DREADFUL FREEDOM

DREADFUL FREEDOM

A Critique

of Existentialism

By MARJORIE GRENE

THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS

THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS, CHICAGO 37Cambridge Urnvemty Prl'ss, London. N W I, EnglandW J. Gage 8< Co. LImIted. Toronto 3D. Canada

Copyrrght 1948 by The Unll'trslty ofChICago All nghb restrl'eJPubll~hed 1948 Composed and prInted by [HE UNIVl!R~ITY OP

CHlCAGO PRESS, ChICago, Illmols, USA

TO DAVID

FOREWORD

~lIS is, in the main, an introductory essay; it is cer­

tamly m no sense an attempt at an exhaustive ordefinitive treatment of existentialIsm. There are nu­

merous techmeal questions-such as Sartre's relation tophenomenology or psychoanalysis, for mstance-whlch mightwell be dealt with at greater length; so might, m a dIfferentcontext, such problems as the existential treatment of bme1D 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, ofthe mdl\'ldual m hnnse1f and in his relation to others.

Chapters 11 and vi and parts of chapters IiI and iv appearedas artIcles m the Kenyon RevIew m 1947. My thanks are dueto the editors for theu permission to repnnt them, and tothem, 3'i well as to Profes~or Ehseo VIvas. of OhIO StateUmverslty, and Profcs'ior \Vallaee Fowhe, of the Umversltyof ChIcago. for theIr ad\ice and encouragement. To myhusband and to J\lrs Benn Frankfort lowe much morethan I can say.

Acknowledgment ]S due the followmg publIshers: toLibrame Galhmard. for permission to quote from L'J!tre etIe ncant, to Harcourt Brace and Company. for penmssionto quotc from 'The RepublIc of SIlence; to Fernand Aubier,for pcnl1ls~ion to quote from ~tre ct avon; to George 'Allenand 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 ofSimone de BeauvolI's Eye {or Eye; to the edItors of the NewYorker, for permIssion to quote Edmund \VIlson's reviewof Sartre; and to 1\1:. Sartre, for pernllSSlOn to quote articlesin Les Temps modernes.

[ Vll ]

TABLE OF CONTENTS

~ I. WHY EXISTENTIALISM? 1

II. 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 NEW

REVOLUTIONARY 95

VI. JASPERS AND MARCEL THE NEW REVELATlo~ 122

VII. POSTSCRIPT 141

BIBLlOGRAPlIICAL NOTE 150

[ix ]

CHAPTER ONE

WHY EXISTENTIALISM?

1

T IU more fa!llllonable a plulo!lophy becomes, the moreelllm'c IS Its defimtron So the proponenh of eXlsten:hahsm pm c1auu that, though mJny attack, few under­

stand them. They mmt on the essentral optImIsm of theIrdoctnne that "man makes hUllselt" for there IS always, untildcath, another chance. Granted, they would say, that, intheIr \\Idc humamry, thcy c:\plore the far comers of humanhfc, thc horrors and perversIOns uncharted by tImorouscaph\'cs of gcntIlIty. Granted, too, t1 WIth h ." ruth­lc<;!>nc!>!l, thc\' cxpo~e the (" ~f.. fraudulen., stnctlybOurgCOl!l "human (hgmty" 1 • Just becausc of this ve~

hllmanCnC\\, tillS \ cry honcsty, they are dccncd as pen ertsand lcono(.·la~h. a~ plulo!loplllc l1lhl1l!lt!l and drhshc freaks.So. finally, a!l the \\Ord goes around, e\cry treatIse that doomslIl.ln to de!ltru<.tron. c\cry nO\el \\hose characters are mJdor bad, every plclY that depresses without elevating, IS IJ­bcled "1>0 c\')!ltcnh,ll", and hence eXlstenhahsm, more e\enthdll the n,ltmah!llll of Zola or of Ibsen III their days, comesto mean thc 1>hockmg. the sordId, or the obscene.

One mar '\ell agrec WIth the existentialIsts that, so looselymcd, thc word IS nearl} meanmgless-cxcept perhaps for avague sensc that tins mO\cment, lIke othcrs, expresses thecollapse 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 undoubtedlyhave brought a blush to the cheek of the PodsnappiJn youngper~on. But in that sense, after all, anyone, from Freud to

[1]

DREADFUL FREEDOM.

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

Nearly as meaningless, too, it seems to me, is the equallygeneral, though much more senous, use of the word in somephilosophic discussion, m which nearly every philosophersince Hegel IS shown to be in some sense an existentiabst.Agam, there IS truth m tlus usage, since existentialism is, inone strand of Its development at least, a reaction againsUhesJ>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 ambiguoussense that nmeteenth-century philosophy m general. fromSchellIng 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, moredeeply than he would hImself have granted, even by thearchfiend~ But Klerkegaard was m Ius own tIme com­pletely WIthout fame or mfluence; and to spread the name ofhis pecuhar brand of dIalectic over an mdefimte number ofhis predecessors and contemporanes is to spread It very thin.

Moreover, as Sartre and numerous others have repeatedlyinsIsted, there IS, in fact, no need for all this vagueness andobscunty, since an extremely simple, bteral, and precise def­imtIon of eXIstential phIlosophy is easy to come by and easyto 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 issimple and intelligible as "2 and 2 are 4." Why, then, all thebewddcrment 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 mnstmake 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. Forinstance, in the thlIteenth-century controversy about proofsof the existence of God, the Augusbnians beheved in- theprionty of essence to existence-in the possIbility of movingfrom the Idea of God, the mtUltive apprehension of Hisessence (in so far )as such apprehension of the infiniteis 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 humanknowledge, 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 mtuitiveawareness of essences and eternal truths.1 Yet, if there is any­one in the whole of \Vestcm philosophy who has never beenaccmcd of being an existentialist, surely it is S1. Thomasl

The necessary quahfication to the existentialist principleeaSily 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 toactuahty 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 weshall ~ec, the ",hole notIon of starting With "pure bemg" andof 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 purethought 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 mightbe. The Hegehan play with essences is a pompous, professo­rial game, great 10 pretensions but despicably trivial in itsbaSIC reahty. But the existence to which I<ierkegaard contrasts

1. EXlstencc IS pnor to essence In St. Thomas only in the order of know·mg, not of bemg. but the example IS suffiCIent to show that the peral prin·Clple, Simply stated, does not hold EXlStentiahsm 15 not the phl1osophy forwhich, In general, exIStence 15 pnor to essence.

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DREADFUL FREEDOM

this game WIth essences, the ~heer fact that summons hImfrom the dream-world of speculation, IS, nearly always, avery particular eXIstence: that of the thmker hImself whoplays the game. How pItIable IS the wretched HegelIan pro­fessor, bmldmg hIS great dream-palace and hvmg beSIde Itm a hovel; marchmg WIth the World-soul through Chinaand IndIa but neglectmg, untIl It shnvels up to nothmg, theonly soul that should really concern 111m-hIS own. It III fact,indeed, that existenbahMll puts before essence-but a par­ticular human fact. Not the sense-perceptions of a Thomas,generally accessIble m theIr standard character to all ourspeCIes, not even the more "subJectIve" but equally umfonnimpreSSIOns of Humc, but Just the unique, mexpreSSlble thatof anyone conscIOus bemg's partIcular eXIstence-such ISthe actualIty that Klerkegaard and hIS twentIeth-ecntury suc­cessors agree m referring to when they declare, as theIr firstpnnclple, the pnonty of eXlstcnce ovcr cssence

2

Takmg eXIstentIalIsm, however, m the context of reachonsagainst Hegel and the peculiar ":.lbsolute Ideahsm" denvcdfrom him, one may, of course, mSIst that the movcment hasm this respect no umquenes'>, that the pragmatIsm of Jamesand Dewey, for cxample, was an equally effectIve and muchless outlandish rebelhon against the once ommpresentHegehans There IS certamly, m James, a SimIlar turmng ofthe phIlosopher's attentIon from spcculatIve system-bUIld­ing to more pressmg human concerns "The stagnant fchcltyof the Absolute's own perfectIon moves me as little as Imove It." There IS even, at some pomts, a distmct l!!cencssbetween the pragmatIc descnptIon of knowledge and thecontemporary eXIstentIalIsts' analySIS of human expenence.For example, there IS the well-known description by HeI-

[4 ]

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 aclass of things that pomt, and notably thmgs that pomt assigns. These signs-for mstance, lo Heldegger's example, themechamcal 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 somethingas other thmgs have. ll1elr dIfferenha IS that, as signs point­109 to other thmgs, they not only serve a particular practicaluse but reveal somcthmg of the relations between tlungs andtherefore of the nature of things-at-hand in general-still,howcvcr, thmg'i-at-hanc1, mtcrpreted as useful for somethingnot ali mcrely there Thus sIgns are doubly pragmatic. First,thcy arc only one <.IdS'> IJ1 a umverse of things pragmaticallymterprcted, tlllng<,-for-usc Second, the use which they havel!l to sub<,cne a pragmatIc mterprctabon of the \,odd: tolllununatc the gcner.!l structure of the world m wInch \\ebve as It,>clf wnshtuted b~ thmgs-for-use and our use of orconcern \uth them 'Vltlun tlus class of slgn-pragmata, more­ovcr, !l~mbol, e~pres!>lOn, and meanmg are themselves onlysubc1J!l<,e'>, hstcd along With "trace, remams, memonal, docu­ment, e\'ldcncc, appearance:':! All thiS looks very hke a varia­tion of Jamcs's thcmc of Ideas as railroad tIckets from onestation to another m our cxpcnence, or hke a different!}'oncntcd but not ha!>lcally dl"smnlar \erSlOn of Dc\\ey's' ex­pcnmcntallogic. In fact. a dctaIlcd comparison of IIcldeggerand Dc\\ ey has been attcmptcd at least oncc, and a super­fiCial hkcllCe,o; onc ccrtamly cannot deny.

2 Martm HCldcggcr. Scm lind ZClt, crste Halfte (Hallc Max Niemeyer,1931) First pubhshcd In 1927

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DREADFUL FREEDOM;a

Even in Sartre, though he decnes the pragmatic theory ofknowledge as "pure subJective Ideallsm," one can find state­ments which are, though much more complex and subtlethan anythmg m the Jamesian or Deweyan phIlosophies,not out of harmony, at any rate, with the general tenor ofthe pragmatic account of knowmg as subordmate to doing.There is a stnking passage, for example, m an article 011

"Materialism and Revolution" III Les Temps moderncs.The theme of the essay-the revolutIOnary as eXlstenhallst,not as materialIst (of whIch we shall have more to say in alater chapter)-would doubtless shock the mnate conserv­amm of an orthodox pragmatist. But Sartre's statement ofthe intrinsic relation between human ends and the percep­tion of nonhuman, mechanical cause-and-effcct patterns IS,

if not pragmatic, somethmg the pragmatIsts should havesaid if they had known what they were at·

Here again matenaltsm gIves the revolutionary more than heasks. For the revolutIOnary demands not to be a thmg but to jgovern things It IS true that he has acqUIred, 10 work. a correctapprecIatIOn of freedom That [freedom] whIch has becn 11m-;rored for him by his achon on thmgs IS far rcmovcd from the,'abstract freedom of thought of the StOlc.lU mamfcsts Itself in a\partIcular SItuatIOn into which the worker has been thro\\n bnthe chance of hIS buth and the caprice or mtcrcst of ]m mastcr. \It appears m an enterpnse \\-hlch he has not started of hI'> ownfree will and which he wIll not fimsh; It IS not dlstmgmshablcfrom hIS very engagemcnt at the heart of that cntcrpmc, but,finally, if he becomes aware of hIS freedom, from the depth ofhIS slavery, It IS because lIe mcasurcs tllC efficacy of hIS wncrcteactIon. He does not have thc pure Idea of an autonomy that hedoes not enJoy, but he knows hIS power, whIch IS proportionateto hiS actIon What he establishes, 111 the course of the achonItself, IS that he goes beyond fdcpasse] the present !>tate of thematenal by a precIse proJcct of dlsposmg of It m such and sucha way and. that, thIS proJect bemg Identical WIth the governmentof means 111 VICW of ends, he, m fact. succeeds 1Jl dlspo'lmg of itas 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 thepresent 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 toeffect IS revealed m and by the efficacy of an act whIch IS at onceproject and reahzabon. It IS, 11l fact, the doelhty and at the samebme the reslstanc.e of the UUlVer!le wIueh show hIm at the samehme 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; 'Vlthoutthe IllnmmatIon whICh that end prO\ Ides for the present ~ltua·

tlOn, there would be m that sItuation neither causal eonnectmnnor rclJ.tJon of means to end, or rather there would be an mdls­tmc.t mfimty of meam and ends, of effects and causes, Just asthere ,..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 bmdmgd '>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.,tractl.m of nature hut III so fdr d~ a human proJect carve'> out andIllu11lmates, m the mIdst of the mfimte mtcrJ.(hon of phenom­ena, J (crtam parhal dctcnl111u'>m .\nd, 111 tlll'> d<;tcrmml!>m,which I~ proved slInpl) by the effie8c) of hUlll,In actIOn-as theprmclp]e of \rcllllJlcdc<' \\:I!> alrC,ld\ IN.'d and understood byshipbUilder!. lOll!!; before i\rclllmedcs h,ld gl' cn It It~ conceptualform-thc rcl,lboll of cal\~e to effect IS mdlsccrmhle from thatof 1l1cam to end l11C orgal1l( Ul1lt~ of thc proJect of the" orkcr1<, the cmergcnce of an end ,du( h at fir"t \\:IS not m the um' erseand Wlllcll mamfe~ts It~c1f hy thc dl'>po~ltl(ln of mcans With aVICW to adm', lllg It (for the end IS nothmg but the s, nthebclImt} of all the 11Ic.ms arranged to produce It); and, at the sametnne, the lower ..tr.\ t11111. \\ hlch !>ubtcnds these meJllS and ISdl\co'ered 111 It'> turn hy thclr ,en (h~P0'>lhOIl. 15 the rcl.atlonof 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, "hleh1~ conceived only m the hf;ht of the Anglo-:\mcncan proJcct ofwmnmg 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'> andmteractlons 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 Itexists, on the contrary, for engagmg one's self in present actionand c:onstructmg a future; it IS that by which there IS born a futurewhIch penmts understandmg and changmg the present. Thusthe worker, 10 fact, learns his freedom from thmgs, but precIselybecause the thlOgS teach him that he 15 anythlOg m the worldbut a thIng.8

In the same article, too, Sartre gives an account of thegenesis of philosophic systems not unhke Dewey's descrip­hon, for instance, 10 Reconstruction in PhIlosophy. Philos­ophies have in the past, accordIng to both authors, served thefunction of stabIlizmg the norms by which the ruhng classin a society justifies Itself; theIr pretensions to intellectualobjechvity 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 Humianhne, from which Dewcy's talk of custom, habit, and so onappears to stem; but then accounts of the social ongIn ofwhat 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 ofvalues from past to future from a crystallizatIon of whathas been to an aspIration toward what needs to be "What,then, in reality, is a value," says Sartre, "If not the call ofthat which is not yet?"4 True, one might say it is presentmore than future that Dewey turns to (see hiS denunciationof the utIlitarians' "hedOnIstic calculus" because of its ex·cluslve dlTectIon to future things wanted rather than tointerests and satisfactions felt now). A more importantdifference, however, in the two accounts lies not in Dewey'slesser emphasis on the future but in the kind of future to

3 Jean-Paul Sarhe, "Mat~nahsme et revolution (lin)," Les Tempsmodemes, I, No. 10 (July, 1946), 18-20

4. Ibid, p. 12

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WHY EXISTENTIALISM?

-bch each writer wants to shift our attention. To tumalues from past to future is for Sartre to tum from the sanc­

tioning of bourgeois privilege to a vision that sees beyondthe sectional interests of the society and hence to revolution.For Dewey the change from what were falsely called "eternalprinciples" of truth and morals IS to a sort of spontaneousgrowth 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 butremaimng faithfully WithIn the present one, prOVides some­thmg like a new dogmatism, less precise in outlIne but justas 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 scienceand scientific method, In turnIng philosophic emphaSIS fromthe speculative to the factual, from umversal to particular,turns more generally than e'ClstentIalIsm to facts as such, tothe stream of perceptions, In themselves humanly Indiffer­ent, which follow continuously through our consciousnessand even, by some accounts, constitute it Pragmatism InthiS regard contInues, though In a different style, the hen­tage of Locke and Hume, while existentialism substitutesa new and puzzlIng concrete givenness for the indtfferentouter flow of sense-data that constitutes the material forSCientific construction. Therefore, It IS a different kind ofeXistence whose pnonty to essence IS proclaimed by the twophllosopll1es. .

Nor IS that yet the most Significant difference betweenthem. What IS really essentIal is not so much the kmd offact 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 fromfalse traditional moralities there always comes, in Dewey

[9J

DREADFUL FREEDOM

and his followers, a pomt at whIch one suddenly finds thatwith the elImmatIon of relIgIOus superstItIon and metaphysical Ignorance, new values or even old ones have beenspontaneously generated out of the bedrock of fact andmore 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 glonousgrowth of a harmonIous socIety m \\ hleh all work willInglyand sweetly together for the good of all. And at that pomtpragmatism Itself succumbs to a delUSIOn at least as gncvousas 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-byItself generate eIther good or eVIl Not, as Sartre pomt!! outm the artIcle already quoted, the mec.hamcal mterconnec­tIons of thmgc; but the free acts of men upon those thmgscreate, maintam, and constItute values It IS m the dichot­omy between fact and value, between what merely and maobonally but undcmably IS, and what we aspIre to, yet \\hatas undemably IS not· in what Ibsen's Brand calls "the dJrklyfelt splIt between thmgs as they are and tlunge; as they oughtto be," that human grcatncs~ :l!> well as human fmlure hesAI!d It IS th.e perception of that dichotomy tlmt IS the centraland signJ~cant inSight of existentIal philosophy As agamstsuch mSlght, pragmatIsm appears rather ao; gh'ing only thcreversc Side of Palmstrom's dIctum III the Morgcmtcrnballad-

Well, so schlmc; cr mc~~crsch:lrf,

Nlcht sem kann \\as llIeht sein darf l'i

The inadequacy of sCIentIfically onented plulosophIcs toexplain the geneSIS of values IS more conspICUOUS perhaps,

'; "For, he concludes, faolor-kecn,What's not suppo~cd to be cannot be II

[10 ]

WHY EXISTENTIALISM?

though not essentIally dIfferent, in the posItIon of the schoolnow vanously called "logical POSItIvIsm," "scIentIfic empIri­cIsm," or the like; for here the emphasis on modern logIsticmethods, on the one hand, and, on the other, the exphcItrestrictIon of the "facts" that logic or mathematIcs workson, to spabotemporally locatable sense-data have doubly re­moved the subject matter of philosophy from any relevanceto 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 worldof It, that good and evIl, Importance and ummportance, canongmate Value.. arc created, mother ,vords, only b)' the freeact of a human agent who takes this or that to be good orbad, beautIful or ugly, m the lIght of hIs endeavor to gl\'esigmficance 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 asbehavlOIlSbc 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", littleto 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 doWIth the mfimte shades and subtlebes of meanIl1g or "hatare 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 asIfor Kant. no wIll apart frOl:!! ~c:cQpm. But for posltI\'1sm therearc only two necessItIes: mathematIcal and mechumcal; orrather, 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 ofpseudo-necessity. Freedom there certainly IS n'ot, except asthe nonsensical babbhng of phllosophers:-such an oriema:- - - --- - - -. - --- -

[ 11 ]

DREADFUL FREEDOM

tion in fact or in existence, then, is as much the contrary ofexistentialism as is the systematic Idealism that they bothoppose.

3ExistentIahsm 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 muchagamst the claIms of sCIcotific philosophIes as it IS againstthe more hIgh-sounding but no more ambitious systems thatpreceded them. But 10 that case one may wonder how eXIsten­tialism dIffers from other contemporary movements thatclaim to redeem a lost humamty by rescuing us from, notthrough, SCIence There are, notably, t",o dIrectIons for suchrevolt agamst the intellcctual and spmtual predommance ofthe sCIentIfic temper. One may demand, hke RemholdNIebuhr, a return to Christian faIth; or one may rely, as, forexample, such WrIters as Brand Blanshard or R M. Hutchinsvanously do, on truths of reason accessible to all who arewillmg to understand them. As dIstInct from the simplenaIvete of pragmatist and POsitIVISt, what all these wntershave to say agamst our faIth, our phIlosophy, our educatIon,or our pohtIcal unwisdom is entirely convmcmg. But agamstboth 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, inthe sense of tradItIonal ChristIanity, a faithless generation.But simply to assert to such a generation that faIth is whatIt needs is-even should It be true faith-to talk, hke Zara­thustra, to a deaf and unheeding multItude: "this is not themouth for these ears." Faith is not to be had by fiat but onlyby 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·

[12 ]

WHY EXISTENTIALISM?

trary notwithstandmg-as deeply based on faith as is anysupernatural knowledge. The framers of our Constitutionconceived, some of them at any rate, that they were found·ing a government on the eternal truths of reason. To us whohave lost the Newtonian-Lockean sCIentIfic basis for theirpnnclples, our behef 10 those same pnnciples has become anact of faith, not an mSIght of reason-of faIth m reason itself,perhaps-but nevertheless an act by whIch we believe, notan argument by whIch we know. The world-vIews, whetherThomIstic or Cartesian, in the hght of which these truthscould be demonstrated and conveyed hke mathematicaltheorems to docIle pupIls, are dead and gone; and, howeverdeeply we may belIeve m the doctnne of the brotherhood ofman, we can neIther prove ItS universal truth nor persuadeIf we could prove.

That is not a specifically existentIalIst obJcction. And, ofcourse, 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 andeven necessary way out of our present moral chaos. Whatan atheIstic eXIstentIalIst lIke Sartre asserts, however, of eItherthe religious or the metaphysIcal solutIon IS that we havehere 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 butsupernatural mysteries or eternal tmths of reason. Yet theystIll are facts, which we dIscover eXIstmg obJectively outsIdeourselves and on which we can rely, m blIssful dependence,to guide our actIons toward the good and the right. So boththese attitudes, equally With matenalistIc or posItIvistIctheories, exemplIfy what Sartre calls "the SpIrit of serious­ness"· they seek to escape OUT ultimate, inexplicable, andterrible responsibIlIty for the values that we lIve by. by gIvingthem a cosmic rather than a human, a necessary rather thana libertarian, source.

[ 13 ]

DREADFUL FREEDOM

How existentIahsm fares in Its endeavor to save us at oncefrom all these false Idols we shall try, m the succeedingchapters, to dIscover. We shall find m It, I thmk-in some ofIts proponents at least-a bnlhant statement of the tragIcdIlemma If not of man, at least of man m our time. And weshall find in It, also, relentless, even extravagant, honesty mthc rejectIon of easy solutIons or apparent solutions to thatdIlemma. Whether such honesty Itself, heroically mamtamedagamst every mtellectual temptatIon, can m Its splendId,self-nghteous IsolatIon, of Its own forte prove the solutIonof Its own problem-that IS at first, and perhaps wIll be tothe end, an open qucstIon

[14

CHAPTER TWO

S~REN KIERKEGAARD. THE SELFAGAINST THE SYSTEM

1

ATIIINKER who hates the abstract complexIty of meta­

physical sY5tems, yet whose thought IS persistently. mfact, s}stemahcally, dHected to workmg through a

smgle all-Important problem-such a thmker's work shouldbe relatIvely easy to summanze or evaluate. But Kierke­gaard's one problem was so specifically rehglous m char­acter and so complex in itS hterary presentatIon (complexout of all proportlOn to Its phdosophic scope) that to assessit philosophiCally is a difficult task indeed In the lIght ofKlerkegaard's growmg mfluence, however, the task must beattempted-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 thatrare person whom Klerkcgaard calls "hIS reader" (and Iconfess, thankfully I fear, I am not he)? Fantastic agamlYet one must try to make somethmg of thIS apparently stIm­ulatmg, certamly lIntatmg, figure; and if the attempt itselfis absurd, that at least might have pleased the apostle ~f

absurdity.l'J Kierkegaard's problem, as he puts it m the PhIlosophicalFragments, was "to find out where the misunderstandmg liesbetween speculation and Christianity." It is, he belIeves, inthe nature of personal eXistence that this nllsunderstandmghas its roots, and so his thought centers m the problem of the

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

[ 15 ]

DREADFUL FREEDOM

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

2By "speculation" Klerkegaard means Hegelian specula­

tIon. That is not to deny that he sometImes contrasts theinSight sought by the subjective thmker with the emptyobjectIVity of sensory and hlstoncal knowledge, as well asWith plulosophlc (I e , HegelIan) speculation One can findin the Papers, for mstance, a strong mdlctment of empmcalsClence-m partIcular, phYSIOlogy, as applied to the humanspecies'

In our tIme It IS cspecIally the natural <;clences which aredangerous PhYSIology WIll at la~t spread so that It WIll take ethICSalong. There are already traces enough of a new tendcncy-totrcat ethiCS lIke phYSICS whereby all of etlucs becomes Illusion,and the ethIcal clement m the race comes to be treated statis­tically with averages, or to be reckoned as one reckons oscIlla­tions m natural laws. A phySIologist takes It upon himself toexplam the whole person Here the queStIon IS. prmclpus obsta.what shall I do WIth It? What need have I to know about thecentnpetal and centnfugal clIculatIon of nerves, about the bloodstream, about the human being's miCroscopIC state m utero?EthICS has tasks enough for me Or do I need to know how diges­tIon works m order to be able to eat? Or do I need to know howthe movement m the nervous system works-m order to belIevein God and love men? And If someone should say, "True, for

[ 16 ]

THE SELF AGAINST THE SYSTEM

that one certainly does not need it," then I should ask again:"But what If It weakens all my ethIcal passIOn, that I becomean observer of nature? What If. WIth the whole mamfold knowl­edge of analogIes, of abnormalItIes, of thIs and that, I lose moreand more the ImpressIon of the ethical: thou shalt, it is thou,thou hast nothmg to do with a smgle other person, thoughheaven and earth collapse mou SHALT? What If [to pursue thatknowledge] IS to provide myself with a lot of sneakmg evasionsand excuses? Suppose It IS turnmg my attentIon away from whatIS Important to let myself begm on physIOlogy, mstead of lettmgphysiology go and saymg 'Begm.'''2

Such a passage IS perhaps more charactenstic for the ex- .Istential movement generally, considered m its negatIve as­pect as a rcvolt agamst the charactcnstIc mtellectual temperof our age, than are Klerkegaard's more specific attacks onthe HcgclIan brand of obJcctlVlty. But though a more generalantiscientIfic revolt may be consIdered a legItImate mferencefrom Klerkegaard's posItIon, hIS acquamtance wIth sCIentIficachIevement of any degree of sophIstIcatIon or preciSIon wasso extremely shght and his attentIOn to It, even negatIvely,so mfrequent that one must regard hIS own problem, what­cvcr ItS more gcncralllnphcatIons, as bounded, m the mam,by the Hegehan tradItIon.

Withm these IU111tS Klerkegaard ccrtainly ranks amongthe outstandmg cntIcs of Hegel and HegelIamsm or perhaps,by ImphcatIon, of ontology a~ such Such cnticlsms are con­stantly recurrent throughout the works and papers.

One finc!.~~.!!1_a_I!c! _agaII!z J~m-l?lc:.. the_9Qi~.£tiQ.llJ:hat..

the S.Y~te~n....!s sub s'p~I~_l!.eternitatis, whereas eXIstenc~j~

tempo_raL~~Il}!Jarly, the System is na..systel]1 uJlles§...iL~

finished (and bas thus att~ined t.Q...a.J.!!1l.el~s ~.t~Je) t whereasexis.kw;~whIle e!I§tIng 15 never ft'!illpecl-and the-System j~~thus incapable of accountmg for existence This incompat-

- . - ---_. "--' -- ---_.-----2. S;ren Klerkegaard, Paplrer, eel P A Heiberg, V Kuhr, and E TorstIng

(Copenhagen, 1909--), Vol. VII, Part I, Thv A, No 182 (referredto hereafter as "P").

[17 ]

DREADFUL FREEDOM

IbIlIty KlCrkcgaard strcsscs, for example, m hIS cnbClsms ofthe concept of "movement" m lOgIC. It is ImplIed In his gibesat thc SY1>tem for never attaInmg the state of systematiccomplebon that it promlscs.

I am wIllmg to fall down adonngly before the System, If only Ican 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 runmngfrom Herod to PIlate. Several bmes I have been ql1lte near toadoration, but 10, at the moment when I had already spread outmy 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 thatcase I shall prostrate m) self, even though I should rum a pau oftroU1>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 postponedagam-both the SYlltem and the kneelmg S...,

The fanta1>be cl,mlls of the System over agamst eXIstenceare shown up agalll by KlCrkegaard's theory of thc lcap. The"ab1>olute begmlllng" bccomes, If we observe the process ofthought honc!>tly, an illusIOn The bcginnmg of phIlosophy,hke any other acbon, has, III KlCrkegaard's VIew, a specIficf.lctual scttmg; and It malllfcsts the radIcal dIscontInUItycharac.tenl>tIc of the commcncement of evcry Intellectualas 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 thatE-leaE? Or was there someone who had dreamedabout It?~'4 -' - - -- --

• --Or the unrcalIty of the Hegehan procedure is pointed,

3 Sfilren KlerllgJJrd, SJlIJlec1e Vaerker, ed A B Drachmann, I LHelberg, and II 0 Lange (2d cd , Copenhagen, 1920-31), VII, 95 (referredto hereafter as "5").

4. P, V, C, 3.

[18 ]

8 IbId, VII, 101.9. IbId., IV, 316 D.

THE SELF AGAINST THE SYSTEM

as was mentIoned m the prevIOus chapter, by reference tothe hfe of the philosopher himself m relatIOn to his system."Most sys_~eIP~t!.zcrsin !.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 wrItesthe system"O to his grandlD!lC metaphysIcal edIfice, and ridI­culmg the Il1lphclt reducaon of the speculant's own existenceto abstractIon, whIch the prac.tIce of HegelIan phIlosophy!leems to lum to mvolve. "A phIlosopher," he says. "hasgradually_1?<:£~n~ s_u~~..a }~I!!~stIc creature that the W1ld~_s!..

Ima.g!I!~!I~~has searcelY7I~Y~I!t~? any!~ing so fabulQu~"Lfor by thc undcrstanding lof Cluna and Perstal ::J1e Rc:}Ieves,one IS not hciped but rather lundered In that understand:mg of one's self wllich is tor-hIm the only Importantunderstanding .

