UNIVERSITY OF ZAGREB FACULTY OF PHILOSOPHY DEPARTMENT OF PHILOSOPHY

SARTRE: BEAUTY OF DESPAIR

Ante Zguri

Zagreb, 2011.

AUTHOR'S NOTE:

This is ontological work that was very hard to translate, so there are probably some mistakes in the text. Few remarks considering beings: 1. Being (capital B): refers to the being as not directly considering man, as the being in the sense of existing, although you'll find more complex explenation(s) of this term later in text. 2. being: refers to the life being, a human.

The rest should be understandable.

Read well!

CONTENT:
1. Introduction............................................................................................................................3. 2. Influence of Husserl's phenomenology and Heidegger's fundamental ontology on Sartre and his definition of understanding of Being..........................................................................5
2.1. The abolition of essence.............................. 5. 2.2. Phenomenology as the basis for studying the existence ..............................................................8.

3. Pre-reflective cogito, the definition of being-in-itself (tre-en-soi)......................................9. 4. Fear of nothingness..............................................................................................................11. 5. Theistic existentialism: Karl Jaspers....................................................................................13. 6. Being-for-itself (tre-pour-soi)............................................................................................18. 7. Temporality..........................................................................................................................20. 8. Being-for-others (I'tre-pour-autrui)...................................................................................23.
8.1. Me and You....23. 8.2. Me and the world of objects.......................................................................................................28.

9. Optimism of despair.............................................................................................................33. 10. Epilogue.............................................................................................................................38.

1. Introduction:
This seemingly paradoxical formulation of the title "The beauty of despair" suggests the whole absurd of Sartre's existentialism, which can be freely called the basis of his philosophy of existence in general. It is known that Sartre's philosophy of existence is mostly interpreted as the philosophy of despair, as an extremely negative attitude towards the world and mankind as a sort of human inability to comprehend anything more than this world given to us as such, and that there is nothing more than this real world as we know it. Somehow, we can conclude that Sartre is actually an extension of Nietzsche's atheistic philosophy, and nihilism that was established by his famous phrase "God is dead", where Sartre didn't try to overcome this situation by accepting the world as such in that Dionysian"gaming" or hedonistic pleasure in what we have, and in attempt to overcome this man of the world, that is, in intence to seek the super human. Sartre has, so to say, deepened that nihilism and reduced it to the unability of finding a higher sense of reality, ie the world and life in it, suggesting in his ontological speculations that besides the being as such, everything else we can reach is "nothing", and where a man as a conscious being, or better yet, paradoxically being, is standing at the crossroads of Being as such and nothingness, that is exactly what's all "around" the Being and to which man is constantly reaching out, losing all kinds of sense of everything that surrounds him as an existential being. So why did we use the word "beauty" then? The thing we're trying to show in this debate is the ability of a man, that looms in this existential definition of himself. We'll try to bring all the social causality into question, which mostly tries to reduce a man as an individual to the kind of prosperity that can only be ordered by the group and according to which the individual is compelled to act. In this context, all those so called despair segments of human being of which Sartre speaks (atheism, nothingness, absurdity, pessimism, nausea, solipsism, etc.), which are in such social priority system perceived as an extremely negative phenomenon, we'll try to lead to a kind of positive givenness that aimes to the awareness of a man, of his unenviable position in society, which in turn tends towards the subjectivism, and which ultimate goal is to see opportunities provided by the existence as such. In this regard, we'll try to deliver Sartre from any possible misinterpretation and any negative views that are reflected in linkage of Sartre with these terms, particularly with atheism and solipsism. Of course, in this context, we'll give a comparison with representatives of theistic existentialism (Jaspers, Buber, Marcel), who have their roots from Kierkegaard and his subjectivism, that appears in man's pursuit of cognition that his foundation also has a concrete existence, but that the ultimate goal is the faith in god as the possibility of transcending the actual situation. But before we go into discussion about these notions, we should give a special intention to the ontology of Sartre's philosophy of existence, which can be freely denounced as the establishment of Sartre's existentialist concept in which the most important notion of existentialism will be discovered, that is, existence preceding essence, that will ultimately
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lead to the definition of a man as a contingent, or free and indeterminate being who as such has completely opened view of the existence and all its possibilities. Specifically, in its basic ontological considerations, Sartre will actually negate any possibility of some kind of essence to be a single cause of all things, which will seriously undermine the metaphysical concepts that date back to the representatives of ancient philosophy, Plato for example, via German idealism, particularly Hegel, to Husserl, whom Sartre will admit the influence of his phenomenological philosophy, but will make a major critic in a form of consideration a human being as the one who aspires to the essence, and thus the possibility of an essence to be in front of existence, but over which he will establish the basis of the concept of atheistic existentialism, so well try to consider the differences between this seemingly unrelated relationship. Also, in intent to show Sartres basic ontological thoughts, we must also address an influence of Heidegger, who, through his fundamental ontology, that is, by setting the Being, ei what exists as a Being as the Being of a man in the form of "Dasein", made base on the definition of the Sartres term of existence. Finally, in order to reach the paradoxical notion of a man more efficiently, it is necessary to define Sartre's basic ontological notions of "being-in-itself" and "being-for-itself", so that we could later first reveal the absurdity of existence, then the possibility of designing ourselves through the dimensions of "temporality" and "relations with others".

2. Influence of Husserl's phenomenology and Heidegger's fundamental ontology on Sartre and his definition of Being:
2.1. The abolition of "essence": First of all, we should ask ourselves, what is the "essence"? Can we search for it, and ask if there is something, some kind of area where its "hidden"? We can provide a strict ontological definition of essence as "what makes something as what it is"1 , ie the one unchanging nature of something that is hidden from human view in a sphere of transcendent. But if we want to get more acquainted with definition of essence, and then its application to existential philosophy, it would be the best to start with the notions of Edmund Husserl, ie his phenomenological philosophy. In his pure phenomenology, Husserl will establish the relationship between 1. facts and essence, which will be reflected in his mission to establish the possibility of 2. "ideation", ie the search of essence that is located "behind" the object, which will also imply the possibility of creating 3. philosophy as science. These are the main tenets of Husserl's phenomenological philosophy, but let's try to explain these elements better... On the one hand we have what Husserl calls a natural sciences, the science of material nature, that is the nature of a mere factuality: what we see, what we hear, in short, everything that surrounds us. Also, there must
1

Kalin, B., Povijest filozofije (History of philosophy), kolska knjiga, Zagreb, 2003., p. 20.

be some entity able to perceive the nature around him, and, that is, the man who perceives the outside world. That is defined as the "experience as a factual science"2. So we have two important factors: the nature of factuality, as an object, and the human as a subject. On the one hand we have a nature, spatial-temporal, causal world as identical to where we are, where we're recognized as physical, cultural and historical beings, but on the other hand, we have a consciousness that rises above that space and time, and that just through the experience of factual matters or experience, comes out from the domain of reality, and is entering the domain of something different from what we see around us. In fact, Husserl would say that consciousness is in the domain of psychological experience that starts from the empirical conditioned world, but it transcends, it goes beyond the world to the very essence, and in this context, these phenomena given from the outside world must be taken into account as the "experience of counsciousness, and as such should be kept to themselves, which means they do not correspond with the actual definition of their subject, but intuitively penetrate into the sphere of an essence, as something different from factual reality. "Empirical observation, special experience, is the awareness of an individual object, and as observation consciousness it 'leads it to the givenness', and as a sight to the originary givenness, to the awareness that the object is affected "originary, in his 'physical samenes'3. This is why Husserl wanted to provide scientific relevance to his philosophy. If there are exact sciences that study the factual world, there must be a science that will study the conceptual world, which of course can only be philosophy. In the process of phenomenological reduction, we should start from the exact sciences, especially psychology, but Husserl's goal is to go out of the exactness of the experiential domain, and to use science through philosophy as to be able to find a way to reach the essence in a way in which psychology as the science of consciousness is opposed to phenomenology as the science of consciousness as "ideation", ie the knowledge of essence. In that desire, Husserl will provide a critique of naturalism that, moving from the domain of the physical world, he believes, is trying to objectify human consciousness itself, which by its nature must be in the domain of phenomenological reduction.4 So, we have the notion of facticity as a condition of knowledge as the metaphysical root of reality, and we have an entity or person who has the mind, Descarte's cogito, one that has the ability to penetrate into the essence of things and that way, as Husserl calls it, has the ability of eidethical reduction. And if a man as the subject has the cogito as a reflexive consciousness, that is, has the possibility of thought, and thus suspecting, he necessarily has the ability of ideation, or penetrating to the essence from which derives all that is visible. That
2

See Husserl, E., Ideje za istu fenomenologiju i fenomenologijsku filozofiju (Ideas for the pure phenomenology and phenomenological philosophy), Breza, Zagreb, 2007., p. 12. 3 ibid., p. 14.-15. 4 It is worth mentioning that through the philosophy of Sartre and Heidegger, and Jaspers in particular, will be considered the shortcomings of science and general knowledge that indeed serve as a kind of driving force of philosophical thought, but are insufficient in considering the totality of being, which deals with philosophy.

means that Husserl considers consciousness as the givenness that reflects an items from the world as our own experience, not as they are objectively given, but as a form of individual consciousness, which establishes the notion of the transcendental ego. In this context we can say that this ego is the one that gives us a possibility to perceive ourselves as the councious, understanding beings, and has the awarenes of the knowledge of the outside world as the world in me, the being-for-me". "I always find myself as someone who perceives, represents, thinks, feels, wants, etc., and in fact often find myself in a relation to the reality that surrounds me constantly"5. Objective reality is the basis of Husserl's discovery that is shown in the reflection of human subjects. Here we have the same starting point as Sartre does, and it is this same objective reality, where existence is revealed to us through the perception of reality, and through experience. But there is one important difference in the further ontological speculation between the two philosophers. While for Husserl we found the existence of the duality between appearance and essence, where the phenomenon, through the cogito, the transcendental ego, is establishing eidethical reduction, ie the possibility of knowledge as well as essence "behind" the things themselves, for Sartre, such a duality, ie the "essential" basis does not exist. He simply believes that every phenomenon is a set of its own occurrences. So, there is no existance of this kind of idea about the phenomenon which proactivly reinforces the aspects of its object in reality as it's seen, and which humans as conscious beings would discover in a phenomenological reduction, through vivid consciousness, through intuition, as Husserl would say. There is no essence that is behind what appears as a kind of negation of Being, but "Being of existing is exactly as it appears"6. Here we come to the basis of Sartres existential philosophy,which is revealed in the phenomenological-ontological aspect of reality considerations. Thus, Sartre does not accept the essence as the foundation of everything, not as the beginning of everything, rather as the essence that it is assimilated into existience as a part of it, as the meaning of existence. According to Sartre, we can not say as Husserl did, that there is an essence of the red color as something "red", which determines all the red in the world. There is only one infinite term of red which is established precisely in the Being as something that this Being has produced, and is constantly percived or applicated, such as the color of the sky at the sunset, and which with its constant application and observation acquires universal character in the Being generaly. So, the only thing that can exist for Sartre is Being, where he admitted the influence of Heidegger, whose fundamental ontology has its roots in phenomenology as a discipline, which includes the ontic-ontological character of the being starting from existential definition of a man.

5 6

ibid., p. 61. Sartre, J. P., Bitak i nito I (Being and nothingness I), Demetra, Zagreb, 2006., p. 4.

