Sartre in Ten Minutes
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- čas přidán 8. 02. 2014
- I do not own any of these images. This 10-minute video is intended as an introduction to the existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, with an emphasis on Being & Nothingness. It is not intended as a comprehensive or definitive account of his thought. This video is for educational purposes only.
An excellent introduction to jean Paul SARTRE. THANKS
"A coffee cup is not a rhinoceros."
..................... *mind blown*
Now that's philosophy for you!
Thanks for doing these videos. Love the short format. You get to the essence of things and don't leave anything important out. They have helped clarify my understanding of these topics.
swhupp Thanks, swhupp. Yeah, my whole goal in these videos is to make these thinkers' work more accessible to everyone -- so that people can start working with the main ideas quickly & easily. Anyhow... thanks for watching.... Eric
Sounds like Sartre is answer Descarte. Descarte: I think, therefore I am. Sartre: I am, therefore I think.
I think it's more of "I am, therefore I think and so I can reason that I am because I can think. ' But yours rolls of the tongue better.
@@koalasquare2145 Except there are lots of things that are, but that don't think. In fact most of the things that are do not think. They exist, but are not aware of their existence. Most of these things never say "I am", but a recording device might do so. However, even a recording device that says "I am" probably doesn't think, even though its declaration is nothing more than a statement of fact since it does in fact exist. Unless it's one that I just made up in order to make a point: which is that even if existence generally precedes thinking in systems where both thinking and existence are present, we can't know that until we've thought about it. At which point we notice that we are both thinking and existing, but can we really know which came first? And what if we're mistaken about existing? What if there are things that can think without existing? The creatures we encounter in our dreams might think, but do they really exist? And so on.
Stirner: I think, therefore, who cares?
@@mtgradwell "I am a living born human therefore I think."
instablaster.
Thank you! Just getting started on "Being and Nothingness" and definitely needed something like this to start to wrap my head around it. Greatly appreciated!!
I think that all of these great masters of Philosophy and Science will be much more proud of us if we as human beings take the risk of thinking for ourselves, I know for a fact that much more happiness, truth, beauty and wisdom will come to us that way.
Riccardo Verdecia Sr only if a majority allowed it. The system pits the mundane public against the less mundane free thinkers to shut us down and remove us into reject isolation.
@S.I.V. Kind of hard to think or have the energy to do so when your forced to work 8-12 hours everyday just to survive.
@S.I.V. I suppose but who really is going to think about deep issues like existence, why they are here, the nature of life and all its sufferings etc. Those thoughts require a lot of intellectual energy, which is none the less energy and people have a finite amount of that to use everyday. I would argue thinking can be just as exhausting as physical work. To add onto that most people view those questions/ideas in a negative light or simply don't want to think about them for the obvious reasons.
Difficult to work and think for me, I cant do a physical task and think about the deep complexities of life at the same time, I honestly don't know anyone who could do that. Even after works over you usually have chores, errands or other tasks that require maintenance. Even on your days "off" people still have obligations.
2021 are we still thinking for ourselves?
@@FoB39 exactly - we have so much to deal with - inter personal relationships- colleagues - house chores parents children - living here with a fixed income we can deal with this - there are some who struggle for the regular income s - and the country the politicians - so much to think and get distracted - very little time to think about such things
2019 existentialist right here!!
Just recently discovered your videos Eric, they're all excellent.
me when I thought he said “the gays” 👁👄👁
Don’t you just hate it when people gays at you?
"Hell is other people". Yes. Schopenhauer basically said the same thing in his "Counsels and Maxims"
Excellent. Thank you. You hit a lot of the highlights in Sartre and explained them with excellent examples.
Jay Raskin Thanks, Jay, and thanks for taking the time to watch....
I completely agree that we exist before we express our essence. I've always thought myself to be agnostic, but now I believe myself to be an existentialist.
Thanks for this! I'm attempting to continue directing a production of The Flies, during this Pandemic - online! So I'm digging it to more dramaturgy and deeper exploration and this is really well done, helpful and entertaining. Also timely as we all figure out how to respond to "Shelter in Place" ...and no TP.
Nice video. Can you recommend any secondary reading for understanding Sartre's phenomenology, mainly the for-itself?
Hello Me Dudson,
Is there another video material that teaches existensialism in depth? I have taken existensialism in University but I would like to acquire more knowledge about it, especially in regards to Nitzsche and Sartre.
Thanks
I am currently reading The Age of Reason so this is very helpful as well. Should I read Nausea next, or Being and Nothingness? Any recommendations from other philosophers as well would be very much appreciated!
Thank you. I am writing a paper for my PHL class and plan on quoting and referencing this video. It not only explains concepts very clearly, it explains them in the best way possible - simple but precise. I am also going to recommend this video in an email to my professor, if I can remember anyway. Hopefully he just takes initiative & posts it for the class on his own, after reading my paper and seeing your an excellent reference.
Angel... thanks for the warm words. I'm glad that this helped you to write your paper for your class. Yeah, I'm trying to be as direct and succinct as possible with the explanations in these videos. This of course necessitates making some inevitable simplifications. But I still think there's value in helping people get on-board quickly with some of these thinkers.... Again, thanks for the response.
You have some great videos here. Thanks.
I liked that video a lot. Thanks for uploading!
