Sartre & the Crisis of Morality - Walter Kaufmann on Existentialism

first of all I want to say something about the modern crisis then something about existentialism and the modern crisis and then something about Sabbath and the crisis in morality finally there will be a conclusion now to begin with the modern crisis I have examined a crisis in religion and philosophy about which I want to be very brief at this time and I still have to examine what I take to be a crisis in morality and in all three instances there is one common factor which consists in the enormous rise of the natural sciences and in the wake of the social sciences - I do believe that this great development of the sciences has an enormous amount to do with what I have called the modern crisis this does not mean to anticipate that I think that this development of the sciences is regrettable that doesn't follow at all I just see a connection there now the way that I conceive of the modern crisis in religion as many of you pnau know is that science has threatened traditional naive believes that science has made it impossible for large masses of thoughtful educated intelligent people to hold the same kind of beliefs in the same way in which their parents grandparents great-grandparents and generations for hundreds of years have held them and has led to a widespread abandonment of these beliefs or to an attempted reinterpretation and in the wake of this reinterpretation there is the very serious question in many instances what meaning remains to these beliefs I have further tried to point out in the first lecture that morally this ties in with tonight's problem that morally there has come too a very open a frequently frankly avowed process of selection where people admit that they don't accept all the moral Commandments of their religion but that they pick out some while rejecting others as of course primitive or of course to be accounted for in historical terms or perhaps in Psychological terms and in the wake of this election the question arises whether then the morality isn't really based on reason on experience on conscience and whether women in religion or God after birth as a sanction is not merely redundant the further problem I have suggested in the first lecture that organized religion has always posed for true religion a point that Kierkegaard made at particular length and with great emphasis but a point that one could easily trace back through the history of religion at the very least as far as the biblical prophets and there's also an inverse proportion of the quantity of believers and the quality of believers a point again abundantly made in the Hebrew Scriptures that in times in which everybody flocks to the temple religion is likely to become something shallow and superficial while it is perhaps only the remnant perhaps only the small number that has religion in a deeper sense the crisis in philosophy I have suggested last week consists in the fact that emulation of the natural sciences leads more and more and more english-speaking philosophers to reject almost all not quite all but almost all of traditional philosophy one begins to wonder whether traditional philosophic tenets are not perhaps just as untenable as traditional religious beliefs some of them to have to be accounted for again edan psychological or more often in historical terms as belonging to a certain era but many of them no longer seem at all acceptable this I think is a crisis even if some people would call it by another name the large body of philosophy that has come down to us has suddenly become questionable people wonder whether what has been called philosophy hitherto is worth preserving and what some of them are now doing is something quite different from what was done traditionally and as far as english-speaking philosophers are concerned tends on the whole world to be very academic and to be of relatively little interest to the very large number to the steadily growing number of intelligent and concerned laymen laymen in the sense that they are not professional philosophers there's further the factor that in philosophy to organization plays some part that more and more philosophers find themselves allied with universities in fact practically all of them they are hardly any philosophers left who do not have some university position and being in the academies they tend to be more academic there's a rising number philosophic journals which are read by fellow craftsmen so one tends to write for each other for other professional philosophers for fellow technicians instead of dealing with cosmic questions with religious questions for the larger moral questions you might say even so where is the crisis in perhaps I have to add only one thing at this particular point and that is what creates such a crisis here is that for all the emulation of the sciences so far except possibly in such narrow fields as probability theory or something of that sort certainly philosophers for their academic manners haven't come up with any results comparable to those of the Natural Sciences and where is the crisis in morality the crisis in morality I think parallels the crises that I have tried to analyze in religion and in philosophy here - it is very largely due to the development of science and again I'm not at all critical of science for this I don't hold it against science on the contrary I heartily appreciate the on the whole anti-authoritarian attitudes that science raised in science there are no authorities in science you can always be challenged for the evidence you can't just say a great man said you can't cite Newton as an authority you have to see whether things stand up moreover you have to consider alternative hypotheses sometimes there is seemingly very good hypothesis but you still have to ask aren't there some other hypotheses that are just as good and perhaps one of these alternatives is even more elegant than the one you already have in this way traditional morality is undermined once one gets into the habit of asking what's the evidence for what is being said and aren't there any alternatives you have an attitude that no longer acquire sirs in traditional morality traditional morality need not even be exactly the same for everybody it may differ slightly in some respects depending on ethnic or on religious background but what morality is in general have in common traditional morality is that they have something authoritarian to them that they are originally taught to a child as what's what the parent knows the teacher knows the rabbi priest or Minister knows and the child is supposed to accept what it is told and when one gets into the mood of saying but what's the evidence for this and aren't there perhaps alternatives traditional morality is undermined and the obvious result