KlCrkegaard sugge!lts some of the methods by whIch the::IystcmatI( hOdx succeeds It IllegItimately mtroduces predi­catcs of value mto logIcal arguments What is "bad mfimty"for ll1stance? "Is bad a dIalectIcal determmatIon? How do!lCorn and contempt and means of terronzation find a placeas admISSIble propellmg forces m logIc?"8 Mor~y~r.z th~

Heg.clIan .me!hod gmdes the student through transItIons~pparently logIcal, but actually verbal only. 9f thIS ruse hegives a!l an examp1e the play on "Wesen/gewesen:': "Wesen1St, ~ a~ l~t gewescn, 1st gewesen IS a tempus practcntum ofsci"'1- ['bemg'l therefore Wesen is 'das aufgchobene Sem["!lu!lpcnded bemg"],' the Sein that has been. That IS a logicalmovement l ':O The System deceIves, finally, by the grandvistas that it dIsplays. It draws attention from the morehumble problems which, m Kierkegaard's opmlDn, properlyconcern the fimte knower, to dIzzying processIOns of the

5 IbId, VII, I, A, 826 S, VII, llO7 IbId, VII, 105

[ 19]

DREADFUL FREEDOM

world-mind, persuadmg the student that, in companson with"6,000 years of world-hiStOry,"10 his own small existence isof no Importance. The absolute method is, for the moralistKierkegaard, "a bad conscience In purple:'ll

Damsh phIlosophy, should such an entity come into bemg,is to have a very different temper:

Damsh phIlosophy, if there can some day be talk of such athing, WIll dIffer m thIs respect from the German, that it will notbegm With nothing, or without all presupposition, nor explaineverythmg by mediating; but, on the contrary, it Will begin Withthe propOSition that there are many thmgs between heaven andearth which no philosopher has explamed. That propOSition Will,by its admittance mto philosophy, furnish the proper correctl\,e,and at the same time cast a humorous-edifying agitation ovcr thewhole 12

3In fact, of course, that thmg between heaven and earth

which concerns Damsh phIlosophy m the pcrson of Klcrke­gaard IS the ChnstIan paradox, whether considered as theparadox of the God-man or as the paradox of the humanindividual's f31th-that IS, hiS expenence of nothingness be-

~ fore God which IS yet the fulfilment of hiS eXistence. SoKlerkegaard's philosophizing, bounded on the one side bythe Hegelian tradition, i~ limited on the other side by theconstant presence of Chnstian faith (a "limit," of course,only for the non-Chnstian, but as such it must appear in ageneral philosophic account of Klerkcgaard). It is throughthat presence, Klerkegaard himself says, that his dIalectic"goes further than Socrates":

This project mdisputably goes further than the Socratic, as IS

evIdent at every pomt. Whether It IS therefore truer than theSocratic IS an entirely different question, which cannot be de­Cided in the same breath, for here there was assumed a new

10. Ibid, VII, 107.11. p. V. B, 41. 12 Ibid, V, A, 46.

[201

THE SELF AGAINST THE SYSTEM

organ-faith; and a new presupposition-the consciousness ofsm; a new dec1Slon-the moment; and a new teacher-God 1D

hme.....13

And hIs thought is further limited by his own peculiarconception of Christianity, which not only does not corre­spond exactly to any Christian orthodoxy at least up to hisown day but eliminates altogether, according to the accountof the Fragments and the UnscientIfic Postscript, any con­ception of an "objective truth of Christianity." The wholeproblem for every serIOUS Christian, according to Klerke­gaard, bes on the subjective side, in the riddle of his ownpath to faith. Not the understanding of any general relationof man to God, not the bUlld10g of any elaborate theologicaledifice, but the way to eternal blessedness for "my own httle1" is every Christian's whole concern. But that means, forKlerkegaard, turmng sharply away from systematization andobjectIVity to subJectlVlty, to "1Owardness," as Klerkegaard'hkes to call It. It means turnmg from the "extensive" Me ofunexamined sensabon to the "mtenslVe" life of introspec­tion. It means turning from the knowledge of general, ab­stract, and therefore nooreal propositions to some sort ofnoncogmbve grasp (sometimes called "essential knowledge,"but most unlIke knowledge 10 any commonly understoodsense of that word) of the particular, copcrete, real existent:that i~, of the individual himself, who is the only real existent:for himself, except for the 10fimte being whom he comes toacknowledge through faIth. It means, in a word, turning fromtautology to paradox: from systems of impersonal "truth"that are, because impersonal, as superficial and trivial as theyare consistent, to the one passionately realized subjectivetruth that is profoundly meaningful because it is profoundlyself-contradictory-because it is absurd from start to finish;for to cleave t-o subjectivity is for Kierkegaard to reject all ab­straction, even so much as is necessary for the imaginative

13 S., IV, 302.

[21 J

DREADFUL FREEDOM

transference through words of my expenence into yours. Butsenously to reject all abstraction is to renounce the wholesphere of logiC and consistency and to leave only contradic­tion and Its Imgmstic expreSSIOn, paradox. Hence paradox ISthe tool of Klcrkegaard's "mdlIect commumcatIon"; and con­tradiction the defimng character, for him, of conSCIOusnessitself: "Immediacy IS rcalItv.. language IS i.dealItv, conscIous::I.!.ess is contradICtIon. The moment I eronj!U.nce realIty. con­tradiction IS therel.....for what I sar1~"14

J It is, then, to personal eXistence and to the absurd, theself-contradictory, the radically mcommumcable m personaleXIstence that the antI-Hegehan, ChnstIan thmker has toturn; and it is this paSSIOnate attentIon to the mwardness ofpersonal existence, It IS this "mfimte mtcrcst," as Klerke­gaard calls It, m one's smgle isolated self, together With theemphaSIS on paradox that the accompanymg demal of allgenerality or abstractIon appears to mvolve, that determmesthe peculIar qualIty of hiS thought. First, la&t, and always blst.h9.~ht IS dlr~c!~dl_wlt.h!!!jlI~ do~~le bounQ~DT of t~e refu-

_tatKlJl Qf fIegeli?n erroIJ!.1]Q the approach _!oS:lms.!~a_n tr.t~~h,

JQ...3 single qlles.tIQn:~What IS t!Ie self that remains l{ a~rs~n has lost t~e _whol~ 'Y!Jrld.~~~yet not 10stl!I!1!~!~'

14 P, IV, B, 145 In Its barest lOgical form the situatIOn IS Simply statedEither as "speculant" one seeks "objective truth," Whll.h IS reducible totautology, 1 e • to the form "a or lion-a" or ItS cqUlv.dcnt "not both a andnon-a" Or as Chnstlan thmker one secks sublcctl~ltv, I c , onc demc\ ob­Jectivity and thereWith the logical pnnclple of objectiVity and assert~ "botha and non-a," which IS contradiction or parado" So, for cxample, contr.!chc honIS the hmltmg pomt of the dialectic of EIther Or, thc e"pre\\1011 of thcaesthetic stage of personal existence 11m kmd of hfe corre~pond~ wnc[ctdy,KIerkegaard comments In the Papers (P, III, B, 177) to the mtcllectualdeification of tautology, for "ever}"vherc," he says, thc dialectic of EIther Or"leads cverythmg to the ddemma " Or, as he puts It m Either-Or (5, I, 26)"Hang yourself, you win regret It, do not hang }ourself, you wJ11 also regret It,hang yourself or do not hang yourself, you wdl regret both That, gentlemen,IS the summation of human Wisdom" How can one escape from tIns senesof meallmgless alternatIVes? Only by a complete about face from the obJcctlveto the subJectIve, which Imphes the demal of the supreme pnnCJple of oblec­tlVlty, Ie, the demal of the law of contradiction.

15. P, IV, C, 77.

[ 22 J

THE SELF AGAINST THE SYSTEM

4The character of that question and the sense in which

attention to it genuinely involves a new dlIecbon in philos­ophy may be clarified by some brief historical comments.

/ a) Kant's revolution in philosophy inv~v~J:!I~ (~~l!si!1A.

?! Ehilosl?P~!c i~ves~&.ation on the guesbo!LW!tJltjs Plantwith its three su&llvisloI!Sz. What can I know( What oughtI tci d9? ~Ild Wh.~tt.1Jl~ l..b!!p~u:rkegaaI(l shares the­Kanba~ conviction that phl1osophy deals wit:4_~1}m_an pr~b­

lems, that it can-consiller onlY tpe nature of our limitedp~w~rs of knowing or doi~I!ot the, c;sseJl~-of some vas.!~smic reality. Within the. ~malysls Qf knowkdgeztoo, I<1erke­gaarq shares the Kantian view of ~_~p"arabon-of- ~hougirtand being, essence and eXistence (hiS theory of knowledge,as a matter of fact, is more like Hume's thao.hke.Kant's, mor~hke some modern poslbvisms than hke elthe.!,). But Kant'streatment of human nature, though it demes our reason thepower to deduce the universe, leaves it umty and complete­ness enough in the deducnon of Itself It was the one sys­tem of reason that Kant hoped to have described a reasoneverywhere unified even m ItS dIVersificatIons-where thoughtsupplements intmtIon, reason supplements understandmg,will supplements intellect, and the whole IS one eternallyvahd structure of the human mind For Kierkegaard, how­ever, there is no such one totality of human nature whichcould be dlIectly and'systematIcally descnbed. There are justthese human eXistences, whose mner qualIty the subjecbvethmker can attempt to communicate only by the mostdevious sorts of indlIechon. It IS, much more concretely, the"modes of human reality," as Jaspers calls them, that Kierke­gaard wants to interpret-the vanations of human personal­Ity as they feel to the person himself; the development ofhuman personalities caught in the very flux of time, whereeternity enters as standard or ideal but not as system. ForKant the thing in itself is beyond our knowledge, even the

[23 ]

DREADFUL FREEDOM

I itself; but human reason 10 Its functioning is clear, open,intelhgible to the reasoning mmd; once the cleans109 toolof cntIcism has been used, reason can be once for all de­scnbed in all the beauty of Its comp}e,[ organic structure. Butfor Klerkegaard the question What is man? has no such sys­tematic answer He makes much of Socrates' statement 10

the opemng of the Phaedrus: that he may lllmself be amonster stranger than Typhon, that he must therefore de­vote hImself to the quest of hIS own nature as of somethmgmfinitely Important but strange, puzzlmg, and full of mys­tery. Not man as such, but the strange, inaccessIble self whoremams when a person has lost the whole world but not hIm­self, the very real lOner impassIOned feel of self, the selfbeyond the transcendental umty, whIch for Kant is unknow­able and mcommunicablc-that IS Klerkegaard's concern.And 10 that attcntIon to thc inner fecl10g of the person inIts completely concretc quahtatIve reahty, Kierkegaard ISturmng aSIde not only from the Kanhan kmd of Vemunft­system but from thc malO stream of Western phIlosophysince Anstotle, for, after all, If one really stops to thmkabout It, one must admIt that, WIth the possIble exceptionof such antipllliosophical phIlosophers as Pascal, most phI­losophers have treated the nature of man in a fashIOn whoseabstraction and unreahty IS qmte staggcnng If, for example,the saintly VISIon of a Spinoza makes of human reason apower It does not 10 thIS eVIl world 10 fact possess, considereven the so-called "empincal" phIlosophIes· the atomism ofthe anclCnts or the assocmhomsm of the Bntish tradition,whICh thought thcmsclves close to good, honest, obviousthmgs. ConSIder thelI conception of human hfe as put to­gether of dIstinct httlc bItS of red, round, sweet, hard, pleas­ant, painful, etc. Try really to take it hterally, even for amoment. Surely it IS fantastically apart from what concretely,in ItS vague half-meaningless confusion of somethmg and

[ 24]

THE SELF AGAINST THE SYSTEM

nothing, of direction and indIrection, our experience at mos~bmes is.

b) It may be significant, moreover, that, in turning asidefrom an ;lbst!act philosophic trachbon to something closerto the inner feelmg of our experience (from quantity to qual­ity, as he would say), Klerkegaard so frequently and exphcltlyturns back to the Socrates of the dialogues. PlatOnIC in­fluences, m the sense of a Neo-PlatonIc tradition, one may,of course, find everywhere m Western thought. But mKlerkcgaard onc finds something much rarer: a genume re­turn to the dIalogucs themselves as to a fresh source of philo­sophiC inSIght, a return lIke that of Castiglione's Courtler;and Klerkegaard, lIke CastIghone, draws heavily on the Sym­posmm. It IS not to Plato's doctnne-for to understandthat IS always to misunderstand Plato-but to the PlatonicSocrates, so strangely identified WIth philosophy itself, thatKlCrkcgaard goes. He has, as far as I remember, nothingmuch to say about the theory of Ideas, about levels of being,or any such elaborate "Platonic" cosmological schemata;but he knew thc dIalogues and loved them, I suspect, Witha paSSIOn truly akm to the tlleta mama of the Phaedrus.Tortured and tWIsted as hiS thinkmg IS, It shares With Ren­aissance PlatoDIsm a genume reverence for Plato-or Plato'sSocrates-as the fountamhead of philosophic wisdom. InKlerkegaard, of course, ChnstIan faith cnters as contrastrather than as complement to the SocratIc situation: the aimof the Fragments IS to solve the Socratic problem of learningby means that are radically different from Plato's-dlfferentJust because of the mterposition of Christiamty. So there ishere no easy fUSIOn between Plato and Chnsbamty. Yet mKierkegaard as in Renaissance Platonists the tum from alatcr traditIon to the Platonic dialogues is oddly lmked witha deep revltahzatIOn m phllosophy-a sense of turnmg fromthe dry bones of techmcal systems to thoughts stIU hvmg.

[ 25 ]

DREADFUL FREEDOM

through Plato's art, in the person of his teacher. Were it notfor the signal exception of Bergson, I should almost feelmchned to take the phIlosophIc revolt of our own day-forinstance, in Whitehead-as a further instance of the way inwhich a rebIrth of philosophy means a return to Plato, asort of histoncal recollection, If you hke. But, apart from anysuch tempting generalizations, one may certainly feel In

Kierkegaard hImself an uncanny dIrectness m his dealingwith the dIalogues and a tremendous power m the msighthe draws from them. Whatever hlstoncal analogies onedraws or does not draw, thiS IS, Wlthm narrow range, mdeed,but still qUIte genumely, a lIttle renaIssance, occurrmg oddlyin the dreary nmeteenth century but growmg 10 sIgmficanceas that dreanness m our own day becomes despaIr.~..:>

5It may be saId, of coursc, that It IS unnecessary to go back

to Klerkegaard for a new Impulse m phIlosophy, that sucha movement as pragmatism, as we suggested earlier, hasalready effected what eXIstential phIlosophy aIms at-thatis, 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 toaccomplIsh at least the second of these alms and the sense mwhIch Klerkegaard points at least to a dIrection more ap­propnate for dealing with them may be indIcated by anexample, slIght in Itself but suggestive of a larger contrast.Death IS certamly an Important fact in every man's life; lookat the way m whIch Klerkcgaard and a pragmatist lIke Deweytreat it. In the course of hIS argument agamst the tradItionalmeans-end conception 10 Human Nature and Conduct,Dewey analyzes the SItuatIon of a man building a house. Theman IS not buildmg the house 10 order to hve 10 It, Deweysays, for he mIght dIe before it was fimshed; so he is bUIldmgit for the sake of the present activity itself. Compare this

[ 26]

THE SELF AGAINST THE SYSTEM

glancing reference to the continual imminence of death withKierkegaard's conceptIon of the way in which death con­stantly determines or should determine the manner of ourlives. The conception of "bemg glad over 70,000 fathoms,"of hvmg constantly in the face of death, in the awareness thathere 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 amnot sure whether "das Sein zum Tode" is really the funda­mental detcrmmant m our expenence, pushed back but nevercanceled by the tnvmhzmg demands of every day, or whether,though recurnng conspIcuously at moments m our bves, itassumes an all-Important place only m certam situatIons­such SItuatIOns as the underground movements, a main sourceof French existentIalism, had to face. In either case death andthe dread of death do at least form a recurrent thread inhuman bfe, a thread suffiCIently conspICUOUS that a phIlo­sophic account of man's nature needs to take serious notIce ofIt 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 oneexample, 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 Itcontamed nothmg pOSItIve beyond the pleasant deSIre tomake tlungs comfortable Whatever IS uncomfortable­death, sm, despaIr-It passes by on the other SIde. As hasbeen smd a number of tImes, pragmatIsm is afraid to faceevIl.16 And It IS afraid, too, to face the ultImate puzzle ofhuman 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 basISof 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 indiovidual who has forgotten how to be an mdivldual, that prag­matIsm celebrates. PragmatIsm is, indeed, the phIlosophyof 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 thebIg bad wolf refrains wIth mcredible decency from eatmg upthe 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 thatboth fnghtcns and Illummates by the II1slghts that It nowand then displays, for Klerkegaard does try to face the puzzleof the human mdlVldual, sometImes, mdeed, in hackneyedand tediOUS contrasts between tIme and eternity, mfimte andfimte, but often 111 a charactcr sketch or parable that sharplystresses some aspect of the general problem that forms them:lIn preoccupatIon of existentIal phIlo!.ophy-the theme ofthe contmgcncy of human life, Gcworfenhelt, as IIeldegger Icalls It. Death IS the most dramatic, perhaps the ultImatelydetennuung, example of such contmgency, and the dread ofdeath the most dramatIc, perhaps even the ultImately deter­HUlling, attItude Impellmg human actIons. But, more gen­erally, what KlCrkegaard and eXistentIalIsm are concernedWith IS the stubbornness of fact not as data to be understoodbut as the neceSSIty for free bemgs to be ju!.t this and notthat; the Impmgement of the sheer brute glVenness <>f eachperson's hIstory on hiS aspIratIons as an mdlvldual, the des­perate conflict m the individual's nature establIshed by suchImpmgement, the extreme IsolatIon and mcommuDlcablhtyof that conflIct m ItS sheer Immediate qualItative character.Conrad's Lord JUll, for example, seems to me in tIus sensean existentIal character, stakmg hIS whole life, as he does, onthe refutation of a smgle past action. And in this connection

r28 1

THE SELF AGAINST THE SYSTEM

the devious "indirect communication" of Conrad's novelsbears a significant lIkeness to Klerkegaard's kInd of lIterarytechmque. The tragIc conflict that lIes at the core of personaleXIstence is somethIng completely private, completely hIddenat most tImes from public view, and revealed only In glImpsesas 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 fromthe current eXIstentIal school itself, IS the character of GarcInIn Sartre's Huis-c1os, who has not just his lIfe but all etermtyto puzzle out the question of his cowardIce Or take an ex­ample m Kierkegaard hImself hIS favonte Old Testamenttheme of the sacnfice of Isaac. This, though a vcr} dIfferentSItuation, 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 eachother 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 substratumof nothmgne~s ,IS clcarly e'i:hibited in contingency as suchas m death, the ultImate contmgcnt

There is m thIS kmd of conceptIon, bIzarre and hmitedthough it seems, a dynamIc really novel in \Vestern thought;and thIS dynamIc Klcrkcgaard does genuinely contnbute asa fresh source of phIlosophizIng, ImplYIng not merely areorgamzatIon of phIlosophIc categones but a renewal ofphIlosophic VIsion.

6But what of the phIlosophic implementation of Klerke­

gaard'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 naturaldetermination of my essence."17 What, then, has Kierke­gaard the dialectician to offer, technically, for those queersouls who have to express their perspecbve on human ex·perience not in poetry or painbng but in abstract categoriesand logical inferences? A little, I think. though not much.

For one thing. 10 Kierkegaard's analysis of the modalitiesthere is a rather interesting constructIon of modal spheres.The merely posslble equated to the necessary IS contrastedwith the actual equated to the contingent; the necessary asthe 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 sphereof the merely possible by wluch Kierkegaard refutes theHegelian conception of a logic eqmvalent to ontology; partlylD 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 thefuture and of the histonan as a "backward prophet"-thereare some provocative, if not entirely plaUSible, passages. Ingeneral, however, I<1erkegaard's analysis of the modahties ISnot strikingly anginal He drew a good deal from the modi­fied Anstotehamsm of Trendelenburg, whom he eVIdentlystudied closely; and, though he disagrees exphcltly wlth theAristotelIan dlvislon of posslbles, hIS generaI 1".Tlalysis doesnot dIverge markedly from the posltion of ab.. lose philos­ophers who have taken pains to separate thu...::nowledge ofIOglC or propositions or inference from th.: lowledge ofthings.

The existential dla1ectic Itself, secondly;-involves at leastone central conceptIon that IS of great significance for con­

t temporary eXistentialism-the concept of the "leap." The17. P, IX, A, 213

[ 30]

THE SELF AGAINST THE SYSTEM

dialectic as a whole in Kierkegaard has its chief significancein the peculiar religious stage into which it issues. The first,aesthetic stage (the lIfe of the sensuous moment) has mean­ing only in its collapse before the realIty of time..Face to face IWIth the temporality of his own eXIstence, the indIvIdualtries, in the ethical phase, to tum temporal flux into truehistory by reference to an absolute moral standard. But dutycannot m Kierkegaard come even as close as it does in Kantto standmg by itself. The whole sigmficance of this secondstage, again, lIes in its collapse, in the realIzation that all

\duhes are toward God-hence, for example, Abraham's dutyto slay Isaac, an action whIch may look lIke the very OppOSIteof morabty humanly seen, smce morahty cannot be humanlyseen at all. So the whole movement has Its whole meaning inthe emergence of the thud, relIgIOUS stage, in whIch the inm­vidual, totally isolated from hIS follow-men, stands m theshattenng realization of hIS own unworthmess before hisGod. In this singly directed movement it is the final stagerather than the technical mampulatIon of the process that ISsIgnificant. But what IS pecuhar and Important along thecourse of the dialectic is the stress on the discontmUIty of

,personal existence that K1erkegaard everywhere displays.IFrom the aesthetic to the ethical, as from the ethIcal tothe relIgIOUS, phase, the transItIon is by a leap Even in the

'knowmg process (see Klerkcgaard on Helberg, p. 18) and afortIon m the sphere of morality and relIgIOn, every sigmf­Icant step iTf'Dlies an absolute dIsjunction, a radIcal shift ofcategories, 1, that on which Klerkegaard hkes to dwell fromquantity to Q~ lity. It would be interestmg to compare Kier­kegaard's th &ilt here with Bergson's analysis of subjectiveexperience. j hey share the notion that the Immediate tem­poral flux of our experience is the sphere of quality, which ismisunderstood by the quantifying abstractions of the intel­lect. But Bergson identifies the subjective WIth the continu­ous, the snowball that swells as it advances. For Kierkegaard,

[ 31 ]

DREADFUL FREEDOM

on the other hand, contInUIty IS the mark of the logical andunreal; and the actual Inner growth of the person is char­acterized by radIcal discontinUIty at every important stage.

7With these exceptions, however, KJ.erkegaard judged as

phIlosopher rather than as inspiration to philosophers cutsan extremely poor figure. Pacing hIs eIght rooms at Kongens­Nytorv, each of them equipped WIth a standIng-height desk,Kierkegaard thought and thought and wrote and wrote. Inthe papers certamly every passIng thought was caressmglynoted, draWll out, repeated again and agam; and too muchof such verbIage found its way into the works thcmselves.After all, there was no one to stop him He was not checkedby his friends, for hIs only "fnends" were the superficIalacquaIntance of the coffee-house, who presumably remaIned,

.to use hIs language, at the aesthetIc stage of existence He wasnot restramed by publIshers, for he lived on hIS caplt3l­whIch convemently survIVed as long as he dId-and dependedfinancially on no one He was not affected by popular acclaImor the reverse, smce he hated the crowd as cordially as a "sub­jectIve thmker" was bound to do. I do not mean to suggestthat no phIlosopher can wnte without contact or cntIclsmfrom outsIde; there have been phIlosophers, hke Enugena,1for example, who seem to have nsen smgly to greatness outof the most barren enVIronment. But, if It can be done,Klerkegaard was not the man to do it. The worst is noteven the repetItIous apologiae pro vIta sua, dealmg WIth whatKierkegaard admIts to be bagatelles for the outsIde, though.tremendous problems to hImself-the problem of the pseu­donyms, for Instance; the problem of hIS relatIon to Regma,rehashed years after the break with her; and so on. Besidesall these, one finds in the works and papers, interspersedbetween brillIant inSIghts and movIng parables, page after~age of chIldishly bad logIc-and, what is worse in a cnbc

[ 32 ]

THE SELF AGAINST THE SYSTEM

of the "System," bad Hegelian logIc; of pure word-jugglingand of paradoxes, nicely pomted, indeed, but meaningless ormore frequently simply untrue. A few examples will sufficehere; they can be multiplied endlessly throughout the nearlythIrty volumes of works and papers.

In the Philosophical Fragments Kierkegaard is dealingWIth the question of how, from hlstoncal knowledge, onecan attain eternal blessedness. He starts WIth the Socraticproblem: How can one learn If one does not m some sensealready know what one has to learn? The Socratic solution(recollection) does not, Kierkegaard says, emphasize themoment of deClsIOn, he IS lookmg for an account whIch does.But If the moment IS to be declSlve, .

then untIl the moment the seeker must not have had the truth,not even In the form of Ignorance, for then the moment becomesmerely the moment of stimulation. In fact he must not even bethe seeker, for It IS thus that we must express the dIfficulty If wedo not want to explaIn It socrahcally. So he must be determInedas outSide the truth (not comIng to It, as proselyte, but comIngfrom It) or as untruth. He IS untruth. But how shall one remIndhun, or what help Will It be to remInd hIm of what he has neverknown and so cannot tlunk of718

What does It mean to say the seeker is untruth? WhatKlerkegaard wants, of course, is the SImplest form of contrastbetwecn man, who "is falSIty," and God, who IS truth: "Theteacher IS God IllDl!>elf, who actll1g as occaSIOn gIves occaSIOnto the learncr's bCll1g remll1ded that he IS untruth, and byhis own fault But thIS condition, to be untruth and to beIt by one's own fault, what can we call It? Let us call It sm."lDQUlte apart from the theologIcal question of definmg sm onthis purely intellectual baSIS, the inference itself, from theignorance of the mdlvidual to the statement, "He is un­truth," seems the SImplest sort of non seqUltur.

Or consider this passage "In so far as the learner IS m

18 S, IV, 207 19. Ibid, IV, 209

[ 33 ]

DREADFUL FREEDOM

untruth, but is so WIth himself .... it might seem that hewas free; for to be with one's self rhos sig seIv] is, in fact,freedom."20 Here is the Hegelian definition (das bei sichselbst Sein), patly taken as part of the argument, thoughthe whole superstructure of HegelIan thought which couldmake it anythmg but nonsense has been roundly rejected.To be sure, it turns out that the learner is not free-God mustfree him-but the Hegelian definition is nevertheless usedas the starting-point for that discovery; it IS not the defini­tion, but the fact, that IS denied.

And along WIth Hegelian defimtions, Klerkegaard retainsthe HegelIan habit of paradoxical play with philosophIcalvocabulary. In cntIclsm of the definitIOn of necessity as umtyof possibility and actualIty, for example, he says: "Whatcould that mean? PossibilIty and actualIty are not differentin essence, but m bemg; how could there, of thiS difference,be formed a umty which was necessity, WhICh IS not a deter­mmation of bemg but of essence, since the essence of thenecessary is to be.":!! That seems to me at least as crude asthe play on Wesen/gewesen that Klerkegaard himself de­ndes. Or, In deahng with the question of the contempo­raneity of those who saw and spoke with God on earth,he says'

But what does that mean, that one can be contemporary With­out bcmg contcmporary, and thus one can be contemporary andyet, despIte usmg thIS advantage (m the Immediate sense), bethe noncontcmporary; what does that mean except that oneSImply cannot be ImmedIately contemporary WIth such a teacheror CIrcumstance, so that the real contemporary IS not the real con­temporary m vutue of ImmedIate contemporaneity, but In virtueof somethmg else? SO" the contemporary can, despIte that, be thenoncontemporary, the real contemporary is so not m virtue ofImmediate contemporaneIty, therefore lIkewise the noncontem­porary (m the ImmedIate sense) can be the contemporary throughthe other conSIderatIon by wluch the contemporary becomes the

20 IbId. 21. IbId, IV, 266

[ 34 ]

THE SELF AGAINST THE SYSTEM

real contemporary. But the noncontemporary (10 the immedIatesense) is, 10 fact, the later, so the later may be the real COD­

temporary.22

Why all this word-play when the next sentence makes thesame point so much more tellingly?

Or IS it this to be the contemporary, and is this the contem­porary we honor, who can say: "I ate and drank before his eyes,and that teacher taught 10 our streets; 1 saw him many tImes; hewas an 10Slgmficant man of low buth, and only some few be­lIeved they found anyth10g extraordmary 10 him, which 1 couldnot 10 the least discover, even though when It comes to be10gcontemporary with him, 1 was that, 10 despite of anyone"? Or ISit thiS to be contemporary, and IS thiS the contemporary, to whomGod may say If they meet sometIme m another lIfe and he wantsto appeal to hiS contemporaneity: "I know you not"?28

The trouble IS, Klerkegaard never did reject his Hegelianbackground. He got some genume mSlght mto Its narrow­ness from his teachers M~l1er and Sibbern, and he broughtto bear on a certam type of dIalectIcal philosophy a genumepassion of hIS own that now and then has phIlosophical im­phcations. But he remamed, m the mam, WIthin the intel­lectual horizon of the secondhand Hegehanism that hiSown epigram so aptly dcscnbes' "What the philosophers sayabout reahty is often just as dIsappointIng as It IS when youread on a SIgn at a second-hand store: 'Ironing done here.'If you should come WIth your clothes to get them Ironed,you'd be fooled, for only the SIgn is for sale."2( Withm thatlimIted horizon, moreover, the source both of the weaknessand the strength of Klerkegaard's phIlosophy is hIS love ofparadox. Paradoxes are sometImes true and sometimes false,but he cherished them for their own sake. Granted that the­paradox of the God-man did really hold deep meaning forhim; that is clear from the power of the Fragments, wherethe questIon is explicitly focused from the start on that par-

22. IbId, IV, 25923. IbId. IV, 259-60 24. IbId, 1,19

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DREADFUL FREEDOM

ticular "absolute" paradox, as against the more discursivePostscript, where the movement is from the analysis of themodalittes to paradox as such. Granted, too, that the neces­sity for paradox in the indirect communicatIon of the sub­jective is genuinely a consequence of KJ.erkegaard's interpre­tation of conceptual knowledge. But much of Klerkegaard'swntmg seems to be motivated not so much by an insight mtothe philosophical or relIgiOUS appropnateness of paradox toa peculIar problem as by the sheer mtellectual delight m theabsurd for it~ own sake. Klerkegaard admitted his own mch­natton to "deceive himself With language"; and one suspectsthat m his perpetual coming of paradoxes such dcceptionoftcn plays a rather heavy role ConSider the "schcma for theexclUSIOn or absence of mwardncss" m The Concept ofDread. "Every form of the exclUSIOn of inwardness IS eitheractivity-passivity, or passlvlty-actlVlty, and whether It IS theone or the other hes m self-reflection "25 One of thc examplesof the schema IS the followmg

PlIde-cowardice Pnde bcgm& through an actlVlty, cowardicethrough a passlVlty, otherwisc they are IdentIcal, for there IS mcowardIce Just so much actIVity, that the dread of good canbe preserved. Pnde IS a profound cowardice, for It IS cowardlyenough not to want to under&tand what the proud m truth IS, assoon as thiS understandmg IS forced on It, It IS cowardly, blows uphke a bomb, and bursts hke a bubble Cowardice IS a profoundpnde, for It IS cowardly enough not to want to understand evcnthe demands of misunderstood pnde, but by such reluctance Itshows It~ vcry pnde, and It knows, too, how to take mto accountthat It has suffered no defeat and IS therefore proud of the nega­tIve expreSSIOn of pnde, that It has ncver suffered any loss It hasalso happened m hIe that a very proud mdlvidual was cowardlyenough never to dare anythmg, cowardly enough to be as littleas pOSSible, just to save hiS pndc If one put together an actIve­proud and a passIVe-proud mdlvldual, one would have an oppor­tumty, m the very moment when the first collapsed, to persuadeone's self how proud at bottom the coward was.28

25 Ibid, IV, 451 26 Ibid, IV, 455

[ 36 ]

THE SELF AGAINST THE SYSTEM

This is a startlmg passage; but does it startle because of anunusual insIght or simply because it involves some rapidconjuring tricks with an unusual pair of contranes?

Or consider Kierkegaard's statement of the question beforeus: the place of paradox in thought:

Paradox is the passIOn of thought; and the thmker who is With­out paradox IS like a lover Without passIOn-an mconsiderablefellow. But the highest power of every passlOn is always to wantIts own destruction, and so It IS hkewlse the hIghest passIOn ofthe understandmg to want a !>tumblmg block, even though thestumblmg block may 10 one way or another prove Its destruction.That IS thought's highest paradox, to want to dIscover somethmgIt cannot thmk.27

Again, thIS IS a rather Intnguing passage; but is it true thatevery passIOn seeks ItS own destruction? Yet it is on that atleast doubtful propOSItion that the argument hinges. If athinker Without paradox IS an mconslderable fellow, thethInker who loves the absurd for ItS own sake IS, 10 hISown way, a questIonable character, for he may easIly turnout as much falSIty as truth or as much nonscnse as sense.

8But Klerkegaard's greatest weakness IS not even his shabby

Hegeliamsm or hIS overindulgence In vcrbal sleIght of handIt is the 10adequacy of the man 11l111Self to bnng to fruitionthe redirection of phIlosophy that he InitIates

The sigOlfieanee of the eXIstentIal dIalectic hes, as I havesaId, in the final rehgious stage that alone gIVes meaning to .the whole. The aesthebc IS trlVlal, the ethIcal merely tran­!lltory; only 10 the relIgIOUS stage does subJectlVlty come intoJts own. But what IS thIS relIgious lIfe that Kierkegaard exalts?It is the lIfe of what he hImself calls "an mtenslve point."SubjectivIty can be truly subjective only 1D the confrontationof the individual with God, smce only the absolute is com-

27 IbId, IV, 230.

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DREADFUL FREEDOM

pletely indescnbable, completely beyond the inroads of ab­straction and objectlVlty. Only before God IS a man reallyhimself, because It is only before God that he IS finally andirretnevablyalone. But before God the fimte indIvidual is{as nothing; and it is the bItter reahzahon of that nothingnessthat marks the relIgIOUS stage of existence. ReligIOUS ex­perience for Kierkegaard, in other words, hes wholly in theself's awareness of Its 10fimte dIstance from the God whomalone It loves. And the quahty of that awareness, the way itfeels to the self, is pure and unmIxed suffenng. Sometimes,to be sure, the relIgious hfe is described as a joyous onc:"over 70,000 fathoms, mIles and miles from all human help,to be glad." But the quahty of suffermg IS much morefrequently what Klerkegaard stresses 10 the "1Otensive" ex­istence he has chosen. To permt m the dIrectIon of 1Oten­siveness, he says, IS "nothmg more nor less than to besacnficed"; and the sheer unmitIgated agony of spmt thataccompanIes the sacnfice IS the tnumphant Issue of hIsdialectIc of personal eXIstence-for the mtellect, pure para­dox; for the spmt, pure suffenng ThIS is mdeed the hfe ofthe intensive pomt, "zero-pomt eXIstence" (NulIpunkts­eXlstcn7) as some of Its cntIcs have called It. Granted thatthe march of the We1tgClS,t IS mdlffcrent to the salvatIon ofone's smgle self; perhaps even that mdlfference IS preferableto thIS sort of salvatIon.

The dialectIc that leads to it is SImple and stralghtforward­from outwardness to mwardness, that IS, to complete, whollyIsolated 1Owardness, with the only really pnvate and incom­mumcable object, that IS, the absolute, for content. But theabsolute, whIch IS 1Ofimte, cannot be content for the fimteself. So there IS noth1Og left but the tortured recogmtion ofthat 10abIlIty to 611 out the whole of subJcctIve experience;.

The question IS whether turmng to 10wardness neces·sanly means turning to the self as totally Isolated from otherselves, and so tummg completely away from any conception

[ 38 ]

"!'HE SELF AGAINST THE SYSTEM

of human community; for in that case there is indeed nothingbut the individual as nothing before God-or, when faithis gone, simply as nothing. Kierkegaard's preference for ex­tremely simple disjunctions and, more especially, his ownantisocial temper made him thmk that inference a com­pelling one: either the objective or the subjective; there isno compromise. True, he is so far right, that the root ofmorality does he in the individual. That is, in fact, one of thesignificant insights that existential philosophy has to offeras against current social-work, social-conscience gospels. Itis, indeed, meaningless to find moral value in helpmg others Iif one does so out of despair at findmg such value in one's self.If human individuals as such, those helping as well as thosehelped, are not thought of as possessing by their very human- Iity some core of mtrinsic worth, the end of helping them rep­resents only an endless process of mnmng away from one'sown emptiness. Kant's pnnclple, "Treat every human beingas an end and never as a means," holds only If one's own selfis equally an end with every other. But to focus only on one'sself in total isolation is to take an equally distorted, If not animpossible, view of human nature-and Kierkegaard's de­scription of the ethical stage is, in fact, highly artificial anunconvincing; for morality is ~qually meaningless WIthousome conception of a community in which the indlviduais set. Yet Kierkegaard rejects phIlosophically and personallany such notion' community means outwardness, a deniaof self, and therewith falsity, hypocrisy, self-deceit. And herejects it, I think, out of weakness rather than out of strengthHe could not, as he says, "realize the general"; and thisinabilIty stands behmd his bitterness agamst all that is not10 the extremest sense inward and subjective. The com­munity that he himself appeared to live in was the highly.artificial lIttle world of Copenha~n cafe society, whichsuited him presumably just because he did not really live init at all, because he could think his own thoughts in as near

[ 39] I

DREADFUL FREEDOM

to total isolation as a man can easIly achieve. The irony ofsuch a life is a lIttle man's irony, dIfferent from the Socraticirony that Klerkegaard so much admired. From such a situ­ation, to be sure, the phIlosophy of paradox and pain is anecessary consequence; but It IS not a universal human SItu­ation, and the consequences to be drawn from It constitute,at best, but a twisted and fragmentary dialectic of personalexistence.

