CONTENTS PREFACE

Transcription

1 CONTENTS PREFACE CHAPTER- I 1. INTRODUCTION 1.1 What is Man Concept of Man in Greek Philosophy Concept of Man in Modern Western Philosophy Concept of Man in Contemporary Western Philosophy Sartre From Childhood to Man Sartre s works Influence of Philosophers on Sartre Concept of Man in Sartre s Philosophy CHAPTER- II 2. Existentialism 2.1 What is Existentialism? The Philosophy of Concrete Man Revolt against Idealistic Thought The Meaning of the Word Existence Background of Existentialism as a Philosophic Movement 2.4. Sources of Existential Theme Existentialism and Mythology Existentialism and History of Philosophy Existentialism and prominent Modern Existentialist Philosophers Theistic and Atheistic Existentialism Conclusion vi

2 CHAPTER- III 3. Nature of Man What is Being? Being-in-itself and Being-for-itself Reasons of Nomenclature as Being-initself and Being- for-itself Difference between Being-in-itself and Being-for-itself vii Consciousness What is Consciousness? The Characteristics of consciousness Consciousness and Being-for-itself Sartre s Analysis of Descartes and Husserl s view of consciousness Nothingness Nothingness, the foundation of negation Nothingness and consciousness Sartre s comment on Hegelian and Heideggerian concept of Nothingness Types of Non-being Origin of Nothingness Immediate Structure of the Being-foritself Temporarility Transcendence Being-for-others Conclusion CHAPTER- IV 4. Man and Freedom What is Freedom? Freedom: The First Condition of Action

3 4.1.3 Freedom and Fundamental Project Freedom and Facticity: The Situation Freedom and Responsibility Freedom and Bad Faith Bad Faith The Attitude of Self Negation Bad faith and Falsehood Patterns of Bad Faith The Faith of Bad Faith Impact of Marxism on Sartre s Freedom Conclusion CHAPTER- V 5. CONCLUSION BIBLIOGRAPHY viii

4 CHAPTER-I I. Introduction 1.1. What is Man? Man itself is an interesting question to himself. Like all other living beings of nature, man has a physical body composed of the basic elements, which has growth and decay. Like that in common with other beings it has the capacity to move and is endowed with sensory organs which enable him to direct his acts by an awareness of external things. Apart from this man has the power of thinking with an inquisitive mind. Man s curiosity has no bounds. From his very birth he wants to know the unknown. Even, he wants to know about himself, as, what he is. But the answer of this question is not the one or the same. Although human being has the same thinking capacity, yet, the way of thinking varies from 1

5 person to person. For this diversification there are different types of interpretations of man. The astronomical view of man looks him as a tiny physical process lost in the vast encompassing spaces of the galactic universe. The biological interpretation of man defines man as a living being and regards him as the last stage of a protracted planetary evolution. The animalistic interpretation of man gives concentration upon his awareness of pleasure and pain. There is the libertarian view of man which gives importance on man s freedom and choice and defines him as the master of his history. There is another important interpretation of man, i.e. religious view of man. It interprets his whole being and describes him in terms of a relation to eternal spirit. Concept of man also occupies a prominent place in philosophical discussion from time to time. Because philosophic thought is concerned with the problem of life and existence. Philosophy, if it is true to itself, has to be a philosophy of life, not of one part of life but of the whole. This life is the life of man. 1 So, concept of man is closely associated with philosophy. From a general view, i.e. from the meaning of dictionary of philosophy man may be taken as the subject of historical process, of developing material and spiritual culture on earth, a biosocial being (representative of the homo sapiens species) generally linked to other forms of life, standing off from them due to his ability to produce instruments of labour, reasoning power and consciousness. 2 2

6 However philosophers are not satisfied with a single interpretation of man. According to their own outlook, different philosophers from different philosophical traditions put forward various interpretations about man from time to time. In Western Philosophy, regarding concept of man, there are three types of discussions in accordance with three stages of development Concept of Man in Greek Philosophy Western Philosophy started from the Greek Thought. The concept of man in the earliest pre-socratic phase of Greek Thought was not distinctly focused. Man was taken simply as a part of the cosmos and attention not given on his peculiar nature as an object of special concern. Thals had asserted that the world was full of Gods. On the other hand, the atomists had maintained that spirit were non-existent and that bodies alone were real. According to Parmenides and his followers all was immobile. Heraclitus, on the other hand, held that all was in flux. Protagoras was interested in man rather than the cosmos and he established man-centered philosophy. Socrates was a most original thinker who changed the whole direction of sophistic movement. He was led to a new view of the soul and a novel theory of human nature as a whole. Man is not a cosmic accident, but a culminating phase of the whole natural order with a peculiar and important function to perform. Plato, the pre-eminent disciple of Socrates, explained that man is an erect, walking animal, but he alone among all animals is a rational animal with the ability to examine, to reflect, to reason and to form mental 3