This is much more informative than the School of Life video
I enjoyed this, thanks for uploading.
Great videos, and your replies to comments are very insightful, thanks a lot! I'm at uni in England studying medicine but i find this fascinating and really stretches my thinking!! (although I do have to watch the videos a few times and look up a few words)
Oliver Hudson Thanks, Oliver. I'm glad that you're enjoying my videos. Yeah, sometimes it's challenging to strike a fruitful balance with respect to how much technical vocabulary to include in these videos. I want them to be accessible & inviting. But I also want them to be true to the works themselves. Anyhow... thanks for watching, and good luck with absorbing all of that physiology. Eric D.
Thanks for this "10 minute introduction to Sartre", it took me the better part of an hour to "listen through" ;)
Impressive, best videos on existentialism I have found.
I've been saying that forever! We're not who are so much as who we're not. And everyone just looks at me like I'm stupid or crazy. So good to have your ideas confirmed by others.
Yeah, the idea that everything (including ourselves) is implicitly defined by what it is not also gains a confirmation in the movements of Structuralism and Post-structuralism that followed existentialism. Of course, as you say, that kind of thinking tends tends to be pretty counter-intuitive to most people. To a lot of people's ears, it starts to sound like a Zen koan. And, who knows, maybe that's the real value of that kind of thinking... it's worthwhile because it starts to loosen up the knots & constrictions in our a priori ideas about what things are and how they work. Anyhow... thanks for watching, and for taking the time to comment. Eric
great videos. Thanks for making them
Mr Dodson, Would you please clarify what does Sartre understand for "essence."? Is "essence similar to scientific principles?
I really like what you're saying in this video at around 7 minutes in in regards to changing your life from one of 'Bad Faith'.
I'm not sure it's physiologically possible to "decide to adopt different ways of behaving at any and all points" - it is possible, but I think it takes a large amount of energy, time, and the willpower to rewrite our plastic brains.
In avoiding a life of bad faith, the main relevant factor I can think of is that we are creatures of habit, and you cannot change all aspects of your life immediately - I don't think it's physically possible to change every habit/pattern of behaviour in your life immediately - say, in my experience with changing mental habits, I've been reading over and over again that it takes around 6 weeks for these changes of habits to take place. So yeah, you can avoid living in bad faith, but it takes time.
I'm also uncertain of the extent of human ability to change emotional responses as well, as I'm pretty sure our emotional responses precede our intellectual control on a physiological level, in that our reptilian brain affects nervous system responses before we can intellectually interrupt them. I'm not saying it's impossible, I'm saying that you cannot do it immediately - It takes time, persistence, and consistency.
I'm not a brain scientist, nor a psychologist, but I have been studying this stuff over the past few years in my own attempt to refine my mental habits and move out of a lifestyle set in bad faith. I really like the idea of avoiding a life of bad faith, but I also like to understand it in the context of modern science and psychology. This is my understanding, I'd appreciate people with a better understanding to contribute.
Awesome video though, thanks for the thoughts and ideas (not to mention your time and effort!) :)
Thank you...I didnt know what in-itself and for-itself was.....now you have told me what you think they are Good
Your Chanel is awesome just subscribed if always been interested in philosophy but couldn't ever afford to go to college to study it and growing up in TX they definitely didn't mention any of this in high school
Deidre... If u can read, you can educate yourself to anything you want. College students read books.
Thanks Eric, I enjoy it so much as points are so clear. I'm now fantasizing you do a video on Wittgenstein. Gosh, I sound like I'm having a philosophical crush. lol
Yeah, Wittgenstein would be a cool choice. But I was thinking about either Husserl or Kierkegaard next. Or maybe I'll do another zany comedy video (I've been wanting to do one on Tom-Tom's). I can't always predict what will capture my imagination next. Anyhow, as always, thanks for watching! .
Very well summarized and nicely explained. I liked this one.
An absolutely incredible introduction to Sartre's main points and theories. Thank you
Thanks, sohte17, and thanks for watching! Eric
Hey Eric, so I'm not sure if you still respond to the comments on this video, but I have a question for you. If we are totally free to believe in whatever we want, does this mean that Sartre was a postmodernist/relativist who does not believe in any sort of absolute truth?
Sartre doesn't believe in an absolute truth so to speak but rather believes that the meaning and purpose of our lives derives from the choices we decide to make. there is no wrong or right choice, just the one you decided to make.
4:08 but that's just silly.
You can look at it that way, but its absurd, and doesn't add or clarify anything!
For Sarte, the shadow negates light into being?
That was great. I always enjoy your pithy takes on weighty subjects.
The reason Sartre sounds so pessimistic in his writing is that... while he understood how humankind devolved into the morass that Sartre perceived as 'this current situation with the state of humanity' (i.e. each individual's self-denial)... he did not put together a process for humanity to pull itself out of the morass by its figurative and sometimes literal bootstraps... you will find that all the better philosophers have been more pessimistic in their outlook for humankind... that they understood the why... was enlightening to them... and they wanted to pass that 'knowledge' along... but that they could and still cannot find a reasonable and logical process that lifts humankind is what frustrated them and turned them pessimistic...
