In Being and Nothingness Sartre presents his depressing view of individual freedom grounded in self-limited epistemology and drowning in a merciless sea of subjectivity:
…I can say of Pierre, who is dead: “He loved music.” In this case, the subject like the attribute is past. There is no living Pierre in terms of which this past-being can arise. But we conceive of such a subject. We conceive of him even to the point of recognizing that for Pierre the taste for music has never been past. Pierre has always been contemporary with this taste, which was his taste; his living personality has not survived it, nor has it survived the personality. Consequently here what is past is Pierre-loving-music. And I can pose the question which I raised earlier: of whom is this past Pierre the past? It can not be in relation to a universal Present which is a pure affirmation of eing; it is then the past of my actuality. And in fact Piere has been for-me, and I have been for-him. As we shall see, Pierre’s existence has touched my inmost depths; it formed a part of a present “in-the-world, for-me and for-others” which was my present during Pierre’s lifetime - a present which I have been. Thus concrete objects which have disappeared are past in so far as they form a part of the concrete past of a survivor. “The terrible thing about Death,” said Malraux, “is that it transforms life into Destiny.” By this we must understand that death reduces the for-itself-for-others to the state of simple for-others. Today I alone am responsible for the being of the dead Pierre, I in my freedom. Those dead who have not been able to be saved and transported to the boundaries of the concrete past of a survivor are not past; they along with their pasts are annihilated (112).
Sartre goes on to rightly point out that when we speak of “having” a past this is not the same as saying one “has” an automobile or a racing stable:
That is, the past can not be possessed by a present being which remains strictly external to it as I remain, for example, external to my fountain pen.
He persists in seeking to drive his essential point home:
The past indeed can haunt the present but it can not be the present; it is the present which is its past.
Sartre rejects Chevalier’s attempt to illustrate the meaning of that which is past. Chevalier speaks of two seemingly identical nails. However, one has just been made and never been used, while the other was bent in a previous use but has since been hammered back into its original shape. While at the first blow the first nail sinks straight into the wall, the other, when hit, bends yet again. Chevalier used this second nail to illustrate the action of the past. But Sartre rejects this explanation, insisting that it is the present difference in molecular structure which is the determining factor.
In Satre’s world the present “I” is the centre of the universe, the one who creates his universe and gives everything else meaning, including even the past. But once the “I” is made subordinate in epistemology and regarded as the recipient of God-sourced knowledge then reality is no longer self-determined. Indeed, Pierre and his taste for music does has a past which is not dependent on my disposition to think of Pierre-loving-music. For Pierre and all that he “was” and “is” and, yes, “will be” - for, contrary to Sartre, no human being is annihilated at death (something that lies beyond the limits of Sartre’s epistemology, anyway) - is fully known by the One “who is, and who was, and who is to come” (Revelation 1:8).
Indeed, even more primary than knowing the Lord, as truly wonderful as this is (Philippians 3:7-11), is to be known by him (1 Corinthians 8:3; 2 Timothy 2:19).
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