Well, Sartre at least had an exquisite taste in women.
His wife Simone de Beauvoir is a magnificent read. Classical feminism when
it was still intellectually vigorous.
I have always found it hard to put her husband in the same league of
thinkers. ;-)
Big love
Alexander

Den tors 23 maj 2019 kl 19:06 skrev Steven Quackenbush <
[log in to unmask]>:

> Hi Alexander,
>
> Distinctions can be made among (a) what a philosopher says she is doing,
> (b) what other people say the philosopher is doing, and (c) what the
> philosopher is actually doing.
>
> Sartre devoted more pages to psychobiography than he did to fiction,
> politics, or academic philosophy.   His 3000-page study of Gustave Flaubert
> dwarfs in size (and, arguably, in scope) the complete set of his major
> philosophical works (e.g., *Being & Nothingness*, *Critique of
> Dialectical Reason*).   As I read it, I don't find myself in the presence
> of Mao, Rousseau, Freud, Hegel, Nietzsche, or even Sartre "*the
> existentialist*".   If I had to classify it, I'd say it has much in
> common with the psychobiographies of Erik Erikson (as Stuart Charme has
> observed).  Still, it remains uniquely "Sartrean" in execution.
> Interestingly, Sartre considered it a development of his own early work on
> the role played by imagination in human experience (with Flaubert emerging
> as *a sorcerer* of "the imaginary").   But even this fails to capture the
> richness of the text.
>
> I can't speak to Sartre's place in the history of philosophy.  My own
> interest in his writings wasn't elicited by a concern with existentialism,
> Marxism, or any other -ism.  Rather, I discovered Sartre quite accidentally
> as I was exploring the contemporary "narrative psychology" literature,
> where his psychobiographies seem to have had a modest impact.
>
> But since this thread is concerned with the problem of freedom, I'll
> conclude with a relevant passage from Sartre's study of Flaubert:
>
>    - "The *person*, in effect, is neither completely suffered nor
>    completely constructed; furthermore the person *does not exist *or, if
>    you will, is the always surpassed result of the whole mass of totalizing
>    operations by which we continually try to assimilate the unassimilable --
>    primarily our childhood..."
>    - "In any event, personalization in the individual is nothing more
>    than the surpassing and preservation (assumption and inner negation) at the
>    core of *a project to totalize what the world has made -- and
>    continues to make -- of us.*" (*The Family Idiot*, Vol. 2, pp. 6-7).
>
> Take care,
>
> ~ Steve Q.
>
>
> Steven W. Quackenbush, Ph.D., Chair
> Division of Psychology & Human Development
> University of Maine, Farmington
> Farmington, ME 04938
> (207) 778-7518
> [log in to unmask]
>
>
>
> On Thu, May 23, 2019 at 4:20 AM Alexander Bard <[log in to unmask]>
> wrote:
>
>> Dear Steven
>>
>> Excellent points!
>> However Sartre is stuck in an almost vulgar intrepretation of Marxist
>> dialectics. Please recall that he was also a Rousseauian and a Maoist.
>> There you go.
>> Hegelian dialectics does not work the same way but is rather more
>> sophisticated.
>> Freud is very much a Hegelian but not a Marxist. So there is deep
>> dialectics going on in psychoanalysis, starting with negation (not thesis)
>> moving on to to abstraction (not antithesis) and ending up with concretion
>> (not synthesis). While all three simultaneously co-exist with intense
>> overlap.
>> Without Hegel we would have neither any Freud nor any Nietzsche. And they
>> both do fine without Marx.
>> Which in turn explains why we in Europe find so little use of Sartre
>> these days.
>> Psychoanalysis in a dialectical relationship with archeology and
>> neuroscience seems a much better place to start from.
>>
>> Love and respect
>> Alexander
>>
>> Den ons 22 maj 2019 kl 20:29 skrev Steven Quackenbush <
>> [log in to unmask]>:
>>
>>> Hi all,
>>>
>>> A quick comment regarding the relationship between Sartre and Freud (as
>>> it may shed further light on the problem of freedom).