2.2. Phenomenology as the basis for the study of existence: When we talk about Heidegger, it would be best to start from his capital thesis, which states: "essence of hereexistiance (Dasein) is in his existence"7. In fact, Heidegger will determine the fundamental ontology, which is reflected in the root of phenomenology, as the one that examines "a Being that exists as the meaning of the being" (to put it plainly, a sense of being), in contrast to other sciences that study only the Being in their exactness (certain segments of being) which also suggested Husserl when talking about the difference between the exact sciences, which study the factual world and the philosophy that studies the conceptual world. To that extent we can talk about the same starting point of Heidegger and Sartre, who drowned their phenomenological assumptions from Husserl, in the sense that the ontological doctrine is based on the facticity of being, ie the phenomenal and empirical, but they include the ontic character of the being which is the basis of the study, unlike Husserl which studies the pure essence of such as the definition of all things, that is, existence. Thus, Heidegger also implies the totality of existence and perception of its facticity, which is not directly related to the human being, which he defines as "being-within-the-world as a structure of being-in-the-world"8 , ie the categories that are divided into prehanding, ie a purely factual existence, while in that factuality lies onhanding, ie the possibility of "accessories" that allows the facticity, this spatiality of Dasein, we might say, to bring in the possibility of being-in-the-world as its structure. Plainly said, prehanding just encounters the world around us, while onhanding has the possibility of discovering that the world is revealed in "careing"9, ie in the view of the world as "humans", that is, the abilities which world as such gives to a man, which makes being of human Dasein, ie Dasein which is related to its existence. The second mode is, we mentioned, Being-in-the-world. Referring to the above mentioned, Heidegger won't consider "just" a man, but the man who has the ability to review, understand, live his existence, that is, the Being in which he is. Therefore, a human being who is related with the Being, which will determine character of a man as the special being who has two ontological torques: torque of inauthentic and authentic being (which we'll discuss later), which acctualy reveals another mode of Dasein, which is the being-in-the-world. In this context it is important to assume, according to Heidegger, to take into account the definition of an empty existence as the basis for studying the existence and the possibility of a man that exists in one way or another. This means that Being as such can not and should not be explicitly understood (for example, how naturalists recognized the existence). Being indeed remains at the level of observed and experienced, but as such it serves as a study of the totality or the meaning of existence, in which Heidegger suggests ontic-ontological character of existence, or that the ontic in itself implies the ontological character of Dasein, because if it refers to the existence as the possibility of being of Dasein, the question about Dasein must be asked, and thus to the meaning of being in general. And this is precisely the moment which

7 8

Sartre, J. P., Bitak i nito I (Being and nothingness I), Demetra, Zagreb, 2006., p. 4. see ibid., p. 115. 9 see ibid., p. 117.

we'll call the structure of Heidegger egsistentiality, thus the possibility of existence as such to be opened to the essence of everything. As we mentioned, similary to Heidegger, Sartre recognizes that the objective, ie phenomenal world reveals itself in its appearance on us. Thus, Sartre's Being is revealed precisely through the phenomenal world from which it follows that phenomenal world seeks to discover the essence of the phenomenal as the "basis of Being that refers to itself"10 and not something else that is positioned outside the Being as such. Finally, this notion of philosophy of existence, the general conception of existence with Heidegger and Sartre, has led to denial of the possibility of cognition, ie cognition in a Hegelian view of knowledge as absolute spirit, and so on. For if there is no essence, if there are no concepts that have universal value, that are on "intelligible sky"11, then the Being must be the only real foundation of a man. Likewise, if existence is the only real foundation of a man, it is difficult to talk about defininition of a man in a sense of natural determination, or any definition in general. Is there something that can define a man then? No. Man is completely free being, he doesn't commit to any determinism, nor has any natural law, absolutely nothing. Just treading on the ground of existence he could only realize one thing: he is simply sentenced to freedom. Therefore, the only possible realization that he can pursue is the cognition of the Being. Thus, there is no cognition that is inherent to a man, that reveals a man as the unique form of cognition, but the only thing that can be sought is the ontic foundation of knowledge which extends from the roots of Being and goes to possible understanding of the Being in its whole integrity. This definition of knowledge extracts the problem of cognition, ie the question of what acctualy is cognition, that is, if it does not have an essence in the setting of "I" or the transcendental ego as the condition of cognition, then how can we define a person as the one who transcends beyond the factual Being, if he is defined as the being whose existence is only within the existence? Now we have resolved a definition of the Being in Heidegger's and Sartre's ontology as a pure factual foundation (figuratively speaking) of cognition; plainly said, existence that precedes essence. But the question is, if we conclude that man is simply thrown into this world as mere existing being, how can we continue to perceive, and therefore realize the Being, that is, how can we determine the role of a human as the subject being, as a conscious being, who is in this Being, and as such relates to him, that is, as beings who exist in complete freedom?

3. Pre-reflective cogito, definition of the Being-in-itself:

What is consciousness? Can we speculate on the mind as an instrument by which we seek the essence of all that is given in reality, as Husserl would say, or is the consciousness only a
10 11

Bitak i nito I, p. 8. see Sartre, J. P., Egzistencijalizam je humanizam (Egsistentialism is humanism), http://www.scribd.com/doc/12849655/JeanPaul-Sartre-Egzistencijalizam-Je-Humanizam, p. 11.

concept of the mind that is established only in contact with the world as it is? If we take into account the existential definition of a man, then we could easily conclude that Sartre gives primacy to the latter. But what is "the existence of consciousness" then? If we consider the concept of Husserl's transcendental ego as the instrument through which we perceive things that are reflected in our consciousness, then we can conclude that consciousness as such has its own essence, that is somehow given to it. As we noted, Sartre would completely negate such definition of consciousness, ie the possibility of the transcendental ego. Sartre, in fact, sees the existence of consciousness which precedes thinking, ie a nonpositional consciousness that is not directed toward itself, but primarily to the objects that surrounds it. That is pre-reflective cogito. He defines it as "unthought consciousness that makes the thinking of itself"12. It is therefore the consciousness that precedes itself, which refers to the objects as spontaneous cognition of things, where now I can not perceive myself as the consciousness that is above or in front of the things that surrounds me, but as myself in things. For example, following Husserl's view, if we run to catch a tram, the term "tram-that-must-becatched" is derived from our own transcendental ego through the perception of a tram in the distance. There is the transcendent "I" that looks a tram as an object, but it is beyond the scope of the tram. Sartre would say different. That is, if I run for a tram to catch him up, then there is no "I" that tells me that there is a "tram-that-must-be-catched", yet only awareness of the tram and me who must catch up this tram, which means that "I" is in relation with the object of tram as "me-who-has-to-catch-the-tram"13. I simply feel that I am and that I'm here, in situation where I'm trying to catch the tram. So, if there is no essence of all things, there also is no essence of consciousness or awareness of the law which evokes an essence of everything, but there is a consciousness which is given only in the frame of existential, and as such, our consciousness is one that has its roots located precisely on the basis of Being and it is recognised as such. However, we said "our consciousness"! This awareness, truth to say, is a part of the Being that we supervene, but it is not a metaphysical construct that leads us into some transcendent sphere of what is considered to be out of senses, nor the Being in itself. Because if we admit that our consciousness is the same as the Being as such, that would be the same as to recognizing ourselves as the statue, or building stones... Actually, it would be very hard to think of ourselves as something, if we were objects! Thus consciousness differs from what Sartre would call the being-in-itself, ie what is simply the way it is, its own consistency, which can't go in any other sphere of reflection, ie the daily determination of the world and human life, just what the Being is. Consciousness implies the transcendence of that objective and passive state, precisely because there is a pre-reflective cogito which is the condition of thinking, or we could say, requirement of the experience which implies a consciousness that is in its subjectivity the one which moves away from the Being as something that Being is not.
12 13

see Bitak i nito I, p. 12. see Webber, J. M., Sartre on Husserl's Transcendental Ego (part one), 2005., http://www.shef.ac.uk/content/1/c6/04/12/25/SartreonHusserlsTranscendentalEgo.pdf

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"Consciousness is the knowing of something; this means that transcending is the constitutive structure of consciousness, ie that the consciousness is raising as focused on the Being that it's not"14. We gave an example of the trams that we're trying to catch up. Specifically, although we know that our consciousness is in relation with the objects of the Being, just the mere presentation of the tram in the distance and intention to catch it up, does not correspond to the real image in which we are currently running for the tram. I can see a picture of myself getting into the tram which is the exact nothing that goes beyond the Being-in-itself of reality as such. In that sense we can say that consciousness itself implies transphenomena of the Being of subjectivity, since we, as the conscious beings, perceive the world as it is, but also are distancing ourselves from that factual determination of the world, that is the Being-in-itself. This brings us to the Being of knowing as the absolute which starts from the human experience and its not compelled to a Cartesian interpretation of the subjective as the "substantial" appearance in front of the Being, or in front of the existential, and as such, consciousness is a phenomenon that has its foundation as the existance of the being, which transcendents a whole phenomenal state towards everything that the Being is not, that is, the Being-in-itself, as what can only be in domain of the consciousness as the Being of consciousness; what simply goes beyond the current and is not directed towards the fullness of being, but precisely to what the Being is not. And now, when we discovered the ontological dimension of the consciousness that moves towards the non-Being, we can ask a question about the consequences of such tendencies, that is how do we actually reveal that "nothing" in the context of the views of the world and life in general, and man's place in it?

4. The fear of nothingness:

Now we come to the point where consciousness takes a position opposite to the Being, or the Being-in-itself. In fact, as we agreed, consciousness can not be an object, since it has the ability to transcend. It follows that consciousness as such is something that can not be bounded by the Being-in-itself, which can not be the Being-in-itself, but only as a condition of the human attitude that is automatically something else that is not being as such. In fact, as a conscious being man is the one who transcends in a way that reveals the Being in which he is. By observing and discovering the essence, man keeps on asking about the way of being. By asking, man places some kind of condition which directs him to what the being itself is not.

14

Bitak i nito, p. 21.

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So, as soon as we ask a question, we determine some kind of attitude, and if we ask a question about something, therefore we're suggesting the possibility of the non-Being, in a way that the Being-in-itself is sublimed by our consciousness, which consequently leads to the possibility of denial . In this sense, we can briefly say that the non-Being always appears within a certain human attitude, whether is produced by destruction, or mere possibility. Also, by the assumption that the man is the one who aspires to some kind of attitude, we automatically denied the definition of a man as the one who is understood in its fullness of being, ie the Being-in-itself. As weve noted that there is no essence of consciousness, likewise that "nothing" mustnt be understood as the destruction of the Being that results from an absolute spirit or as a preconstituted characteristic of the Being. This is not some abstraction which determines the vision of being, ie concreteness, and where the knowledge of the human mind destroys this concreteness in some way, as was suggested by Hegel or Husserl. Destruction of which Sartre speaks is simply crossing the concrete situation and allusing to this "nothing" in a way that calls into question everything that is factual. And the only thing that allows a man to cross that state is nothing but freedom, which, as we indicated earlier, is the single defining moment of a man. So, we've found that the freedom is the only determination of a man, and as such, it's a requirement for: 1. moving away from the reality of a being, 2. the way of moving up to nothing; therefore, freedom is a humans Being - freedom is the one that asks, and denies, and as such separates from the world, but also the one that is a separation as such. Freedom, therefore, implies an issues encountered in everyday life, that are actually outside of the Being, that nullifier of the Being, all that being is not, therefore, it's a question of nonBeing. If I was thrown into the world undetermined from anyone and anything, then I am free to ask, to deny the value of a situation, of some people, to bring the meaning of everything into question, therefore, to transcends in a way in which I'm knowing the non-Being, that is, not simply to look all the way it is, because I am an entity that has an option, that is, freedom to do so, who is free because he knows he can be free! But what leads me to the constant questioning? The more I ask, more I feel that I'm on a way to the emptiness that overcomes me annoyingly. Somehow it seems to me that if I'm constantly asking, I'm becoming "the man over whom nothing is injected in the world"15, and as such I begin to feel some discomfort, some undefined fear ... I feel like slipping out from the fullness of the Being to some sort of emptiness, to a sort of endless abyss... I feel constant lack of something, as if all the things are becoming colorless just by watching them; they become odorless, as like everything loses a sparkle, as if they're all mortifying in my view, just because I can't rely on something that would give a meaning to everything. If I deny the value of a human being, an object, anything, it's like I had completely unlifed them, as if they became puppets and cardboard boxes... Somehow I miss that essence of a red color, with

15

see Egzistencijalizam je humanizam, p. 75.

