Existential Me?

Ever since my arrest in 2005 people have been telling me that my thinking sounds a lot like existentialism. I usually just dismiss such observations because I know that my "thinking" is based primarily on my own first hand observances, not on anything I heard someplace, or read about in some book. What little I know about philosophy has given me a strong distaste for it. So calling me an existentialist seems just silly to me.

Recently though, the Education department on this prison set up a study program for the death row prisoners (SCU) called "A.C.E." (Adult Continuing Education) that allows us to have a DVD player in our cells so we can view education videos. Most of the videos that they have available for us are high-school and middle-school documentaries that aren't very interesting. But mixed in with those are a few college level lecture based coursed that I've found to be enjoyable.

After completing a six part biology course, that consisted of 72 lectures all together, I decided to do a two part lecture course (24 lectures total) on existentialism called "No Excuses" by professor Robert C Solomon (business and philosophy at the University of Texas at the time he did these lectures, but according to Wikipedia he is deceased now, having died of a heart failure while travelling). The education department provides only the DVD's and none of the texts meant to accompany these courses. Fortunately, because the material is a bit dated, I've been able to ask a friend to buy the main texts very inexpensively on Amazon.com (see "Books" "No Excuses" for a list of the books I read in accompany with this course). This has brought the educational value of these video courses up to a good level for me. In fact, while studying these materials in my cell I can easily forget where I am (and why) for hours at a time as I slip into the intellectual realms of intent concentration that I developed over years in various state colleges, both in and out of prison. This focused state of mind is my "comfort zone" or "happy place" that I've often found more relaxing than deep meditation. The fact that I am actually aquiring a useful education in the process is, and has always been, a mere added benefit. And in the case of this "No Excuses" course on existentialism, I also get the added benefit of finally understanding why people tell me that I think like an existentialist, so I can disagree more informatively.

Professor Solomon structures his lectures around the existentialism of Jean Paul Sartre. He spends most of the lectures discussing Sartre's predecessors and contemporary philosophers that contributed to, or otherwise helped shape (or at least influence), Sartre's thinking. But, the entire last six lectures of Solomon's course focus exclusively on Sartre, with clear emphasis on Sartre's ideas about freedom (free will) and individual responsibility; hence the title of the lecture series, "No Excuses".

But, when I read the same writings by Sartre that Solomon cites and discusses I come away with a slightly, but fundamentally different understanding of what Sartre is trying to say.

According to Solomon, Sartre emphasizes INDIVIDUAL responsibility. But, for me, Sartre emphasizes something else. He points to individual responsibility, but then emphasizes the SOCIAL aspects of that responsibility not the INDIVIDUAL aspect.

For example, in Sartre's well known lecture, "Existentialism is a Humanism", he says plainly, "... the first effect of existentialism is that it puts every man in possession of himself as he is, and places the entire responsibility for his existence squarely upon his own shoulders". Solomon uses such statements to assert a kind of individual blame for what we do. But, if you continue Sartre's thought (i.e. the very next sentence in the same lecture) we find a critical qualification, "... when we say that a man is responsible for himself, we do not mean that he is responsible only for his own individuality, but that he is responsible for all men." The qualification is critical because it says that we are not INDIVIDUALLY responsible, but we are SOCIALLY responsible. If we follow Sartre's thinking through, then we find that his philosophy does not give us an excuse to blame others for what they do, but instead it only tells us that we are all responsible, entirely responsible, for what all men do!

This idea is so alien to our conditioned way of thinking, especially in the West, that it doesn't surprize me that such a preeminent contemporary expert on existentialism such as professor Solomon. would fail to see the significance of Sartre's carefully worded qualification for what is meant by "responsibility". Sartre himself never asserts that we have "no excuse" for our behavior (or thoughts for that matter). Instead he is merely pointing out that we have the freedom (a term that philosophers use to mean "free will") to CHOOSE, regardless of our excuses. Sartre's emphasis, according to what I have read myself of his works, is on freedom, not responsibility; especially not responsibility in the sense of "blame" that Solomon seems to take from Sartre's philosophy.

If I were a professor myself then I would put a lot more effort into supporting, defending, and clarifying this interpretation of Sartre's meaning. But, it is this very type of quibbling over language that I feel gets in the way of real understanding in the first place. If Solomon spent more time thinking for himself, instead of studying other people's thoughts, then maybe he would have seen what Sartre was trying to say in the first place.

(J.D. 9-15-2014)