Did Sartre reconcile Freedom with a work ethic?

How did Sartre reconcile freedom with the need for people to go to work to earn a living to survive?

 

Sartre changed his view of freedom during his life: if he'd written an answer to your question he might've said the need for people to work & earn a living was the struggle for freedom.

Early on in the 2d (& incomplete) volume of his last major philosophical tome, Critique of Dialectical Reason, is a lengthy dissertation on boxing. He takes it for granted that boxers choose that profession because they're good @it, but there are also cadres of trainers, managers, promoters, gamblers that earn their living from the boxers.

 

I think the answer is simple---you always have a choice, that is your freedom. You can choose to work, and provide a living for yourself and your family. You can choose what work you will do (and there are certainly those people who do what they like, and do not consider it working). Or you can choose not to work. If you are not able to support yourself while living a life of leisure, then you will suffer the consequences---but it is your choice, and you will live the consequences of that choice.

Freedom does not mean that your life will be happy and free and you can do whatever you want. During World War II, Sartre disagreed with the Nazis and the Vichy government, and because he was free, and faced with the consequences of his decision, he joined the French Underground. He could have very well been killed or put in prison or any number of bad things could have happened by making this choice. But he was free to make that choice.

 

And it is simple to to tell apart the situation in world History where we work and play from the Situation in the midst of civilized Man for which we we alter our presence in Nature.

The first situation of the individual human is for believing, but really failing God for actually the Man-not-believing. Thus the situation becomes altered in the Psyche per symbolically appropriate meaningful-Time: conscious Man being conscious of the material reality de-cyphered for symbols. We search signs to wish by.

The future shall exist against Matter; thus every person must believe concerning his psychological place as material.

 

How many people here know that J.-P. Sartre was number one in his graduating class at the Sorbogne: which left him with little expertise in the subject of this thread. At least for much of his life.

What does that mean to existentialism? I think he was a physically uncoordinated bufoon more than they care to admit.

 

He was also fairly insensitive, and in this way, cruel and cold-hearted to his main mistress.

 

Thus in his later life, over the peace movement, he was apologetic for a rather hypocritical stance about tolerance, and indeed spurred by Simone de Beauvoir, encouraged to believe that conscience was available even without the self-deceiving regret and remorse. :daisy:

 

Hi. I hope you don’t think it’s presumptuous for a newbie to come piling straight in like this, but this topic is particularly close to my heart (for reasons which will become clear).

Sartre’s thinking is basically directed at having people constantly aware of certain ultimate facts of existence – death and the absurdity of being - by which they remind themselves of the true and absolute nature of their freedom and prevent their day-to-day lives sliding off into a systematic self-delusion.

We may, under such conditions, weigh up the pros and cons of working for a living and, likely as not, decide that we will indeed embark upon some means of employment. We will have thereby made a free choice.

Of course, it doesn’t end there, and we must continue to make free choices with regard to the many concomitant obligations and exigencies of being an employee.

It’s not for Sartre to square the issues for us, it can only be done by ourselves for ourselves. Paraphrasing from Proust (I’m sure there is a more directly appropriate quotation from JPS himself somewhere, but I just happen to have this to hand today): ‘"We can't be given freedom; we must discover it for ourselves after a journey that no one can take for us or spare us."

Now, the reason why I find this so pertinent, just as I join your forum, is because, after the best part of 30 years in a professional career, with the weight of much reading and my own thought, I decided that I had not made a sufficiently free choice in setting out on my particular career path. I also decided that it is never too late to do something about it. And so I quit!

Existential thinking is nothing if it does not lead to and govern action, so I’m making a guinea pig of myself in a project to see if even a convention-ridden middle-aged man really can suddenly about-face and live by his beliefs.

Of course, this rather means that I’m going to REALLY have to believe what I think I believe. It’s all very terrifying, thrilling and liberating! We only get one chance at this, right? We might as well give it a really good shot!

And so I thought I would research groups of like-minded thinkers to hang out and chat with; one doesn’t tend to bump into too many people in everyday life who won’t think that a 40-something year old like myself doing what I’m doing isn’t entirely crazy.

Anyway, that’s me. I hope I haven’t breached etiquette by launching out like this upon you all; many apologies if I have, but a quick look around your site and your discussions has left me feeling very stimulated.

 

(Wow! That IS a long post. I'm even more apologetic than I was in it! I hope you find something worthwhile in there to help me justify it!)

 

Oh no!!! A Newbie! Don't read it anybody!!!

Just kidding!!! Of course you are welcome to join in anytime. Anytime someone posts in a thread for the first time they are technically a 'newbie' to that thread, you could say.


...and if you think that is long----you haven't seen too many of my posts.

 

Very good post Damnation of Fist (Now that I have read it---I just wanted to tease you a bit after reading the first part you wrote).

I too did the same thing---at 51 or so----for very similar reasons.

 

Thanks (er, what do I call you? Mr Wolf??). Much appreciated!

