Existentialism and Existential Isms

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International Phenomenological Society

Existentialism and ExistentialismsAuthor(s): Mikel DufrenneSource: Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. 26, No. 1 (Sep., 1965), pp. 51-62Published by: International Phenomenological SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2105468

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EXISTENTIALISMAND EXISTENTIALISMS

Instead of Existentialism,we should speak of Existentialisms. f we

were to go into the historyof contemporary hilosophy,I might showthat there is a perpetualinternal fight among the group of philoso-pherswho are giventhe label of Existentialists,and, what is more, thatnone of themclaimsto be an Existentialist:or instance,Hoidegger ays

he cares only for ontology, and he disavows Sartre;Sartre disavows

himselfwhen proclaiminghimselfa Marxist n his last book; Sartreand

Merleau-Ponty,who were, as long as Merleau-Pontyived, good friends,

disagreedon philosophicalas well as political issues. Nevertheless,mycontention s that to speak of Existentialismmeans something,but that

everyone of the so-calledExistentialistsreads now his own path in his

own direction.

I. The main aspectsof Existentialism

Existentialismhad a definitemeaningtwenty years ago, in the time

of distress, when, through war and torture, freedom and civilization

were at stake. In order to show what it meant, I will refer mostly to

Sartre, he first Sartre,although he secondSartre,as we will see, is notso different.But we must think of it as a genuineand difficultphilos-ophy, and not merelyas an attitudesuggestedby an historicalsituation,nor as a collectionof literary hemes.As a matterof fact, I would like

to emphasizethat many pseudo-existentialisthemes do not necessarily

belong to Existentialism.Such are the themesof the absurd, of nausea,

anxiety,of the exaltationof freedomfor freedom'ssake. Many of these

themeshave been popularizedby Camus; t is only too bad that Camus

is not a philosopher,nor even a very profoundthinker.Many of thesethemeshave also been developedby Sartre;but one shouldkeep in mind

that Sartredoes not approveof them: in his first works, when he dis-

covers freedomas the essenceof man, he wantsto show in whichtraps

reflectionaboutfreedommayfall, andwhichbad uses of freedomaction

may make. If Roquentin s nauseated, f Mathieu s hauntedby anxiety.

it is because they refuse to committhemselves.by assuming heir free-

dom; if hell is the others, it is becausewe expect from the otherswhat

they cannot give us. If Goetz is torn betweenthe Devil and the good

Lord, it is as long as he hesitatesto be a man amongmen. If negative

51



52 PHILOSOPHYNDPHENOMENOLOGICALESEARCH

attitudesmay be a way of freeing thought from some prejudicesandalso of expressing he fact that the emergence of consciousness s un-predictableand unjustified,because the for-itself is not its own funda-ment, those attitudesare neverthe last word of existentialist thics.Now

this ethics is groundedon a philosophy,and we mustexaminesomemainnotionsof this philosophy.

a) Existentialismsuggests existence. Existence is traditionally,withessence, a category of being. So Existentialism s put forward as aphilosophyof being, an ontology,distinguishingtself fromthe more shy(or more reasonable)philosophieswhich deal only with knowledge orlanguage.It returns o the Aristotelianconception hat the eternalobjectof philosophicalresearch s Being qua Being. It also rediscovers n its

own way, according o Sartre, he famousontologicalproof:the idea thatessence entails existence,or that an existent can only have a being -

nature or essence - on the conditionthat it has being, that it be. Soexistence comes first. But the originalityof Existentialismconsists, in-stead of using this proof in favor of a supremebeing, in distinguishingtwo types of being, or two ontologicalregions,both differentand recip-rocally conditioned: the in-itself, the opaque and inert being whoseessence implies existence, and the for-itself, the transparentbeing ofconsciousness,whose existenceposits the essence. Wheredoes this dis-

tinctioncome from?From the fact that, by a natural shift of meaning,one passes fromBeing to the beings, to the existents;and there are forthose existents, wo ways of existing,dependingon the relation,withinthemselves,.of existence to essence: the in-itself is what it is, it hassomehow too much essence, but it has it only on the conditionthat itexists; and it is also as if it had no essence,becausea consciousness srequired or that essence to appearand to be determined, o that in away the in-itself receives its meaning or essence from the for-itself.Conversely,the for-itself has not enough essence, because it gives this

essence to itself, it has to be what it is, but also on the conditionthatit exists.And so the wordexist has two meanings,dependingon whetherit designates he existenceof a thing or of a free subjectivity,he fullnessof being or the unsubstantialabsolute of a subjectivity. t is generallyfor characterizingubjectivity hat the word existenceis employed;butwe mustnot forgetthat, as Sartresays, "consciousnesss born supportedby a being that is not itself"I and which exists also. Existentialiston-tologyis at first a dualisticone. It keeps andtransposeson its.own level

the distinctionof objectand subjectmade by the theoriesof knowledge.Why? Because it is a phenomenologicalontology: it is inspired byphenomenology.