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whom I could paint this horizont that I'm watching. But it doesn't appear anywhere, I only see a colorless sky. Now when we came to the definition of a human as completely indeterminate, contingent being, then as a being who can not aspire to some essence, can we think then about some religious aspects of human, or, can human, from the failure of metaphysical speculation, find a refuge in religion? Can I get rid of this fear of being reduced to nothing by trying to fill this gap by faith, as Kierkegaard and Jaspers suggested, who tried to accomplish the synthesis of existentialism and theism through the faith in god, and thus tried to overcome the negative image of faceless humanity lost in a mass of almost masochistic kind of accepting all values in order to reach any kind of salvation?

5. Theistic existentialism: Karl Jaspers:

At the very beginning we can ask the question: "What is the faith?". To what it really serves? What does man seek in religion and does he find anything in it, or is a religion just an act of universal superstition and hysteria, and quest for authority as the unability to rely on ourselves as individuals and to accept ourselves as our own authority? What it really means when someone says that he believes in god? What is this god? We could say that faith is a desire for something "higher", a kind of hope in something better, something nicer, in something... So, the same kind of transcendence beyond what is objectively given in the existence of life itself, which occurs when we can not find a knowing proof of something that we want to penetrate, or of something in which we want to find the meaning, which lacks so much as the concreteness of the real, ie that is seen in the imperfection of harsh and monotonous reality and life in general. On the other hand, just because man seeks the concretization of a higher meaning, even if it's just a phantasm, he wants this belief to gain any kind of validation, which is realized in terms of mass beliefs that are manifested in the institutionalization of religion in the form of mass meetings in churches and related religious venues. But the problem of this kind of belief is that in this case it shapes and defines the concept of god. Something "holy", something that is abstract and incomprehensible entries in such a sphere of demystification, that what is perceived as a divine and sacred is being characterised as daily and routine. Once I understand that I believe in god who is propagated in the institution of church, in who I believe only to escape from "disbelief", then I know that I'm not really a believer, but rather a supporter of something higher and stronger than I am as an individual, and what manifests itself through the enthralled group of enthusiasts. If I brought myself to the situation to think that God is like this or that, that he can be comprehended, then I have a picture of a supreme model whose norms I respect through the institutions that are representing him in a way they like, in which case we can only say that my belief in god can also be a belief in an ideology, in a philosophical direction, a faith in a brand of products, etc.

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It is this problem that was getting in a way of Kierkegaard and Jaspers, who directed their philosophy primarily towards the man and his discovery of self not within religion, but belief. Namely, Jaspers will agree that faith occurs when the limits of existence as such are discovered, ie when the limits of Sartre's Being-in-itself are detected. Since Jaspers dealt with science (he was a psychiatrist by profession), he saw that science as such (in the wake of Husserl) can not be sufficient in detecting the questions raised by the man as a subjective or transcendent being. That is this Husserlian and Sartrean, generali philosophical notion of something "after", which exceeds the boundaries of knowledge, clearly stated, the meaning that occurs after all that was proved by the science, therefore, gives another dimension of human being that differs from that positivist-naturalistic reduction of a man to the "being-asan-object"16. But why are we constantly asking ourselves about the meaning? If a science gives the answer to something, why will philosopher always ask "why?". Allthough it could be a good deal of argue on this subject, perhaps more in an ethical context (for example, bioethical issues related to advances in medicine and similar), we'll try to give a simple answer. In fact, one could say that this simply is the "business" of philosophy, and in favor of this follows: namely, if I do, indeed, handle a great deal of knowledge, I will be a professional, but I would not be a human in a sense of the one who, by wondering about the meaning, enriches his own paths of knowledge, whether they are theistic, atheistic or whatever. I will be Autodidact from Sartre's "Nausea", one real example of encyclopedic erudite who loses himself as an individual in his pragmatic views, while speaking rapturously about the faith in people and love he feels for them, not knowing that he does not really believe in it, ie not knowing that it was this faith and love for the people actually a manifest of his sexual orientation to the same sex, and which was first felt in the military complex, together with other men. Generally we can talk about the character of Autodidact as a kind of a loner who is trying to translate his existential frustration at all costs into some, any kind of spurious self-actualization, which creates a picture of himself as a weak individual who dives into infinite breadth of formal knowledge, which is nothing but mutter painting, or filling the white canvas of existence. I question, then, to become a human and as such to be a human, as Jaspers would say. By questioning a man within the human dimension of existence I'm opening the new dimension of reviewing not merely a "understandable" being that is trapped within a rational and positivist view, but have an opportunity for opened view for a man, opportunity to discover the "soul" of a man, and an attempt to overcome that negative situation of time in which he lives, by distancing myself from everything to the sphere of mind through which I see the suffering of a man and the universe, where I'm no longer worrying about the neatness of my home and garden, but rather trying to put in order all other cosmic mess. On the other hand, religion likewise can not be sufficient for discovering something "higher", since, as already stated, it demystifies religion as such, and imposes the particular denomination as universal, therefore, intolerantly imposes it onto other religions revealing

16

see Jaspers, K., Filozofija egzistencije, Prosveta, Beograd, 1973.

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itself as an absolut moment of the particular transcendence, and thus limits the ability for one's to discover his own being. To combine these two extremes, Jaspers establishes the philosophical faith. That would be a faith that is in line with knowledge and a knowing man, a thought that does not become a dogma, but the faith that is a kind of irrational addition to the rational, and is not blind; the faith that leads one to consider the meaning which can not be detected merely by thinking or by transcendence, which, unlike Sartre, as the product of a belief of human mind, are filling that empty space of nothingness! So, I believe in god, but not in the god who imposes us through established religion, but in the god who gives me an opportunity to primarly believe in myself and in my own existence. Now we know why Jaspers did not accept any religion as a relevant form of faith: if we have our own faith, it can not be objectified, it can not be concretized, it's historical and it's constantly emerging. As such, it is free, and thus individual, and shows the route through which individual seeks the meaning in totality of the meaningless. As such, it's a personal aspect of god's transcendence; he is neither a Buddha, or Yahweh, or Allah, he is mine. It is the faith that can not be denominated precisely because it's philosophical, that is, thoughtful and transcendent, and as such is never finished, it constantly strives to upgrade a man. And just when we say that god is a personal aspect of transcendence, we've underlined an unbridgeable line between theists and atheists in a philosophy of existence. Now when we came to the basic notion of theistic existentialism of Jaspers, one should ask, what is the significance of this faith that leads me to the possibility of finding the meaning? If we compare this with Sartre's assumption of transcendence, then it would mean that beliving is equal to being free. This leads us to an important difference between these two positions. Specifically, we have Sartres freedom, which is given by itself in the existence which doesnt determe us in any sence. As such, man is free, and from the possibility of knowing that freedom, he reveals the shortcomings of his own existence, because only thing to which he can transcend is nothingness. For Jaspers, it is god who has given freedom to a man, and it was he who determed man as a free being, which means that he also enabled a man to transcend, therefore, he gave the essence to the Being and to the freedom that fills the existence. So, with Sartre we have atheistic kind of freedom as a deficiency of an existence, while to Jaspers that is an advantage, which means that existence as such seeks god and directs man towards god. Because if we look at everything from this desperate perspective of a man17, then we can easily conclude that he is really in the chains of what Jaspers calls the border situations, and such situations (wars, famine, disease, fear, pain, mortality...) should make one to begin questioning his own lostness in his existence, to eventually reach the limits of the current, ie the indication of transcendence, and therefore faith, that is, the god. In this sense, that is a tolerant religion, it tends to communicate with others, and it's a communication that is
17

Here we can generally refer to the spiritual situation of time in which Jaspers lived, ie during the World War II, in which Jaspers as a Jewish thinker was persecuted by the Nazis, which has greatly influenced the shaping of the most important positions of his philosophy of existence.

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intuitive, mediated only by "the language of the spirit", the symbol of those findings with which we are enriching our own being, and which we manifest in the external world, ie on the others, but also strive to extrovertion and acceptance of new horizons, just what Jaspers called the fight-in-love, which is realized as a paradox of human existence, where man as selfconsciously and authentically being must penetrate into the conceptual world of the other, but not accepting it as an absolute, universally valid, yet only as an incentive for finding his own sense of reality, which manifests itself through: the faith in god, faith in a man, and after all, faith in the possibility of the existence which was given by the god, which means that the god is the one who creates the very essence of man, and a man, if he believes, will find that essence, because as Jaspers said, only he who departs from god, can look after him"18. Looking this way, we can conclude that Jaspers provided an excellent foundation for resolving Sartre's falling into the gap, in transcendening to nothing, and that is the existence of god. Sartre himself acknowledged the great merits of Jaspers' existentialism, primarily in a form of detecting the border situations as a possibility of overcoming this situation through his notion of philosophy of religion, or freedom, which tends to break down these entrenched social and spiritual principles, general affirmation of a man as the subjective and free being. However, looking from Sartre's perspective, Jaspers perhaps too naively went over the problem of existence of god in a way that he a priori input him in his philosophical system, where in a dichotomy between false and true enlightenment, it is the god who occupies the foundation of the latter, which is the only true meaning of the human progress, and his existence as opposed to "false" and blind rationality, which is implemented in a misleading atheist doctrine.19 In a very attempt to define a man as the one who is moving toward something "divine", Jaspers suggested something in the front of existence, some kind of essence. Despite the fact that human in his freedom can question and deny existence, impression is that he received this instruction from god. What Sartre seeks is a complete rational basis of existence, which will not be revealed in assumption of an irrational foundation, which, as much as it acknowledges that individuality and freedom, somehow takes away the value of individuality, precisely because it does not turn completely to the possibility of a man to achieve his own and completely indeterminate affirmation in the world. One must have a basis in himself, in his own freedom in order to recognize the possibility of questioning and denial of all that's causal in the Being-in-itself. But what am I really discovering in this questioning? If now I know that there is no god, then there are no values that would be determined by god or some sort of idea that manifests itself through the real. Simply put, if there is no essence, there is no knowing of essence, if there is no god, we can not comprehend it, which means we can not behave according to some moral rules that would have been the product of god's existence. If I know that I was thrown into the world against my will, then the only thing my freedom can be is nothing. That initial fear that
18

Tolvaji, D., article Filozofijska vjera Karla Jaspersa, Crkva u svijetu, vol. 44/ no. 3, Katoliki bogoslovni fakultet, Zagreb, 2009., hrcak.srce.hr/file/65726 19 see Filozofija egzistencije, p. 198. (Here we can also refer to limited possibilities of the particular sciences)

