时间性·介入·政治有效性——萨特与加缪的一场世纪争论的启示

萨特和加缪是上世纪法国的两位著名文学家和思想家,同为二战时期地下抵抗运动的生死战友,也是惺惺相惜的文学同道。虽然他们有时同被归属于存在主义阵营,但相互之间仍然存在着巨大的     

Swimming and Skiing: Two Modes of Existential Consciousness

The philosophical argument between Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus can be summarised in their conflicting accounts of skiing and swimming. For Sartre skiing exemplifies the struggle of existence and the angst of the alienated ego. For Camus, swimming represents some glimmering of collective harmony, the possibility of transcendence. Sartre's thinking is inflected by quantum theory and the ‘steady state’, whereas Camus is more of a wave theorist, with a lingering nostalgia for the ‘primeval atom’ and a fondness for peak experiences. Put together their separate ways of analysing consciousness suggest a two-phase account of cognition.     

Sartre and the Doctors

Abstract

This paper considers how the experience of illness fits within Sartre’s account of embodiment in Being and Nothingness. Sartre makes some remarks about illness, but does not develop a full account. I show that the anti‐naturalistic ontological framework in which Sartre’s discussion of the body is placed, which opposes my ‘being‐for‐Others’ to my ‘being‐for‐myself’, imposes a revisionary account of illness, and how Sartre’s model of interpersonal relations affects his view of doctors, and their role in the illness experience. I note and discuss the connection Sartre draws between illness and bad faith. I also point out that recent phenomenologically inspired criticisms of the medical establishment that draw on Sartre’s account of the body are limited by their failure to engage with Sartre’s ontology.     

The Interface Between Sartre’s Theory of Emotions and Depersonalization/Derealization

Human beings are emotional beings and emotions are one’s way of relating to the world. Sartre’s Emotions, An Outline of a Theory lies on the borderline between psychology and philosophy. In this paper I will attempt to present the interface of Sartre’s philosophical theory of emotions with the signs and symptoms of depersonalization/derealization syndrome as presented in the psychiatric/psychological literature. I will begin by concisely situating Sartre’s concept of emotions within the Sartrean doctrine of existentialism, and follow with a brief summary of Bernard Frechtman’s translation of Sartre’s “The Emotions, An Outline of a Theory”. I will focus on the Introduction and Chapter Three, where Sartre presents the findings of his phenomenological study that purport to reveal the “essence” of emotions. Next, I will introduce the diagnostic components of the depersonalization/derealization syndrome which is a subcategory of dissociative disorders as defined in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th edition (2013) as well as criteria of International Classification of Diseases—10th edition (1992) and highlight the similarities with Sartre’s characterization of emotional behavior. Finally, I will attempt a brief comparison between Sartre’s theory of emotions and depersonalization/derealization syndrome using literary and philosophical critiques of Sartre’s “Emotions” and theoretical as well as research papers from the psychiatric literature. The focus will be on the similarities and incongruities between Sartre’s characterization of emotions and psychiatric diagnoses of depersonalization/derealization syndrome.     

Vattimo’s Renunciation of Violence

For Gianni Vattimo, the renunciation of violence is the starting point for constructing a post foundational politics. So far, criticism of Vattimo’s argument has focused on his larger commitment to metaphysical nihilism and whether the renunciation of violence is a thicker principle than his post foundational philosophy can support. I argue that Vattimo’s renunciation of violence can also be criticized for two other reasons. First, Vattimo attempts to distinguish between acceptable and unacceptable uses of violence through an under developed idea of self-defense. Second, despite his attention to the political and philosophical impact of mass communications technology, Vattimo ignores emerging technological challenges to our understanding of violence. Nonetheless, I argue that Vattimo’s renunciation can still serve as a useful starting point for contemporary political thinking. What Vattimo’s logic shows is that we can enhance the moral standing of democracy by decisively detaching its practices and institutions from historical artifacts of political violence.     