+Stephen Kirby Well, there always seems to be a fine line between pessimism and realism. That's because of the very pronounced and human tendency to want to see things in sunny, upbeat ways... so that any attempt at realism (which is what a lot of philosophers are trying to do) ends up looking like pessimism in contrast to how people usually want to see things. And, yes, Sartre doesn't give much prescriptive advice for how to extricate ourselves from the habit of bad faith. But then again, he does say that our entire engagement with life is a function of our spontaneous, creative responses to it, rather than a product of any a priori recipe or formula. So, then why shouldn't the same also be true of our struggles with bad faith? Perhaps he doesn't tell us how to do it because there is no "how to do it..." There's only what's there in every other facet of our existence -- our ongoing, spontaneous invention with respect to the situations in which we find ourselves.
+Eric Dodson Eric Dodson 2 hours ago‘’+Stephen Kirby Well, there always seems to be a fine line between pessimism and realism. That's because of the very pronounced and human tendency to want to see things in sunny, upbeat ways... so that any attempt at realism (which is what a lot of philosophers are trying to do) ends up looking like pessimism in contrast to how people usually want to see things.’’I don't think you yet understand the position that Western philosophy should be working on and frankly it's not the dichotomies between pessimism and realism…
those are just mere stepping stones on the way to actual individual human enlightenment…
if you really want to just talk about the mechanics of a philosophy then I need to move on…
but if you want to talk about a real wholistic world philosophy for 2015 then I'll hang around and see if you can catch up…
to do so you would probably need to stop focusing so exclusively on Sartre and all the other old dead purported philosophers…
reread the Kant quotes I posted until you understand them to get a more wholistic perspective…
the most productive approach to understanding the point to understanding is not a piece-by-piece pathway, such as parsing realism and pessimism, or existentialism and anamnesisism, but by being able to develop a bigger picture view…don't you think?...
Stephen Kirby Well, I probably don't have enough extra time & energy to see if I can "catch up" with how you're seeing things. At this point I'm busy pursuing my own path. Sorry.
+Eric Dodson Eric Dodson 55 minutes ago commented;‘’+Stephen Kirby Well, I probably don't have enough extra time & energy to see if I can "catch up" with how you're seeing things. At this point I'm busy pursuing my own path. Sorry.’’ Don't take it personally... I was kidding... in an off off comedic broadway sense... maybe not (I’ll put that in my notes)... actually, you possess quite enough information already to make what amounts to a small perspective shift... if you choose... we are precisely at the juncture of two roads diverging in a yellow wood... the more traveled road, by the norm of the population... or does the road less traveled beckon...
Stephen Kirkby..... You seem to have noticed our philosophers appear to suffer a similar affliction of "reductionist" thinking as has afflicted our sciences. lol
Super helpful ! Thank you !
Philosophers have such a lovely way with words.
Which is the more difficult , expressing yourself in words , or being understood perfectly by others ?
your name and channel is hard to remember.
my first instinct is to serach "philosophy". but it's hard for me to remember that eric dodson is related to philosophy.
Never understood Sartre better.Please continue your good work
Thanks, Yashas, for the warm words. I'm glad that you enjoyed this video.
Immensely helpful. Thank you
Great video, thanks.
Being a hardcore introvert, I'll have to quote Sartre's, "Hell is other people" because I feel it in my bones.
That's not what he meant by that - he meant that as people we cannot see how WE can create hell for other people, but we can never perceive how we create that hell for them.
paul norris
L’enfer c’est les autre
unfortunately he is right. This is not some a priori linguistic game. At least if he was born an American we could blame his basic nature on Western lies.
@@davidbulbeck8945 Because France is not Western?
paul muad' dib Didn't Sartre say that Stalin was good because he made the trains run on time ? How may ppl did he have his minyans despatch .The Minyans were 85% of the CHEKA in Ukraine during the winter of 1932-33.
hmm.. this brings back memories during mycollege philosophy class.. an example that negate Sarte's "existence precedes essence".. .. whenever someone invent something, he already has the general idea of what his/her invention is for, let's take scissors for example.. the inventor knows he/she wants a handy tool for cutting light materials before the actual scissor existed.. in that sense .. Essence precedes existence.. Something like that... I forgot if that came from another philosopher or not..
ahh.. i miss my philosophy class...
Thank you so much for your videos.. :)
Wait🤔, you're on to something here.
@@mrs.albertcamus7930 no. see paper knife
Aria Hime very late response but sartre didnt claim that the existence of things precedes the things' essence.
In one of his lectures "existentialism is a humanism," he outright states that a knife is thought of first. We make blueprints and planning of tasks etc. Then the knife is put together with the necessary materials. Thats an example of essence preceding existence.
His point is that if that were the case for man, that means something mustve made us, which is god. And god is like the starting point for everything, so hes the only thing where existence preceds essence.
Since sartre was an atheist, he argues that there wasnt anything that made us who we are. So is god isnt the being whose existence precedes essence, it must be us. Then from there he was able to come up with concepts such as radical freedom and such
Tl;dr its man whose existence preceds essence, not scissors or whatever
God desired to create thinking beings .... so he brought us into existence . Is that another example of essence preceding existence ?
HELL is other people. That pretty much sums it up. Our self image is a mirage, is ego. We know this and attempt to conceive how others perceive us. When the gulf presents itself, then hell comes into existence.