that this has led to can be summed up in one word namely relativism moral relativism where people ask whether whatever morality they have been brought up on isn't possibly just one morality among a large number of morality is and is there really any reason they asked for preferring one to the other the social sciences have developed further and again they have had a very critical influence on morality here perhaps the best single example would be the kind of thing that is exemplified by the kinsey reports by gathering statistics by telling people what percentage of the population does certain things people's conscience becomes a little less Stern they have the feeling that there is some safety at any rate in numbers that if so many people do such things there can't be quite so bad of course it would be foolish to suppose that science is the only factor in this crisis in morality it obviously isn't there are other factors for instance that they are such growing numbers of people more people than ever before well with a growing number of people there's also a growing anonymity there's a loosening of social bonds there's mobility more people move around they move from the country to a city from a small city to a very big city from one big city to another city and as a result of this there is a loosening of social bonds nobody knows you the neighbors no longer know you and tear to certain restrictions Paul by the way and there is necessarily as a result of this is there always I think has been in history under comparable circumstances a growing permissiveness when all this that I have said so far I don't mean to take sides I don't mean to make any particular evaluation I just want to explain what I mean by the crisis in morality perhaps it is relevant and even truthfully important to say something about the word crisis at this point after all a crisis is not necessarily anything bad anyway what crisis means literally is a turning point a crucial time the Greek word for main means to separate and you might say that a crisis is the time which separates the men from the boys it is somehow a decisive moment Pranay means that only separate but also decide crisis is the moment of decision or to use a term that is used in a certain sport it's the moment of truth the moment when you sort of see what stands up and what doesn't stand up it's in that spirit that I speak of crisis not in the most illogical not by way of suggesting aren't we an unfortunate generation that hours of the time of crisis probably wide-open weather every time isn't possibly a time of crisis and whether if in some respects our prices are more acute than ever I want to leave open whether that is a good or a bad thing now one trouble with these lectures I think has been that in the last lecture although I did speak of nature I did not on the whole concentrate on existentialism but I Ellis trated the crisis in philosophy very largely from english-speaking philosophy and so I after having in these general firms characterize the modern crisis want next to deal with existentialism and the modern crisis and here at least in the beginning I can again fall back on some points previously made our first deal very briefly for the two men to whom I have already devoted a lecture a piece namely kirkegaard and Ezra one thing that they have in common in spite of the many things that vary obviously they don't have income and is that both of them were aware of the kind of crisis that I have tried to picture for you I don't at all go along with the attempt made by some people of kind of trolling Kierkegaard and Nietzsche together as if all their many differences were unimportant it does seem to me that very obviously the differences are in reality more important than the things that they have in common they're more important because they differed on the things that mattered most to them nothing mattered more to Kierkegaard and how one might become a true Christian and probably few things mattered more to nature than his criticism of Christianity not just of Christendom but of Christianity but for all that they do have some things in common and one thing they have in common is that in the middle of the 19th century of one man in the middle and one man a little later still in the 19th century they foresaw a crisis that many people even today are not fully aware of and one thing further that both Kierkegaard and Nietzsche recognized and this was no mean feat in their time was that this crisis was intimately related to the progress of science they both recognized that Kierkegaard drew the conclusion from this and adult in detail but this in the first lecture that science was a bad thing that science was a danger then and that one ought to have the courage to be unscientific that one ought to have the courage to believe what science considers absurd that one ought to go against reason and against science Nietzsche's attitude on the whole world I think was in favor of science as one of the points on which I have tried in my work on it to interpret him somewhat differently from the way many other people have interpreted him have tried to show in considerable detail that his attitude toward reason was on the whole affirmative appreciative and similarly also his attitude toward science and they are abundant texts to bear this out and in his criticism of Christianity he comes back to this theme time and again that Christianity has been anti-scientific anti rational but although nature in important respects made common cause with science he did not care as most of the thinkers of the later 19th century did the best optimism about science as if now that we have science and science grows it will solve all our problems and people will become more humane and better and everything will be fine nice job all affirming science realize that science did produce crises in religion in philosophy and in morality moreover he did not agree but the English speaking philosophers today who want to make a philosophy and academic specialty modeled on the sciences Nietzsche did not believe in restricting philosopher to matters on which textual agreement can be obtained in these respects it was not at all in favor of emulating science here he saw some of the dangers of science what he was in favor of and this is a distinction worth making and a distinction with which I definitely align myself but he was in favor of was careful critical thinking and even experimental thinking to the extent of being willing to engage in thought experiments to consider alternative views in morality in theory of knowledge wherever philosophers think to weigh these against each other there's actually one of mixtures books that has the title foolish' Wissenschaft and subtitled gaga see Enza and an english could be called the gay