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Existentialism

Author(s): F. C. Copleston

Source: Philosophy , Jan., 1948, Vol. 23, No. 84 (Jan., 1948), pp. 19-37

Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of Royal Institute of Philosophy

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3747384

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EXISTENTIALISM

The Rev. F. C. COPLESTON, S.J., M.A.

To treat existentialism as a philosophy is no more possible than to treat idealism as a philosophy. The reason is obvious. Jean-Paul Sartre is an existentialist and Gabriel Marcel is also an existentialist; but the philosophy of Sartre is not the same as the philosophy of Marcel. One can no more speak of the philosophy of Kierkegaard, Jaspers, Heidegger, Sartre, Marcel and Berdyaev, as though they maintained the same system, than one could speak of the philosophy of Plato, Berkeley and Hegel, as though one philosophy was common to the three thinkers. Of course, if one took idealism in the sense in which the Marxist uses the term, as meaning the doctrine that mind is prior to matter, i.e. as opposed to materialism (with the suggestion that realism and materialism are equivalent), one would have a definite theme to consider; but one would be forced to recognize as idealists thinkers who would never call themselves by that name and who would not be generally recognized as such. Similarly, if one said that existentialism is the doctrine that man is free and that what he

makes of himself depends on himself, on his free choices, one would doubtless have mentioned a doctrine which is common to the exis-

tentialists and which they insist upon; but one would at the same time be forced to include in the ranks of the existentialists philo- sophers whose inclusion would be manifestly absurd. It is very difficult, then, to assign to existentialism any doctrinal content which would be common to all those who are generally recognized as existentialists, but which would at the same time be peculiar to them. M. Sartre has asserted that existentialism "is nothing else but an attempt to draw all the consequences from a consistent atheist position,"2 while Berdyaev is reported to have exclaimed, "L'existentialisne, c'est moi!" But Berdyaev is no atheist, while Sartre is not Berdyaev: the positions are obviously incompatible. According to Sartre, that which all existentialists have in common is the fundamental doctrine that existence precedes essence;3 but though this may be a doctrine common to all existentialists, it does not seem to be peculiar to them, if one regards its essential meaning. It means in effect that man has no given character which determines his actions, but that he is free, and while this doctrine would dis- tinguish existentialism from all forms of determinism, it would not distinguish it from other philosophies which also deny determinism.

This paper represents a lecture given at Oxford on May 23, I947. z L'Existentialisme est un Humanisme. p. 94. 3 Ibid., p. I7.

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PHILOSOPHY

M. Sartre may say, and indeed does say, that his meaning is that man has no essence antecedently to his free choices, to the essence he creates freely; but since he is able to delimit man as the object of his existential analysis in such a way that chickens are excluded, it is difficult to take him altogether seriously or to suppose that the proposition, "existence precedes essence," amounts to much more than an emphatic assertion of liberty and an emphatic denial of any form of physical or psychological determinism. In the case of M. Sartre the proposition is certainly bound up with atheism, in the sense that he denies the existence of any archetypal idea or divine idea of man, which is realized or unfolded on the plane of created existence; but if the proposition is understood in a sense which would be acceptable not only to Sartre and Camus, but also to Marcel, it can hardly involve atheism, though it would involve the rejection of that determinism which seems to be implied by certain theistic systems, by that of Leibniz, for example.I Nor does it seem that we can define existentialism in general in

reference to what one might call "personal thinking." Kierkegaard was certainly a personal thinker, in the sense that he philosophized on the basis of his personal experience (a knowledge of his relations with his father and with Regina Olsen is by no means irrelevant to an understanding of his thought), and so far from attempting to construct an "objective system," he directed a great deal of his polemic precisely against "the System" and against "objectivity;" but one could hardly say the same of Heidegger, who sets out in Sein und Zeit to construct an ontology, to investigate the problem of being. In a letter to Jean Wahl, Heidegger protested that his philosophy was not Existenzphilosophie, that his investigation of human existence or of the being of human existence was but a preparatory stage to an examination of being in general, and that his philosophy should not be confused with that of Karl Jaspers who considers the concrete possibilities open to the human being, without aiming at the development of any general theoretical ontology. It is true that Jaspers has declared that it is the task of the philosopher to awaken man to the possibilities of choice and that existentialism as a general theory, is the death of the philosophy of existence; but he is much more of an observer, a philosopher of philosophies, than a personal thinker in the sense in which Kierkegaard was a personal thinker.

Nevertheless, even if it is difficult to find a doctrinal content which is common and at the same time peculiar to the existentialist philosophies, we all know that the word existentialism has objective reference and that it is not unreasonable to group together Kierke-

I Leibniz defended "liberty," it is true; but not all would recognize as liberty what he regarded as such. 20

