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Existentialism Of Jean Paul Sartre
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He further maintains that insofar as Consciousnessis conscious of
itself, it is purely absolute. The central message of the celebrated
book of Sartre, Being and Nothingness presents an existential concept of
self “as the unique individual that is essentially free even though in
chains, is a master of his own fate.â€9 He therefore projects the self in
conformity with the analysis of Cartesian thought, as individual human
being seeking for apodictic certainty as a referential point of
departure. The actual message of self in Sartrian philosophy may not be
correctly sent without the cause to “make a veritable insight into the
ontological and epistemological variations, wherein the Cartesian cogito
becomes essentially manifested.â€10
Hans Gadamer would have been
forgotten in the arc of intellectual history if not for his celebrated
line ‘No one speaks from nowhere’, thus, to speak implies speaking from a
particular point of view. Bearing this in mind, the question of self in
Sartrian philosophy may not be exhaustively explored without a
necessary reference to his phenomenological background.
1.2 Existentialism: A Phenomenological Background.
The
word “phenomenology†has quite a long history in philosophy.
Occasionally, it was employed by Immanuel Kant to stand for the study of
phenomena or appearances as opposed to things-in- themselves. Hegel, in
his phenomenology of mind, used the word for his exposition of the
manifestations of the stages of the mind, from perception, through the
forms of consciousness, to the highest intellectual spiritual
activities. Husserl’s Introduction to Pure Phenomenology bracketed,
questions concerning reality and tends to devise method
for detailed and accurate description of various kinds in
their pure essences.11
A
brief intellectual tour in the existentialists’ environment will reveal
that, it was Edmund Husserl (1859-1938) that first picked up the
intellectual relay- race in the German phenomenology. Thrilled by the
Cartesian cogito, he plans to establish from a phenomenological
background, the self, from the focal point of action as the existing
agent. The undeniable influence he asserted on his successors, thinkers
like Martin Heidegger, Merleau-ponty and Jean Paul Sartre carried along
the phenomenological relay race. Due to the fact that existentialism
owes its definitive emergence to phenomenology, invariably most
existentialists are phenomenologist though the reverse may not be the
case, notwithstanding, there is an undeniable fact of close tie that
developed between the two styles of philosophy. The fact is obvious;
“Phenomenology seems to offer existentialism the kind of methodology
necessary to pursue the investigations into human existence.â€Fascinated by Cartesian methodic doubt, Husserl radicalized its tenets
with a certain degree of consequence. The transcendental consciousness
could no longer be characterized in terms of a thinking matter, a
‘res cogitans’ but an acting matter. In his argument, he stresses that
if consciousness only exists as consciousness of something, then,
Husserl’s interpretation of the methodic doubt implies that the
‘physical ‘I’ would perish along the line, “because the ‘I’ presents the
character of an object.â€13 The existentialists developed
phenomenology to suit their own purpose. The point of divergence between
Husserl and the existential phenomenologists is not very difficult to
pinpoint. Whereas the former places emphasis on essence and approaches
phenomenology as an apodictic science, the latter stresses on existence.
The existentialists’ allegiance to existence could be seen in Sartre’s
assertion ‘existence precedes essence’. In this regard, they refuted
Kantian dualism that supposed some hidden ‘noumena’ of which the
‘phenomena’ is merely the appearance.
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