC of Les Temps modcrnes The sy&tcm IS a great external apparatus, an Implacable machIne whlth one nught call the oblCc.hvc spmt of the Umted Statcs and which over there they call "Amencamsm", It IS a momtrous complex of myths, of values, of formulae, of slogans, of symbols, and of fltes But It would not do to thInk that It IS dcpmlted 10 thc hcad of cvery Amencan as Descartes's God has dcpoMtcd the pnmary notions In the mmd of man, It would not do to Hunk that It IS "refracted" 10 theIr brams and 10 their hearts and that It thcre detennmes at every moment emotIons and thoughts whIch are ItS ngorous exprcsslOn It IS, m fact, outSide, It IS prc&cntcd to the CItIzens, the most skilful propaganda pre!>ents It to thcm cea&cles!>ly but never does more than present It It IS not m them, but they 10 It, thcy struggle agaInst It or accept It, they stIfle m It or transccnd It, they submit to it or remvent It cvery bme, thcy gIve thcmselves up to It or make funous efforts to evade It, m every way It remams external to them, transcendcnt, Slllce they arc men and It a thIng There are the great myths, that of happmess, that of progress, that of hberty, that of tnumphant maternity, there IS realism, optimIsm, and then there are the Amencam who at first are notlung, who grow among these

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colossal statues and disentangle themselves as best they can m the midst of them 11Iere IS the myth of happmess, there arc those spellbmdmg slogans which advise you how to be happy as quickly as possible, there are the films With happy endmgs, which every evening show lIfe m rose color to harassed crowds, there IS that language, laden with optimistic and profligate expressions, "havmg a good time," "enjoy," "hfe is fun," etc.-and then there are those men who are pursued even into the most conformist happmess by an obscure malaise that does not know what to call Itself, those men who are tragic for fear of bemg so, by that total absence of the tragic m themselves and around them . . Nowhere can one find such a wedge between men and myths, bctween hfe and the collective representation of lIfe. An AmerIcan said to me at Berne. "The trouble IS that each of us IS haunted by the fear of bcmg less Amencan than hiS neighbor" I accept that explanatIon, It shows that Amencamsm IS not a Simple myth that a skilful propaganda could bury m people's heads but that every Amencan remvents It, gropmgly, every mmute, that It I'> at once a great external fonn which nses at the entrance to thc port of New York, OpposIte the Statue of Liberty, and the daIly product of unqUIet lIbertIes. There IS a drcad of the Amencan In the face of Amencamsm, there IS an :llnhIValence of hiS drcad, as If he were askmg himself at one and the same time. "Am I Amencan enough?" and "How shall I e~cape Amcncamsm?" A man, m Amenca, IS a certam simultancous answcr to these two questions, and every man must find hiS answers alone. I3 Yet even here there IS an echo of the eXistential view of freedom, of the conception of man'~ makmg himself out of hIS hIstory rather than that of hIstory's making hUll; and one can at least say that, frequently, as agamst the more abstract, more eaSily gencralIzmg mterpretatIons of "social psychology," "progaganda analYSIS," and the lIke, the concreteness, the very mdlVidualism, of the eXIstential view does lend Itself exceedmgly well to certam-hmited If you lIke, but penetrating-kmds of human and socIal portraiture. 13. Sartre, "Presentation," Les Temps modernes, I, Nos 11-12 (AugustSeptember, 1946), 19+-95, 196-97

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3 The problem of connecting, logically, the private and publIc aspects of exIstentialism becomes acute, however, if we look at Its supporters' expliCIt statements of political and social theory. The locus classicus for thIs theory, at present wrIting, IS Sartre's pair of articles on J;I1aterialism and revolutIon In Les Temps modernes. 14 The first essay considers a senes of contradictions in materialism, notably, In dialectIcal matenahsm, the contradiction, as Sartre sees It, between the unique concrete wholes envIsaged by dIalectic and the abstract, quantItatIve relations With which scientIfic matenalism IS bound to deal. So, for example, Engels IS incorrect, he says, In his assertion that phySICS moves from quantItatIve to qualItatIve concepts' It moves only from quantIty to quantity. Evcn Einsteinian physics deals wholly in external and quantItative relatIonshIps, and, what is most essential, even EinsteInIan phYSICS, lIke all SCIence, deals With the abstract condItIons of the Ul11verse In general, not, lIke dIaleCTIC, wItlI the growth of a l1Vlng concrete totalIty. Sartre admits freely the usefulness, for revolUTIonary purposes, of the materialist myth-or at least Its usefulness m the past. Yet both as phIlosopher and as revolutIonary he questions the long-term efficacy of such a "monster" and proceeds, m the second essay, to construct an alternative theory of revolution WIth, m his VIew, a sounder, nonmaterialIstIc basis. The revolutIonary, accordmg to Sartre, must be oppressed, but eo;sentIally oppressed, that is, oppressed in such a way that only a radical change in the structure of the SOCIety can relieve his oppressIon: What the Amencan Negroes and the bourgeOIs Jews want IS an equalIty of nghts, whIch does not In any way imply a change of structure in the regIme of property; they SImply want to be 14 Sartre, "Matcnahsme et rb'oIutron," Les Temps modernes, I, Nos. 9 and 10 (June and July, 1946) Selections from these two essays also appeared 10 translatIon 10 the July-August, 1947, PolItIcs

