For Readers of the UK Herald
Prepared from the Original for Philosophers and Politicians of the United Kingdom.
Lemma I. Martin Heidegger and Jean-Paul Sartre are widely perceived as the most prominent exponents of 20th-century existentialist philosophy, and numerous scholarly articles have explored the interpenetration and mutual influences of their writings. Recently, Morin (2009) has contrasted Sartre’s “In-Itself” and “For-Itself” and used these concepts in a deconstruction of the pre-linguistic nature of Sartrean Nausea. Clooger (2013) has undertaken an analysis of the concept of meaninglessness is Sartre and Heidegger’s philosophical opus and relates this concept to Castoriadis’ philosophy of indeterminacy. Kakkori & Huttunen (2012) explore Heidegger and Sartre’s respective atheisms and explore the Kantian role of humanism in the development of humanistic atheisms. These authors also undertake a brief investigation of Sartre’s reaction to Jaspers – a topic which could be explored in substantial depth in the context of phenomenological ontology. Figueiredo (2008) explores the homologies between Sartrean and Heideggerian notions of the human being and Arendt’s existential ontology. Briedis (2009) undertakes a detailed exploration of Sartre’s ethics and applies Sartrean theory to several classical ethical dilemmas. This deconstruction also includes some mention of Sartre’s interpretation of Heidegger’s ontology. Sze (2009) interprets Sartre and Heidegger’s respective humanisms considering Hegelian dialecticism and exposes distinctly Sartrean objections thereto. Weimin & Wei (2007) explore Sartre’s “cogito” and its appropriation of Cartesian ontology, arguing that Sartre fundamentally generalizes this ontology to account for postmodern freedom. A substantial portion of contemporary research centers upon the critical analysis of Sartre’s and Heidegger’s respective humanisms. Wulfing (2008) has inquired of the nature of Sartrean freedom and its attendant existential anxiety and has mined Heidegger’s corpus for evidence of similar anxieties that derive from the essential nature of homo sapiens. Echeverria (2006) has made inquiries into the role of Sartre’s philosophy in the context of resistance to the politics of totalitarianism.
Lemma II. All the authors referenced above have sought some grounding in Heidegger and Sartre’s respective exisentialisms; in the wake of such pursuits, they have been led to inquire of the interdigitation between Sartre and Heidegger and their respective views of human nature. Morin (2009) and Clooger (2013) undertake this inquiry considering classical postmodern ontology, but do not find it necessary to provide a detailed deconstruction of the respective humanisms. Kakkori & Huttunen (2013) are interested in educational theory and do not furnish a philosophical analysis of Sartre’s humanism. Figueirido (2008) undertakes a collective comparison of Heidegger and Sartre with Arendt; although he does not focus upon humanism directly, he does make mention of it. Wulfing (2008) focuses primarily upon Sartre and Heidegger and produces a balanced account of both ontologies, but only with respect to existential anxiety and not, for instance, intentionality or volition. There has been little contemporary scholarship (2006-present) focusing directly upon the comparison of Heidegger and Sartre’s respective humanisms as presented in their foundational ideological addresses.
Lemma III. In these essays for the news outlets of major UK cities, I shall provide the very beginning of such an account. Focusing principally upon Sartre’s appropriation of the Cartesian “cogito” and Heidegger’s reaction against it, I will argue that Heidegger’s concept of the “sorge” (concernful behavior with respect to Being) of Dasein is a precise inversion of the Sartrean concept of “cogito.” The primary contribution to knowledge rendered by the current essay is a deconstruction of “sorge” in the realm of aesthetics – as opposed to politics or metaphysics, traditionally written by commentators (Dreyfus, 2005). Considering Sartre’s critiques of Dasein, I advance that Sartre’s humanism is one of radical freedom in which “Being-For-Itself” thinks and therefore is, and that Heidegger’s Dasein is prior to intellective motions of any kind. I shall also advance that Heidegger’s notion of human existence, “ek-sistence,” is fundamentally at odds with Sartre’s notion of the existence of radical freedom. I will argue that, for both Heidegger and Sartre, regardless of their varying definitions of freedom, the aesthetic manifests itself as a subject-independent dialectic in which social and moral values are discursively constructed.
Lemma IV. The resurgence of post-Structuralism in the work of Focault and Derrida has engendered continued reactions against the existentialism of Sartre, Heidegger, Husserl, and their prioritization of ontology over the structural and political content of the social. Any clear reading of Sartre (or Heidegger, for that matter) should begin with the metaphysical scions of post-Structuralism who conscientiously sought a safe distance from Sartre’s ontology of radical freedom in the ever-present but protean structures of “homo socialis.” For instance, Derrida frequently addresses Heidegger’s Dasein as the antithesis of Sartre’s “cogito,” which represents the epitome of Cartesian Universalism, uneasily pervaded by Heidegger’s persistent but organic “Being”. In the first instance, one should look to Sartre’s seminal 1946 presentation, “Existentialism in a Humanism” to begin the determination of Heidegger’s influence on Sartre’s ontology. It is here that, in his grand declaration of the modes, states, and values of the French existentialist tradition, Heidegger is named by Sartre – Heidegger is a progenitor of the existential “in-media,” mediating (on the one hand) the ahistorical phenomenology of Husserl and the uncompromising ontological freedom of Sartre’s later years (Sartre, 1946). One could in principle argue that Sartre’s declaration was not so much a declaration of war on the “epoche” or phenomenological ontology of “Being and Time” as it was an assertion of the primacy of a Cartesian postulation of the situated, conscious subject in the Western philosophical tradition. The later amalgamation of self and self-nihilating mental-physical identity that constitutes, for instance, the “In-Itself” is borne in “Existentialism is a Humanism” in an “epoche” not of the physical senses but of metaphysics. Sartre claims to be grounded in “authentic experience” but, in privileging the ego over the relational dialecticism of Heidegger’s metaphysics of Dasein (Dreyfus, 2005).