Klerkegaard was a small man in a small society in a smallIntellectual world. He possessed genuine literary gifts of alimited sort, In particular. a genuIne gIft of parable-see, forexample, the story of the lIly and the bIrd or, in the Frag­ments, the story of the king and the lowly malden. He wasfilled WIth genuine paSSIOn In the realIzation of an ethicaland relIgIOUS CrISIS, a passion which Impels hIm at times togenuIne philosophIC InSIghts. But that dnve In hIm waslimIted as much by Ius spmtual stature as by thc honzonof hIS Intellectual VISIOn. Kierkegaard, In other words, gavethe Copernican revolution of phIlosophy stIll another turn,which It, In fact, needed, but he was hImself too exclusivelya shaper of paradox and, In the worst sense of that epithet,too "HegelIan" a thmker to gIVe adequate phIlosophic imple­mentation to such a new duectIon, and too small a man, forall his passionate self-torture, to make of the new dmlectIcmore than the passage from aesthetic despaIr to a love ofGod equally despauing

[40 ]

CHAPTER THREE

SARTRE AND HEIDEGGER. THEFREE RESOLVE

1

THE "stages on hfe's way:' as Kierkegaard descnbesthem, are, first and last, steps m a pilgnmage from theworld to God; it IS the ultimate confrontation of the

indivIdual wIth his maker that motivates and dIrects the JOur­ney. Only to find God could one relmqUlsh the brightness ofthmgs seen for the dark despaIr of the mind turned in uponItself; only to find God could one renounce the splendIddream-palacell of speculative fancy for the cramped quartersof one's tortured sohtary self. But, m the view of Sartre and,by Sartre's account, of Heidegger, It is the very denial ofGod's eXIstence, not the search for 111m, that makes themner odyssey of the self seekmg the self phl1osophy's primaryconcern.{The self that eXIstentIalIsm l seeks IS each person's,mdividual self, which he must forge for hImself out of suchsenseless circumstances, such meamngless limItations, as aregIVen hIm. This sclf-creation-the makmg of one's essencefrom mere eXIstence-is demanded of each of us because, ac­cordmg to eXIstentialIsm, there is no smgle essence of human­Ity to which we may logIcally turn as standard or model formaking olmelves thus or so. And there IS no single concept of 'humamty, because there is no God For the concept of a hu­man nature, SaTtre belIeves, was a by-product of the tradI­tional Idea of God the maker; and so, when God dIes, the

1. In referrmg to "existentialism" m thiS and the next two chapters, I amrefemng to contemporary atheistic existentialism, such as that of Sartreand Heldegger.

[ 41 J

DREADFUL FREEDOM

notIon of an essence of humanity dies with him, leaving justthese partIcular hIstories of these particular selves to "livethemselves subJectIvely" as best they can. God is tradItIonallythought of as a kind of supermanufacturer, who turns outmen much as Ford turns out motorcars. And there is no sensein talking of a V-8 or a model T or even a tImeless and eternalpattern of machines or men WIthout a maker to make, or atleast conceIve, them A man, then, is either made by God Inconformity \"Ith that "supenor artIsan's" supenor model, orhe must make himself out of the brute facts of hIS own par-ItIcular situatIon Without any model at all. AccordIng to Sar-!tre, however, God is Impossible. To be God IS to exist fromthe necessity of hiS own nature alone: to be causa SUI. But tobe the cause of one's self IS to stand In relatIon to one's self:that IS, to be at a distance from one's self, to be what one ISnot, to be In the manner of consciousness, which is aware ofnot bemg ItS own foundation-that IS, to be not nccessarybut contmgent. Necessary existence, then, Imphes its owncontradIctory, contIngent, or nonnecessary eXistence and istherefore impOSSible. In other words, if God eXIsted, hewould be contmgent and hence not God; or if he IS God, heis not contingent and hence, since noncontingent eXistenceIS self-contradictory, is not But If we have no maker, neitheris there a model by which we can trace the proper pattern ofhumamty, smce the model was conceived of only as an In­strument of the maker. "Heaven is empty," and we are leftalone to create ourselves by our own acts.

This IS perhaps a crude paraphrase of Sartre's argument,but the argument itself, on contIngency and neceSSity,though stated WIth more compleXity than I have given It, ISnot essentially differcnt and IS, in my opimon, a very ques­tIonable one. Actually, however, what is important for Sar­tre's position IS not the disproof of God's existence but,much more Simply, the absence of any belIef In his existence.Granted, on whatever grounds, the logical impossibility of

[ 42 ]

THE FREE RESOLVE

the traditional God: that IS, for a Kierkegaard, just thereason to cherish our faith In him. Logical impossIbility canno more conquer faith than logical possibIhty can create it.What matters, then, is not the inaccessIbility of God to logicbut the actual fact that we do not believe in him; for, as suchdIfferent ChnstIans as Augustine or Occam have recognized,if faIth In an all-good, all-powerful maker of all thmgs doesnot }?recede our reasonmg, no argument wIll ever lead us tohIm.rrherefore, If we start, as Sartre does, without that essen­tIal faith, we are mdeed left WIth the naked facts of our con­tmgent existen(,e~ to make of what we may. There IS nonature and, a forbon, no human nature, ordered through andthrough by the plan of a supreme and supremely WIse Cre­ator, on whIch our acts and aspiratIons can be modeled andby whIch they can be )udgedi

There IS, howevcr, another possIble positIon whIch onellught oppose to that of the eXIstentiahst. Why, even with­out a creator, cannot the human speCIes, qua natural species,have one umform and mtelhglble essence? The analogy withhuman processes of manufacture-motorcar models for mo­torcar-makers-Is a rather shaky one, especially in VIew of thefact that III Anstotle we have an actual histoncal Illstance ofa philosophy Involvmg a unitary human nature but not acrcatmg God The pure Anstotehan pOSItIon, as against thePlatomzed and JudaIzed Anstotchamsm of ChnstIanity, Sar­tre docs not anywhere, so far as I know, trouble to dIspose ofHe could have shown faIrly eaSIly, I should t1unk, that It is, Ifnot an untenable, at least a fauly unhkely, position in thefacc of a number of kinds of eVIdence. For instance, there isthe famIhar obJectIon to Aristotle's eternally separate speCIesm the lIght of the theory of organic evolutIon. ThIS can begot around, perhaps, by devious logic, but, unless one startswith the notIon of a world of God's creatures permanentlyordered, there seems to be httle ground for maIntamIng theAnstotelian species agamst the much weIghtier evidence for

[ 43 ]

DREADFUL FREEDOM

some sort of continuum of livIng things. Not only biology,'moreover, but modern physIcs as well lends its weIghtagainst the tIghtly ordered neatness of an Aristotelian uni­verse. Nor is there in Aristotle's psychology any place for thecomplexIties of the subconscious, whIch are, surely, neItheraspects of the sensItIve soul that we share WIth animals norexpressIOns of a ratIonal and actIvely knOWIng faculty. Inshort, WIthout the support of a supernatural faith or the ex­cuse of a perverse antIquarianism, our concept of matter, hfe,or mInd equally refuses to be bound by the fetters of Ansto­telIan procedure, and so we lose whatever advantage mIghthave accrued to us morally from an acceptance of the notIonof a neatly dIVIded and subdIVIded nature, IncludIng onemcely umfied and definable compartment labeled "Man."In fact, then, Sartre's position is not seriously weakened byhI5 fmlure to deal WIth the Anstotehan essence of humanityYet It IS stIll a strange omIssion on his part, since the eXIst­ence of the Anstotehan system does dearly invahdate theSImple mference, "No God, therefore no essence of man."

But, If dlYmely or phIlosoplllcally gIven essences are ehmi­nated, neither IS human nature here reduced to matenalcatcgones. Matenahsm IS, I presume, beneath the ontologi­cal dIgmty of Heldegger even to refute; but the phIlosophythat reduces man to mechamsm hac;, for Sartre at least,enough attractiveness to ment refutatIon. The pohtIcal POSI­tion of the French existentialIsts, as the artIcle quoted III

chaptcr i indIcates and as we shall sec m more detml m alater chapter, IS definitely left of lIberal. And Just becausethey share polItIcal aims and sympathies with the Commu­msts, they take special pains to show how, m their view,eXIstcntIahsm proVIdes a better phIlosophIc basis for theseaims than does MarxIst materialism There is even a note ofpersonal sympathy-an affect not generally conspicuousamong them-in some of their dealings with communism.See, for example, in Sartre's Age of Reason, the interview of

[44 ]

THE FREE RESOLVE

his admittedly autobiographical hero, Mathieu, with hisCommunist former frIend. A sharp nostalgia and a kind ofsympathetic envy dommate MathIeu's mood: he feels morebItterly than usual the loneliness of hIs search for freedom,whIch as clearly involves his condemnation by the revolu­tIonary friend he more than halfway admIres, as It does hISrejection by the bourgeOIs brother he despIses.

In Sartre's own phIlosophy, moreover, the concept ofbody, which, as he points out, IS strangely ignored in Heldeg­ger, IS central to the analysis of conSCIOusness; but It IS thlS\body and these factual conditions as a facet of thIS personal­ity that are SIgnificant, not personahty as such, reduced ingeneral to an epiphenomenon of abstract materIal laws. To"explam" consciousness even as mechanically as analySIStends to do, by turning typical conscious symptoms into theexpressIOns of umversally recognizable subconscious pat­terns, is, for Sartre, to aVOId the problem of the lOdlvidualconsCIOusness Itself True, Sartre takes a great deal fromanalysIs 10 hIS transformation of symbol mterpretatIon lOto"exIstentIal psychoanalysIs"; but in the ultImate philosophi­cal meamng and human purport of such mterpretation thereIS a significant dIfference. In L''t;tre et Ie m~ant, after a de­tailed dISCUSSIOn of the symbohc meaning of la viscosite andles trous, he concludes:

.... What Intere~ts the [exIstentIal] psychoanalyst first of all,IS to detcrmme the free project of the Single person starting fromthe IndIVIdual relatIon whIch umtes It to these dIfferent symbolsof beIng I can love Vl~COUS contacts, have a horror of holes, etc.That docs not mean that the VISCOUS, the greasy, the hole, etc.,have lost theIr general ontologIcal slgmficance for me, but, on thecontrary, that, because of that sigmfication, I determme myselfIn such and such a manner m relabon to them.2

What the existential psychoanalyst is after, it seems, is notso much the elimmation of the problems of the conscious

2 Jean-Paul Sartre, L'l!:tre et Ie ncmt (Pans Llbrame Galhmard, 1943),p.706.

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DREADFUL FREEDOM

self through explanatIon of their origin in typical subcon­scious patterns as it is the use made of universal symbols bythis individual-and that IS a free use. The existentiahst doesnot deny the reality of the indIVidual WIll by uncovering thecause-and-effect relatIons that determIne its chOIces andreducing It to them. Rather, he illuminates the individual,will and heightens our sense of ItS reahty by dlscovennghow, with respect to the fundamental project that constI­tutes myself, I determine myself in relation to such symbols.•

But if the ordInary analyst's determInism is inadequatefrom the existentialist point of view, at least as much so isthe Marxist attempt to reduce conscIOusness to matenallydetermined cause-and-effect phenomena. The economic de­terminants that make me worker, farmer, or entrepreneur,housewife, "career woman," or "sociahte," have for the ex­Istentiahst enormous and inescapable Importance for thedirection and purport of the history that is or becomes my­self. There is, for eXIstentIalism, no free-Wlll-in-Itself existinginwardly, in StOIC fashion, in eternal apartness from theafflIctions or achievements of the eXistIng, embodied in­dividual. There IS no mner versus outer, rabonal versus ura­tional, In human histories. But, on the other hand, thoughthere is no self apart from thiS partIcular economiC, social,physical situation, such a situation does not constitute theself. No matter how bound by feudal oppression was thepeasant whom Gibbon sneered at, there was a difference be­tween him and the ox he worked. He could work well orill, with docility or rebelliousness; he could even, on occa­sion, rise to rule Christendom; and he could sporadically, ifineffectively, exclaim with Wat Tyler, "When Adam delvedand Eve span, who was then the gentleman?" Geographical,historical, and economic facts far beyond the individual'scontrol do mdeed determine the scope and the limits of thechoices he can make. Yet, however narrow those limits, it isstIll the choice within the situation, not the mere situation

[46 ]

THE FltEE ItESOLVE

itself, that makes the man. But materialism, as Sartre sees it,nullifies that central freedom; it makes us not only deter­mined by thmgs but ourselves things; and thus, in its revolu­tionary form, it involves the contradIctIon of seeking humanliberty through its demal. At least It appears to seek it,though, at bottom, matenalIsm IS, for the eXIstentialist, anendeavor not to find lIberty but to avoid it, to seek excusesfor rejecting a freedom one dare not face.

2EXIstential phIlosophy, then-or that branch of it which

Sartre calls "atheistIc existentIalism"-is an attempt to rean­terpret human nature in terms of human subjectIVIty itse'tf,not through superhuman relIgious or sU9human material'categories. It is this attempt to show how human values arederived from a totally human-in fact, a desperately human-SItuatIon that makes some of the analyses of Sartre orHeldegger, if not valId, at least ternbly relevant to the di­lemma of those who can find comfort m no creed of God orsCIence.

Before we look at some of the partIculars of tIllS reinter­pretatIon, however, it should be noted parenthetIcally thatto lImIt tlleir philosophies to the sphere of human valuesand human problems would imply for eIther Sartre or Hei­degger a very superficial and mIsleading conception of theiralms; for both of them profess not to be dealing with "ethi­cal" or even "epIstemological" problems in the tradItionalsense but to be founding a new ontology, a new analysis ofbemg itself, not our being as distinct from being in general.True, this new ontology is conspicuously focused on whatlook like human categories-in Heidegger, such concepts asconcern, care, cunosity, dread of death, resolve, etc.; inSartre, consciousness, interrogation, dread, bad faith, etc.Yet Heidegger is forever insistIng on the distinction betweenthe ontological significance of his principles llnd the merely

[-47]

DREADFUL FREEDOM

-and contemptIbly-"ontic" apphcation of them to partIc­ular actual situatIons. Sartre's Being and Nothing-as meta­physIcally entitled as Its German parallel Being and Time­IS expllcltly said to be a work in ontology which merely laysthe foundation for partIcular moral or psychological analysisof speCIal human problems. Heidegger at the outset ofSem und ZeIt declares he is embarking on a "destruction ofontology" as the preface to a new ontology. And SadreclaIms to be analyzing the conscious self-the pour-soi­wIth the purpose of discovenng, through its relation tothmgs, the nature of phenomena as distmct from self, ofwhat in Hegelian language he calls the en-soi. Yet, where"being" enters both mvestIgations, It enters totally wlthmthe exphcit context of Its human bearing and personal sig­nificance; and to call this "ontology" seems, to one nottramcd m the dISCIpline of HusserI and his school, a strangeextenslOn-or llmitatIon-of the name. We all hve, as HeI­degger puts It, "under Kant's shadow:' We all recogmze, msome form, a distmction between what is and what appearsto us; and in the light of that dIstinctIon we recognize thatwhen we try to deal WIth being we must, from our limItedperspectIve, deal WIth it not SImply as It is but as it seems tous But what Sartre and Heidegger profess is the exact con­trary of that Kantian restrictIon: that in dealing with thingsas they seem to us we are dealmg with them as they are:'"Here, I must humbly confess, I simply cannot follow them,unless m the spmt in which one follows Allee down the rab­bIt-hole. In ItS human relevance the analySIS of both philos­ophers is genuinely novel and, in part at least, genuinelyilluminating. But as ontology I cannot profess, and do notpropose, to expound it.

Admittedly neglecting, then, the aims and achievementsof eXIstentialism as a metaphysical revolution, let us look atsome of the baSIC conceptions of Sartre and Heidegger asthey bear, frankly, on the problems of human personality-

[ 48]

THE FREE RESOLVE

not on reality as such but on man's reality. It is, after all,from its stress on human existence, not just existence, thatthe movement takes its name; and it is that stress, m its newconcreteness, that gives it Its Importance, whether as mo­mentary fashIOn simply-"le nouveau Da-da," as Sartre hascalled himself-or as something much more serious.

Looking at their work, then, in this lImited context, one•finds, equally in Sarhe and in Heidegger, a number of funda­. mental concepts that appear, as in Kierkegaard, either newor newly interpreted when compared wIth more conven­tional theories of human nature. So, for example, the con­cept of freedom receives new meanmg when it IS seen m thecontcxt of the concrete human sItuatIOn-neIther as God'smexplIcable gIft to his Image nor as the self-delusion of aclustcr of condItIoned reflexes. The net of cucumstante!>that constItutes m the broadest sense my physical sItuatIon,the world mto which I am flung-or rather mto whIch, whenf come to any kmd of awareness, I have always already beenflung-is, nevertheless, a world only through my projectIon 1of what I mcan to make It And some resolutIon to make ofIt one thmg or another, to make of myself one person oranother, IS me!>capable for me. Sheer facts exist only for"scum, offal. or a cabbage." For me they are always my facts,whIch I must transcend m some duectIon, If only m thedIrcction of flIght. of madness. or of self-destructIon. Thereare steel and stones and mortar; but there is my city, whIch Il1lU5t hate or love or be indIfferent to, hve in or leave or comeback to. There are papers and typewrIters and mailboxes;but there is my job, which I must get done by an edItorialdcadhne or leave undone, with the sense (perhaps m eIthercase) that existentIalism is too much for me. CIrcumstancesbecome circumstances only for the consciousness that triesto make of them something other than mere circum~iances.

So self and the world are continuously born together, in theself's free transcendence of Its situation to form itself-in-

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DREADFUL FREEDOM

relation-tO-lts-world~transcendence always already in proc­ess, yet always not yet accomphsh¢. Thus It is no contra­diction for men to be determIned and free; for freedomwould be meamngless, were there not these partIculars toface or flee, use or discard-partIculars which make me whatI am, yet which I, by my transcendence of them in thisdlIection and not In that, make Into the world they are.So It is that "man IS what he makes himself:' that there IS no 'essence of humamty but only actIons of men-responsible,acts, yet acts whIch are not yet what they aim to be., Nor is thIs, as It may at first SIght appear to be, Just an­other easy way out of the problem of freedom and necessity.It IS, on the contrary, an acutely uncomfortable way; for ItimplIes not only hope of what I ~hall do, but lIteral and mes­capable responslblhty for whJt I have done It imphes notonly that I may becomc what I may do, but that J am whatI have done: not what, out of well-meanIng InCapaCIty, Imeant but fallcd to do, but what, WIthIn the close yet fleXIblebounds of my pcrsonal sItuatIOn, I have contnved to accom­plish Of such accomplishment and faIlure to accomphsh Iand I alone must bear the credIt, the shame, the tnumph,and the regret. It I~ meamngless to say with the matenalIstthat my enVlIomncnt has made me what I am; for It 15 I who,have, by the values I rcad llltO It, made it an enVIronment. ,If malnutntIon and bad housmg made me a cnmmal, so I

have malnutntIon and bad housing made poets, finanCIalWIzards, and what not. But If, contrary to the enVlIonmen­tahsts' clmm, I, not my sItuabon, am responsIble for what Iam, such responsIbIhty is not to be weakened by the conver­Mon of myself mto a sccret, mner WIll, convemently apartfrom my concrcte, external, observable acts. There are, forthe eXIstentIahsts, no mute mglonous Mlltons-If they aremute, they are not MI1tons There is no good saying I amwhat, but for my situatIon, I might have done; for if my sit­uatIon 1S not myself, neIther am I anything apart from it.

[ 50 ]

THE FREE RESOLVE

What I wIsh I might have been, had things been different,is an expression of my fallure, not of my possible accom­plishment. So there is, for the existentialist, a double com­pulsion of fact. There are the facts of my situation, meaning­less except as I have given them meamng, and there are thefacts of the meamngs I have gIven and the acts in which Ihave expressed them: they were free acts, but, just because ofthat freedom, they are more mtnnately, more poignantlycompulsive than the vast nexus of factors m my sItuationthat are less immedIately mine. Thus, shorn of materiahstexcuses or Ideahst escapes, the eXIstenbahst's Judgment ofmen is ruthless and unforgIving In the extreme. It is, onemay say, the exact opposite of ZOSSIma or DImitri's con­SCIOusness that we are all equally gUIlty Each man is gUIltyalone and of hImself' let him hve out his own consequenthell WIthout mercy and WIthout repneve That is, in fact,what the characters of Hms-c1os have to do-each servingonly as goad or devll to the others. It is just the fact of hisown achon-whlch was cowardly-that Garcm cannot bearto face; as m the other example we mentioned earher, It isthe fact of hIS own actIon that was dIshonorable that Con­rad's Lord Jml is forever trying to escape. The hell of Garcin,the purgatory of Lord JIm, are the mevltable, right, and Justconsequences of human responsIbilIty. Through some suchhell, or at the least some such purgatory, each of us who ishonest must dare to pass.

ThIS is, one may say, a terrible doctnne And, in fact, therealization of my responsibIhty to make of my world what it,and with it I, can be brings inescapably, when It is genuine,terror before the full meanmg of that responsiblhty:Dread"though variously interpreted in Kierkegaard, Sartre, and}Heidegger, invariably goes hand m hand With freedom. Forall of them freedom is revealed not m heaven-writtensanc­tions, not even in the smug humility of Kantian "respect forthe law"-in which the law I give myself appears, despite its

r51 J

DREADFUL FREEDOM

self-imposition, to follow universally from the nature ofreason itself, and so to be comfort1Ogly self-explanatory andself-justified. Freedom reveals Itself rather, when we screw upour courage to see it without pretense, in the dizzying col­lapse of external sancbons and universal laws, in the appall­ing consciousness that I, and I alone, have, absurdly andwithout reason, brought order out of chaos; that I alone, ,crudely and stupidly, without cosmIC meamng or rabonalground, ha"e made a world out of notlung: and Wlth thatawareness my world Itself totters on the brink of the noth1Og- \ness from whIch It came. •

Stnctly speak1Og, however, "terror" is not the word todescribe thIS rcvelatIon of the meanmg of frccdom. Terror,like fear, has a dcfimte object· the thing or the occasionthat insplIes terror or fear IS a recogmzable obJcct or eventwithm an ordered world-even If Sartre IS nght 10 descnb10gthe respondmg cmotIon as a "transformatIon of the world"aimed at ehminating the fear-mspmng object The eXisten­tialists' "dread," by contrast-the vertIgo that accompamesand even constItutes self-realIzatIon-has no definable objectwithm a well-compartmentalIzed umverse. It IS a more am­biguous, even though a profounder, uneasmess, whose objectis not thiS or that wlthm our world but 10 some scnse thevery lImits of that world Itself It is drcad before empt1Oe!ls- ,before anmhI1ation-before nothll1g Much scorn has beenheaped on Heidegger, notably in Carnap's famous Pseudo­problems of Metaphysics, for his ontological effusions aboutnothing 10 Was ist Metaphyslk? More recently Jean Wahlhas cntIcIzcd Sartre's arguments on noth1Og 10 L':£tre etIe neant. And there is certall1ly a good deal of word-play onthe subject 10 both authors. "1 am my own nothingness" (feSUlS mon pIOpIC neant) IS perhaps not qUIte so obviouslynonsense as "Nothing nothings" (Das N lChts mchtet). ButIe neant hke das Nichts does often provide a neatly dramaticphrase that seems to settle the author's problem Wlth a qmp

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THE FREE RESOLVE

rather than with an argument. Yet, WIth all that, the conceptof dread with its object that IS nothing and nowhere, the ideaof human freedom as revealmg Itself in the very realizationof its own meaninglessness, its own nonentity-such a con·ception lies ,t the core of eXistential phIlosophy and at thecore of ItS signl~cant contnbution to man's view of his ownnature. ~

That this dread is of nothmgness is especially clear, per­haps, in Heldegger's analYSIS of personal eXIstence; for in hisview what IS dreadful is the awareness of my death as theinevitable end toward which my freedom projects itself.Death in its utter negatIOn of meamng lImits, and so in thedeepest sense determmes, whatever resolve I make to tum"the meradlCable past mto a significant future. Yet it is only10 such a resolve as limited by death-in the realizahon of myexistence as essentially and necessanly being to death-thatI can nse out of the dlstractmg and decelVlng cares of myday-by-day eXIstence to become authentically myself. Only insuch recognitIon of my radIcal fimtude, In the smking dreadwith whIch I face my own anmhIlatIon, can I escape thesnares of a delusIve present, to create, in a free resolve, a gen­UIne future from a genumely lustorical past.

For Sartre, on the other hand, my death IS for me so com­plete a nonreahty as to be of relatIvely little mterest eXisten­tially. In the tItle-story of Le Mur, for example, the con­demned man faced With death at sunrise becomes no longera person but a mere mass of phYSIcal sensations. Existencewith so hideously definite a hmlt to Its future is no longer inany personal sense eXIstence at all; for it is essentially the pro­jection of myself mto the future that constitutes, for Sartre,my personal reality. My own death, he says in L'P;tre et Ieneant, is more real for others than it is for me. Yet dread forhim, too, is of a kmd of nothingness. For Sartre it is the free

. resolve itself that is dreadful, since it carries WIth it the aware­ness that, unjustifiably and absurdly but inevitably, I must of

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my own single self create-or have created-the values thatmake my world a world. Hence the nothingness in the faceof which dread rises is. though not death. just as genuinely akmd of anmhilabon or negation; it IS the utter disparity be­tween the bare facts that are there and the somethit1'f'8sethat is not. but whIch. Without the comfort of divine sanctionor matenal neceSSIty. I in my agomzed lIberty must fashionof them. "Man is condemned to be free." that is. continuallyto make himself other than he IS. and deep dread accom­panies the awareness of that destiny. ,

But. one may object. our hves go on from day to day.'through hopes and fears. rejoicings and disappointments.without any such sickemng expenence of the emptmess onwhich. the exlstenbalists would have It. those lives are based.To the eXIstentIahst, however. that IS no serious objection.If the actual expenence of dread. the nausea m whIch It findsItS physical expreSSIOn. occurs but seldom, the very ranty ofits occurrence teStifies to ItS hIdden presence; for It IS char­acteristic of human freedom that It cannot bear, from day today, to face the shattenng awareness of its own reality. Hencedread. whether mterpreted as in Heldegger as dread of deathor as in Sartre as dread of hberty Itself, is contrasted by bothof them to an everyday self-deceIVIng manner of eXIstence,which conceals the tragic terror of the individual's lonelmessbeneath a soothing multIphcIty of conventional and externaldemands. Heldegger's "human eXIstence" (Dasem) in con­tinually lost in the "one": what one does. thmks. and be­comes is subStituted for the genuine resolve of the Isolatedbut hberated mdivldual. And such surrender to the scatteredand dlstractmg demands of every day is. though fraudulent,an essential aspect of the very existence of the indIvidual.Being what we are. we cannot help hvmg most of our lives.quantitatively speaking, in the little concerns of every day: mtaking care of the things we habitually take care ofB-the

3 The ke} concepts ale Sorge, "care" or "concern," and besorgen, "takecare of," or "be concerned With or for,"

[ 54]

THE FREE RESOLVE

letters to be written, the dIshes to be washed, the car to begreased, the class to be taught, the cigarette to be smoked.And in Sartre, in additIon to the force of such everyday dIs­tractions, we find the ethical angUIsh of the free man blurredby various forms of "bad faith," i.e., attempts to blur thedichotomy between my freedom and the mere contmgencyon which It is founded, and thus to escape the awareness ofthe true nature of that freedom. Notable among these, e g,IS "the spint of seriousness" which we mentioned earlIer­the pretense to one's self of finding values comfortably en­sconced for us in things, instead of realIZIng our own unjustI­fiable Invention of them as unjustIfiably earners of ourfreedom. Such a pretense, In fact, is constantly abetted bythe pattern of our dally lIves .

. . . . Ordmarily, my attItude WIth respect to values IS emmentlyreassurIng The fact IS, I am engaged 10 a world of values. TheangUIshed apperceptIon of values as sustamed 10 be10g by myhberty IS a posterIor and medIated phenomenon .... Thus, 10what we shall call the "world of the immedlatc," whIch presentsItself to our nonreflectIve conSCIOusness, we do not appear first tobe thrown afterward mto undertakmgs. But our bemg IS 1m·mediately "m SItuation," that IS, It ames m undertakmgs andknows Itself first m so far as It IS rcflected m ItS undcrtakmgs. Wediscover ourselves, then, in a world peopled With eXigencies, atthe heart of projects "10 the course of realIzation": I am wntmg,I am gomg to smoke, I have an appomtment tomght With Pierre,I must not forget to answer Simon, I have no nght to hide- thetruth any longer from Claude. All these small passive expecta­hom of the real, all these trIte and everyday values, draw theirmeamng, m fact, from a first proJechon of myself whIch IS, asIt were, my chOIce of myself m the world. But, to speak precisely,thIS projection of myself toward a first posslblhty, whIch bnngsIt about that there are values, appeals, expectations, and, 10 gen­eral, a world, does not appear except beyond the world as theabstract and logical sense and sigmficance of my undertakings.For the rest there are, concretely, alarm clocks, SIgnboards, taxreturns, pohcemen-so many barners agamst dread. But as soonas the undertak10g falls me, as soon as I am sent back to myself

[ 55]

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because I must await myself m the future, I suddenly find myselfto be the one who gives Its meanmg to the alarm clock, whoforbids hImself, at the instance of a signboard, to walk on aflower-bed or a lawn, who lends Its urgency to the chief's order,who deCIdes on the Interest of the book he is wnbng, who bringsIt about, finally, that values exISt to determine his action by theirexigencies. I emerge alone and m dread m the face of the umqueand first project which constItutes my bemg; all the barners, allthe railIngs, collapse, anmhllated by the conscIOusness of myhberty, I have not, nor can I have, recourse to any value agamst ,the fact that It IS I who mamtam values m bemg, nothmgcan assure me agamst myself, cut off from the world and my Iesscnce by the nothmg that I am, I have to reahze the meanmgof the world and of my essence: I deCide It, alone, unJustIfiable, .and Without excuse.4

3Freedom that is total, yet rooted 10 a determmate, histori­

cal situation; dread in the face of such freedom; and the con­cealment of dread in the comforting frauds of everyday exist- ,ence-~uch IS the nexus of ideas that make up the core of the

. existentIalIst's concepnon of human lIfe. There is, perhaps, •nothing really new in any single one of these Ideas. Klerke­gaard, as we have seen, thought of himself as a continuer,though with a significant dIfference, of the tradition of So­cratIc nony. Sartre finds, overlaId, to be sure, with the falSI­tIes of "dogmatism" and "ChristIamty," the seed of hIS con­ceptIon of free wIll in the unhampered lIberty of the Carte­sian God, who is bound neIther by truth nor by good butmakes them both. Here is the recogmtIon, says Sartre, thatliberty is at one with creativity, that only pure freedom canmake a world. Even Heidegger, despite his scorn for nearly·all philosophers but Heidegger, claims, WIth the help, it IStrue, of some rather strange phIlology, that he finds 1D theearly pre-Socratics-Anaximander and Parmemdes-somegenuine existentIal insight. But, in general, phIlosophers

4 Sartre,op CIt, pp. 76-77

[ S6]

THE FREE RESOLVE

have fought out the problem of freedom in a much moreabstract sphere and have thus contnved, wIth singular per­sistence, to overlook the mdlVldual existence m which alonefreedom can have its being, to obscure rather than to illumi­nate the grandeur and the folly, the triumph and the terror,of men's lIberty.

Yet no theory of human nature that has truth in it is whol­ly new; and one finds ll1stances of the truths stressed by con­temporary eXistentIalIsts, If not so much m their philosophicpredecessors, at least certainly in the less logic-bound inter­pretatIons of human lIfe of the poet or the novelist. Thus,for example, Simone de BeauvOlr sees in Stendhal's JulienSorel the eXistential hero, who would, in NapoleOnIC lIberty,rise above hIS world and transform It. And the end of Julten,too, IS, I should tlunk, eXIstentIally fitting, for It expresseshis fatal responsIbIlIty for an actIOn that appears, m propor­tion to hIS ambItIon, capncIOus and even tnvlal. Or, agam,Camus finds m Dostoicvsky the eXistential novelIst par excel­lence. That IS because, m extreme contrast to hiS own phI­losophy of absurdlsm, whose heroes are Don GIOvanni, theconqueror, the actor-those who glory m the sheer matIonalmoment-he equates eXIstentIahsm with ItS rehgious form,WIth the morahty that has passed through the absurd not tofreedom SImply but to God Camus IS mIstaken In that equa­tion. But If an Alyosha I~ unthmkable to the admirer ofJulIen, there I~, for example, in the world as Ivan's GrandInqUlMtor sees it, a reflectIOn of somethmg lIke the eXisten­tialIst's sense of the bitterness of human freedom, thoughthe eXl1,tentIahst would stoically bear that bitterness ratherthan demand that men renounce It for a false and captivehappiness.