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assimilated to the pnvileges of thelI oppressors, that is, at bottom they seek a more complete 1OtegratIon. The revolutionary IS in a sItuatIon such that he can in no way share those pr1V1leges; It is by the destructIon of the class that is oppress1Og hIm that he can obtam what he demands. That means that the oppressIOn IS not, lIke that of the Jews or Negroes, consIdered as a secondary and, as It were, lateral charactenstlc of the SOCIal regIme but that It IS, on the contrary, constitutive. The revolutionary is, then, at once a vIctim of oppresSIOn and a keystone of the society which oppresses hIm; more precIsely, It IS 10 so far as he IS oppressed that he is indIspensable to that soclety.llI That means, secondly, that he IS a worker' it is those who "work for the ruling class" who are indIspensable to the society In their very oppressIOn. Such IS his situation; the third charactenstic of the man, according to Sartre, is that he goes beyond his situabon-ll 1a depassc-toward a radically dIfferent SItuatIon, whICh It is hIS aIm to create. A philosophy of revolution, then, will be a phIlosophy "in situatIon" but also a program of actIon beyond that SItuation. In partIcular, It wIll substitute a new conceptIon of value for that of the rulIng class; and, SInce this rulIng class founds ItS dominatIon on Its conceptIon of the nghts of man, that is of the dIvine nght of the bourgeOIS ruler to oppress the proletarian worker, It wIll be not an assertion of nghts but a denial of them. Hence, presumably, the appeal of matcrialIsm, SInce It substItutes a natural conceptIon of the human species for the bourgeOIS pretense of human dIgnity, whIch is only the digmty of ruler-person against worker-thing. But, by so domg, it negates all values, whereas what the revolutIonary seeks IS a new conceptIon of values, one which goes beyond the present SItuatIon, whIch enVIsages goods to be created In revolutIon rather than imposed by reaction. To describe adequately the revolutionary attitude, then, Sartre says, four POInts are needed. 15. Les Temps modernes, No. 10, P 2

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(1) that man is unjustifiable, that his existence IS contmgent that neither he nor any Providence has produced It; (2) as a consequence, that every collective order establIshed by men can be transcended [depasse] 10 the dIrection of other orders, (3) that the system of values current 10 a socIety reflects the structure of that SOCICty and tends to preserve It, (4) that It can, therefore, always bc transcended toward other systcms, which are not clearly perceived because the society which they exprcss does not yet eXI~t but which are antiCipated and, 10 one word, mvcnted by thc vcry cffort of the mcmbers of the SOCICtv to transcend It 16 10

These points, he continues, neither matenahsm nor Ideahsm proVide l\fatenahsm wIth Its ngld causalIty leaves no room for freedom-and the transcendence of one value-sItuation, toward another, \\'I1I(,h IS e~~entIal to the revolutIonary, is i frecdom' "TIus posSlblhty of movmg away from a SItuation rdccoller] to take a pomt of vIew on It (pomt of VICW wIuch IS not pure knowledge but mdlssolubly understandmg and actIon) -thIS is precIsely what we call 'frccdom ' "17 Ideahsm does no better, he belIeves, since, whIle recogmzmg subJectiVIty, It falls to acknowledge, what IS equally Important, the hardness of fact-the stubbornly eXIstent obstacles whIch the revolutIonary, 10 Ius very freedom, has set hU11Self to overcome. Moreover, Ideahsm IS, for Sartre as clearly as for the orthodox MdrxI~t, merely the attempt of the rulmg cla~s to cloak ItS self-mterest in grand phrases The correct account IS one different from eIther of these A bemg cOTltIngcnt, unJustifiable, but free, completely plunged into a socIety whICh oppresses him but capable of transcendmg that society by Ius efforts to change It, that IS what the revolutIonary man claims to be IdealIsm mystIfies hIm 10 that It bmds hml With ItS already given nghts and values; It masks hIS power of IOventmg hiS own paths. But matenahsm also m}stIfies him, by robbmg him of hiS freedom. The revolutionary phIlosophy 16. Ibid. p 12 17. Ibld.,p.13.