science although unfortunately it was translated for him is leading Lee I think as the joyful wisdom but Nietzsche and mine was gay science and what he meant by science was this open-minded critical experimental spirit so both kirkegaard and Nietzsche understood the crisis and the students connecting with science but took different views of science now briefly before I turn to salad I want to go on from Kirkuk current nature to a couple of existentialist whom I do not propose to discuss in any detail but affirm at least I want to indicate briefly as was suggested in the printed announcement of these lectures how they fit into the picture at least how I propose to fit them into this picture there is first of all Martin Heidegger the German philosopher still living now in his seventies who is by some people considered the most profound existentialist philosopher now how Heidegger reacts to the modern crisis can be I think not unfairly suggested by a sentence that I shall want from him and that incidentally is also quoted emphatically and apparently with approver in a recent very popular book on existentialism where is also singled out as very characteristic although the author finds no fault with that so it's not malice that dictates my picking this particular sentence the sentence is thinking does not begin until we learn that reason though glorified for centuries is the most stubborn adversary of thinking this what Heidegger says thinking does not begin until we learn that reason though glorified for centuries is the most stubborn adversary of thinking I think this is very interesting in this respect Heidegger although widely characterized as an atheist and he doesn't mind this characterization he certainly is not a theist I don't like these labels of theists and atheists particularly but he is certainly above Lee na'toth ears in this respect Heidegger is much closer to Kierkegaard then are such people as for example Karl Jasper's and Paul Tillich who make much more of their respect and admiration for Kierkegaard and Heidegger does when Heidegger talks of Kierkegaard these days it's the way of depreciation he was not a philosopher he was merely a religious thinker leave them out to merely I agree that kirkegaard was no philosopher but a religious writer he said so himself but in this anti-scientific anti rational bias this is interesting I think Heidegger were not a Christian and not a Fears is really much closer to Kierkegaard than any number of other contemporary existentialists now what remains if you have this animus against reason if you recognize as Heidegger - does the connection between science and technology and the characteristic feats of the 20th century if you recognize the connection between that but as usually considered progress on the one hand and the crisis in religion philosophy and morality on the other hand well he draws the conclusion we must therefore in some sense oppose scientific thinking we must oppose reason this raises the big question well how then is one as a philosopher going to think and write and what I think almost necessarily has to happen is that a philosopher who adopts this attitude must relapse into a highly arbitrary way of thinking which will either be associated thinking just sort of moving from one sentiment to the next one that's associated almost the way a Freudian patient on the couch does when engaging in free association or doing something else but really isn't so different namely in order to avoid total anarchy and incoherence to find some texts of which we can then offer exegesis and in this way Heidegger seeks his way back to the earliest philosophers the pre-socratic philosophers some of whom wrote poetically some of whom wrote f aristokraft will have one thing in common and that is that we don't possess any of their works but only scattered quotations only fragments preserved in the writings of other people I fear with Heidegger an enormous lehigh regard for some of these fragments which are fascinating which are worth studying but I don't think it is an example of some method to try to develop a philosophy by taking sentences out of context you free there is no context when there is one Heidegger still takes them out of context and then and there's almost inevitable reading his own ideas into them this is not just my but even those followers of Heidegger who greatly admire his earlier work if they happen to be classical philology as well roundly repudiate his interpretations of Greek philosophers as follow logically untenable and people who know their Rilke realized that his broken interpretations are antennae for and people who know they need to realize that as Nietzsche interpretations are untenable but this is not surprising this is not just something that happens to happen but if thinking does not begin until we learn that reasoned or glorified for centuries is the most stubborn adversary of thinking if we deliberately or balloon reason and scientific procedures in the sense of regard for evidence and impartiality well then how can the interpretations be sound they might in places be enormous ly suggestive and exciting but I never can persuade myself that it's very difficult to be suggestive and exciting if one doesn't care to be sound I'll give you one example which is both in print and which are also happened to hear in person Heidegger gave a series of lectures at Frei born in 1955-56 on what he called deserts from gold which seemed to mean the principle of reason the principle of sufficient reason and the turning point of the lectures was provided by sentence but you will initially have to give in German and a trust that some of you will understand that he began to talk about the lead one of kirkegaard conceptions le ap the jump the lead and he said their spring is deserts from gunshots from grunt and as a gun designs which means something like the leap is the jump from the basic principle of Ruiz into saying something about being but it all depends on tunning mainly the words up see suddenly pointed out doesn't only mean sentence or principle but can also mean in German jump or leap as when one says Heidegger zone example yes MIT einem zaps so a 200 hours is out of the door but one jump and similarly grown it can also mean ground so that suddenly from the principle of reason we get to the jump from the ground now this is the height of arbitrariness it is suggestive but it is terribly close and for a philosopher compromising Lee close to Finnegan's Wake this makes it eminently suitable for study and graduate seminar seminars where you want to discuss something that's difficult and puzzle it out and something can perhaps be learned from it but the important thing is that not only is the human history of philosophy since the pre-socratics rejected by Heidegger