So, I'm intrigued. It's been a while now: how has that worked out for you?

 

You can say MVW for short or Mountain Valley Wolf, or whatever---I am also referred to as Wolf----you could be referred to as DoF or something like that.

Anyway, I quit to write, unfortunately I spent most of the first two years traveling and what not---trying to let my wife know not to freak out about everything even though I am not working. My wife takes up much of my free time---so I have not done nearly as much writing as I thought I would have. But I've certainly enjoyed myself. We kind of cut back on the traveling now because we were spending way too much money way too fast. So now I am focusing more on my writing.

 

Cool, MVW! Mine has been a year and a half. I first gave myself some time and filled it up with all sorts things I just wanted to do but never had time: learning music theory and the piano, art history, teaching myself Italian, I read all of Proust and a little light quantum physics!

But, as fascinating as it was, ultimately it didn't feel as if it were constructive. I need to find out what might actually lead to something worthy of the fabulous gift of this little time on the planet.

Good luck with the writing: in what direction are you drawn? The great American existential novel?

 

Thank you----this time my writing started out as a book on the History of the Sacred Feminine---mainly through language (originally centered on what I believe to be is the oldest word in the human language----the 'C' word---that's right, you guessed it, carbon. -----No I'm joking---it's the word that sounds like 'can't' (---but is what most guys want to (do))).

Seriously---this word root is very old and is found in almost every language around the world and even when the meaning changes in different languages it is still intimately related. (This was started before the Genome Project, and so it started as what I considered as a very strong proof that man had originated at a common point, with a common primal spirituality, and a common language). But my focus was still much bigger than just that. And then somewhere along the way, I realized that when you put together how this root played out at a global level, it became clear that there was another more hidden significance in this root---evidence that mankind originally was not hung up on gender differences----the male and female were simply two halves in the creative process. It was then that the real significance of the modern day rise of the feminine became clear. Mankind was coming full circle, and the significance was a lot deeper than just equal pay, and assertion of women's rights.

And suddenly all the stuff I was trying to fit into the book made more sense. I broke the book up into three books---the first one being the book on the sacred feminine---but it also deals with some other universal spiritual mortifs like the World Tree/World Cave/World Mountain (or Axis Mundi). It finishes with an exploration of how we are coming full circle in the understanding of gender and the deeper psychological, cultural, and social significance of that.

The second book set out to try to resolve the mind/body problem---to undo the rift that Kant had created between science/mechanics and religion/philosophy, and philosophically, I saw it as a continuation of what Heidegger set out to do---bring our understanding of being back to a deep enough point to where if the gods do exist, they could once again be. In other words it is a rational model of the universe that includes the irrational----mind, spirit, soul, god, whatever you want to call it. I am hoping that it will be something that people can turn to, in their struggle with their own mortality, or the loss of a loved one, or whatever other crisis they are dealing with, and break through all the objectivistic rationalistim that the Modern World has programmed into us. In part it deals with my own search for meaning on a path that meandered towards atheism, until a few experiences with my Filipina wife's family (descendants of healers or Filipino medicine people) and then numerous experiences with other tribal folk shattered all that. The idea of the book is not to push any single religious belief system----but on the other hand, it is largely a book about quantum physics meeting indigenous animism. It therefore deals with the Post-Modern search for meaning.

The third book ties everything together and explores how we may be able to resolve the Post-Modern crisis. It deals with the issue that, as we look towards our future we are faced with the fact that we will either destroy ourselves (and the iconic tool that represents life in the future will be a sharpened stick), or we will rise above this crisis (and the iconic tool that represents life in our future will be the quantum computer).

 

Wow!

I am SO glad I asked. That resonates very strongly indeed with what I have felt so drawn towards that I have quit my conventional career.

Your first book sounds fascinating: language, particularly words as tangible ancient landmarks in human being, is something I am fascinated by (and, by the way, living in the UK, we are far less squeamish about the C-word than are Americans; this is something I learned in 30 years of a US-facing business).

But the debunking of the notion of an absolute opposition between (if I may term it) 'logos' and 'mythos' that has become embedded in our culture, to it's and every individual's in it's most profound detriment, is a noble cause indeed!

I know precisely what you mean when you speak of allowing Gods to once again be; and also about there being no need to subscribe to one religion at the expense of all the others (for, are they not, the same thing simply in different 'languages' of metaphor and practice?). I don't see how any search for 'meaning' can't steer one towards this conclusion.

...And didn't the arch-rationalist, Wittgenstein, arrive at an irrational faith? (“Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent” doesn't mean we should discard it but embrace it without words!)

So I completely applaud your project. I'm looking for ways by which I might get involved in similarly promoting this very cause. I have no idea how yet, but I simply cannot let it be.

Or rather, it simply will not let me be!

(PS 'Let me be' sounds like a great title for an existentialist's autobiography!)

 

Jean Paul Sartre never did a day's work in his life.