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I felt now is gone through freedom to one higher dimension, and that is the anxiety that is represented to us as nothing but a burden of an already overburdened Being, where I can not get into something else that is not Being, yet constantly penetrating into the non-existening spheres of something transcendent. Here, for the first time I can say that I felt the sickness of existence, one unbearable cluster of things that are in themselves empty, as a backdrops of my life. Somehow, I intuitively come to that feeling of inner emptiness that envelops all that I see, all that I feel. Indeed, if we deny the existence of god and ability of transcending to him, i.e. to all "good" which derives from his existence, then were back again in Sartre's nothingness. Because, if I know that there is no god, then how to believe, in what then can I trust? And where is this foundation at all, that gives me the ability to think? Simply I can believe in anything again, which is equivalent to not believing. Again, relying on Sartre, I'm an atheist. Now I may ask, what can I do in this painful and brutal existence? Should I be simply reduced to passivity then, to the inertia and unbearable fullness of Being-in-itself? Should I let myself to the power of a mass that in this complete freedom of choosing, chooses to be a part of the Being-initself, or as Heidegger would say, mass that collapses, where that definition of the Being as a humans Being is actually being vanished and replaced by the Being-within-the-world as a mere mediocrity of existence, therefore the automatism of life that is dominated by nonauthentic concern, which is manifested through the code of everyday occurrence, that is, the reduction to the moments of optional and shallow conversation, repetition of the cliches that we hear from various sources, like, for example, through the superficial and snobbish understanding of Sartre as the one of the greatest example of pessimistic philosophy, generally, to enjoy everything that is required in the existence of the world as we know it. But why not to let ourselves to the anxiety? If I already see that in this conforistic picture of the world Im taking the position of another insignificant existence, why not then to aspire to the full disclosure of my opportunities, that is, my freedom, even at the cost of that oath feeling that is constantly following me? For precisely this anxiety that I feel shows me something else that is not the Being-in-itself, and what I define as the subject being that can grasp and understand the border situations of which Jaspers speaks, as the subject who thinks! Now I realize that anxiety just points to a life that is captured along with the current existential ambiguity, uncertainty, to a life of passive suffering and possible escape froman automated way of life... "... Fear is a thoughtless knowledge of the transcendent, anxiety is thoughtful cognition of ourselves"20. Anxiety tells me that I am, that I exist, it points to my Being, creating the awareness of the Being, not in the sense in which various moral paragons or metaphysicians are seeking an essence of a man to save himself from the pain and boredom of Being (what Sartre and Jaspers suggested in the term of religion), and thus escape from the freedom that it represents. For if the Being is, then the anxiety is the catapult that transfers a man out of this well-known, orderly world to nothing, because then it comes to the nullification of the Being, and depersonalization and a break with history, therefore, life itself loses all of the meaning, we
20

Bitak i nito I, p. 60.

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unstick ourselves from our reality, we come to what Sartre calls the bad faith or the bad conscience, where in the dichotomy of the human Being, on the one side, we accept the status of the factual being which is undoubtedly related to the existence in which he is, on the other side, we deny our own historical and social status, not appealing ourselves to this false determination that oppresses ideal of Being-in-itself: "Free man can not survive in this 'world of the sweet stickiness', where as 'mushy', 'sticky', 'oily' they forget freedom and settle down in dishonesty, in the impure conscience, objectifying themselves as the things, taking other as a cream, while gaining fat and stiffening"21. So, anxiety is the one which denies the claims of the world so we "could realize ourselves as a consciousness that owns pre-ontological understanding of our own essence and pre-cogniting sense of our possibilities"22, which ultimately leads to the possibility of revealing ourselves as the Being-for-itself! Now we can say that this blind rationality of which Jaspers speaks regained it sight, in the sense in which man, not as a being of knowledge and not as a religious being, but as a reasonable and contingent being establishes foundation of becoming the man!

6. Being-for-itself:
On Husserl we argued that he, basing his phenomenology on Descartes' cogito, i.e. "I think, therefore I am", brought the concept of transcendental ego, and therefore his phenomenological reduction. The character of these two cogitos is such that they remain in their own domains, i.e. both cogitos as the products of mind are closed in themselves alone. For Sartre, we: 1. assessed the Being of phenomenon as the begining of existence, from which we came to 2. consciousness as the pre-reflective cogito, which, as such, strives to "nothing", and this denial had led us to 3. freedom that can be seen in the act of 4. anxiety, which took us to the 5. bad faith, which eventually had led us to the attempts of conditioning a possibilities for 6. the Being of awareness. So we have an inverted image of consciousness as the prereflective cogito which seeks its own being, his "consciousness of consciousness". We came to the determination of self as the pre-reflective consciousness that is an awerness of itself, the foundation of self that determines the Being of consciousness, and self as such is the one that points to the subjectivity, to the man who has some potential to deviate from the path of the Being-in-itself, as to try to move into erratic battle with the non-being, i.e. that "nothing". Thus, we come to the concept of reflective cogito which is now revealed in the act of self-perception, the existence of self-consciousness that is self-awareness, of me who exists, which is revealed in the concept of "Being-for-itself". Now I can freely say, "I exist!", and as such I see beyond bare existence in which I am, I move far away from some situations that want to throw me in the non-existing, that want to deceive the true vision of existence that is nothing else but anxiety! Therefore we come to the possibility of what Heidegger would call the authentic existence. Earlier we said that the being-in-itself is marked as inauthentic existence, what we, in the
21 22

Egzistencijalizam je humanizam, p. 72. Bitak i nito I, p. 71.

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context of social life, could call conformism. But now we have to accept the Being-in-itself as the possibility of authentic existence that transcends the inauthentic worry that is revealed in a living that is inherent to everyday life, which reveals itself in matters of diet, exercise, maintaining a tidy home, shares etc... Man is a conscious being situated in everyday life, in society, within the issues and actions that create the actual situation of the Being. But that should be understood as a possibility, as a pure factual basis, because, as we have agreed, a man is the Being-for-itself and as such, in the possibility of authentic concern, he realizes himself in this structure of existetiality which is his ability for selecting, because if we said that man in his existence is free, undetermined by anything, then he, as his own subject, can choose between a myriad of options. Heidegger would say that Dasein is first and best reveald in everyday mediocrity, and according to that, inauthentic being is a starting point of authentic one as the structure of existentiality, where man steps in what is "ahead of him", i.e. in front of himself, therefore, transcends itself as an actual being. Therefore, just starting from facticity, if man aspires towards freedom, towards non-being, then the human Being strengthens through the possibility of transcending produced by the Being-for-itself, which is defining moment of the exsistetiality of Dasein, which seeks the meaning of existence, which is revealed through questioning and denial that leads to genuine human knowledge of his own false and hypocritical definition of the Being-in-itself. And now when I realized that I'm a conscious being, when I, regardless of my atheistic position, found that anxiety indicates the possibility of existence, of authentic existence, of possibility to be yourself, how to move this kind of being closer to the one in which I am as a factual, existential being? Because if there is no god, according to whom I exists as to another instance whereby I'm moving to the possibility of knowing myself and existence in general, that is something that leads me to the meaning of the Being, then how can I realize myself as a different, free, able to transcend, if I am constantly nailed to a solid foundation of the Beingin-itself as a foundation of my existence? How, on the other hand, if I transcend to something, that is, if I'm able to transcend towards something that I do not know, if my own thoughts on something imply something that has no concrete foundation, or if "the Being-for-itself is the Being-in-itself which loses itself as the Being-in-itself as to be founded as a consciousness23, then how can I be, as the subject being, a part of the objectivity of my existentional basis, the more I am denying that foundation by questioning, and what then provides the base of transcending for me? Finally, how can I (and can I at all) connect the possibility of pure actual Being and the transcendence to discover the meaning of the Being? So, the Being-for-itself is the foundation of itself as the self, as self-consciousness that denies the factual givenness of Being-in-itself. But this Being-for-itself seeks the Being-in-itself, their union, in the sense that the Being-for-itself "becomes". And regardless the fact that I discover a new possibilities of existence and thus move away from what is, in this transcending I just can't get to something that I'll put "down to earth", which will enrich the existence as such, because if I close my eyes and see something different from reality, when I reopen them, the image of the fullness of Being that burdens me, and that keeps me in its field
23

ibid., str. 119.

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will be shown again, without the possibility to resist, and if on the other hand I constantly keep my eyes closed, I will not be able to be oriented in reality... I feel that everything I do, everyone I meet, somehow burns in my view, and the only thing that remains of all is the fire field covered with ashes. "Human reality in its constant existing is a suffering because it appears in the Being as constantly persecuted by the totality which it is, but not possible to be, precisely because it can not reach the Being-in-itself that as the Being-for-itself is not lost"24. Now when I know that I have to do something, that I have ability to create myself as my own project, can I present this project in the Being-in-itself as a constant value that will somehow capture that transcendent dimension of the Being-for-itself as the Being-in-itself? How can I, and can I at all, fill the gap between being and nothingness? In trying to reach the solution to this problem, we need to consider two segments which will appear as a possible affirmation of authentic existence. We will start from the temporality that will later open a new perspective of possibilities of authentic existence, and then go to the definition of physicality and the possibility of being with the other.

7. Temporality:
Can the concept of time be discovered as a possibility of existing? At first glance it seems that time is something that could easily be put as Sartre's Being-in-itself, something in what we simply are, the part of the Being which is consisted of a transience time. But here we say: the "transience". In fact, if we think about it, somehow our concept of time differs from that transience. In first case we are actually speaking of a fixed time, of time as a factual feature of the Being, the time as something that simply leads us to the present factual situation. But the transience is the segment of time which indicates its dynamics. Transience is one factor that separates the notion of time in its three segments, or what will Heidegger and Sartre call dimensions, i.e. past, present and future and what can be known within the Being-for-itself. Sartre, as also Heidegger, will argue a lot about an issue of time, but here we will focus exclusively on the notion of time as one factor that allows dynamics of life, therefore, time as the basis of transience. In this context, Sartre would say that the Being-in-self is nontemporal, because time, that is, the transience can not be comprehended within it. Suppose, for example, we're loking at the picture when we were kids. We'll see that picture and it is very likely that we will not be able to recognize ourselves in it. So, we're looking at the picture that is directly related to our life, but tell us absolutely nothing, in fact, if our parents or someone else haven't said that the ones on the picture are us, we would see a picture of completely unknown child. And what actually happens then is that we are inventing a story that connects us with that picture from the past, we reveal some fragments of memories in which we try to penetrate, but since we are as the Being-for-itself the ones that exist in this inconceivably short time of the present, all of the past becomes the Being-in-itself that disappears as something that was, and it is no longer, and takes the place in nothingness. "The
24

ibid., str. 123.

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letters that I have write on it (the paper) have not dried yet, and I already feal that they don't belong to me..."25. We could say picturesquely that our every movement is being turned into a single image from the past that disappears into nothingness. So the problem here is the transcendence of consciousness to the past, because it relates to the present, i.e. we're cogniting it in the present, but we understand it as the Being-in-itself of the past, which, as we said, can not connect the past with the present, since history is in constant separation from the present and can only be seen from the present, but as a separate entity, without any connection with the present, the same way we can not connect the picture of ourselves in childhood with us, because the past was, but now it's not. And that "not" can not reach the fullness of the Being that is. Then how should we define the existence of the future? Namely, if we understand that moving trail and we know that we're moving away from the past, then we know that we can move from the present towards the future in a sense that we understand our future as a possibility! "Future is an ideal spot in which haisty and infinite compression of falsity (past), Being-for-itself (presence) and its possibility (defined future) could make the Self to finally appear as the existence of a Being in itself for itself"26. Although is nothingness that stands at the crossroads of the present and past and present and future, as the Being-for-itself at least we can assume that the future is yet to come ... In this context we can talk about Heidegger's Being to death. It is, in fact, revealed in an act of genuine concern, as opposed to the inauthentic one, which corresponds to observing a static temporality where the dimensions of time are understood, but only in the context of periodic extensions of the present to the transience. In fact, Heidegger would say that death is nothing but the not-being, simply the end of life, but also, in a real, genuine understanding, it is the possibility of existence, that is, of freedom, which affirms the possibility of knowledge of human freedom. So there is a life going on in the Being, and in a genuine concern it is to be lived as we live towards death, and not to god or something that at some spaceless or a timeless sense that comes after life. And only man can grasp and connect this dimensions of time, in which he feels this transience, this passing of time, and it is precisely this trasience that encourages him to be determent, to discover this thread which is tied to temporality in terms of understanding the Being to the death, and not to be indifferent, which is manifested in nihilism or in running into some metaphysical and religious spheres etc., which is inherent to the inauthentic existence in the form of accepting an everyday occurrence for granted. Therefore, temporality would be, for Sartre and as for Heidegger, horizon in which the Beingfor-itself recives its legitimacy, or the possibility of authentic existence, and from which arises a possibility of looking at the past, acting in the present and aspirating to the future, bringing the transcendent aspect of human consciousness as the Being-for-itself closer to the concreteness of the Being-in-itself, in a way the existential dimension incorporates the notion
25 26

Sartre, J. P. Munina, Konzor, Zagreb, p. 132. Bitak i nito I (Being and nothingness) , p. 171.