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EXISTENTIALISM

gaard, Jaspers, Heidegger, Sartre, Camus, Marcel, however great and however important the differences between their respective philosophies may be. I suppose that in the first place one can link them together by their common rejection, explicit or implicit, of all forms of "totalifarian" philosophy, using the word "totalitarian" not in its political sense (primarily at least), but as signifying any philosophy which minimizes the position and importance of the individual as the free, self-transcending subject and as the central datum of experience. One does not need to labour the point that Kierkegaard, for whom, owing to the circumstances of his university education, philosophy meant the Hegelian system, revolted against the Hegelian exaltation of the Idea or Absolute at the expense of the individual and against the Hegelian insistence on mediation and on the synthesis of opposites. The primary fact is the individual, and it is simply comical if the individual strives to strip himself of his individuality and to merge himself in the universal consciousness or cosmic reason. True philosophy is not objectivity, but it is the fruit of passionate interest; in other words, thinking is personal, not impersonal, and its value lies in its clarification of choice and its appeal to choose, the ultimate object of choice being the self in its relation to the Transcendent, to God. Similarly, Jaspers insists that the function of philosophy is not to teach a Weltanschauung, but to make clear to the individual the possibilities of choice and what authentic choice is. In the limiting situations, particularly in face of contingency and death, man recognizes the enveloping presence of the Transcendent; but the deciphering of its nature depends on an act of choice, and the study of the life and thought of men like Kierkegaard and Nietzsche serves to make clear the personal charac- ter of the choice of Weltanschauung. It might seem that Martin Heidegger constitutes an exception since, as already remarked, he sets out to develop an ontology; but in point of fact since he actually starts with man and ends with man, he falls into line with the other existentialists. Heidegger lays his emphasis on authentic choice, though for him this choice is really the choice of the self as the being doomed to death, das Sein-zum-Tode. As to Sartre, although he gives as the subtitle of L'Etre et le Neant Essai d'ontologie phenomenolo- gique, the emphasis is on man as projet, as the being which creates itself by free choice, as the possibility of its own transcendence, and this theme reappears in plays like Les Mouches and novels like Les Chemins de la Liberte. Although Sartre makes considerable use of Hegel in L'Etre et le Neant, particularly in regard to the power of the negation, he is at one with the other existentialists in insisting on the individual. He declares that his starting-point is the sub- jectivity of the individual (and that for strictly philosophical reasons), and that the first and basic truth is the Cogito, la verite absolue de la

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PHILOSOPHY

conscience s'atteignant elle-meme.I For Camus, again, though he insists at length on the absurdity of the world and of human life (as in Le Mythe de Sisyphe, L'ltranger, Le Malentendu, Caligula), the real problem is how the individual is to conduct himself in an absurd world. Of Marcel's philosophical writing one can say that a great part of it is devoted to revealing to man what he is and what his spiritual activities, his truly human activities, imply. Although it is not formally true of Heidegger, it is actually true

of all the existentialists, therefore, including Heidegger, that they take man as the central theme of philosophy, and that by man they mean the free, self-creating, self-transcending subject. Looked at under this aspect existentialism may be regarded as a revolt against absolute idealism (at least so far as Kierkegaard is con- cerned, and the same is partly true, I believe, of Marcel) and as a revolt against positivism, materialistic determinism and psycho- logical determinism, against any form of philosophy which would reduce man to an item in the physical cosmos, so far as this would imply determinism, and against any form of philosophy which excludes a consideration of man's inner life and destiny. (To assign as the central theme of philosophy man's inner creation of himself by his free choices is to turn one's back on logical analysis, for example, as a sufficient subject for the philosopher.) Again, exis- tentialism, by insisting on the individual, on the free subject, is also a reaction against the tendency to resolve the individual into a number of functions, such as citizen, taxpayer, voter, worker, trade unionist, civil servant, etc. This theme is developed particularly by Gabriel Marcel. In other words, existentialism is the re-assertion of the free man against the totality or the collectivity or any tendency to depersonalization, and in this respect it is akin to personalism and pragmatism. Before proceeding further it might be as well to anticipate an

objection against the mode of treatment of existentialism adopted in this paper. I can well imagine a Marxist saying that existentialism is the philosophy of the dying bourgeoisie, the last convulsive effort of an outmoded individualism, and in point of fact M. Naville (though I do not think that the latter is a Marxist) suggested to M. Sartre that his philosophy was really a resurrection of radical- socialism adapted to present social conditions. La crise sociale ne permet plus l'ancien liberalisme; elle exige un liberalisme torture, angoisse.2 The Marxists have called M. Sartre the philosopher of the misfits, I'ecrivain des rates, and they wonder what the phenomeno- logical analyses of L'Etre et le Neant have to do with history. More- over, many critics, whether Marxists or not, might be tempted to observe that it is a mistake to treat existentialism abstractly, that

I L'Existentialisme est un Humanisme, pp. 63-64. 2 Ibid., p. I07. 22

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EX I STENTIAI, ISM

one should treat it in relation to its historical and political circum- stances, in relation, for example, to the fall and liberation of France and the ensuing social and political conditions, or even that one should treat it as a literary, and not as a philosophical phenomenon. However, while it is doubtless legitimate to treat a philosophical movement in relation to political and social circumstances, it is also legitimate, and in my opinion a good deal more relevant, to treat any philosophy which professes to be a philosophy as a philosophy, i.e. abstractly. Anyone who is prepared to allow the possibility of attaining philosophical truth must admit this. Moreover, the con- sideration of political and social conditions is more relevant to explaining the popularity and vogue of a philosophy than to settling the question of its truth or falsity. Existentialism cannot be explained simply in terms of the last war, if for no other reason than that Marcel was writing long before the war began, while Sartre published La Nausee in 1938; but it may very well be that recent and present conditions in France help to explain the vogue of existentialism, the interest it has aroused. It would certainly be absurd to exclude the social and political approach as altogether illegitimate; but if one is entitled to treat dialectical materialism as a philosophy and not simply as the transient expression of passing historical circumstances, one is also entitled to consider the thought of M. Sartre from the point of view of its truth or falsity rather than as affecting or not affecting the welfare of the proletariat. As to the literary approach, I would remark that the use of the drama and the novel by Sartre, Camus and Marcel certainly helps to explain the wide interest taken in existentialism; but the significance of those plays and novels for the philosopher consists in their philosophical import, and any student of Sartre is aware that his popular productions can be properly understood only in the light of his general philosophy., To return, then, to my abstract treatment of existentialism. It

seems to me that the existentialist starting-point, man as free subject, is a legitimate starting-point, considerably more legitimate than some principle which is postulated as ultimate, though its existence cannot be known a priori and though to presuppose it is to presuppose a whole philosophy. The excuse for starting with an ultimate and presupposed ontological principle is that if the philo- sophy built on it or deduced from it constitutes a complete and coherent account of reality, its justification is evident. But apart from the fact that this seems to involve a further presupposition concerning the character of reality and the power of the human mind, the history of philosophy appears to show that facts of ex-

I In the case of Gabriel Marcel special consideration should indeed be given to his idea of the relation of drama to philosophy; but I cannot embark on that subject here.