because it attempts to be rational and reasonable but what we get instead is something that is in its nature completely arbitrary unsound and thing for us that he might for all that have occasional insights is another matter I personally happen to think that he has fewer of those than other existentialist this may be a minority viewer and I found not try to argue it in detail here I have dealt I might say with Heidegger in some detail and for that matter also with hospice in some detail in from Shakespeare to existentialism but was recently issued in paperback by anchor books in chapters 15 17 and 18 and they are to is a chapter it happens to be chapter 14 that deals in some detail with the relation of philosophy and poetry which of course is crucial for doing justice to Heidegger since what he wants to do is bring philosophy closer to poetry than to science so refer you here to my from Shakespeare to existentialism and move on to a few passing remarks about justice and Tillich before moving on to South with whom I want to deal in some detail in Jasper's and also in Tillich who are in many ways I think similar you find attitudes that are avoid Lee and emphatically in favor of Reason and in favor of science they both on the whole lean over backwards not to share kirkegaard anti-scientific bias but rather to welcome science where religion and science conflict Tillich is likely to say that religion must be in the wrong and similarly justice insists being himself a doctor of medicine who specialized later in psychiatry that it is good training for a philosopher to master one of the sciences it's interesting as I have already mentioned that both of them make so much more of Kierkegaard and Heidegger that both of them are closer to kirkegaard religion so I think very far indeed from hearing it then Heidegger but that nevertheless in spite of that in basic or again tasty they really have terribly little in common with Turkey regard and I might say that although both of them are clearly more attractive personalities than Heidegger that both of them clearly have a kind of personal integrity that many of us feel Heidegger beheaded ever lost you the Nazi pigeon but for all that perhaps both Josephus and Cilic are less radical for better or for worse then Kierkegaard and then Nietzsche and then Heidegger and then said they see some of the elements of the modern crisis I am Not sure that they go quite so much to the roots of it as I think Sartre does and now the way of making a transition to south I might say that here again I think I'm submitting to you a minority view I think it is on the whole fashionable to say that Heidegger particularly if one hasn't read him is really the profound Teutonic thinker about South is merely the journalist who popularizes all this I don't agree with this at all i esteem salad not only as a human being but also quite emphatically as a writer and thinker much more highly than I do Heidegger and I'd hire also then Jasper's and so I have selected him for more detailed treatment partly out of regard for him I'm now ready finally to deal with surrett and the crisis in morality very briefly first of all a very few data about the men he was born in Paris in 1905 and suffered the same fate that Nietzsche suffered in one respect he lost his father as a little boy his father died and then he was brought up by his mother in the maternal grandparents house and there's something interesting about this his maternal grandfather is an Alsatian of wars or sation by the name of fight sir and jean-paul Sartre and Albert Schweitzer are cousins which as opposed few of you knew and which i think is rather piquant little detail his mother remarried when Little John port savat was 11 and moved with a boy from the elders to Louisville Ferry where he grew up then he absorbed his military service studied philosophy as a philosopher as Heidegger had done earlier he studied for a while with Edmund Husserl the German Jewish founder of the school of phenomenology was very profoundly impressed by a horse Earl and started out as a philosopher with a phenomenological orientation he did some teaching before the war and on the eve of the first world war in 1938 published his first novel available in paperback norcia followed it up the following year in 1939 with a collection of short stories originally named in French l'amour and an English the wall but then when it got to the paperback level it was called intimacy and had and had a variety of rather lurid covers but CA that there are five short stories one of which is called the ball and one of which is called intimacy I must say that having read the five I think intimacy is the more accurate title in this case it does not promise too much I don't think that the stories are in any sense pornographic I don't know that it is not misleading when the cover quotes a British magazine that said leaves Lady Chatterley sleeping at the door pose but they are very Frank and forthright stories which I think have points to make in which I happen to think again a minority view perhaps are very excellent and very profound and very interesting stories he also published before the war broke out several philosophic essays mainly phenomenological many public what might be without hesitation called his main works during the war chiefly letter a linear Being and Nothingness translated in full into English by hazel Barnes and available in one big volume and very difficult to read in large parts as well as a play that came out the same year the Flies lemon and about the same time another play no exit and then any number of further plays of which perhaps the single most interesting is the one the Jabra Lila Bonjour Lucifer and the Lord or the devil and the good Lord also published quite a bit of literary criticism in 1946 a lecture to which I shall have to recur banned I start in a moment talking about morality which is called existentialism is a humanism and then what is probably his most controversial work a long book on a man who was at the time that this book was written simply considered bile and a criminal but was now widely considered a but however belonging to it he felt that if one was seriously against the status quo that then one ought to make common cause but the one authority so it seemed to him that was serious about overthrowing existing society and changing it he never seems to have been under any illusions that surely his own head would have been one of the first to roll if the Communists should have taken over and then he did show on this rather abominable bad judgment I think that there was a certain obtuseness about but it is interesting that he never followed any strict party line but remained as one would expect of him all along an eccentric individualist after Budapest he welcomed