I Being and Nothingness, p. lxi.



EXISTENTIALISM AND EXISTENTIALISMS 53

b) Existentialism starts from a reflection on the phenomenon. It car-

ries out spontaneously the reduction which for Husserl is the condition

of any philosophical thinking. It discovers the wonder: things appear to

us, they showthemselves.Everythingis given; f some thingsarehidden,

they still can be given and are homogeneous o the given. There is noother world,no behind-world.Even the worldof logicalor mathematicalobjects,the worldof universals,belongsto the only givenworld,becausethese objectsalso are given as the meaningof the signs,words or sym-

bols we construct.Must we identify appearingand being?Here Sartre

divergesfrom Heidegger.For him, what the thing is, that appears:theessence is not concealedbehindthe existence,it is read on the objectas its meaning;doubtlessthis readingnever comes to an end, because

the essence, as the principleof the series of appearances, s infinitelyremoved,but this infiniteis homogeneous o the finite and immersed n

it. On the other hand, that the thing is, that the phenomenonentails a

being of the phenomenon, hat does not appear.Theoappearingdrives

us back to somethingwhichis its conditionand which does not appear.

Appeasingis appearingof and appearing o. Appearingof means that

appearingpresupposesa being which appears.Sartresays: "Thatwhich

appearsdoes not exist only insofaras it appears .. it is in itself."2 The

phenomenonof being requiresa being of the phenomenon.This being

is the ground or appearing, ndit is coextensive o the phenomenonwith-out having the status of a phenomenon.So, Existentialismavoids the

temptationof idealism, and rediscovers he ontologicalproof: there is

Being. On the otherhand, what appearsappearsto: to a consciousnesswhich exists only as consciousnessof something,and which is thereforean unsubstantialabsolute.There is anotherdimensionof being, whosenatureconsistsin opening tself to appearances ndrevealingbeing:such

is the for-itself, which exists only in relationto itself and to the world.

This opened existence, light and transparent, s not nothingness, t is

rathernegativity, hroughwhich nothingnesshappensto being.c) And hence proceedsthe main themeof Existentialism:he peculiar

fate of subjectivity.Existentialism epresents he perpetualrevoltof sub-

jectivityagainst systems, any system which objectifiesand enslaves it.

Such alreadywas Kierkegaard's rotest against the status ascribedby

Hegel to man,manas a pawnfor historyor a tool for logos. Kierkegaardwantedto be left alone in his quest for God. But there are many otheraccessesto the self-assertionof subjectivity.There is the ethical feeling

of man'sdignity,of the absolutevalue of a rationalbeing.This claimisitself a consequenceof Kant'sdiscoveryof the transcendentalubject,an

autonomous ubjectwhichis not governedby laws of natureas in Hume,

2 Ibid.. p. lxii.




but which imposes aws to natureand gives to itself its own law. Husserlsays also that consciousness s constitutive,sense-giving.Other philoso-phers emphasize other aspects of subjectivity,its power to promotevalues,as in Nietzsche, or, in Marx, to humanize he world and to over-

come the alienationwhich man at first is sentenced o. But what Sartreis mostly attentiveto is the Husserliannotion of intentionality:con-sciousness s merely the naked power of aimingat something; n opposi-tion to the massive,opaque and inert in-itself, it is nothing, nothingbutthe beingto whichthe world is present.Subjectivity s consciousnesshasno being; it is negativeand asserts itself throughnegationsby which itgives sense to the in-itself because, as Spinozasaid, any determinationis negation.And this negativityis the soul of freedom: subjectivity s

primarily ree.That means also that man is not featured n a theologicalor cosmo-logical program,he is not a means for any end, because he is himselfthe end, being such that he posits the ends. When Existentialism sChristian, t is ready to admit that man is not createdad majoremDeigloriam,and that in any case he is as necesaryto God as God is neces-

sary to him. But Existentialism s more willingly agnostic:man mustinventhis own way;there he is, for nothing,and his birth s unjustifiable:merecontingency,whose sign is the facticityof the body.