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of transcending into the temporality, ie understanding the mere transience, that is, a flow of time, and thus opens the possibility for a man to know himself by being aware of time, as also the whole of the human nature, ie the Being, and finally, the meaning of existence, that is, the wholeness of existence. But no matter how we understand ourselves as thinking beings who have a possibility of knowledge of the dimensions of time and aspirations to the future as a possible concretization of a man in terms of integration of the Being-in-itself and the Being-for-itself, we are still going around in an enchanted circle of the attempts of the Being-for-itself to be realized as the Self, as the possibility of authentic existence. For I want to exist as an authentic being, and as such, I see that transience, I see time in its constant passing, but as the Being-for-myself, I know that the past simply disappears. So even though I'm sometimes catched by the "sense of adventure of unrestricted time"27, which holds me by the hand as a reflex hitch of arm of the dying past, this twitches, or rather, this remembering, also disappear eventually, this remembering that used to touch me every now and then in the present, which would shake me and evoke a special feeling of fullness of memories, as if I were there again. But now, what past made is that it simply emptied all this memory reducing it to one so simple facticity of the Being-in-itself, which means to me absolutely nothing. Now, passing some places from the past again, I only see those cardboard backdrops of the Being-in-itself of the present and nothing more than that... I, as the Being-for-itself, can not penetrate into the past, I can not feel that same pain or happiness that I felt before, I can not change what has passed, can not penetrate into that state of mind that I had when I hung out with some people who had stayed in the past, with whom I had something that linked us through the depth of view which fullfilled us. At present, as Being-for-it self Im nullyfing factual state of history in a way that in every step away from a past, in constant movement, Im becoming something else that is different from the facticity of Being-in-itself of the past. And all I can know is that I'm trapped in this present moment, and there's nothing that can be translated into all three dimensions of time, since any attempt to pursue my own project automatically disappears with the past, and as such it simply becomes worthless. On the other hand, taking into account the possibility of Heidegger's Being towards death in a global context, reveals a man's determination for not taking the transience of time into consideration. As if he prefers to run away from any attempt of realizing his project by accepting the concepts of static time as such. We could say that, in fact, man's consciousness is focused on not thinking about death, that the concept of death is somehow removed out of his consciousness and everything he does in life seems somehow lazy and sluggish, too relaxed and at easy, like he's enjoying this constant repeatition of the present moment. And as much as he admits that death is what awaits him safely, no matter how wistfully he's saying: "how fast the time passes ...", saving some old stuff as the memories of something, the same stuff he does not remember where he got it, and do not tell him anything else but the silence of nothingness of the past; he somehow behaves as if death does not exist, and therefore as there is no transience, as it is so far from him that it will never catch him, as the most abstract and yet so specific part of life.
27

Munina (Nausea), p. 83.

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For as a part of that Are, they're only casually and self-explanatory saying: "everything dies", which is essentially the same as saying that no one died, that something died, something abstract, totally unknowable, not experiencing death as concrete necessity of the end of existence. And precisely this Are does not allowe us to reflect on death, to feel fear, and with it the possibility of living towards death, because then a man is defined only as a coward, as "obscurantist", as mismatched and somewhat depraved being. But those who are boldly walking toward death, they defend their past from nothingness by selling their memories for experience, "and later, about forty, baptize their little stubborness and some maximes in the name of experience, becoming machines that share the wisdom"28, with which they also want to ensure themselves from the future of nothingness, and thus from the fear of death. Also, they believe in God, in what is above us, the universe, the stars ... But in all this, they lack the faith in man...

8. Being-for-others:
"Unhappy is the one who can not say the basic word (You), but the coward is the one who talks to someone naming him as a concept or a slogan29. This quote from the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber is something that covers a wide range of "relationships with other" in philosophy of existence, taking into account almost all the representatives of existential philosophy, especially those who were on the side of a theists, therefore, except for Buber, those are Jaspers, whom we have already mentioned, and Marcel. Also, we could associate this quote with Sartre's work "No Exit" where he portrays the very concepts that are presented in the ontological definition of existentialism, especially the notion of Being-for-another, which will so unobtrusive, yet very strong and impressively be shown in this drama as connected with everyday life. But before we go into further discussion on this topic, it would be useful to determine what is this "You", ie the relationship between I and You with Buber, and then try to get to that relationship with Sartre.

8.1. I and You: To describe such relationship with Buber in more authentic way, it would be best to start from the example provided by Buber himself, and that is the direct relationship that is realized by a newborn... The first thing we see is that it cries, it does fast hand movements, it looks for something... That same child while it is still not aware of himself, nor anything around him, looks for a toy and talks to it in unarticulated way. From this we can conclude that a child who has no his own I", as Buber would say is in domain of the unconscious being, seeks a relationship. Furthermore, from the fact that the child talks to the toy, we can conclude that what it sees is something that he truly loves, its not an object, or even some sort of pleasure, but simply something to which it can address. It is in this direct relationship that Buber sees foundation of the relationship between I and You. From this example we briefly define the
28 29

Munina, p. 97. Buber, M., Ja i Ti (I and You), Rad, Beograd, 1977., p. 14.

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immediacy of relationship as something that is reflected in an intuitive attributing a personality to another in the sense that one's body becomes a source of something unphysical, something spaceless and timeless, a form of love that has metaphysical and metapshychological character. And this relationship is not primarily directed to another human being, but it also refers to the nature, to the art and to god. So, at the very beggining there is an a priori desire for relationship and direct relationship, but as we already mentioned, the infant is still unconscious being, which has not yet built his conception of self. This will lead us to Buber's double meaning relationships: as the relationship between I and You, and the relationship between I and It. On the one hand, we have the primary definition of a man as the relationship of I and You, to which Buber gives primacy over the discovery of his own entity, ie, self-identity, selfhood, with what he, analogous to Sartre, suppressed Husserl's theory of the transcendental ego, that is, he does not take I as a subject that has the central position in the world, that constructs the world according to some kind of principle or essence. On the other hand, there must be some kind of solid ground for revealing myself as the being who is in the primar relation with the environment, with the world around me, and to reveal that I, man undoubtedly has to get in the I-It relationship. For to build ourselves as a conscious beings, we have to learn, observe, we must first learn what is I, therefore, to be aware of ourselves as an existing beings. And if we see something as a conscious beings (as opposed to the child), we thus objectify something, therefore, dissociate from the primary I-You relationship. This is also in watching other people: if I see another person and if about think about it, what I think is its height, hair color, voice, possibly a social reputation if you know it, etc. So, I'll be looking it as an object. Consequently, I can only exist in dual relation of I-You and I-It, which also suggests that definition of a man is that he as a natural being, or rather, being that is not affected by the "civilized", who establishes the relationship of I -You, but also by this distancing from the nature degrades to the I-It relationship. This leads us to an important link with Heidegger, that is, with his "Are" as the neutrum in which the rutine takes its place, in which that It is going on. Thus, referring to Buber, we can say that a man, in his irrational determination, has the option of existing towards the You and I relationship, but has positioned himself primarily as a social being that finds the basis of existence in society, in It. Heidegger has a similar theory, since he identifies a person as the one whose place is primarily in It, or in that Are, as an ambiguous gender of the Being. So, there is no I separated from existence with others, and it is precisely the Da (Here) of Dasein (Herebeing) the one which goes along with others, making this It of Being. Earlier we mentioned Heidegger's distinction between authentic and inauthentic existence, which through this two terms is marked by worry. Indeed, if there is just inauthentic concern, then we stop only at the threshold of I-It relationship, which is marked by clear empirical relationship that does not actually mean anything, because our reflection in our inner world will not create anything that will change the world, that will enrich it etc., it's just a routine that moves, and it is a symbol of I-It relationship between the human world. I can see

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someone, study him, but I won't be able to know him, to reveal his secrets, nor to change him, as he will not be able to change me. Also, in this respect, our language is reduced to the language of It. I can speak, and others can hear those words, but those words occur by inertia, they are dead, they do not reach other in terms of understanding of which Buber speaks. If I say the word such as "anxiety" to someone, that word will come up to his ear, he or she will hear it, connect it to some painful condition, with something negative that was possibly seen in life, therefore, will link that notion to his own experience, or even with a definition that was read or heard, and which he believes that best describes this notion. The same thing is when I say the word "love", where this word is reduced to a purely emotional, or experiential moment. Others will say that they understand that term, but how could I be sure of that, when "love" or "anxiety" are so abstract notions that can not possibly fit in this phonetic creation of a few letters? Finally, how can I understand his idea of love, anxiety, when my experience of that is quite different from his? "The form of verbal language does not prove anything. For many You that have been told, means, basically, someone It to whom You is said just out of habit and dullness..."30. This is exactly the problem of the I-It relationships: the inability to enter into a deeper realm of consideration of some situation, feeling of another person. And here we just came to important part that explains a quote mentioned at the beggining of this chapter. Now, if we take into consideration It as some kind of background, ie the basis for life and work of man in the world, then indeed we can say that it is difficult to address each other with You, because all we do in life is more or less objectification of some situation, putting everything in terms of It. When I pass by someone, it's just as I walked past the tree or pole, and somehow it feels more comfortable to apprehend other that way than to say: "This is human". And if it suits me to define a man that way, and I am also a man, then I'm also degrading myself on It, I'm becoming the same pole or tree that is observed by others. We can simply say, "without It man can not live. But, who lives only with It, is not a man"31. Now we have come to the first segment of Sartre's concept of relationship with other... Authentic existence, on the other hand, aims to establish a relationship between I and You, and not only towards others but also to the nature, to the world, in short, the existence, and therefore it is precisely this relationship that is revealed in relation between I and You, as the world of relationship. In the I-You a relationship is created, I bind myself with others, in short, the world as the experience: I-It, a world of relationship: I-You. But how to establish this relationship, when we're stuck in the Being as such? How to resist this mutual distance in the form of It and let ourselves to the immediacy of the relationship in the presence of other. Finally, in order to penetrate the world of other, how to coexist with other in this metaphysical and metapsychical sense, and what, at the end, means the understanding of each other?

30 31

ibid., p. 54. ibid., p. 31.