>>>
>>> Alexander writes that Sartre "never understood the Freudian revolution
>>> to begin with."
>>>
>>> Sartre agrees:
>>>
>>>    - "I have to say that I was incapable of understanding him because I
>>>    was a Frenchman with a good Cartesian tradition behind me, imbued with a
>>>    certain rationalism, and I was therefore deeply shocked by the idea of the
>>>    unconscious."
>>>
>>> Still, the mature Sartre's resistance to Freud is considerably more
>>> nuanced than much of the secondary literature might lead us to believe:
>>>
>>>    - "I would reproach psychoanalytic theory with being a *syncretic *and
>>>    not a* dialectical* thought.  The word 'complex', indeed, indicates
>>>    this very evidently: interpenetration without contradiction."
>>>       - "The results of *syncretism*...can be seen in the Oedipus
>>>       complex, for instance:"
>>>          - "[The] fact is that analysis manage to find everything in
>>>          it, equally well the fixation on the mother, love of the mother, or hatred
>>>          of the mother, as Melanie Klein argues....The consequence is that
>>>          an analyst can say one thing and then the contrary immediately
>>>          afterwards, without in anyway worrying about lack of logic, since after all
>>>          'opposites interpenetrate'...Psychoanalytic theory is thus a
>>>          'soft' thought.  It has no dialectical logic to it."
>>>          - Of course, "the fixation of a girl on an older man may will
>>>          come from her father, or the fixation of a young man on a girl may derive
>>>          from a profusion of original relationships. But what is missing in
>>>          conventional psychoanalytic accounts is the idea of dialectical
>>>          irreducibility."
>>>       - "In a truly *dialectical *theory, such as historical
>>>       materialism, phenomena derive from each other dialectically: there are
>>>       difference configurations of dialectical reality, and each of these
>>>       configurations Is rigorously conditioned by the previous one, while
>>>       preserving and superseding it at the same time.  This supersession is,
>>>       however, precisely irreducible.  While one configuration may preserve
>>>       another, it can never simply be reduced to its predecessor."
>>>          - "It is the idea of this *autonomy* that is lacking
>>>          in psychoanalytic theory.  A sentiment or passion between two persons is
>>>          certainly highly conditioned by their relationship to the 'primal object',
>>>          and one can locate this object within it and explain the new relationship
>>>          by it; but the relationship itself remains irreducible."
>>>
>>> Sartre is clearly over-schematizing here.  There are certainly strands
>>> of psychoanalytic thought (e.g., the Eriksonian tradition) that can be
>>> characterized as authentically "dialectical", as Sartre understands the
>>> term.   For my part, I read the mature Sartre as a psychoanalytic
>>> thinker interested in exploring the "dialectical intelligibility" of human
>>> behavior (in a manner quite compatible with the ToK framework):
>>>
>>>    - "The concept of 'lived experience' marks my change since* Being
>>>    and Nothingness*.  My early work was a rationalist philosophy of
>>>    consciousness.  It was all very well for me to dabble
>>>    in apparently non-rational processes in the individual, [but] the fact that
>>>    remains that *Being and Nothingness *is a monument of
>>>    rationality....Today, the notion of 'lived experience' represents an effort
>>>    to preserve that presence to itself which seems to me indispensable for the
>>>    existence of any psychic fact, while at the same time this presence is so
>>>    opaque and blind before itself that it is also an absence from itself....In
>>>    developing this notion, I have tried to suppress the traditional
>>>    psychoanalytic ambiguity of psychic facts which are both teleological and
>>>    mechanical, by showing that every psychic fact involves an intentionality
>>>    which aims at something, while among them a certain number can only exist
>>>    if they are comprehended, *but neither named nor known*.
>>>    The latter include what I call the 'stress' of a neurosis."
>>>       - "A neurosis is in the first instance a specific wound, a
>>>       defective structure which is a certain way of living a childhood.  But this
>>>       is only an initial wound: it is then patched up  and bandaged by a system
>>>       which covers and soothe the wound, and which then, like anti-bodies in
>>>       certain cases, suddenly does something abominable to the organism.  The
>>>       unity of this system is the neurosis."
