Sartre, existence preceeds essence and mental illness *possible trigger*
i wasnt sure if this would trigger anyone, so thought it best to warn people just in case
basically im writing an essay on Sartre's catch phrase that "existence preceeds essence", which is basically saying that we exist and then we make ourselves into what we want, we possess complete freedom
but its got me thinking where mental health issues would stand in this. my interpretation of Sartre's theory would mean that everyone has complete freedom and thus has freedom to overcome a mental illness if they so choose. it just feels to me asthough Sartre implies everyone chooses to be the way they are and so if someone is depressed its cus they choose to be that way (just for the record this is not what i think)
but if thats not the case, and sometimes we suffer things that we can not control then surely this would mean existence could not preceed essense as there is part of us which we dont have complete freedom over
im sorry if iv explained all this quite badly, its just got me thinking.
what do other people think?
I disagree with Sartre on that. Humans do not possess complete freedom, and I doubt we ever will. A starving child in Africa does not choose to live a life of poverty, he has it thrust upon him. If he had complete freedom, he would choose not to live like that. Similarly, nobody chooses to contract a deadly illness like cancer. Basically what I'm saying is that if we could make ourselves into what we want, we would.
I could be getting this all wrong (I haven't really studied Sartre at all), but that's my opinion, based on what you've said.
Philosophers tend to oversimplify life and humanity anyway. They look for one answer to a billion questions.
no one has choice to have or not have mental illness but they can choose how they react and deal with it, we all have a choice as to whether we let it rule our lives etc. or how much control it has over us. [those who happen to be mentally ill]
Stop thinking about what I want, what he wants, what your parents want. What do you want?
I believe there is no single reason that we are what we are.
You're born with certain genetics that can shape your personality and life, and the environment you're born into, and the people you are surrounded with, the institutions, they all affect our lives and personalitys as well, and this goes onto to hsape our decisions and the wya we behave, and this leads onto blah blah blah blah. You get the point yes?
In the case of mental health, I like the theory of a diathesis stressm model, basically we're born with a certain level of genetic disposition to develop diferent kinds of mental illness. If you picture it as a jar, that when you're born is filled up a certain amount of disposition to mental illness due to genetics, as we go for life, our experiences, etc. can either add to that jar, or take away from it, e.g. someone who say is bullied at school, may find that their jar fills up more than others, whereas someone who is popular and not bullied, their jar empties.
Anywho, if the jar ends up overflowing, you will develop mental illness.
I'm not sure whether I've explained that well enough, but basically it's a combination of genetics and environmental factors that can lead to mental illness, if you're born with a jar thats already pretty filled genetically, you're more susceptible to mental illness, but may not develop it with good quality of life, etc.
I pretty much agree with what everyone above has said.
I’m a materialist and determinist. But determinism does not excuse a person from needing to do as well as they can and make the best decisions possible. Your experience of consciousness and choice is the process by which a great deal of your brain operates.
Of course you can examine your mind at a lower level of abstraction as an electrochemical network and so forth, and sometimes this is useful, as for designing pharmacological treatments for psychological problems. However, all the drugs and therapy in the world won’t help you if you’re not ultimately willing to help yourself.
I guess I’d also emphasize that there’s not a clean dividing line between mental illness and health, just like there’s no such line for physical wellness. There are varying degrees of capability, and some people might be sufficiently well-adjusted in some environments but not in others. For example, if we didn’t have to work or otherwise expose ourselves to high-demand environments, a lot of this site’s userbase would probably seem to be functioning well enough to avoid being considered ill.
Im a case-by-casist. Its my very own "-ist" and I strongly believe it is the most intelligent one. On this particular case, my comment is that philosophers are enigmas. How the crap do they make money?
That is all.
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I would recommend that you read some work by Existential psychotherapists like Emmy Van Deurzen-Smith.
It's a long time since I read them, so I can't really comment on the theories myself. My previous therapist, who I worked with for 9 months, was, apparently "Existential Phenomenological". Which basically meant she took me as I was each session, not holding onto how I was before, and often questioned why not and why and stuff like that.
Existentialism,while makes for intriging reading doesnt cut it in real life.Ever read Kafkas 'metamorphosis ',surreal and quite depressing.Its like looking at life through a darkened mirror.
We can not stop or control mental illness.Maybe the lives we lead contribute to some of it .But how are we to know what the future brings?
I dont know if the intended Satre belief embodied the thought that mental illness is controlled by the individual .Nobody can stop psychosis ,voices in their head,racing thoughts.Life throws things at us that we cannot only but cope with.
