Sartre was a French philosopher that was very popular in the 1940s. He was an existentialist, and a humanist. I reinstate the case I took last week: Does the actions of whistle-blowers make the world a better place?
According to Sartre, Man was "condemned" to be free and he will try to avoid, distort and deny but he will have to face it if he consider himself a moral being. Once the burden of freedom is acknowledged, it would be up to him to give this freedom a meaning.
This argument may have been used as an inspiration to Julian Assange and Company, as well as other whistle blowers. When they see how governments around the world abuse their power by establishing overreaching surveillance programs and conceal all of this from the general public, action becomes necessary to denounce this. Not doing so would make us immoral since we would tacitly support those actions.
However, it is important to notice as well that Sartre states the following: "Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does." It is acknowledged that human beings are not born and "thrown" into this world by choice, and freedom is unavoidable since every individual has a capacity of thought. But also, it is important to keep in mind that our actions, as commendable as they appear, have consequences. Those consequences can be good or bad. We must make choices, but while doing so, we must be careful.
Nice work, Chevalier Rouge. Don't forget to experience Sartre in his own words. The passage you quoted is a passage that often gets taken out of context on sites that collect quotes. Here is the article it comes from, and the paragraph that the quote comes from. As you'll see it's a little different from what you quoted. "We are left alone, without excuse. That is what I mean when I say that man is condemned to be free. Condemned, because he did not create himself, yet is nevertheless at liberty, and from the moment that he is thrown into this world he is responsible for everything he does. The existentialist does not believe in the power of passion. He will never regard a grand passion as a destructive torrent upon which a man is swept into certain actions as by fate, and which, therefore, is an excuse for them. He thinks that man is responsible for his passion. Neither will an existentialist think that a man can find help through some sign being vouchsafed upon earth for his orientation: for he thinks that the man himself interprets the sign as he chooses. He thinks that every man, without any support or help whatever, is condemned at every instant to invent man. As Ponge has written in a very fine article, “Man is the future of man.” That is exactly true." https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/sartre/works/exist/sartre.htm
ReplyDeleteThank you for your help professor. I suspected I was taking the quotation out of context, so I proceeded to examine some bio from Sartre. Now I have a better insight of what he would say about this issue.
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