Stephen Christy (echoes@surfnetinc.com)
Wed, 5 Nov 1997 16:48:58 +0100
Greetings LS,
Today in my philosophy class we were discussing the philosophy of
the existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre. We covered his concepts of freedom
and anguish. I will cite a paragraph from one of his texts and then
show how I believe it reflects DQ and SPoV.
"Consciousness is terrified of its own spontaneity, because it feels
this spontaneity as beyond freedom. This can be clearly seen in an
example from Janet. A young wife was in terror, when her husband left
her alone, of sitting at the window and soliciting the passersby like a
prostitute. Nothing in her education, in her past, or character could
explain such a fear. It seems to me that a negligible circumstance
(reading, conversation, etc.) had produced what might be called a
"vertigo of possibility." She found herself monstrously free, and this
vertiginous freedom appeared to her as the occasion for this gesture
which she was afraid of making. But this vertigo is understandable only
in terms of consciousness suddenly appearing to itself as infinitely
overflowing in its possibilities the I which ordinarily serves as its
unity..... On this level there is no longer any distinction between the
possible and the real, since the appearance is the absolute." (The
Philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre, Robert Denoon Cumming, p.55)
Now, the spontaneity, or utter freedom, that so effects the
consciuosness in this way immediately brought to my mind DQ. This
freedom of Sartre's is something which isn't limited by any one form or
the other. He goes on to describe a sense of anguish which we
experience when we become aware of this utter freedom. This anguish
finds its roots in the fact that we cannot complete control our own
actions or future. DQ, cannot be controled by us.. and it can be
intimidating. When you approach a new environment or situation, when
everything is a new experience, the possibilities of what can or may
happen are imposing. This is because we are on some level aware of the
utter freedom we have from any absolute restrictions or determinism.
This is where Sartre begins to introduce "responsibility".
Responsibility in the sense that people form values and beliefs of
things to protect themselves from being lost within this torrent of
freedom. Things that give some kind of foothold. And this, to me,
starting sounding suspiciously like SPoV. This responsibility that we
must take on to protect ourselves from degeneration is P's SPoV. The
freedom is DQ. In the case of the woman left alone, as cited above, she
was aware of this dynamic freedom, a freedom in which she may act
against her own beliefs of right or wrong, but her intellectual SPoV
protected her from these actions. She knew she believed it wrong to
prostitute herself, and this awareness of dynamic quality threatened
these patterns.
I am going to stop here and wait for responses before I go any
further. There are numerous other, perhaps more concise and better,
examples I could cite from Sartre to show the similarities between his
Freedom and P's Q, but I will refrain until I know if anyone wants me to
pursue this any further. Thanks for bearing with me and reading this.
:)
Steve Christy
(IRC nick: Phaedrus)
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