I think the opportunity of having some cause now over which he could openly dissociate himself from the Communist Party he did it in an interview that was published in eager and I think the first issue of the evergreen review it's very interesting to read I think it's to my mind somewhat dismal performance which again although he now is anti-communist does not to my mind so any political penetration or particular good sense I don't think that this is the most serious matter that one can say about a philosopher I but cheerfully say that Plato did not not have much political good sense either and it remains an open question but our philosopher who is politically not very perceptive might not possibly be very profound in other matters now what is the core of South's philosophy at that point clearly if one has to make a selection and people will differ about what is the core I will suggest that perhaps the central idea of South's philosophy is and about here so far as possible paraphrase him that name is unsatisfying phrase condemned to be free man is condemned to be free the demeanor of this carries out inserts addition that man is constantly tempted to hide his freedom from him self and who live in bad faith call it bad faith or call it as I have done in my little anthology of existentialism from Dostoevsky to serve in which the world is reprinted along the the electronic essentialism is a humanism and portrait of the anti-semite the sexy also on bad faith from latter linear and I dare they call it bad faith I call it self-deception it's no great matter it means I think much the same thing such point is that man tries to deceive himself about his own freedom he tries to deceive himself into thinking that he is not as free as in fact he is perhaps even into thinking that he is not at all free but Mary craves such things in a different mode of being altogether from the human mode of fear such suggests that there are two modes of being the one is that he calls using phrases out of Hegel and of the German philosopher Hegel or spa and post wa the in itself and the for itself but we don't need this particular terminology we can say the two kinds of VA are the Anspach the being of phase and the fools were the human mode affair and phineas Sark suggests have a mode of being that is characterized or so at least it seems to men by a solidity that men do not have in this connection I personally think that South engages in altogether too much jargon in unnecessary Burbage which is modeled after Hagar and after Heidegger sometimes also after who saw it succeeding academic and the worst tradition of academic philosophy and that in places can say hardly be construed and figured out but for all that and very far from saying that that's all there is to it on the contrary my whole point is that in this forbidding show they are what I consider some very profound insights what Mansell thinks once is the solidity that characterizes the BA of things man wants to exist all at once supposed to be there all at once like a rock like a piece of stone that's impermeable he wants to have that kind of an identity and Virgil have a quiet moment when you are say by yourself and suddenly realize that you could also be quite different from the way you are let's say you happen to be giving a lecture are you happy to be a professor or you happen to be a doctor or a lawyer or a businessman or what have you that you really aren't a doctor lawyer businessman of professor are giving a lecture in the same way in which a stone is hard or in which water contains oxygen but that it's up to you up to a decision that you make whether you remain that way I could right now stop this lecture and walk out I could right now resign my job you could become quite different you could give up the kind of career that you have had so far you could suddenly decide that you will take the first ship on which you can get and go to Africa to do something either to work will fight sir to make trouble in the Congo and anumber things to all these possibilities never can dress up some of these possibilities in a humorous way and just be entertaining about it but when it strikes home when suddenly realize that the assembling of a fake security about your present mode of life but it could suddenly be changed altogether that's rather frightening it's much more comforting to think as for me I am such a such a person as for me I happen to be a larger well that's me or as for me for that matter I happen to be an anti-semite and there you are and now make up that what you want to there isn't that frankly this is the kind of person I am now but we don't necessarily adopt such aggressive views as such and a semi a dozen as anti-semites generally do so I think is suggesting that the anti-semite that he sketches for us is merely Christic of a common Union tendency that the way that the anti-semite lives in bad faith is only an extreme example of a brave in which most of us decline the full and frightening measure of the responsibility and somehow seek security in a spurious sort of solidity I think that there are few if any people in the whole of literature and philosophy who have explored in such detail and put such a wealth of ingenuity and inside the mechanisms of self-deception the ways in which people fool themselves this much something ought to get a new bits are far from it for example if you read Anna Karenina by Tolstoy you may find to your surprise perhaps that this is one of the themes that run is all through the book to the best of my knowledge it's not a point that has been widely noted or that has been made in print but I think it is one of totes toys central preoccupation to point out of people deceived ins of its interest day how often the birds self-deception and deceived themselves and did not want two more phrases like that how often they occur in Anna Karenina so not trying to say this is something altogether novel and so obviously it isn't but I say that if you consider that some other people tried their hand before in some very formidable and wonderful people at Tolstoy it's doubly remarkable that South should have come up with so much that is so good on this subject another way of leading into morality from there is of course one person who explored self-deception a little earlier than sir and that is Sigmund Freud and salt devotes a sexy of his main work being and nothingness to what he called existential psychoanalysis he doesn't I think in that quite as emphatic as he might be about making clear that Freud has some priority here that Freud developed psychoanalysis and that now jean-paul Sartre is trying to introduce some variation is a tiny that almost sounds as if it were a well-known fact that of course there are two kinds of psychoanalysis virgin and Sathyan but there