The Inconsistency of Jean Paul Sartre’s Logic

THE THOMIST A SPECULATIVE QUARTERLY REVIEW OF THEOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHY EmToRs: THE DoMINICAN FATHERS OF THE PRoVINCE oF ST. JosEPH Publishers: The Thomist Press, Washington 17, D. C. VoL. X OCTOBER, 1947 THE INCONSISTENCY OF JEAN PAUL SARTRE'S LOGIC No.4 IF, in view of the public interest which has been centered about the novels and plays of Jean Paul Sartre by a sensational advertising campaign, we ask ourselves what will remain--or, indeed, what remains now-of his apparently subtle and new philosophy, we come to realize that its novelty has grown old very quickly and that existentialist psychoanalysis disintegrates thought more than it promotes or enriches it. In order for an idea to retain the attention of the public, it must be new in a much clearer and more real sense. Moreover , critiques have been written that are considerably subtler than those found in the analyses and audacities of works that are subtly paralogical. It would be interesting to gather together these studies that negate the most positive assertions of a writer whose logic ends up by destroying itself. An excellent example of this form of critique is the argument of Pierre Ayraud in his Reflexions 8Ur l'Etrre et le N eant, one of 393 894 MAURICE BLONDEL the essays m Temoignages (Cahiers de la Pierre-qui-Vire, August 1946). This study begins as follows: "A reading of l'Etre et le N eant makes one wonder if it is really necessary to refute Sartre. He has organised his system in such a fashion that acceptance of the initial premises of the book leads, little by little, to acceptance of the whole book. To the rejections of these premises the author will certainly object that it is unfair to criticize his philosophy on the basis of principles other than his own. Besides, Sartre is a subtle thinker, indeed, too subtle. Armed with his existentialist psychoanalysis, he quickly destroys his opponent's thought, reducing it to that game of mirrors in which the " pour soi " 1 triumphs only to perish more completely. It has to be said: A philosopher who considers serious-mindedness the supreme illusion of human consciousness is a priori not even worthy of criticism. Therefore, we shall not try to find out whether Sartre is right or wrong, whether he is a charlatan of genius or a poor fellow caught in the trap of his own dialectics. We shall try only to prove that his philosophy constitutes no threat whatsoever to our own basic theses. More than that, realism correctly understood permits us to perceive more clearly the hidden flaws in this phenomenological ontology that is neither ontological nor phenomenological. How explain the fact that Sartrian existentialism, expressing itself in a whole series of morbid literary works, was born and developed in the land of Descartes, although part of it came to France " in the baggage train of foreigners? " Is it simply a reaction against the rationalistic and idealistic trends which too long dominated philosophical thought in the nineteenth and at the beginning of the twentieth century, cutting that thought off from reality and life and making it sterile? Must we not recognize that this noisy explosion of existentialism has emotional roots and arose out of the frightful cataclysm of world war? 1 Sartre recognizes two kinds of being, "l'etre pour-soi" and "l'etre en-soi." The latter is the thick " viscous " impenetrable being of inanimate things and of man's past. The former is man's present being in which consciousness, "nothingness ," and "choice " play the major role. INCONSISTENCY OF JEAN PAUL SARTRE's LOGIC 395 Certainly, philosophy must raise the question of the meaning of human existence, and all reflection should take into account the destiny of man himself. Philosophy is not only a scheme of ideas; it is the establishment of a position with regard to the Absolute and each one of us, at every moment, irrevocably stakes infinite values. But we must not allow the abuse of deadening abstractions to throw us into the sticky subjectivity of the hard existent, as the exaggerated systematization of Hegel drove Kierkegaard to clench his fists in a fideism of despair. Philosophy...