When he said that 'Hell is other people', it's worth bearing in mind that most of the other people he knew were French... ;)
MarloFan, and one of them was Foucault
elucidating, well done!
Great video ! Thought you'd include the bit about him not showing up for his Nobel prize .
Michael Trudell "The writer must therefore refuse to let himself be transformed into an institution, even if this occurs under the most honorable circumstances." Jean-Paul Sartre
Did he have a relationship with Simone ?
We will forgive Sartre for not knowing what neuroscience now knows about will and personality and for therefore assuming that humans can choose whatever they want at any time. Thanks for another great video, Eric!
Well this is a good summary, but if you really want to understand existentialism you need to read directly from his books, it's a completely different experience. Yes, you might not agree with everything he says, but that's the point, we are in constant movement, we live, we learn, we move forward to live new experiences and then one day we die, but humanity goes on.
The beauty is so simple but no being wants to accept the simpleness of it all.
I love having access to so much information but is listening to the audio book and reading Dostoyevsky , is it the same?
Maria your analysis is on point, agree 100% I can say unequivocally you've been reading the great masters, if more young ladies could only be influence by you on these topics of painting, science, philosophy, literature and photography this would be a beautiful world indeed. You're beautiful in and out Miss Vaz thank you for been the young lady that you are, and please continue on, I tip my hat off to you in total admiration...Salud!!...Cheers!!
Indeed, I was about to make the same comment. Big up's Maria Vaz!
Wuji moves and produces Taiji.
Taiji returns to Wuji when the former becomes still.
All things in the Universe go like that.
They eventually return to nothingness.
What book should I start with? I never read books but this sounds like a very interesting topic.
+Karosuu Try starting with Sartre's essay, "The Humanism of Existentialism," which is contained in a book called, "Essays in Existentialism."
+Karosuu p
+Karosuu . I would start with the philosphic novel "La Nausée" (the Nausea): a brillant writing on our existence which is without any given sense. Only we can give a sense to our existence: not religions, nor politics , neither ideologies !
+Karosuu "Free Will" by Sam Harris
+shawn6669 Satre couldn't have known that there is no free will (as proven by neuroscience quite recently), but to be honest it still doesn't change what he though about our essential freedom to choose whatever path / reaction to stimuli we wish, because, although like Sam Harris says, we are a "holistic system" and thoughts emerge without our input, the system itself is always free to react in any given way - we're just slaves to our subconscious. All that remains is to hope that our "system" will work to our advantage when the time comes and we can help make that happen by assimilating great Thinking Tools (Danniel Dennett) that become a permanent part of our system. It is true that one does not "choose" to watch videos about Satre, but it's safe to say that the consequences of this decision have a much higher chance of being beneficial to ones life, that watching cat videos, for example.
Thank You. I used to study this in college. You forget man.
I like the ending, and of course I agree with the other comment , their is so much more, but this is merely a summary..
Nice work man!
THIS IS A BRILLIANT VIDEO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Thanks
I think Sartre's assertion that we are always free to decide our responses to things - is very short sighted.In saying this, he presumes that the mind and will exist "rubberstamped," and are not a tortuous concatenation of innumerable phylogenetic
threads - links through the distant biological past,embedded in our cellular constitutions,the combining of which constitute the entity we call the "self..."
Best introduction to Satre on You Tube...?
This vid doesn't include his views on Capitalism. Also, "The school of Life" has a better introduction.
Well made video. Would recommend looking up "How to pronounce Sartre" but other than that great job
First thanks for making this video! I am a formally trained artist from a school with high emphasis on social critique and we studied more of this sort of thing than painting or drawing etc. However, we didn't have pure philo classes, we'd have theory and criticism, which was a sampling of the thinkers of the time frame we were examining. I also cannot read books easily due to a cervical vertebrae issue and so getting a little synopsis like this is great.
I would love to know what he'd have thought of the break throughs in neuroscience... our brains decide on something SIX whole seconds before we are conscious of that choice. We can measure that empirically. It sort of puts a few dents in that whole choice theory. Although... I don't know how he interprets conscious vs unconscious choice.
Consciousness in "no-thing" -> which distingts itself from unconsciouss object like a cup. The cup is in-itself object so it is like a noun, but consciousness is like a verb. Consciousness can also be seen like a mirror, where in-itself object projects onto. ..that's the most profound idea I ever heard. Sartre was a contemporary Buddha. That's insane!
great!
please give aglimpse on Sartre's concept of Why to Write?
I haven't read that specific work, which I believe was written a few years after B&N. However, if one were to extrapolate upon the insights in B&N, the reason to write would reside in the same dynamics that the reason to do anything else would. The reason to do ANYTHING resides in our choices to regard that thing as compelling, interesting, gratifying, worthwhile, etc. In other words, there would be no inherent reason to write, as opposed to anything else. The decision to write would be a irreducibly creative response to the question: What should I do with my freedom right now? However, I suspect that the specific essay to which you're referring has more to do with Sartre's later movement toward Socialism... where the question about writing would be situated in an analysis of the pro's & con's of writing vs. other forms of activism.