is one important difference which I think much less separates self from Freud then it separates Sabbath from many followers of Freud and not only from followers of fraud but quite especially from the largely following that Freud enjoys the people who have read some for it and use him how well precisely to do what's out is most preoccupied with the tacking mainly to deceive themselves about their freedom to live in bad faith to hide from themselves their freedom I don't think that this amounts to perfect latekka isaacman for themself it's not a point that in this lecture i want to go into deeper but i think that that is clearly right that many people who have read Freud tell me to say as if it were obvious well this is the way I am and of course it's all the fault of my governess or all the fault of my father my mother the way I was brought up and something happened to me when I was 2 and that accounts for the way I am so this is a way according to south of self-deception of living and dead faith of high days of freedom from yourself here Freud himself who went out to attack self-deception has been quickly made into another instrument and tool of self-deception develop insane amounts in a way to suggesting and this on purpose that set up central inspiration is moral that south central concern is in a way that of a moralist for all that it is affect that his major work ends with a promise that he will before long give us an ethic and he has not so far been able to give us an ethic that SETI's satisfies himself he has not worked out a book on FX but for all that I think in all of his work deeply moral concerns are impressive and so I shall now suggest what I think our South major insights about morality number one he clearly denies that there is any absolute morality he clearly denies that there are any more facts facts that are simply there for us to recognize and to conform to another way of putting this is to say that his view of morality is anti platonic Plato in an important sense believe even if Socrates before him didn't Plato believed that the birth forms ideas beyond this world of justice and temperance and courage and other virtues also a form of the God and then it was up to us to see these forms to have a building of them and if we couldn't and most of us can then to listen to people who have had such ability in other words according to Plato there are as it were moral facts which man thought realized and then conformed to in his life many religious people look at it similarly that there are certain things that as a matter of fact are good and evil and that man should recognize these and live accordingly certain the other hand denies absolute morality and suggests that morality is a matter of choice not just a matter of choosing what I want to be a good boy or a bad boy but a matter of choosing moral codes of choosing what I am to consider moral and immoral I don't know whether this so far would strike to the say the majority of this particular audience as particularly radical very likely not very likely so far a very large percentage of modern intellectuals would not only go along but even say basically that's a common price but suppose further he suggests further that there is no human nature he says there is no human nature now what does this mean they are some people move debris including some of Ford's most famous followers who are critical of them who have tried to develop a moral absolute ethic a humanistic ethic well they love suggesting that there is a human nature and that once you recognize what this human nature is it becomes obvious that some things are good for it and other things are bad for it you only have to be a doctor that is the suggestion here to realize that some things will ruin the patient and others will make him function properly and this means that after all everything isn't so bad everything isn't so serious everything isn't so critical there are certain things that are good for all men and there are other things that are bad for all men this is a very comforting view and I dare say an extremely popular view and very large numbers of educated intellectual people who agree that in the only photonic or religious sense there are no absolute values assuming that in this sense you can somehow reinstate a universal and up to a point absolute morality said does not agree with this he thinks that there's no human nature for which some things are good and some bad but that in a quote him again man makes himself that man decides what is good for him and what is bad for him and that man has to choose here and then if he kills himself into thinking that there are certain things that just plain are good for people or that just plain are bad for people so it would say he engages once again in his favorite game of self-deception he once again lives in bad faith not me of course we suggested and is often suggested for the people who use the strategy that I have just outlined that not only are there things that are good for all men and that are bad for or men but that of course this isn't you at all but that all the great religious teachers of mankind agree that they have all taught the same things that there is a significant moral agreement that in this way the latest science and the oldest religious agree is this view right which is so popular or is it possible that Sabbath is more profound at this point I would side with salt on this I do not agree that you might reveal what it is certain kinds of behavior Abani to be disastrous and to bring unhappiness let's say for example murder theft polygamy dishonesty well on the other hand altruism monogamy and honesty are the best policy I don't agree with that in quite that way and of course this last way of putting it sound cynical but the people who put forward this view bend over backwards not to be cynical they avoid all cynicism and they appeal not only to anthropology sociology above all psychology but they also make frequent and respectful boughs to mankind's greatest moral teachers and just as there is a ready-made audience for archeologists who claim to prove that the Bible was right there's also a ready-made audience for social scientists who Pro prove the great religious teachers right if one engages in that sort of thing earth one can hardly fail at least as far as popularity goes but there are a number of things that are wrong with it the first one is that the great religious teachers of mankind did not agree about morality I won't go into any very great detail about that in this lecture there will be opportunity of some of you want to challenge me about this in the discussion to engage further an argument about this just point out that even the people who claim that the great religious teachers of mankind agree are forced very soon to say