It has been said, too, that Hamlet IS an eXistentIal drama;1i5 Cf an article 011 "Hamlet The ElI.,stential Madness," by Wylie Sypher

(111 Nahon, June ZZ, 1946),111 which, however, there IS some confUSion betvleen the absurdlsm of Camus and the exlstentlahsm of Sartre ·'Absurdlty"IS an existential concept hut not to the exclUSIOn of other factors 111 thehuman situation.

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and, though that is perhaps as hazardous as to call Hamlet,say, a Freudian drama or, 10 Friedrich Schlegel's sense, ametaphysIcal drama, still there is, in some respects at least,justice 10 the epIthet. For the existentialist, every man isborn to set nght a time out of joint; and every man's tragedy,hke Hamlet's, hes 10 the disproportion of the circumstancesto be righted and the action that he takes to nght them. Thisis not the simple romanhc dlspanty of thought and actionbut a more dehcate and, at the same time, more desperatedIscord. It IS not Just the dreams of a man at odds with whathe does, but It IS hIS dreams enacted, his values self-createdand self-rcahzcd, hopelessly dIsproportionate to the circum­stances he is trylllg to control. The actions that Hamletdoes not take are as much achons as those that he doesput into practice. The check that repeatedly keeps him fromSWIft and effective execution of hIS purpose IS as much hISdOlllg as are the bold and impulsive deeds that he does do inthe heat of a moment-vls-a-VIs Polomus, the pIrates, atOpheha's grave, and, finally, agalllst the Klllg hImself. Or, toput It the other way, as the check where he should act pointsthe lack of proportion betwcen action and SItuation, so doesthe element of chance and of capnce in the actions which hedoes execute. The elements of chance III the plot-in themeetlllg WIth the pIrates and m the final catastrophe-are byno means, as they appeared to Dr. Johnson, flaws III the struc­ture of the play. They arc dramatic mstances of the absurd­ity, the uratlonahty, that underhes our freedom. Our hIghestpurposes fall mIserably and ineptly short of theu fulfilment;and, where they do issue into positive action, they are en­snared III a maze of chance, purposelessness, or, at best, cross­purposes.

Not only the disproportion of circumstance and action,moreover, but the dIsharmony of a genume humamty and itsconventional imItation may be called, in a sense, an "exis­tential" element 10 Hamlet. Hamlet's antic disposition is not

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THE FREE RESOLVE

simply a device to find out the king (it IS put to httle use forthat or any other observable external purpose). It IS, as theedge of Hamlet's Wlt continually bears wItness, the sign of adeep wound-a wound ongmatmg m the sense of hIS moth­er's corruptlon but reflected more broadly in the rejection ofthe whole outer surface of hIS world, the world m whIch aman can sml1e and smile and be a v111am. So Rosencrantzand Gmldenstern, who were once accepted as friends or atleast compamons in student revelry, are now despIsed for thefrauds they are; and Polomus IS fittmgly made a fool of. ForHamlet, there IS that withm whIch passeth show; but showis all the world of a Polonius or of Laertes, hIS youthfulcountcrpart. Hamlet's apparent madness, lIke Kierkegaard'sirony, marks the final, irremedIable split between the worldlywisdom that is appearance only and the tragic reahty whIchwe find when we face ourselves unmasked.

And Opheha's real madness echoes the same theme. Gneffor her father may be the ImmedIate occasion; but that gnefcannot be disentangled from her equally gnevous beWIlder­ment about Hamlet, and that agam is sharpened by the fal­SIty of her own posItIon. She has been preached at by fatherand brother, shamelessly used as a tool by her father-onlym madness can a real Ophelia break through the restramts ofsuch a SItuation. Some awareness of the frauds she IS asked tohve by is apparent even early m the play, m her reply toLaertes·

But, good my brother,Do not, as !lome ungracIOus pastors do,Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven,WhIle.., hke a puffed and reckless hbcrtme,HImself the pnmrose path of dalhance treads,And reeks not Ius own rede.

It is that awareness, intensIfied by the further actions of theplay, that, as her songs mdicate, ternllnates in madness and,again in an action that appears half-accidental and half­Wllled, in death.

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DREADFUL FREEDOM

But one can find "existential" motifs in stranger placesthan Hamlet. One might not expect any kinship with exis­tentialIsm, for example, in a novelIst wnting so entIrely in arealistic tradition-and wIth so lIttle claim to being a "philo­sophical" novelist-as Dickens. Yet the intimate relation ofdread to the genesIs and mamtenance of a scheme of valuesIS an "exIstential" theme dramatically exemplified, for in­stance, In Great Expectations. Of course one might hold,and with some reason, that DIckEns would be, for an eXIsten­tIalIst, merely a hornble example of "mauvaise fm": of a manwho took so senously the values gIven him by his age that hecould not "rise above It to transform it." The boy in theblackmg-factory, who so bItterly resented the vulganty andsordIdness of IllS surroundmgs, nught as an artIst create mrebel or cnmmal corrosives agamst the society in which hehad again won the place of gentleman. But the bitternessgrowmg from that chIldhood wound IS the correlate of un­qucstioning acceptance of hiS society's valucs, not of thenrejectIon or transmutatIon.6 And that kmd of acceptanceconstitutes the "spmt of senousness" which the eXistential­IStS so profoundly !lcorn In particular, the resolution of thestory m Great ExpectatIOns-even Without the fal!le Estellaendmg-would probably appear to the eXistentialist to beexceedmgly Wicked. Pip IS no longer the London gentleman;but, though exIled to the East and to trade, he is stIll undem­ably a gentleman. HIS rathcr condescendmg visits to Joe andBIddy and hiS namesake scarcely atone for that (for Pip andDickens) comfortable but (for the eXIstentialIst) shamefulfact. As far as I can sec, the only pOSSible cures for mauvaiseloi for Sartre and hiS followers are to be an honest workIng­man or an honest eXIstential philosopher. But PIp could

6 See Edmund Wilson, "The Two Scrooges," In The Wound and theBow (Cambndge Houghton MdBm Co. 1941).

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THE FREE RESOLVE

hardly have turned into either of these worthy characters,any more than DIckens could.

Yet despIte this (existentIally) lamentable lack on thepart of Pip and his author, the story of Pip's dream and Itscollapse does reflect, in part at least, a favorite existentialtheme. Miss Havlsham, Wlth her creature Estella, sets goingPIp'S discontent Wlth hImself as a "common laboring boy"with coarse hands and heavy boots-and hIs dreams of him­self as somethmg very dlff~nt, as endowed by Fortune WIththe role and beanng of a gentleman. But Magwich and theprison-shIp, on the other hand, are both the lIteral realItyunderlying that Fortune when it does come and the symbolof a psychologIcal reality The escape on the marshes fillssmall PIp with terror; that chIldhood terror IS re-echoed inthe nameless dread that he feels at the meetmg Wlth the con­victs on the coach, and it comes fully to the forefront of hISconSCIOusness m the return of Magwich-when the gentle­man of hIS daydream IS brought face to face WIth thehideous realIty of the outcast who has "made" him. As MISSHavisham IS the external stimulus for PIp'S situatIon andEstella the symbol of the beauty and grace he longs for, soMagWlch and the conVicts are the recurrent symbols of theternble realIty underlymg the fulfilment of hiS hopes and ofthe uneasiness that accompames the foreknowledge of thatreahty. Thc two themes coalcsce only With Magwich's return;but theu compresence is suggested m the episode of PIp'SViSit to MiSS Havisham on the occaSIOn of Estella's commghome as a "fimshed" young lady. ThIS is seemingly the per­fection of hiS dream: he is a gentleman, and Estella is meantfor hIm. Coarse, humble Joe is totally bamshed, with ob­VIOusly false but effective excuses; and the gentleman, hkethe lady, appears to be "finished." But it was on that journeythat the convict of the pound notes traveled beside Pip onthe coach, and that PIp got down off the coach at the edge oftown to avoid their hearing his name:

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As to the convicts, they went thelf way With the coach, andI knew at what pomt they would be spmted off to the Ilver. Inmy fancy, I saw the boat with Its convict crew waltmg for themat the shme-washed stalIs-agam heard the gruff "Give way, youl"hke an order to dogs-agam saw the wicked Noah's Ark lymg outon the black water.

I could not have saId what I was afraid of, for my fear was alto­gether undefined and vague, but there was great fear upon meAs I walked on to the hotel, I felt that a dread, much exceedmgthe mere apprehensIOn of a pamful or disagreeable recogmtIon,made me tremble. I am confident that It took no distinctness ofshape, and that It was the revival for a few mmutes of the terrorof childhood.

It was indeed such a revival, but It was also an anticipation ofthe terror of adulthood-the angUIsh that was later to markthe collapse of PIp'S illuSIOns, the recogmtIon of the squalor,uncouthness, and depraVIty from whIch, in fact, the realIza­tIon of hIS VISIon of PIp the gentleman had sprung.

4

If the inSIghts of eXIstentIalIsm are not entirely novel,however, theIr phIlosophIC formulation m large part is. Notthat age-old phIlosophIC problems are here suddenly solved;but at least some of them are more adequately stated or somephenomena of human hfe more adequately descnbed.

For example, look bnefly at the problem of taste, the clear­est and perhaps the most fundamental part of the wholequestion of the nature and ongm of values. DIsJomed froma foundation In some sort of Neo-Platome world harmony,beauty tends In recent phIlosophy to become merely the ex­preSSIOn of the sort of capneIOUS hking about whIch there isproverbIally no disputmg Such preferences can be lIsted orcatalogued, and one can arrive statIstically at a sort of "theoryof value" just as one mIght arnve statIstIcally at a generalcatalogue of the hair and eye color of various sections of the

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THE FREE RESOLVE

population. None of it seems very important for telling useither what this or that man is or what men in general are.But existentialism, with its stress on the project by which theindividual creates himself, can, wlthm the traditIon of rela­tlVlsm and wIthout recourse to absolutes or Ideas of Beauty,at least describe the phenomena of taste in their integralrelatIon to what the individual essentIally is or is becomingSartre's discussion of physical taste, of which all taste is insome sense a complex sublimation or elaboration, is starthng,in part even fantastIc. But it indicates a frUItful direction, ac­cording to him, for "existentIal psychoanalysIs," perhapseven for aesthetic theory m general'

Thus tastes do not remam irreducible gIVens. If one knowshow to question them, they reveal the fundamental projects ofthe pcrson. Even preferences m food havc a meamng. OneWill realIze that, If one reflects well on the fact that every tastepresents Itself not as an absurd datum that should be excused butas an eVldcnt value If I lIke the taste of garlic, It seems irrationalthat othcrs can fall to lIke It. To eat is, m effect, to appropnateto one's self by destructIOn, and It is, at the same tIme, to stuHone's self WIth a certam bemg. And that bemg IS gI\en as a syn­thesIS of tempcrature, of denSIty, and of taste m the stnct sense.In a word, thiS synthesIs slgmfies a certam bemg; and when weeat, we do not hmlt ourselves, by taste, to knowmg certam qual­ItIes of that bemg, by tastmg It, we appropnate It to ourselves.Taste IS assimIlatIon, the tooth reveals, by the very act of gnndmg,the denSity of the body that It is transformmg mto a food bolus.Thus the synthetic mtUltIon of the food is m its assimIlativedestruction It revcals to me the bemg WIth which I am gomg tomake my flesh. Hence what I accept or reject With disgust is thevery bemg of that eXistent, or, if you prefer, the totalIty of thefood proposes to me a certam mode of bemg of the bemg whIchI accept or refuse.....

.. One understands that taste, from thiS fact, receives acomplex archItecture and a differentiated matter-which presentsto us a peculIar type of bemg-that we can assimIlate or rejectWith nausea, accordmg to our ongmal proJect. It is therefore not

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at all a matter of indIfference to hke oysters or clams, snaIls orshnmps, provIded that we know how to dIsentangle the exIsten­tIal slgmficance of these foods. Generally speakmg, there is nomeduclble taste or mclmatIon. They all represent a certamappropnatIve chOIce of bemg.7

Or agam withm the traditIon of relativism-say, Withinthe line of non-Platonic, non-Hegehan phIlosophers of thelast two centunes-there have been plenty who have de­nounced rehglOn as (wIth Hume) superstition and enthu­SIasm or (wIth Marx) the opIate of the masses. The existen­tIalism that we have been dlscussmg obvIously shares thisantIreligious bias. Yet at the same tIme the human reality ofgenume religious feehng is not, as it is by most antireligiousphIlosophers, simply dIsmIssed as nonsense by existentIalistWIlters. One has only to look at that greatest of skeptIcaltexts, Hume's Dlalogues on Natural RelIgion, to see what islackmg m this sort of enlIghtencd refutatIon of fmth. TheDIalogues are an undoubted masterplect: of phIlosophIcallogic-I should not heSItate to say the most magmficentpiece of phIlosophIc wntmg m Enghsh-but as dIaloguesthey have a strange weakness. PhIlo IS the only person mthem who IS real, the only one whose arguments obvIouslyrest on genume convlctions.s Cleanthes is a mere front, theman who, With eminent respectablhty and not much logIC,takes the pohte and moderate posItIon. He is neIther unreli­gious m Ius professlOns-heaven forbld!-nor too relIgiousfor comfort and decency. But poor Demea-agam Hume­Philo makes the logic, or illogIC, of hIS positIon painfullyclear; but as a hvmg person he IS a null, or rather he IS a badCalvmist preacher trymg to turn philosopher, whIch comesto much the same thmg. And, most of all, apart from hIS

7 Sartre, op Cit, pp 706-78 I am followmg here Norman Kemp-SmIth's mterpretabon of the

Dialogues (see hIS edItion [Oxford Clarendon Press, 19351), whIch appearsto me enbrely conclusIVe, both on mternal and on externaf evIdence

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THE FREE RESOLVE

necessary place in the superb logic of the Dialogues, he is theincarnation of Hume's failure to understand what a genuine­ly religious disposition could conceivably be or how faithcould be rooted in anything but the blindest enthusiasm orgrossest superstItion. Such narrowness is to some extentcorrected, it seems to me, in the concreter analysis of Sartreand Heidegger. At least some concepts tradItionally associ­ated with relIgious beliefs are undeniably sigmficant forthem, though, of course, in a very different context. So, forexample, gmlt and conscience are essential to the resolve ofHeidegger's Dasein: it is conscience that cal1s existence fromIthe "one" to the reahzabon of itself; and gmlt is the conse­quence of that call: "Der Gewissensruf hat den Charakterdes Anrufs des Daseins auf sein eigenstes Selbstseinkonnenund das 10 der Weise des Aufrufs zum e1gensten Schuld1g­sein."Q Or 10 L'J'ttre et Ie neant one finds, for mstance, suchan analySIS as thIS of onginal sm'

Shame IS the perception of the ongmaI faIl, not of the fact thatI may have committed thIS or that fault, but SImply of the factthat I have "fallen" mto the world, mto the mIdst of thmgs, and Ithat I need the medIation of another to be what I am. Modestyand, m particular, the fear of bemg surpnsed m a state of naked­ness are only a symbolIc specIfication of ongmal shame: the bodyhere symbolIzes our object-character WIthout defense. To clotheone's self is to disguise one's object-character, to reclaim the nghtof seeIng WIthout bemg seen, that Ill, of bemg pure subject. ThatIS why the bIblIcal symbol of the fall, after ongmal sm, is thefact that Adam and Eve "know that they are naked."lO

In both analyses there IS much 10 the techmcal Jargon that ISoversubtle or even absurd, as, for instance, the typIcallyHe1deggerian statement (as the chmax to a tortuous mqmry

9. MartIn HCldegger, Sem und Zeit (Halle Max Niemeyer, 1931), P 269If one can render Heldegger's weird language "The call of conscience hasthe character of calhng cxI~tence to Its propcrest capacity of beIng Itself, andthat In the manner of calhng It up to Its properest gUlltlncs~ "

10 P.349.

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DREADFUL FREEDOM.

about the nature of the voice of conscience). "Consciencespeaks only and constantly in the mode of silence."l1 And.what is perhaps more Important. no one could claIm thateither of these WIlters is, any more than Hume was, in anygenerally accepted meamng of the word a "relIgious" man.But there is certamly m both of them inSIght mto the humanmeaning of conceptions usually thought of as religIOUS, aninsight conspICuously lackmg m pllllosopllles that foundtheu rebellIon agamst the supernatural on broader than Im­man models, whether it be the atom or the organism. InL':t;tre et Ie neant, as a matter of fact, even God, though non­eXIstent, takes on a novel meanmg. In the contInual tran­scendence of our past. stnvmg to be not only free but-whatwe never are or can be-the foundation of our own freedom,God, causa SUI, IS what we hopelessly but mevltably wlll our-.selves to become:

All human realIty IS a paSSIOn, m that It proJects its own los!.to found bemg and With the same blow to constItute the In-It~elf

that escapes contmgency by bemg ItS own foundatIon, the Enscausa sm which rehglOns call "God." Thus the passIOn of manIS the mverse of that of Chnst, for man loses himself as man tlutGod may come to buth. But the Idea of God IS contradICtory. andwe lose ourselves lD vam. man IS a useless paSSIon 12

11 HeldcggeI, op Cit, P 273.12 Sartre,op Cit, p. 708

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CHAPTER FOUR

SARTRE AND HEIDEGGER: THESELF AND OTHER SELVES

1

so FAR we have been dealmg wIth the sohtary adventurerm~om of the smgle person. resp~~Ib!eDylITmse1ffor what_he lpakes_Q.f 4lmself. Kierkegaard's stress on

mwardness rcmams. even though not faith but Its demalnow motivates the tum to the subjectIve. Of Heidegger orSartre. then. as of Klerkegaard, one is bound to ask: How isIt that the indIvidual, fallen strangely mto a strange world, isyet not entIrely alone? On the face of it at least, my eXIstencemvolves that of others: whether, lIke Heldegger. I recogmzethe neighboring farmer's field as not mme and so acknowl­edge hIS eXIstence or whether. lIke Sartre. I dIscover the ex­istence of others in the absence of PIerre. who IS not at theFlore, or In the presence of the walter, who Is-or more gen­erally m the anonymous crowd of passengers among whomI find myself travelIng m the Metro. How does the projectIonof myself m my world mvolve such otller lIberties. whoserealIty I appear to acknowledge at least Imphcltly m everyhour of my everyday eXIstence?

Heidegger gave. I suppose. what some people would callan answer to that questIon in hIS Heidelberg address, "OleRolle der Universltat 1m Neuen Reich" in which the freedomof Sein und Zeit turns out. in something like Hegehan fash­ion, to mean subjectIon to that higher entity-HItler's Ger­many. It seemed to me then, and It stIll does. a disgracefulsellout of whatever core of genumeness underlies the onto­logical trappings of Sem und ZeIt; for It is the complete iso-

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DREADFUL FREEDOM

labon of the free man, terribly alone WIth his own mortality,yet splendidly arrogant in face of the common world of theundifferentiated "one," that is realm Heidegger's analySIS ofhuman existence. To see in the surrender to the Nazi statethe fulfilment of that hard-won freedom IS, despite suchaffimtIes, for Instance, as the anti-Intellectualism of bothHeidegger and the Nazis, to give away in advance whatevervalIdity Heldegger's portrayal of human nature has. True,one ought not to consider existentIal philosophy apart fromthe eXistentIal philosopher; for, If every vISion of the world ISmadc what It IS by the nature of ItS maker, so much the moreso for a philosophy which professes to find in personal eXist­ence the subJect, method, and frmt of Its speculatIon. Never­theless, thc person behmd the eXistentialIsm of Heldegger IS,I should guess, not so much the NaZI Heldegger-a characteras easily sloughed off as on, it seems-as the Heldegger of theBlack Forest skl-hut- more dramatIcally alone m hiS snow­world than KIerkcgaard or Sartre at their cafe tables of Pansnow or Copenhagen then, and Jt lea~t as sneenngly con­temptuous as they of the self-delUSIOns of those less "free."!

Scin und ZeIt deals first With eXistence In the mode ofVcrfallcnhelt, that IS, With eXistence as It loses Itself in thedlstractmg Concerns of everyday. So the relation with otherexi~tences occurs, too, on thiS level One phase of being-in­the-world IS bCIng-wlth-others. As thmgs are "at hand" formy handling of them, so other human eXistences are there,too, ""lth then everyday cares abettIng or interfering WIth myown. This Mltdasem-I.e., "existing-with"-is, as Sartrejustly observes, a highly abstract and impersonal relabon.Heideggcr's contmual insistence on the "ontological" char-

1 For dISCUSSIons of Heldegger's pohtlcs, Ie, the extent and slgmficanceof hiS assocmtlon WIth the NaZIS, see a pair of mtervlcws fubhshed 10 LesTemps modernes, Vol I, No 4 (January, 1946), and Kar Ldwlth's amcleon the polltlcdllmphcatlons of JIeldegger's philosophy, 10 the same penodlcal,Vol II, No 14 (Nmember, 1946). LbWlth's aIm IS to show that Heldegger'snaZllsm dId, 10 fact, follow from hIS phIlosophIcal pnnciples

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THE SELF AND OTHER SELVES

acter of his analysis and hIs rejection of the "ontic:' that is,of the partIcular happenings of particular lives, as irrelevantto hIS profounder theme, do carry with them an emphasis ongeneralities· which seems almost to contradict his mitIalaS5ertIon that Dasem is "mine m partIcular" (ie meines)But even were such Mitdasein consIdered in partIcular casesrather than in general, it would still be, m the sphere ofeveryday existence, the conventIonal and therefore the gen­eral relation, say, of pupIl to teacher, laborer to foreman,husband to Wife; for on the level of everyday dIstraction,where the deepest dIrection of my own becommg IS hIddenby subservience to the "one," my relation to another, how­ever close superficIally, IS likeWise engulfed m the umversalanonymity.

What one wonders is thIS: What..happens to the individ­ual'sr~ to others when he resolves to oe,-iiot a~

mass of conventIon5;1mfliiinserrrIilo[lierwords, what dOesHeI~gel dCT"'WIth flle- question of our eXlstmg-together­with-others outsIde the conventIonal and unauthentic levelof eXIstence? The answer IS clearly "Next to nothm~Myfreedum IS mine, and the awareness of It bears no mtruders,for it l~ "Gecdoitrto death"; and from my loneliness II.! faceof death no one can save me; nor can I, if I would, save orevmdty anoth~ -

Heideggcr does mentIon briefly that Fursorgc-the rela­tIon that I enter into toward others in my fraudulent every­day aspect-has an eqUIvalent m the sphere of genume eXIst­ence. But It IS a lltrange eqUIvalent. On the e\cryday level,Fursorge, as dIstmct from my general togetherness wItllothers, IS my duect concern for them. It corresponds, for per­sons, to the care I gIve thmgs-and one's everyday lIfe con­SIStS generally of a combmation of the two Thus as a house­Wife I take care of pots and pans, floors and linens, but I alsotake care of my husband and chIldren. Or as an office workerI am concerned With files and accounts, papers and type-

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DREADFUL FREEDOM

writers, but also Wltli employers and employees. This is allin the purely conventional, fraudulent mode of existence;and here, of course, neIther I nor the others emerge as gen­mne mdlVlduals but only as pseudo-centers 10 a patternwhose whole meaning is the dIstraction of the individualfrom hIS true nature. One might then expect, at first glance,that, WIth the transformation of myself into a genuine exist­ence, I should also apprehend as genuine at least a few of theothers WIth whom I habItually deal, and that thereWIth myconcern for them would become a concern for them asgenuine, not merely dIstracted, centers of human history. Butsuch is far from bemg the case. I care for others in a genuine,rather than a conventIonal, sense, accordmg to Heldegger,in so far as I refer my care for them essentially and complete­ly to my own free proJectIon of myself. ThIs IS, motherwords, the contrary moralIty to Kant's the free man is he

I who treats other people always as means, never as ends. Butsuch a relation IS hardly in any meamngful sense a together­ness of human bemgs or a concern for them. Rather It IS thedebasement of others to mere tools by the rare man of char­acter who has rISen to the level of a richer, genume eXIstence,who has resolved m ruthless mdependence to fashion a hfe­toward-death, a freedom in fimtude on his own pattern. ArelatIon, on the other hand, of concrete togetherness, mwhICh two human bemgs stand as free bemgs face to face­such a relation the smgle-mmded arrogance of Heldeggercannot envIsage and could not tolerate

There IS another context m which one would expectHeldeggcr to deal with the indIvIdual as hIS relation to othersaffects hIS genume existence, that IS, in his dISCUSSIon of his­toricity. The passage from the spurious to the authentic levelof eXIstence involves the translation of the chIef existentialconcepts mto temporal terms. The recognition of my fini­tude is the recognitIon of my existence as temporal; and mybeing-already-in-a-world, my everyday distraction in the pres-

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THE SELF AND OTHER SELVES

ent, my transcendent resolution toward the future, are all\seen as dImensIons of existential tIme. In this context historybecomes a central concept. But "history" suggests to most ofus, I should think, somethmg more than the process of anindividual hfe. HIstOry in the substantIve sense-that is, thehistory about which "histones" are wntten-Is, surely, asgenerally understood, the transformation or evolution of agroup of lives lived together in some sort of functional, aswell as merely physical, contiguity. Heidegger does, in fact,deal briefly with the relation of the togetherness of individ­uals to hIstory. In part, he merely glances again at the to­getherness of our conventional, fraudulent eXIstence; in parthe does some punnmg on Geschick and Geschichtllchkeit.2

But his mam emphasis, for mstance, in the lengthy dISCUS­sion of the views of DIlthey and the Count von Yorck, IS stIllon the general distinction between a human lIfe as a hIstoryand the mere beIng-there of nonhuman thIngs. Sometimes,to be sure, this dIstinction Imphes a concept of communitywhIch goes beyond the individual. For example, in the analy­sis of histOrIcal monuments the POInt IS made that as thmgsthey are not "histOrIcal," they are only there; they are "past"only in the sense that the human world in which they func­tioned is past. And such a world was, of course, the world ofa group, a "civIlIzation," not just an indIvidual or an unre­lated aggregrate of mdlvlduals. But there is no exphclt ac­count of my history as shared WIth that of others who formpart of the same history-no attempt to analyze the existen­tial SIgnificance, if there be any, of the conception of com·mumty or tradItIon or the like. Nothing is added that makesmy world in any real sense ours or lessens in any essential waythe grim IsolatIon of the self-resolved-in-face-of-death.

To be sure, Sadre, in his critIcism of Heidegger's Mltda­sein, stresses the fact that, for Heidegger, togetherness is es-

2. The pun is untranslatable, the words mean "fate" and "historIClty,"IQpecbvely

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DREADFUL FREEDOM

sential to the very nature of the personal existent. That is so,in a way, 10 so far as Heidegger is unrelent10g in his emphasison the "ontological" and essenbal nature of every character­IStiC that he attnbutes to personal existence. And, mdeed, onthe level of the unauthentIc, togetherness is essential; for itIS just a fraudulent togetherness, a sense of belonging WIthnothing genuine to belong to, that constitutes the "one" inand by which, on the unauthentic level, each of us lives. Onthe other hand, with his resolute emergence into authenbc­Ity, Heidegger's indIvidual learns to subordinate to their dueplace the concerns of everyday-and WIth them the peopleas much as the things that he IS concerned wIth in this un­authentic aspect of his existence In his dlstracbon he wasbound to the many: to many thmgs and people and to thatanonymous many, the "one," in whom hIS actions and hispassions wcre submerged. Now he is hberated from themany by bmding hImself to a true one, that is, to his ownsolitary projecbon of himself mto the future, a future shapedby the fearful realIzatIOn of hIS mortal destmy. Here no onecan follow him; he creates a world and a hIstory out of thevery fact of theIr inevitable cessabon-and in that world orthat history, as there is room for only one catastrophe, sothere is room for only one solItary solIloqmzmg actor. Othersare stage propertIes, placed perhaps by chance, but mamp­ulated as he WIll by this strange virtuoso, playing, withoutauthor or audience, as hIS own sense of tragiC fitness mayduect.

2As distinct from Heidegger, Sartre, at any rate, recogmzes

the importance of the problem of the relation betwcen indI­viduals and has dealt with it explicitly in at least two places.in the essay L'Existenbalisme est-II un humanisme?3 a talk

3 Jean Paul Same, L'EXJStentJalISme est-il un humamsme? (Paris: Edi­tions Nagel, 1946) ThIS essay appeared 10 translation under the otIc EXisten­tIalISm (New York Phdosophlcal LIbrary, 1947)

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THE SELF AND OTHER SELVES

to the Club Maintenant published in 1946 and, in greatdetaIl, in Part III of vttre et Ie neant (1943). These twoexpositions differ so markedly that they had best be dealtWIth separately. I shall take the later, and weaker, one first.(Presumably, Sartre cannot 10 either version be taken asspeak10g for French existentIahsm in general, witness therather different analysis of Simone de Beauvoir in Cineasand PyrrIms )

The e~say IS a defeme of eXistentIahsm agamst Its attackers,pnncipally Cathohcs and Commumsts. As such It blurs anydIstinctions among atheIstIc eXIstentIahsts themselves-dif­ferences of Sartre's own doctrines from Heidegger's, for 10­stance, whIch are stressed 10 L'fttre et Ie neant-and does agood deal of sugar-coatIng of existentIahsm in general, no­tablyon thIS very questIOn of intersubjective communication.SubJcctIvity, Sartre says hcrc, mcans not the mdividual con­~CIOusness but human subJcctlVlty ill general' that is the"deep sense" m whIch existentlahsts use the term when theysay men cannot 10 then mterpretatIon of expenence go be­yond the limIts of the subJectIve. Such ImplementatIon asSartre gIve~ thIS conceptIon here, however, is shght andextremely shppery. Man, he says, IS what he makes hIm~elf,

but when a man chooscs for hImself, he chooses hkewlse forall, for he chooses Wh<lt lS good, and what IS good for one ISgood for all. So If a worker Joms a ChnstIJll trJdc-muon, hechooses a certam type of SOCICty as preferable over others forhIS fellows as wcll a~ for lum!>elf That ~ecms plaUSIble. ButSartre gocs on: when I deCIde to marry, raIse a fanuly, orthe hke, I am agam decidmg for all mankind. That begmsto sound remarkably hke Kant's abstract argument for mar·riage; and one stops to wonder how, apart from a humannature, what IS good for onc can in any sense be good for all-whether the Christian worker, too, does not rather chooseout of the available associations the one that best suits hun

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DREADFUL FREEDOM

and only very incIdentally, if at all, the one that he feelswould be good for everyone.

The examples which Sartre uses in explication of centralexistential concepts confirm one's suspicion that he is argu­mg, extrcmely cleverly but, m Plato's sense, sophIstically,with the end of persuasion not of truth. Dread, he says here,is the result of the very fact that, in choosmg, I choose for all.'It is exactly the feehng of a general decldmg to nsk hIs army'shves in thIS advance or that retreat, But that is a transforma­bon beyond all recogmtIon of the existential concept ofdread, whether KIerkegaard's or Heldegger's or that ofSartre hImself. Garcm of Hms-clos, Oreste of Les Mouches,MathIeu of L'Age de RaIson-none of them is concernedWith the umversallmphcatIons of hIS acts but only With thequestion of how those acts themselves are or become orhave been free, and with the awfullluphcabons of that free­dom-for hImself. They all mm.t, of course, act m socIal SItu­abons-Garcm m relatIon to hIS WIfe and mistress or in thebronder socIal situation of hIS condemnation to death; Orestein the return to Ins people, m the deme to be one of thembut, at the same time, to transcend them as then conSCIence;even Matlncu m hIS relatIOn to the conventional class pat­tern that he refuses, as well as in his particular dealmgs WithIus mistrcss, with Ivich, etc. Yet 111 the case of all theseSartrean heroes, It IS ultImately not the social setbng thatmatters, not the ImphcatIon of their behaVIOr for others,but the meanmg of thcIr acts for then own hberty· for Gar­cm, the gnawing quesbon, DId he dIe a coward? for Oreste,the search for hIS own tnumph m his own act; for Mathieu,the question, over and over, How can he act in and forfrecdom and freedom only? And It IS the awareness of thatfreedom, which IS each man's conccrn and hIS alone, thatconstitutes dread· "Dread IS the reflectIve grasp of freedomby Itse1f."4 If dread means anythmg, It is the agony of that

4 S.utre, L'~tre et Ie ncant (Pans Llbrame Galhmard, 1943), P 77.

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THE SELF AND OTHER SELVES

self whom Kierkegaard sought, who has lost the whole worldbut not himself.

The treatment of "ab~doI!!!!.ent" (delaissement) (Hei­degger's Geworfenhelt or the facticite of L'~tre et Ie neant)is, though in a dIfferent way, equally disturbing; for It is clearfrom the example whIch he dIscusses that Sartre himself,despite his profession to the contrary, is usmg "subjectivIty"in the narrower, not the broader, sense. A young man has tochoose between staymg at home Wlth hiS mother, otherWlsealone, and gomg to jom the Free French In England. Thepoint IS, of course, that the boy must create hIS own valuesm hIS own SItuatIOn-he can only do what he IS and be whathe does; no supernatural values appear m the heavens toguide him. Granted; but in the descnptIon of the SItuatIona sIgmficant factor IS omItted. the relation between the boyand hIS mother whIch wIll or wIll not bear thIS or that deci­SIOn, a deCISIon of hers as well as Ius and possibly of theus.True, the boy's chOIce IS thIS very concrete partIcular choicewInch no pre-exultent values can determme. But he does nottherefore choose as If, suddenly and out of all relatIon tothe freedom of any other person, he alone had to deCIde. HeIS, as the eXIstentIalIsts say, already flung mto a world, a'World that involves hIS relatIon to hIS motber and hers tohim; and his declSlon to leave or stay Wlth her is inseparablybound to her acts, past and present, as well as to hIS own. ItIS the history of two people together that IS at issue Yet,eXIstentIally seen, the son chooses not only m hIS SItuatIOnbut alone in It. l11e "deeper sense" of subjectIvity IS easIlyforgotten.