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In Sartrean spirit, Buber will say: "Only where all resources are destroyed, a relationship between I and You is created"32, which recalls the definition of anxiety as the possibility of transcending, denying the Being-in-itself or Bubers It, which implies to Sartres nothing, in Bubers case to the immediacy of the relationship between I and You. But if we consider that It is determinative to this I of a man, how to destroy It then, which so distastefuly compromises the relationship between I and You? Now we come to the very same problem that occurs with Sartre, that is the reduction of Being-for-itself to Being-in-itself, only in this case we have a reduction of the direct relationship between I and You through the indirection of the relationship in the neutrum reality. Now how is this relationship between I and You accomplished? If this relationship is immediate, what makes this immediacy? How to explain that "and"? First of all, in the manner of existential knowledge, we should take into consideration It, that is, what It really is like, what do we find in this terms of existence? We can vividly tell in Buber's style, nothing but gravity, which pulls us to earth and finally dug us into it as nothingness33. Indirection of the relationship of which Buber speaks is actually constant and causally emergence of the various social infrastructures, as well as individual creations, which intertwines with I, installing it into the infrastructure that is causality in which man does not know how to tell You, but addresses all with It, as was previously stated: that tree, that pillar, that man... But perhaps an even better question is, why is so? What is the actual foundation of that infrastructure? Here we can argue a lot about some kind of conditionality of human as a being who could be defined rather as an obsessed, and not a free being, since he, historically, always aspired to a cult, a religion, a mystical and so forth. In short, there was always an obsession with some sort of authority. In this context, Buber will talk about the escape from freedom, as did Sartre (in metaphysics, religion, mysticism, etc.). And that would be one pole of the problem of man as a being who creates, or helps to build this infrastructure from the perspective of the mass. On the other hand, Buber will talk about egoism, ie the difference between the personality and ego. Ego is the one that finds its apparent freedom in isolation from others, which actually causes the loss of ability to understand oneself, as also freedom, thus I-You relationship. It is, simply, disorientation of the individual, living in unreal world, where by putting himself in a superior position, convinced in the value of his fictional world, he wants to conquer It. This apparently refers to the positive side of the destruction of everything as such, of asking about everything and trying to free oneself from the shackles of objective, massive anxiety, but such approach in fact aims for destruction of everything, just to subsequently affirm this unreal world of individuals, in a way, in political context, the dictatorship is created, or what Buber says, taking an example of Napoleon, demonic You who had taken the followers as It. They are just like characters in an image that Roquentin watched in Nausea, which he calls self-complacent and hypocritical Bastards, who are so rudely imposing the present, this dotted and decrepit faces which are long lost in the past, persons who wanted to be portrayed to be
32 33

ibid., p. 12. see ibid., p. 30.

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presented as "pillars" of the society, as the best among equals, that is, impersonal people; and their real faces, that would never be revealed in public life, were always presented in the four walls of their castles or villas, where they show the bare, so unsightly facial expressions, which are till this days admired by the common people just because they are a part of a history. "Who isolated I pronounces with a large initial letter, reveals the shame of the world spirit degraded to the spirituality"34. Buber's goal is not to break down everything, to simply destroy everything in order to put the Being of own egotistical world into the Being as such, since, as we have said, It is the foundation of the Being, and as such it must survive. He desn't want to abolish the institutions, nor public, nor private ones, such as the marriage (for which Buber also argues that are the kind of carriers of that infrastructure of alienation from You), yet he just wants to reforme it in the sense that they operate, in a manner of speaking, by the patterns of You, not It. And now the question is, what to do to achieve something like that, what kind of person must be to say You to another? How is that I build in this striving to You? "He who enters into absolute relationship is no longer aware of anything in particular, neither the things nor beings, neither earth nor heaven, but it's all comprised in the relationship"35. That I in this context can mean developing myself as a personality, ie, the convergence to all of the world and entering into a relationship with the world as the whole, true, where I will not distance myself from the mundane in terms of creating my own egoistic world, or to act like a stranger in this mechanical world enchanted by deterministic forces of everyday relationships, but will assimilate a world of I and You into the world of It. It simply means to live in this world so that it is viewed in a more natural, more beautiful, authentic experience, in a way that developes a person who has the will to enter into a relationship with other and to observe other as well as a personality, similar to Jaspers interpretation. To read, for example, Aristotle as to talk with him, to be overwhelmed by the spirits of the time, which are presented by the work of art, or simply to sympathize with others, with their suffering or happiness, but not by a clause given by the society, or by my own orders with which, for some reason (just to fuck), I want to approach other immensely, but simply to be hit by a tragedy or happiness of others, as it was my own... This is exactly the destruction of the causality of It of which Buber says. This means also to accept fate, but not as determinism that necessarily takes me to an eternal resting place, but as an opportunity to get into the flow of time that detects a seed of freedom deep within me, and to establish the relationship between I and You in which I will create a visible substance of values that will last and not burn out in a blaze of ecstatic relationship with someone or something. Let's call this that Sartrean Being to future, or Heidegger's Being to death (only talking about the segment of time, later we'll find large differences between Sartre and Buber in (im)possibility of achieving the immediacy of the relationship). Specifically the fate of "a man that does not keep him on a leash, but waits for him" 36 , the one he accepts as a possibility, that in spite of all byproducts of It he begins to love this
34 35

ibid., p. 58. ibid., p. 69. 36 ibid., p. 52.

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world and starts to feel the beauty of the immediacy of the relationship between I and You. "If we love the real world that will not be destroyed, if we really love it with all its horrors, if we dare to enfold it with the muscles of our minds, our hands will encounter hands that hold the world"37. Of course, such notation of man, nor with Buber, as well as with Jaspers, could not function without the existence of god, who is also a founder of this belief, attribute who in his universal presence enriches the whole existence of a spirituality that immediate man seeks. That is so called existentialist god whom I perceive as the one who lights up my way through all the possible existential dichotomies and paradoxes, which in turn does not want anything but my belief. We could say that god is exactly this "and" between I and You, and if I believe in him, I will believe in the possibility of a direct relationship between me and everything around me. And now that we have determined that direct relationship between I and You by Buber, we can easily assume how would this relationship be manifested with Sartre it simply doesn't exist. Sartre will, through the ontological notion of corporeality, jeopardize any possibility of someone's existance for the other and vice versa...

8.2. Me and the world of objects: Mere human body as such is an object for other. For I, as a being, can not ask for a shelter outside the body, there is no duality that indicates the possibility of getting closer to something beyond the physical; I am just my body, and as such I must acknowledge myself as the Being-for-itself in relation to the Being-in-itself. Because my body is the one which beholds my sensations by which I connect my consciousness with the outside world, and as such I'm actually a counciousness that exists my body and knows it implicitely through his objectivity as objectivity of senses wrapped by thought. And everything I feel in this body, and also know that way, it is also an object to another. Because I know that my body is relatively complex anatomy, I know position of my organs, but I can not cover my entire body the way the others can. Other transcends me in a way that he overcomes my own transcendence and puts it in one small spot, the pupil of his eye in which my reflection is so difficult to be recognized. So let's take an example of banal behavior in the presence of another. As much as I know who I am and to what I aspire in solitude, somehow in the presence of other all that blurs and I feel that the only stronghold I have is a fragile foundation of his sight. I start to act insecure, becoming affected by his view, trying to figure out what I am in a strangers sight; I guess, I obey him, or wheedle him, but still can not recognize myself in his eye. Finally, I distance myself from other with an indescribable touch of hatred towards him, and thus trying to negate the existence of another, and again I feel sick of the Being-for-another. "Everything that goes for me goes for the other. While I'm trying to get rid of the influence of another, others are trying to get rid of mine,
37

ibid., p. 83.

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while I'm trying to subdue the other, the other is trying to subdue me. There is no word about the one-sided relationship with some object-in-itself, but about mutual and changing relationships. [...] Conflict is the original meaning of the Being-for-other"38 . As our eyes objectify all the things around them, since everything else is nothing more than an object, now, starting from the body (of someone), which is also an object that is moving in the world, they also objectify the body. But as this body, shown to us in a sight, speaks, hears, watches us, since we know that it is the Being-for-itself, just like us, we see that it observes us the same way as we observe it, and as such, we are the objects in the eye of the other. How to solve this conflict? Is the only solution to distance oureselves from other in order to rid myself of his presence and flee to my own freedom? Certainly not, because of the one question: how could we define ourselves if there is no other? How do I know I'm good if I do not know that the other is evil, how, generally, I know what is good if I don't see someone who is evil? How do I know if I'm handsome or ugly when I look in the mirror, if another does not say that I'm as such and as so? For as in "No Exit" Sartre describes a situation in which Estelle is trying to put some make up in a room without mirrors, the only thing she can do is to try to see her reflection in the pupil of the eye of Inez. Without others eyes, we're foreigners to ourselves. After all, we can not distance ourselves from others, because specificaly eyes of the world are constantly watching us, and where as the being-for-itself we have a consciousness about it and we feel like we're all the time in the room where it is continuously lit, with no possibility to close and refresh eyes, as Sartre described at the beginning of the quoted drama.39 We can say that Sartre's view of relations with other is analogous to that of the causal infrastructure of It, in which everything is intertwined, except the sincere and direct relations that Buber describes. All those emotions that define our relationship to other are actually just a failed attempt of arriving at honest and direct I and You. Because if the relationship with other is constant objectification, then we can not imagine a love that recognizes the freedom of one individual by another, but only becomes masochism, ie a tendency to be objectified, a desire to tell someone I love you, just not to admit that is not possible to love, as to believe in god in order to be saved from the nausea of existence, and as such to hide from the sight of the world in the intimate sphere of a bedroom where we are constantly saying to this person: "love me", which, in a void and darkness of the room, resounds as: free me! Again I reveal myself as a hypocritical being that conceals his existence with something unreal. It's like scene from "No Exit" where Estelle, who herself does not know she's lying to Garcine, says that she loves him no matter what, but the truth is that she only needs "other" in order to strengthen herself as a character in secure sight of the other and to move away from Inez's sight, who refers to all those existential anxiety that is revealed in relationship with other, where in inability of her own actualsation and constant watching and understanding
38 39

Bitak i nito II, p. 440. see p. 37. (imposibillity of distancing from others in the context of responsibility)

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other as an object, therefore, in a world of objects, as being-for-itself she feels nothing but sufficient. Here we can also refer to a scene from Nausea, where Roquentin observes this young flirting couple, both smiling to each other, while they know that their only goal is to sleep together. "Once they sleep together, they will have to find something else to conceal massive absurdity of their existence. Yet... is it really necessary to lie to themselves?"40. That the instincts are one of the way to cover the absurdity of existence testifies the further discussion of Sartre's relationship with other in which he says that every kind of relationship is acctualy caused by desire, primarily by a desire to "conquer" the freedom of other and that all these wishes have their base in sexual instincts. Now we can ask a question, what is the goal of sexual act between these two young people? Probably they'll admit that it refers to pure pleasure, and thus satisfying those instincts, but the pleasure, as Sartre would say, is not defining moment of satisfaction, in fact the goal can not be satisfaction at all. Specifically, if man feels desire for the other, the goal is not to get rid of these desires, but to strive constantly to something in the context of relationship with other, more precisely, to constant objectification of other, in tendency to realize himself. But what he wants then is nothing but physical. So, although the Being-for-itself transcends the contingency of the body, desire is the one that wants to drown the Being-for-itself in this contingency of the physical. In this context, through sex, that is, desire for another, we seek another person's body, pure being in itself in which I try to embody my consciousness in order to embody other. Because if I feel my skin and my skin is among the skins of others, I would want to feel others skin, just to feel my own! In short we can say that desire is the one that takes awareness, ie the Being-for-itself, into the body to be felt as existing, and body permated in the Being: "The world becomes infused, consciousness plunges into a body that immerses in the world"41. As stated earlier that for the definition of itself the other is needed, that way desire should not to be taken only as a physical extension of the world, it is primarily focused on relationships with other, because in isolation I can not define myself, we have needs, desire for another, to be pressed with the skin of another, to love, to hate... Because desire is first and foremost relation with other. In this context we are talking about sadism. Because when in this process of knowing ourselves in relation to one another we realize that we seek the love that, as pure masochistic relationship, is doomed to failure, then all that's left from that inability to get other coverered as subjective, not objective entitie, is only a defeat in recognising a man as a sadist, pure passionate being who aspires to the fake wholeness of the body. The relationship turns into obscene, degrading, utterly disgust relating towards each other, only for a man to be with someone, not to love someone, but to revenge because he can not be in other as a consciousness to other consciousness, just to humiliate him as a submissive dog, or to fondle him as a loveable cat: "We just wanted to show that sadism as the seed is present in the instincts"42. And now when we look at this young couple, it is clear that this is indeed a form
40 41

Munina, p. 151. Bitak i nito II, p. 473. 42 ibid., p. 486.