So, is Sartre negating the possibility of presupposed intuitions and formulaic actions of responses? Maybe I've misunderstood, but his emphasis on freedom seems to do so; that is, unless I've misinterpreted, and Sartre did in fact state there are preconceived laws influencing human thought, and that freedom can negate these laws but only after their effect originally expounds itself on our psyche. Our freedom to like things as beings, or as no-things, doesn't seem as free as made evident in this video. Even if we were to start from as blank of a slate as supposed, wouldn't the entire action of "liking" something over another become void as well? Isn't that but just another formulaic system of understanding the material world around us? If we had as much conscious freedom as Sartre presumes- at least, as I've understood Sartre to presume from this video- couldn't we avoid all forms of material interpretation/representation?
Now, if I have misunderstood, and Sartre does, in fact, claim there to be some sort of naturalistic prenotions on our psyche, and instead claims freedom gives us the conscious choice to OVERCOME those said prenotions, after their existence that is; and to only allow our new state of existence to coexist with the past state of existence. If that is the case, then I can see it's utility- although utility is but another form of the past existence- however, Im failing to see the answer to any question on being and any relevance to the presupposed qualities of nature.
Please correct me in my thinking if Im wrong, but if my line of thinking is correct in the first paragraph, our blank slate, dictated by immense freedom, should allow for complete reevaluation of all formulaic thought and it's processes; something Sartre himself wasn't able to escape, as he spent a lifetime writing within the same formulaic determinations as someone determined by anteceding laws of understanding.
If the thought of the second paragraph is true; wouldn't it bring us to the exact same place as before? Wouldn't we still be ignorant to the presupposed determinations, and formulas of thought?
Again, I may be completely misunderstanding what was said in the video, or what was trying to be conveyed. I think a reading of Sartre's work would prove helpful to my understanding, obviously.
I enjoy the channel! Keep up the good work.
I'm doing a paper on Bad Faith. This is excellent. Thanks!
Glad to help. Good luck with that paper, and thanks for watching! Eric
He discovers an adversary everywhere humans are populated and dies with a sword in hand.
This was a great introduction to Sartre. What would Sartre think of the problem of suicide? Could it be an expression of free will or just an extension of bad faith by running away from freedom?
Many people contemplate suicide because they feel trapped rather than feeling they have freedom.
Ideally Satre settles on the idea of intersubjectivity as a way to foster better human relationships.
i love it very very much,the most Respectful and very Friendly greetings of me @Johan,,
This was brilliant
Eric your kind is who was youtube *made for* . thank you
interesting introduction to satre in the book he goes really deep but nice work
Trying to wrap my head around Sartre, at one point I gather he talks about pre-reflective awareness which I took to mean a kind of Id or pre-rational preception that gives us a general inclination toward things and as we make specific choices, lets say to be a writer, we inhabit the norms and values of a writer pre-reflectively - what he calls pre-reflective fundamental project. My confusion comes with the source of the general inclination, do we control that choice? Where does it come from? Am I misreading him?
Hi Sean. For Sartre, anything that would count as a "general inclination" would itself be nothing other than another set of factical choices -- in other words, a conjoining of the givens of our existence with our choices about how to respond to those givens. Basically, for Sartre there is no such thing as an inherent "inclination" apart from our freedom toward it, any more than there's such a thing as a choice that's separable from our facticity. Even at the most primitive level of innate "inclination" -- that having to do with pain and pleasure... well, we can still decide that we're going to enjoy something that's basically painful (as long distance runners and devotees of S&M can probably confirm), or vice versa. Of course, all of this probably begs the question about whether some factical choices are inherently easier to make than others....
Okay, part 2... I wouldn't be too quick to equate Sartre's idea of pre-reflective awareness with psychoanalytic concepts, such as those of the ID. The reason is that psychoanalysis presupposes the idea of the unconscious, which is a function of an active, ongoing process of repression. Pre-reflective awareness (which is a bit of a contradiction, actually) consists of those things that we could know, if we were to train our reflective perception upon them. Basically, it's the difference between refusing to know (that's the psychoanalytic unconscious) and not thinking about it yet (that's Sartre's idea of pre-reflective awareness). For Sartre, almost all of our choices are made pre-reflectively, and we only become aware of them as choices retrospectively, through some process of reflection upon them. "Inclinations" would be a case in point, where, if we reflect upon them, we'd probably realize that we could have decided to be inclined toward something else. Of course, as Sartre also stresses, our typical response to this is to flee into the theatre of bad faith. Hope all of this helps... and thanks for taking the time to respond. Eric
Thanks Eric for your response. I really do appreciate it. If I can follow up, if most our choices are made pre-reflectively how can that be freedom? More importantly does Sartre talk about the origin of our inclinations or simply emphasizing our freedom to choose to be something else if we reflect upon them retrospectively?
Sean Joseph Okay... maybe a concrete example would help. Say that you're about to drive your car home after work -- probably something that you do automatically, without much reflective awareness that you're even doing it. But when you reflect upon that moment afterward, you can realize that you could have decided to call a taxi instead, or decided to walk home, or decided to sleep at work, or... [insert thousands of other options here]. So, insofar as that pre-reflective moment of driving home actually offered you many other options, at some level you must have selected to drive home from all of those other possibilities, even if you weren't reflectively aware of making that selection at the time (probably because you were pre-reflectively choosing to do what you usually do after work... again, you could always choose otherwise). The somewhat counter-intuitive upshot of this is that choice, and hence our freedom, isn't particularly dependent of our awareness of our choices. Even when we seem to be moving un-reflectively through the moments of our lives, for Sartre, we're still choosing, and hence still free.
