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Culture Documents
DREADFUL FREEDOM
A Critique
of Existentialism
By MARJORIE GRENE
37
Publl~hed 1948
TO DAVID
FOREWORD
lIS
TABLE OF CONTENTS
~
I. WHY
II.
EXISTENTIALISM?
1;
III.
41
IV.
67
V.
Tim
VI.
VII.
NEW
95
REVOLUTIONARY
THE NEW REVELATlo~
122
141
POSTSCRIPT
150
BIBLlOGRAPlIICAL NOTE
[ix ]
CHAPTER ONE
WHY EXISTENTIALISM?
1
IU more fa!llllonable a plulo!lophy becomes, the more
elllm'c IS Its defimtron So the proponenh of eXlsten:
hahsm pm c1 auu that, though mJny attack, few understand them. They mmt on the essentral optImIsm of theIr
doctnne that "man makes hUllselt" for there IS always, until
dcath, another chance. Granted, they would say, that, in
theIr \\Idc humamry, thcy c:\plore the far comers of human
hfc, thc horrors and perversIOns uncharted by tImorous
WIth h ." ruthcaph\'cs of gcntIlIty. Granted, too, t1
lc<;!>nc!>!l, thc\' cxpo~e the ("
~f.. fraudulen., stnctly
bOurgCOl!l "human (hgmty" 1 Just becausc of this ve~
hllmanCnC\\, tillS \ cry honcsty, they are dccncd as pen erts
and lcono(.la~h. a~ plulo!loplllc l1lhl1l!lt!l and drhshc freaks.
So. finally, a!l the \\Ord goes around, e\cry treatIse that dooms
lIl.ln to de!ltru<.tron. c\cry nO\el \\hose characters are mJd
or bad, every plclY that depresses without elevating, IS IJbcled "1>0 c\')!ltcnh,ll", and hence eXlstenhahsm, more e\en
thdll the n,ltmah!llll of Zola or of Ibsen III their days, comes
to mean thc 1>hockmg. the sordId, or the obscene.
One mar '\ell agrec WIth the existentialIsts that, so loosely
mcd, thc word IS nearl} meanmgless-cxcept perhaps for a
vague sensc that tins mO\cment, lIke othcrs, expresses the
collapse 111 our time of certain formerly chcmhed COl1venhOIl!l-and that eXllltcnbahstc;, III fichon as well as m philosophy, say a numbcr of thmgs that would undoubtedly
have brought a blush to the cheek of the PodsnappiJn young
per~on. But in that sense, after all, anyone, from Freud to
[1]
DREADFUL FREEDOM
[2]
WHY aXISTENTIALISM?
[ 3]
DREADFUL FREEDOM
this game WIth essences, the ~heer fact that summons hIm
from the dream-world of speculation, IS, nearly always, a
very particular eXIstence: that of the thmker hImself who
plays the game. How pItIable IS the wretched HegelIan professor, bmldmg hIS great dream-palace and hvmg beSIde It
m a hovel; marchmg WIth the World-soul through China
and IndIa but neglectmg, untIl It shnvels up to nothmg, the
only soul that should really concern 111m-hIS own. It III fact,
indeed, that existenbahMll puts before essence-but a particular human fact. Not the sense-perceptions of a Thomas,
generally accessIble m theIr standard character to all our
speCIes, not even the more "subJectIve" but equally umfonn
impreSSIOns of Humc, but Just the unique, mexpreSSlble that
of anyone conscIOus bemg's partIcular eXIstence-such IS
the actualIty that Klerkegaard and hIS twentIeth-ecntury successors agree m referring to when they declare, as theIr first
pnnclple, the pnonty of eXlstcnce ovcr cssence
2
Takmg eXIstentIalIsm, however, m the context of reachons
against Hegel and the peculiar ":.lbsolute Ideahsm" denvcd
from him, one may, of course, mSIst that the movcment has
m this respect no umquenes'>, that the pragmatIsm of James
and Dewey, for cxample, was an equally effectIve and much
less outlandish rebelhon against the once ommpresent
Hegehans There IS certamly, m James, a SimIlar turmng of
the phIlosopher's attentIon from spcculatIve system-bUIlding to more pressmg human concerns "The stagnant fchclty
of the Absolute's own perfectIon moves me as little as I
move It." There IS even, at some pomts, a distmct l!!cencss
between the pragmatIc descnptIon of knowledge and the
contemporary eXIstentIalIsts' analySIS of human expenence.
