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    An Existentialist Ethics PDF

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    An Existentialist Ethics PDF

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    An Existentialist Ethics PDF

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    Paula Bautista

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    © All Rights Reserved
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    of 5

    Introduction to an Existentialist Ethics

    Jean Paul Sartre (1905-1980)


    responsible for philosophical formulation of Existentialism
    popularized existentialism through plays, novels, and literary essays
    human lives in anguish (suffering, torment) not because life is terrible but we are condemned to be
    free. We are thrown into existence, become aware of ourselves and have to make choices (even
    deciding not to choose, is a choice)

    EXISTENTIALISM
    European Philosophy that begin in the mid19th and 20th century
    popular after the horrific years of World War II, when many began doubt the traditional idea of a
    moral divine being based on the terrifying violence committed during the war

    KEY IDEAS​:
    THERE IS NO DESIGN FOR A HUMAN BEING
    No way we have to be, no God to create a purpose for us, no human nature that fixes how we should
    live in
    existentialism is a humanism (attaching prime importance to human rather than divine being)
    example: You can work even if you quit school. You can get married even if you are just 18 or at 50.
    (There is no absolute formula on how to live your life)

    EXISTENCE PRECEDES ESSENCE


    Man first exists, encounters himself, surges in the world and defines himself afterwards
    we are born without any kind of collective purpose
    we are born independent individuals rather than labels. stereotypes that society or family decide to put
    on us
    Our purpose or essence as Sartre describe is not what others place on us but instead we create it
    through our own consciousness

    Misconception: people can do whatever they want or be whoever they want


    Truth: We may believe we are certain essence; we are in fact defined by our own actions, and are
    responsible for them
    Example: If a person believes they are kind but acts cruelly (Existentialist define that person by their act,
    as cruel)

    EXISTENTIALISM is not synonymous with ATHEISM


    many existentialists are atheists but some are theists (believe in God) like Kierkegaard
    For theists: God may exist – but instilling the world, cosmos or you a meaning is not his job.

    ABSURD​ – technical term “​the search for answers in the answerless world”
    we are born into a world where actions lack any coherent purpose
    the world wasn’t created for a reason and doesn’t exist for a reason. If there is no reason, there are
    also no ABSOLUTES to abide by: no cosmic justice, fairness, order, rules.
    UNIVERSALITY
    - The quality of involving or being shared by all people in a particular group or world.
    - In creating the man we want to be, there is not a single one of our acts which does not at the same time
    create an image of man as we think we ought to be.
    - Our responsibility is much greater than we might have supposed, because it involves all mankind.

    ANGUISH
    -​ the man who involves himself and who realizes that he is not only the person he chooses to be, but also
    a lawmaker who is, at the same time, choosing all mankind as well as himself, can not help escape the
    feeling of his total and deep responsibility

    Example:
    You did something that you didn’t expect that people will react and hope that they don’t. Just like a thief
    they don’t want to be like that but there is an anxiety that they have no other choice but to do it.

    -There is no escaping this disturbing thought except by a kind of double-dealing. A man who lies and
    makes excuses for himself by saying “not everybody does that,” is someone with an uneasy conscience,
    because the act of lying implies that a universal value is conferred upon the lie.

    Example:
    when a military officer takes the responsibility for an attack and sends a certain number of men to death,
    he chooses to do so, and in the main he alone makes the choice. Doubtless, orders come from above, but
    they are too broad; he interprets them, and on this interpretation depend the lives of ten or fourteen or
    twenty men. In making a decision he can not help having a certain anguish. All leaders know this anguish.
    That doesn’t keep them from acting; on the contrary, it is the very condition of their action. For it implies
    that they envisage a number of possibilities, and when they choose one, they realize that it has value only
    because it is chosen.

    -When we speak of forlornness, we mean only that God does not exist and that we have to face all the
    consequences of this. The existentialist is strongly opposed to a certain kind of secular ethics which would
    like to abolish God with the least possible expense. About 1880, some French teachers tried to set up a
    secular ethics which went something like this: God is a useless and costly hypothesis; we are discarding
    it; but, meanwhile, in order for there to be an ethics, a society, a civilization, it is essential that certain
    values be taken seriously and that they be considered as having an a priori.
    -It must be obligatory, a priori, to be honest, not to lie, not to beat your wife, to have children
    -No fixed and given human nature, no determination that decides us for how we’re going to choose.

