Sartre rejects the Cartesian split of free will from determined passions
Evidence
These observations can lead us, if we know how to use them, to new discoveries. They will enable us first to bring to light the relations between freedom and what we call the “will.” There is a fairly common tendency to seek to identify free acts with voluntary acts and to restrict the deterministic explanation to the world of the passions. In short the point of view of Descartes. The Cartesian will is free, but there are “passions of the soul.” Again Descartes will attempt a physiological interpretation of these passions. Later there will be an attempt to instate a purely psychological determinism. Intellectualistic analyses such as Proust, for example, attempts with respect to jealousy or snobbery can serve as illustrations for this concept of the passional “mechanism.” In this case it would be necessary to conceive of man as simultaneously free and determined, and the essential problem would be that of the relations between this unconditioned freedom and the determined processes of the psychic life: how will it master the passions, how will it utilize them for its own benefit? A wisdom which comes from ancient times—the wisdom of the Stoics—will teach us to come to terms with these passions so as to master them; in short it will counsel us how to conduct ourselves with regard to affectivity as man does with respect to nature in general when he obeys it in order better to control it. Human reality therefore appears as a free power besieged by an ensemble of determined processes. One will distinguish wholly free acts, determined processes over which the free will has power, and processes which on principle escape the human-will. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1078
Categorization
- DEFINE: Distinguishes Sartre’s unified freedom from the Stoic/Cartesian/Proustian model of free will beset by determined passions.
- XREF: The Stoics’ ‘obey nature to control it’ line echoes Spinoza and anticipates Sartre’s critique of wishing — worth cross-referencing against Beauvoir’s account of the sub-man. — connects to: Sartre’s free transparent consciousness leads him to reject the unconscious and all psychological determinism — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 79; Sartre divides being into free for-itself consciousness and inert in-itself matter — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 496; Sartre’s own bad-faith example presupposes a body-mind dualism his ontology denies — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre: The Riddle of…, 96 (+5 more)
Broader Connections
- Sartre rejected Cartesian dualism by treating material givens as meaning-sedimented facticities
#expands(0.90) — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 63 - Sartre divides being into free for-itself consciousness and inert in-itself matter
#expands(0.85) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 496 - Sartre’s own bad-faith example presupposes a body-mind dualism his ontology denies
#complicates(0.80) — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 96 - Sartre’s absolute consciousness is bounded by other consciousnesses without being determined
#expands(0.80) — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 260 - The Cartesian cogito is the only absolute truth grounding all other knowledge.
#contradicts(0.80) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism Is a Humanism, 21 - Sartre’s concepts change meaning across Being and Nothingness due to his Cartesian method
#complicates(0.75) — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 212