Sean Joseph Part 2 (about inclinations). Well, for Sartre, all of our inclinations boil down to sets of factical choices. So, that would be their origin. Basically, we choose our inclinations relative to the constraints of our facticity. Consequently, our inclinations aren't necessarily the hard-and-fast rules that we sometimes take them to be (probably in "bad faith"). In turn, Sartre doesn't say much about the origin of our factical freedom itself. From the point of view of his phenomenological analysis, it's simply something to which we've been "condemned" -- into which we've been thrown. Of course, some people would say that the origin is that God made us that way. Other people would say that it's the result of a karmic process. But for Sartre all of those types of other-worldly explanations are things that we don't actually have experiential access to. So, they remain mere points of conjecture for him (even if some people would claim to have experienced past lives that have allowed them to understand the workings of karma or God). In that regard, the ultimate origin of our factical freedom (which in turn is the source of our "inclinations") is something necessarily unknown. Why are we as we are? From the point of view of phenomenology, it's an unanswerable question. So, the project of phenomenology is simply to understand how we are... not why we are. Hope this helps. Eric
I haven't read any of Sartre's work (and am not interested/energetic enough to do so in the near future), but this summary gives me the impression he believed that we are free to change our attitude towards anything - like for example being strapped to a chair and tortured. Is this true? Was he so dreadfully inexperienced? Or am I underestimating how non-obvious it would've been in those times that we are capable of purely reflexive mental responses in situations of severe stress?
I kept expecting you to detail some conclusion that would make all of Sartre's disdain for humanity seem okay. He goes on about how we all come up with ways to pretend we're not responsible for our ways of life, and about how we are so insecure about our subjectivity that we must objectify others to keep our heads above the water, but does it end there? Did he never come up with a way to justify all this? Or was his whole philosophy characterized by this disdain? Most of the philosophers you discuss on this channel seem to present an alternative way of living, once we open our eyes to their philosophy, by which we can improve ourselves.
They got me on the double Rainbow 1:01 what does it mean ? It means Lot of things people dont like to hear
Can you do Simone de Beauvoir next?
as far as I'm aware, by existence preceeds essence Sartre meant that we, as human beings, do not have any personal identity as we may conceive it - we are not "bob the builder" or "maggie the housewife" ---- we turn up in the world and then we have to choose who we are. There's no use saying, "well I'm just an angry person" - you're not - you have been angry and you keep choosing to be angry. Saying you are an angry person is refusing to take responsibility for your choices and ability to choose again and choose differently. We choose who we are. In other words: no excuses.
Yes, all of these things do seem to be necessary manifestations & expressions of the fundamental Sartrean fact that our existence precedes our essence. Well put.... and thanks for taking the time to watch and to comment.
Eric Dodson Do you know what Sartre might say about people with mental health issues, for example schizophrenia? If the essence of a person is down to their free will, then one could change who they are. But if one was born diagnosed with schizophrenia this is a part of their essence that they can not change. Unless he believes that schizophrenia is a psychological mental state that one could change by exercising their free will. A mental disease could dictate if not all, then a great deal of one's essence. Or maybe I've miss understood Sartre here...
Tuval Schneerson I suppose on re-evaluation, schizophrenia could be factuality; a schizophrenic could make free decisions to be whom it wants within the restrictions of of its facticity.
Freedom
Is a strong seed
Planted
In a great need.
I live here, too.
I want freedom
For an only 10 minutes resume it's quite good, but Sartre is far more than this
+marco brenni FAR MORE THAN THIS ! " THIS" I'm afraid is irrelevant.
+David James : Ok: is far more
Undies in a bunch David?
great film
What exactly does good faith entail? He seems to have enough freedom to give the audience vertigo, but seems to be in a position to label any action bad faith. Is simple self-awareness of this the same as good faith?
Dr. Jacoby?
Nice!
I particularly like the Danish stamp that implies Kierkegarde was born in 1813 and died in 2013. LOL
Marmalade.
makes more sense the Satre, and has some practical use.
How does satre's view should help in finding solutions for problems in life ? We have endless ways we can chose in our life ? I dont see that. How can we relate freedom to it, while the meaning of freedom itself is contradictory ? What is a choice in general, because we always do something, we dont do nothing, you only need a point of view. And this point of view puts its categories into the things we assume. Where should I find the nothingness ? Isnt it only a frame of expectations which doenst get filled ? ALso when Im physically addicted to something it doenst help me to assume that I also could kill myself because im free or not the body which wants me to feel good. My mind also stucks on the things I need to do to feel good and this feeling is something I know and I dont need to think about by metaphysical problems. Living as he sees it seems to be more a psychological problem. The question of freedom is more a question of feeling safety, putting things right and getting the affirmation for it. Having an a priori freedom in my mind doenst mean anything to my considerations, my habits and my choices. And I also cant get over the assertion of seeing other people as hell. Its such an intellectualized definition of the worst place you can imagine.. I think looking in others peoples eyes for a long time will cease in a lack of interest and make me see only a pair of eyes with a mind behind it. And if I want to understand this mind I need endless time for it until the words run out and I have to accept myself and my existence so im not able to feel bad for anything because I have to accept it. "Huis clos" is so stupid.. Maybe he is right, but then im still not know what to do with this concept.