d) The body. It is preciselythis theme of Subjectivity hat carriesusinto reflection on the human condition,where the for-itself is conceivedas being-in-the-world. he necessaryconnectionof for-itselfwith in-itselfbecomes,when the for-itselfis understoodas a concretesubject,and thein-itself, enlightenedby the for-itself, is understoodas the world, therelationbetweenman and world.Being-in-the-worlds not being a thingamong things, it is bringingsense to the in-itself, so makingthat worldbe. The world as I live in it has myself as an absolutecenter of coordi-nates because I am involved in it and my presence to it is contingent.

For consciousnesso be sense-givingdoes not implythatit is a transcen-

dental consciousness, mpersonaland pure, and somehowcreative,as in

traditional dealism;on the contrary, onsciousnesss giving only because

it is committed o the world, compromisedby it, embodied.The incar-

nation of man means that the duality of in-itself and for-itselfis over-

come in at least one place: in man. The for-itself,as we said, is every-

where negation, even of itself: its freedom consists in refusing any

determination n order to invent itself. What it negates is the in-itself

that it is, and this in-itself is the body. Doubtlessthe experienceI haveof my body is not the same that othershave;for myself,as Sartresays,"I exist my body."For others,I am a body, and this body is an object;

for me, it is the instrument f my communicationwith the world.But it




is truealso that my body, such as I live it, is an object,with the densityof the in-itself:the body is both a body and a soul.

We have evoked the other. Existentialismattachesgreat importanceto my relationshipwith the other.In fact, many societiesare more con-

cerned with controllingthe relationshipsbetween the group membersthanwithdominatingnatureby science or technology.Being-in-the-worldis being a man amongmen. Man calls for man: he meets him, but healso looks for him. He needs the other, not only -to live and make thespecies live, but also to assert himself, to get recognition,as the childby his parentsor the artistby his public,and to enterinto collaboration,since his freedomis finite and wants to be carriedover to the freedomof others. Man tends towardscommon ends, he aims at humanity.

Then he needs also society and culture. Throughinstitutionshe isgiven a status and a style of life. He tends to identifywith his culture,even when he denouncesand fights t, as with efforthe denounceshis ownbody.And culture s for him like anotherbody: he lives in it and it livesin him. From this point of view some studies by American culturalanthropologists ave an existential lavor.

Now society has a history. Man is a historicalbeing because he isgiftedwith a memorywhichretainsthe past and a will which opens thefuture.And we meet the same paradoxwith historyas with the body:

man both is determinedby history and makes history, even if he isunawareof it. So he remainsan irreducible ingularity,an unassignablefreedom.

e) How can we grasp this relationshipof man and world?First of all- and this will be the last themeI consider by exploring he primitiveexperienceswherethis relationshipmanifests tself. Phenomenology, aidHusserl,must be archeology.Husserl'sconcernwas mostly to reveal thedoxa, the naive opinion which episteme, clear knowledge, is founded

upon: coming back to the source of all knowledge, one understands

betterhow science is constituted; ationalevidencehas its roots in sen-

sible evidence withoutlosing its privileges.For Existentialism,he stress

is on ontology ratherthan epistemology; ts main concern is to show

how man, from the very beginning,gets along with the world. Hence

the interest in analyzingperception,emotion,feeling, anythingwhich is

immediate,as well as primitivecivilizations, avagearts, magic.It is also

on that level of immediacy hat one may find the- irst manifestation f

freedom:spontaneity.Spontaneity, he first form of liberty,is not suffi-

cient becauseit has not yet asserted tself as a power of liberation,but

happybecauseit harmonizeswith the worldand blossomslike a flower.

I do think that the themeof innocencemighthave beenmoreemphasized

by existentialism;t has not been takeninto consideration ecauseexist-




entialismhas been more attentive o the tragic aspects of negativity,andalso because it is deeply concernedwith ethics: freedom for it impliesresponsibilityand, as Simone de Beauvoir says, "If man wants to savehis existence, what he only is capable of, his original spontaneitymust

raise itself to the level of a moral freedom, by taking itself as an endthrough the unveiling of a singularcontent." We come back again tothe idea that Existentialism s an ethics, maybe the only genuine one, ifit is true, as de Beauvoir says, that "in a metaphysicsof Transcendenceevil reduces to error ... and Existentialismonly, as well as religions.actually takes evil into consideration."