Camus’s Absurd and the Argument against Suicide

There are striking differences between Camus’s early and late philosophical essays, but Camus often claimed that his works were part of one consistent project. This paper argues that, although Camus had a significant change in his views on the consequences of the absurd, throughout his life he also had a common concern with the relation of the absurd to morality. Showing this requires us to clarify what Camus meant by the “absurd,” and identify at least three different uses of the term by Camus: lacking a purpose; lacking an explanation; and a tension between purpose and purposelessness. Clarifying the meaning of “absurd” allows one to show that Camus’s late argument against suicide, often dismissed as inadequate, is valid. This also illustrates the consistency of his concerns over time.

     

Camus on Authenticity in Political Violence

Politically motivated attacks against civilians are typically evaluated by focusing on objective factors, such as the loss of innocent life, the justness of a rebel organization's political vision, and whether the attacks are successful in advancing that vision. Albert Camus' philosophy on rebellion provides an alternative approach that focuses on subject experience of the rebel. The rebel experiences a genuine moral dilemma created by the passionate desire to fight injustice and the feeling of universal solidarity that encompasses even those who the rebel believes it is necessary to kill. From this standpoint, any action the rebel takes is immoral. Camus thus makes authenticity the focus of his analysis. Authentic rebels continue to value solidarity, which creates a limit on how violence can be used in rebellion. Drawing from The Rebel and The Just Assassins, this paper develops several criteria for immoral but authentic acts of political violence, which are then applied to suicide bomb attacks directed against civilians.     

Self-awareness and self-deception: a Sartrean perspective

In spite of the fact that many find Jean-Paul Sartre’s account of la mauvaise foi puzzling, unclear and troublesome, he remains a recurring figure in the debate about self-deception. Indeed, Sartre’s exposition of self-deception is as puzzling as it is original. The primary task of my paper will be to expose why this is the case and to thereby correct a recurrent misunderstanding of Sartre’s theory of consciousness. In the end, will we see that Sartre offers the following theory: self-deception is to be accounted for by assuming that there are intrinsically self-deceptive epistemic states. The latter are self-deceptive in so far as they claim certainty while nevertheless being accompanied by an inbuilt and incorruptible awareness of being unwarranted. For Sartre, developing this rather peculiar account of self-deception, is, as we will see, not primarily intended as an end in itself. Rather, Sartre thereby hopes to illuminate the nature of self-awareness as (i.) epistemically super-secure, (ii.) pre-reflexive, (iii.) non-positional and “embryonic” knowledge that (iv.) does not necessitate but can still ground epistemically super-secure reflexive knowledge, and (v.) that can replace Freud’s notion of unconscious knowledge. As an account of self-deception, Sartre’s suggestion, however, comes at a high price. Apart from the presuppositions Sartre makes in the theory of consciousness and intentionality, his account is deflationist with regard to local cases of self-deception.     

To the Nothingnesses Themselves: Husserl’s Influence on Sartre’s Notion of Nothingness

In this article I argue that Sartre’s notions of nothingness and “negatity” are not, as he presents it, primarily reactions to Hegel and Heidegger. Instead, they are a reaction to an ongoing struggle with Husserl’s notion of intentionality and related notions. I do this by comparing the criticism aimed at Husserl in Sartre’s Being and Nothingness to that presented in his earlier work, The Imagination, where he discusses Husserl more elaborately. Furthermore, I compare his criticism to Husserl’s own criticism of the “doctrine of immanent objects”, in order to show that Sartre’s notion of nothingness is a continuation of Husserl’s criticism, and that he turns Husserl’s own arguments against himself.     

The concept of violence in the work of Hannah Arendt

Arendt claimed that violence is not part of the political because it is instrumental. Her position has generated a vast corpus of scholarship, most of which falls into the context of the realist-liberal divide. Taking these discussions as a starting point, this essay engages with violence in Arendt’s work from a different perspective. Its interest lies not in Arendt’s theory of violence in the world, but in the function that violence performed in her work, namely, in the constitutive role of violence in her thought. It argues that the concept of violence allowed Arendt to make important distinctions serving to catalyze the categories that constitute her political philosophy and, in particular, the categories of public and private. More specifically, it claims that the concept of violence in Arendt’s work is the a priori background against which both the public and private realms should be defined.     