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of sadism, which manifests itself in conformity of the sexual behavior. So the average man, because of laziness of mind and because of the conformism, can not imagine any other purpose for his desire except ejaculation"43. This occurs as the nausea in observation of that kind of existence, which aims to consistently satisfaction of the basic needs, and which remains at this level. So, the failure to find another consciousness through an act of love results as a sadism relation without love, which tends to the pure body objectification of other so we can enjoy the feel of our own body. To what, in the act of love, desire aspires in the physical sensations is, as the counsciousness feels the body in desire, also to feel the consciousness of another in his body, his nullifying transcendence - and this is a possibility of solving relationship with the other as a conflict: to understand myself as the subjective, free being and as such, to encompass the other as a freedom, just as Buber intended to achieve the I and You relationship. But if I take a closer look, its not just that one is running away from me as a transcendence, but also as his here-being (Dasein), that is, as a person who exists as the Being-in-itself and the Being-for-itself, and in this regard I have only sadistic intentions to humiliate other, the sadism which kills that plain liking of the people, which is, in the case of that couple, from the initial innocent affection and flirting, in the absence of penetration of consciousness to consciousness, transferred into a pure sadistic "handling of someone else's body" 44 . If our goal is hereby to eliminate any possibility of direct existence with other as Buber said, the aim is certainly achieved. This is another dimension that only confirms the absurdity of existence which is so often in many examples presented by Sartre. What here can be called a relationship is the only revenge executed by another in the form of sadism, by objectifying another, returning the debt to his objectification of me. From this we can easily conclude that one can not exist in relation to the community he belongs as a social being, with which, setting a solipsistic view, Sartre denied the possibility of Heidegger's Are, which is revealed as the most important difference of these two philosophers opinions. In fact, the factual setting of a man is in communion, in a group of people that constantly surrounds him, and that is inevitable; that is the concept of the indeterminate gender of Heidegger's existence which reveals itself in the form of coexistence with others. But if we can not penetrate "into" the other as a subject being, then how to create a community of "we" as the community of subjective beings? According to Sartre, that is simply not possible. And although some of our social events constantly point to the naturalness of living in society, or rather, being forced to live in society, such "natural" is achieved only at the level of experience, and that experience, as we already mentioned in Buber, does not give us the possibility of penetration to the preliminary world of other, yet ordinary causality in indefinitely repeated social norms. Although a man can be defined as existential, and therefore as a free being, he seems willingly agreed to be a part of this social causality to embody himself in the form of one particular and irrelevant object, whose freedom, in fascination with ephemeral values and
43 44

ibid., p. 465. ibid., p. 484.

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small things, is directed to the objectification of everything, that is, alienation from each other, and thus the abolition of his value. So, his definition of freedom, which in its, how was called by Gabriel Marcel, primary definition, ie the primary reflection, does not go beyond its own definition of a man by the status and the social function and the things he has, with which man actually defines himself as a pure object, ie as a being completely identified with his body that aspires to a particular function, ie, transcending its physicality in the sense that it receives confirmation that it is something that has a specific function, or rather, it serves a function. In the constant strengthening of their status, or sharpening oneself as a function, his primary goal is to distance itself from the possibility of understanding oneself as a being that exists, and as such would be free and unrelated to the things that surround him, revealing the possibility of his existence. Instead he looks for a meaning as it is forcibly introduced into the existence and strives to the Self designed through the things that he has and functions which he takes in the society. Why? Probably to conceal shame, or rather, not to allow the shame of his own weakness and stupidity, in short, a nothingness, to penetrate to his consciousness that he constantly destroys by the attempts of his realization through idiotic creations such as showbizz, political parties, the desire for power, desire for others to like him (a reference to Sartre's sadistic objectification of others) etc., deductively resulting in the worst possible consequences: falling morale, delirious thinking, overeating, plastic surgery, the incredible proliferation of overswelled egocentrism, humiliation of others, rape, murder, war... And worst of all is that throughout the history this became a hardened vicious circle in which the structure of stupidity as perpetuum mobile is nourihsed with inexhaustible wealth of food human stupidity! Of course, Marcel will try, in theistic way, through the concept of "secondary reflection" and then "reflexive reflection" to find possibility of overcoming such definition of a man as a pure object through the knowledge of self in community with others, ie through communication with others, therefore, in the fact where man should not be imprisoned in the solipsism of which Sartre speaks, but to be open to others, and thus to the opportunity of discovering his own basis, and therefore the essence of the existence; simply a possibility of creating his own project in union with others. As an existentialist, Marcel will admit Sartre's definition of the being foundation which is revealed in its body, which would define freedom as one that can be felt, as the experiential givenness of the body and mind. But he will not remain in a closed circuit of the objectifying forces of the body as only givenness, and where this freedom is "captured" in independency to objects and functions, but will try to find exit from the constant alienation from a man as a being in possibility that just in this participation with other beings (not bodies) man tries to get to the liberation from pure empirical determination of the body into the freedom of being as a philosophical or ontological mystery, which will ultimately imply the possibility of the god existance. But if we refer on Sartres views previously said, then such a possibility of secondary reflections does not exist. So, watching from Sartre's perspective, if its only possible that someone objectifies me or I objectify someone, or to distance myself from other through hatred, then we can only remain at the level of Marcels primary reflections, which can only

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aspire to a better identification and realisation of myself in existence in such a way that denies the possibility of existence of the other as a free being. Looking from Sartre's perspective, we can only conclude that Marcel discovered nothing more than another opportunity to escape from freedom of existence, the one in which we now come to a negative definition of freedom, that is, the escape from freedom, which no longer holds its roots in metaphysics, or religion, but in existence, the existence of a man who accepts the possibility of negative behaviour to the other, where a man is entirely socially determined, even in the extent in which some of his basic vital functions that are in the domain of his private life, such as sex, hygiene, nutrition, etc. are being determined by the social organization which does not allow any kind of escape outside that system. In this respect, man is determied as being retired from life for a long time as also from any deliberation about life and its possibilities. He's no longer at the zero degree of understanding its capabilities, but now in a negative sense, he's trying to tie himself to material things to make his own functioning more efficient within the existence. He defines himself valuable only through this achievements as lawyer, doctor, student, mechanic, merchant, scavenger, etc. He looks other people the same way... As such, man is accustomed to this deafening noise of questions such as: "What will you do when you finish school?", "How long untill you complete your education?", "For what are you educating?". In all that, man forgets to ask questions that are directed to one, we can say, "philosophisticated" level of debate that would be reflected in a simple transformation of that materialising question "for what?" In "why" (eg, why do you educate?), which implies a tendency towards the man, or his freedom, rather than going to apriori classification of a man in a domain of function. So, Marcel's concept of objectification, ie nullifying of freedom that aims to concretize ones own I, in a way corresponds to Sartre's concept of relationship with other, except that Marcel goes even further in the negative definition of individual freedom that is provided by his social function (of course, Marcel tried provide a solution, but as we have seen, with Sartre that possibility can not pass). And now that we came to another failure of the Being-for-itself approaching to the Being-initself, we can ask ourselves, is this above said really all that these desperate, so full and yet empty existence can provide?

9. Optimism of despair:
If we already have the possibility, as a free and thinking beings, to walk into this world, is there really nothing concrete, nothing permanent, nothing "comprehensive" to which we could aspire? Somehow, impression is that every achievement is lost in the past, and that every relationship is lost in objectivity. It's all just burning down somehow and turning to ashes of existence, so that even a thought of the possibilities that are open in the future do not offer any hope, and only thing we can see is the nausea of time flow to the death, about the way

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Roquentin felt when he observed an almost endless moment in which the lame old lady was walking pass the corner, never disappearing from his sight.45 The only thing a man could know is that he is free, but he does not see the possibility to manifest this kind of freedom in a comprehensive manner. Now only thing he knows is that he fell into an insurmountable paradox of existence in which is fully aware of his existing, but can not disclose anything that could fill this existence apart the void he feels in every moment. Existential theists have tried to overcome this painful and paradoxical state in faith, but in what can I really believe when only thing I see is a pure existence as dense and infinite mass, in which I, as a contingent being, feel that I am nothing more than the surplus, and only I can ask myself, why was I even thrown in this world? I felt that I am here, in existence, and I realized, as a physical being, that I have opportunity to feel, with that to experience, and as a conscious being, the possibility of thinking, of realizing this project that we call life. I saw the possibility that, as a conscious being, I can find the essence of existence. But now that I have examined all, I see that this essence is nothing but a void, and the only thing I feel is the unbearable weight of physicality, as if I was locked in a stone and as such watching the world around me. "I sneak as a wolf, I do not know what to do from my hard and fresh body, in the midst of this tragic crowd, which is resting"46. The only thing that's left is to escape to some metaphysical, mystical, or whatever speculations on the essence of everything, and to waste life in an attempt to find that. But if I am aware that existence is the same thing as freedom, then I lie to myself again and actually provide Buber's I-It relationship no longer just with other, but also with myself. Perhaps I should try to find a solution in knowledge, in enrichment of my own experience through books, memorials, folklore, or travel, experiencing the culture of some distant nations, etc.? We have already said in the case of Autodidact that encyclopedic knowledge doesn't mean anything. Can I enrich my project with traveling, ie gathering of experience through travel, constant desire to meet new people, experiencing adventures? No.The only thing I'll be able to do than is to praise this experience, to sell the experience, as noted in "Temporality" section. I'll only be able to say that I was in an unfamiliar country and I had very good or very bed time with such-and-so people, but this presentation of myself will have absolutely no response, because it is also a spurious fullness with which I try to enrich existance, which also vanishes in the past and where each image of the landscape where I passed becomes blurred image, and the people I've met the wooden figures that I've put in a box that's rotting hidden somewhere in my memory. This would correspond to that complitely wrong definition of adventure of which Sartre speaks in Nausea, as it is an experience that presents itself as something extraordinary, something special, but it is actually nothing more than experiencing the monotonous present only in some other place, which is revealed only through a sublime experience of oneself as the one who has done something very special by the fact that he temporary changed the place
45 46

vidi Munina, p. 51. ibid., p. 78.