It became like a sort of prison. Encased in a silver shell, words so full of bleeding need spilled like drops on dry leaves. And all the while laughter prevailed a long way from here. Nowhere land, nowhere time, nowhere space.
Sartre actually goes a little bit into being born with a predisposition towards acting/behaving in a certain way, he called this his facticity, I believe.
He was born with a bad eye and obviously he doesn't have a choice in the matter about that so he had to find a way to get around it. So, like any good philosopher, he did. You're born with a facticity towards something and you make your choices around that, you don't make your choices depending on it.
So I believe Sartre would say you can suffer from mental illness but it is in the way you deal with this that you make your choice.
Read Existentialism & Humanism. He makes really good points in that and explains it a lot better than I can but yeah. I like Sartre a lot, he makes a lot of valid points. "A man is the sum of his actions". That doesn't have to mean you choose to be depressed, it just might mean that for you personally it's the difference between trying to better the situation if you can or letting it deteriorate.
This is your life, it doesn't get any better than this. This is your life, and it's ending one minute at a time.
Oh but if you make your decisions based around your facticity then you're acting in bad faith. You're not making an authentic decision. So if you said "I'm not gonna do that because I'm depressed" then you're acting in bad faith. Facticity isn't a get out clause for Sartre.
This is your life, it doesn't get any better than this. This is your life, and it's ending one minute at a time.
^ good one ,I didnt read la nausee but I read a love story which was about Satres la nasuee book in relation to a girl the protagonist was dating.I have it here somewhere ,couldnt be bothered looking for the title but it was like 'Love and Naseau ' or something.
It was very good and explored a lot of Satres beliefs.One such thing I remember from it was the guy in question fell in love with this girl .One day they lay by the river totallyas one .He digresses that even though the moment was 'perfect' he couldnt switch his mind off and began to think ,maybe 'pefect' doesnt exist.he procastinated on his mind not being happy with the moment ,dwelling on the ins and outs of it rather than excepting the actuality of it and being content.
The protaginist was obsessed with Satre and believed also that true happiness did not exist ,just the 'idea' of it .This is a common thread in Existentialism and its theories .I agree somewhat with it for the mind is too obsessed to just 'be' and will always find ulterior thoughts and veins to abstract from what is at that precise moment.
I think if we all explore ourselves ,we will find that the happiest times were perhaps also some of the saddest.
It became like a sort of prison. Encased in a silver shell, words so full of bleeding need spilled like drops on dry leaves. And all the while laughter prevailed a long way from here. Nowhere land, nowhere time, nowhere space.
I think if we all explore ourselves ,we will find that the happiest times were perhaps also some of the saddest.
I have not found this to be the case. I mean, sometimes things that are momentarily enjoyable have costs that provoke unpleasant moments later on, but my happiest moments haven't involved feeling sad or regretful or incomplete simultaneously. The times when I have had conflicting emotions like that have not my happiest moments by my definition.
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One day they lay by the river totallyas one .He digresses that even though the moment was 'perfect' he couldnt switch his mind off and began to think ,maybe 'pefect' doesnt exist.he procastinated on his mind not being happy with the moment ,dwelling on the ins and outs of it rather than excepting the actuality of it and being content.
I think perfection is an idiosyncratic subjective judgment, as is the feeling that you are "totally as one" with another person.
I’m not sure what one would mean by saying they felt “totally as one” with another person, except something along the lines of “I felt like I loved them very much and understood them very well and they loved and understood me too.”
If you define perfection as being a state where nothing could possibly be any better, then it's never going to appear; it’s like an asymptote. We’ll always want more than we have.
That doesn’t mean that you can’t be happy. But you’re not going to be truly happy all the time.
Well, perhaps we could via future technological intervention. But that could be risky since complacency is maladaptive in the face of change to one’s environment.
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He is stuck by the meaninglessness of his actions and of his surroundings, his consciousness of this fact evokes a sense of nausea - life's randomness has robbed him of meaningful choice.
I guess the idea that life has no “inherent” meaning precipitates crisis for some; personally it’s never been much of a problem for me though of course I had to go through a stage of coming to the realization that I had to make my own meaning. I highly recommend Hermann Hesse for reading on that theme, particularly Siddhartha which is very short and sweet.
I don’t think that meaninglessness is synonymous with randomness, and I don’t find existence to be very random.
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Existentialism,while makes for intriging reading doesnt cut it in real life.Ever read Kafkas 'metamorphosis ',surreal and quite depressing.Its like looking at life through a darkened mirror.