>>>
>>> The above quotations are taken from a 1969 interview published in an
>>> anthology entitled *Between* *Existentalism and Marxism* (Sartre,
>>> 1974).
>>>
>>> ~ Steve Q.
>>>
>>>
>>> On Wed, May 22, 2019 at 11:19 AM JOHN TORDAY <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Dear Peter and TOK, thank you for the collegial discussion. I would
>>>> like to address your comment "The cosmos are just a bit of
>>>> collateral damage in also determined so that human determinism can make
>>>> sense." I beg to differ. Based on the Endosymbiogenesis Theory, that life
>>>> derives from the endogenization of physical properties like oxygen, heavy
>>>> metals, ions and bacteria, our physiology is literally founded on the same
>>>> Laws of Physics when facilitated by compartmentalization to integrate these
>>>> factors in an organic context. So the deterministic and probabilistic
>>>> properties are shared by both the animate and inanimate....but that's my
>>>> perspective. I welcome rebuttal. IMHO, John
>>>>
>>>> On Wed, May 22, 2019 at 9:57 AM Peter Lloyd Jones <
>>>> [log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Dear Europe, Alexander, and TOK,
>>>>> Between Sartre and Merleau-Ponty I do not know which is winning the
>>>>> popularity contest in the USA, and am amused that Europe doesn’t make much
>>>>> of Sartre these days. I wish I did know because then I maybe wouldn’t have
>>>>> to finish or present this stupid paper that I’m writing.
>>>>>
>>>>> As to free will not being a philosophy proper, I have not taken on the
>>>>> task of mending all of the errors of philosophy. I think that I mentioned
>>>>> somewhere above (below?) that John Locke pointed out in the 17th century
>>>>> that the term “free will” is problematic.
>>>>>
>>>>> Your comment, "The future is open. And that is what scares the shit
>>>>> out of most of us.” is very Sartrean: we aguish in the face of our freedom.
>>>>> As rarely-quoted Sartre wrote, the possibilities of our choices
>>>>> are vertiginous.
>>>>>
>>>>> Thank you for your thought,
>>>>> Best,
>>>>> Peter
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Peter Lloyd Jones
>>>>> [log in to unmask]
>>>>> 562-209-4080
>>>>>
>>>>> Sent by determined causes that no amount of will is able to thwart.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> On May 21, 2019, at 6:22 PM, Alexander Bard <[log in to unmask]>
>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> Dear Peter
>>>>>
>>>>> Then here is a little update from Europe: We don't make much out of
>>>>> Sartre these days. Even Merleau-Ponty is far more quoted these days than
>>>>> good old Sartre (who never understood the Freudian revolution to begin
>>>>> with).
>>>>> Rather we have arrived at a struggle between Hegel and Nietzsche today
>>>>> represented by Zizek and Deleuze. Like the new generation of philosophers,
>>>>> like Manuel DeLanda and Aaron Schuster, I'm in both camps in my work. The
>>>>> synthesis of Hegel and Nietzsche is simply where it's at. And there is no
>>>>> determinism in any of these camps. And certainly no talk of any "free will"
>>>>> since that is just Christian theology and not philosophy proper.
>>>>> Determinism requires that all things are determined in a closed loop
>>>>> of cause and effect with no chance involved.
>>>>> All that is required is one single incident during the Universe's
>>>>> existence that can be attributed to chance and determinism is dead.
>>>>> I would argue even that the big bang itself is such a chance. Also if
>>>>> for example biology was not pre-programmed into the big bang, then
>>>>> determinism is dead.
>>>>> Probabilism only looks deterministic when studying a full field. But
>>>>> when fields are broken, that determinism is also broken. That is
>>>>> essentially what "chance" is. Whether our own minds then are determinist or
>>>>> not is beside the point. If our surrounding reality is not determinist then
>>>>> neither are our lives. The future is open. And that is what scares the shit
>>>>> out of most of us. Freud, again.