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PHILOSOPHY

perience are not infrequently distorted or slurred over in order to fit in with the preconceived principle, and not the least important of these facts is precisely the human consciousness of personal freedom. It may be objected that the existentialist presupposes freedom, whereas it ought to be demonstrated; but in view of the initial consciousness of freedom, it is the determinist, not the main- tainer of freedom, who should be called upon to demonstrate his position. M. Sartre deals with certain determinist arguments in L'Etre et le Neant, the argument, for example, that motives deter- mine conduct, and he attempts to show that a conscious being must be free, that the pour-soi, as opposed to the en-soi, must be free owing to its ontological structure, that it does not simply possess liberty, but is its liberty--does not Orestes say in Les Mouches, "I am my liberty?"-but in any case he evidently thinks that liberty is a datum of immediate experience and that the determinists are trying to evade the recognition of a truth of which they are, to some extent at least, inevitably aware; they are in mauvaisefoi, they are les ldches.

Secondly, I think that it is to the credit of Heidegger and Sartre that in their insistence on the free ego they do not at the same time create the Cartesian gulf between the ego's self-consciousness and its knowledge of the world and of other selves. Their datum is not the self-enclosed consciousness, but the self in the world. Dasein or la realite humaine comes to know itself in and through its experience of the milieu and of other persons, and to separate off the conscious- ness of the ego from the original total experience, in such a way that it becomes necessary to prove the existence of extramental objects and of other selves, is, they recognize, to create an artificial problem which is hardly capable of a satisfactory solution, since the premisses are themselves unsatisfactory. Par le je pense, contrairement d la philosophie de Descartes, contrairement a la philosophie de Kant, nous nous atteignons nous-memes en face de l'autre, et l'autre est aussi certain pour nous que nous-mmrnes. Whatever one may think of M. Sartre's protracted discussion of our knowledge of other selves and the phenomenon of le regard,3 it is a matter for rejoicing that he does not allow his insistence on the Cogito to blind him to the artificiality of Descartes' procedure. If the free self in M. Sartre's philosophy tends to be a closed self, this is due, not to any adoption of the Cartesian gulf between the self-enclosed consciousness and the external world, but rather to the fact that he tends to concentrate on those activities which turn the person into a thing and which render impossible true personal relations, those activities which

Cf. L'Etre et le Ndant, pp. 508 ff. 2 L'Existentialisme est un Humanisme, p. 66. 3 L'Etre et le Ndant, Part 3, Chap. I, L'Existence d'Autrui.

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EXISTENTIALISM

belong to the sphere of what Marcel calls Avoir, as distinct from the sphere of Etre. Marcel, who also avoids the Cartesian gulf by his insistence on the primary fact of incarnation, embodiment, con- centrates on those spiritual activities of man, such as love and fidelity and hope, which involve the relationship of person to person, thus revealing the self-transcending subject or self as essentially "open," not as self-enclosed. The starting-point of existentialism may, therefore, be called a

realist starting-point; M. Sartre insists that knowledge is always knowledge of something and consciousness always consciousness of something; neither knowledge nor consciousness creates its object. The world is the object of knowledge and is not created by the knower in regard to its being. The world is phenomenal in the sense that what we mean by the world is that which appears; but it does not follow that we can reduce the being of phenomena to percipi. If the being of phenomena consisted in percipi, the percipient would exist outside himself, since to perceive is to perceive something and this implies a distinction between subject and object. One can speak, therefore, of the trans-phenomenal being of phenomena (in the sense that the object has being independently of the percipient), though this transphenomenal being is simply the phenomenon in itself, not an unknowable noumenon underlying the phenomenon. But though Heidegger and Sartre are to that extent realists, their

realism is none the less a post-Kantian realism, in that they both emphasize the part played by the subject in the constitution of the world of experience. For Heidegger the organization of the world into a system of relations depends on the interests, the preoccupa- tions (Besorgen) of the subject. Man, Dasein, is essentially orientated towards the other than himself, and each object appears as a Zeug or tool, its meaning or essence residing in its tool-relation, its relation to the preoccupation of the subject. According to the interest or preoccupation of the subject there is the world of the physicist, the world of the ethician, the world of technique and so on; but all these worlds are included in a total system, of which we have a kind of preview or anticipation. This concept of world in general, of an intelligible totality, an inclusive Umwelt, is the creation of Dasein; it is the system of relations created by the multiple possibilities of Dasein, the unified field of those possibilities, though it is due, not to an a priori category of the understanding, but to the first charac- teristic of Dasein, its being-in-the-world, its orientation towards the other than self in terms of interest and development of possibilities. This view of the world is obviously strongly reminiscent of Fichte's conception of the world of objects as the field for the self-realization of the ego, the field of the ego's moral activity, though Heidegger does not mean to imply that the brute existence of things is con-

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PHILOSOPHY

stituted by the ego (he is not an idealist in that sense), but that the intelligible being of things, their meaning, their organization in an intelligible system, is constituted by man's possibilities of self- transcendence. Dasein and Umwelt are really two aspects of one reality, being-in-the-world. To interpret the world is to construct the world, but this power of construction is limited by the very finitude of man.