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of residence. Such form of adventure can be experienced on the way home from the grocery store, only depends on how this adventure is told. We're undetermined, therefore, from anyone and anything, but on the other side, we can only strive towards no one and nothing. Is there anything that can turn this existence, this pessimism and despair into a hope and optimism? What can I do to make this happend? Just at this moment a new understanding of existence is revealed... If a man is a free being, that means he's free to do, to create, to work, then, as we've said, to realize his own project. So even though we encountered many ontological and social barriers in trying to carry out this project, it should be taken into consideration precisely this ability of a man to act, ontologically speaking, the Action-for-itself, or that he, in fact, as a free being, in some way designs everything that occurs in existance, and in this sense aspires to some values, some goals that can get him back on the track of an authentic existence. "So the scheme of my ultimate goals determines the significance of my Being, and that is what is identified with the first outbreak of freedom, which is my own freedom. And this outbreak is an existing, in which there is nothing of essence or features of Being that would be emerged in conjunction with some idea"47. As such, he is responsible for everything. For all that appears in the project, the streets we walk, the people we meet, discussions we make, images we're reproducing to ourelves, it's all a part of our own project and as such, as the Beings-for-ourselves, we are responsible for all of it! So let's take for example a situation where we're tied from head to a toe with a bandage over our mouth... Yet, we're still responsible for the things that we think or what we do at the moment. We can, for example, by feeling some sort of remorse, freely leave ourselves to this situation, or we can fight it, try to free ourselves... This world is in the pupil of my eye and as such it is my project, it is mine! I'm the one who's creating it. "... And the worst circumstances or the worst threats that can get my person have the meaning by the mediation of my project, and these difficulties and the threats are emerging from the back of the engagement which I am"48. In short, freedom determs responsibility. Of course, this is also seemingly paradoxical formulation precisely because it should be normaly understood that freedom itself is not conditional for any kind of responsibility, but here responsibility is ordered as a definite consequence of freedom, because as we said, if we are free to act, to project, then we are responsible for everything that we introduce in this project, starting with ourselves, all we choose, to other people. Sartre would say: "by electing myself Im the electing a man"49, meaning that there is a responsibility for the whole picture of the world I create in myself, ie through my project. In this sense, I can't leave other on a particular course: essence, religion, or natural law; he is only in my individual project and as such I am responsible for him. I can not say, for example, that the fate brought someone into my life. The latter came into my life because I have chosen
47 48

Bitak i nito II, p. 533. ibid., p. 656. 49 Egzistencijalizam je humanizam (Egsistentialism is humanism), p. 13.

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him, and the path I trod to get to a certain person is still my way and as such I am responsible for this whole process. Although we still might call this situation pesimistic, where now we not only endure the existence as such, but are also creating our lives as a stage performance with the audience of the world, where we still have to commit to everything that happens in it, that is, we must be careful that what we do on this stage does not take a wider scope, in terms of presenting some of the values that would oblige the universal application from the others, something very positive actually comes from this situation... Lets now try to convert this image of desperate existence for which we can say that is the freedom to nothingness and to responsibility, into an image of freedom to freedom, that is, the creation of values. Actually the issue here is only the point of view to the constatation freedom conditions the responsibility. The responsibility we are talking about is something that just gives a man ability to achieve himself as the human! Here is this frequent dispute between Sartre and the followers of religious life directions, and generally those who have not been aimed towards the acceptance of existence as such. Here, Sartre gives a great critique to christian religion mostly in terms of not accepting responsibility. Here arent only christians that are considered, but every man that directs towards something that would deny his own responsibility, and thus to escape his own freedom and self-actualization, the responsibility to take life in his hands. For them Sartre would say that they are "people who are reaching to the bottom, to which any unusual action is an act of romanticism, who believe that any activity beyond their abilities is simply prohibited50 This is precisely that "tragic crowd that is resting", that cowardly mass that calls another It, that conformist creation which constantly repeats parols of the great leaders or folk wisdoms, that cluster that defines other by nothing but the function! Now we can talk about optimism that is shown exactly in anguish and despair of the awareness of existance, and responsibility for everything and everyone, which derived from all the nothingness that reveals itself in the absence, or we might better say, the advantage of not falling into conformity definition to which man aspires and rescues himself that way. Here we can say that man, as a purely existential being, is the one who must act to be confirmed, which does not depend on anyone, who independently creates his own character, his own destiny... And what is more optimistic than that, asks Sartre? Right now we receve the image of existential humanism concept that includes any kind of man's ability to overcome a situation in which he is, and which manifests itself through the possibility of human activity. So although we can draw a parallel between theistic and atheistic existentialism, in terms of ontological speculation about the existence of god, the goal to wich all of them seek is actually the same: pure subjectivism, which is reflected in a freedom and responsibility and thus the possibility of a man to be a man and who as such
50

See Egzistencijalizam je humanizam, p. 7.

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strives to humanism that won't take the other as an aim, as an object of expressing ones liberal views, but to consider the possibility of constant human progress and attempts to find something concrete in this, what Sartre calls, existential "dough"; something that will be able to encompass that three dimensions of time and as such would exist as a permanent value, which will however continue to be a subject of various missinterpretations of those mass of faceless people, but in its metaphysical and metapsyhic sense will remain as it is and as such will be able to penetrate to this denying transcendence, that is, the subjectivity of the other. Looking this way, the future that opens to us is truly a possibility of a more beautiful and valuable existence, human existence. This is exactly what Sartre, that is, Roquentin would call an adventure. We might call this the essence that comes after existence that shows itself as something permanent, comprehensive, which gives the hardness to this existential "dough". If we are free to act and if we aspire to some kind of essence, then how can we produce this essence as a pure existential beings? For Roquentina answer is art. Art that is revealed as something external, something timeless, but that is not given as an attribute of god and so forth, but is buried by the sufficiency of existence, and becouse of that it can not be recognized. "... At the bottom of all these attempts that are seemingly unrelated I find same desire: to banish myself from existence [...] to purify myself, to harder myself, to finally get one clear and precise sound of a saxophone tone51. This is precisely the essence that will fill the void of existence, which derives from no one else but a man. That is the beauty that will paint that colorless sky, which lacked that essence that Husserl presented, and which Sartre denied; the essence that will enrich this everyday existence as something more than mere existence, in a way that we create it as are own adventure in which we place ourselves in the term of Bubers direct empathic attitude towards something through art, that is, the story that art tells, which gets this enduring value that transcends existence as such. This may not even be described as any kind empathy with some artwork, where we identify ourselves with some hero or simply with the melody of music, where we're actually embracing it as "ours", thinking that "beauty empathizes with us"52, that is, we're embracing it as an object of "compassion". This simply is empthy, either with nature, with man, god, with any moment we can put into music, write, paint, etc., or through art make it as something of our own, even if it is that way from home to shop that we previously mentioned, and that as such can resound in all its fullness and be seen by others and as such arise special feeling in them, some images of the spirit of time when that artwork was created, speculations of how that artwork occurred, how did author feel when he created that piece of art... Simply to give a higher level of value of the existence we know. Of course, this is just one aspect of what man can do when he becomes aware of his freedom and responsibility, and thus the opportunities that were given to him.There are countless ways in which person can actualise his own way, he just needs to choose, and not to rest in quietism, nihilism, conformism, etc.
51 52

Munina, p. 231. ibid., p. 229.

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10. EPILOGUE: It is difficult to give an epilogue to this work since almost all was said in this discussion. Here we might speculate about the character of Jean-Paul Sartre, controversy if his actions, not only in literature or philosophy, but also in social framework, where we might mostly talk about his representation of existential stands within the Marxist theory or significance of his refusal of Nobel Prize, engagement against the French colonization of Algeria, opposition to the Vietnam war, etc. These are the issues that have a lot of links with the ideas of his philosophical thoughts, which have derived from his basic existential ideas, which are manifested through the ontological works such as "Being and nothingness" or literary works such as drama "Dirty hands", and on which as such much can be written. But here we are focused on something else. The primary goal was here, as we mentioned in the introduction, to describe the beauty of despair, to give basic guidance starting from the embryonic state of human consciousness in the ontology, to the ability of concretization of a man as a complete being in a social context, and to show this often denied, brighter side of Sartre's pessimistic and tedious existentialism and everything that can come from it. First of all, it should be noted that Sartre's philosophy, as with most existentialists, where Heidegger is primarily emphasized, is not spared from disease of falling in the various paradoxes from which was really difficult, actually impossible to get away, so in some areas of study of his work we get the impression of continuous cyclic flow of the thought that does not end anywhere. Of course, this dichotomies in which Sartre fell somewhat further complicate his philosophy, and are primarily detected in inability of synthesis of the Being-in-itself and the Being-foritself, of which was speculated in a very large number of tedious pages of ontology, ie, "Being and nothingness", just to get to the solution that everything is "nothing", which actually suggests a very pessimistic view of a man as a being who really has no way out of this existence as such, and only thing he realizes are the options that are blurring at the mere thought that they might be materialized, which was clearly illustrated in a novel "Nausea". On the other hand, in his book "Existentialism is Humanism" Sartre gives positive picture of his vision of human existence, especially in the context of humanism, which is primarily focused on the discovery of "human space", where man as an individual has the opportunity to progress in this "surplus of existence". In this context, somehow it seems that this, in a manner of speaking, existence of optimism emerged just to rescue Sartre from constant critics by which he was adressed from the other sides. But perhaps is this constant falling into paradoxes actually Sartre's style of presentation of a paradox of human existence in general, as if he wanted to vividly show the imposibility of the synthesis of the Being-in-itself to the Being-for-itself. Yet we get the impression that he somehow forced the overcome of this paradox by changing the term "existential pessimism" in the "existential optimism.

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Also, in the context of modern society, in many segments is difficult to accept the thesis of Sartre's existentialism. We might ask: "How can I understand the metaphysical concept of the nausea of existence and how to overcome it, when this existence through the nothingness and this generally difficulty of living the existence in every day life constantly punches me in the stomach so hard that it already makes me noxious?". How to think about the existence at all, when I have to think how to provide my own existence? Here we can say that an ordinary worker feels this suffering of a modern man much harder that Sartre described it, because he really does not need to get to a sense of emptiness, as much as this sense comes to him, which is enriched with this uncertainty and fear for the future. Moreover, Sartre himself said he has never felt the despair of existence. In fact, from all this discussion we could conclude that all that Sartre felt is this sense of abundance of feelings resulting from responsibility, the ability to create his own project, his own life, which have the basis in the initial feelings of anxiety. And this is exactly what adorns his philosophy, that large dose of unconventionality by which he uncompromisingly criticized sciences that aimed to "liquefy" a man in the neutrum of Being and as such reduce him on the continuous dependence on something, either on god, on others, on any authority etc., and which in turn receive submissive man who's willingly deferred to the neutrality of all, constantly asking himself: "Why did all turn out this way?", and the only hope he sees is a daydream about better tomorrow. But as far as much is hard for a modern man to accept some philosophical speculations about the essence of all: man, existence, etc., which in today's life really does not play any role, which is a pure abstraction of the life of limited opportunities and forced dependence on social occasions, the others, the power of others, and finally the dream which is our only hope, if we sincerely ask ourselves, maybe Sartre's view of existence will come to us just as the rein from some unrealistic dreams in which we live, or at least it will awake us from the lethargy of everyday life. Right now this existential optimism is revealed. The ability to still look at something beyond mere existence. So even if we are limited by social conditions and similar, existentialism of Jean-Paul Sartre strives toward deliverance from the "existence" in the sense of transcending this pure machinery state of society. Finally, if I can understand myself as the one who, indeed, depends on his existential status, but who has the possibility of something different, yet better, something for his own, to create something very much different from anything that is daily shown in this world of conformity, then I know I'm on the right path of authentic existence. This is the adventure that begins when one realizes the burden of existence, when one realizes that there is nothing except what man himself can design and as such it remains valuable forever. People are just mesmerized by the existence and are so drawn into her that they do not even think of something "more" than what exists. In this attempt they are trying to produce values that are disappearing along with them.

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After all, Sartre was the one who made something that lasts, something valuable. He made a special picture of existentialism that has been studied, learned and retailed till present days... He wrote about nausea, the one that is perpetuated as a permanent sense, but more importantly, nausea, which strives towards the understanding of a man as the man. Now we can say that Sartre's existentialism can truly be called the beauty of despair.

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