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must be a philosophy of transcendence [une phdosophle de 1a transcendence] .18 So the revolutIOnary phIlosophy turns out to be the philosophy of freedom-=-not just the philosophy of those who • seek freedom but the philosophy of the very free act Itself, i the phIlosophy of transcendence; that is, though Sartre does not here call It so, It turns out to be eXlstentiahsm. And what is more, as the phIlosopllY of freedom, it turns out, accordmg to Sartre, to be the phIlosophy of man m general. I t starts, mdeed, in one class, that of the workers-but a bourgeoIs doubtful of his own class values may come to ac.cept It; and, besides, It seeks, despite the probable need of bloodshed, not so much to destroy the ruling class as to jom workers and fonner rulers m a commumty of men, to make them equally free. So It IS not, lIke either matenalIsm or idealIsm, a myth used by one faction or another but a statement of the nature and action of the free man as such: thc revolutionary, Ly hiS very chOice of revolution, becomes "the man who wishes that man freely and totally assume hiS dec;tmy "111 Such, m bnef outlme, I!> Sartre's phIlo!lophy of revolution. There IS, of course, an obylOus plullSlbtlity m the _eguatIon of the free act Wlth the revolutionary act-there IS a stnkmg earallel, If not a logical eqUIvalence, between the eXI!ltentIal concept of transcendence, of choice In, but beyond, a concrete Situation, and the revolutionary's transcendence of hiS SOCial and polItical situation In hiS very grasp of It. But, dcsplte the stnking rightness of some of Sartre's inCidental observations (see, for Instance, the passage quoted on pp. 6-8 on the relation of mechamcal cause to human aims and choices), the theory as a whole has a certain artifiCialIty about It it is, agam, somehow too logical m the wrong places The phIlosopher's love of a neat logical construct has severa] times 18. Ibid, pp 1,-14. I have translated dcpasser by "trJnsccnd" The French tcrm transcendcnce occurs only 11l the final phrase "philosophy of transcendence .. 19 Ibid, p 30

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led to a faIlure of Sartre the artIst: as m The FlIes, which IS topheavy with exIstentIal theory, or even in The Unburied Dead, where the possIble vanants on the genuinely moving theme of death and torture are so exhaustively and conSCIen· tiously explored that the result is something more like a psychologi~t's card-mdex than a tragedy.20 But here It IS the phIlosopher hIm~elf who is gUIlty of too much neatness wIth too httle realIty or, m the jargon of the trade, too much coherence WIth too lIttle adequacy. ThiS IS apparent at several pomts. In the first place, one 1~ lIkely to ask one's self, as Sartre hImself asks of the Communist: What of the revolutionary after the revolutIOn? \ The phIlosophy of the free man in Its polItical aspect is the phIlosophy of transcendence as such, of gomg beyond the present society to create a ncw one. At present, 10 Sartre's pIcture, It IS the dichotomy of oppressor and oppressed that motivates such transccndence But what of the free man m the free society? If he is stIll frce, he stIll transcends his SituatIon to a new one; he IS still, by defimtIon, a revolutionary, but agamst what? Agamst freedom Itself? That IS ab~urd The reply might be, I suppose, that revolutionary philosophy is, as Sartre says, "m situation": It is thought now duected to a currently pres!lmg and sigmficant end But Sartre has mSisted, agam~t the Communists, that a phIlosophy of revolution must be at once immediately prac20 Cf Edmund Wilson's compamon of Sartre With Stemhetandard of IIvmg that dIstIngUIshes us aIllong the peoples of the earth Sartre IS prob.tbly qmte nght m !>aymg, lD Ius edltonal on Amenca, tlIat thc Amencan myth I~ not so much hved by as lIved under, that every Amenc.an tncs constantly, wIth an odd msecnnty, to Ic-wm and rea~ ..crt It!> efficacy for hImself. Yet, despIte tlus rclatIon of dIstance between the people and theIr Luth, It IS stIU, for most of them, the only fmth they know or can llIlagme, and for ~uch a fmth (as several contnbutors to Temps moderne!>'s Umted Statcs Issue have strcssed) a ngId dIVISIon of classc~, clearly recogl1l.lable from both SIdes of the cleavage, can lurdly be SaId to eXISt. IIere, It seems to me, mueh morc than m the relatIon of hIS thought to the French ReSIStance, Sartre has mdeed tned to buIld a gcnerJI theory upon a SItuation who!>e geograplucal and hlstoneallimlts senously Impmr It~ ul1lversal valIdIty. These are both dI!>turbmg 11l11ltatIons in the Sartrean tlIeory; but there IS a more scnous and more sweepmg objection, whIch we antIcIpated at the outset of thIS chapter Sartre's polItIcal theory and hIS analysis of the individual, using as they do the same central concepts-situatIon, free-