The same theme is present in the philosophy of Sartre. It is man, la realite humaine, who makes the world to arise, as an organized and intelligible system. Consciousness (le pour-soi) does not create being as such, unconscious being (I'en-soi), but it organizes it into a system, marking off, as it were, individual objects, and determining their mutual relations in terms of its own interests. Distance, being far away or near, really depends on the interests of the pour-soi: America, for instance, is far away to the displaced person in Germany who would like to go there but cannot, while it is nearby to the millionaire who can go there by plane whenever he likes, while to a person who has no interest at all in America it is neither near nor far, it is simply "there". Similarly, the future can be understood only in terms of the possibilities of man: c'est par la realite humaine que le futur arrive dans le monde.' In itself l'en-soi is opaque, gratuitous, unintelligible: it owes its differentiations and its intelligibility to consciousness, to le pour-soi. But if the Kantian and Fichtean elements in the philosophies of

Heidegger and Sartre, together with their peculiar insistence on liberty, might lead one to class them as (partly) idealist philosophies, there is another important element in virtue of which they are more akin to materialism. Original being, I'en-soi, is, according to M. Sartre, non-conscious; it is simply itself, opaque, self-identical: 1'etre est ce qu'il est. We really cannot say anything about it except that it is; the ideas of activity and passivity, for example, are human ideas, and being in itself is beyond activity and passivity. Moreover, we are not entitled to apply the category of necessity and say that it is the necessary being, the Absolute. It did not create itself, it is true; but it is simply there, gratuitous, de trop. In fine, all we can say of l'etre en-soi is that it is and that it is what it is. Perhaps it cannot be formally described as material, but that is obviously what it is to all intents and purposes. The shade of "father Par- menides" can be discerned in the background. Being-in-itself is thus gratuitous, de trop; but how does conscious-

ness, le pour-soi, arise? At this point Hegel is dragged in from the wings to take his place on the stage. As for Hegel being, emptied of determinate content, passes into not-being and gives rise to the category of becoming, so for Sartre consciousness arises from non-

L'Etre et le Neant, p. I68. 26

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EXISTENTIALISM

conscious being through the power of the negation. Consciousness means distance from and presence to at the same time; it is the negation of being-in-itself, but it presupposes being-in-itself and is separated from it by ... nothing. Being-in-itself contains no nega- tion; it emerges (i.e. le teant) only through consciousness, which secretes its own nothingness. To be conscious means to exist at a distance from oneself as present to oneself, and this distance from oneself is no thing: consciousness, then, arises only through a "fissure," a negation, being introduced into being, and it is le pour- soi itself which introduces this negation, so that it is in this sense its own foundation. That there is consciousness at all is a contingent fact, for which the "ontologist" can give no certain explanation; but we may say that being-in-itself, which is gratuitous, attempts to found itself (that it is projet de se fonder) and that it can do so only through the emergence of consciousness which aims at becoming its own cause or adequate foundation, at attaining the status of l'en-soi-pour-soi. In plainer language we may say that brute being has an aspiration to overcome its gratuitous and contingent character by becoming the conscious Absolute, and human consciousness emerges as the means of realizing this aspiration. But this aspiration is doomed to frustration: consciousness is being constantly grasped by the en-soi, by that contingency which it cannot escape. Man is a passion, a desire to escape from his original contingency, a flight before the past (with its invasion of facticite) towards the goal of becoming the Absolute without thereby losing consciousness, i.e. towards the goal of becoming God. But the idea of God, of the en-soi-pour-soi is impossible, and as man begins by birth, so he ends by death and relapses into facticite. If we look merely at man, at his aspiration to become God, we must admit that he is une passion inutile,I while if we regard the emergence of individual consciousness as a means whereby l'en-soi endeavours to become the conscious Absolute, we must admit that gratuitousness and absurdity have the last word as they had the first word. In so far as M. Sartre is serious in putting forward this remarkable

piece of mythology, one may say that he is proposing a kind of Hegelianism manque: being-in-itself is the aspiration towards the realization of absolute consciousness, but it is doomed to frustration: 1'en-soi is the alpha and omega, and human life is vain, absurd. Stripped of all Hegelianism, however, M. Sartre's contention is simply that being is meaningless, de trop, inexplicable, that con- sciousness is a mere passing epiphenomenon,z and that human life and human history are vain and absurd. It is really at this point

L'Etre et le Neant, p. 708. According to M. Sartre, l'ame est le corps en tant que le pour-soi est sa

propre individuation. L'Etre et le Niant, p. 372.

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PHILOSOPHY

that the characteristic theme of Sartre and Camus begins, the problem of conduct in a world which has no given significance, in which there are no universal and absolute values, but in which man is free and cannot evade the total responsibility of choice and the creation of values which is involved in choice. But leaving aside for the moment this humanistic theme, I wish to draw attention to the dogmatism contained in the initial presuppositions of M. Sartre. M. Sartre affirms dogmatically the priority of being-in-itself over being-for-itself. That human consciousness reveals itself as conscious- ness of, that it presupposes an object, I have no wish to dispute; but that this implies the derivation of consciousness from non- conscious being does not follow. It is not an evident fact by any manner of means that consciousness is derived from the non-

conscious, still less that the non-conscious is, in general, prior to the conscious, to mind; and to suggest that non-conscious being has a kind of urge to become God or the conscious Absolute is to suggest a mythological hypothesis. M. Sartre asserts that being-in-itself is gratuitous, de trop; but what is this but an initial and gratuitous presupposition of atheism? Sartre does indeed attempt to show that the idea of God as self-identical consciousness is contradictory, since consciousness involves distinction; but it does not necessarily follow from the fact that finite human consciousness reveals itself