that of course some of the so-called great religious teachers were not really great but the some of them were very bad we somehow have to separate out here the good religious teachers and the beared religious teachers at which point this particular appeal so far as I can see breaks down completely in that case we might say some religious teachers agree but others don't agree and if the only way we have or finding out which ones are right is not by looking to them but by examining the facts and the appeal to Authority crumbles but when there is crumble then I think the second fourth of the strategy which alone is crueler meets the eye and that is that science can present facts but it does not disturb that any standards it might conceivably show us what makes people happy and what does not it might tell us what conditions favor a big burst of poetic creativity and what don't what conditions make for excellence in sculpture for great architecture and what conditions don't what conditions make for impressive music and what conditions don't order the shoe lay here of course that we can agree on what is great news a great architecture great sculpture and so forth which is a moot point one might also possibly expect that scientists can tell us what social arrangements are what kind of behavior has promoted major scientific breakthroughs but what science cannot tell us is what goals we for those with a be so choose happiness or scientific breakthroughs or excellence and sculptural and poetry or a music well what of course is immensely popular is to tell people that they can have everything everything - there's no need to make any choices at all a maximum of pleasure end of science and of art in the philosophy and of music of morality of comfort of high standard of level of religious liberty poetry can all be heard the people only learn the art of loving altered [Music] the biblical formulation offered seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things shall be added unto you or a modern ease become a chewer and all these things shall be yours as well but in my mind this is really a view that is the quintessence of immaturity besides being thoroughly unscientific well seize here the world in black and white on the one side there's Jesus justice joy love truth Freud and all the good guys and on the other side you get dial bluegill tyrants totalitarians and then in this extremely simple mind that scheme no serious decisions have to be made anymore it's obvious who is going to choose the side that has such guys as Hitler and Stalin in there nobody wants that and it suggested that all the others are on the goody gumdrops side so we don't have to make any choices but this isn't so this is so for people who don't want to grow up that they have the idea that one doesn't have to make choices that everything is simple it looks as if moral conduct that have been reduced simply to psychological maturity that we don't have to grow up and face the frightening complexities of life we are saved from all serious choices serious laundry's from dread responsibility is we'll need anymore for tragedy we can have all good things without missing anything worth having but I think self that is much more tragic view is much more nearly right here take a very simple if you that would be much on our minds these days the people who say our survival is at stake and may hinge on on some absolute morality now what then is the standard should it be survival at any price would it be better for humanity to endure for a few more thousand years under a Hitler or in Huxley's brave new world or in some ant-like state but drastically reduced potential all the other hand that are safe to have a failure great flowering of culture so exceeding anything yet known and then to Paris no break I don't want to say that this is a black-and-white choice it's a difficult choice and one has to discuss it and consider it and I think each of us must decide after painstaking reflection and discussing what he is to value ultimately some people say monogamy is clearly right because they're approximately equal numbers of men and women and so it follows that this is the best arrangement but in Germany for example at the end of World War two they were ever so many more women than men should be then conclude that of course in that situation it's alright for one man to have many wives than other countries for one women to have many husbands but in most countries monogamy could be the rule or might will not have to face the possibility but Plato much more radical did face that perhaps the whole institution of marriage might be a bad thing in perhaps and a certain circumstances ought to be abolished but I'm trying to do he has not solve these problems at all for you but lend some substance to self suggestion that we do ultimately a morality have to make choices and that we can turn to some daddy figure who both tell us I have studied religion or I have studied science or psychology or medicine or what have you and then I'll tell you what's good for you know appear to science no appeal to expediency can settle the central moral questions which concern ultimate standards because what is EXPEED what is good in this instrumental sense always depends on what your goal is and what science may tell us how they're useful words can or cannot be reached it does not tell us what goals to seek now the enormous question that a man like select faces after have they said something of the sort and of course much of the detail here was mine rather than his the way of lending subsidies to but I take it is his view enormous problem that he faces is whether he is not now confronted with moral NRK how can he if he says there is no such human nature we have to choose our standards how can we then avoid complete moral Anarchy I think he has not found the answer to this question though he has tried the big question of the water put it differently is how can he deceive her between a responsible choice and irresponsible choice but does what he tried to do in his famous lecture on existentialism as a human as me and I think that that attempt in his lecture was really a failure I think it was very little considered what he suggests did not make a very long story very short clear what he suggested to Steve were the responsible choice from the irresponsible one what he thought were injured his rebuttal of any charge of Anarchy but warranted him in saying that the world's responsibility possible after all was that nothing can be better for us unless it's better for all and this I think is very clearly wrong and I find it quite a stunner when either a man is steeped in hombre lead and Friedrich Nietzsche assert is should have said that nothing can be better for us unless it's better for all seeing that as I