Sartre and Spinoza on the nature of mind

What surfaces first when one examines the philosophy of mind of Sartre and Spinoza are the differences between them. For Spinoza a human mind is a mode of the divine mind. That view is a far cry from Sartre’s view of human consciousness as a desire never achieved: the desire to be god, to be the foundation of one’s own existence. How could two philosophers, one a determinist and the other who grounds human freedom in the nature of consciousness itself, be seen as having any commonalities worth exploring? How could the noted user of the deductive method and one of the most important phenomenologists of the twentieth century share any philosophical ground at all? I will argue in this paper that despite the very real differences between their two philosophies, there are striking similarities between Sartre’s view of consciousness and Spinoza’s view of the mind. They become apparent when one examines each one’s analysis of the nature of mind and its relationship to itself, the body, and the world. Both are heir to a kind of Aristotelian naturalism. This commonality between them derives from their mutual rejection of Descartes’ substance dualism. I first explore the consequences of that rejection on how each one conceives of the relationship between the mind and its objects. Next I examine their view of the mind’s relation to itself and finally I look at how each one understood the mind’s relationship to the body and the world. The examination of their two views reveals how much they anticipate and support theories of mind defended by contemporary analytic philosophers of mind.     

Wings of desire: Reflections on sexual desire,identity and freedom

The aim of this paper is to give a critical discussion of Sartre’s concept of sexual desire and its relation to self-identity and freedom. Why Sartre? Sartre is one of very few philosophers who offers a systematic account of sexual desire. He has influenced eminent philosophical concepts of sexual desire held by, for instance, de Beauvoir, Lacan, Foucault, Levinas, Irigaray and Butler, but not much is written about his own notion of sexual desire. This alone is reason to explore Sartre’s view. What makes his view of sexual desire particularly interesting is that it is framed by his theory of freedom. Sartre offers the original, radical notion that freedom is absolute. Because consciousness is never self-identical, he argues, human identity is not fixed. Instead, we are consequently nothing else but what we keep desiring to make of ourselves. He concludes that we are always free to choose our drives and desires, even what seem to be our most enslaving, natural sexual instincts. The question raised in this article, however, concerns what the nature of sexual desire is and how free we really are to choose our sexual desires. I first contextualise Sartre’s view of sexual desire within his notion of desire in general and its relation to instinct, drive, consciousness, freedom and identity. Then, I give a detailed discussion of his analysis of sexual desire, its relation to freedom, and, what Sartre calls its failures. Finally, I discuss a critique of, and alternative to, Sartre’s theory of sexual desire from the perspective of my own notion of heteronomous and autonomous desire and freedom.     

Sartre,The Condemned of Altona and the Critique of Dialectical Reason-to-come: Insanity or Bad Faith Running Away with Itself?

What for Sartre happens when bad faith goes so deep that one is no longer master of it? In The Condemned of Altona, Franz Gerlach, after an initial show of resistance, joins the Nazi cause and tortures prisoners of war in his charge. Fleeing home from Russia at the war’s end, he sequesters himself in the attic of the family mansion and attempts to absorb the guilt of the twentieth century by frantically arguing his case before a tribunal of scuttling crabs.

What does Sartre’s portrayal of hallucination tell us about the human condition and is it the result of insanity? As a harbinger for the Critique of Dialectical Reason (CDR), Sartre’s ontology has shifted away from an emphasis on human isolation and absolute freedom to a concern with how behaviour, even of an irrational kind, is a profound reflection of one’s place in a social hierarchy. Also a reflection of a CDR-type approach, Sartre’s views change regarding the status of truth and interpersonal relations. For while someone like Nausea’s Roquentin exhibits a redemptive value through introspection, fantasy and private experience, Franz’s behaviour points to a repeated failure to deal with social reality and the associated attempt to redeem his own existence by acting authentically towards others.     

