I'm reading "Existentialism is an humanism" by Sartre and I'm somewhat confused by some parts.
First, I didn't understand why if a man desires freedom for himself, he must desire freedom for others. It's pretty confusing.
Second, he says that if a man doesn't feel despair when he realizes that when he makes a choice for himself, he's defining all men in the world, he's acting in bad faith. No arguments used at all.
Could someone explain it to me?
2nd question answers the first. your actions, thoughts, beliefs, morals, etc, all those things you use to define yourself, are, by being yours, extended to all of humanity. you are man, you define what it means to be man. welcome to existential authority.
if you seek freedom, youre implicitly stating all humanity ought to seek freedom, otherwise you wouldnt be seeking freedom. if you feel only you are worthy of seeking freedom you need to reevaluate your value system because newsflash kiddo youre not worth one iota more than any other.
when you fully realize that your choices, by making them, are statements demanding the rest of humanity follow you, you feel despair at having the entire weight of past present and future lives of man looking at you for guidance and direction. sounds a little overwhelming and perhaps despair inducing no?
if this responsibility is insufficient to elicit a despairing response youre more oppressed than you think user.
>philosopher that places a high regard for personal freedom
>is a godless commie
What did Sartre mean by this?
Only in communism can you be truly free
atheism was in vogue at the time, and communism is better than you think you politically indoctrinated and thus oppressed demoskratian.
im saying you either need to debase communistic theory and support democracy as being the supreme mode of government, or at the least state why it is superior to communism, or youre just another soul lost to ethnocentric historicity on the road to utopia.
What if I have no morals whatsoever? Why should I feel despaired if all of humanity were to follow my way of thinking?
It's true what they say when they tell you that the Soviet Union, China, North fucking Korea, even Cuba, are not NOT communism.
Certain "intellectuals" bought into the plan that full communism would come someday after the soviet style took over everywhere. Sartre being one of them.
youre not only an amoral anarchist incapable of reasoning beyond your own sadistic vision of the good but a hopeless unfortunate forever condemned to an infinite cycle of reductive logic, loneliness, and 0 connexion with deep universal Truth. enjoy ignorance i hear its mighty blissful you nihilistic fuck.
you cannot transcend morality. your morality is not having a morality, which is disgustingly close to moral relativism. i wont elucidate the inherent contradictions in your ethical system because its not my responsibility. youve got a long road ahead of you if you want to become more fully human. put down this Parisian and read plato before society fully indoctrinates you.
>Sartre is supposedly very Smartre
>thinks people will just give up power for much ideology
Damn son he was a hell of a memester
I even believe in God, it's just hard to feel empathy for others.
What Plato book should I read if I wish to stop being a moral nihilist?
bump
>I didn't understand why if a man desires freedom for himself, he must desire freedom for others.
Not just freedom. but everything. Sartre said that every action your perform must be thought as universal. Being an existentialist implies believing that each person has absolute responsibity for his actions, regardless or any possible condition in which the action is performed. Since there are no ontological determinations upon humanity, each choice is done on a "blank canvas" (ethically speaking), and since we are all humas and therefore the same blank canvas being in the world, each choice is not about I and my circumstances choose, but what I, the blank canvas that I am, choose, therefore it extrapolates to every blank canvas, this is, all people.
>I didn't understand why if a man desires freedom for himself, he must desire freedom for others.
It's part of the humanism school of thought. I think Erich Fromm explained best in The Art of Loving.
While I doubt Sartré's meaning of life is the search for love, humanists center their philosophy on love. Freedom can only be reached by love, and love starts with loving yourself and being able to love other beings, despite not knowing them.
If you love yourself but lack the capacity of loving anyone else, it falls under narcissism; which means that you're basically slaved to your demons, and therefore not free.
I don't love others, and I don't think I am better or worse by doing that. I tried to follow the buddhist way of thinking once, but I really can't feel much empathy for others.
Also I don't see why it would help me to feel empathy for others. Sometimes I want to, but I can't
Satre is what happens when you get Heidegger wrong and make a philosophy out of your newly acquired, shitty understanding.
>First, I didn't understand why if a man desires freedom for himself, he must desire freedom for others. It's pretty confusing.
That is precisely because it is wrong.
A man's freedom must necessarily come at the cost of others' freedom. Bread must be wrung from the sweat of other men's faces, and you can rest assured that the salt only adds to the flavour.
>Second, he says that if a man doesn't feel despair when he realizes that when he makes a choice for himself, he's defining all men in the world, he's acting in bad faith.
A weird but not unexpected combination of the Categorical Imperative and ressentiment. Sartre's 'bad faith' is almost identical to Nietzsche's ressentiment.
You can learn the hard way to disregard all 20th century French psychoanalytic/postmodern/poststructural hacks, or you can save yourself the trouble. Choose wisely, OP.
To love others, you must love yourself first. And that's usually the hardest part.
Humanism doesn't romanticize love as the word would imply, they usually refer to it as a continuous activity and not just an emotion.
I don't think humanism is the way of life, but sometimes they make sense. Existentialist authors like to think that depression and anxiety are inherent to humans, despite being an abnormality. I'm biased tho, can't help to get clinical while reading any work of fiction.
>You can learn the hard way to disregard all 20th century French psychoanalytic/postmodern/poststructural hacks, or you can save yourself the trouble. Choose wisely, OP.
This.
I don't love myself at all. I love what others think of me, since everyone I know sees me as an intellectual. But I hate my personality.
I think like Ivan from Brother's Karamazov: "I love some great deeds done by men, though I've long ceased perhaps to have faith in them, yet from old habit one's heart prizes them"
>A man's freedom must necessarily come at the cost of others' freedom. Bread must be wrung from the sweat of other men's faces, and you can rest assured that the salt only adds to the flavour.
I agree and I always agreed. I think like Stirner, but I don't like to say that since everyone thinks he's just a meme.
Egoism is the most coherent philosophy, however I absolutely hate it. I feel like there is something wrong with it, but I can't find out why. Plus, VERY few philosophers agree with Stirner but nobody said why, so I keep thinking it's obvious why he's wrong.
>Bread must be wrung from the sweat of other men's faces, and you can rest assured that the salt only adds to the flavour.
holy..
>Not worth more than any other
>Demanding humanity follow you
I think I'm better than everybody and am content to let them enslave themselves.
bump