Maybe im too radical in my opinion about this metaphysical mysterys... Enlighten me!
Wow, a ton of questions. I probably won't have time to answer them all, so I'll just pick a few of the more salient & interesting ones (to me). You ask, how does Sartre's view help in finding solutions for problems in life? Well, in and of itself, phenomenology is not about looking for solutions to our specific problems. It's about exploring the meaning of the fundamental structures of our lives -- things like our consciousness, existence, Being, etc. Of course, the understanding that we get from that exploration could then be applied to specific problems we're having. In fact, probably for anything to count as a genuine solution to a real life-problem, it's probably good for it to be rooted somehow in, or at least connected to, whatever understanding we have of our existence -- for the solution to be "radical" in the etymological sense (Latin: radix = root). For instance, the human race seems to be having some problems with relating to itself and to the world more generally -- which manifests in more particular, concrete difficulties like mass genocide, wholesale destruction of the natural environment, etc. So, question: Does it seem reasonably likely that we'd be having less of these kinds of problems if the human race were able to see more deeply and more clearly into the nature of its existence? To me, the answer is: Probably so. If we could really feel our deep, living connection to each other and to the world more generally, I suspect that we'd end up treating each other better, and treating the world like it's actually integral to our existential constitution (rather than as something to be used and consumed). To me, this sounds like a path toward a solution to concrete problems like genocide and destruction of the natural environment. At the very least, it seems like a path worth exploring.
Okay... you also complain about "Hell is other people" & "No Exit" (Huis Clos). Yes, I think that Sartre was being pretty short-sighted here. I think that we was basically correct in his analysis of the unpleasant dynamics of objectification. But his analysis is only a partial, fractional view of human inter-relations. In this regard, I much prefer Martin Buber's treatment, which contains many of the elements of Sartre's (in Buber's idea of I-It), but which also contains the dimension of I-Thou. Basically, hell may be other people. But then, so too is heaven. Anyhow... I have to get going. Thanks for taking the time to watch & comment. Eric
Eric, you wrote; ‘’ The reason to do ANYTHING resides in our choices to regard that thing as compelling, interesting, gratifying, worthwhile, etc.’’
On the reasonable and logical first causational priority list... finding something compelling, interesting, etc. is a useful way at looking at motivation… but you are missing the bigger picture… Life is a ‘whole body’ experience… the senses sense… the mind interprets what is sensed… your thinking… or at least what you have posted... while it handles the reason and logic parts quite well, does not address the larger ‘whole body’ aspect, which is an integral part to understanding the sine qua non of Philosophy.,.. jus’ sayin’...
+Stephen Kirby Yes, I agree that addressing the "whole body" side of existence is a weakness in Sartre's work. I also agree that this would be necessary for a more comprehensive phenomenological account of existence. Within the phenomenological tradition, the corporeal side of things is addressed much more directly by Sartre's contemporary, Maurice Merleau-Ponty (I'm thinking of doing a video on him in the future).
impressive
Reflective and prereflective are the 2 dimensions of consciousness. Maybe.
if excuses are lies, why are excuses called lies when they are true experiences? excuses are explanation, fictional or non-fictional
..then to master ones idea of freedom, one would have to seek objective meanings of life, and then life would become the freedom of exploration, or the cage of social formation.
could we choose to like other things? that sounds off
Eric Dodson commented;
‘’+Stephen Kirby Well, it seems to me that the main trick is to balance understanding life against actually living it....’’’
Spot on… I know… easy to say… hardest work I’ve ever done… still workin’ on it… heheheheh... right now...
‘’to awaken to reality and to become cognizant of it while STILL relating to the man on the street (or over the Internet).
Again… Spot on… I know… easy to say… hardest work I’ve ever done… still workin’ on it… heheheheh... right now...
‘’ And if all of this seems immature... well, immaturity too is a necessary stage of development.’’
True… but people seem to have turned into a ‘lifetime pastime’… and in so doing, they miss out on the enlightenment available to them (and its totally bitchin’, by the way…) during this one life that they ‘know’ is theirs to live...
‘’ After all, that's where maturity ultimately comes from. So why treat immaturity like some sort of pejorative?’’
If you were to miss out on the best thing that could possibly happen to you because you wanted to live your entire life in ignorance and immaturity… in the end… wouldn’t you have wanted someone who knew better to point it out to you…?
‘’It's a little like chiding a young kid for needing training wheels on his bicycle.’’
A healthy, adult-looking individual with training wheels on his or her bicycle would just look as silly as they must feel inside… don’t you think…?
‘’Similarly, perhaps people need to be guided by others for a while before they can think for themselves.’’
Fine… but their ENTIRE LIVES…? almost all religions, (one on which you seem to rely)... offer the big ‘reward’ to their adherents only after death… Hmmmm… what about this one life that the adherents ‘know’ is his or her to live…? their religion finds that life insignificant… C’mon… even childish adults must think that is childish… don’t you think…?
why are we all so hung up on our being scared and frightened by living and why we are here? i feel that we will feel most free once we all realize to just be. to just be alive at this moment, at this time.