Finally, in deahng Wlth the objection that the existentIahstcannot critIcize the morality of others, Sartre rephes that,besides the critIcism m terms of bad faIth, the exIstentialIstcan also demand that one choose for the sake of freedomitself, not only for one's self but generally, since "the free­dom of one involves the freedom of others." Again, thIS is

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DREADFUL FREEDOM

superficially logical; but, like the general statement aboutsubjectivity or the good for all, it IS too easy; and nothing inthe much more detailed analysIs of VP;tre et Ie neant, or inthe novels and plays for that matter, bears It out. One mustadmit, as we shall see in the dIscussion of Sartre's politicalphIlosophy, that, gIVen as foundatIon the general principleof freedom for ItS own sake, of human lIberty m general as anabsolute value, one can construct upon It an mgenious and,at least supcrficlally, consIstent phl1osophy of revolutIon. Butthe questIon remams how from the solItary creator of aworld who dares to bear hIs lonely freedom, who decides"alone, unjustifiable, and WIthout excuse," one can deduceso eaSIly an agent of univcrsal freedom, a proletanan in­heritor of the French hbertanan tradItIon In sllort, as putin the Humamsm essay, the whole discussion of the transI­tIon from or relatIon of mdlVldual to general subjectIVIty,or of perllonal to polItIcal freedom, though It may be goodpropaganda, aVOIds or dIstorts the phl1osophlc issues atevery turn.

3The analySIS of "Le Pour-autrm" m L'P;tre et Ie Deant is

more honest, as well as more exhaustIve, and reveals morcclearly, I tlunk, the blmd spots of thIs partIcular eXlsten­tiahsm, as well as ItS mSlghts. It IS an extremely detal1edaccount, of wInch we can here mdlcate only some of themore SIgnificant or stnkmg features

Expenence, for Kant, Sartre relllll1ds us, was orgamzed IultImately as my cxpencnce-no bndge to another self wasproVlded in the KantIan analySIS The temporal flow of con­sCIOusness that forms the matenal of the inner sense I know,m psychology, as a phenomenal self, much as I know thematenal of the outer sense, m physIcs, as an ordered worldof objects. But only my own self IS so accessIble to me; foronly my consciousness IS open to the mner sense. So I can

. [76]

THE SELF AND OTHER SELVES

find no access to another subject. I cannot know It em­pirically; and a noumenal self, a self-in-itself, I cannot knowfor anyone, myself or another. Thus the Kantian cnticismleaves the way open for solipsism. However umversal mayappear the "understanding" or the "reason" with whichKant is dealmg, it IS still an abstract, skeletomc I who possesssuch understandmg or such reason, an I for whom there is,as far as one can see, no meeting ground for any contact withothers of his kind. Moreover, Sartre demonstrates, neither"realistic" nor "idealistic" solutions of this problem in thenineteenth century were adequate; for each of these phi­losophies needed, inconsistently, to call the other to Its ald.Such a Kanban idealist as Schopenhauer, for example, hassimply to take the other subject as a reality, which, properly,his systematic Idealism should not allow. And such scientificphilosophies as posltlVlsm, on the other hand, have, just asdlegibmately, to mfer another self as an ideal construct, whenall they know, strictly speakmg, is a set of mferences fromone set of sense-data to another such set, With no mtervening"scI£" at all. Even grantmg them such mconsistencles, more­over, neIther school could refute solipSism on a more thanprobable basis, whereas, accordmg to Sartre, only some kmdof certainty could really effectively banish this phdosophlcalhobgoblin.

Some progress has been made, however, Sartre believes,in the analyses of HusserI, Hegel, and Heldegger, and heconsiders their attempted solubons as a preface to hiS own.HusserI did try, he says, to show that I am what I am essen­tially in relation to another ego. But the relabon mvolvedwas both external and intellectual and so, remaining doublywithin the sphere of the merely objective or merely prob­able, failed to touch the core of the problem. Hegel hadgone further, Sartre thinks, in that he understood the rela­tion between two selves to be internal. In fact, the descrip­tion of master and slave in the Phenomenology of Mind is

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DREADFUL FREEDOM

something of a sacred text for Sartre's own interpretation;for his theme is essentially that of the attempted but uneasyabsorption of one conSCIOusness mto another, or their recip­rocal making of each other through the destruction of eachother. Yet 1D Its outcome Hegel's interpretation, too, falls,for the relation which It portrays, though internal, IS stillintellectual, it IS still the knowledge of self by self that hestruggles with. And, above all, such knowledge, hke all hisdialectic, IS envIsaged m terms of a whole that for Sartre ISquite Illusory and Irrelevant-the onc all-embracing systemof Absolute Mmd IS as fantastic to Sartre as It was to Kierke­gaard. Heldegger, finally, has at least abandoned the cogni­tive baSIS of the problem and has nghtly taken It out of Itsfalsely mtellectual settmg 1D both Husserl and Hegel. Wecan never, Sartre pomts out, know another self other thanprobably-as, 1D fact, we know any object 1D our world, andhence, If the question IS put m terms of knowledge, we cannever elImmate solIpsism as a possIble answer. HCldegger'seXistential analysIs IS correct m puttmg the whole que~tIon

on a dIfferent footing. But, on the other hand, HCldcgger'stheory of "exlstmg-together," Sartre feels, faxIs much moreradically than, say, the HegelIan master-slave view It gen- I

eralIzes about the togetherness of all of us but misses the!concrete problem of thIS man's contact with that man; and, I

If Heldegger had squarely met that more concrete Issue, hemight have found somcthmg qUIte different from a Simpletogetherness constitutive of one person's meetmg Withanother.

That sometlllng different Sartre himself then proceeds tolook for m an extended argument for hiS own theory: in anaccount of what, m hiS View, docs happen when I realIze,not cogmtively but immediately and absolutely, the ex­istence of another person, another free center of anotherworld, which yet in some way enters or overlaps or, as weshall see, anmhllates mme. It is the fact of another's look-

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ing at me, Sartre believes, that reveals the existence of an­other subject-not the mere physical presence of a pair ofeyes directed my way but the whole transformation of myworld that the look behind those eyes implies. For in thaiexperience of being looked at by another I find myself be­coming, not the transcendence I otherwise feel myself tobe, but a mere object, a body appearing thus and thus insomeone else's world. For myself, my body is the sheergivenness of my bemg-in-sltuation, the closest and con­cretest reality in the widening range of contingencies that,on the factual side, sets the limits and direction of my natureFor the other person, whom I find looking at me, I becomeonly a body, a thing WIthin his honzon, as "objective" as thechair I am sIttmg on or the cup of coffee I am drinkmg.-

The revelatIon of the other eXistence observing me is, forSartre, lIke my awareness of my own existence, a direct ex­perience, a "shghtly enlarged coglfo"; and by thIS experience,not cognitIve m Its nature but, just for that reason, im­medIate and final, the pOSSIbIlIty of solIpsism is once andfor all elImmated:

The CarteSIan COgIto does nothing but affinn the absolutetruth of a fact that of my exIstence; sImtlarly, the slIghtly en­larged COgItO we are usmg here reveals to us as a fact the exIstenceof another and my existence for another. That IS all we can sayThus my bemg-for-another, lIke the emergence mto bemg ofmy conSCIOUSneS'i, has the character of an absolute event,S

But the other eXIstence wluch thus reveals Itself is, at thesame time, anmhIlatIon of myself as subject; and such ananmhilatlOn I am bound to try by every means In my powerto overcome. Therefore, between myself as subject and theother who sees me as object, between my freedom and itsdestruction In another's possession of me, there arises a Circle

5 There IS also, In thiS account, a third "ontological dimenSIOn" of body,In which I also. as the other does, apprehend my body as a thmg.

6 Same, V1!;tre et le neant, p. 342.

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of conflicts which constitutes, accordmg to Sadre, the wholepattern of possible mtersubjective relationshIps. "ConflictIS the origmal sense of bemg-for-another."7

Sartre introduces this theory WIth two examples. Supposethat I am sltbng in a park and see another person walkingnear me. Suppose the other person to be readmg a book. Heand his book are then as wholly "objects" as, say, the tree­on-the-grass or the fountain-m-the-square Man-reading-book,like the other things m their places, IS a self-contamed unit,holdmg no obVIOUS threat to me or my world But supposethe stranger's eye, mstead of bemg fastened attentively tohis page, IS wandermg over the paths and borders, so that Imay at any moment find he IS lookmg at me Such a ShIft 1D

hIS attention would suddenly reveal me as an object m hIS

world-and by thIS pOSSIbIlIty the whole world of my con­SCIousness, the world as I have ordered It, IS threatened withdlsorgamzahon and destruchon. The awareness of such apossibility causes, Sartre says, an "mternal hemorrhage" ofmy world: it bleeds m the dlIectIon of the stranger. Hence,for Sartre, the appearance of the other person in my worldis the occasion for possIble, If not actual, dlSIuphon of thatworld, and fear, the natural reachon on my part to such apOSSlbl11ty, would seem to be my ongmal relabon to himm such circumstances.

Or, Sartre contmues, suppose I am hstening at a keyhole,whether out of Jealousy, spIte, or whatnot-the motive ismelevant. And suppose I suddenly feel myself, m tum,observed. All at once I feel the eyes of an observer on meand tum to find hIm lookmg at me. All at once, mstead ofbeing engaged as a free agent m a project of my own, I amrevealed to myself, as to the unexpected observer, as an objectm his VIew. My transcendence IS, m tum, transcended byhIm as free agent; I am what he makes of me, not whatI make myself I recogmze the mdlgmty and absurdity of

7 Ibld,p HI.

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my position, stooping awkwardly at a keyhole; I am thatlaughable or despicable thing, an eavesdropper; and I amashamed. But what makes my eavesdropping shameful is Itsdiscovery (see the innumerable scenes, m Fleldmg, for ex­ample, of servants discovered hstening at doors). It is thetransformation of a proJect into a posture that makes theposture ridiculous. And, in general, It is the transformationof myself from free agent shapmg my own world to body!seen by another that is the source of shame. Hence Sartre'sexplanation, already quoted, of origmal sm' It IS the revela­tion of my body as a mere body that makes me ashamed; andthat shame IS at the root of the sense of sin. TIus conceptionof the existential meamng of the body and, m particular,the naked body IS Illustrated III The Age of Reason, forexample, m Marcelle's confession to Mathieu that she ispregnant. Mathieu's nakedness IS appropriate If hiS body istouchmg hers m the usual gestures of love-makmg But whenshe, clad, surprises him, naked, with such a disturbing andunexpected revelation, theIr amatory routme is broken, andhe feels himself humlhated as well as annoyed by her infor­mation The Important pomt for Sartre, of course, is that,whatever example one chooses, such an expenence Impliesan onlooker and that, m fact, conversely, the existence ofan onlooker imphes shame Fear and shame are, for him,the two proper and immediate reactions to the mtruslOn ofanother person mto my world.

The only alternative to shame or fear, if the onlookerthreatens to make me a mere subJect by his looking, IS toturn and look at hml In that case I i~ my pride (orgeuil)threaten him With extmcbon Hence the prinCiple of con­fhct-all relations between myself and another are, existen­tially, a battle to the death. Either he, a person, transcendsmy transcendence and makes a thmg of me, or I in myprouder freedom transcend and so annihilate his liberty. Or,rather, that is how the conflict looks; but it never ends in

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victory for one or the other. Even murder cannot change thefact that the vIctim, by havmg existed, has threatened andbmited my lIberty. ll1ere can be no knockout blow or evena decIsIon, only round after round of a bout that neverstops-and never starts eIther, for it is a continuous andunbreakable circle.

There is, It IS true, an apparent escape from my objectIfi­cation by another 10 the substItutIon of vamty for shameIn vanity I accept my object-status and try, by the kind ofobject I am-clever or beautIful or the lIke-to affect theother person In his very freedom. But thiS IS only anothercase of "bad faith"-that IS, of the false objectIficatIon ofmy freedom-wInch can find no satisfactory fulfilment;for what I thus create IS an Image of myself 111 the otherperson To find that Image, I must, In tum, obJec.tIfy hIm;and what I find there IS only dlSllluslOnmellt, for I find afalse image that IS not what I am but what I seemed to h1l11.My own essence falls stIll of the objectIficatIon that I thoughtit could find. I am destroyed as surely by my own vamtyas I might have been by my antagomsfs pnde

There IS, then, at least In terms of tIns analySIS, no escapefrom the alternative of fear/shame or pride as fundamentalto my relatIons WIth another. There are, however, furthervanatIons WIthIn tbese two typcs of relatIonships whichSartre proceeds to analyze They are all aspects of sexuahty,which, for Sartre, IS not merely psychologIcally but "ontolog-Ileally" essentIal to human eXIstence. Not the contIngent factsof my havmg this or that sex or these or those particularhabits of expressing my ~exual nature but the fact that, qmtegenerally, I am "a sexed beIng" is what he finds eXlsten­bally so important. The basic variants m the expression ofthat fundamental nature he descnbes, agaIn, in terms ofthe origmal duality in all relatIons between mdlVlduals:eIther I become object for another subject, or anotherbecomes object for me as subject.

[ 821

THE SELF AND OTHER SELVES

There is, Sartre points out, no special reason for startingwith anyone of these relationships, since the whole consti­tutes a circle. In pomt of fact, he begins with the first of thetwo that we have menboned and with its exemphficationin love. Love, accordmg to Sartre, is the wish to be loved:that is, I as object want to take hold of the very lIberty ofthe other by becommg myself-i.e, my object-self-the sourceof hIS values, the only meamng of hIS freedom. That IS why,Sartre says, the lover always wants to know if the belovedwould rob for hun, murder for hIm, etc. Love IS the attemptof the self-seen-as-obJect to absorb another's freedom by mak­mg itself the hIghest reahty, the ground of all sIgmficancefor that freedom. When such absorption threatens to fall(and It cannot succeed, Sll1ce two are two, not one), thelover tries to bring about hIS end by seduction, by makmghImself a "fascmating object." This IS, Sartre says, a baSICtype of language, not m the narrow sense of verbahzation, butm the primItive sense of expressiveness m general Such ex­preSSIveness IS, however, still doomed to fallure by the verylogic of the SItuatIOn. The lover wants the beloved to lovehIm' he wants as object to "make worth hvmg" the lIfe ofthe beloved as free subJect. But suppose he succeeds Thenthe beloved loves the lover. That IS to say, the beloved hIm­self turns object m relation to the lover as subject. So theoriginal character of the relationshIp is contradIcted by ItSown fulfilment Love by Its very nature carries WIth Itits own frustratIon.

Faced WIth such frustration, I may try agam, desperately,thIS time not simply to absorb the other's lIberty to my ownbeing as fascmating object, but to reduce myself to nothmgbut an object, so completely that I appear even to myselfas object before the other's total freedom. Such an attemptIS masochism, in which I love the shame of my obJect-char­acter and try in every way to stress and to increase it. At thesame time, my shame is, though chenshed, felt as gUllt: "I

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am gUIlty to myself, because I consent to my absolute aliena­tion, gUIlty to the other, because I furnish him the occasIOnof bemg gUIlty, that is, of mIssmg radIcally my freedom assuch."8 But thIS attempt again carnes Its frustration WIthinIt; for, no matter how much I make myself an object, it isI by my free effort who do so. In fact, masochism, Sartresays, lIke every vice, "loves its own frustration." It is "a per­petual effort to anmhIlate the subjectiVIty of the subject inmakmg thc other assimIlate It and .... this effort is ac­compamed by the fatiguing and delicIous consciousness offrustration, to the extent that it is the frustratIon that thesubject ends by seekmg as ItS chIef end:'D

If the attempt to accept my own object-character has nosatIsfactory Issue, then I may try as subject to reduce theother to mere object. IndIfference IS an attempt of this sortI take the others whom I meet solely m theIr functIonalcapacItIes as tIcket-collector, elevator man, receptIomst, andwhat not, and hence deny ImplICItly theIr mdlVidual exist­ence as personalItIes. Yet this IS an unsatIsfactory solutIon,smce thcre IS the perpetual danger of the man m the park­one of these functIonal automata may at any moment destroymy IllUSIOn of supenor solItude by lookmg at me.

More aggreSSIvely, I may seek to anmhIlate, rather thanmerely to Ignore, another's freedom m sexual desiI€l. Desue,for Sartre, IS the endeavor to produce the mcarnatlOn of an­othcr subJcct, that is, to ensnare the other's freedom in theflesh, to reduce hIm not to body in general or to an objectm the mstrumental sense but to thIS very concrete presentflesh The means to thIS end is myself to become flesh m Iorder, by phYSIcal contact, to reduce the other person to thesame purely fleshly eXIstence Therefore, the achIevementof deSIre lIes, in Sartre's view, not in the fulfilment of thesexual act itself but m the caress, m which the hand, beeom-

g IbId, P 4469 IbId, P 447

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THE SELF AND OTHER SELVES

ing flesh, makes flesh of breast or thigh, or the whole body,made flesh, makes flesh of the other's body, and so seems,momentanly at least, to transfigure and transcend hIS free­dom. But desire, too, containS Its own frustration. The sexualact itself and, in general, "la volupte sexuelle proprementdlte" are, in Sartre's view, purely contingent aspects ofhuman nature, dependent on particular gIven physiologIcalstructures and so on. And the pleasure that accompames theachievement of such an act is Irrelevant to, even destruc­tive of, the profounder meamng of deme. For pleasure, atfirst immediate, produces a reflective consciousness of pleas­ure, which becomes Itself an end; and as I seek my ownpleasure I am dIstracted from, and lose the aim and aware­ness of, the other's incarnation, which IS the proper functionof desire. In another way, too, deme IS frustrated. As demeto possess the other, it tnes to do more than make flesh of theother's freedom, It tnes actively to lay hold of the other's"mcarnate conSCIOusness." Here I cease being flesh and try,using my body, to seIze and appropnate the other's lIberty,and here deSIre, in turn, gives way to sadIsm.

ThIS SItuation Imphes the breakIng of the reCIprocIty of mcar­nation whIch was, preCIsely, the proper end of dcme. the Othcrmay remam troubled, he may remaIn flesh for Jlll1lself; and I mayunderstand hIm, but It IS a flesh I no longer grasp by my flesh, aflesh whIch is no longcr anythIng but the property of Another-as­obJect and not the Incarnation of Another-as-eonscIOusness SoI am body, ..• in the face of flesh. I find myself practically backm the SItuatIOn from which I was Just trymg to escape throughdeSIre, that IS, I try to use the obJect-Other to demand of hIm anaccount of hIS transcendence, and, just because he IS all obJect, heescapes me WIth a11 hIS transcendence I have even, once more,lost the clear understandIng of what I am seekmg, and yet I amengaged m the search for It. I take and I dIScover myself m thecourse of takIng, but what I take m my hands is somethmg elsethan what I wanted to take; I sense it and I suffer, but WIthoutbemg capable of saymg what I wanted to take, for, troubled asI am, the very comprehension of my deslfe escapes me; I am

r85 1

DREADFUL FR.EEDOM:

like a dreamer who, wakmg, finds himself engaged in clenching'his hands on the edge of the bed without recalling the nighbnarethat mduced his gesture It is thIS sItuation whIch is at the onginof sadlSm.1o

The object of sadism, Sartre says, 18 "immediate appro­priation." The sadIstic, lIke the desiring, consciousness wantsto identify another's freedom with his flesh. But the sadistseeks that end without himself becoming flesh and withoutgivmg up the instrumental character of the other-as-object:

He wants the nonreclprocity of sexual relatIOns, he rejoices inbeing power, free and appropnatmg, in the face of a freedomthat IS captured by the flesh. That IS why sadism wants to makethe flesh present differently to the conscIOusness of the Other:It want~ to make it present by treatmg the Other as an instrument,it makes it present through pam. In pam, JD short, facbcIty 10- jvades conSCIOusness, and, finally, the reflective consciousness is 1fascmated by the facbcIty of the nonreflective consciousnessThere IS then mdeed an mcamabon through pam. But at thesame bme pam IS produced by instruments; the body of thetortunng For-Itself ]S only an mstrument for givmg pam. So theFor-Itself can from the begmning gIVe itself the IllUSIOn of takingpossessIOn mstrumentally of the freedom of the Other, that ISof drowmng that freedom 10 the flesh, WIthout ceasmg to behe who provokes, who beats, who seIZeS, etc.ll

'"'hat sadism seeks to produce is the obscene, that is, flesh 1revealed to an observer WIthout desire. But that aim, too, isthwarted, SlOce It is the very freedom of the other that thesadIst tnes to seize, and that freedom constantly escapes him.QuotlOg the closmg scene of Faulkner's Light in August,Christmas looking up at his murderers, Sartre says:

Thus thiS explOSIon of the look of Another in the world of thesadIst makes the meamng and end of sadism collapse. At oneand the same time sadism discovers that it was that lIberty itwanted to enslave and realIzes the vamty of Its efforts. Here we

)0 Ibid, pp 468-69.11 IbId, pp 469-70

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are once more returned from the-bcing-who-Iooks to the-being­who-is-Iooked-at, we do not leave the clrcle.12

Not even hate, as a last desperate remedy, can break thesebonds; for, as we saId, murder itself, impelled by hate as theattempt at total destruction of the other person, falls of itsobject. The other has been and has been free; that encroach­ment on my total bberty I cannot cancel or forget. The circle,then, of conflIct on conflIct IS still unbroken; it is a treadmIllfrom whIch, in my endeavor to approach another's freedom,I can never find escape.

4This is, at least, faCIng the questIon squarely. But as an

exhaustIve account of human relationshIps it is, to say theleast, depreSSIng. To lessen our despair a bttle, we mightlook again at Sartre's exposition and, in partIcular, at theexamples WIth whIch he Introduces "the look of the other."My relation to another is revealed, as we have seen, in themoment at which, SIttIng in a park, I find a stranger lookIngat me or at least about to look at me. But surely this IS ahIghly artificial example on whIch to base an analySIS of per­sonal relatIons An indIVIdual confronts another; but bothare abstracted by the pubbc nature of the place from thepersonal settmg in whIch each of them, in fact, lives hisbfe. So It is not the two as bvmg human beings who faceeach other but the faCSImIles of humanity who are, in Hei­dcgger's phrase, together in the "one:' I may, indeed, con­jecture from the look of the stranger something of hIS per­sonal reality; but in that case I project hIm in Imagmationinto his world, a world of other human beings to whom hestands in as intimate relatIon as do J to those whom he, too,can only guess at. In the anonymous togetherness of so-called"career women" in a genteel restaurant, for instance, whatemerges as real behmd their mutual sIlence is the lack that

12. Ibid., P ",77.

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each one feels of the orgamc relabonslllps beyond herself thatcould give substance to what IS othcrwlsc an empty freedom.That feelmg is not, I thmk, only-though it IS in part-asurrender to convention, a desire to be what society and in­stinct eombme 111 urgmg agamst the deeper elalms of free­dom. It is, beyond that, the sense of wantmg the completIonof onc's self m others which is Just as geUlllne In humanconSCIOusness as IS the ultimate pnvacy wluch eXIstentialIsmprefers to stress. For an account of the need of human beingsfor one anotller thc myth of Aristoph::mes m the SympOSIUmIS at least as valId as are Sartre's four hundred pages

It IS, in other words, some such sense of the ongmal to­getherness of partIcul::Ir human hemgs as that myth conveysthat is lackmg 111 Sartrc's analyc;Is PerhdpC;, If KlCrkegaard'smV\ardness IS taken as the whole of human per\onahty, thepnnclple of conflKt as the "onglllal sense of my relation toanother" docs follow But to take that sohtary mwardne~s

as the ""hole already involves an abstractIon amountmg todI~torhon The dIfference of me from every other person IS,mdeed, a umque, perhaps even the most essentIal, aspect ofmy nature But e"mtentIah~m IS a plulosophy wludl boaststhat It tJkec; serIously the hvmg, temporal gro\\- th of theperson, growmg through the transcendence mto hIS pecuharfuture of Ius partIcular past Surely, then, It IS strange thatsuch a phIlosophy should Ignore altogcther the growth ofthat umque sense of dlffercnce Itself, for conSClomness Itself,for all Its mwardness, evolve~, after all, out of a pattern oforgJDlC rclabonslllps from tlle total dependency of the un­born duld on Its mother, through the gradually lessenmgdependence of the mfant and young chIld In that proces~

others arc essentIal to the mdlVldual neIther [IS threats to hISown hberty nor as mere oblects in hIS world but rather asthe very foundatIon of that world Itself Even]f It could besaid in general that, WIth adolescence and matunty, conflIctbecomes the fundamental relatIon of chIld to parent, the

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original togetherness of the family has surely influencedsignificantly the character of that conflict itself.

Again, Sartre's other example IS equally suspect. HIS de­scription of shame and vamty are Indeed Illuminatmg asdescriptions of just those paSSIOns; and, what is more, It ISa surprising gap In earher phIlosophIC accounts of the pas­SIOns that they so frequently faIl to take account of shameas an extremely Important and central emotIon. Yet neItherSartre's examples nor hIS obJect-subJcct theory sufficcs tomake credIble the VIew that shame IS tIle ongmal expreSSIOnof my relatIon to others, that fundamentally and exclUSIvelyI sce myself as bodIly nakedness beforc all others as 5pecta­tors-and destroyers. One could mamtam, for example, WIthat lcast as much 5how of reason, that the ongmal relatIOn ofmyself to another hcs m the rccogmtIon of another lIkelmyself, who cnrichcs and complctes my frecdom rather thanthreatens to anmllllatc It Such an cxpenencc may be lll­

frequcnt, 50 m the ordmary course of our dally hvcs IS shame.But It may, for all that, reveal the scope and nchnc5s of myfreedom as essentIally as shame reveals ItS mstablhly.

r..loreover, the same IllmtatIons of example and of theorycany through Sartre's ",hole analySIS The descnptIom ofmasochism and sadIsm are extremely tellmg; m part even,notably m the account of the caress, thcrc IS somethmg tobe saId for the dISCUSSIon of deme But, 111 general, thc cn­deavor so completely to dIvorce the "eXIstentIal" Import ofsex from Its bIOlogICal foundatIOn produces a strangelytWisted picture For mstance, If there IS, as Sartre tlllnks,eXIstentIal sIgmficance In the fact of sexuahty as such, thereIS also, I suspect, "exlstcntial" meamng In the dIstInctIOnbctween ma5culme and femminc-a dIstinctIon, it IS true,not necessanly coterminous With the physiological differen­tiatIon of the sexes. Goethe's "das eWlg Welbhchc" is onepart German sentimcntahty and one part a male egoist'sexcuse to himself for a succeSSIon of Fnedenkes; but I must

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reluctantly confess a suspicion that there is something moreto it as well. At any rate, the avoIdance of such merely "con­tingent" differences gIVes a certam arbficlahty to the frame­work of Sartre's dIScussIon.

What is worse, Wlthm that framework some of his analy­ses are so inadequate as to be almost tours de force-in par­ncular, the account of love, where both definition and argu­ment fall most obviously short of his material. This is notthe place, nor have I the skIll, to elaborate an alternativetheory; I can only pomt again to the Platonic Aristophanes,to DlOtima's account of immortahty, or to the myth of thePhaedrus. What the lover of Aristophanes' story wants ISnot just to be loved but to be made whole agam, to becomewholly hImself m umon With the other from whom an un·natural cleavage has diVided him. Or agam, what the loverof the Phaedrus crave~ IS not SImply the love of the belovedbut the growth of his soul's wmgs, whIch only the beauty ofthe beloved, by recallmg bcauty Itself, can gIve him. And 10

that process the soul of the beloved as well as the lover isnounshed and ennobled. So regarded, love IS not so muchthe deSIre to be loved as It IS the sense of one's completIon10 another through shared mSIghts and aspIratIOns. In ex­IstentIal terms, the transcendence of the lover here neIthertranscends nor IS transcended by another but becomes awareof Itself, 1 e , becomes Itself, through the particIpation of thevery freedom of anothcr 10 hIs freedom; and, m turn, theother's transcendence-the project that he Is-expands andripens 10 ItS way through SImIlar partICIpatIon. Were thereno such mutualIty, no such growth of two souls through therecIprocal ennchment of each other's freedom, the dIlemmaof the Sartrcan lover mIght mdeed obtam-though It IS, lIkemuch m Sartre, almost too logical to match reahty. But ifthe major premise IS false, so IS the conclUSIOn; and, surely,no one but the most faIthful diSCIple could deny its falsity.Sartre's account of sadIsm is stnking 10 its genumeness; it IS,

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after all, the account of a member of the Resistance whopresumably knew extremely well the ways of the Gestapo.Besides, as we shall see in more detail later, It is just this kindof revelation of humanity dehumamzed that Sartre excelsin. But his amour smacks of the bad French novels thatVictorian heroines were wont to hIde under their pillows.

Sartre does consider the possibilIty of some commumtyof human bemgs, some posItive union between them, be­yond the pnnclple of conflIct. An "us," he says, a nous-objet,does anse when two mdividuals, engaged m the mevitableconflIct With each other, find themselves Jomtly the objectof an onlooker. In this case the thIrd person objectIfies themboth, and m theIr mutual danger they find mdirectly, but onlyindIrectly, a kmd of umon. That IS, I suppose, the kmd ofumty Sartre IS drawmg in "La Chambre" between Eve andher mad husband, a umty against the hostIlIty and horrorof her bourgeoIs father. It IS also the kmd of umty that deter­mmes, accordmg to him, the nature of class-conscIOusness.Not the common needs or sufferings of the poor but thediscovery of the rich man's lookmg on at them creates an"oppressed class." But the indiViduals within that class arestIlI bound only by the tensIOns of love, hate, deme-that is,for Sartre, by conflIct. I do not know whether this is an ade­quate account of c1ass-eonsciousness; It IS certamly a bril­lIant descnptIon of the occupied countnes, where the hatredsand recnminatIons of peacetime politIcal life were for onceoverrIdden by the anmhIlatIng presence of the outsIder.

A "we," on the contrary, a nous-sujet, Sartre thmks, occursonly accIdentally; for mstance, when I ride in the Metro,the signs "eXIt" and "entrance" by implIcatIon, and thefigures and faces of the other passengers expliCItly, show methat I am along WIth others in a world made by and for many.But my togetherness with the others, whIle it creates astrange temporary "we," is not essential to my personaleXistence. It is a passing phenomenon that leaves no perms-

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nent mark on me. In fact, of course, it is the very strange­ness of the passengers to one another that gives thIs kmdof mCldcntal "we" ItS peculiar character.

And IS this all? As far as Sartre can see, it IS; but there aresome tlUllgS that he does not see. True, each man alonemu~t mJke hUllself what he IS to be. Only he can make hIsworlel the absurd order, the ordered absurdIty, that it is;and of that ternble freedom no one can rob 111m. But thereare, I tlunk, at least two pomts at whIch the Chmese wallof sllbJcctlVlty IS broken.

1 'he partIcular given sItuation out of whIch I make myworld IS not Itself entirely private, and, though It becomesa world pnmanly for me, there are stIll, even m our socIety,somc occaSIOns on whICh It bccomcs a world gcmllncly forus. One can see tlus stIll, for mstance, m some agnculturaloperatIons, such as a tlueshmg, \\-here the demands of thefacts themselves produce for a few hours a genume unity111 the men who dcal WIth them. Obviously, those occa­sions wele more frequent in the old days of barn-raismgs,hand-haymg, and so on; and obVIously, too, there are mmodcrn urban SOCIcty no such events at all Here, m­deed, t1Ierc IS tIle "one" and the despaIrIng freedom ofthc MathIcus who would not be lost m It-and perhaps nomore. But If we have lost those activIties-part work, partntual-m whIch mcn gemunely stand together to wrest thegoods they need from a co-operative, yet unwI1lmg, nature,we have no nght, m consequence, to call our soplustIcatedlonclmess a umversal condition of mankmd.

On the SIde of freedom Itself, moreover, rather than of Itc;contmgent conditions, there is, now and then, escape fromthe sohtary confinement of the self-agamst-all-others. Even Ifmost human contacts are, as contacts Wlthm the "one,"bereft of reahty, sometimes surely (as we suggested earher)an indlVldual comes somewhere upon what he can only call,lamcIy enough but rightly, "his own kind of pcrson"-one

I 921

THE SELF AND OTHER SELVES

who can share, If only for moments, hIs own projection ofhimself, hIs own bberty, wIthout threatening It or bemgthreatened by it. EXIstentIabsts like to find phIlosophicalsIgnificance in common idIOm. What does it mean, tben, to"see eye to eye" with another? Surely, that he and I can lookat one another directly in a more than phYSical sense, as twocentcrs of liberty whIch can be frec together, not endanger­ing each other but united through understandmg of ourSImIlar aIms. Granted, that such dIrect commUnicatIon be­tween mdividuals occurs only scldom, but, If It has evcrhappened at all to anyone anywhere, that is enough to breakthe charmed CIrclc of observer and observed, threatencr andthreatened.

