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Some questions I'm left with after finishing Being and Nothingness. (self.philosophy)
submitted 6 months ago by [deleted]
I just finished Being and Nothingness, and for the most part I felt I really grasped it. However, I was left with a few questions that I really couldn't figure out on my own, and was hoping maybe some of you Redditors could help me out here.
What is the relationship between consciousness and its objects like, and how is it different than the relationship between consciousness and itself?
How is consciousness different from the nonconscious part of being? I understand Freud's concept of the unconscious, but Freud creates a huge distinction between the two. Freud also doesn't believe so heavily in free-will, thus there's no reason for him to stick to these beliefs like Sartre has to. So, Sartre believes in absolute free-will, then what the hell is the nonconscious to him, and how is it any different than the conscious since both of them seem to be in total control.
Sartre then goes on to discuss the relationship between nothingness and the conscious, which he says the nonconscious cannot understand. I don't understand the relationship. What is it?
How does Sartre relate consciousness to self-deception? Why is it part of our consciousness that we self-deceive? Is it that rather than what Freud believes in that we repress, that our consciousness deceives us?
[–]Plato_Karamazov 0 points1 point2 points 6 months ago
1) Do you remember way back when in grade school when you learned about the difference between "subject" and "object"? These two concepts play a MAJOR role in Sartre's philosophy.
What do you mean by "its objects"? An object is a non-conscious thing, it does not have agency or experience. The relationship between consciousness and object is merely its use. If you refer back, for example, to the chapter on sex, you will see that that even subjects can be treated like objects (which is dangerous--see the chapter on Sadism!)
For consciousness and itself, the Subject would never treat itself as an Object (dehumanization); however, when Sartre talks about the Body, it is entirely possible to refer to one's physical body as an object: "My hand", "my foot", etc. But these do not directly refer to the totality of the Subject; we never call a person "It."
2) Nonconscious = nonbeing. A nonconscious entity does not have agency, therefore it is not a being. The nonconscious are objects. Do you recall when he asked, "How do we know that the man who is walking down the street toward us is not simply a machine?" (He never satisfactorily answers this question.)
3) Honestly, I don't get it either.
4) I don't necessarily think it's Freudian repression, because we are always conscious of what we are doing, especially in the case of the example he gave in the chapter on Bad Faith. Much of it has to do with the false idea that we can change who we are fundamentally, and it is here that Heidegger's notion of authenticity comes into play (my favorite concept of all of Existentialism): We act in a manner we know to be false, for whatever reason (the gay man hates homosexuality, the feminist hippie convinces herself of the benefits of the free-market system in order to do what she thinks will bring her success, a woman adopts Christian values to hide her nymphomaniac past, etc), and pretend it to be true for some other end.
[–]Either-Or 2 points3 points4 points 6 months ago
1) Actually, Sartre, like Heidegger, does away with the object-subject dichotomy: The for-itself cannot be in-itself, but this relation is not the same as that between the subject and the object, which is so drenched in faulty metaphysics that it precludes a true view of the matter at hand. The for-itself and the in-itself should be considered theoretical abstractions of a whole (being), a mere methodological device for the sake of simplifying analysis, and the "relationship" between them is a much more intimate one. As Sartre says, the for-itself is being nihilating itself.
To answer the original question, I think it might be better to start with the "relationship" between consciousness and itself: Sartre talks about the pre-reflective consciousness as the way in which consciousness concerns itself, and signifies the relation by putting the "of" in "consciousness of itself" in parentheses: Consciousness (of) itself.1 This is to signify that while consciousness cannot exist other than as consciousness of something, it also implicitly maintains its own structure as being conscious (of) being conscious of something. This is why we so readily answer "I am counting" to the question of "what are you doing?" This relation of consciousness to itself is immediate.
In opposition to this, consciousness of something is consciousness of not being what it is consciousness of, and as such it is a negation of what it is consciousness of. In other words, the relationship is a negative one. This is how "things" are differentiated, how something can be fragile, etc. This relation is mediated.
2) Both the conscious and the nonconscious are part of being. As I said already, the "relation" between for-itself and in-itself is not really a relation as such, at least not if a relation implies distance; they are aspects of a whole, of being. Consciousness differs by being that which brings nothingness into being, or in other words, is being bringing nothingness into itself.