>>>>>
>>>>> Best intentions
>>>>> Alexander
>>>>>
>>>>> Den tis 21 maj 2019 kl 15:30 skrev Peter Lloyd Jones <
>>>>> [log in to unmask]>:
>>>>>
>>>>>> Alexander, John, et.al
>>>>>> <https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__et.al&d=DwMFaQ&c=eLbWYnpnzycBCgmb7vCI4uqNEB9RSjOdn_5nBEmmeq0&r=HPo1IXYDhKClogP-UOpybo6Cfxxz-jIYBgjO2gOz4-A&m=czp9Y7o97w7LCL-W7Vmg0G8SPLqw3mKPGY98LFZb0-U&s=f3hhXp_A_lMTW1PN6V9IWIgcofgvX1yLAobMDBjEysw&e=>
>>>>>> .,
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I was wrong to infer that the determinism debate is between only
>>>>>> those from the field of philosophy, though I am pursuing it as a
>>>>>> philosophical question. Some today are using interpretations of scientific
>>>>>> evidence as their argument.
>>>>>> Maybe John is one who (partially) is a proponent of determinism, as
>>>>>> per his last note?
>>>>>> Sam Harris, famously, though painfully unscholarly he is.
>>>>>> Galen Strawson says he isn’t a determinist but argues that we cannot
>>>>>> escape the causes that have made us who we are, which is basically a type
>>>>>> of determinism since for him it means that human autonomy is an
>>>>>> impossibility because we can never step out from under past causes to be
>>>>>> autonomous.
>>>>>> John Searle, though he seems in the last decade to be hedging on
>>>>>> determinism and starting to embrace quantum indeterminism as justification
>>>>>> for free will
>>>>>> Jerry Coyne,
>>>>>> BF Skinner, who in his philosophy of behaviorism was a determinist.
>>>>>> Dan Barker doesn’t see free will as a scientific truth or
>>>>>> philosophical truth, but as a social truth. But I think he is still dealing
>>>>>> with ghosts of his preacher past.
>>>>>> It could be that I’m am wasting time on popular opponents of free
>>>>>> will that would be best to leave behind.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Please know that I am addressing this issue from the context of a
>>>>>> 70-year-old tome of existential philosophy, comparing Sartre’s metaphysics
>>>>>> to what some claim today about proofs of physics concerning the concept of
>>>>>> human autonomy. And I have to do it in 3,000 words.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Also, I use the word consciousness as does Sartre, who did not
>>>>>> acknowledge subconscious states. He refers to behavior as being reflective
>>>>>> or non-reflective, asserting that most of our behavior is non-reflective.
>>>>>> Much of his writing about non-reflective behavior lines up with is being
>>>>>> compatibly the subconscious. Sartre has plenty to say about motives and
>>>>>> passions and desires, and it would be revealing to suss that out against
>>>>>> the background of today’s advances in neuroscience.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Thank you for your thoughtful questions that bolster my self-doubt. I
>>>>>> do not say that in sarcasm but truly thrive on self-doubt. It makes me work
>>>>>> harder.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Best to all,
>>>>>> Peter
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Peter Lloyd Jones
>>>>>> [log in to unmask]
>>>>>> 562-209-4080
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Sent by determined causes that no amount of will is able to thwart.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On May 21, 2019, at 6:45 AM, JOHN TORDAY <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Peter, In the name of shameless self promotion, I have proposed that
>>>>>> life is both deterministic and probabilistic based on experimental evidence
>>>>>> for both cell physiology and its relationship to Quantum Mechanics (see
>>>>>> attached). Perhaps you could comment? Best, John
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On Mon, May 20, 2019 at 9:51 PM Peter Lloyd Jones <
>>>>>> [log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> John, Alexander, Gregg, and TOK,
>>>>>>> It seems that we agree also that choice is better than free will
>>>>>>> because the freedom we are taking about when using the rems “free will" is
>>>>>>> a doing, not something to have. It is a verb, as John just said, and as
>>>>>>> Sartre has said. Sartre of course worked this out deeply on the ontological
>>>>>>> level, saying that freedom, choice, consciousness are all one and the same.