For example, there IS the well-known description by HeI-
[4 ]
WHY EXISTENTIALISM?
degger of the function of the "sign" in our everyday experience. Things in our world occur pnmarily not as mdifferently there, hke Cartesian extended substances, but as things "at I
hand," thmgs there for this or that use. Among the thingsat-hand, among the ~hoes and ships and sealing wax, are a
class of things that pomt, and notably thmgs that pomt as
signs. These signs-for mstance, lo Heldegger's example, the
mechamcal hand on German buses that showed the dlrechon that the bus was golOg to turn-are themselves thlOgsat-hand, wIth the same funchon of belOg there for something
as other thmgs have. ll1elr dIfferenha IS that, as signs point109 to other thmgs, they not only serve a particular practical
use but reveal somcthmg of the relations between tlungs and
therefore of the nature of things-at-hand in general-still,
howcvcr, thmg'i-at-hanc1, mtcrpreted as useful for something
not ali mcrely there Thus sIgns are doubly pragmatic. First,
thcy arc only one <.IdS'> IJ1 a umverse of things pragmatically
mterprcted, tlllng<,-for-usc Second, the use which they have
l!l to sub<,cne a pragmatIc mterprctabon of the \,odd: to
lllununatc the gcner.!l structure of the world m wInch \\e
bve as It,>clf wnshtuted b~ thmgs-for-use and our use of or
concern \uth them 'Vltlun tlus class of slgn-pragmata, moreovcr, !l~mbol, e~pres!>lOn, and meanmg are themselves only
subc1J!l<,e'>, hstcd along With "trace, remams, memonal, document, e\'ldcncc, appearance:':! All thiS looks very hke a variation of Jamcs's thcmc of Ideas as railroad tIckets from one
station to another m our cxpcnence, or hke a different!}'
oncntcd but not ha!>lcally dl"smnlar \erSlOn of Dc\\ey's' expcnmcntallogic. In fact. a dctaIlcd comparison of IIcldegger
and Dc\\ ey has been attcmptcd at least oncc, and a superfiCial hkcllCe,o; onc ccrtamly cannot deny.
2 Martm HCldcggcr. Scm lind ZClt, crste Halfte (Hallc Max Niemeyer,
1931) First pubhshcd In 1927
[ 5]
DREADFUL FREEDOM
;a
[6]
WHY EXISTENTIALISM?
not In submItting to it, but m the very act whIch goes beyond the
present state (adherence of coal to the walls of the mme, etc ),
but toward a certam end whIch, from the depth of the future,
Illummates and defines that !ltate. Thus the relation of cause to
effect IS revealed m and by the efficacy of an act whIch IS at once
project and reahzabon. It IS, 11l fact, the doelhty and at the same
bme the reslstanc.e of the UUlVer!le wIueh show hIm at the same
hme the comtancy of causal senes and the Image of hiS hberty,
for the fact IS th,lt IllS llbcrty IS mdl!.tll1gU1~hablc from the utIlIzation of cau!>J.I sene'> for an end which It Itself sen; 'Vlthout
the IllnmmatIon whICh that end prO\ Ides for the present ~ltua
tlOn, there would be m that sItuation neither causal eonnectmn
nor rclJ.tJon of means to end, or rather there would be an mdlstmc.t mfimty of meam and ends, of effects and causes, Just as
there ,..auld be an undifferentIated mfimty of elfc1es, ellipses,
tnanglc~, dnd poh ~om m gcometnc space, wIthout the gencratl' e act of the mathematician" ho trac.es a figure by bmdmg
d '>enes of pomts cho'>cn a(cordmg to a certam law. Thus, In work,\
(ktermlOl~m doe., not re"cdl freedom In so far as It 15 an ab.,tract
l.m of nature hut III so fdr d~ a human proJect carve'> out and
Illu11lmates, m the mIdst of the mfimte mtcrJ.(hon of phenomena, J (crtam parhal dctcnl111u'>m .\nd, 111 tlll'> d<;tcrmml!>m,
which I~ proved slInpl) by the effie8c) of hUlll,In actIOn-as the
prmclp]e of \rcllllJlcdc<' \\:I!> alrC,ld\ IN.'d and understood by
shipbUilder!. lOll!!; before i\rclllmedcs h,ld gl' cn It It~ conceptual
form-thc rcl,lboll of cal\~e to effect IS mdlsccrmhle from that
of 1l1cam to end l11C orgal1l( Ul1lt~ of thc proJect of the" orkcr
1<, the cmergcnce of an end ,du( h at fir"t \\:IS not m the um' erse
and Wlllcll mamfe~ts It~c1f hy thc dl'>po~ltl(ln of mcans With a
VICW to adm', lllg It (for the end IS nothmg but the s, nthebc
lImt} of all the 11Ic.ms arranged to produce It); and, at the same
tnne, the lower ..tr.\t 11111. \\ hlch !>ubtcnds these meJllS and IS
dl\co'ered 111 It'> turn hy thclr ,en (h~P0'>lhOIl. 15 the rcl.atlon
of came to effc( t llkc the pnnclple of :\rehllnede~. at once support ,mel content of the tcehmquc of s]lIpbl1lldcrs In tlllS sense,
one can .. a~ that the atom" as crcclted b~ the atonllC bomb, "hleh
1~ conceived only m the hf;ht of the Anglo-:\mcncan proJcct of
wmnmg a Wdr Thm freedom IS diSCO' cred (lnly J\l the act, IS
one With the at t, It IS the foundation of the connection'> and
mteractlons which constitute the mternaI structure of the act,
It never IS enjoyed but IS rc\ca1cd m and by Its products; It 1')
[7]
DREADFUL FREEDOM
not an inner power of snatching one's self out of the most urger.