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dam, transcendence-form an mterestmg paIr of parallels. Is there, or is there needed, any bridge, any logIcal connecbon, between the two, or can the parallelism stand as such? That there IS need for such a conncctIon can, I suppose, hardly be questIoned; for any theory of the state and SOCICty, no matter how wide ItS field of reference, rests ultImately on and follows from some theory of the nature of the mdividual, if only on a demal that there is an individual. That Sartre tries, 10 hIS own case, to make such a connection is also clear, and It IS, I am afraid, equally eVident that he falls to make It with cogency or convictIon The crux of the matter lIes 10 the concept of solJdarity. The rcvolutIonary must be dlstmgmshed from the rebel He does not seek hberatIon for hImself alone, for that would mvolve only absorption IOta the rulIng class He seeks It for Ius whole class, even, at last, for all mankmd In hIS descnpbon of class-conscIOusness 10 L't!;tle et Ie ncant Sartle has representcd thc oppressed group as umted, mdlIectl)', for such jomt attIon, by thelI awarcncss of the oppressor as onlooker. 21 DIrectly, however, they arc stIll bound by the bes of conflIct only, which alonc forms thc dynamiC of one mdiVidual's relatIOn to anothcr, whether Wlthm or beyond hiS class. The conccpbon of the opprcssor as onlookcr and therefore as destroyer of subjectiVity IS lIkeWise mvolved, 10 part, 10 the Temps modemes essays But thcre are at least strong Illnts that thiS alone IS not enough that somethmg more than an mdlrect nous-objet is nccdcd Wltllil1 the oppressed class Itself If one IS to achlCve solIdanty rather than anarchy, a common revolutIon for freedom rathcr than the sporadiC rebellIon of the mdlvldual against Ius mdlvidual tyrant. Look at two passages in the second essay: We have seen .... that the revolutionary act is the free act par excellence. Not at all of an anarchIst and mdlVlduahst freedom; 21. See P 91, above.

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in that case, as a matter of fact, the revolutionary, by his very situation, could only claim more or less explIcitly the rights of the prIvileged class, that IS, his mtegratIon to the higher social strata. But smce he claims at the heart of the oppressed class and for all the oppressed class a more ratIonal SOCIal status, his freedom resides m the act by which he demands the lIberatIon of all his class and, more generally, of all men It IS, at Its source, recogmtIon of other lIberties, and It demands to be recognIZed by them. Thus It places Itself from the begmmng on the plane of solIdanty 22 This IS, at first Sight, a clear and logical statement of the revolutionary pOSItIon, but ItS Achilles' heel appears m the sentence "It is, at ItS ~ource, recognition of other hbertIes, and It demands to be recogmzed by them " Whence thiS recognition of other "hbertIe~"7 From where m the cucle of conflicts can It sprmg? The threat of the oppressor and the stand of the oppressed agamst hun one can see as a variant on the baSIC pattern of thc subJcct-obJect conflict. But a tie of mutual recogmtIon, first among the oppressed and ultimately among all mankmd-that one finds one's self, withm the framework of Sartre's eXlstentIahsm, unable to conceive. Wlthm that framework, as Sartre hlm~elf has SaId, "respect for another's freedom IS an empty phrase" (Ie respect de la liberte d'autrUI est un vam mol) l3 The second passage IS, If anythmg, more weasel-worded A revolutionary philosophy must take account of the pluralIty of lIbertIes and show how each one, even while bemg liberty for Itself, can be object for the other It IS only thiS double character \ of freedom and objectiVity that can explam the complex notIons of oppressIOn, of struggle, of frustration, and of VIOlence For one never oppresses but one freedom, but one cannot oppress It unless, in some respect, It lends Itself, that is, unless, for the Other, It prescnts the extenor of a thmg Thus one wIll understand the revolutIonary movement and Its project, which IS 22 Sartre, "Matermhsme et revolution" (second half), p 26