as involving distinction, that all consciousness necessarily involves distinction. The logical positivist might remark that no other form of consciousness can have any significance for us, since our idea of consciousness is founded on the only consciousness we experience, human consciousness; but when the theist says that God is infinite selfconsciousness, he is saying that God cannot be less than the consciousness we experience: he does not pretend to have (and indeed cannot have) a clear and adequate idea of what infinite consciousness is in itself, but he has a clear idea of what "not less than" means. In any case, if we leave God out of account and speak simply of the necessary Being, by what right does Sartre affirm, as he does affirm, that there is no such being and that it could not explain contingent being? I am not aware of any philosopher of the first rank who has adopted this strange position. Thomas Aquinas, Spinoza and Hegel no doubt differed in their views as to the character of the necessary Being; but they did not suppose that the notion of such a Being can be dispensed with. If, moreover, it be asserted that the category of necessity is a purely human category, one could obviously make the retort, as far as Sartre is concerned, that in this case the category of contingency is in the same boat, and that instead of declaring that being is de trop, M. Sartre would do much better if he observed a discreet and modest agnosticism.

From his initial atheist position M. Sartre draws the conclusion 28

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EXISTENTIALISM

that there are no absolute values, but that values are the creation of man, the individual man, who in fixing his own ideal creates his own values. However, as the foundation of all values is liberty, it would appear that liberty must be itself a value independently of choice, since man did not choose to be free, but is "condemned" to be free, as M. Sartre puts it. To deny consistently the objectivity of values is not such an easy task as M. Sartre seems to suppose. Heidegger and Sartre distinguish authentic choice and unauthentic choice, and it is very difficult to avoid the impression that the former, authentic choice, is considered to be superior in value to the latter. If there are no objective values, it should make no difference whatever, from the valuational standpoint, what one chooses or how one chooses. The dogmatism of Martin Heidegger is probably more disingenu-

ous than that of Sartre. He makes play with ideas like contingency and dereliction, insisting on die Geworfenheit des Daseins; but the question of a "Thrower" he does not raise, passing it by silently, though it is clear that to a man of Heidegger's particular upbringing the problem must have been present.' He does not speak in Sartre's somewhat airy fashion of God and religion; he does not fulminate passionately like Nietzsche; he hardly speaks of the matter at all, and the most he does is to observe that man's concept of being is finite. But what does this prove? That man's apprehension of the Infinite must in any case be a partial and finite apprehension; it certainly does not prove that man can have no knowledge that the Infinite exists or that he cannot even raise the question of the Infinite I mentioned that Sartre calls l'Etre et le Neant an essay in pheno-

menological ontology. The use of the phenomenological method is common to the existentialists (as a rough generalization at least, this is true), and in my opinion its use constitutes in some respects a strong point and in other respects a very weak point of existential- ism. The phenomenological method of Husserl means the objective analytic description of phenomena of any given type. Husserl himself applied the method to the invariable structures of psychic experience (such as "intention," being conscious of, perceiving); but the method can be applied in various fields, to religious or aesthetic experience, for example, or to the perception of values. Husserl regarded the application of this method as a necessary pro- paedeutic to ontology, which it should precede. For instance, the phenomenologist will consider the essence of "being conscious of," without presupposing any particular ontology or metaphysic, but letting the psychic phenomenon speak for itself. Whether it is possible in practice to exclude all such presuppositions and, if it is possible,

I am speaking of Heidegger as author of Sein und Zeit. I have heard it said that his views have changed since, but I do not know if this report is correct or not.

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PHILOSOPHY

how long it is possible to persevere in the suspension of judgment concerning the existence or mode of existence of the object regarded (the Object of religious experience, for example) is obviously dis- putable; but the application of the method certainly has its value and some of the existentialists have made a fruitful use of it. Thus

in the course of L'Etre et le Neant M. Sartre gives long, descriptive analyses of time or temporality, of "bad faith," of le regard, of love, while Gabriel Marcel has practically done the same for faith (not in the theological sense), hope, love, disponibilite'; and one can say that the phenomenological analyses of Heidegger, Sartre and Marcel, and of half-existentialists like Lavelle, are admirable pieces of intellectual work. Although Kierkegaard indeed was dead before Husserl was born, and his works were written long before Husserl and Scheler applied the phenomenological method to their respective themes, one can say that he applied the method to phenomena like Angst or dread, and it would doubtless be profitable to trace out and compare the different analyses of dread, Angst, angoisse, as given by Kierkegaard, Heidegger and Sartre. The use of this method is legitimate enough in itself, and the actual use of it made by the existentialists constitutes, I suggest, one of their strong points.

On the other hand, if one chooses to use the phenomenological method of Husserl, one should either adhere closely to the epoche, or, if one does proceed to make existential judgments, one should note carefully the transition from phenomenology to ontology. As an example of what I mean, I shall refer to Sartre's treatment of la nausee. In the novel of that name Antoine Roquentin, sitting in the public gardens of Bouville, is depicted as having an experience, i.e. an impression, of the gratuitousness, the inherent contingency of the things around him and of himself; they and he himself appear to him as de trop, gratuitous, without rational justification for their existence. Now, I should certainly not deny that an impression of this kind is possible as a subjective experience, and M. Sartre has a perfect right, as a novelist and indeed as a phenomenologist, to describe it; but I suppose that it is clear to every intelligent reader of La Nausee that Roquentin's subjective experience is assumed by the author to have objective reference, that it is, implicitly at least, described as corresponding to reality, as affording information about the character of being. But this involves an illicit passage from description to positive doctrine, from phenomenology to ontology. It may be said that M. Sartre proves his doctrine elsewhere. But does he? It is true that in L'Etre et le Ndant he distinguishes ontology from metaphysic;I but it is also true that he assumes from the very

x By ontology he means phenomenology applied to the structure of being revealed in experience; but ontology in this sense could obviously do no more than reveal the finite and contingent character of actually experienced being.