situations, for there IS no outside or insIde for man. But It
exists, on the contrary, for engagmg one's self in present action
and c:onstructmg a future; it IS that by which there IS born a future
whIch penmts understandmg and changmg the present. Thus
the worker, 10 fact, learns his freedom from thmgs, but precIsely
because the thlOgS teach him that he 15 anythlOg m the world
but a thIng.8
In the same article, too, Sartre gives an account of the
genesis of philosophic systems not unhke Dewey's descriphon, for instance, 10 Reconstruction in PhIlosophy. Philosophies have in the past, accordIng to both authors, served the
function of stabIlizmg the norms by which the ruhng class
in a society justifies Itself; theIr pretensions to intellectual
objechvity or to unIversal truth have been, In fact, the pretensions of the pnvileged to self-perpctuatIon. Sartre's language is in the tradition of Marx rather than in the Humian
hne, from which Dewcy's talk of custom, habit, and so on
appears to stem; but then accounts of the social ongIn of
what purports to be pure speculation are certamly slnIllar.
As agaInst such false hypostatIzatIon of Ideas or Ideals, moreover, both of them would in a sense turn the direction of
values from past to future from a crystallizatIon of what
has been to an aspIration toward what needs to be "What,
then, in reality, is a value," says Sartre, "If not the call of
that which is not yet?"4 True, one might say it is present
more than future that Dewey turns to (see hiS denunciation
of the utIlitarians' "hedOnIstic calculus" because of its ex
cluslve dlTectIon to future things wanted rather than to
interests and satisfactions felt now). A more important
difference, however, in the two accounts lies not in Dewey's
lesser emphasis on the future but in the kind of future to
3 Jean-Paul Sarhe, "Mat~nahsme et revolution (lin)," Les Temps
modemes, I, No. 10 (July, 1946), 18-20
4. Ibid, p. 12
[8]
WHY EXISTENTIALISM?
[9J
DREADFUL FREEDOM
[10 ]
WHY EXISTENTIALISM?
DREADFUL
FREEDOM
3
ExistentIahsm does not, then, tum to existence in the
, sense that It finds human values emergent from mere facts,
as pragmatism or posltlVlsm try to do. It is a reaction as much
agamst the claIms of sCIcotific philosophIes as it IS against
the more hIgh-sounding but no more ambitious systems that
preceded them. But 10 that case one may wonder how eXIstentialism dIffers from other contemporary movements that
claim to redeem a lost humamty by rescuing us from, not
through, SCIence There are, notably, t",o dIrectIons for such
revolt agamst the intellcctual and spmtual predommance of
the sCIentIfic temper. One may demand, hke Remhold
NIebuhr, a return to Christian faIth; or one may rely, as, for
example, such WrIters as Brand Blanshard or R M. Hutchins
vanously do, on truths of reason accessible to all who are
willmg to understand them. As dIstInct from the simple
naIvete of pragmatist and POsitIVISt, what all these wnters
have to say agamst our faIth, our phIlosophy, our educatIon,
or our pohtIcal unwisdom is entirely convmcmg. But agamst
both sorts of remedy-the rehglous and the metaphyslcalthere are at least two objectIons in the light of which existentIahsm appears, at any rate, a plausible alternative.
In the first place, one can take it as given that thIS is, in
the sense of tradItIonal ChristIanity, a faithless generation.