7 abstraction. According to Aristotle, man is the microcosm and the final goal of nature, distinguished from all other living beings by the possession of reason Concept of Man in Modern Western Philosophy These are different opinions from Modern Western Philosophers. Modern western philosophers also want to explain what is man? from their own stand point. Rane Descartes is called the father of modern Western Philosophy. According to him, a man is a nonphysical thinking substance. Descartes wants to get certain knowledge in philosophy and to get this knowledge, he tried to doubt everything and found the certainty in the proposition Cogito Ergo Sum; i.e. I think, therefore, I exist. So, Descartes deduced his existence from his thought. I am, I exist: this is certain; but for how long? For as long as I think, for it might perhaps happen, if I ceased to think, that I would at the same time cease to be or to exist. 3 Thus, according to Descartes, a man is a non-physical substance. He is a nonphysical mind or soul attached to physical bodies. He is nothing but a thinking substance, a thinking thing. John Locke belongs to modern Western philosophy, is famous for his empiricism and as a staunch defender of free enquiry. Locke states that the human at the time of birth is a tabula rasa, a dark chamber, an empty cabinet, a white paper, void of all characters, without any ideas. According to Locke, it is man who acquired knowledge from experience. To Locke, substances, the ground and causes of qualities and acts are two of kinds. They are body, which is a 4

8 material substances and soul, which is a spiritual substance. According to Locke, concept of freedom has significant application to man s power of action. A man is free so far as he has power to think or not to think, to move or not to move according to the preference or direction of his own mind. Wherever, he has not the power to do or forbear any act according to the determination or thought of the mind, he is not free, though perhaps his act may be voluntary. 4 Immanuel Kant, the propounder of criticism, states that, it is man bearing to think of himself without relying on the authority of the church the Bible or the state to tell him what to do. No generation should be bound by the creeds and customs of bygone ages. According to him man is a citizen of the world. As a being of the senses he is subject to his volition and action to the control of natural necessity, while as a being of reason he is free. According to G.W. Leibniz, in reason man possesses reflection or self-consciousness and knowledge of God, of the universal and of the eternal truths or a priori. Man differs from higher beings in that the majority of his ideas are confused. Under confused ideas, Leibniz includes both sense-perception anyone who has distinct ideas alone, as God has no sense-perception and the feelings which mediate between the former and the perfectly distinct ideas of rational thought. 5 According to Rousseau, primitive man; i.e. the noble savage is superior to civilized man. Rousseau thinks the restraints of civilization as evils. His famous saying is that, man was born free, but everywhere he is in chains. He 5

9 gives freedom to man. But his freedom is not just freedom from God or the Bible, but freedom of the individual means freedom from any kind of restraint. However, according to him, a man is the centre of the universe Concept of Man in Contemporary Western Philosophy Man is taken from a different angle in contemporary Western philosophy. Karl Marx takes man as a Creator of Nature and Culture. To him, man as a species is a natural being, develops in the natural being, and develops in the course of world history. Mankind in its history has transformed the objects of the natural world and has created the entire world of Culture. The vast historical and natural accumulation of the material and cultural objects which mankind has produced are the manifestations or externalizations or embodiments of man s creative powers. 6 Bertrand Russell, in his book, An Outlines of Philosophy, has discussed about the relation between Man and Universe and describes man as the instrument of his own knowledge. Man alone of living things, has shown himself capable of the knowledge required to give him a certain mastery over his environment. 7 Therefore, the dangers to man in the future also will come from man himself, not from nature. In Contemporary Western philosophy, there is an elaborate discussion of concept of man among the Existentialist Philosophers. These 6

10 philosophers emphasize the subjective realities of individual existence, individual freedom and individual choice. Man is no more a logical concept for existentialist, which constituted only by the essential qualities, i.e. rationality and animality, commonly possessed by all men. He is not an object to himself that can be conceptualized. He is essentially a subject. Existentialists think that the existence of man is the highest truth. To them existence of man is more important than essence. Man has no fixed essence. He exists and makes himself develop. He is the result of his own choices. Essence is not destiny. He is what he makes himself to be. Besides this common view about the concept of man, existentialist philosophers have their own individual discussions on man, according to their individual principles. Among them, in my present work I want to discuss concept of man according to Jean-Paul Sartre. Although, there are different prominent existentialist thinkers or forerunners of Sartre, yet modern concept of man or the importance of human being is greatly expressed or focused through the literary and philosophical contributions of Sartre. But, before going to discuss Sartre s concept of man, I want to discuss about Sartre s life history as, who is he? 1.2. Sartre From Childhood to Man Sartre s autobiography, where he has written his childhood, is a biting, aggressive attack on his parents, his grandparents and the bourgeois society 7

11 into which they and he were born. He was born on 1 st June, 1905 in Paris in a middle class family. His father, Jean - Baptise Sartre, was a novel officer and son of a country doctor from Perigord. Sartre s mother, Anne - Marie, was the only daughter and youngest child of Charles Schweitzer, a language teacher from Alsace. Unfortunately, Sartre s father died of tropical fever when he was only one year old child. Young Sartre never knew his father. I left behind me a dead young man, he wrote, who has not had the time to be my father and who, today, could be my son. Was it an evil or a good? I do not know. But I willingly accept the verdict of a prominent psychoanalyst: I have no super - ego. 8 His mother sought solace in her little son and concentrated all her attention on him. But, without profession she was penniless and had no option but to return to her parent s home. When he was twelve years old his mother remarried. The spoiled Polou, as she had nicknamed him, experienced her marriage as a loss and a betrayal. Immediately, he decided that God does not exist though his grandfather and his step father exist. Jean - Paul grew up in a household dominated by his grandfather, Charles Schweitzer. He was allowed no friends of his own age and was kept as a prisoner in the huge sixth - floor apartment on Rue le Goff in the Latin Quarter of Paris. Therefore, Sartre sought the companionship of the books in his grandfather s large library. 8