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EXISTENTIALISM

beginning the gratuitousness of being, the epiphenomenalistic character of consciousness, the finality of death, and indeed all those supposed facts which bring out the absurdity of the world, and of human life in particular. In the exercise of his powers of description and of analysis he shows great virtuosity, intelligence and ability; but when he plays the part of an ontologist, I do not think that it is unfair to call him a dogmatist. To do him justice, one must admit that, like Heidegger (who, as intending to pursue a strictly ontological investigation, does not pretend to employ the epoche), he sets out to give a phenomenological ontology and not to act as a phenomenologist pure and simple; but it remains true that he tends to slide from descriptive analyses of subjective experience into existential judgments concerning the objective reference of those experiences as adequate apprehensions of reality. In my opinion he does this because he has already chosen his philosophy. This leads him to single out for description those phenomena which will lend support to the assumed position. That a philosopher should select and dwell on those aspects of reality which illustrate and support his main position is only to be expected (Hegel, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, all do this); but if a philosopher builds his system on certain aspects of reality and then supports the system by reference to those aspects, slurring over other aspects, he involves himself in a vicious circle.

Albert Camus proceeds in a similar manner. In Le Mythe de Sisyphe he describes and analyses le sentiment de l'absurde, and the absurdity of life is illustrated or portrayed in the concrete by dramas such as Le Malentendu and stories like L'Jttranger. The dramas and stories, however, illustrate a thesis which is assumed and not proved, which is taken for granted. Gabriel Marcel has written plays and has subsequently distilled philosophy from them and it may be said that Camus' plays portray life in the concrete and are a legitimate generalization from experience; but one can obviously reply that life has many aspects and that if one consistently chooses only certain aspects for portrayal, one does so in virtue of a preformed judgment as to what life is. Moreover, the possibility of the world and human life having a meaning and purpose which, partly at least, transcends the world, cannot be ruled out legitimately from the beginning; the denial, like the affirmation, of such a meaning and purpose stands in need of some proof; it can neither be taken for granted nor based simply on certain selected aspects of life. To speak of Platonism or Christian theism or of pantheism as escapism, as a refusal to face the facts of life and of the world in general may sound very well in the ears of those on whom any appeal to psy- chology acts like the voice of the Siren; but it is of little value from the philosophical standpoint, unless first of all the arguments of

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PHILOSOPHY

the Platonist or of the theist or of the pantheist have been adequately refuted.

So far I have referred mainly to the atheist existentialists, and I have suggested that when Sartre says that atheism is for them a point de depart, he must be taken seriously. Atheism is for Sartre a point de depart, a dogmatic assumption, though it would perhaps be more accurate to say that it is the fruit of a certain mentality and intellectual atmosphere. He shows no sign of feeling the problem of God in the way in which Nietzsche felt it. For Kierkegaard, on the other hand, man's relation to God is all-important; the supreme choice is the choice of oneself as a creature in relation to the infinite

and personal Absolute, God. In spite of their contradictory views on the God of Christianity, Kierkegaard is more akin to Nietzsche than is Sartre, inasmuch as Kierkegaard and Nietzsche were both personal thinkers, whose thought can hardly be understood apart from their lives. But one result of Kierkegaard's intensely personal standpoint is that, while he is able to describe in an admirable manner man's possible attitude to God, man's submissive choice of his God-relationship, man's defiance and sin, the aesthetic and moral planes of existence, and so on, and while he is able, in the name of Existenz and "subjectivity," to conduct a polemic against the Hegelian mediation of opposites and the synthetic merging of finite and infinite, he omits altogether to prove objectively the existence of God and the rational justification of the leap of faith; indeed, he expressly denies the legitimacy of natural theology or the meta- physical approach to God. To turn this point into a reproach against Kierkegaard may seem to be an unfair procedure and to involve a misunderstanding of his dialectic, since by faith he does not mean an attitude or activity which could be attained by way of meta- physical speculation. This last point is doubtless true; but from the philosophical standpoint, which is the standpoint with which we are now concerned, one cannot justifiably demand acceptance of an object the existence of which has not been demonstrated. Kierke- gaard may indeed be chiefly occupied with the question how one becomes a Christian, i.e. a true Christian, and his words may very well be of value to the Christian; but none the less from the specu- lative standpoint he demands a leap, and his affirmation of God, when regarded from that standpoint, is a dogmatic affirmation. The words of a twelfth-century Scottish philosopher and theologian, Richard of St. Victor, are here relevant: "I have read concerning my God that He is eternal, uncreated, immense, that He is omnipo- tent and Lord of all... all this I have read; but I do not remember that I have read how all these things are proved.... In all these matters authorities abound, but not equally the arguments... proofs are becoming rare." If Sartre and Camus dogmatize as to the