23 Sartre, L':£tre et Ie ne:mt, p 480

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to make society pass by VIOlence hom a state wherem lIberties are alIenated to another state founded on theIr reCIprocal recogmbon.24 Here we have the explicit statement of the oppressor-oppressedjsubject-object equatIon It IS in terms of conflIct and, as far as one can see, conflIct only that the revolutIonary recognizes the "pluralIty of lIberties." But suddenly out of this grim pIcture "one understands the revolutIonary move· ment and Its project, whIch IS to make SOCIety pass by violence from a state wherem lIberties are alIenated to another state founded on theIr reCIprocal recogmtion." From what human SItuatIOn, from what ncw and marvelous source in the depths of a subjectIVIty otherwise so lonely, so closely and so constantly endangered, does thIS balm of reciprocal recognition flow? WIthout It the whole theory of revolutIon as the phIlosophy of human liberty, as man's call "to hIS total destmy," collapses mto unrealIty. Yet m the eXIstentIal VIew of the mdlvidual there IS no place for such recogmtion and therefore, one is bound to conclude, no foundatIon on which to buIld the polItIcal theory whIch Sartre himself has sketched ThIS IS, as a matter of fact, apparent at some pomts, even in the less general and therefore, on the whole, more satisfactory dISCUSSIOns that we quoted earlIer For example, the passage on torture and vengeance by SImone de Beauvoir contInues' An obJect for others, every man IS a mbject to himself, and he lays the sharpest claIm to bemg recogmzed as such. Everybody knows, for example, how many fights m crowded places start WIth a bump or an aCCIdental kIck: the person that gets jostled madvertently IS not SImply a body, and he proves Ithe defies the other person WIth a word, a look; finally he hItS hIm. The respect he IS exactmg for hImself each of us claIms for hIS near ones and finally for all men. The affirmation of recIproCIty in interhuman relatIons IS the metaphysIcal baSIS for 24 Sartre, Matenal1sme et rbolutlon (second half), p 28

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the idea of JustIce. TIllS IS what revenge IS stnVIng to reestabbsh agaInst the tyranny of a freedom that wanted to make itself supreme 211 And thIs expansion of one's own claim to all humanity IS further elevated by MIle de Beauvoir into a unIversal moral pnnciple: .... there are cases where no redemptIon seems possible, because the eVil encountered IS an absolute eVIl, and when this happens, we find the POInt of VIew of chanty IS no longer acceptable, for we thmk that absolute evIl eXIsts. You can excuse every misdemeanor and every cnme, even, by whIch an mdlvldual asserts himself agamst socIety; but when a man debberately sets about to debase man mto thmg, he lets loose a scandal on earth which nothmg can make amends for. ThIs IS the only sm agamst man there IS, but once It has been brought to pass, no mdulgence IS allowable, and It IS man's bmmess to pumsh It 26 That thIS IS absolute eVIl, the ultImate and only sm agamst mankmd, I heartIly agree Yet, It IS, at the same tIme, by Sartre's account,27 the only pOSSIble relatIon of one human bemg to another eIther I try, m desire or sadIsm, to make another mto a thmg and so am gudty toward hIm; or I debase my own subJectlVlty to thmghood, as m love or masochIsm, and so sm agamst myself. That is, perhaps, only to say we are all smners. So we are. But If, where there IS sm, there IS sometImes no redemptIon, m general there Is-or at least the hope of it. And such hope can come, in this case, onl)' if respect for some other and so, mdIrectly at least, for all others can break the cIrcle of perpetual conflIct. MIle de Beauvoir says tllat it does so, yet her assertIon stands agamst, 25' Dc BeauvOlr, op CIt, P 136 26 Ibid, P 139.

27 SImone de Beauvou's analYSiS of mtersubJectlVe relations seems to differ m some lespeCts, as I have saId above, from that of Sartre It does not, how ever, to Judge from the fragments that I have seen, differ In the essentIal respect relevant to our diSCUSSion here, 1 e , It does not prOVide a "reciprocal recogmtlon" of two equally free beIngs for one another's freedom It pre sents, rather, a hierarchy of transcendences, In whIch each person makes hImself obJect for hiS "peer"

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rather than Within, existential theory. Her description of the conflict that constitutes vengeance is bnlliant; but the transference to the level of general moralIty slips in, like the "mutual recognition" of Sartre's essay, without due introductIon or explanation. Or again, the same IS true of Sadre's own remark 10 the "Portrmt of the Anti-Semite": "A man who finds it natural to denounce men cannot have our conception of the human."28 What IS "our concepbon of the human"? Where does It suddenly come from? One does not expect French Ideas, any more than Frenchmen, to travel about wIthout a carte d'identltC, or at any rate a passable counterfeIt thereof. 28 Sartre, "Portrait de l'antJs6mte," p 451.

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JASPERS AND MARCEL. THE NEW REVELATION 1 HE storm around eXIstentIahsm rages mostly about Sartrc and thc French atheIstIc school, of whom even HCldcgger IS saId to have saId "Good Godl I never mtended thatJ" But on the penphery of the movement are WIlters-apart even from the Barthlan theological hellS of Klcrkegaard-for whom God has not yet dIed and for whom, moreover, even the lonelmess of the Klerkegaardlan self IS, at least ostensibly, conquered by the discovery of ImmedIate commuDlcatIOn betwecn selves. So, It seems, the stress on personal eXistence may serve the lonely VISIon of God, as m Ss'ren Klerkegaard, or It may stem from the demal of God but Issue m a self equally sohtary, as m Sartre or Heldegger Or It may, as m the Protcstant Karl Ja~pers or the Cathohc Gabncl Marccl, mvolve a recogmtIon both of faIth m God and of dllect conuuumcatIOn wIth othcr finitc selves as necessary elements m personal CAlstcncc Itself The only pennutabon I have not sccn stated IS an eXlstcntIal phIlosophy affirnllng dllect cOl1unumcatIon whIle denymg God. ThI~ is, I thmk, hlstoncal aCCIdent rather tllan logIcal neceSSIty, for It appears to be the result of comcldence rather than of logIC that both Marcel and Jaspers mSIst on (m Jaspers' \ terms) both communication and transcendence. That faIth m God does not Imply dllect commumcabon we know from Klerkegaard, for whom mdlTed commumcatIon IS a necessary consequence of the kmd of subjectIVIty that alone leads to true faIth. That the acknowledgment of communicatIOn,