II. The Divergent Progeny of Existentialism

The themes we have evoked are the core of Existentialism.But theydo not constitute a whole philosophy.As soon as they are given somedevelopment, hey explode in divergingdirections, probably under theinfluence of presuppositionswhich depend on the personalityof eachphilosopher.Let us now summarize ome of these trends.

a) Gilson. The notion of being is obscure in Sartre's, ntology.Exist-ence is not univocal; t is torn apartbetween too much and not enough;in both cases it is contingent,neither groundednor grounding.There isa world, there are men, that is all we can say. The only task for philos-ophy is to describe he relationshipbetween man and world, and to callman to himself. But some philosophies would prefer existence to bejustified and to appearas a fundament.Such is Gilson's philosophizing.He congratulatesExistentialism or having rehabilitated he notion ofexistence against the temptationof essentialism,and for having estab-lished that the knowledge of essences dissimulatesthe true problem,which is the rootingof essence in existence. But he condemnsExistent-ialism for having consideredexistence as a fact and not as. an act. We

must, says Gilson, consider the pure act of existing as the act of asupremeBeing; anythingwhich exists participatesn this very act, whichis both creative of itself - God is, causa sui - and creative of all crea-

tures..Such is Aquinas' existentialism,where; ntology leads to theology.But it seemsto me that this idea of an act of existingis ambiguous;tmakes of existing the privilegeof a being, and it transforms he giveninto a giving.If existence is, an act, there is a fact of this act, but thisact is not a fact. No being is capable of an act except if it does not existfully, if it does not coincide with itself. If thereis, an act of existing,it

belongs to man, not to God. On the other hand, Gilson can introducethe idea of God only by jumping rom the idea of being to the idea of

3 Pour une morale de l'ambiguite, p. 46.4 Ibid., p. 48.




a being. When he says that we must "posit existence at the root ofbeing,"he no longerthinksof being as existence,but of a being whichexists. And as a matter of fact, he adds that "sinceboth essence andexistenceenterinto the structure f the realbeing, and since the primacy

of existence assertsitself in the being, this primacy s not a primacy ofexistence upon being, but in being."5 So existence is subordinated obeing, and being is a being. Possibly, Existentialism s responsibleforthis misunderstanding,ecause it distinguished wo types of being andso invitesus to pass from being to beings.And maybethis,confusion sunavoidablef it is alwaysa being whichis and if the problem s alwaysto know what is, and how it is.

b) Heidegger.But precisely here is a philosophywhich endeavorsto

do justice to Beingas,

such, I meanas

distinctfrom

thebeings or the

essents (essentis the word coined by a translatorof Heidegger o trans-late Seiend as opposedto Sein). Heideggerwas.a studentof Husserl,andhe has inspiredSartreand Merleau-Ponty.But he does,not accept beingcalled an Existentialist or two reasons: because Existentialism ends tomistakeessentfor Being, and becauseit gives too muchcredit to humansubjectivity.Let us look at those two points. Heidegger's undamentalquestion is: Why are there essents ratherthan nothing?And his funda-mental assertion s,the distinction o be madebetweenessentsandBeing.

To be sure, any essent is; but its being is not a being. And the philoso-pher must be concernedwith Being, while unauthenticknowledge thepositiveknowledge is only concernedwith assents, heir natureor theiressence. Theology itself is oriented towards the assent, the supremeessent, and not towardsBeing. But how can we seize Being, if not be-cause it discloses itself?

Heidegger also starts from phenomenology: here are phenomena,somethingreveals itself. We may distinguish he phenomenonof beingand the being of the phenomenon this distinctionhas been borrowed

from Heideggerby Sartre. But Sartreis interested n the phenomenonof being,because it requires, he presenceof a for-itself: t is for a con-sciousnessthat the phenomenon s a phenomenon.He is also interestedin the being of the phenomenonbecause it teaches us the priority ofbeing: there is a phenomenononly if there is some being. But as soonas the phenomenondrives us back to a being which shows itself, beingis again mistakenfor an essent. Now Heidegger is primarily nterestedin the phenomenonof being: this phenomenon s preciselyBeing itself.

