Abstract

This thesis proposes a somewhat different approach to Sartrean criticism: it will grant Sartre everything he claims about reality; the division of the pour-soi and the en-soi; that consciousness is a translucent nothingness; and that every conscious act is free. It will then attempt to determine whether or not the various ontological structures that Sartre advocates are consistent with each other. If they are, then Sartre can validly claim that man is totally free; if not, then he cannot make that claim. ;For Sartre, an action is simply an act of the pour-soi in which the full objectivity of the en-soi is negated. An objective state of affairs cannot produce a negation of itself, and since the essence of consciousness is negation of an intended object other than consciousness, the casual determinism operative in the en-soi must be usurped in the action of the pour-soi. All acts must be totally free. What sort of acts? Sartre indicates we are free agents acting in the everyday world. This being the case, the body is instrumental in performing an act. ;The body as known by the Other is a passive instrument occupying abstract geometric space. The body-as-it-is-for-me is not a passive instrument; it is in fact at one with the pour-soi. The pour-soi is an instrument-for-itself co-present with the objects of the world which represent its possibilities. Our consciousness is not a non-spatial substance lodged within a spatial body. The lived body and the pour-soi are one and the same entity. ;Sartre continually contrasts our conscious life as lived, with our conscious life as observed by the Other. The Other, by attempting to portray us as an "object" holds a false notion of our subjectivity--we are not purely en-soi. Does the same contrast hold between our lived body and our "objective" body? Is the body-as-it-is-for-me true, and the body as a purely physical entity false? Now the en-soi is in part responsible for the facticity in things; otherwise we would, as Sartre claims, be strapped with an idealist position in which the "table would disappear as table." The body must have an element of facticity. It is obvious that Sartre wavers between two tacit notions of the body: the body as lived, and the body as "...that which I nihilate. It is the in-itself which is surpassed by the nihilating for-itself." ;It seems that we are confronted with a dualism made manifest by the ontology of the en-soi and the pour-soi in which the structure of either, if true, cannot allow for the existence of the other. Some authors have claimed that this is a paradox, but Sartre does not claim that there are two valid but conflicting truths in his ontology. He does not recognize that there is an irreconcilability between the notion of a lived body and body as en-soi; he simply claims that the body as en-soi is a bogus reality when he compares it with the body-as-lived. As a result, we have the following: Sartre argues for the ontological freedom of consciousness; consciousness as pour-soi is placed within the concrete world by making the pour-soi and body one ; the body, a concrete object among other concrete objects is nevertheless allowed to act as pour-soi as well; it acts and acts freely; and the objects of the concrete world, including the body as facticity are determined by the laws of physical nature. The preceding elements are incompatible. If Sartre had been content to merely describe our experience of the body-as-it-is-for-me there would have been no difficulty. Sartre, however, states that we are free to act, and by act he means free to choose whether we will plunge our pen into the inkwell or not. He must provide us with a proper ontology to allow the preceding, but he does not do so.