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conversely, does not Imply a transcendent faIth, one can only guess-for example, from the weakness of the attempted umon of the two in Jaspers or Marcel. But, lacking such a philosophy, we may fill out hIstorIcally, If not logIcally, the outlInes of actual, rather than possIble, exIstentIal theorIcs by examInIng some aspects of the Protestant and CatholIc varieties, respectIvely, In Jaspers and Marcel. Both these men belong to the IncreasIng group of those who lament the mechamzatIon of personalIty that has accompamed the mechamzatIon of industry. In an essay on contemporary irrclIglOn, publIshed In ~tre et aVOII In 1935/ :Marc.el attacked three contemporary plulosophles the IdealIStiC, the techmcal, and what one lllay call the "vItal," that IS, the phIlosophy wluc.h IdcntIfies the human In man WIth the merely livmg. Of thcsc, It IS the second whIch IS most Important and most dangerous. As Marcel sees It, tlIe pnncIpal charactenstIc~ of a techmcal VICW of the world are that It understands thmgs only m terms of some hold (pnse) that human agents helve on thcm, some way of mampulatIng thcm; that such techmques of mampulatIon and, consequently, the world It~clf appear perfectible-even neltural catastroplIes are looked on as unaccountable flJw~ 111 the machmery whIch we have not yet rectIfied but of course wIll ultuuatcly, and that, m the hght of thIS ",ay of rcgardIng tlllngs, man hllmelf becomes for hImself only an object of such tcchmques, knowmg hImself only by reflectIon as another object to handle and to perfect when he falls to run nght. The moral rcsults of thIS world-VIew are, for Marcel, con~pICUOUS and deplorable SInce the "intenor hfe" IS mmlnuzcd by such an externalIZIng attItude, human asplIahons are reduced likeWIse to their mimmum, I.e., to the mechanIcal purSUIt of instantaneous pleasures-which Marcel calls "Ie Anglo-Saxon havmg a good tIme." (The epIthet seems a bIt unfaIr to the Puntan tradltIonl) Moreovcr, If good IS 1 Gabnel Marcel, ttre et avaH (Pans Fernand Aubler, 1935), pp. 259-95

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reduced to mere momentary pleasure, neither IS the real nature of evil understood m our techmcal age. Marcel's pomt here IS rather provocatIve, though, of course, not new: that It IS just the notIon of an Imperfect world whch IS combined m our tIme WIth the denial of radIcal eVIl. The world as God made It was perfect, yet It had a devIl m It. The world of the I machme has ItS breakdowns, but It also has no mystenes and therefore no flaw~ ",hlch cannot be nghted by new and Im-l proved techmqucs. EVil really beyond our power to conquer does not eXIst. There are gnevous SOCial consequences, too, m Marcel's View, of the teehmcal phllosophy. By reducmg man to another object of his own techmque, ~ e have, he thmks, turned ~oclety from a genume commumty mto an aggregatr of deadened, pleasure-seekmg, pam-shunnmg umts that bear no mner spmtual relatIon to one another Marcel's model for a geullmc commumty, of course, IS the church, where f31th forms the ~pmtual bond that umtes ItS members And the common sourcc for all thcsc Ills of our tIme IS our forgetfulncss of the only part of man that makes hIm man-1m soul It IS to ~clve tins bctter part of our nature from ItS prescnt dechne that hc turns to the analySIS of personal eXlstencc as a phIlosophIc leItmotIv. , Jaspcrs dlIectcd a more extended and rather celebrated polemic agaimt tcc.hnocracy m DIe geIshge SItuatIon der Gegenwart, whIch appeared as No 1000 m the "Goschen" pocket senes and was also publIshed m EnglIsh (If one can call It sneh) under thc tItle Man In the Modern Age :l111Ough It covers a number of fields-everything from war to education-Its theme IS extremely sImple It IS an attack on the l\fassemenseh In every area-polItIcal, SOCIal, and culturalJaspers finds the fallure of our age In the human analogIes to mass productIon: m the levelmg-down of human dIfferences and therefore of the only slgmficant human achievements, to fit the cheap and shoddy pattern of the mass-pro-