    Example:
    Life is to protect nature, we have educate our children, we should know the truth. Those may be true, but
    we have to make true. It is not like that we have to choose. Not because we already have the answer it is
    the answer.
    there is no determinism, man is free, man is freedom. We choose what we want to be.
    NO OMENS
    For Jean Sartre, he believes that:
    -There are no omens which means there are no signs by which to decide.
    The existentialist does not think that man is going to help himself by finding in the world some omen by
    which to orient himself. Because he thinks that man will interpret the omen to suit himself. Therefore, he
    thinks that man, with no support and no aid, is condemned every moment to invent man.
    -We are responsible for ourselves--we are the sole authority of our lives. We cannot give up this
    responsibility except thought self-deception or bad faith.
    Example:
    We cannot blame our parents or teachers or friends for their influence. For, if they have influenced us, it
    is because we have allowed them to do so.
    The feeling is formed by the acts one performs;
    So, "I can not refer to it in order to act upon it. Which means that I can neither seek within myself the true
    condition which will impel me to act, nor apply to a system of ethics for concepts which will permit me to
    act. "

    Further Charges
    According to Sartre, Existentialists are charged with immuring man in his individual subjectivity​ -
    For Sartre, the absolute truth where we base our decisions and actions came from the man himself. Thus,
    stresses man’s freedom and personal responsibility. Which rises to

    3 objections:
    1. Existentialists are told ​“So you’re able to do anything! No matter what!”
    - They are referring to the arbitrariness of choice
    - but according to Sartre, when we are involved in situations, we cannot decide ​a priori​ what is should be
    done.

    Example. Case of the student who came to see Sartre who was left with a choice whether to remain with
    his mother or to sacrifice himself and join in England to fight against a war and have the possibility to
    save millions of people.
    Man makes himself. He makes himself by the choice of his morality, and he cannot but choose a
    morality, such is the pressure of circumstances upon him.
    It is therefore absurd to charge existentialist thinkers with arbitrariness of their choice.
    2. ​“But why may not he choose himself dishonestly?”
    - Here, they are addressing on the fact that once an existentialist man have already made a configuration
    sanely and sincerely, it is impossible for him to prefer another configuration. Thus we’re unable in a way
    to pass judgment on others.
    - Nevertheless, one can still pass judgment. First, one can judge that certain choices are based on error and
    others on truth. If we have defined man’s situation as a free choice, with no excuses, every man who takes
    refuge behind the excuse of his passions, every man who sets up a determinism, is a dishonest man.
    Existentialists do not believe in the power of passion
    - According to Sartre, it is what we do that makes a determinism, deterministic. Thus, we are
    responsible for our passion.
    Therefore, we cannot make our passion as an excuse to choose to do something that is morally
    unethical
    We affirm our stance as the stance as the stance that not only we should take but any responsible person
    or everybody should take.
    - Thus, our freedom depends on the freedom of others and that the freedom of others depends on ours.

    3. ​“Fundamentally, values aren’t serious, since you choose them.”


    - ​“To that I can only say that I am very sorry that it should be so; but if I have excluded God the Father,
    there must be somebody to invent values.”
    - But, according to Sartre, even if there is a being that invents the values, it is still we who will make
    meaning to those values. Therefore life is nothing until it is lived; but it is yours to make sense of, and the
    value of it is nothing else but the sense that you choose.

    According to Sartre, “You can see from these few reflections that nothing could be more unjust
    than the objections people raise against us. Existentialism is nothing else but an attempt to draw the
    full conclusions from a consistently atheistic position.”
    Existentialism is not atheist in the sense that it would exhaust itself in demonstrations of the
    non-existence of God. It declares, rather, that even if God existed that would make no difference
    from its point of view.
    The real problem is not that of His existence; what man needs is to find himself again and to
    understand that nothing can save him from himself, not even a valid proof of the existence of God.
    AN EXISTENTIALIST ETHICS
    JEAN-PAUL SARTRE 

    GROUP 7

    MEMBERS:
    SANTIAGO, RAISSA MARIE
    SERRADO, MILLENA MAE
    TABINAS, MARY ANGEL
    TERRANO,KYLA FEN
    VENTURA,ISABELLA PATRICE

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