Lemma V. In Heidegger’s mind, and in those of his most prominent interpreters, Sartre’s identification of self with the linguistic, individuating article of selfhood (I) causes Sartre to be branded as a Cartesian par-excellence, proclaiming a metaphysics of separation (“Being-In-Itself” against “Being-For-Itself”), and one in which the ego is isolated from the “phenom” of actual Being- that of Husserl’s “epoche.” In “Being and Time,” Heidegger is notoriously wary of metaphysics in general; when he does speak of it, he emphatically cautions philosophers to avoid the identification of consciousness with cogitation or rationalization, which, for Heidegger, are frequently confused with Dasein in the lived experience of homo sapiens (Heidegger, 1962). In other words, Sartre’s epistemic rationalization of thought and resulting characterization of voluntary choice in thought as the essential category of individual freedom would strike Heidegger as a contradiction of phenomenological methodology. As Heidegger argues, thought – like all phenomena – cannot be reduced to certain physical or ideological invariants without becoming destructive of the phenomenon itself. In “Existentialism is a Humanism,” Sartre expounds upon what existentialism is by responding to what detractors have posited regarding his existential philosophy of Being. Sartre commences by postulating that the key starting point for existentialism is that actuality precedes ideality – or, in Sartre’s words, “existence precedes essence” (Sartre, 1946) There is no “a priori” human attribute, whether of thinking or being, that is formulated by God. After we dispense with the notion that God exists, Sartre follows Heidegger by advertence that there can exist precisely one being for whom actuality precedes ideality – namely, the human being (Sartre, 1946). There is no possible eidetic (or formulaic) essence for the human being because there is no God to actualize an essence for humans. Without a pre-defined essence, the human being is free – radically free – to construct their own essence (Sartre, 1946).
Works Consulted in the Series.
Clooger, J. The Guise of Nothing: Castoriadis on Indeterminacy, and its Misrecognition in Heidegger and Sartre. Critical Horizons (Acumen Publishing) 2013, Vol. 14 Issue 1, p1-21.
Dreyfus, H. L. Heidegger’s Ontology of Art. In H. L. Dreyfus, & M. A. Wrathall(Eds.), A Companion to Heidegger (p. 419 note 4). Oxford: Blackwell, 2005.
Echeveria, B. El humanismo del existencialismo. Dianoia nov2006, Vol. 51 Issue 57, p189-199.
Figueiredo, L. O Abismo da Liberdade: Arendt vs. Kierkegaard e Sartre. Revista Portuguesa de Filosofia, T. 64, Fasc. 2/4, Horizontes Existenciários da Filosofia / Søren Kierkegaard and Philosophy Today, 2008, pp.1127-1140.
Heidegger, M. Being and Time. (J. Macquarrie, & E. Robinson, Trans.) New York: Harper & Row, 1962.
Heidegger, M. Identity and Difference. (J. Stambaugh, Trans.) New York: Harper & Row, 1969.
Heidegger, M. Poetry, Language, Thought. (A. Hofstadter, Trans.) New York: Harper & Row, 1971.
Heidegger, M. The Question Concerning Technology. (W. Lovitt, Trans.) New York: Harper & Row, 1977.
Heidegger, M. Nietzsche: The Will to Power as Art. (D. F. Krell, Ed.) New York: Harper & Row, 1979.
Heidegger, M. Gesamtausgabe (Vol. 43. Nietzsche: Der Wille zue Macht als Kunst.). Frankfurt: V. Klostermann, 1985.
Heidegger, M. Über den Humanismus. Berlin: Klostermann, 2000.
Kakkori, L. & Huttunen, R. The Sartre-Heidegger Controversy and the Concept of Man in Education. Educational Philosophy & Theory, June 2012, Vol. 44 Issue 4, p351-365.
Morin, M. Thinking Things: Heidegger, Sartre, Nancy. Sartre Studies International 2009, Vol. 15 Issue 2, March 2009, p35-53.
Sartre, J. P. Nausea. Paris: Gallimard, 1938.
Sartre, J. P. L’ Existentialisme Est Un Humanisme. London: Cambridge, 1946.
Sartre, J. P. Situations. New York: Brasillier, 1965.
Sartre, J.P. Between Existentialism and Marxism. London: NLB, 1974.
Sze, J. & Ang, M. Whither Hegelian Dialectics in Sartrean Violence? Sartre Studies International, 2009, Vol. 15 Issue 1.
Weimin, M. & Wang, W. (2007). Cogito: From Descartes to Sartre. Frontiers of Philosophy in China, June 2007, Vol. 2, No. p. 247-264.
Wulfing, N. Anxiety in Existential Philosophy and the Question of the Paradox. Existential Analysis: Journal of the Society for Existential Analysis, January 2008, p. 73-80.