One more word, not so much on L'P:tre et Ie ncant as 011

Sartrc the pllllosopher-arhst. The analYSiS of the contact be­tween mdlVlduals as an endlcsll struggle of each personalIty,by dcstro) mg the other, to escape ItS own dcstructIOn, m­volves, as we have seen, givmg to sex a plaec of central Im­portance m the descnphon of personal CXlr,tence But, be­yond that, takmg Sartre's wntmg as a \\-hole, one c;ense"something more, perhaps deeper than hIS extreme mdlViduahsm, certamly somchow alhed to It a love of exploring tothe lilmls the extreme or perverse m human nature. The pre­occupatIon \\-lth the voyeur m such stones ac; "Enr,trostratc"or "Intinntc," for cxamplc, or thc study of Damel m The Ageof Reason, or such mCidents as IVIch cuttmg her hand have,bke most tlungs m eXIstentIal hterature, obViOUS, often tooobvious, pllllosophical ImphcatIons. But, conversely, thcphilosophy seems to feed on perverseness. Even to thc analy­SiS of normal sexual phenomena Ul L'1!tre et Ie neant thereIS a twist that makes it extremely subtle perhaps, but subtlymistaken as well. The plays of Sartre, Enc Bentlcy says. arephIlosophIC melodrama rather than tragedy and, for thatvery reason. are more "maturely modem" than would-betragedIes, whIch faIl to suit the "nontragIC" temper of our

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time.IS Something similar is true even of the more technicalexpressions of Sadre's phIlosophy, as well as of his novelsand stories. Whatever It is that makes our age "nontragic,"that it is which makes existential philosophy, hke existentialdrama, suit it so well. Only I cannot feel so cheerful aboutthe whole thmg as Mr. Bentley seems to do. Of philosophy,the most abstract of the hngUlstIc arts, as of drama, one needsto remember what Synge says m hiS essay "The Vagrants ofWlcklow":

In all the healthy movements of art, vanations from the ordi­nary types of manhood are made Interestmg for the ordmaryman, and m thiS way only the higher arts are universal. BesidethiS art, however, founded on the vanatIons which are a condi­tion and effect of all Vigorous hfe, there IS another art-sometimesconfounded With It-founded on the freak of nature, In Itself amere sign of atavism and disease. 1111S latter art, which IS occu­pied WIth the antics of the freak, IS of Interest only to the vana­tIon from ordmary mmds, and for thiS reason IS never umversal.14

If eXIstentiahsm suits us, It IS as much our fmlure as eXlsten­tiahsm's success

13 See Enc Bentley, The Playwnght as Thmker (New York· Reynal &HItchcock, 1946), chap VII, Scc IV, pp 232-46

14 J M Synge, In Wlcklow. West Kerry, and Connemara (LondonGeorge Allen & Unwm, Ltd , 1919), P 1Z

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CHAPTER FIVE

FRENCH EXISTENTIALISM ANDPOLITICS. THE NEW

REVOLUTIONARY

1

T o THE very long analYSIS of t'be CIrcle of conflicts thereIS a very short footnote: "These considerations do notexclude the possibility of a morahty of dehverance and

salvation. But this can be attamed only at the end of a radicalconverSIOn, of which we cannot speak here."1 I have no meansof knowmg what sort of deliverance this IS; but it is reasonableto assume that Sartre is refernng to the pohtIcal theory andpractice of his group, which, starting With the ReSistance,has since become mcreasmgly articulate Here the stress onthe individual's lonelmess is Joined With, or even subordi­nated to, social and pohtIcal sohdarity, With revolution ratherthan mere personal rebellion as its end. Here the subjectmade object by another Identifies himself With the wholeclass of people so oppressed and seeks to hquidate the op­pressor qua oppressor by creatmg a free SOCiety, in whichthere are no slaves and masters but all men stand togetheras persons mutually respecting one another. This is cur·rently, through numerous articles in Les Temps modernes,the most pubhcized and, for the existentialists themselvesapparently, the most senous, or at least the most urgent,aspect of their doctrine. Yet, despite the logical link throughhis theory of class-consciousness,2 the Sartrean pohbcal

1 Jean-Paul Sartre, L'P:tre et Ie DeaDt (Pans Llbrame Galhmard, 1943),p.484.

Z See p. 91, above

f 95 J

DREADFUL FREEDOM

theory seems, at first sight, a strange addition to the existen­tial view of the indivIdual and the values, mdiVIdually up­held, mdlviduall)' created, by which he lives. In other words,in lookmg at the pohtJcal theory of French existentialism,one is continually faced WIth the question which we havealready mentioned m connection with the Humamsm essay.How, m this hIghly mdividuahstJc theory of human nature,does the liberty of one involve the liberty of all? Or, 10 thelight of our examination of V£tre et le neant, how does onereconcde a pnnclple of the mutual respect of free be10gs forone another's freedom Wlth the principle that each man'sfreedom reciprocally imphes the represslOn of every other?

Qmte apart from lOgIC and phdosophy, the first answerto that qucstIon IS a hlstoncal onc. French eXlstentiahsmdid not begm WIth the ReSIstance Sartre's pre-war publica­tions, hkc Le MUT and the Esquisse d'une tlleone des emo­tions, dIffer in no fundamental way from the latcr develop­ments of hIS theory. But eXlstentIahsm as a popular move­ment m French phIlosophy and, in particular, eXlstentIahsmas a pohtIcal philosophy did grow mto then present prom­inence out of the peculiar stresses of the Occupation andthe pecuhar pattern of hfe-that is, of torture and death­10 the Underground. That pattern Illuminated, more dra­matically and more mSlstently and on a natIonal scale, whatthe inner self-torment of a Klerkegaard had revealed a cen­tury carher: the utter lonelmess of each of us in moral CnslS Iand the essential umon, almost the identity, of that lone­lmess and the freedom that we find 10 it. Man makes himself,but only in secrecy and solitude-publicity is betrayal orillusion. ThIS contrast, in the Occupation, takes the extremershape of paradox: the more oppressed we are externally, thefreer we can be in our own decisions, in our single hves. SoSartre says in "The RepublIC of Silence":

We were never more free than dunng the German occupatIon.We had lost all our nghts, begmmng WIth the nght to talk. Every

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THE NEW REVOLUTIONARY

day we were insulted to our faces and had to take it lD SIlence.Under one pretext or another, as workers, Jews, or pohtlcal prIS­oners, we were deported en masse. Everywhere, on bIllboards, lDthe newspapers, on the screen, we encountered the revo1tlDg andinsipid picture of ourselves that our oppressors wanted us toaccept. And, because of all thIS, we were free. Because the Nazivenom seeped even IDto our thoughts, every accurate thoughtwas a conquest. Because an all-powerful polIce tned to force usto hold our tongues, every word took on the value of a declarationof pnnclples. Because we were hunted down, every one of ourgestures had the weIght of a solemn commItment. The cIrcum·stances, atroCIOUS as they often were, finally made It pOSSIble forus to hve, WIthout pretense or false shame, the hechc and Impos­Sible exIstence that IS known as the lot of man.a

And, what is more, the objects of each man's decisions insuch circumstances have a pecuhar sIgmficance for the reve­lation of man's destmy in general. Klerkegaard's problemswere often, as he hImself says, "bagatelles" to the externalobserver. Should he or should he not use a pseudonym?Should he or should he not pay a call on the long-lost (andvery-Iong-mdIffcrent) Regina? But each act of every French­man under the Occupation imphed a much more dramaticand much more ulllversal questIon. Sartre contmues.

Exl1e, captIVIty, and espeCIally death (which we usually shrinkfrom facIDg at all lD happIer bmes) became for us the habitualobjects of our concern. We learned that they were neIther in­eVitable aCCidents, nor evcn constant and extenor dangers, butthat they must be conSidered as our lot Itself, our destmy, the pro-jfound source of our reahty as men. At every lDstant we hved upto the full sense of thiS commonplace httle phrase: "Man ISmortall" And the chOIce that each of us made of hIS hfe and ofhIS bemg was an authentIc chOIce because It was made face toface With death, because It could always have been expressed lDthese terms "Rather death than.... :' And here I am not speak-

3 Sartre, "The Repubhc of Sl1ence," translated by Ramon Guthne, lD

The RepublIC of SIlence, compiled and edited by A J. ueblmg (copyngllt1947 by A J Lieblmg), pp 498-500. Repnnted by permISSion of HarcourtBrace & Co , Inc The quotations gIven In thiS chapter compnse the wholeof the essay

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DREADFUL FREEDOM

Ing of the elIte among us who were real ResIstants, but of allFrenchmen who, at every hour of the night and day throughoutfour years, answered NO But the very cruelty of the enemy droveus to the extremItIes of thIs condItIon by forCIng ourselves to askourselves questIons that one never conSIders In tIme of peace. Allthose among us-and what Frenchman was not at one bme oranother In thIS sItuatIon-who knew any detaIls concernIng theReSIstance asked themselves anxIOusly, "If they torture me, shallI be able to keep SIlent?"

Kierkegaard's "70,000 fathoms," Heidegger's "being todeath," are interestmg phIlosophic conceptIons; but here isthe human actuahty that has given a new dimenSIOn and anew vitahty to theIr eccentnc, If bnlhant, mSIghts:

Thus the baSIC questIon of lIberty was posed, and we werebrought to the verge of the deepest knowledge that man can haveof hImself For the secret of a man is not hiS OedIpus complex,or hIS mfcnonty complex. It IS the hmlt of hIS own hberty, hislcapacIty for resIstIng torture and death.

Whatever one may think of the theoretical correctness ofthe existentIahsts' VIew of the mdlVldual and of ItS conSIstencyor otherWise WIth theIr pohtIcal phIlosophy, one must quahfysuch CrItIcism by recogmzmg the genumeness of this hard­won inSIght, and by concedmg that those of us who havenot known the daIly threat of death or torture have ultI­mately no rIght to speak agamst it. "It IS charactensbc ofthe French," Edmund WIlson wrote in hIS otherwise ex­ccllent reVIew of Sartre m the New Yorker" "that the de­structIon of French mstItutions should have seemed to thema catastrophe as complete as the Flood and caused them toevolve a phIlosophy whIch assumes that the predIcament ofthe patnobc Frenchman oppressed by the German occupa­hon represented the SItuatIon of all mankind." Perhaps so;It may be that French existentiahsm more than other phi­losophIes expands a umque situatIon mto a umversal theory.

4 Edmund Wl1son, "Jean-Paul Sartre, the Novehst and the EXlstentiahst,"New Yorker, August 2, 1947, P 61.

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THE NEW REVOLUTIONARY

But Wl1son would scarcely be the last to admit that some­thing simdar is true of phl1osophers generally, as it is ofartists, and that for each philosophy the umque experiencefrom which the resultant system has grown as much con­firms as invalidates the theory Itself. And 10 this ease ourfortunate ignorance of the sltuabon must make us, at anyrate, heSitant in our judgment of the consequent theory. Per­haps It was unique only 10 the sense of histoncal aCCident;perhaps It was unique, rather, as the eXlstentiahsts believe,10 ItS revelation of the very hnuts of human hberty. rIbueyd­Ides, too, saw the effect of one war on one people and sawmit the sltuabon of all mank1Od; that is, at least, good prec­edent for the eXlstenbahsts' procedure

\Vhat makes the ReSistance most significant for the pol­Ibcs of the French school, however, is not simply the secret,yet dramatIc, lonelmess of each Underground worker, but theconJunction of sohtude With sohdanty 10 thiS 10Vlsible army. j

In the ReSistance It was true, undemably, that each man,deCiding alone and of himself, did deCide for all So Sartre'sessay concludes.

To those who were eng,lgcd 111 underground actiVIties, theconditions of theIr struggle afforded a new k10d of expenence.1bey did not fight openly lIke soldiers In all Circumstances theywcre alone.J'hey were hunted down In solItude, arrested In solI­tude It waS'complctcly forlorn and unbefnended that they heldout agamst torture, alone ,md naked 10 the presence of torturers,cIc.m-sha, en, well-fed, and well-elothed, who laughed at theIrcnngmg flesh, and to whom an untroubled conscience and aboundless sense of social strength gave every appearance of bemgm the nght Alone Without a fnendly hand or a word of encour·agement. Yet, 10 the depth of their solItude, It was the others thatthey were protectmg, all the others, all thelI comrades 10 the Re­sistance. Total responsibilIty In total solItude-IS not thiS the verydefimbon of our lIberty? This bemg stnpped of all, thiS sohtude, I

thiS tremendous danger, were the same for all For the leaders andfor their men, for those who conveyed messages Without knOWIngwhat their content was, as for those who duected the enbre Re-

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DREADFUL FREEDOM

sistance, the pumshment was the same-Imprisonment, deporta­bon, death. There IS no army In the world where there IS suchequalIty of fISk for the pnvate and the commander-In-ehief. AndthIS IS why the ReSistance was a true democracy: for the soldIer asfor the commander, the same danger, the same forsakenness, thesame total responsibIlity, the same absolute liberty wltlun diSCI­plme. 'I'hus, In darkness and In blood, a RepublIc was establIshed,the strongest of RepublIcs Each of ItS cItIzens knew that he owedlumself to all and that he could count only on himself alone.Each of them, m complete Isolation, fulfilled Ius responsibilityand Ius role m history. Each of them, standmg agamst the oppres­sors, undertook to be lumself, frcely and ITTcvocably And bychoosmg for hllnself m liberty, lle chose the liberty of all. TIusRepublIc wIthout lllstItubons, without an anny, without pohce,was somethmg that at each lllstant every Frenchman had to wmand to affirm agam!>t NMI~m No onc fatIed m hIS duty, and nOwwe are on thc tluc~hold ot another RepublIc May thIS Republicabout to be set up m broad daylight preserve the austere vtrtuesof that other Republic of SIlence and of NIght.

LIke the expencnce of lIberty m enslavement, the ex­penence of "total re!>ponslblbty In total solItude" IS hereundemably genume In the Remtance the freedom of oncdId mvolve, unmedlatcly Jnd herOIcally, the freedom ofmany It wa!> as humelf Jud JS J Frcnchm,lll that each manhad to ask, "If they torture me, !>hall I be able to keep SIlent?"-Just as, conversely, It was hImself as much as France thateach collaborator betrayed But It IS here, too, that thetheoretical questIon becomes mSlstent The situatIon of theResIstance, m wInch each man does mdeed deCIde for every­one, was made a conSIStent whole by the dramatic force ofItS actual eXIstence But when this SItuation I!> elevated tothe status of an abstract system, what lmk IS thcre to bmd,theoretIcally, the sohtude WIth the responsIbIlIty, the oneWIth the all? 'The pIcture of the mdlVldual VIS-a.-VIS hIS tor­turer remams as the human, lnstoncal foundation of Sartre'stheory 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 theResistant's solitary and dangerous decision?

2Before lookmg at Sartre's explICIt formulation of polItical

or social theory, however, we should notice, short of suchgeneral theoretical statements, a kmd of analysIs of humantypes or behaVIOr patterns to wluch eXIstentialIsm lends ItselfWIth conspICUOUS success. That IS Illustrated, for example, aswe have already secn, 111 such analyses as those of vamty,sadIsm, or masochIsm 111 V£tre et Ie ncant. TIle broadersocial ImplIcations of some of thcse dIScussIons-as of theconcept of total, yet penlous, freedom on wInch they arefounded-arc ample. In part, for example, Sartre's mterpre­tatIons of sadIsm and of hate arc utIlIzed III Ins "PortraIt ofthe Anb-Scnute,"5 or III SIlllonc de BeaUVOlr's discussion ofrevenge 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 furnishan eqUivalent for \\hat one has received or taken. The deSire foreqUivalence IS expressed more cxactl)' m the famous lex tal1011IS orlaw 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 tendsto satisfy f>ome unknown, somber god of symmetry, but first andforemost It wrresponds to a profound human reqUirement OnceI heard a member of the maqms tellmg how he had retahatedon a National Guard who had bcen gUIlty of torturmg a woman."He under<>tood," he concluded, soberly TIllS word, whIch ISfrequently 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, butexactly 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 1In 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.

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"understandmg"-an operatIon by whIch our whole being realIZeSa SItuatIon; you understand a t!,ol by usmg it; you understand atorture by expenencmg It. The butcher feels, 10 hIS tum, whatthe vIctim felt, but thIS 10 Itself cannot remedy the ongmal evIl.It is not enough for the suffermg to be rehved or revIved, thetotahty of the SItuatIon must be revIved also. The butcher, whosaw hImself as sovereIgn conSCIousness and pure freedom con·frontmg a wretched tortured thmg, IS now a wretched torturedthmg hImself, expenencmg the tragic ambigUlty of the humancondItIon. What he has to understand IS that the VIctim, whoseabjectIon he now shares, shared somethmg else With him too­the very pnvIleges he thought he could arrogate to hImself. Andhe does not understand thIS mtellectually, m a speculative man­ner. He reahzes concretely the turnabout of SItuatIon, really andconcretely, he reestabhshes the state of reCIproCity betweenhuman conSClOusnesses, the negation of whIch IS the most funda­mental mJustIce An object for others, e"ery man IS a subJect tohImself, and he lays the ~harpc~t claim to being recogmzedas 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 ofvengeance:

What IS mvolved IS nothing less than the coercIOn of freedom­the terms are contradIctory. Yet there can be no true revengeexcept 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 hewould remam pure freedom, and in the very suffenngs that he'might mfllct on hImself voluntanly he would stIll, 10 spite ofhImself, be makmg mock of hIS VIctIm. What IS reqUIred IS thathe should feel hImself as VIctim, he should undergo VIOlence.But VIolence, by Itself, IS not enough eIther; ItS only pomt IS togive nse in the gUIlty person to an acknowledgement of his truecondition, the very nature of freedom, however, makes the sue-

7 POlItiCS, P 136.

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THE NEW REVOLUTIONARY

cess of this dubious. Violence can be an inducement, a tempta­tion, but never an absolute compulsion. What we really want isto 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 fromItself feelings nobody could Impose upon It Without ItS ownconsent. 1111s contradiction IS the reason that revenge's alms cannever be satisfied.8

In punishment there is a more complex problem, for wehave no longer the concrete struggle of one freedom againstanother but the substitution of an abstract pattern in whichthe condemned man, though he must suffer in his own fleshand his own spirit, is at the same time, for his judges, ratherthe 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 theconcrete realIty of a umque freedom By bcmg able to discern inPetam both a traitor and an old man, condemnIng the one, par­domng the other, the HIgh Court merely demonstrated, up to thehIlt, one of the tendenCies of socral Justice It doce; not view thegmlty man m the totalIty of hiS beIng, It does not engage m ametaphYSical struggle WIth a free conSCIence that a body of fleshand bone Impnsons, It condemns hIm insofar as he IS a substractand a reflection of certaIn bad acte;. The pumshment, therefore,takcs the form of a symbolIc display, and the condemned mancomes close to beIng secn as an expIatory VIctim, for, after all, ItIS a man who IS gomg to feel m hIS consciousness and hiS flesha penalty Intended for that SOCial and abstract reahty-the gUIltyparty.9

But such dualIty is mevltable, S1l1ce it is implICit in the verynature of human acbon and hum~n freedom:

.... evcry attcmpt to counterbalance the absolute event whIchIS a cnme mamfests the ambIgUIty of the condItion of man, who

8. Ibid. 9. IbJd., p. 137.

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DREADFUL FREEDOM

IS sImultaneously freedom and thmg, UOlty and dIspersion, iso-,Iated by subJectIvIty and yet coexIstent wIth other men In theworld's bosom-hence all pUDlshment IS one part defeat. Butlove and actIon too-qmte as much as hatred and revenge-alwaysmvoIve a defeat, and that does not stop us from loving andactmg, for we have not only to ascertam our condItion; from theheart of Its ambIgUIty we mnst choose It 10

Or agam, in the "PortraIt of the Anti-Semite:' Sartreapphes partly hIS conceptIon of ~adlsm, partly the existentIalconceptIon of the free project itself to a difficult sOCIal prob­lem. Wilson lIkens thIS essay to some of the portraiture ofthe 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 ISnot, 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 opimonsformed from It, has dlOsell hate as his way of hfe It ISthe character of that baSIC chOIce, not a lIst of humanlyrIdiculous or histOrIcally plaUSIble opmlOns, that has to beunderstood For Hume and hIS pragl1latIc-po~lhvlst de­scendants there IS no es~entIal differcnce between reason­able OpInIOn and prCJudlce, only prejudIce is an opmlOnfounded on a narrower, rathcr than a WIder, range of evi­dence So If, WIth the mce, senSIble cool-headcdness that allmen possess whcn beyond the spell of rabble-rousers, themtolcrant arc ~ho",n the SCIentific eVIdence for tolerance,they WIll, of course, alter theIr "antIsocIal" attItude to amore "constructl\'e" one. Logically, SCientIfic 0plDlOn is onlybroadminded prejudice, and prejudice IS narrowness of

10 IbId., p liO

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opimon; the exposition of relevant eVIdence wIll, as a matterof course, substitute the more for the less deSIrable of thetwo. As against sueh a highly abstract, totally unreahstIc, andtherefore, I suspect, almost totally ineffective conception,the incisiveness and penetration of Sartre's "PortraIt" is awelcome, 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 obJectsof the passIOn' women, glory, power, money. Smce the antI­Semite has chosen hate, we are oblIged to conclude that It IS theImpassIOned state tllat he loves. Usually, thIS kmd of affectIondoes not please at all, he who pa~slonately deme~ a woman isImpassIoned because of the woman and 10 spite of the passIOn;one scorns passionate rcasomngs, which try to demonstrate byevery 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-Semltehas 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, thatother consIderations WIll occur to call them 10 doubt, he neverknows vcry well whcre he IS go109, he IS "open," he can pass forhesltJnt 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. Andwhat ternfic~ them IS not the content of the truth, which theydo not even m~peet, but the very form of the true, that ob/eet of tmdefimte approxlmahon. It IS as If then own eXistence wereforever 10 suspense But they want to eXist all at once and Im-,med13tely They do not want acqmred opmlOns, they want mnateones, because they arc afraid of reason109, they want to adopta way of hfe where reason109 and mveshgahon have only a sub­ordmate role, where one never seeks except for what one hasalready 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

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hold reasomng by the leadIng-strIngs, It alone can remam Im­penneable to expenence and SUbSISt through a whole life. TheantI-SemIte has chosen hate because hate IS a faIth; he has chosen,at the outset, to devaluate words and reasons. How much at easehe feels now, how futIle and shght seem to him the dIScussIonson the nghts of thc Jew he IS sItuated from the first on a dIfferentplane. If he consents, by courtesy, to defend hIS POInt of VIew fora moment, he lends but does not gIve hImself, he SImply tnes toproject hIS mtmtIve eertamty onto the plane of dIscourse. 1quoted earhcr some "mots" of antI-SemItes, aU absurd' "I hatethe 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 ofth~e replIes They know theu arguments arc ~hght, conte'ltable,but they are amused by them It IS theIr adversary who has theduty to use words senously because he belIeves m words, as forthemselves, they have the ng1lt to play. They even lIke to playWIth arguments because, by gIVmg clowmsll reasons, they throwdiscrecht on the scnousness of theu 111terlocutor, they are of badf.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 knowWIth a haughty word that the tIme for argumg has passed, It I~

not that they are afraId of bemg convmced, they fear only thatthey may look ridIculous or that thelI embarrassment may havea bad effect on a thud person whom they want to attract to theIrparty If, then, the anti-SemIte IS, as everyone has been able toobserve, Impermeable to reason and to expenence, It IS not be­came hIS convIction IS strong, but rather hIS conVIction IS strongbecause 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 In111selfthat mspires fear In others. He has chosen mcdIOcnty-agambecause Ius medIOcnty can be chenshed as a thmg, notfought for m hazardous freedom; for he possesscs the mystichentage of blood and soil against the corroslve~ of a rootlessmtc1hgence. 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, indread, the sigmficance of one's values, to wrest a precariousgood from entanglement in ill: good and eVIl are given, to I

destroy the evIl is the mission of the good. So, finally, theanti-SemIte appears as destroyer and sadlst-smce hIs gooddemands as its expression the suffering and, finally, the de­struction of the victIm that he has marked as evil. In all thISit IS the fixity, the objectIvity of himself and hIS good, thathe has chosen True, he has chosen hate, which is a passionnot a thing; but his hate carnes hIm beyond himself, takeshim from the penl of self-questIoning, from doubt, dread,and nsk, to certainty:

He chooses, finally, that the Good be ready-made, beyondquestIon, beyond attack, he dares not look at It for fear of bemgled to contest It and seek another The Jew is here only a pretext:elsewhere one makes use of the Negro, elsewhere the yellowraces. HIS [the Jew's] eXistence Simply allows the antI-Semite tostIfle hIS anxIetIes m the egg by persuadmg lumself that hIS placem the world has always been marked, that It awaIts hIm, andthat he has, by tradItIon, the fight of occupymg It AntI-SemItIsm,In a word, IS fear of the human condItIon. The antI-Semite IS theman who wants to be pltIle!>s rock, funous torrent, destroymgthunder, 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 whohave taken on the attItude of "not beanng the Jews"-orthe Negroes or who not-merely to seem to be somebody totheIr assocIates. He menbons a man who, otherwise entIrelyundIstInguished by conduct or conversation, has always beenknown to hIS acquaintance as "unable to abide the English"so his presence becomes noticeable by everybody'S aVOldanceof 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 longconcludmg story of Lc Mur, "L'Enfance d'un chef." Thecomplete emptmess of the boy's and young man's life, thelack of any slgmficant passIOn m It, is compensated for atlast when he has got away with his refusal to shake handswith a Jew at a party Thcre was no overpowenng hatredback of his act, It was, If anythmg, Just a capncious attemptto be dIfferent, but It succeeded, hIS host on theIr next meet­mg apologizcd; and he was establIshed as someone. someonewho detcsts the Jews.

In all these Instances, of course, It may be just the shrewd­ness of the particular wnters, wIthout much rcgard to thcIreXIstentialism, that makes the analyscs apt or mtcrcstmg.That would seem to be so, for example, of some of Sartre'scomments 111 hIS editonal mtroduetIon to the Umted StatesISSUC 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 UmtedStatcs and which over there they call "Amencamsm", It IS amomtrous complex of myths, of values, of formulae, of slogans,of symbols, and of fltes But It would not do to thInk that It ISdcpmlted 10 thc hcad of cvery Amencan as Descartes's God hasdcpoMtcd the pnmary notions In the mmd of man, It would notdo to Hunk that It IS "refracted" 10 theIr brams and 10 their heartsand that It thcre detennmes at every moment emotIons andthoughts 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 ItIt IS not m them, but they 10 It, thcy struggle agaInst It or acceptIt, they stIfle m It or transccnd It, they submit to it or remvent Itcvery bme, thcy gIve thcmselves up to It or make funous effortsto 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 thereare the Amencam who at first are notlung, who grow among these

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colossal statues and disentangle themselves as best they can mthe midst of them 11Iere IS the myth of happmess, there arcthose spellbmdmg slogans which advise you how to be happy asquickly as possible, there are the films With happy endmgs, whichevery evening show lIfe m rose color to harassed crowds, thereIS that language, laden with optimistic and profligate expressions,"havmg a good time," "enjoy," "hfe is fun," etc.-and then thereare those men who are pursued even into the most conformisthappmess by an obscure malaise that does not know what tocall Itself, those men who are tragic for fear of bemg so, by thattotal 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 IShaunted by the fear of bcmg less Amencan than hiS neighbor"I accept that explanatIon, It shows that Amencamsm IS not aSimple myth that a skilful propaganda could bury m people'sheads but that every Amencan remvents It, gropmgly, every mm­ute, that It I'> at once a great external fonn which nses at theentrance to thc port of New York, OpposIte the Statue of Liberty,and the daIly product of unqUIet lIbertIes. There IS a drcad ofthe Amencan In the face of Amencamsm, there IS an :llnhIV­alence of hiS drcad, as If he were askmg himself at one and thesame time. "Am I Amencan enough?" and "How shall I e~cape

Amcncamsm?" A man, m Amenca, IS a certam simultancousanswcr to these two questions, and every man must find hiSanswers alone.I3

Yet even here there IS an echo of the eXistential view of free­dom, of the conception of man'~ makmg himself out of hIShIstory rather than that of hIstory's making hUll; and onecan 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 Itselfexceedmgly 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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3The problem of connecting, logically, the private and pub­

lIc aspects of exIstentialism becomes acute, however, if welook at Its supporters' expliCIt statements of political andsocial theory. The locus classicus for thIs theory, at presentwrIting, IS Sartre's pair of articles on J;I1aterialism and revolu­tIon In Les Temps modernes.14 The first essay considers asenes of contradictions in materialism, notably, In dialectIcalmatenahsm, the contradiction, as Sartre sees It, between theunique concrete wholes envIsaged by dIalectic and the ab­stract, quantItatIve relations With which scientIfic matenal­ism IS bound to deal. So, for example, Engels IS incorrect, hesays, In his assertion that phySICS moves from quantItatIveto qualItatIve concepts' It moves only from quantIty to quan­tity. Evcn Einsteinian physics deals wholly in external andquantItative relatIonshIps, and, what is most essential, evenEinsteInIan phYSICS, lIke all SCIence, deals With the abstractcondItIons of the Ul11verse In general, not, lIke dIaleCTIC, wItlIthe growth of a l1Vlng concrete totalIty. Sartre admits freelythe usefulness, for revolUTIonary purposes, of the materialistmyth-or at least Its usefulness m the past. Yet both as phI­losopher and as revolutIonary he questions the long-termefficacy of such a "monster" and proceeds, m the secondessay, 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 waythat only a radical change in the structure of the SOCIety canrelieve his oppressIon:

What the Amencan Negroes and the bourgeOIs Jews want ISan equalIty of nghts, whIch does not In any way imply a changeof 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 wayshare those pr1V1leges; It is by the destructIon of the class that isoppress1Og hIm that he can obtam what he demands. That meansthat the oppressIOn IS not, lIke that of the Jews or Negroes, con­sIdered as a secondary and, as It were, lateral charactenstlc of theSOCIal regIme but that It IS, on the contrary, constitutive. Therevolutionary 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 thesociety In their very oppressIOn. Such IS his situation; thethird charactenstic of the man, according to Sartre, is thathe 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 forthat of the rulIng class; and, SInce this rulIng class founds ItSdominatIon on Its conceptIon of the nghts of man, that isof the dIvine nght of the bourgeOIS ruler to oppress the prole­tarian worker, It wIll be not an assertion of nghts but a denialof them. Hence, presumably, the appeal of matcrialIsm, SInceIt substItutes a natural conceptIon of the human species forthe bourgeOIS pretense of human dIgnity, whIch is only thedigmty of ruler-person against worker-thing. But, by so domg,it negates all values, whereas what the revolutIonary seeksIS a new conceptIon of values, one which goes beyond thepresent SItuatIon, whIch enVIsages goods to be created InrevolutIon 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 contmgent10 that neither he nor any Providence has produced It; (2) as aconsequence, that every collective order establIshed by men canbe 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, whichare not clearly perceived because the society which they exprcssdoes not yet eXI~t but which are antiCipated and, 10 one word,mvcnted by thc vcry cffort of the mcmbers of the SOCICtv totranscend It 16

These points, he continues, neither matenahsm nor IdeahsmproVide l\fatenahsm wIth Its ngld causalIty leaves no roomfor 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 SItuationrdccoller] to take a pomt of vIew on It (pomt of VICW wIuchIS not pure knowledge but mdlssolubly understandmg andactIon) -thIS is precIsely what we call 'frccdom ' "17 Ideahsmdoes no better, he belIeves, since, whIle recogmzmg subJec­tiVIty, It falls to acknowledge, what IS equally Important, thehardness of fact-the stubbornly eXIstent obstacles whIch therevolutIonary, 10 Ius very freedom, has set hU11Self to over­come. Moreover, Ideahsm IS, for Sartre as clearly as for theorthodox MdrxI~t, merely the attempt of the rulmg cla~s tocloak ItS self-mterest in grand phrases The correct accountIS one different from eIther of these

A bemg cOTltIngcnt, unJustifiable, but free, completely plungedinto a socIety whICh oppresses him but capable of transcendmgthat society by Ius efforts to change It, that IS what the revolu­tIonary man claims to be IdealIsm mystIfies hIm 10 that It bmdshml With ItS already given nghts and values; It masks hIS powerof IOventmg hiS own paths. But matenahsm also m}stIfies him,by robbmg him of hiS freedom. The revolutionary phIlosophy

16. Ibid. p 1217. Ibld.,p.13.

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must be a philosophy of transcendence [une phdosophle de 1atranscendence] .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, ithe phIlosophy of transcendence; that is, though Sartre doesnot here call It so, It turns out to be eXlstentiahsm. And whatis 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 bourgeoIsdoubtful of his own class values may come to ac.cept It; and,besides, It seeks, despite the probable need of bloodshed, notso much to destroy the ruling class as to jom workers andfonner rulers m a commumty of men, to make them equallyfree. So It IS not, lIke either matenalIsm or idealIsm, a mythused by one faction or another but a statement of the natureand action of the free man as such: thc revolutionary, LyhiS very chOice of revolution, becomes "the man who wishesthat 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 ofthe free act Wlth the revolutionary act-there IS a stnkmgearallel, If not a logical eqUIvalence, between the eXI!ltentIalconcept of transcendence, of choice In, but beyond, a con­crete Situation, and the revolutionary's transcendence of hiSSOCial and polItical situation In hiS very grasp of It. But,dcsplte the stnking rightness of some of Sartre's inCidentalobservations (see, for Instance, the passage quoted on pp. 6-8on the relation of mechamcal cause to human aims andchoices), the theory as a whole has a certain artifiCialIty aboutIt it is, agam, somehow too logical m the wrong places ThephIlosopher's love of a neat logical construct has severa] times

18. Ibid, pp 1,-14. I have translated dcpasser by "trJnsccnd" TheFrench tcrm transcendcnce occurs only 11l the final phrase "philosophy oftranscendence ..

19 Ibid, p 30

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led to a faIlure of Sartre the artIst: as m The FlIes, whichIS topheavy with exIstentIal theory, or even in The UnburiedDead, where the possIble vanants on the genuinely movingtheme of death and torture are so exhaustively and conSCIen·tiously explored that the result is something more like apsychologi~t's card-mdex than a tragedy.20 But here It ISthe phIlosopher hIm~elf who is gUIlty of too much neatnesswIth too httle realIty or, m the jargon of the trade, too muchcoherence WIth too lIttle adequacy.