read and reread novels and as I read meets just philosophy this is the Burton well this is the thing that they were fighting against all the time this idea that nothing can be better for us unless it's better for all and what South wants to do is in this fray introduce responsibility and how it doesn't work comes out beautifully in his own example if he says I decide to marry and to have children even though this decently proceed simply from my situation from my person on my desire I am thereby converting not only myself but humanity as a whole to the practice of monogamy I am thus responsible for myself and for all men and I'm creating a certain image of man as I would heaven to be in fashioning myself a Faton man that in a lecture I think is plain rhetoric and it's a noble conclusion but it doesn't stand out if I know if one wife I'm not necessarily implying that monogamy is better for all here at all irrational or irresponsible to suggest that I propose to make a go of it with this one wife without having any wish whatever to limit other people who have more money or who are sexually different inclined or who find themselves in quite a different situation or environment from behaving quite differently not marrying at all or having more than one wife similarly if I choose to have two children and didn't object to other couples having either no children at all or one or three or more then they consider changing a profession or writing a book the point is even more obvious surely when I left to become a philosopher I don't imply that such a career is better for all it's quite conceivable although I'm not trying to make any great confession now let's conceive the bird that I bought before being a great composer or that I got before be a Michelangelo but did I find that I haven't got what it takes now that wouldn't mean that if therefore I become a philosopher that I could feel that other people more fortunate than I could become philosophers - or the other way around that others who happen to let whatever gifts I might have or to follow my example take a still more specific case which leaves it utterly to be absurd and that is suppose that I decide to write a certain form when that case purely I don't want everybody to write that book if I knew that if he one other guy was writing that kind of a book I would want to change mine so I think that in as a tip to meet the charge of irresponsibility so it has failed and here I will just take a swipe at somebody else being very close now to my conclusions and we can explore that more in the discussion if you want to I think Camille is another man who has failed at that point Camille - somehow wants people to make responsible choices thinks there is nothing that is absolutely right for everybody but I think has been unable to give a criteria for what makes some choices better than others this comes out very movingly in what many people consider his greatest work the pest the plague where the central character a doctor takes the attitude that if a man wants to leave the town and turn his back on the rest of mankind and just seek his own happiness well no reason can be given why he couldn't do that but on the other hand he wishes that such a man wouldn't blame him for doing what he does here you have a resignation in the face of this problem and but this I come to my conclusion I think that existentialism has the enormous virtue of recognizing the nature of the modern which I think other philosophers on the whole have not been doing and further existentialists have occasionally diagnosed this crisis exceedingly well nor have they been defeatist about it but when it comes to their positive prescriptions I think it's fair to say that this has been on the whole their weakest part if you turn to somebody like Kierkegaard he suggests that we could throw reason out the window when it comes to salad trying to reintroduce responsibility he fails but too many english-speaking philosophers have been playing or stretch and it's a good thing to have people who face up to a crisis and diagnose that honestly even if they don't quite know what to do about it and here then is another answer to the question which I have tried to answer at the end of the first lecture and at the beginning of the second lecture and now again at the end of the third why one should study men with terrible views not because of their occasionally terrible prescriptions Plato - offered some perfectly dreadful prescriptions but rather because they face up to problems and see connections that other people don't say you might ask in the end whether I think that some of these problems can be solved and the answer is that I have tried to solve some of these problems particularly some of the ones that have been talking about today in my next book the faith of a heretic which Doubleday will publish next summer but I don't think that this is the time for going into my own solution because my topic is existentialism and the modern crisis

Channel: Philosophy Overdose

Views: 13,181

Rating: 4.8158994 out of 5

Keywords: Philosophy, Existentialism, History of Philosophy, Sartre, Heidegger, Relativism, Subjectivism, Bad Faith, Self-Deception, Psychology, Moral Psychology, Jean-Paul Sartre, Human Nature, Existence Precedes Essence, Ethics, Moral Relativism, Martin Heidegger, Free Will

Id: m7-jYhYgPNI

Length: 71min 29sec (4289 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 18 2018

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[u/jorio]

Abstract:

Dr. Walter Kaufmann gives the third and final lecture in a 1960 series on existentialism. Since it has not kept up with the results of science, the question arises, "Is philosophy worth pursuing?" Dr. Walter Kaufmann, in this examination of Sartre, suggests the breakdown of morals, institutionalized anonymity, permissiveness, and the population explosion have brought us to a crucial point of decision. This was foreseen by the existentialists who did not share the vast optimism about scientific progress. The work of Sartre and Heidegger is contrasted along with a discussion of Jaspers and Tillich. He suggests both Sartre and Camus failed to alleviate the current moral vacuum.

Existentialists take human existence and the human condition to be a fundamental issue. They tend to be radical individualists who focus on lived experience, privileging human passion over reason. They focus on themes such as: freedom, authenticity, meaning, anxiety/angst/dread, alienation, death, guilt, and the absurd. They are often suspicious of any fixed human nature, objective/universal values, and philosophical systems. Some of the most important existentialist thinkers include Jean-Paul Sartre, Martin Heidegger, Søren Kierkegaard, Friedrich Nietzsche, Dostoyevsky, Karl Jaspers, and Albert Camus.