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EXISTENTIALISM

absurdity of the world and human life, Kierkegaard dogmatizes as to the existence of God. This may seem a hopelessly abstract and high- and-dry attitude of criticism; but I do not see how any philosopher can deny its relevance. Gabriel Marcel, the Catholic existentialist, is possibly in the same

boat as Kierkegaard; whether he is or not, seems to me to depend on the answer to the question whether he regards his philosophy as simply a phenomenology of la realite humaine or as also an ontology and metaphysic. Elsewhere I have suggested that Marcel is pretty well as much a "leaper" as Kierkegaard;' but I do not feel quite sure that the accusation is just Let me take an example, to illus- trate my meaning. "It is doubtless true to say that there is no other metaphysical problem than the problem, 'What am I?', for it is to this that all the other problems are reducible."2 Now, if I analyse man, I can find in him the demand for or the hope of immortality, at least as implied in such activities as fidelity to another. If a loved one has died, it depends on me, on my interior attitude, to maintain his or her "presence," without letting this "presence" be degraded to the status of an image, a mere memory; creative fidelity demands this.3 Is such a line of argument meant to be a description of certain human spiritual activities which imply a hope of immortality, or is it supposed to be a proof of immortality? If the former, one cannot accuse Marcel of dogmatism; if the latter, it would appear to me that he leaps from the desire or hope of immortality to the assertion of immortality, and I should agree with Duns Scotus, who adorned this University centuries ago, when he maintains that one cannot argue from the desire of an object to the actuality of that object; one has first of all to show that the attainment of the object is at least possible. If one could discern with certainty a natural desire for immortality, one might argue to the fact of immortality, provided that one has first shown the rationality of the universe and of natural desires, which in practice means proving the existence of God. If the world were such as Sartre and Camus depict it, the desire of immortality would certainly not show that the human soul actually is immortal. Again, it is rather difficult to know whether Marcel regards his

analysis of man's spiritual activities as constituting a proof of God's existence or not. It may be that an activity such as love implies the presence of the Transcendent in and through which human beings can communicate as persons in the mutual giving and self-sacrifice of love, and one might try, by arguing along the lines indicated by

' "Existentialism and Religion," in the Dublin Review for Spring, 1947. 2 Homo Viator, p. 193. 3 Positions et Approches Concrites du MystOre Ontologique," in Le Monde

Cassg, p. 29o. C 33

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PHILOSOPHY

Marcel, to show the "irrationalists" like Sartre and Camus that they have not really thought out their position and its implications, and that the problem of God is more real than they suppose; but it is doubtful if one could prove God's existence, in any strict sense of the word "prove," by reflections such as those of Marcel. Moreover, his distinction between a "problem" and a "mystery" would appear to involve a position analogous to that of Kierkegaard in regard to the proofs of God's existence. Guido De Ruggiero asserts roundly that Marcel's procedure involves a series of leaps to undemonstrated conclusions, and his contention may be true; but if one regards Marcel's philosophy not as a "system" in the ordinary sense, but as an endeavour to reveal to man what he is and to awaken in him the

perception of the "meta-problematical," of what Marcel calls the "mystery" of being, the question of the leap and of dogmatism hardly arises. And, even though Marcel's distinction between "mystery" and "problem" is spiritually akin to Kierkegaard's in- sistence on "subjectivity," I now regard this second line of interpre- tation as the right one.

According to Guido De Ruggiero,' "at bottom, Marcel knows from the beginning where he wants to arrive, and, seeking, he has the air of a man who has already found." But Marcel did not begin as a Christian philosopher, and he claims that his reflections on human existence opened the way to the definitive conversion which took place in I929, a claim the truth of which one can have no adequate reason to doubt, though it does not necessarily follow, of course, that the considerations which weighed with Marcel would appear probative to another type of philosopher. As to wanting to arrive at a certain conclusion, what would be proved by the existence of such a wish, supposing that it was present? Insistence on "wishful thinking" is so often irrelevant, as can be seen from an example. Lord Russell, in his History of Western Philosophy, emphasizes the fact that when St. Thomas Aquinas undertook to prove God's existence, he was already convinced of the truth of the conclusion at which he arrived and that he wanted to arrive at that conclusion.

This is quite true; but the relevant question for the philosopher is not what St. Thomas' wishes happened to be, but whether his proofs were cogent or not. It may be that Marcel wanted to arrive at a theistic conclusion and Sartre at an atheistic conclusion; but the relevant question for the philosopher is whether either of them proves his position. As regards Sartre, I am quite sure that he dogmatizes, in substance if not in form; as regards Marcel, I do not feel certain, for the reason which I have indicated. It may be objected that I persist in criticizing the existentialists from a standpoint which is not their own; but then it is precisely their standpoint which I find inadequate.

Existentialism, p. 40.

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EXISTENTIALISM

M. Sartre claims that existentialism is a humanism, and I want finally to consider existentialism, under this aspect. M. Sartre rejects the humanism which takes man as an end, since man is always something to be made, not something already made (to practise a cult of Humanity after the style of Auguste Comte is, for Sartre, ridiculous); but he claims that the existentialist doctrine that man is free, that he is the being which transcends itself and creates itself by free choice, that he is his own legislator, unfettered by any absolute values or universal moral law, constitutes a true humanism. Obviously a great deal depends on what one understands by human- ism. If by humanism is meant a doctrine about man, then M. Sartre's philosophy is certainly humanistic and M. Sartre himself, as a student of human nature, is a humanist; but if humanism be taken to imply devotion to human interests or concern with human interests, it may well be doubted if the Sartrian existentialism is humanistic. A conviction that man is totally free, that there are no absolute values and that man is responsible neither to God nor his fellows may seem to open up that boundless ocean of possibility of which Nietzsche spoke; but is the liberation more than apparent? Man must choose, he is "condemned" to be free, he cannot but make something of himself (even if he commits suicide, he chooses, he draws a line under his life and says, "that is what I am"); but it makes not the slightest difference ultimately what he chooses, what he makes for himself, since man is une passion inutile. A Hitler or a Francis of Assisi, a Nero or a Buddha, what does it matter? If values are the creation of the individual and depend on his choice, there is no standard of valuational discrimination between different types of men or between the ends they set themselves, their ideals. As to authentic and unauthentic choice, authentic choice, if there are no absolute values, is no more valuable or praiseworthy than unauthentic choice, whereas if on the other hand authentic choice is more valuable in itself than

