Abstract
In this chapter, we will continue our exploration of Sartre’s early thought, this time focusing on his concepts of ‘freedom’ and ‘facticity’, which build upon his broader ideas around selfhood. Importantly, for Sartre, ‘freedom’ is understood in an ontological rather than practical sense. It does not deny what he calls ‘facticity’ – namely, the ways in which the individual is situated within the world in particular ways. Towards the end of the chapter, I will work through these ideas in relation to classroom experiences – firstly, as a way to question conventional accounts of teaching and the problematic dualisms that this so often entails, and secondly, as a way to rethink one’s responses in the classroom as fundamentally shaping what is brought to light therein.
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Notes
- 1.
Roquentin is a neurotic character – by most standards, he could be said to be suffering from a mental illness. But he nevertheless serves as a conduit for some of Sartre’s main ideas – particularly in relation to the ‘nauseating’ experiences of freedom and facticity. Although histrionic, he helps make accessible the more taxing of Sartre’s philosophical writings.
- 2.
Sartre has been accused on conflating ontology with metaphysics, particularly in relation to his separation of the two forms of being, most notably perhaps by Heidegger. One tension relates to Sartre’s usage of the term ‘existent’ implies that it does not exist independently of consciousness, but neither is it a ‘representation’ that exists in consciousness. There are also tensions in Sartre that come from his attempts to combine ontology and phenomenology. His ontological approach reduces Being to a set of categories but his conceptual framework is somewhat insufficient to explain what it purports to describe. For Merleau-Ponty in particular, the in-itself/for-itself distinction does not translate into conscious experience but, as Whitford (1979) points out, this is because Merleau-Ponty erroneously saw the ‘for-itself’ as completely interchangeable with ‘consciousness’ and ‘subject’. Such terms do not fully capture the insubstantiality of the for-itself since they are loaded with meaning.
- 3.
In dividing being-in-itself and being-for-itself, Sartre is often accused of maintaining the ‘embarrassing dualisms’ that the phenomenologists wished to undermine. Merleau-Ponty argued that Sartre’s ideas very much followed the rationalist discourse of Descartes, maintaining the problematic subject/object dualism. See Stewart (1998) and Whitford (1979) for a more in-depth discussion on this.
- 4.
This fundamental groundlessness is not shared by other thinkers (Catalano, 1985, 2010). Descartes seemed to understand this contingency on one level, but by using this as a way to prove the existence of God, he therefore offers a justification for existence. Heidegger also tries to justify our existence (according to Sartre) by claiming that in realising this contingency, one can learn to live more authentically. Sartre was on quest to find an ontology congruent with an atheistic worldview, however, based on the idea that there is fundamentally no ‘reason’ for our existence outside of our own.
- 5.
This is not to say, however, that we could ever be totally dissociated from our past - it carries weight in the present, as something that affects us and that we still hold ourselves responsible for. In spite of this, the past can only be called ‘the past’ if there is some disconnect between it and now. Of course, this is not to deny that things have happened, and the only certainty which we can know ourselves is with regards to how we once were or how we once behaved. But even this is open to re-interpretation. The past is thus best thought of as facticity, one that provides the context in which consciousness exists, and whilst it ‘haunts’ us, it can nevertheless be transcended.
- 6.
Sartre’s discussion of meaning involves several other considerations as well, of things that simply do not make sense without consciousness – the distinction of different qualities and quantities in particular things, the world as organised in terms of possibility and potentiality, meaning-making through our conventional usage of different things, echoing Heidegger’s distinction between ‘ready-at-hand’ and ‘present-to-hand’.
- 7.
However, he is sometimes accused of conflating the two (e.g. Detmer, 2005).
- 8.
Sartre is sometimes criticised for not taking into account the intersubjective element of meaning-making in the world, or the fact that the fundamental project can involve ‘common goals’ (something he later considers in his attempts to reconcile existentialism with Marxism) (Stewart, 1998; Whitford, 1979). Merleau-Ponty, for example, argues that whilst Sartre allows for a plurality of consciousness, the fundamental project is nevertheless formulated on an individual basis, and this in turn implies that the meaning we apply to the world is ‘subjective’ rather than ‘intersubjective’. Whilst there are merits to this criticism, thinking of the world and the formulation of our fundamental projects in terms of intersubjectivity does not radically alter Sartre’s position. As explored in Chaps. 7 and 8, whilst we always exist in relation with the Other, we also respond to this relation as individuals.
- 9.
Towards the end of the chapter of Freedom and Responsibility, Sartre even takes the somewhat extreme stance that we are all responsible for wars, even if we ourselves were not the perpetrators. What he means is that we are responsible for our attitudes towards war, and for the actions we take in light of these. Sartre revises this position in his later works, differentiating between the innocent victim and the implicated agent (See, for example, Sartre, 1992). Again, the emphasis here is on an ontological rather than ‘practical’ or ‘political’ sense of responsibility.
- 10.
- 11.
Some have remarked that Sartre’s attempts to combine both theories marked the end of existentialism. Others see this later period as a continuation and enrichment of his previous writings. For a collection of short essays and interviews on this topic, see Sartre (2008a). These later texts will not be considered in depth here. Perhaps if we consider the context in which Sartre and his literary counterparts were writing, however, one can be more forgiving of the somewhat ‘extreme’ account of freedom and responsibility in his earlier works.
- 12.
- 13.
Camus was faced with a similar dilemma in relation to the Algerian war for independence. Whilst he agreed with the collective end of the independence movement (although not with their violent means), he nevertheless stated that: ‘My mother could be on one of those trams (that is bombed). If that is justice, I prefer my mother’. This also reveals two kinds of (equally justifiable) ethical positions (Camus, as cited in Brady, 2017).
- 14.
The question of whether we should take such an anthropocentric view of the world exists in post-humanist thought. I am not sure if Sartre would necessarily disagree with these positions. Firstly, Sartre’s focus is on the individual and not ‘collective’ sense of being human. For instance, he argues that it is absurd for us all as individuals to take credit for the so-called ‘human’ achievements, as though our membership to the same ‘species’ allows us to do so. Secondly, if he sees that the fundamental aspect of humankind is consciousness, then any being we consider to be sentient might also be included in this argument. There are, however, many interpretations of what consciousness counts as that call into question the anthropocentrism at the heart of Sartre’s understanding.
- 15.
Perhaps what self-evaluation policy seems to be getting at, however, is a form of honesty rather than objectivity. Indeed, if we do not ask teachers to be evidence-based, how can we trust that their accounts are genuine? We will return to this question in Part III.
- 16.
As we will explore in Chap. 9, however, ‘phronesis’ itself is often understood as a technique or a skill in accountability literature.
- 17.
Of course, Sartre was not a poststructuralist and thus, I am extending his argument here in a way that he himself might not have. However, I will return to Sartre’s connection with poststructuralism in Chap. 8.
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Brady, A.M. (2022). Freedom and Facticity in the Classroom. In: Being a Teacher. Contemporary Philosophies and Theories in Education, vol 19. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-7323-9_5
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