tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3077210.post111323557111760613..comments2024-03-28T08:37:58.136+01:00Comments on Limited, Inc.: saint sartreRoger Gathmannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11257400843748041639noreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3077210.post-1116137328789552032005-05-15T08:08:00.000+02:002005-05-15T08:08:00.000+02:00It is questionable as to whether or not mere "resp...It is questionable as to whether or not mere "responsibility" is enough to link Sartre up with US lefties. The groundlessness of human existence is enough to interrupt the enthusiasm of most leftist demands for a grounded ethics. The only principles that emerge out of Sartre is the resistance of those historical practices that efface the ontological character of the human as always only articulable as always being what it is not and not being what it is. I.e., the impossiblity of stable identities destroys the possibility of identificatory schemas as operative grounds for solidarity. Nevertheless, the question of strategic identities does become a positive question...by the way, does anyone have any knowledge of Badiou's relation to Sartre?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3077210.post-1113939704532880982005-04-19T21:41:00.000+02:002005-04-19T21:41:00.000+02:00Drat. I was hoping to read more devastating critiq...Drat. I was hoping to read more devastating critiques of my 2nd rate analysis of Sartrean "responsibility." Yet one might ask why isn't some synthesis of Rawlsian and existentialist approaches to responsibility and decision-making feasible? We may be condemned to choose about many things (though many basic human actions--having to do with sex, food, employment--are perhaps more determined than Sartre was willing to admit), yet the specific character of those choices--, motivations, relevant considerations, consequences--are not adequately described in the Sartrean accounts.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3077210.post-1113351719972120242005-04-13T02:21:00.000+02:002005-04-13T02:21:00.000+02:00I don't think JS or anyone can avoid at least tang...I don't think JS or anyone can avoid at least tangentially addressing the more traditional ethical issues--i.e., at some point consequentialism enters the picture, even the existential or situational picture. Self deception is wrong not only because of psychological damage to the individual but because what happens when the self-deceived person (say a Schwarzenegger who believes he is bringing real reform to the masses while slashing away at education budgets) does within the social context. No? But it is true that the liberals too often think in Rawlsian or utilitarian terms of norms or rules applicable across the board: the lib. argues "let's organize to raise taxes," instead of "let's form small units of hackers and bank robbers and jack the financiers of America"Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3077210.post-1113349234571893942005-04-13T01:40:00.000+02:002005-04-13T01:40:00.000+02:00Actually, the case you mention -- "if one chose t...Actually, the case you mention -- "if one chose to be, say, an authentic member of the Wehrmacht, fully aware of the lies and deceptions of the nazis, one would would have had JPS blessings" -- is more a case of bad faith. I don't really think that is a problem for JS -- I have been describing the formal conditions for freedom, which I think are outlined in Sartre, without describing the ethic -- the valuing of the possibility of those conditions. The case you describe is easier for JS than other cases, as for instance -- what if you are fighting against the colonialist oppressor and you receive a piece of information that would discredit the insurgent leader? Things of that type. in which bad faith collides with the praxis of freedom, are harder for him -- and for all of us. <BR/><BR/>Look, I'm not nominating JS as a god -- certainly, philosophically, I'm closer to Foucault or to Deleuze -- but I am saying that he produced the outlines of what has become identical to the presuppositions by which the left operates -- and the presumptions of the culture that the left has moved, in a certain direction, since the fifties. Don't look for too much in Being and Nothingness and Cr. of Dialectical Reason -- but don't use limit cases as invalidating, either. Sometimes they are, sometimes they simply point to repairs needed in a system of thinking.Roger Gathmannhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11257400843748041639noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3077210.post-1113348479110007232005-04-13T01:27:00.000+02:002005-04-13T01:27:00.000+02:00If who one is determines how one acts, again, why ...If who one is determines how one acts, again, why not an uebermensch, if not the prototypical anarcho-opportunist-- ok, I ask forgiveness for spouting the Walter Kaufmann cliches, but I have never understood how one obtains a duty from early Sartre, other than "be authentic," and if one chose to be, say, an authentic member of the Wehrmacht, fully aware of the lies and deceptions of the nazis, one would would have had JPS blessings....or is there for the "subject" in a particular situation some requirement that he must assess or value the freedoms and choices for all, so the more options and choices each has (real or apparent) the more palatable the situation? I don't recall much of any discussion of this but that would make Sartre seem more Rawlsian then initially supposed--not necessarily a drawback...Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3077210.post-1113341443503087992005-04-12T23:30:00.000+02:002005-04-12T23:30:00.000+02:00And certainly you'd be right about the nihilism --...And certainly you'd be right about the nihilism -- but Sartre's freedom isn't the Gidean acte gratuit. In my post I perhaps did not emphasize enough that Sartre embeds freedom in the situation -- so that the measure of freedom becomes the measure of the situation, and not the options abstractly opened by one's status as a contract holder. This is why the early Sartre ties who one is to how one became the way one is through an ethic of responsibility. Which, I think, is at the center of the contemporary ethos. Making the situation both a limit on freedom and the (transient) result of an indeterminate number of choices founds the contemporary left's notion of politics -- which isn't just about mechanisms, but about identities.Roger Gathmannhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11257400843748041639noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3077210.post-1113332971847717432005-04-12T21:09:00.000+02:002005-04-12T21:09:00.000+02:00If a sartrean model of freedom as defined by subje...If a sartrean model of freedom as defined by subjective actions holds, why not choose to be Raskalinikovs instead of, say, ethicists. As some of us liberal petite-bourgeois types unfortunate enough to have been subjected to some of Being and Nothingness always yawped, isn't JPS mostly nihilism--or entailing nihilism---with some phenomenological wanking and freudian overtones.....Deriving some notion of duty or politics from existentialism--which seems to insist that all decisions are valid, except for those based on self-delusion--seems quite absurd.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com