unauthentic choice, if, for example, it is objectively better to be a Communist or a Christian as the result of a choice proceeding from an authentic act of the will than simply out of social conformism, there must be an objective standard of value and values are not simply the individual's creation. One cannot have it both ways. M. Sartre might learn something from Plato in this matter. The atheist existentialists seem to attach a value to clear knowledge and decisive choice and action, just as Nietzsche, who theoretically denied the existence of absolute and universal values, clearly thought the "noble" type of man objectively better than the "ignoble." To act with resolution, even with the clear perception of death as the inevitable and final end, seems to constitute a value for Heidegger, while revolt against the absurdity and meaninglessness of existence is admired by Camus, and Sartre attaches value to engagement.

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PHILOSOPHY

Sartre might say that it is not a question of engagement having a value antecedent to choice, but that it owes its value simply to the individual's liberty; but does not the affirmation of a value by the individual presuppose the perception of value? The logical conse- quence of atheism may be, as Sartre, following Nietzsche, says it is, the negation of absolute values; but the conclusion is valid only if the premiss is valid, and if there is an awareness of value which precedes the acceptance or affirmation of value, the premiss is at once rendered doubtful: at any rate it cannot legitimately be taken as a point de depart. In any truly humanistic philosophyaccount will be taken of all sides

of human nature; but if a being from another world were to gain its knowledge of human nature from L'Etre et le Neant, La Nause'e, Les Chemins de la Liberte, Le Mur, Huis-clos, La Putain Respectueuse and Morts sans Sepulture, that being would have a very one-sided idea of man. If one touches on this theme, one runs the risk of being misunderstood; it may appear that one is simply moralizing, that one is objecting to a novelist or dramatist introducing certain themes into his novels and plays; but I am not concerned to lay down rules of censorship for novelists and dramatists, but rather to point out that a philosopher who claims to analyse and describe la realite humaine and who at the same time omits or degrades man's higher spiritual activities is unfaithful to his task as a philosopher. A novelist, considered as such, may legitimately confine his attention to certain types of people or certain aspects of human nature; but a philosopher of man should possess a comprehensive vision. If he does not possess it, his picture of man will be inadequate, and if he proposes to erect a general philosophy on his analysis of human existence, his general philosophy will be correspondingly inadequate. It requires no great experience of human nature to know that the phenomena which appear to fascinate the attention of M. Sartre actually occur; but if one were to compare the analysis of love, for example, as given by Sartre with that of Gabriel Marcel, one would have to admit, if faithful to the total data, that a level of spiritual activity to which Marcel's eyes are open seems invisible to those of M. Sartre, for whom love is, at best, une duperie. This makes more difference than may appear at first sight. Sartre dwells on those aspects and activities of man which illustrate his theory that man is une passion inutile and that life is absurd, whereas Marcel discerns those spiritual activities of man which imply at least an appeal to the Transcendent, even if they do not strictly prove its existence. Similarly, whatever one may think of Kierkegaard's rejection of natural theology, it remains true that he discerned and emphasized those activities and attitudes of the spirit which imply a "vertical" transcendence, in contrast to Sartre's exclusively "horizontal" 36

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EXISTENTIALISM

transcendence. If the philosopher recognizes the existence of those activities and attitudes, he will concern himself seriously with the question of their objective implications; but if he is blind to them, he will naturally pass over the question. Nicolai Hartman, in his great work on ethics, spoke of a blindness to values; M. Sartre seems to me to be one of the myopic in this respect. In conclusion I should say that existentialism, in spite of its

important defects, is of value in that it draws attention to the human person as free and responsible. A rough definition of exis- tentialism, so far as one can give one, might be that existentialism is the descriptive analysis of man as free, self-transcending subject, a descriptive analysis which is itself designed to promote authentic choice. Whether adequate or not, such a definition does at least bring out the fact that the existentialist deals with man as subject, and as free subject; he starts, as Sartre says, with subjectivity. The system of Hegel himself can scarcely appear to us in the same dangerous and threatening light in which it appeared to Kierkegaard, but there are other systems of philosophy, one of which at least is of great practical importance, the effects or implications of which in regard to the human subject are no less dangerous than those which Kierkegaard, rightly or wrongly, considered to follow from the Hegelian system. But if one wishes to protest against such systems in the name of the human person, it is essential to have an adequate idea of the human person, and in this respect Heidegger, and still more Sartre, are radically deficient. Kierkegaard and Marcel have a deeper insight into the nature of the human person, and in that respect their philosophies are superior to those of Heidegger, Sartre and Camus (though, as I mentioned earlier, the phenomenological analyses of Heidegger and Sartre are often excellent). But existenti- alism as such can, it seems to me, have little future, unless an adequate and faithful descriptive analysis of man-in-the-world is made the basis for, or is united with, an unprejudiced attempt to construct a rational ontological and metaphysical system. Heidegger and Sartre really prejudge the issue from the start, while with Kierke- gaard and possibly Marcel subjective impressions and experiences tend to take the place of objective reasoning. Philosophic reasoning can quite well begin with the human person; but without a sustained effort of reasoning no durable philosophy can be developed. Pheno- menological analyses, however brilliant they may be, are an insuffi- cient basis for a philosophical system. Moreover, it is one thing to start with "subjectivity" and another thing to surrender to sub- jectivism; however great the faults of the system, Hegel's insistence on objectivity and "impersonal" thought is not altogether devoid of value.

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