3) I'm not sure where you get that bit from, but if Sartre says that the nonconscious cannot understand nothingness, it is because something nonconscious simply cannot understand at all. If you mean how the in-itself cannot admit nothingness, the point is that if you abstract being into something that is principally not witnessed by any consciousness, then you cannot say very much about it, but you may approximate it by saying that it coincides perfectly with itself, that it doesn't allow for any nothingness or distance, etc.; the in-itself simply is, neither more nor less.
4) Sartre's concept of "self-deception" (I take it you mean Bad Faith) is one where we take a reflective attitude and direct our consciousness on itself in the way in which consciousness is consciousness of other things. In other words, if consciousness looks at itself and takes itself as thing, we are in bad faith. It is very "easy" to make this mistake because essences are constituted through successive appearances of anything such that whenever we take ourselves as object, we run the risk of confusing what we might be said to have been with what we "are."
1: I can't remember exactly, but I think in some places, the English translation turns this into "self-consciousness" because the translator believes this English construction is a good way of conceptualising Sartre's thought. However, I think the only result is that, as "self-consciousness" is a more established construction than "consciousness (of) itself," the phrase is simply passed over as another word in the continuous stream of a flowing text: Much like how in "paris in the the spring," we skip the second "the" (at least when the sentence is properly formatted -- it might not work here), we end up reading "self-consciousness" as [self-consciousness], and not [consciousness (of) itself].
If you want a really good example of the difference between Subject and Object, read this article I wrote:
The Male in Pornography -- particularly the part about lesbian porn.
[–]ravia 0 points1 point2 points 6 months ago
Unfortunately, Sartre is kind of poor. While he does address themes and issues that are important, his way of dealing with the concepts he's got himself involved in is, frankly, not so hot. In other words, after reading that great tome, you may need to really read some of his sources a bit to get clearer on the concepts. Sartre quotes Heidegger, for example, referencing and doing a lot of "This is what Heidegger means when he says X". Meanwhile, Heidegger could be found reading some Sartre and calling it "drecht" (the only thing near a translation was "inconsequential crap").
Sartre doesn't really get out of the "subject-object" dualism and mis an scene, even if it appears that he does. He strongly affirms that "every consciousness is consciousness of something", which is right out of Husserl and it's a rather simplistic, naive description of how things really are, for example.
His take on being in the world appears to be naive and very virile, a bit full of crap. The idea of "pure free will", whether he uses the word "pure" or not is quite literally unmitigated nonsense. Choice is variously limited and determined. Unfortunately, this is also a fault of a lot of philosophy, even better stuff like Heidegger, and they all go along with the great shut-down of what I call "midrange" psychology, as opposed to full-blown and more specifically Freudian psychology. This means no skill analysis, linguistic skill-base analysis, skill repertoire issues, knowledge-base effects, "psychological bias" issues, probability bias issues, relationship issues, "hot cognition" (emotional cognition), love issues, family relationships, family dynamics, um...wait, isn't all that stuff something like the greater quantity of what real being in the world is? Does this mean that there is some kind of weird problem with philosophy?
Yes.
[–][deleted] -1 points0 points1 point 6 months ago
I read Being and Time before Being and Nothingness.
Hmm.
[–]heisgone 0 points1 point2 points 6 months ago
Consciousness is this thing that you can only understand by your own experience. You can, for example, realize that you cannot be conscious of two things at the same time. You cannot be conscious of your left hand and your right hand at the same time. It's just an illusion because consciousness scan our environment so fast be by training in concentration you can get to see that. You can then try to turn consciousness into an object, which is impossible. But also, everything that can be an object to your consciousness "isn't you". So everything you experience "isn't you".
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[–]Plato_Karamazov 0 points1 point2 points ago
[–]Either-Or 2 points3 points4 points ago
[–]Plato_Karamazov 0 points1 point2 points ago
[–]ravia 0 points1 point2 points ago
[–][deleted] -1 points0 points1 point ago
[–]ravia 0 points1 point2 points ago
[–]heisgone 0 points1 point2 points ago