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duced average man. This does not mean, despite hIs talk of such things as a "genuine war" or a "true anstocracy," that Jaspers is opposing polItical democracy. The "genuIne war" I cannot claim to understand-like Marcel's genuine relIgIOus COmmUnIty, it sounds, to say the least, a bit disqUIeting. But the "true anstocracy" is merely the commUnIon of those few indiViduals who have, each in his umque faslllon, realIzed the pOSSibilIty of genuIne inner eXIstence that is In all men and who reach out to one another In that achievement. What Jaspers is objecting to, as against such rarc and hardwon achlCvement, IS the unIversal predomInance of mediocrity as fact and standard in our SOCICty. Actually, this same medlOcnty, thc process of "wearing down into umformlty all that IS IndiVidual," IS more clearly described, from the POInt of view of the EnglIsh reader, In Mill's chapter "Of IndiVidualIty" In the essay On LIberty. What Jasperll has to say in DIe geIstIge SItuatIOn IS essentIally, despIte the differcnees In termInology, an elaboratIon of that chapter, as our Hollywood-radIO-ndden world is an elaboratIOn of the SituatIOn that it dcscribes On the other hand, Jaspcrs' attack on the cra of tcchnology 15 qualified at several pomts. He recogmzes the Inevitabihty of further technical advance and appears to hope that we may yet learn to use such skIlls m the serVIce, or at least not to the disscrvicc, of the goals of gcnuIne perllonal existence. And he does not, as Marcel at least appears to do, condcmn the mcthods and attitudes of posItIve science as such as necessarily dcstructIve of slgmficant human lIfe He admires Kant too much for that; and more espeCIally hIS great fnendship and reverence for Max Weber made him consider even the extensIOn of SCientIfic techniques to human problems as pOSSIble and important. Weber's greatness, he felt, was hIll ruthless honesty In lImitIng every SOCIOlogical l11vesbgation to a SIngle sectIon of expenence and In refUSIng to construct a dogmatic philosophy of human lIfc as such out of

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hIS carefully restncted empirical researches. Such social science is doubly modeled on natural SCIence in the KantIan spirit. It involves the search for truth WIthin a stnctly limited area, limited both by the phenomenon studIed and by the defimng principles applied to It, yet unlImIted In the sense that It can nevcr, thanks to Its phenomenal nature, be saId to be completed. And It leaves, as Kant's sCIence does, an open field for thc moral and relIgIOUS aspIratIons of men, SInce In ItS dISCIplIned objectIvIty It neIther Imposes on nor is Imposed on by the umquely mward, outwardly InexpreSl)Ible conflIcts or tnumphs of the concrete IndIVIdual self. Klerkegaard, of course, would find such a separatIon absurd, but It IS an Important mgrcdlent In Jaspers' modIfied eXlstcntIahsm A certam respect for pmlhve sCIence IS nnrrored, too, In Jaspcrs' treatment of posItIvIsm III the first volume of his PhllosopIllC. s IIe deals there WIth pOSItIVIsm and IdealIsm as thc two pllllosophlcs whIch have tncd, m recent tImes, to aSSImIlate all realIty mto a complete and umfied system Both faIl, he thmks, whcn they fall to recognllc thcIr own lllmtatIons; but tIley may be useful to genume, eXIstentIal phllosoplllzmg If they do rccogn17e those 11l1UtatIons The lImit of PO~lhvlSln IIcs, ultImately, m ItS mabllIty to know Itself and, ~ hat II) evcn worse, to lIve Itself "If I wanted to lIve posltlVlshcally, I ~hould not be myl)clf, thIs I know morc or less consoausly and havc no rest." The lnmt of IdealIsm, con· versely, lIcs m Its mabIlIty to recogmzc what cannot be under~tood, the brute facts of empmcal realIty, or, If It recogm7CS them, It dIsmIsses them, as IIcgel dId, as triVIal and Irrelevant to phIlosophy The common usc and the common \\ caknesl) of the two systems he 111 thclr mm of statmg uncqUIvocally the whole and complcted nature of the real; for 111 that they at once fulfil a human need and lead to a 3 Karl Jaspers. PhI1osophle (, vols • Berlm JulIUS Spnnger, 1932), Vol I PlulosopJusehe WeltonentIerung