Hi Skab... Yeah, I agree that real freedom lies in our being able to let our experience be whatever it is in the moment. From that perspective, being afraid of living is just another experience, another thing to live through -- just like being ecstatic about life, or bored with life, or... well, anything else about life. But in practical, everyday terms, probably very few of us are able to see things that way (other than as an abstract, cognitive exercise). So... why are we so hung up on fearing life? Well, probably for the same reason that negative experiences tend to loom larger in our consciousness than positive ones do. As the saying goes, "No news is good news." In other words, most of us are habitually biased toward perceiving the negative, toward what's hurting us, toward what's fractured, problematic, etc. When things are going well, we tend to take it for granted -- so too with life in general. Another angle on the same question: As a general rule, we tend to be ruled most by what we resist most. And most of us resist the experience of being afraid more than we do other experiences. So, that particular experience seems to loom larger for us than other ones do. Hmm... this is getting a little long. I'll take up the "why are we here?" question in a second response.
Okay, part 2. Why are we here? This is of course a question that has haunted humanity, well, pretty much since humanity has been around. And in all that time, the one consistent pattern has been that there doesn't seem to be any genuinely enduring, reliable answer to that question. Sure, people come up with temporary, transient answers that provide satisfaction for a while (maybe even a few centuries). But then the question inevitably re-emerges, and haunts the night of the world again... and again. So, in light of all that, perhaps a better question would be: Why is it so hard to definitively answer the question, 'Why are we here?' My own theory (subject to change) is that it's hard to answer the "Why are we here?" question because the question usually presupposes that life can (or should) be circumscribed by the question "Why?" in the first place. In other words, perhaps the problem is that life is far deeper and far more subtle than our question is. Perhaps the question "Why?" is actually not particularly commensurate with the depth of life's reality. Maybe life doesn't really operate according to the laws that we think it should (especially the laws of deterministic causality that usually underpin people's "why" questions). Sure, we think that our question is deep enough because, well, we're sophisticated human beings in the 21st century... and moreover, we feel such an compelling urgency to have a decent answer to that question. Blah, blah, blah. Yeah, that's what every generation thinks. But life itself always ends up being far more tricky, far more elegant, far more subtle than any of our finest formulae (or questions). So... there's no real answer to "Why are we here?" mostly because we're asking the wrong question, and have been all along. The fact that there doesn't seem to be an answer is a kind of mirage produced by our expectation that life would play nicely within the outer boundaries of our "Why?" question in the first place. But it doesn't. So, the challenge isn't so much to find an answer to the question. The challenge is to find a question that's commensurate with what life is actually showing us -- a question far deeper than the one humanity has been asking for milenia. But, hey, all that's just my opinion. I could be wrong. Thanks for the cool questions. I'd give you a thumb-up, but for some reason the Internet-god won't let me.
Eric Dodson please write a book
SkabCrowley And thank you, Skab (any relation to Aleister?), for watching my video... but more importantly for being interested enough in life to ask such wild and rebellious questions about it. That's wonderful! I doff my chapeau to you!
:D Eric Dodson your just an awesome human being and im honored to run into you in the webs and a somewhat relation to Aleister
Nausea is his real masterpiece, in my opinion. It's the greatest existential book ever written, IMO, the protagonist living an existential life before your eyes.
I Heard,,read, he wrote ''nausea'' from a BAD EXPERIENCE from a mescaline experience?and to a pure in my opinion,SHALLOW,EARTHLY,NOT DEEP person that he always seemed to me, BEING SHOT INTO ETERNAL WORLDS MESCALINE CREATES,and i had beautiful spiritual visions which to this day INSPIRED ME TO BE A GREAT ARTIST,HE BUMMED OUT, SHALLOW EUROPEAN NOTHINGNESS,WOULD BE BLASTED TO ATOMS UNDER MESCALINE
@@markpatterson6104 think of it as; all these smart philosophers are different human beings, so their philosophical views vary according to who they are. sartre was a pessimist bum, so he found a very profound philosophy to give meaning to his pessimistic views. sartre liked living his life, he was more handsome than sartre thus was living a better life, so his philosophy concluded with "go to a café, walk next to the seine and look at the sun, dont think about it much". if he was as ugly as sartre, he wouldve also concluded the same pessimistic way as sartre.
Another example of essentially spiritual matters treated as if they are material. Since the goal of philosophy (love of wisdom) is to essentially determine/discover wisdom, an essentially non-material thing (i.e. spiritual), then it seems altogether foolish to use material methods to determine/discover spiritual (non-material) things.
I laughed so hard at Nothing-ing
+theMOYER Cool! My own sense is that laughter is one of the best indicators that we're understanding things in a deep way -- especially where understanding life itself is concerned.
I thought that laughter was from pent up frustration that nothing makes sense.
Oh, I see. I guess it takes some understanding to know very little makes sense.
If understanding the nature of existence requires being irreducible atheistic or else one presuppositions are predetermined, then all he is saying is that one's presuppositions which are predetermine one's world view would be that God does not exist, where the "correct" starting point would be to have "no" presuppositions either way and let reason argue it out...
Yeah but what about his thesis according to which all consciouness is non-positionnal of itself and positionnal of its object? Just kidding.
Great work! Thanks for sharing!
Pitacle And thanks for watching! Eric D.