>>>>>>> His thought is that the only practical way to look at consciousness is how
>>>>>>> we are discussing looking at choice, that it is an action, not a container
>>>>>>> of things, that we are temporal beings evolving minute by minute.
>>>>>>> Consciousness is the life-long pursuit of being that is a doing and never
>>>>>>> an inert thing to label.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> A few years ago I read an article by a doctor of medicine who
>>>>>>> proposed that consciousness is change, a physical change within our brains,
>>>>>>> and that using AI or computing metaphors only drives us away from
>>>>>>> understanding consciousness. I wrote him asking if his paper was based on
>>>>>>> research he might be able to share and he responded that it was just a
>>>>>>> hypothesis he was pondering. Dang it. But another start.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> I am, so far, in agreement with Sartre, that we act within “a
>>>>>>> network of determinants.” That though does not mean that our acts are
>>>>>>> determined and unfree. So evolution, like conscious choice, is free to go
>>>>>>> in novel directions in evolving novel environments, within the context of
>>>>>>> its history.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> I am pondering whether determinism might not be a problem for
>>>>>>> determinism. What I mean is, there are countless determinants competing to
>>>>>>> influence our every choices, or our evolution, and how can it be
>>>>>>> comprehensibly possible that it is already decided for all time which
>>>>>>> determinant is going to be the alfa determinant in all events? Further,
>>>>>>> this has to be taken on faith as it is unrepeatable and untestable. That
>>>>>>> alone should put it outside the boundaries of science and philosophy.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Alexander, I do think it is a waste of time to be arguing against
>>>>>>> determinism, but, in philosophy, there is a whole movement right now
>>>>>>> promoting determinism. My hope is to shoot it dead.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> I do like syndeterminism...
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Thank you all for your contributions here,
>>>>>>> Peter
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Peter Lloyd Jones
>>>>>>> [log in to unmask]
>>>>>>> 562-209-4080
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Sent by determined causes that no amount of will is able to thwart.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> On May 20, 2019, at 4:55 PM, Alexander Bard <[log in to unmask]>
>>>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Dear Peter
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> I agree. Strongly. But why even pretend that determinism has a case
>>>>>>> any longer? Why not go straight to the point and cut the chase and ask in
>>>>>>> what way determinism predicted the big bang itself?
>>>>>>> Now, if the big bang is an emergence proper, as the birth of physics
>>>>>>> itself, we can then rethink history as emergences that create their own
>>>>>>> vectors. This means there is fundamentally no difference between parallel
>>>>>>> universes and the development of physics and later chemistry and later
>>>>>>> biology and later mind and later culture. They are all vectors of
>>>>>>> emergences in a fundamentally indeterminist metaverse.
>>>>>>> Actually a human life can then be seen as vector of an emergence
>>>>>>> called birth itself. Now that's what I call an emergence theory worthy of
>>>>>>> proper complexity science.
>>>>>>> The question is rather whether indeterminism is the appropriate
>>>>>>> term? Perhaps syndeterminism is even better? Especially since we do not
>>>>>>> even need chance or dices then either.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Best intentions
>>>>>>> Alexander
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> ############################
>>>>>>>
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>>>>>> <1-s2.0-S0079610718300890-main.pdf>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> ############################
>>>>>>
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>>>>> ############################
>>>>>
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>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Steven W. Quackenbush, Ph.D., Chair
>>> Division of Psychology & Human Development
>>> University of Maine, Farmington
>>> Farmington, ME 04938
>>> (207) 778-7518
>>> [log in to unmask]
>>> ############################
>>>
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>
>
> --
> Steven W. Quackenbush, Ph.D., Chair
> Division of Psychology & Human Development
> University of Maine, Farmington
> Farmington, ME 04938
> (207) 778-7518
> [log in to unmask]
> ############################
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