ThiS IS apparent at several pomts. In the first place, one1~ 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 thephIlosophy of transcendence as such, of gomg beyond thepresent society to create a ncw one. At present, 10 Sartre'spIcture, It IS the dichotomy of oppressor and oppressed thatmotivates such transccndence But what of the free manm the free society? If he is stIll frce, he stIll transcends hisSituatIon to a new one; he IS still, by defimtIon, a revolu­tionary, but agamst what? Agamst freedom Itself? That ISab~urd The reply might be, I suppose, that revolutionaryphilosophy is, as Sartre says, "m situation": It is thoughtnow duected to a currently pres!lmg and sigmficant endBut Sartre has mSisted, agam~t the Communists, that aphIlosophy of revolution must be at once immediately prac-

20 Cf Edmund Wilson's compamon of Sartre With Stemhe<.k In theItVltW already quoted (p 58) "Like l)tcmbetk, Sartre IS a onnter of un­dUl1.lbl} C....l.l.pbonal gifts on the onc hand, a fluent lllventor, who canJlways lllJke \olllethmg mterestmg happen, and, on the other, a serious~tl1dent of hfe, With a good deal of spmt Yet he somehow does not seemqlllte first rate A pIa} of Sartre's, for CXJmple, such as hIS recent 'The Unbuned Dead'-\\hlch IS, I suppose, hiS best play-affects me rather hle'1 he Grapes of \;\/rath' Here he has explOIted With both cleverness andcom ICtlOll the ordeal of the French Resistance, as Stembeck has done that ofthe sharecroppcn., but "'hat )OU get are a vutuoslty of reah~m and a rhetoncof moral pa~slOn which make yOll feel not merely that the fiction IS adramatic helghtenmg of hfe but that the literary fantasy takes place on aplane whlc1\ does not have .my real connection With the actual humanexperlcnce ""hleh It l~ prctcndmg to represent"

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tical and unIversally true; otherwise It is not a philosophybut a mere myth, a myth which may by its falSity ultimatelysbfle revolution Itself. Sartre's philosophy, by contrast, mustbe not a he however noble, but the truth of 1a conditIonhumame. In that case one IS bound to try at any rate toenvisage his free man in settmgs beyond the present one, toimagme him in the future that alone gives substance andsignificance to his freedom And there one can see him onlyas a lost revolutionary: as one who has created by his freeact the society embodymg, as far as a society can, the valuesm which he has chosen to belIeve, yet whose very nature asfree demands that he once more deny these values in histranscendence, that he go beyond the very lIberty for whichhe has lIved his lIfe and nsked his death to somethmg beyondhberty Itself-and beyond that agam, and so forever In end­less regress as such there IS no contradiction, but there IS mthiS one; for here revolution for freedom implIes revolutionagamst frecdom And back of that logical Impasse there isa lunt at least of a much profounder difficulty m eXistentialtheory-lIberty as such, m ItS bare logical essence, doee; notappear an adequate replacement for lllore substanbve con­ceptions of value

In thc dcscnptIOn of thc pre~ellt, prcrevolutIonary sltua­bon, morcover, there are, for the Amcncan rcader at least,cqually dlsqmctmg lmutahons Sartre's sketch of the op­pressed worker's situatIon IS an account of a capitalIst societyin which an acute and well-defined class-conSCIOusness ISmuch more highly developed than It IS With us If one IS al­ready a MarXist and has already interpreted the legend ofAmerican democ.racy m termc; of ItS econOllllC ongms, onecan sahsfactonly explmn the lack of a stable class-conscious­ness out of those same economic conditions-and proceedto try to create one. But Sartre's dcscnption IS, presum­ably, not deduced from any theory; and, as a straightforward"phenomenological" account, It Simply does not fit our case.

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The fact of oppressIOn and explOitation eXIsts, of course-Itis probably just about as hard for a West Vlrgmla miner'sson to grow up to anythlDg but the nunes-where he workshard and dangcrously for other men's profits-as It IS forSartre's French laborer to be anythlDg but the VIctim of ex­ploitation that hIS father was before hIm. But If the Amer­Ican workcr sometimes feels lumsclf cheated, It IS only be­cause, as Sartre says of the Forty-eIghters, he wants partIcularcondItIons bettered wlthm the socIety. here, however-andthis IS the Important pOlDt-not because he accepts oppres­SIOn but becausc he cannot scnou..ly conceIve of lumself asoppresscd at all, because he feels that by some absurd aCCI­dent hc has been, for the moment, depnved of the pnvIlegewhIch must and shall accrue to all Amencans-the nght topossess, to raIse further and further the famous !>tandard ofIIvmg that dIstIngUIshes us aIllong the peoples of the earthSartre IS prob.tbly qmte nght m !>aymg, lD Ius edltonal onAmenca, tlIat thc Amencan myth I~ not so much hved by aslIved under, that every Amenc.an tncs constantly, wIth an oddmsecnnty, to Ic-wm and rea~..crt It!> efficacy for hImself.Yet, despIte tlus rclatIon of dIstance between the people andtheIr Luth, It IS stIU, for most of them, the only fmth theyknow or can llIlagme, and for ~uch a fmth (as several con­tnbutors to Temps moderne!>'s Umted Statcs Issue havestrcssed) a ngId dIVISIon of classc~, clearly recogl1l.lable fromboth SIdes of the cleavage, can lurdly be SaId to eXISt. IIere,It seems to me, mueh morc than m the relatIon of hIS thoughtto the French ReSIStance, Sartre has mdeed tned to buIld agcnerJI theory upon a SItuation who!>e geograplucal and hls­toneallimlts senously Impmr It~ ul1lversal valIdIty.

These are both dI!>turbmg 11l11ltatIons in the SartreantlIeory; but there IS a more scnous and more sweepmg ob­jection, whIch we antIcIpated at the outset of thIS chapterSartre's polItIcal theory and hIS analysis of the individual,using as they do the same central concepts-situatIon, free-

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THE NEW REVOLUTIONARY

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 ultImatelyon and follows from some theory of the nature of the mdi­vidual, if only on a demal that there is an individual. ThatSartre tries, 10 hIS own case, to make such a connection isalso clear, and It IS, I am afraid, equally eVident that he fallsto 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 Hedoes not seek hberatIon for hImself alone, for that wouldmvolve only absorption IOta the rulIng class He seeks It forIus whole class, even, at last, for all mankmd In hIS descnp­bon of class-conscIOusness 10 L't!;tle et Ie ncant Sartle hasrepresentcd thc oppressed group as umted, mdlIectl)', forsuch jomt attIon, by thelI awarcncss of the oppressor asonlooker.21 DIrectly, however, they arc stIll bound by the besof conflIct only, which alonc forms thc dynamiC of one mdi­Vidual's relatIOn to anothcr, whether Wlthm or beyond hiSclass. 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 strongIllnts that thiS alone IS not enough that somethmg morethan an mdlrect nous-objet is nccdcd Wltllil1 the oppressedclass Itself If one IS to achlCve solIdanty rather than anarchy,a common revolutIon for freedom rathcr than the sporadiCrebellIon of the mdlvldual against Ius mdlvidual tyrant. Lookat two passages in the second essay:

We have seen .... that the revolutionary act is the free act parexcellence. Not at all of an anarchIst and mdlVlduahst freedom;

21. See P 91, above.

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DREADFUL FREEDOM

in that case, as a matter of fact, the revolutionary, by his verysituation, could only claim more or less explIcitly the rights ofthe prIvileged class, that IS, his mtegratIon to the higher socialstrata. But smce he claims at the heart of the oppressed class andfor all the oppressed class a more ratIonal SOCIal status, his free­dom resides m the act by which he demands the lIberatIon of allhis class and, more generally, of all men It IS, at Its source, recog­mtIon of other lIberties, and It demands to be recognIZed bythem. Thus It places Itself from the begmmng on the planeof solIdanty 22

This IS, at first Sight, a clear and logical statement of therevolutionary pOSItIon, but ItS Achilles' heel appears m thesentence "It is, at ItS ~ource, recognition of other hbertIes,and It demands to be recogmzed by them " Whence thiSrecognition of other "hbertIe~"7From where m the cucle ofconflicts can It sprmg? The threat of the oppressor and thestand of the oppressed agamst hun one can see as a varianton the baSIC pattern of thc subJcct-obJect conflict. But a tieof mutual recogmtIon, first among the oppressed and ulti­mately among all mankmd-that one finds one's self, withmthe framework of Sartre's eXlstentIahsm, unable to conceive.Wlthm that framework, as Sartre hlm~elf has SaId, "respectfor another's freedom IS an empty phrase" (Ie respect de laliberte d'autrUI est un vam mol) l3

The second passage IS, If anythmg, more weasel-worded

A revolutionary philosophy must take account of the pluralItyof lIbertIes and show how each one, even while bemg liberty forItself, can be object for the other It IS only thiS double character \of freedom and objectiVity that can explam the complex notIonsof oppressIOn, of struggle, of frustration, and of VIOlence Forone never oppresses but one freedom, but one cannot oppressIt unless, in some respect, It lends Itself, that is, unless, for theOther, 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 2623 Sartre, L':£tre et Ie ne:mt, p 480

[ 118 J

THE NEW REVOLUTIONARY

to make society pass by VIOlence hom a state wherem lIber­ties are alIenated to another state founded on theIr reCIprocalrecogmbon.24

Here we have the explicit statement of the oppressor-op­pressedjsubject-object equatIon It IS in terms of conflIctand, as far as one can see, conflIct only that the revolutIonaryrecognizes the "pluralIty of lIberties." But suddenly out ofthis grim pIcture "one understands the revolutIonary move·ment and Its project, whIch IS to make SOCIety pass byviolence from a state wherem lIberties are alIenated to an­other state founded on theIr reCIprocal recogmtion." Fromwhat human SItuatIOn, from what ncw and marvelous sourcein the depths of a subjectIVIty otherwise so lonely, so closelyand so constantly endangered, does thIS balm of reciprocalrecognition flow? WIthout It the whole theory of revolu­tIon as the phIlosophy of human liberty, as man's call "to hIStotal destmy," collapses mto unrealIty. Yet m the eXIstentIalVIew of the mdlvidual there IS no place for such recogm­tion and therefore, one is bound to conclude, no foundatIonon which to buIld the polItIcal theory whIch Sartre himselfhas sketched

ThIS IS, as a matter of fact, apparent at some pomts, evenin the less general and therefore, on the whole, more satis­factory dISCUSSIOns that we quoted earlIer For example, thepassage on torture and vengeance by SImone de BeauvoircontInues'

An obJect for others, every man IS a mbject to himself, andhe lays the sharpest claIm to bemg recogmzed as such. Every­body knows, for example, how many fights m crowded placesstart WIth a bump or an aCCIdental kIck: the person that getsjostled madvertently IS not SImply a body, and he proves It­he defies the other person WIth a word, a look; finally he hItShIm. The respect he IS exactmg for hImself each of us claImsfor 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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DREADFUL FREEDOM

the idea of JustIce. TIllS IS what revenge IS stnVIng to reestabbshagaInst the tyranny of a freedom that wanted to make itselfsupreme 211

And thIs expansion of one's own claim to all humanity ISfurther elevated by MIle de Beauvoir into a unIversal moralpnnciple:

.... there are cases where no redemptIon seems possible, becausethe eVil encountered IS an absolute eVIl, and when this happens,we find the POInt of VIew of chanty IS no longer acceptable, forwe thmk that absolute evIl eXIsts. You can excuse every mis­demeanor and every cnme, even, by whIch an mdlvldual assertshimself agamst socIety; but when a man debberately sets aboutto debase man mto thmg, he lets loose a scandal on earth whichnothmg can make amends for. ThIs IS the only sm agamst manthere IS, but once It has been brought to pass, no mdulgence ISallowable, and It IS man's bmmess to pumsh It 26

That thIS IS absolute eVIl, the ultImate and only sm agamstmankmd, I heartIly agree Yet, It IS, at the same tIme, bySartre's account,27 the only pOSSIble relatIon of one humanbemg to another eIther I try, m desire or sadIsm, to makeanother 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 tosay we are all smners. So we are. But If, where there IS sm,there IS sometImes no redemptIon, m general there Is-or atleast the hope of it. And such hope can come, in this case,onl)' if respect for some other and so, mdIrectly at least, forall others can break the cIrcle of perpetual conflIct. MIle deBeauvoir says tllat it does so, yet her assertIon stands agamst,

25' Dc BeauvOlr, op CIt, P 13626 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, however, to Judge from the fragments that I have seen, differ In the essentIalrespect relevant to our diSCUSSion here, 1 e , It does not prOVide a "reciprocalrecogmtlon" of two equally free beIngs for one another's freedom It presents, rather, a hierarchy of transcendences, In whIch each person makeshImself obJect for hiS "peer"

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THE NEW REVOLUTIONARY

rather than Within, existential theory. Her description of theconflict 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'sown remark 10 the "Portrmt of the Anti-Semite": "A manwho finds it natural to denounce men cannot have our con­ception of the human."28 What IS "our concepbon of thehuman"? Where does It suddenly come from? One does notexpect French Ideas, any more than Frenchmen, to travelabout wIthout a carte d'identltC, or at any rate a passablecounterfeIt thereof.

28 Sartre, "Portrait de l'antJs6mte," p 451.

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CHAPTER SIX

JASPERS AND MARCEL. THENEW REVELATION

1

THE storm around eXIstentIahsm rages mostly aboutSartrc and thc French atheIstIc school, of whom evenHCldcgger IS saId to have saId "Good Godl I never

mtended thatJ" But on the penphery of the movement areWIlters-apart even from the Barthlan theological hellS ofKlcrkegaard-for whom God has not yet dIed and for whom,moreover, even the lonelmess of the Klerkegaardlan self IS, atleast ostensibly, conquered by the discovery of ImmedIatecommuDlcatIOn betwecn selves. So, It seems, the stress onpersonal eXistence may serve the lonely VISIon of God, asm Ss'ren Klerkegaard, or It may stem from the demal of Godbut Issue m a self equally sohtary, as m Sartre or HeldeggerOr It may, as m the Protcstant Karl Ja~pers or the CathohcGabncl Marccl, mvolve a recogmtIon both of faIth m Godand 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 phIlosophyaffirnllng dllect cOl1unumcatIon whIle denymg God. ThI~ is,I thmk, hlstoncal aCCIdent rather tllan logIcal neceSSIty, forIt appears to be the result of comcldence rather than oflogIC that both Marcel and Jaspers mSIst on (m Jaspers'

\ terms) both communication and transcendence. That faIthm God does not Imply dllect commumcabon we know fromKlerkegaard, for whom mdlTed commumcatIon IS a neces­sary consequence of the kmd of subjectIVIty that alone leadsto true faIth. That the acknowledgment of communicatIOn,

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THE NEW REVELATION

conversely, does not Imply a transcendent faIth, one can onlyguess-for example, from the weakness of the attemptedumon of the two in Jaspers or Marcel. But, lacking such aphilosophy, we may fill out hIstorIcally, If not logIcally, theoutlInes of actual, rather than possIble, exIstentIal theorIcsby examInIng some aspects of the Protestant and CatholIcvarieties, respectIvely, In Jaspers and Marcel.

Both these men belong to the IncreasIng group of thosewho lament the mechamzatIon of personalIty that has ac­compamed the mechamzatIon of industry. In an essay oncontemporary 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," thatIS, the phIlosophy wluc.h IdcntIfies the human In man WIththe merely livmg. Of thcsc, It IS the second whIch IS mostImportant and most dangerous. As Marcel sees It, tlIe pnn­cIpal charactenstIc~ of a techmcal VICW of the world are thatIt understands thmgs only m terms of some hold (pnse) thathuman agents helve on thcm, some way of mampulatIngthcm; that such techmques of mampulatIon and, conse­quently, the world It~clf appear perfectible-even nelturalcatastroplIes are looked on as unaccountable flJw~ 111 themachmery whIch we have not yet rectIfied but of course wIllultuuatcly, and that, m the hght of thIS ",ay of rcgardIngtlllngs, man hllmelf becomes for hImself only an object ofsuch tcchmques, knowmg hImself only by reflectIon as an­other object to handle and to perfect when he falls to runnght. 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 asplIahonsare 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 seemsa 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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DREADFUL FREEDOM

reduced to mere momentary pleasure, neither IS the realnature of evil understood m our techmcal age. Marcel's pomthere IS rather provocatIve, though, of course, not new: thatIt IS just the notIon of an Imperfect world whch IS combinedm our tIme WIth the denial of radIcal eVIl. The world as Godmade 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 andtherefore no flaw~ ",hlch cannot be nghted by new and Im-lproved techmqucs. EVil really beyond our power to conquerdoes not eXIst. There are gnevous SOCial consequences, too,m Marcel's View, of the teehmcal phllosophy. By reducmgman to another object of his own techmque, ~ e have, hethmks, turned ~oclety from a genume commumty mto an

taggregatr of deadened, pleasure-seekmg, pam-shunnmg umtsthat bear no mner spmtual relatIon to one another Marcel'smodel 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 ISour forgetfulncss of the only part of man that makes hImman-1m soul It IS to ~clve tins bctter part of our nature fromItS prescnt dechne that hc turns to the analySIS of personaleXlstencc as a phIlosophIc leItmotIv., Jaspcrs dlIectcd a more extended and rather celebratedpolemic agaimt tcc.hnocracy m DIe geIshge SItuatIon derGegenwart, whIch appeared as No 1000 m the "Goschen"pocket senes and was also publIshed m EnglIsh (If one cancall It sneh) under thc tItle Man In the Modern Age :l111OughIt covers a number of fields-everything from war to educa­tion-Its theme IS extremely sImple It IS an attack on thel\fassemenseh In every area-polItIcal, SOCIal, and cultural­Jaspers finds the fallure of our age In the human analogIesto 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-

2. New York Henry Holt & Co. 1933.

r1241

THE NEW REVELATION

duced average man. This does not mean, despite hIs talk ofsuch things as a "genuine war" or a "true anstocracy," thatJaspers 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 thosefew indiViduals who have, each in his umque faslllon, realIzedthe pOSSibilIty of genuIne inner eXIstence that is In all menand 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 samemedlOcnty, thc process of "wearing down into umformlty allthat IS IndiVidual," IS more clearly described, from the POIntof view of the EnglIsh reader, In Mill's chapter "Of Indi­VidualIty" In the essay On LIberty. What Jasperll has to sayin DIe geIstIge SItuatIOn IS essentIally, despIte the differcneesIn termInology, an elaboratIon of that chapter, as our Holly­wood-radIO-ndden world is an elaboratIOn of the SituatIOnthat it dcscribes

On the other hand, Jaspcrs' attack on the cra of tcchnology15 qualified at several pomts. He recogmzes the Inevitabihtyof further technical advance and appears to hope that wemay yet learn to use such skIlls m the serVIce, or at least notto the disscrvicc, of the goals of gcnuIne perllonal existence.And he does not, as Marcel at least appears to do, condcmnthe mcthods and attitudes of posItIve science as such as nec­essarily dcstructIve of slgmficant human lIfe He admiresKant too much for that; and more espeCIally hIS great fnend­ship and reverence for Max Weber made him consider eventhe extensIOn of SCientIfic techniques to human problems aspOSSIble and important. Weber's greatness, he felt, was hIllruthless honesty In lImitIng every SOCIOlogical l11vesbgationto a SIngle sectIon of expenence and In refUSIng to con­struct a dogmatic philosophy of human lIfc as such out of

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DREADFUL FREEDOM

hIS carefully restncted empirical researches. Such social sci­ence is doubly modeled on natural SCIence in the KantIanspirit. It involves the search for truth WIthin a stnctly limitedarea, limited both by the phenomenon studIed and by thedefimng principles applied to It, yet unlImIted In the sensethat It can nevcr, thanks to Its phenomenal nature, be saIdto be completed. And It leaves, as Kant's sCIence does, anopen field for thc moral and relIgIOUS aspIratIons of men,SInce In ItS dISCIplIned objectIvIty It neIther Imposes on noris 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' modIfiedeXlstcntIahsm

A certam respect for pmlhve sCIence IS nnrrored, too, InJaspcrs' treatment of posItIvIsm III the first volume of hisPhllosopIllC.s IIe deals there WIth pOSItIVIsm and IdealIsm asthc two pllllosophlcs whIch have tncd, m recent tImes, toaSSImIlate all realIty mto a complete and umfied system BothfaIl, 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 lImitof PO~lhvlSln IIcs, ultImately, m ItS mabllIty to know Itselfand, ~ hat II) evcn worse, to lIve Itself "If I wanted to lIveposltlVlshcally, I ~hould not be myl)clf, thIs I know morc orless consoausly and havc no rest." The lnmt of IdealIsm, con·versely, lIcs m Its mabIlIty to recogmzc what cannot beunder~tood, the brute facts of empmcal realIty, or, If It recog­m7CS them, It dIsmIsses them, as IIcgel dId, as triVIal andIrrelevant to phIlosophy The common usc and the common\\ caknesl) of the two systems he 111 thclr mm of statmguncqUIvocally 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 IPlulosopJusehe WeltonentIerung

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'IRE NEW 'REVELATION

danger both of intellectual error and of personal faIlure. Thatis not to say that there is no truth in these systems; accordmgto Jaspers, there is no dIstinction of truth from falsity mphIlosophy but only the dIstinction of the honest, genumelypersonal search for truth from the arbItrary word-games ofsystem-buIlders. Therefore, posItivism or IdealIsm, m so faras 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 stImulusand hmitatlOn from a deeper source They are not only real but,when they are rc1atIvized, true forces III history as we see It andm our own awareness of what eXIsts. WIthout pOSItIvIsm thereIS no body, WIthout IdealIsm no space for an obJectIve and mean­mgful rcahzatIon of pOSSIble eXIstence 4

2To 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 whIchshould not and cannot be mechanized

Marcel IS careful to !>pecify that m phIlosophizing inKierkegaard's tradItion lIe I~ not dcnymg the valIdity of theThomIstIc CJtholIc syntheSIS But, he says, the me1igiouscharacter of our agc unhappIly renders thc great mSIghts ofthat system valId only for some, not for all, of our contem­poranes. So the phIlosophcr must somehow lead bewIlderedhumamty back to the fmth by wluch it used to lIve and bywhich It needs to hve And to do this It IS necessary to turnto the very concrete problems-or rather, for Marcel, themystcnes deeper than mere problems at the heart of per­sonal eXIstence. Here there is hope of findmg the hvmg rootfrom whIch faIth may grow agam

The method whIch Marcel pursues in thIS endeavor-if Itdeserves the name of "method"-IS pnnclpally that of the

4 IbJd., 1,236.[ 127]

DREADFUL FREEDOM

"metaphysical diary." He published two of these, one underthe title Journal metaphysIque and one forming the majorportion of the volume £tre et aVOIl. This IS, however, notanother Cartesian medItatIon. (In fact, Marce1Is as strongin hIS dislIke of all Descartes stands for as Sartre IS in hISemphaSIS on the CarteSIan COgltO as the only vabd startmg­pomt for phIlosophy.) The MedItatIOns IS the result of angorous appbcatIon of a seriously conceIved "SCIentIfic" tech­mque of problem-solvmg. The "MetaphYSIcal D13nes," onthe other hand, COnsISt of Jottmgs of day-by-day reflectIons,sometImes mterconnected, sometImes qUIte random. Onefinds anythmg from "Walkmg WIth R today, was Impressedby \\-hat he saId about X" to "Today I expenenced grace forthe fir~t tIme.. .. I have never felt such JOY." Jean Wahl,In Ius essay on Marcel In Vcrs Ie wncret,5 appears to tbmkhIghly of the Journal mctaphysique as a phIlosophIcal form.True, he IS wntmg of tbe earber dIary, whIch seems to haverather more coherence than ItS sequel in £tre et aVOlI, but,all the 5ame, I cannot agree that there IS m clther of thesevolumes a phIlosophIc method worthy of senom conSIdera­tIon. The mad dIalectIc of Klerkegaard make5 a good dealmore sense than thIs-not to mentIon wbat M Iscre de­senbes as the "bnlbJntly mac..c.urate" rea~onmg of Sartre6­

maccurate perhaps, but bnlhJnt cert.ullly 111 Ih tcchmqucand often even in its l11sIghts

DespIte the shortcol11mgs of Ius method, however, theeXIstentIal 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.!olSof the human individual. But, he feels, one of the great errorsof Cartesianism was to substItute body m the ab<;tract forthe older and truer ChristIan conceptIon of the Resll-theflesh that IS "the mC\Itable shortcommg of a fallen creature"

5 Pans Llbrame philosopluque J Vnn, 19326 Jean Isere, "CommulUcahon, Sartre vs Proust?" Kenyon RcvIew, IX,

No 2 (spnng, 1947), 286-89

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THE NEW REVELATION

In so far as the human indivIdual hves by and of the flesh,hIS life centers m possession-m havmg, first, his body. wIthits perfections and Imperfections. its cravings and fears. andthen, through flesh and fleshly desire, the other possessionsthat dommate hIS scattered and unceasmg dreams and dis­appomtments And the agc of technocracy IS, of course, theage of havmg m excelsls

But there IS more to human personahty, M.ucel thmks,than thIS "meVltable shortcommg" of our fallen state There

[IS. beyond the lure of possessIOn, the strivmg for bcmg rather, than mere havmg And thIS can be satisfied. accordmg toI hIm, only m the "ShIft of center" of personal eXistence whithconstItutcs love Marcel contrasts the "he" ("101") who IS theobject of the self-seekmg, possessmg subject with the "thou,"("tOl") revealed by lo\e, who IS somehow part of one's selfor at one \\Ith one's self ThIS nught, if Martel dId anythmgwIth It, present a comfortmg alternative to Sartre's bleaktheory of the contmuous conflict of myself wIth autrm Butall he does, as far as I can sec, IS to present, With unctuoussentImentahty, anumber of generahzmg phrases as ullcon­vincmg as a very bad sermon on the text "God is love." Takesuch a passage as tIllS

How could I confu~e tlus attachment of the soul to Its glory,which IS only the dne~t, most stramed, most shnveled form ofself-love, with what dt all tImes I have called "fidelIty"? Is Itchance that It IS, on thc contrary, m those bemgs least preoccu­pied with !>hmmg III their own eyes that fidclIty occurs III Itsmost unexceptionable features? It IS a pCdsant or a servant facethat has revealed It to me And what can be the pnnclple of sorumous a confUSIOn betwecn two dispOSItions of the soul, themost superfiCial Judgmcnt of which assures me that they areforever mcompatIble? How can one help seemg, after all, that afidelIty to another of which I myself was the pnnclple, the root,and the center would, by the clandestme substitutIon that It con­ceals, once more establIsh a he at the heart of the existencewhich It lllforms?7

7 Marcel,op CJt, p. 75.

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DREADFUL FREEDOM

Nor, to judge, for example, from such a playas La Chapelleardente, is thIS generahzmg backed, m Marcel's lIterary pro­ductIons, by such bltter reabty as works bke Le Mur or L'Agede raison provIde for Sartre's theoretical statements. ThesubstItutIon of "fle~h" (chaIr) for "body" (corps) is mter­estmg and perhaps sound, but the theory of "love" and the"thou" as rebef from the Ills of the flesh has a thoroughlyfalse nng.

That IS, I suppose, from Marcel's pomt of VIew, only theobtuse reactIon of the unbebever, for the sIgnificance oflove and the thou bes ultImately In the way m whIch theseconcepts subserve the return to faIth in God as the centcrof spmtual bfe. FaIth, Marcel says, IS the recogmhon of God'seXIstence, love of hIS perfectIon. But It IS fmth that givesmeamng and pOSSIbIlIty to lovc, for only fmth In God makeslove and the thou-and therewith the approach to bcmg­pOSSIble. God IS, accordIng to the first "MetaphYSIcal Diary,"the "plan of thous:' and alllovc depcnds on hIm. Or, as thcsecond diary puts It, the eXIstcntIal project-l'cllgagC1llCnt­can be meanIngful only through Cod, smcc It IS only throughf.:uth that a promIse and, therefore, any genUIne approach ofone self to another can be sIgmficant WIthout such faIththc very Idea of a projectIon of self mto the future IS mean­mglcss, for the self of dCSIres, of momentary pleasures, ofhavmg, cannot depend on Itself to feel tomorrow as It doestoday Only by God's support IS such permanence or, to putIt humanly, such loyalty pOSSIble. By nature we arc all traItors;only dIVIne grace can make us true.

One who doe~ not share Marcel's faIth ean only comment.thi~ m a way sounds reasonable, but agam somethmgabout the tone of hIS wntmg docs not nng true 11m IS, ofcourse, a very general impressIOn, rather hard to confirm inparticulars. One ean only quote some passages, for example,one from an essay on "Piety in Peter Wust." Apropos of Car­tesian doubt Marcel explams.

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A more profound analysIs than that of Descartes would permitus to recogmze, accordmg to Wust, that at the baSIS of doubt

,there IS astomshment at one's self.My doubt betrays the consciousness that I have of my own

contingency and-still more Imphcltly-of the secret gravitationof my most mtImate being m relation to an absolute center ormiddle of bemg, not apprehended certamly, but sensed, wherethe metaphysIcal insecunty of the creature would finally findits repose. ThIs msecunty, thIS mstablhty, which contrasts sostrangely WIth the eternal repose or the Imperturbable order ofnature, constItutes the central mystery of whIch one can say thatthe phIlosophy of Wust IS only the deepenmg Nowhere today,It seems to me, does one find a more persevenng effort to defineand to retneve the metaphysical sItuatIon of the human bemgm relatIon to an order which It mterrupts and transcends, butalso to a sovereign Rcahty which, If It envelops It on all Sloes,nevcrtheless never reaches to the relatIve mdependence wlllchis Its endowment as a creature. For that Reahty Itself IS frec andfreely sows freedoms.

It IS at the core of a~tom~hment, such as we perceive It, forexample, In the look of a small cluM, tllat there IS a rent m theabsolute darkness of the natural slumber to wlllch IS delIvercdall that IS subllutted Without restnctIoll to thc Law It IS With Itthat there nses "the sun of the spmt wlm.h ~hll1cS at the honzonof our bcmg.. . "

How can one help recognl.l:mg here the m~plfation which ani­mates the work of our Claudel and whIch should perhaps gUIdeevery authentIcally Cathohc doctnne of knowledge?8

One pomt Marcel docs make whIch seems to me extremelysound and a good deal more honest than many ChnsbanapologIsts lIke to be: that IS, hIS emphasis on the pnmarysignificance of the concrete expenence of faIth as essentIalto so-called "proofs of God." He says, 111 essence, what Pro­fessor Wolfson says m hIS PhIlosophy of Spinoza about theontological argument, what m a way Kant saId m hIS refu­tation of that argument and what even, mduectly, Anselmhimself saId in hIS answer to Gaunilon: the absolute, con­crete, gIven fact of faith comes first-"proofs" are only m·

8 IbId, pp 321-22

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DREADFUL FREEDOM

tellectual elaborations of that faith. They are, at bottom"unnecessary to those who do belIeve and unconvIncing tothose who do not. ThIs IS, of course, undemably anti-Thomis­tIc; and I do not know how Marcel would reconcIle such apositIon WIth hIS avowed respect for Thomism as a tenableChnstian phIlosophy for those who can grasp its lofty prin­ciples. Perhaps, in fact, hiS concesSIOn to Thomism is a par­tIcular example of the weakness that one feels in hIm else­where more generally and more vaguely. ASIde from the Im­tatmg effect of the haphazard dIary form, aSide even fromthe repellent sentImentality of much of hIS wntIng-thoughthat is near to the central faIlmg of hIS phIlosophy-what onefeels about the "MetaphysIcal Dlanes" is that, in terms ofJaspers' distInctIon, this is not genume phIlosophizmg buta two-faced, ambIguous, and not even very clever imitatIonof It.

