In Being and Nothingness. Sartre contends,
Values in actuality are demands which lay claim to a foundation.
He goes on to explain that:
[value] can be revealed only to an active freedom which makes it exist as value by the sole fact of recognizing it as such. It follows that my freedom is the unique foundation of values and that nothing, absolutely nothing, justifies me in adopting this or that particular value, this or that particular set of values. As a being by whom values exist, I am unjustifiable. My freedom is anguished at being the foundation of values while itself without foundation.
Sartre agrees with Kierkegaard that “anguish is distinguished from fear in that fear is fear of beings in the world whereas anguish is anguish before myself”, that is, apprehension of one’s own freedom, the fear of what might do or not do, e.g. vertigo as the fear not of falling over the precipice but of throwing myself over. Similarly:
the recruit who reports for active duty at the beginning of the war can in some instances be afraid of death, but more often he is “afraid of being afraid;” that is, he is filled with anguish before himself.
Sartre also reasons:
The immediate is the world with its urgency; and in this world where I engage myself, my acts cause values to spring up like partridges.
With expresses his contempt for the bourgeois, commenting:
The bourgeois who call themselves ‘respectable citizens’ do not become respectable as the result of contemplating moral values. Rather from the moment of their arising in the world the are thrown into a pattern of behaviour the meaning of which is respectability. Thus respectability acquires a being; it is not put into question. Values are sown on my path as thousands of little real demands, like the signs which order us to keep off the grass.
Sartre sees himself as the source of values, explaining:
…I discover myself suddenly as the one who gives its meaning to the alarm clock, the one who by a signboard forbids himself to walk on a flower bed or on the lawn, the one from whom the boss’s order borrows its urgency, the one who decides the interest of the book which he is writing, the one finally who makes the values exist in order to determine his action by their demands. I emerge alone and in anguish confronting the unique and original project which constitutes my being; all the barriers, all the guard rails collapse, nihilated by the consciousness of my freedom.. I do not have nor can I have recourse to any value against the fact that it is I who sustain values in being.
The total subjectivity of Sartre’s ethics are a logical consequence of his atheism. For Satre relationships between people are not governed by ethics but by power, either one controls or is controlled. The tragedy of Sartre’s ethics that though he sees himself as the foundation of ethics and morality there is in fact, according to his philosophy, no solid or substantial self. Consequently, even Sartre’s attempt to ground values in freedom ultimately cause ethics and morality to sink into the quicksand of groundless self.
Sartre rejects any notion of people being created beings and will have no truck with the idea of people having a God-created nature which they are destined to fill. We simply ARE in the world and what we will be is what each individual chooses to be. Existence precedes essence. It is for each of us as existents to create our own essence.
Sartre’s concept of freedom is actually slavery. What Sartre fails to appreciate is that all people ARE slaves of sin (Romans 6:16, 20) and that as such any thought that we are able to act with ”freedom” is sheer delusion. We are not able to create our essence, not even a fresh essence, only to further subjugate ourselves. Only when we yield ourselves to obey God from the heart will we experience true freedom (Romans 6:17-18) which is found, paradoxically, in becoming voluntary ”slaves of righteousness.”
Posted August 29, 2009
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