Alienation and Therapy in Existentialism: A Dual Model of Recognition

Many philosopers and social theorists pursue the notion that recognition is a fruitful framework for engaging with a social analysis of moral and political life, and – more critically – that the failure of recognition is a feature of alienation. This article argues that the thrust of these arguments can be properly attuned by deploying a dual model of recognition that draws especially on Sartre’s work. Where there is struggle for recognition between subjects, the object of struggle is not the recognition of identity, or even of difference, but the recognition of non-identity. The claim will be that this practical attitude of recognition designates inter-subjective attitudes that can institute normative practices whereby agents’ claims are motivated by the epistemic virtue of non-identity.     

Erich Fromm’s concept of reactive violence

Abstract

This paper explores the current relevance of Fromm’s concept of reactive violence for understanding particular patients and for generating hypotheses about the world we live in. In his discussion of reactive violence, Fromm gives us a nuanced approach to forms of aggression that can be employed in the service of life. According to Fromm, the aim of reactive violence is preservation, not destruction. It is rooted in fear and, he believes, is the most frequent form of violence. This paper traces the evolution of Fromm’s concept of reactive violence, and considers how it might apply to today’s social and political challenges.     

Analysing Gaze in Terms of Subjective and Objective Interpretation: Sartre and Lacan

Considering the Hegelian master–slave dichotomy over the exchange of the gaze, the paper focuses on the issue of vision and visibility, reinterpreted in Sartre’s phenomenological discussions in different ways. The Hegelian emphasis on recognition finds reflection in the treatment of vision as force expressed through visibility in Sartre and as an issue of self recognition in Lacan. Drawing the Hegelian tag with a comparative argument between Sartre and Lacan, the paper focuses on the different perspectives over the concept of gaze or look. It argues that even sharing the same Hegelian legacy regarding the notion of gaze and recognition Sartre and Lacan differs to a considerable extent in their treatment of the impact of gaze. While emphasising more on the phenomenological-existential analysis of the issue of individual recognition Sartre presents gaze as a strong alienating force released from another powerful subject affecting the intersubjective power relation, Lacan, stands on a non-reciprocal relation between seeing and seen by making a difference between the eyes of the subject that looks at and the gaze which is on the side of the object without having any capacity to become a subject. The paper concentrates on these issues over a broader argument on Sartre’s concept of intersubjective gaze.     

Conscious inhibitions: Freud,anti-Semitism,and Hobbesian imagination

This work aims to portray the effects of Freud’s anxiety about anti-Semitic violence on his political theory and metapsychology. Taking as its entry point Freud’s reorientation of anti-Semitism as aggressive action, I argue that Freud’s fear of the violent mob can be located in three interconnected dimensions of his work, all deeply informed by Hobbesian imagination. First, Freud accepted a Hobbesian vision of social antagonism into his political theory; second, he formulated a deeper, more efficient defence mechanism against mob violence with his notion of psychical guilt; third, Freud’s fears penetrated his metapsychology. Suffering from anti-Semitism, Freud was not only quick to accept a Hobbesian perspective – he also reconstructed it to a degree that radically changed its meaning. Freud’s third and most pervasive manoeuvre destabilized one of Hobbes’s fundamental theoretical tenets by suggesting that the Hobbesian State of Nature is inherently a non-human reality.     

Nonidentity,Negative Experience and the Pre‐Reflective Cogito

This paper contributes to the current academic debate on the nature of embodied, intentional consciousness, specifically the attempt to inaugurate a rapprochement between phenomenological existentialism and critical theory. This is accomplished through a critical comparison of the concepts of negative experience and nonidentity in Theodor Adorno's negative dialectics and Jean‐Paul Sartre's early phenomenology. By comparing how each engages with Hegel, I suggest that Sartre offers a broad, anthropological account of negative experience and nonidentity helpful to critical theorists but that there remains a critical deficit which Adorno's more restricted—and political—sense of nonidentity remedies. Sartre's anthropological portrayal of ‘persistent negation’ worries Adorno but I suggest that it can be understood as a pragmatic presupposition for problem‐solving rather than as a transcendental condition of experience.