3

If MclICcllS mmg eXIstentIal concepts to effect a returnto the CatholIc faIth and the church, Jaspcrs-for whom sucha return would be unlustoncal and therefore eXIstentiallyfalse-is usmg EXlstellzerhellung to modIfy and supplemen'tthe dIstInctIvely Protcstant KantIan tradItIon Jaspers IS notIn any tcchmcal sense a KantIan, but he is certamly deeplyunder Kant's mfluence. 111at IS reflected In the very orgam­zatIon of Ius Plulosopl11e Its three volumes deal WIth threeessentIal aspects of human expenence' the knowable objec­tIve world open to SCIence, the expenenced, but unknowable,\process of the mdlVldual's mner hIstory; and the equally un­knowable, yet inexhaustIble, symbols of cosmIC meamng I

vanously interpreted in art, relIgIOn, and metaphySICS. TherelatIons bctween these three spheres appear to be con­ceived m a manner not unlIke the Kantian relatIon betweenSCIence, moralIty, and relIgIOn. But the emphaSIS on theconcrete uniqueness of my personal eXIstence, of course, in-

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volves a radical transformatIOn of the KantIan tradItion, wIthits universal categorIes and prmciples in c\ery area. Jaspersmdicates at the begmning of the volume on Existenzer­hellung how, in eXIstential analysis, the Kantian objectivecategorIes are transformed:

Objecbve realIty submits to rules and IS knowable accordingto them; eXistential realIty IS, WIthOut rules, absolutely hIstorical. .. The rules of reahty are causal laws, what happens has causeand effect 10 temporal succeSSIOn; QClstentIal reah!)', on the con­trary, appears to Itself 10 bme from ItS own onglO, 1 e , It1~. . Substance IS the permanent In hme, that remalOs, IS neither10creased nor dlm1Olshed, EXlstenz IS 10 the appearance of bmevamshmg and startmg up..... To the recIprocal causalIty ofsubstances .... the commumcatIon of personal existences IS con­trasted. ObJecbve reahty IS whatcver corresponds 10 general toa sensatIOn, ~xlstenbal reahty IS absoluteness [VnbedmgtheItl11!...the decISIve moment; to empmcal rcalIty corresponds the COll­

tent of the declSlon. . .. To bme 10 general .... corresponds th1~

fulfilled bme as eternal prcsent. 1 'he former IS sometlung obJcc­tive, mcasurable, and empmcally rcal, thc latter IS thc depth ofpersonal eX1stcnce out of frccdom 10 ItS ongm TIle fonner ISpresent as valId for cvcryonc, 1Il the latter, time comcs mto be10g10 chOice and decIsion as appearancc at a partIcular tune EXIstenzhas ItS tIme, not tIme as sucII. Tlmc as such e>'lsts for comclOUS­ness 10 general, the other only for KuStCIlz 10 It!. lustoncal cun­sClOusness .... ObJcctively nothmg ncw can anse as substance.. .. EXistentially, on the other hand, there IS no obJectivity ....

but there are leaps and ncw buth of EXIstcnz 10 appearancc.ll

The rest of tIllS volumc IS devoted to the expOSItIon ofthese "SIgna" and others hke them. Some of the conceptsused are famIliar from KlCrkegaard-the uncondItIoned char­acter of the eXIstential resolve as agamst the condItionednature of the obJectified, sensory world; the mdIVidual's hIS­tory as umon of tIme and eternIty; the absoluteness of myfreedom and the gmlt before God whIch It entmls. Theconcept of "boundary MtuatIon," developed, I belIeve, from

9. Jaspers, op. CIt. II (EXlstcnzerheIlung). 17-18

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Jaspers' early medical experIence (see his Psychopathologle),is a kInd of summary of several Klerkegaardian conceptions.All existence IS constantly In situatIon; it must make itschOices withIn the limits of Just these particular contingentfacts Yet 111 such a sheerly given historical situatIon it mustchoose absolutely. That IS agaIn, of course, the conflict ofabsolute and relatIve, aspIratIon and meaningless gIVen,that Klerkegaard and all eXIstentialists after him havestressed. \Vhat Jaspers calls "boundary situatIons" are theCrISes m human existence in which that conflict and its mean­mg become most pOIgnantly and tragically clear. He treatsfour pal tIeular ones-death, suffenng, struggle, and gUIlt; andtwo morc general ones-that of the partIcular histOrIcal de­tcrm111cltIon of my partIcular eXistence and that of the rela­tlVlty of all that IS rcal, its self-contradictory character asbemg always ~omehow what It IS not In such limiting mo­mcnts of a\\aTencss, existence IS shattered by the reahzatIonof what It cannot be, but only m these moments does it cometo Itself as what It genu111ely IS

All thiS IS common eXistentIal stock-In-trade What IS true10 It IS said With much greatcr vigor and preelSlon by CltherHCldegger or Sartre Ac; agamst such common doctrIne, the"ICWS of Jasperc; are distinguished from those of other ex­Istenhahsts pnncipally by Ius emphaSIS on commurueabonand transcendence as thc IneVitable aceompamments ofgcnume pcrsonal cXlc;tcnee. By commUDlcatlOn he meansnot, of l'our~e, the unreal gregariousness of the social con­vcntIons but thc dIrect togetherness of two human bemgsstruggling jomtly to reahze, always precarIously, yet abso­lutely, the fulfilment of thclr deepest personal reahty. Notonly does Jaspers belIeve that there can be such duect partic­IpatIon of two souls m one another's joys or sorrows; heappears to believe, likeWise, that "pOSSIble existence" canbecome reahty, that the IndlVldual can free himself from thedeludIng snares of external demands to become, in exIsten-

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THE NEW REVELATION

tial resolve, genuinely himself, only in union with another'self. Again, as with Marcel, this mIght constItute a strilangrebuttal of Sartre If anythmg were done WIth the suggestion.But again, in the case of Jaspers as of Marcel, various thesesare suggested about personal existence without eIther argu­ments whose logic conVInces or concrete examples whoseevidence bears them out; so that, much as one mIght lIke to,one cannot find In these vague and often unintelhgible pro­nouncements any weapon agamst the somehow sophistIcal,yet extremely clever, dialectIc of Sartre, or, for that matter,against the desperate lonelIness of Klerkegaard or the soh·tary arrogance of Heidegger Such a passage as thIS IS typical.

In commuOlcatJon, through whIch I know myself touched[getroflcnJ, the other IS only this other the umqueness IS theappearance of the substantIahty of thIS bemg. EXIstentIal rom­mUOlcatJOn IS not to be antICipated and not to be ImItated butis simply III Its momentary smgle occurrence. It IS between twoselves, whIch arc only these and not representatIves and thcre­fore admIt no Sl1b~tItutJon. The self has Its certamty III tIm com­mumcatJon as ab~olutely hlstoncal, unknowable from WltllOutOnly 10 It IS the self for tIle self In rccIprocal creatIon In hlstoncaldeCISIon the self has, through bmdlllg Itself to eommumcahon,suspended ItS selfhood as 1~(lbtcc1 bcmg-l, III order to grasp self­hood III commumcaboll ]0

The statement IS clulUsy but not bad, perhaps. Only multI­ply It several thonsand tImes, and you get a morass of ab­stractIons presmndbly deahng WIth the most concrete andviVId of problems, necltly orgdDlzcd under heads and sub­heads, but carrymg no conVIctIon as phIlosophIcal argument,no viVIdness as the expressIOn of an indIVIdual hfe Knowmgthe man to be honest and uprIght in the extreme, I shouldnot say, as I have ventured to guess of Marcel, that the drIveback of Jaspers' philosophlzmg IS not genuine. Yet he cer­tainly does lack VItalIty to carry into any convmcmg Issuewhatever It is that he baSIcally wants to convey. Once in a

10. Ibid., P 58.

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DREADFUL FREEDOM

while there is a rather striking epigram, like "wer nur dieMenschheit liebt, hebt gar nieht; wohl aber, wer diesen be­stImmten Menschen liebt."l1 Sometimes there IS a provoc­ative general statement, hke the assertion that Existenz ful­fils Itself only where there IS some loosmg of the bonds be­tween mdlVldual and state or society, some break in the naIveIdentification between them. In general, however, there is aspread-out, swamphke placidIty in Jaspers' wntmg thatobscures Its truth as well, perhaps, as cloaking its errors.DespIte geographIcal as well as doctrmal differences, I amconstantly reminded, when readmg him, of EdmundWilson's description of the atmosphere of Hegehan ideal­Ism: ...... The abstractions of the Germans .... are hkefoggy and amorphous myths, which hang m the gray heavensabove the flat land of Komgsberg and Berhn, only descend­mg mto reahty in the role of mtervcmng gods."12

All thIS 110lds equally of Jaspers' doctnne of transcendence.That IS, one gathers, the word he uses for God. The concep­tion IS broadened, or weakened If you hke, to refer to theobject of all human gropmgs for portents and meamngsmore than merely human, whether persomfied In a deity,conceptuahzed m metaphysical systems, or vlsuahzed mart.Such a conception has, of course, nothmg in common Withthe transcendence of Heidegger and the French school. That \transcendence IS the proJection of the mdlvldual mto thefuture, the essence of hberty in a purely human sense. Jaspers'transcendence, though indIspensable, in his VIew, for freedomitself, IS by no means Identical with it. It is what the mdIvldualreaches for as somethmg greater than himself, as an obJectof worship or at least of wonder. And It is something dimlyreached for, never met face to face-not even, like Kierke-

11 Ibid, I, 16 "He does not lov!: atall who loves mankmd only, he does \who loves thiS Specific~ " . •

12 Eclmund Wilson, To the Fmland Station (New York Harcourt Brace&: Co, 1940), p. 121.

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THE NEW REVELATION

gaard's God, in agony and paradox. All the fimte self cando, accordmg to Jaspers, IS to read the Chitfreschritt of tIllSinexhaustIble reality that IS forever beyond his duect VISIonor understandmg. In art, rehgIOn, and metaphysics one 15only reading this puzzlmg cosmic language in various moreor less mduect, but never final, forms.

Such an interpretatIon of the common function of meta­physIcal, artIstIc, and religIous actIvitIes is probably correct,and should certamly lend Itself to IllustratIon with an m­definite range of examples. Yet, once more, we have mJaspers only a long senes of vague and sentImental generalI­zations, which only dim to the vamshing-pomt the sense ofreal, If dIstorted, rehglous expenence that one feels in some­one lIke Klerkegaard. That Protestantism does mean some­tlung very real for Jaspers one knows, for example, from hISspeech at the openmg of the medical faculty in Heidelbergand from the expansIOn of its theme 111 DIe Schuld/ragc. IlI

But no such livmg rehglOus traditIon shows through thedense mIsts of the Phl1osopll1c When It come5 to art, too,though therc IS nothmg especially wrong With hIS generalstatements, there are no dlummatmg partIculars to bearthem out. In talkmg of the relatIon of phIlosophy to Ex­istenz, for in~e,..he I,nentIons The Brothers Karamazov,which IS for many obvious reasons a favonte text of eXisten­tial cntIcs. All Jaspers has to say about It is that It has toomuch of phIlosophy for a novel and too much of a novel forphIlosophy. WIth all the absurdItIes of hiS absurdlsm, onewould vastly prefer the expOSItion of Camus m hiS Mythede SIsyphe to that

One more dIfficulty· It IS not made clear in what way theachievement of freedom by the mdlvldual depends on com­munication with another mdlvidual. Nor is it at all appar-

13 Jaspers, Die Schuldfra~e (Zunch ArtemiS Verlag, 1946) TIllS IS apowerful and genume1y movmg statement of the types of gudt and theiratonement, as applied to the present situation of Germany and Its people

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DREADFUL FREEDOM.

ent in what sense the freedom of the indlVldual essentiallymvolves transcendence, or how transcendence is achIevedm communication. Jaspers asserts that all these depend­enCICS hold. Without transcendence, he says, one can­not even wIll And It seems also that transcendence is dIS­covered only through communication: "No one can savehIS soul alone." But of reasons for these necessary connec­tions one finds no mention. Granted, of course, that m thesphere of EXIstenz there IS no Lelbmzlan Law of SufficIentReason nor even Humean necessary connccbons. Sbll, thewhole purpose of Klerkegaard's mdlrect commumcatIon,of the eXIstential analySIS of Heldcgger, or of the phenom­enology of Sartre IS to deVIse some means, however devIOUSor dIfficult, of conveymg meamngful general truths aboutthIS most parbcular of realIbes

4Lookmg elt both these wnters, fiuaIIy, oue feels 111 them,

despIte theIr dIfferent anTIS, a common lack l\1arcel wouldreturn to the authOrIty of a supreme church to Sel\le human­Ity, Ja!lpcrs ,,,ould go forward stOIcally WIth a kmd of watered­down Goethean Stub' uud WeIde as a source of mner salva­tIon amId nun Both lack. as cXlstenbalIsts, the ternblere::ih7<lhon of dread as the core of human lIfe. Perhaps, m­deed, the stress on dread and despaIr makes existentIalIsmmerely another mlllhsm, a gesture of abnegatIon rather thana pO!lIhve phIlosophy. But It IS that stress that gIVes themovement such sIgmficance, however transIent, as it ObVl­omly does have. When dread turns to good cheer and despaIrto hope, "eXIstence" becomes merely the catchword for an­othcr pllllosophlc system, vaguer and less precise but nomarc real than most Marcel finds m Klcrkegaard the thinkerwho saw the pos!llbI1lty of dread and Its sigmficance forhuman life. But It is not the posslblhty of a dread that canbe eU'lIly obviated by God's good grace that IS significant in

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THE NEW REVELATION

Kierkega ; It IS the inescapable actuality of dread that, forhis twentI th-century successors, forms the bv10g core of hISthought. Jaspers, to be sure, acknowledges thIS actuahty: 10the boundary situabons, or 10 hIS final account of das Schel­tern as, paradmocally, the only fulfilment that our hves canfind. Yet his tone IS such that one fcels, almost smugly, thatthis sort of fmlure IS a rather comfortmg llort of succe10s"1m farb'gen Abglanz haben WlI das Leben."

If, moreovcr, as phIlosophers, both Marcel and Ja')perl>lack the force of a prcclse and VigOroUS method, that fmlurcfollows, m a seme, Just becau~c they have dIr,gU1~ed theumque funchon of dread III the eXIstential SItuatIon, for itIS the reahty of dread that impels the logic of the more VIgor­ous eXlstentIahsts, whether Kierkegaard hImself or HCIdeggeror Sartre Jean Wahl m the 0PClllllg Issue of DeucallOn at­tacks, plaUSIbly cnough, many of Sartrc's rathcr forccd andtortuous argumcnts on "notlung" (the obJcct, for IUffi, ofdIeJd) III the first hundred papc') of L'EtTe ct 1e neant. Butthcn, hc 3::.ks, wh) ha~ not Sartrc, aftcr dlsposmg of HeId­cggcr'~ Scm 71l11l '} odc, got nd of dreJd Itsclf as so eSllcntIalto hi::' argulllcllt? That \\ould bc morc comfortable, mdeed­but It would not he c"\.Ic,tcntIahsm, nor would It be anythmgche of plulmoplllc l11tcre~t For c\er} c,lgmfic.mt phIlosophyIS Impellcd by some rulmg pJ!t~lOn. hc It evcn so nuld a pas­510n as IIume's love of thc gcntle .md nonvIOlent or so ascctIca passIOn as Spmoza'~ cxaltatIon of rC.lson over pa<;slOfi Itself.And that passIOn. 10 cXIstcntIalIsm, I~, 111 ~omc form or other,what Sartre calh "l'angOlsse ctlllquc" Apart from clever~ophisms or wcIl-turned phra!tcs, It 110 the lIupasslOned realI­zation of the utter lonelmess and drcad of our bcmg-m-thc­world, the scnse of all that It meam to be "condemned tobe frcc," that gIVes both its logiC and ItS content to eXisten­tial phIlosophy. WIthout such reah.labon, one can acIlleve,to Judge by Marcel and Jaspers, only vague trU1~ms andempty sentimentality. Jean Wahl himself, m fact, a page or

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two after his question about Sartre and angoisse, quotes witheloquent praise the passage on ethIcal dread (whIch we alsoquoted in chap 111): "I emerge alone and m dread m the faceof the umque and first project whIch constitutes my being;all the barriers, all the rallmgs, collapse, anmhllated by theconSClOusness of my lIberty .... I deCIde It, alone, unJusti­fiable and without excme" Of such a passage Wahl says .."Let the detractors of Sartre read pages 76 and 77, and theyWill recogl1l.le there, If they havc good faith rather tIlan thosegood mtcnhons that do not lead to ParadIse, the phllos­opher."ll He IS nght, 1 t1unk, and It IS the lack of such clearand stnkmg cxpressIOn of the meaning of dread that IS thecentral wcakness of the apparently gentler and more chcer­ing, but mfimtely duller, phIlosophIes of Jaspcrs and Marcel.

14 Jcan Wahl, "E\Sal sur Ie ncant d'un problcme," DeucallOD, I, No 1(1946),39-72

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CHAPTER SEVEN

POSTSCRIPT

And It came to pass after these tlllngs, that Cod dId tempt Abra­ham, and saId unto hun, Abraham; and he saId, Behold, here I am.And he saId, Take now thy son, Isaac, whom thou Iovest, andget thee mto tlle land of Monah; and offer 111m there for a burntoffering upon one of the mountams whIch I wIll teU thee of.

W;AT haunted Klerkegaard m the story of Abrahamand Isaac was the paradox of faith-m partIculclr,the secret tnumph of faIth by the very power of

Its absurdIty agamst the pubhc ethical demands beforc whIchfaith IS merely absurd 'That Abraham must be sIlcnt, thathe cannot commumcatc God's command, is all-Importantacts exprcssIVe of human morality obey general, rabonal,commumcable pnnclplcs, but the supreme value, which onlythe relIgiOUS Me can dann, lIes beyond reason, beyond speech,in the declSlve momcnt whcrem the Will submits Itself toGod MoralIty IS the sphere of abstract pnnciples of be­haVIOr; to relIgIOn alone belongs the unique hlstoneal mo­ment, the moment that cannot be told because it tells somuch For the modern cXI~tenhah~t, though Abraham's faithmay appear as self-delusIOn. the secrecy, the absurdIty, andthc umquencss of the all-Important moment of deCIsionremain; but they are transferred now to moralIty itself. ThereIS no longer any publIc domam of the ethIcal-only badfaith pretcnds there Is-and the temptation of Abraham be­comes the symbol not of man before God but of man beforehimself. The absurdity, the umqueness, the inexpressiblesIgmficance lie now, as we have seen, m "the tragIc ambiguityof the human situation," whIch is situatIon, given, fact­fettered, and obstmate, yet freely interpreted and even, by

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such Interpretation, freely created. It is the secret, puzzling,fnghtcmng genesis, agamst reason and agamst logic} not ofsuperhuman but of very human values that Klerk~gaard'sphilosophIc hellS descnbe.

The questIon remains to be asked, though not perhaps tobe answered: Once a publIc moralIty, an openly gIven set ofmoral laws, IS demed, what values grow out of such secretdeclSlons, and how are they maintained agamst theIr ownunjustIfiabdlty and absurdIty? What, If any, moralIty canbe created, a postenon, out of the two-faced, self-confhctmg,forever ambIguous sItuatIon of each of us? Klerkegaard's ex­istentIal dIalectIc comes to a restmg place in faIth. It maybe, indeed, a rc!>tmg place as uncomfortable spintually as aHmdu samt's IS phySIcally, for Klerkegaard's lIfe of fmth ISa life of mner torture, knowmg no pallIatIve and no escapeYet It IS, for KlCrkcgaard, a posItIve Issue of his dlalcctIcalprogression and a tnumph, however agomzed, of the humanspmt. Is therc any Issue, any rcstmg place, for the dIalectIcof the contemporary eXIstentIalIsm? Of course, m one sensethere IS and can be none, and It IS "bad faIth" to demandone, for, as eXlstentIahsts as dIfferent as Sartre and Jasperswould agrce, pllllosophy IS not system-bUlldmg but phdos­ophi71ng It IS thought m actIon, the very lIfe of the plulos­opher, whKh knows no end m the sense of telos, only ce!>sa­hon, or contmuatIon m the equally unfimshed lIves of othclactor-thInkcrs Yet one can presumably say somethmg aboutgood and evIl, evcn WIthout claimmg finalIty for one's value­system Certamly, It IS as an attempt at a new moralIty thatexistentIalIsm IS clueH) thought of And, certamly, even aSIdefrom the too glIblv moralizing "Humanism" essay, one doesfind JD Sadre and hIS school undeniable mdlcatIons that Itis some sort of new moralIty, not Just a phenomenologIcaldescnptIon of man's sItuatIon (1a condition humaine), thatthey are trying to develop. Even in the more austerely in­tellectual analyses of Heldegger, the distinction between

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POSTSCRIPT

"genuine" and «fraudulent" strongly suggests (espeCIallyIf one is acquainted with the platform personahty of the Jauthor) a deprecIation of the latter 10 favor of the former.In fact, one can say of contemporary existentialism in gen­eral that the dIstinction between everyday self-delusIOn and,the profounder awareness of one's freedom achIeved 10 the'rare and rarely revealmg moment Implies, however It be pre..sented, an evaluatIve preference intelligIble only in thelight of a self-conscious and statable moral standard.

If one looks for such a standard ll1 eXIstentiahsm, then, thefirst thing one finds is, as we have seen, that freedom itself,for Sartre and Heidegger at any rate, appears as the source

, of ultimate value. Values are generated by our free declSlonsthey start up, Sartre declares, like partridges before our acts.Yet the only value, It seems, that can stand against the chclrgeof bad faIth, the only self-Justifymg value, is the value of thatvery free declSlon Itself. Acts done and hves hved 10 badfaIth are those 10 whIch we cloak from ourselves the natureof our freedom, In which, to escape dread, we try to makeour subJcctmty mto an object and so, though, of course,we do act freely even m such self-deceptIon, we betray ourfreedom by dlsguismg It.

To be sure, one may say that, m such a situatIon, the ulti­mate value IS honesty rather than freedom. We are free many case, from that fact, both glonous and fearful, there isno escape as long as we lIve at all. But It IS a fact that we mayor may not face honestly. Good for the mdividual resides 111

-the mtegnty WIth which he recogOlzes hIS freedom and actswhIle so recogOlzmg It. Evil, conversely, IS the lie of fraudu­lent objectIVIty, the denial of freedom. In thIS sense, for ex­ample, it IS consistent in Sartre, though startling m the con­text of his extremely factual descnptIon, to call masochIsma "vice," since masochIsm is the endeavor to make myselfcompletely and abjectly a mere thing before my own con­sciousness as well as before another's; and so it is the ex-

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DREADFUL FREEDOM,

tremest self-deceptIon, the completest possible rejectIon ofmy liberty. And It IS apt enough, more generally, to say thatexIstentIahsm IS an ethic of mtegnty, in which running awayfrom one's self IS evil, facmg one's self is good.

But mtegnty IS not a mere mtellectual quality. It IS notsolely a question, for the eXistentialIst, of bemg honest mseemg one's freedom and ItS nature. It is integnty of char­acter and action rather than of VISion alone that IS to beprIzed. True, there is no chOIce between acting freely andnonfreely. That is the only chOIce that we do not have. Wemust be free, even m the vam attempt to relmquish freedom.But there is a choice bctwcen acting m the full awarcness offreedom and acting m thc endeavor to escape It, and sucha chOice Imphes not only the difference between honestyand dishonesty but a difference m the ends of action as well.Acbon m the full lIght of freedom, It IS clear m both Sartreand HCldcgger, IS not only honest action but actIon for thesake of freedom: that end, not the honesty mvolved mseekmg It, IS the ultImate 5clf-JustIfymg good. And the fraud­ulence of bad faith, on the other Side, hes as muc.h m theconnterfelt character of the values sought as In the dishonestyof the attcmpt to 5cck thcm There I~ senous meamng m thejoke about Heldegger's student, who dcclared in all solem­mty: "I am resolved-only I don't know to what l " ("Ieh bmentschlosscn-Ich WCISS nur Dlcht wozu") ; for It IS the struc­ture of the free resolvc III Its freedom, not any valuc beyondIt, for the sake of vvhlch, m HCldeggcr's View, the free manacts And for Sartre, too, m hiS personal as well as hiS poht­ical philosophy it is freedom Itself, In all ItS t_ormenting un­~ertalnty, and freedom only, that the honc5t man must seek.Mathieu, despite-or, better, because of-the negatIvity ofhis actions, is the proper carner of Sartre's ethIcal philosophy;for, in all his deciSions, whatever positIve value IS presentedas a lure to action collapses in the hght of Its possible fraud­ulence and only freedom Itself stands, on the other Side, asthe smgle and difficult good for which all else must be demed.

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Perhaps in the outcome of the Paths of Freedom, in thethud volume of Sartre's tnlogy, MathIeu's and Sartre'smoralIty may emerge wIth some new synthcsls, some othercontent sought for than sheer lIberty for the sake of itself.Yet in the lIght of present evidence, one cannot help doubt­ing the lIkelIhood of such an issue and wondermg, mean­while, how freedom as the sole and self-sufficient moral stand~ard can operate. Existentiahsm- provides, as we have seen,no adequate meam of elevating the mdividual's search forfreedom to the status of a universal pnnclple. It is not manas free being, in general, that eXIstential philosophy can askus to respect. It can demand only that each of us, soMary andunbefnended, seck hIs own freedom. Such a demand IS, mfact, It seems to me, a IcgItImate moral claim. Thcrem hesthe gcnume strength of the philosophy that expresses It, WIthItS tclhng revclahom, OIl the social as well as the mdlvlduallevel, of the mfimtc "anetIes of bad faith by whIch most ofus allow ounelves to pretend to lIve. On the other hand, toplace the sole good m freedom scems, when one looks closer,to invdhdate the very descnptlOn of the free act Itself thatexistenbJI phIlowphy lias gIven. Take Sartre's analySIS oftaste, quoted above even thc most tnvlal taste, he says, isnot capncious but IS an expressIOn of the fundamental projectthat IS the man 11lmseIf, that IS clear from the fact that Itpresents Itself J.~ an eVident value-we are always astom~hed

when other~ fad to <lpprchend It as we do Such a descnptlOnImphc~, It seems to me, an mdefimte pluralIty of values,

•almost a "realm of valuc'>" m which we find our goods andeVlh, not a ~tartmg-up of formerly nonexistent partndgesbefore our acts. Or take the examples that we mentIonededrher of typIcally "exIstcntIal" SItuatIons. Sartre's Garcm,we saId, has to face forever the hell of mterprctmg his ownactIon, whIch was cowardly Conrad's Lord JIm must passthrough the purgatory of atonement for his act, which wasdIshonorable. But a man can be cowardly or dishonorable,only If lIe already belIeves m the value of courage or honor.

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DREADFUL FREEDOM

Those values are not created by his acts but are already im­plicit In the acts. Even SUppOSIng that I have made the wrongjudgment m these partIcular cases, suppose Garcm was nota coward or Lord Jim m fact a man dishonored; the moralsituatIon remams the ~ame, the standard of courage or honorIS found in, not made by, the situatIon. True, Sartre admitsthat we are always already engaged in proJect'i, mvolved inthe values which we have chosen-hence, he might say, thea priori look of values III such cases But they are still valuesthat we ha\e chosen and, m that sense, have made for our­selves out of what, without our agency, would be a meanmg­less, valueless succeSSIOn of mere facts Yet that IS not, Ithmk, a suffiCient answer. It I~ qUIte true that we have, mthe deepest sense, cho~en our own \-alues, and the descnp­hon of that ChOlte. m Its absurd and dreadful finalIty, IS theeXlstentIahst's undelllJblc mcnt But we 11a\ e chosen them,m the eXlstcntI..Ih~t's o\\n terms, m ~ltuatIoll. 'Ve have notmade them out of whole cloth but have chosen them out ofa scnes of alternatIves offered us-offercd ns by personal dls­pOMtIon, natIonal traditIon, the chance mfluence of otherpersonahtIe~,and so on Agam, the eXlstcntIalI'it would prob­ably ansv.er that he cert.nnly does take mto account theInmts of situatIon FactIClt) as v.cll as frecdom, freedom-m­factIclty. IS what he IS tryIng to descnbe But sOl1lchow--a~

IS app.ucnt, for 1I1st.lncc, m the. treatment of hl,>tory 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 Sartrecan a~k ',"'llat, tlIen, IS a value If not the calI of tllat whIchIS not yeP

But a value IS also the appeal of what has been, and per­haps onc can say, very tcntatncly, that what the eXlstentIahstslack is a conceptIon of somethIng like tradItIon or commumty

1 The explICit treatment of hlstorv In L'Etre et Ie llcant IS adnuttedlybnef, but It doC'l seem rather forced and narrow In comparIson \\lth othera~pects of Sartrc s anal}"Sls

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on whIch to ground thelI view of freedom. In our hbertanantradItion the demand for the universal sanctity of humanfreedom 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 ISat fault. But, for man m general, as dIstInct from modernEuropean man, there IS not necessanly any such Identity;and If existentiahsm 15 m any sense what It claIms to be-ananalysis of man, not merely a Western twenbeth-centuryself-portralt-its ImutatIon appears m the defect of thebroader concept

I do not mean to suggest, however, that CXIlltentIahsmmay develop a concept of commumty or hlstoncal tr<ldltIOnto counterbalance the narrowness of Its peculIar indlVldual­Ism and thereby convemently furmsh, as an additIOnal ch­menSIOn in Its analYSIS of man, a broader baSIS for morahtyto supplement the depth of ItS limited mSlghts Sucll easypolarity of balancmg one factor against another would on]}'dull the edge of those mSlghts, would substItute a Jaspersor Marcel, for mstance, for a Sartre or HCldeggcr. GcnumephIlosophic syntheses arc not so easIly achIeved.

That the difficulty hes deeper than that, m the very natureof value theory Itself, IS evident, for example, If one comparesthe existentIal moralIty with Kant's. For Kant, as for the'eXIstentIahsts, freedom, not any substantive good, IS the cen­tral moral concept. Moreover, for Kant, as for the eXlsten-

-':ialists, freedom IS cunously mwrought With ItS OppOSite, thcsubjective pole of our responsIble, nonsensuous bemg Withour objectIve existence as parts of nature. Kant's "~cnsuous"

and "supersensuous" are worlds apart, yet necessanly cocx­istent; and it IS out of that essentIal conjunction of essentIalopposites that morality spnngs. But for Kant It IS the oppo­SItIon of two abstractIons. Duty and inclmatIon are everyman's, not mme. And proportIonate to thClI abstractness 15

[ 147 J

•• D_R.....!-,E_A_D_F_U_L_F_R_E_E_D_O_M _

the ease with which the one IS held subordinate to the otherby the inevitable nghtness of the moral law. The usual claImof overabstractness agamst the categoncal imperative is oftenmade on superficial grounds-because, for instance, for thesupporters of an "empmcal" morality, whatever is a pnon is,IpSO facto, wrong. But there IS truth back of the objection,all the samc. In the theoretical sphere Kant was genuinelypuuled, and out of hiS puzzlement grew a cntIque of knowl­edge that was truly the great event of modern philosophy.But m the field of practical reason he had no doubts. He washappIly at home m an unquestIoncd moral-rehglOus tradI­tion; and m that SItuation a solution came easIly becausethere was, at bottom, no problem to be solved. True, thepractical Impcrahve: Treat every person as an end and nevcra!l a meam, IS agam, I should agree, the great modcrn state­ment of thc baSIC law wInch an adcquate moralIty ought to!ltate But to the Impmmg nghtnc!ls of such a general state­ment onc must contrast the human wrongness of much ofKant's particular reasonmg-the hIdeous unlovelmess of hiSnmanthropc-plnlanthropIst, thc absurdity of hiS dlrcct applI­catIon of the Law of Contradiction, m Its bare abstractness,,IS a tC!lt for moral conduct, and so on There IS a grand moral iVIsta here that IS nght, but It IS aelneved at the sacnfice of amorc concretely human VISIon, that of the !ltumblmg, un­certam, half-blmd, half too-far-sccmg proccss by which<Ilone, 111 eeleh smgle IIvmg person, moral values can anse.So one gcts a system of value not as solutIOn to, but as substi­tute for, the problem of value In the eXistentialists, on the'other hand, the problem of values, the dilemma that IS ourhuman destmy, IS envisaged m phIlosophic argument andm lIterary or JournalIstic portraiture m all the ternble realItyof Its concrete, factual eXistence. To ~ay that in that picturea gcneral pnnclple lIke the KantIan IS lackmg IS not to askfor its supenmpositIon but to admit the radIcal oppositionof the two kmds of analysIs, despIte their superficial hkeness;

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for there is, once again, no place in Sartre or IIeldegger (orKlerkegaard, for that matter) for such a general morality totake hold. The eXIstenbalIsts' account of the human sltua­bon, their concrete apprehension of the naturc of the value­problem, its nature as a !Iymg, mescapable realIty for eachmdIvidual person, 11lummates at many pomts the dilemmaof ourselves and our tune, perhaps even of humamty But Itsvery concreteness, the very bnlllance of its mSlghts, precludea general solutIOn. And the Kanball solution, on the otherhand, IS a solution because it does not see the problem, be­cause it rests on a qmet assurance of Its own umversahty andobjectIVity, which IS, eXistentIally speakmg, in thiS as in cvcryother completed and systematic moralIty, the product of badfaith EXlstcnh:J11Sln, m other words, docs not takc us m thelast analYSIS bcyond the posItIon of the early NlCtzsche,where we are faced, etlucally, With the chOIce of honestdespalI or self-decelVlng hope We Cdn he to ourselves forthe !lake of knowmg what 15 good, or face, bravely but drear~

dy, the insuffiCIency of such "objective" gooels. \Ve can facethe problem of value, or solve it, never havmg faced It Butwe cannot put the question and answer It, scc the dIlemmaand escape It And even that alternatIvc is a Hobson's chOIce.Onee we have faced our freedom and havc 'iccn the absurdnccesslty of our claIm to be morc than thmgs, oncc we havegr<mted that "man l!l unJustifiable," we cannot conSCIOuslyand wIllingly turn to self-deception for our escapc. EXlsten­tmhsm IS a courageous and an honest attempt at a new moral­

lfty. It may yet be one But, to tlle present wIltcr at least, Itseems more lIkely that thiS IS not the ncw morahty we mayhope for, but only a new, !lubtlcr, and more penctratmg state~

ment of our old dlsheartenmcnt, a new expreSSIOn of anold despalI.

[ li9]

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

IaERKEGAARD

The pnnclpal wntmgs of S91ren Kierkegaard have been madeavailable 10 English, chiefly by the Pnnceton Umvemty Press.Of the accounts of hiS life and work the followmg may bementioned

GEISMAR, E O. Lectures on the ReligIous Thought of S. Kierke­gaard. Mmneapolis, Mmn.: Augsburg Pub. House, 1937.

LoWRIE, \VALTER Klerkegaard. New York: Oxford UmversltyPress, 1938.-- A Short LIfe of Kierkegaard. Prmceton: Pnnceton Um­

veISIty Press, 1942.SWENSON, DAVID. SometIllDg about Kierkegaard Minneapolis,

Mmn Aug~burgPub House, 1941.

lIEIDEGGER AND SARTRE

Some of the novels, plays, and essays of Sartre have been ap­peeIIlng 10 English. To date the followmg are available.

"TIlC FIlcs" and "In Camera" London H Hamilton, 1946.TIle Age of Reason ("Paths of Freedom," Vol I) New York'

Alfred A. Knopf, 1947TIle Repneve ("Paths of Freedom," Vol. II.) New York: Alfred

A Knopf, 1947. EXIstcnhaImn. Translation of the essay L'ExIstenhaIIsme est-II

Ull llUlIlallisme? New York· Plulosophlcal Library, 1947.PortraIt of tIlC Anh-Semlte "Partisan ReVIew Pamphlets," No.!.

For dlsClmlOns of contemporary existentialism seeBARRI:rr, \VILLIAM. \Vhat I~ EXlstcnhaIIsm? "Parb5an ReView

PdOlphlets," No 2. .BROCK, WERNER. An IntroductIOn to Contemporary Gennan

PhdosopIlY Cambndge. Cambndge Umverslty Press, 1947.RUGGIERO, GuIDO DF E:\.lstentmIlsm London Secker & 'Var­

burg, 1946] ASPERS AND MARCEL

The only Enghsh title I know of here IS the very unsatISfactorytranslation of DIe geIshge SItuatIOn der GegenwartMan mJlNto'~rnAge. New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1933