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danger both of intellectual error and of personal faIlure. That is not to say that there is no truth in these systems; accordmg to Jaspers, there is no dIstinction of truth from falsity m phIlosophy but only the dIstinction of the honest, genumely personal search for truth from the arbItrary word-games of system-buIlders. Therefore, posItivism or IdealIsm, m so far as they do spnng from genume philosophlzmg, may lead "possIble eXIstence" to Its reahzatIOn through the very recogmtion of theIr systematIc lImits. POSItIVIsm and Ideahsm are true If they receIVe theu stImulus and hmitatlOn from a deeper source They are not only real but, when they are rc1atIvized, true forces III history as we see It and m our own awareness of what eXIsts. WIthout pOSItIvIsm there IS no body, WIthout IdealIsm no space for an obJectIve and meanmgful rcahzatIon of pOSSIble eXIstence 4

2 To escape thc spmtual dangers of our time, then, both thcse wnters turn, m rather different ways, to eXIstential concepts as remmders of those aspccts of human nature whIch should not and cannot be mechanized Marcel IS careful to !>pecify that m phIlosophizing in Kierkegaard's tradItion lIe I~ not dcnymg the valIdity of the ThomIstIc CJtholIc syntheSIS But, he says, the me1igious character of our agc unhappIly renders thc great mSIghts of that system valId only for some, not for all, of our contemporanes. So the phIlosophcr must somehow lead bewIldered humamty back to the fmth by wluch it used to lIve and by which It needs to hve And to do this It IS necessary to turn to the very concrete problems-or rather, for Marcel, the mystcnes deeper than mere problems at the heart of personal eXIstence. Here there is hope of findmg the hvmg root from whIch faIth may grow agam The method whIch Marcel pursues in thIS endeavor-if It deserves the name of "method"-IS pnnclpally that of the 4 IbJd., 1,236.

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"metaphysical diary." He published two of these, one under the title Journal metaphysIque and one forming the major portion of the volume £tre et aVOIl. This IS, however, not another Cartesian medItatIon. (In fact, Marce1Is as strong in hIS dislIke of all Descartes stands for as Sartre IS in hIS emphaSIS on the CarteSIan COgltO as the only vabd startmgpomt for phIlosophy.) The MedItatIOns IS the result of a ngorous appbcatIon of a seriously conceIved "SCIentIfic" techmque of problem-solvmg. The "MetaphYSIcal D13nes," on the other hand, COnsISt of Jottmgs of day-by-day reflectIons, sometImes mterconnected, sometImes qUIte random. One finds anythmg from "Walkmg WIth R today, was Impressed by \\-hat he saId about X" to "Today I expenenced grace for the fir~t tIme.. .. I have never felt such JOY." Jean Wahl, In Ius essay on Marcel In Vcrs Ie wncret,5 appears to tbmk hIghly of the Journal mctaphysique as a phIlosophIcal form. True, he IS wntmg of tbe earber dIary, whIch seems to have rather more coherence than ItS sequel in £tre et aVOlI, but, all the 5ame, I cannot agree that there IS m clther of these volumes a phIlosophIc method worthy of senom conSIderatIon. The mad dIalectIc of Klerkegaard make5 a good deal more sense than thIs-not to mentIon wbat M Iscre desenbes as the "bnlbJntly mac..c.urate" rea~onmg of Sartre6maccurate perhaps, but bnlhJnt cert.ullly 111 Ih tcchmquc and often even in its l11sIghts DespIte the shortcol11mgs of Ius method, however, the eXIstentIal concepts whIch Marcel stresses arc, m part at least, worth notmg Marcel, bke Sartre, though WIth a very dIfferent purpose, stresses the Importance of body m the an..1l.y.!olS of the human individual. But, he feels, one of the great errors of Cartesianism was to substItute body m the abtory 111 S.utrc l as well J~ III HCldeggcr-the back\\ard stress IS not ~o effectne III the findI Is~ue as I~ the forwcud one So Sartre can a~k ',"'llat, tlIen, IS a value If not the calI of tllat whIch IS not yeP But a value IS also the appeal of what has been, and perhaps onc can say, very tcntatncly, that what the eXlstentIahsts lack is a conceptIon of somethIng like tradItIon or commumty 1 The explICit treatment of hlstorv In L'Etre et Ie llcant IS adnuttedly bnef, but It doC'l seem rather forced and narrow In comparIson \\lth other a~pects of Sartrc s anal}"Sls

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on whIch to ground thelI view of freedom. In our hbertanan tradItion the demand for the universal sanctity of human freedom is probably IdentIcal wIth the concepbon of community. In that case it IS, for the account of our own situation, the inabIlIty of the eXIstentiahsts to expand and generahze theu stress on the freedom of the mdlVldual that IS at fault. But, for man m general, as dIstInct from modern European man, there IS not necessanly any such Identity; and If existentiahsm 15 m any sense what It claIms to be-an analysis of man, not merely a Western twenbeth-century self-portralt-its ImutatIon appears m the defect of the broader concept I do not mean to suggest, however, that CXIlltentIahsm may develop a concept of commumty or hlstoncal tr