Being is not what appears,or to whom it appears, t is appearingtself:the essent shows itself, and this showing-itself s Being. Being is thepresence, the horizon,the light, a light which lies neitherin the sun as

5 L'ttre et l'essence, p. 323.




its sourcenor in the eye as its end, but which suscitates and justifiesboth the sun and the eye. If there is a meeting or an agreementbetweensubjectand object, such as phenomenologydescribes,'t takes place inthe space openedby this light. Being is conceived as so pure, in order

not to be mistaken or an essentthat it is nothing,as light is nothing.Itis nothingdisclosedand nothinghidden: t is the disclosure, he glory ofthe essentwhen the essent appears.This disclosure s truth as the greeka-letheia."Truth s inherent n the essence of Being. To be an essent -

this comprises to come to light, to appearon the scene, to take one'splace, to producesomething." In that sense we are in the truth, andthis being-in-the-truthefinesman.

But Being is not completelydefined by the appearing,and it can also

dissimulate itself. This dissimulationdoes not produce a secret to befound, as things are concealed in the nighttimeafter sunset: darknessitself is a phenomenon,t showsitself and so it is as clear as light.Beingis not a hidden God to be found beyondthe world. It is ratherin the

very unveiling hat Being is veiled, becausein makingthe essent appearit lets itself be forgotten; t is like a trap:what appearsmakesus forgetthe appearing.That is why the history of philosophy s, from the pre-Socraticson, the history of a progressive arelessnessaboutBeing: manis alwaystemptedto reduceBeing to essent.

So - and this is my second point - the ontological question requiresfrom the philosopherwhat Heideggercalls a care for Being. In otherwords,appearing annotappearbut from a point of view. This point ofview is the being-there Dasein).Being-theremeans being in space, butmostlybeingin time, in a momentof time:Dasein is essentiallyhistorical.This Daseinis embodied n man, andthatdefinesman. Man is the beingwhichis hauntedby the problemof Being, even whenhe forgetsit, andwhich has an anticipatingcomprehensionof Being. Man is the beingwhich weaves and unfolds time; time originates n man. "Thereis no

time when man was not, not because man was from all eternityand willbe for all eternity,but because time is not eternityand time,fashionsitself into a time only as a humanhistoricalbeing-there.But a necessarycondition or his being-theres that he understandsBeing."7 Man is the

being which can tell Being. Being needs languageand is in some wayslanguage,for languagealso is revealingand may reveal only because

Being primarilyreveals itself. So man in his profoundessence is the

speaker,and as such committed o the serviceof Being.

But precisely because he ascribes to man this exceptional status,Heideggerrefusesa philosophyof subjectivityor a humanism.For him,

6 An Introduction to Metaphysics, p. 102.'7 Ibid., p. 84.




philosophizing annotstart, as in Descartes,from subjectivity,nor fromthe phenomenonas a correlateof a transcendental onsciousness,as inHusserl: it must start from Being. And it must also forget all informa-tion providedby humansciences which are only concernedwith man as

an essent. Man is to be' defined in functionof Being and as servantofBeing, in an endeavor o grasp ts ontologicalemergence.Heidegger riesto go back to the very origin, the ontologicalorigin which is itself theoriginfor chronology.

This is not easy. His effort gives his philosophy he style of an oracleand makesit close to poetry.And this philosophy akesa moreand moremystical character,because it givens more and more initiativeto Being,althoughrefusing o identify Being with any God. Consequently,dealing

with man, it goes farther and farther away from anthropology;t tendsto forget that, if man has a metaphysicalvocation, it is insofaras he isman,an incarnated nd socializedbeing, comingbefore the barof anthro-pology, so that nothingthat anthropologydiscovers abouthim is imma-terial.Maybe ontologyshould call for humanism nstead of denouncingit as illusoryand misleading.