I don’t think that existentialism necessarily implies surrealism. I think they often comingle when people express thoughts on the subject because the surreal/absurd is a convenient metaphor for the feeling that reality is arbitrary.
I think works like Siddhartha (as mentioned above), The Sun Also Rises, Long Day’s Journey Into Night, The Scarlet Letter, Ghost in the Shell, etc. include themes that can be considered existentialist, but are comparatively realistic (though in some cases, relatively stylized and/or speculative; I deliberately chose from a variety of genres to demonstrate the broad scope I assign to the term).
“Existentialism” is one of those words that seems to be often used in subtly different senses, such that it’s not always obvious exactly what someone means by it. When I use the term, I mean an approach to reality where one accepts that certain things exist or behave a certain way, and figures out what is the case, or how to act, by working from those assumptions. I think in that sense, everyone is an existentialist to some degree.
When I refer to “accept[ing things]” I don’t mean that one has to accept things on any particular basis. It just depends on what criteria are most important to you.
I consider myself an existentialist, but also a follower of the scientific method. Kierkegaard was a Christian existentialist who chose to believe in God and salvation despite being unable to rationally convince himself of their existence, because he felt it made his life better. Nietzsche emphasized personal sovereignty and aspiration unconstrained by other people or external forces except to the extent one truly wishes to be affected by them. Buddhism stresses the impermanence of all things and taking things in stride, not getting too caught up in any given goal or moment. The ruling regimes in 1984 are perniciously existentialist as historical revisionists and arbiters of “truth”, where truth/belief is ascribed based on what is most convenient; “who controls the past controls the future” and all that stuff. etc.
Props for the reference to I Corinthians 13.
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Im a case-by-casist. Its my very own "-ist" and I strongly believe it is the most intelligent one. On this particular case, my comment is that philosophers are enigmas. How the crap do they make money?
Many contemporary academic and historical philosophers would probably agree with “case-by-caseism” in the sense of being skeptical about overly broad claims.
Some philosophers certainly have made unjustified generalizations and oversimplifications but that doesn’t mean that philosophy as a discipline necessarily seeks to do such things. And even those who’ve done such things would in many cases admit that they could be wrong, but that proposing such ideas helps to provide a foundation for future thinkers in pursuit of knowledge.
I’m not a formal philosophy student but I know several pretty well and just thought I’d emphasize that not all who self-identify as “philosophers” are prone to oversimplification.
Modern “professional philosophers” generally make money as authors or university professors, either of philosophy or some other discipline. Historical philosophers often did the same, were sponsored by wealthy patrons and/or governments, lived in monasteries, or were independently wealthy.
Of course unlike some other pursuits, philosophy doesn’t necessarily take a lot of money, and the amateur/professional distinction is easily blurred especially as you go farther back in time.
When I said 'toally as one' I just meant they were supposed to be 'happy' .Icant find the book for the exact quotation so as to verify what exactly I was saying but I didnt mean my choice of words to be taken so literally.I studied Nietzsche a long time ago and was familiar wth the ideal of the 'Superman'.I wouldnt have the memory or the basis to come to terms with him now unless I read more of his work presently.
I base my opinions only on what I have read ,for I wouldnt have the knowledge of that which I have now 'experienced'.
From what I could gather ,life was rather sad and full of a sort of emptiness,a pathos very profound.When i say that some of the happiest memories are also some of the saddest ,i still belive this .Do we not cry fro what we have lost .Of course in saying that we have split second shutter images which are berefit of any emotion but which we associate with 'happiness' .How do we know if we were happy at the actual time?
There are moments of pure happiness but if one were to analyise these ,we could go on forever,taking int special account entire lives and childhoods .
It became like a sort of prison. Encased in a silver shell, words so full of bleeding need spilled like drops on dry leaves. And all the while laughter prevailed a long way from here. Nowhere land, nowhere time, nowhere space.
Sorry about typos ,everytime I try to edit there is a problem
It became like a sort of prison. Encased in a silver shell, words so full of bleeding need spilled like drops on dry leaves. And all the while laughter prevailed a long way from here. Nowhere land, nowhere time, nowhere space.
Reading all this really makes me miss my old philosophy lectures. It wasn't so much learning, just over thinking.
I'm really a big fan of Sartre & De Beauvoir, do any of you have anything to recommend? I've read around Hume, Descartes etc and fancy picking it up again.
This is your life, it doesn't get any better than this. This is your life, and it's ending one minute at a time.
It became like a sort of prison. Encased in a silver shell, words so full of bleeding need spilled like drops on dry leaves. And all the while laughter prevailed a long way from here. Nowhere land, nowhere time, nowhere space.
