• Albert Keirkenhaur
    37
    I've found that there are two truths for almost any scenario or circumstance or object. Both exactly as correct as the other.
    • One being what I will call the familiar truth. This is the way we illustrate the world around us on a daily basis. i.e., ''I went to my daughters soccer game and conversed with the parents a little''.
      • The other truth is the existential truth. A truth that could be rather upsetting depending on your perspective. The soccer game quote above is a truth. You did go to your daughters soccer game and converse with parents, but under this truth, the quote becomes ''I watched my female offspring run in short green vegetation with other smaller humans kicking a synthetic leather ball around whilst exchanging audible mouth noises with larger humans.''

      As you can see, neither of these is wrong. That's what makes this distinction interesting.
      The familiar truth of a dinner date may be sitting at Red Lobster with your wife or husband eating salad and crab. The other truth being sitting in an enclosed structure consuming plant and animal matter with another human whose genitals you sometimes touch.
  • Metaphysician Undercover
    13.2k
    So, what are you saying, that there is potentially an infinite number of different ways to truly describe any particular situation?
  • Albert Keirkenhaur
    37
    No, what i'm doing is nothing more than sartrian analysis
  • jkop
    905
    The use of an unconventional or more inexact way of expressing a statement does not make its truth into a different kind of truth.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salva_veritate
  • Albert Keirkenhaur
    37
    Great point.. I can see the fallacy in my thinking. Sartrian existentialism is definitely not inexact though. It's honest in a strange and beautiful way
  • Hoo
    415

    There is something beautiful in Sartre. I love the idea of the self or consciousness as a hole in being. I'd call it an abstract myth that allows us to notice something about ourselves. Kojeve's Lectures on Hegel go well with Sartre. I'd say that half of Nausea is profound. The rest, upon rereading it recently, I couldn't do anything with. But there was a white flame in the little man with the lazy eye. (It's illuminating to read about his relationship with women, one in particular, with whom he gossiped and co-seduced the others).

    In response to your original post, I agree with Rorty than anything and everything is re-describable. So there are not 2 ways and but countless ways to paint a situation. If there is a general structure in all of this re-description, I'd venture to say that they are all infused with purpose, desire, "bias." Reacted to another thread about "cold, hard truth," I'd say that even the notion of "cold, hard truth" satisfies a warm, soft desire.
  • TheWillowOfDarkness
    2.1k
    Sartre is a bit of a miserable one. He’s acutely aware of our existential nothingness. Whatever we are is only a meaning insisted upon by ourselves and others, so we can’t appeal to any essential nature to ground who we are. Any existing form is horrific because it cannot overcome out freedom and satiate our desire of it.

    Everything in world is dissatisfactory because we can never possess the other to define them how we wish. Perhaps worse, we cannot be possessed by others, such that responsibility for our definition is handed off to someone else. We are always expecting people and ourselves to be something they’re not, always restless because our existential nothingness means we never get what we desire or become who we want.

    In a somewhat ironic twist, Sartre is a man burdened by his desires and the gumption to seek them out, his freedom. He can’t settle for anything but existential nothingness because something else would mean settling for a performance in the world. He refuses to perform because he wants something more than the performance. To be a waiter, whether good or bad, for any amount of time just isn’t enough. The same is true of what anyone might be. We might always have our freedom, but it is a hollow life. Our desires are always turned against our existence— to love one is not enough, nor is it enough to love three, not even loving one hundred will be a satisfactory choice. Our deepest desire is to be more than our choices, to avoid choice and responsibility for ourselves.

    Sartrean philosophy (especially the early, maybe less so in later stuff) is characterised by a fundamental disrespect for “freedom.” If all we have is choice, our own decision to perform, what then can be more satisfying than giving the performance we want? Choice needn’t always be a burden. If it is what people are seeking to do with their freedom, what greater expression our freedom could there be?

    If I choose to be a good waiter, and you choose me to have a good waiter, we both perform and everyone gets what they want, despite our existential nothingness. My choice is not always a burden on you (i.e. contrary to your freedom) and vice versa. If I willing choose to be a waiter, you don’t have to go around telling me “You must be a waiter. You are not free to choose otherwise.” in some attempt to force me into an inauthentic life.

    The freedom and choice of Sartrean turns in on itself. If we are responsible for ourselves, this includes are actions, thoughts and understanding of one another. We get to choose our performances. One of the options we may choose is a performance that complements others, such our lives are authentic not only in that we understand our own freedom, but also in contentment with choices we make.

    Sartre is too pessimistic about human relationships. Not becasue they aren’t frequently exploitative or characterised by expectations which deny the freedom of oneself and others, but rather because this is not always true. Sometimes people’s choices amount to relationships which are a respect of each others choices.
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