c) Sartre.Thereis a philosophywhichwants man to accomplishmanin this world:it is Marxism,especially n the modem version of it pro-posed by Sartre n his last book devoted to a philosophyof historyand

society. Manyreadershave been wonderingwhetherSartredid not thusdeny his first book, and whether Marxism is not incompatiblewithExistentialism. do not think so. The secondbook is more a deepeningthan an agonizingreappraisalof the first one. A "critiqueof dialecticalreason" substitutes or a "phenomenologicalntology":what does thatmean? The words dialectical reason evoke Hegel and Marx, the wordcritique,Kant. Kantiancritique is a path of access to the discoveryofsubjectivityas a mode of being; in his own critique, Sartredoes notrenounce he fundamentaldea of his ontology: hat man is the futureof

man becausefreedom s irreducible.Onlythe vocabulary hanges:Sartrespeaks of man rather than of for-itself, of praxis rather than of con-

sciousness,of matter rather than of in-itself. But the, praxis is always

conscious and self-conscious,and it always manifestsfreedom;matter

as in-itself is both the opposite and the product of freedom, it both

suscitates and limits freedom;in the end self-consciousness,which be-

comes self-awarenessof praxis, is always the principleand the model

for intelligibility.The lexicon changes because phenomenologyseems

from now on inadequate:it considers only the immediate and theabstract,it does not provide sufficientmeans to deal with the central

problemof ontology,that is the problemof the relationshipbetweenin-

itself andfor-itself,or between reedomandsituation,by whichis defined



60 PHILOSOPHY ND PHENOMENOLOGICALESEARCH

being-in-the-world. oubtlessBeing and Nothingnesshad alreadyexam-ined the relationshipbetweenfreedomand facticity; t had analyzedmybody, my place, my environment,my fellow men, but in the same wayas my past or my death, that is, as elementsof my situationwith which

I am directlyconcerned.But now Sartrewants to think of being-in-the-world as being-in-lifeand being-in-society:he socio-historical imensionis an essentialelementof man'ssituation.

In order to understand hese aspects of the situation,Marxismisuseful. For Marxism is a dialectic materialism.Materialismimpliesboth an ontologicalthesis: matteris given first; and an epistemologicalthesis:knowledgegraspsreality.Those two theses are implicitlypresentin Being and Nothingness.The ontological proof is the assertion ofthe priority of

the in-itself; the idea of an intentionalconsciousnessprepares he idea of the veracity of knowledge.Materialismntroduces,nevertheless,a very importantnew idea: the idea of scarcity as adetermining actor of all of history, a radical evil. As for the termdialectical,which is new in Sartre'svocabulary, t carrieswith it twoideas: negativity and totality. Being is torn off by negation, or, whatcomes to the same thing, the immediateis mediated by deternina-tions, but negation is itself negated, and the opposition is overcome:dialectics s this transcendingmotionwhich is a perpetualmotion.Being

and Nothingnessalready had found a place for negativity: he title ofthe book says it. And alreadythe negationwas conceivedof as circular:the for-itselfconstitutes tself as the negationof the in-itselfwhich alsonegates it; similarly,in the struggleof consciousnesses,as Hegel said,each consciousnessaims at the other'sdeath- this themewas developedin No Exit. But if there was no exit, no end for this fighting,it is be-cause there was no dialecticto allow for the emergenceof a totality.Inthe same way, in the ontology, dualism could not be overcome, andSartresaid that "it is immaterial or ontologyto consider the for-itself

articulated n the in-itself as a duality or as a disintegratedotality."True, Sartreis less concerned n his last book with this metaphysicalproblem than with the anthropological ne. Now, the main purposeofthe concept of totalization s to throwsome light on societyand history.But we must carefullydistinguish otalization and totality. Totality, ifachieved,would meanthe endof history, he return o a state of inertnessand meaninglessness.Unfortunately,here are totalities:groups,institu-tions, closed societies, as Bergsonsaid; and everywhere hey come up

against man. Besides that, the first alienationproceeds from matter:working s the first form of totalization,of syntheticorganization f thein-itself; and the matterwhich the praxis works on domes up against

8 Being and Nothingness, p. 624.




man, so that totalizingman is totalizedby the matterhe has totalized.So the Chinese,centuriesago, were pauperizedby their own deforesta-tion; and Spain, in the sixteenthcentury,suffocateduider the burdenof gold its trade accumulated.Now totalizationconstitutes also the

objectivityof the social. The social is intelligiblebecause its originliesin human praxis;society is both the productof freedomand the placefor alienation.And Sartredescribes he various forms of this alienation:class or race struggle,colonialistoppression,capitalistic erocity.Historyis not a happyone. And it has been said that the Critiqueof DialecticalReason is a theoryof evil.

Nevertheless, t is also an ethics. Sartre,as in all his works,calls forfreedom.For, if the startingpointof dialectics s in matteras materialism

requiresit, the springof dialectics is inman, as the intelligibilityof

dialecticsproceedsfromthe fact that consciousnesss self-consciousness.Man everywherehas the initiative,even when he makes himselfinertinorder to act upon inert nature,even when he producesinert totalitieswhere he alienateshimself. There is no alienationbut for a freedom.And from a freedom.For evil does not proceedonly from the inertnessof matter,or from the scarcityof goods, or fromthe weightof totalities,but also fromthe violenceand the crueltyof men:to understandorture,we musthave recourse o sadismor the will to power.Here the analysis

of Being and Nothingnessare welcome again: man's negativityoftenmanifests tself as violence.Often,but not always:Sartreknowsit, sincehe also evokes that brotherhoodwhich prevails among the poor, the

slaves, the rioters.And we might add that man may have with naturepeacefuland friendlyrelationships.Some kinds of praxis,which do notsocialize man, are happy:the praxisof the craftsman,of the peasant,ofthe artist. Dialecticalmotion may be comforting.

d) Merleau-Ponty.Here I wouldlike to mentiona last direction akenby Existentialism.Everywhere,up to now, we have seen philosophies

endeavor o return o,fundamentals,o the source:be it the act of existing

in Gilson,Beingin Heidegger, he dialecticalmotionwhichunitesmatter

and praxisin Sartre.In Merleau-Ponty, s in Sartre, he fundamentals

a relationship,he relationshipbetweensubjectivityand the world which

definesbeing-in-the-worldnd whichis manifestedat its best in percep-

tion. "I amthe absolute ource,"but thissource s itself situatedandgiven

to itself:Man is in the world.This idea is not ignoredby Sartre;but in

Being and NothingnessSartreis so intent on assertingthe freedomof

the for-itself that Merleau-Pontyaccuses him of being "cogito-crazy."This was before the publication of the Critique of Dialectical Reason.

But even after this book, there remainsa distancebetween Sartreand

Merleau-Ponty.Merleau-Pontytressesperception,not praxisor sociality.




Perceptionmanifeststhe harmonybetween the perceivingand the per-ceived it is somehow prior to them: esse est perceptio. Perception is the

absolutebeginning, he originof consciousness, he emergenceof sense.

And Merleau-Ponty hecksit by practicing he archeologywhichHusserl

recommended: t the rootof any humanbehavior,of any humancreation- language,art, technics,science, politics - he disclosesperception, his

unreflectiveand spontaneousrelationshipbetween man and world. So

thatthereis senseeverywhere,n historyor in eventsas well as in things,andthis sense alwaysat first appears n perception. ntentionality, ather

than merelybeing a structureof consciousness,carries both conscious-

ness and world;consciousnessaims at the world,and the worldanswersto its aiming.Man,saysMerleau-Ponty, is this perceiving ubjectwhich,

throughthe opacityof feeling, is intenton things whichhe has not the

key to, but whichhe carrieswith himselfthe projectof."9

Now, if I maymentionmyself,I wouldsay that the workI haveunder-

takenis a commenton this sentence.To say thatman carries he projectof the worldis to say he is equippedwith a priori,he assumesthe tran-

scendental.But the transcendentaleveals itself in the empirical,as the

meaningof the empirical.The world must answerto, man, and the a

priorican be read in the object as what constitutesthis.object. So the

harmonybetweenworldandman is the fundamenton whichthoughtand

historyare built. But are we not led back to Leibniz?For philosophy stemptedto dig out fartherand to look for somethingbeyondthe funda-

ment whichI call the ground,somethingwhichgenerates he fundamental

relationship.Might this groundbe HeideggerianBeing?No, because it

must itself be an essent, or ratherthe totalityof essents.Neitheris it a

God like the leibnizianGod, separated rom the world he creates.This

groundis ratherNature,NaturaNaturans,as Spinozasaid: the unfath-

omable power of reality, the reality which can and maybe wants to

appear,but which appearsonly to man and produces.man in order to

appear.But as soon as we say that, as soon as we speak of a Naturebeforeman,we posit man, and we come back to the fundament.Nature

is unthinkable.That is why the philosopherleaves the floor, and is

tempted to give it to the poet.

MIKEL DUFRENNE.

UNIVERSITY OF PARIS.

g Phenomenologie de la perception.

Existentialism and Existential Isms

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