But simply to assert to such a generation that faIth is what
It needs is-even should It be true faith-to talk, hke Zarathustra, to a deaf and unheeding multItude: "this is not the
mouth for these ears." Faith is not to be had by fiat but only
by much more devious and difficult, and certainly unpredIctable, ways. And the same holds for metaphysical "knowledge," which is-Blanshard's brilliant expositions to the con
[12 ]
WHY EXISTENTIALISM?
[ 13 ]
DREADFUL
FREEDOM
[14
CHAPTER TWO
S~REN
1
TIIINKER who hates the abstract complexIty of metaphysical sY5tems, yet whose thought IS persistently. m
fact, s}stemahcally, dHected to workmg through a
smgle all-Important problem-such a thmker's work should
be relatIvely easy to summanze or evaluate. But Kierkegaard's one problem was so specifically rehglous m character and so complex in itS hterary presentatIon (complex
out of all proportlOn to Its phdosophic scope) that to assess
it philosophiCally is a difficult task indeed In the lIght of
Klerkegaard's growmg mfluence, however, the task must be
attempted-and that despite thc ObVlOUS fact that Klerkegaard himself would have conSidered it melevant and imposSible. A philosophic, as dIstinct from a lIterary or rehgious,
assessment? Fantastic! Any assessment by anyone except that
rare person whom Klerkcgaard calls "hIS reader" (and I
confess, thankfully I fear, I am not he)? Fantastic agaml
Yet one must try to make somethmg of thIS apparently stImulatmg, certamly lIntatmg, figure; and if the attempt itself
is absurd, that at least might have pleased the apostle ~f
absurdity.l
'J
Kierkegaard's problem, as he puts it m the PhIlosophical
Fragments, was "to find out where the misunderstandmg lies
between speculation and Christianity." It is, he belIeves, in
the nature of personal eXistence that this nllsunderstandmg
has its roots, and so his thought centers m the problem of the
[ 15 ]
DREADFUL
FREEDOM
2
By "speculation" Klerkegaard means Hegelian speculatIon. That is not to deny that he sometImes contrasts the
inSight sought by the subjective thmker with the empty
objectIVity of sensory and hlstoncal knowledge, as well as
With plulosophlc (I e , HegelIan) speculation One can find
in the Papers, for mstance, a strong mdlctment of empmcal
sClence-m partIcular, phYSIOlogy, as applied to the human
species'
In our tIme It IS cspecIally the natural <;clences which are
dangerous PhYSIology WIll at la~t spread so that It WIll take ethICS
along. There are already traces enough of a new tendcncy-to
trcat ethiCS lIke phYSICS whereby all of etlucs becomes Illusion,
and the ethIcal clement m the race comes to be treated statistically with averages, or to be reckoned as one reckons oscIllations m natural laws. A phySIologist takes It upon himself to
explam the whole person Here the queStIon IS. prmclpus obsta.
what shall I do WIth It? What need have I to know about the
centnpetal and centnfugal clIculatIon of nerves, about the blood
stream, about the human being's miCroscopIC state m utero?
EthICS has tasks enough for me Or do I need to know how digestIon works m order to be able to eat? Or do I need to know how
the movement m the nervous system works-m order to belIeve
in God and love men? And If someone should say, "True, for
[ 16 ]
THE
SYSTEM
that one certainly does not need it," then I should ask again:
"But what If It weakens all my ethIcal passIOn, that I become
an observer of nature? What If. WIth the whole mamfold knowledge of analogIes, of abnormalItIes, of thIs and that, I lose more
and more the ImpressIon of the ethical: thou shalt, it is thou,
thou hast nothmg to do with a smgle other person, though
heaven and earth collapse mou SHALT? What If [to pursue that
knowledge] IS to provide myself with a lot of sneakmg evasions
and excuses? Suppose It IS turnmg my attentIon away from what
IS Important to let myself begm on physIOlogy, mstead of lettmg
physiology go and saymg 'Begm.'''2
Such a passage IS perhaps more charactenstic for the ex- .
Istential movement generally, considered m its negatIve aspect as a rcvolt agamst the charactcnstIc mtellectual temper
of our age, than are Klerkegaard's more specific attacks on
the HcgclIan brand of obJcctlVlty. But though a more general
antiscientIfic revolt may be consIdered a legItImate mference
from Klerkegaard's posItIon, hIS acquamtance wIth sCIentIfic
achIevement of any degree of sophIstIcatIon or preciSIon was
so extremely shght and his attentIOn to It, even negatIvely,
so mfrequent that one must regard hIS own problem, whatcvcr ItS more gcncralllnphcatIons, as bounded, m the mam,
by the Hegehan tradItIon.
Withm these IU111tS Klerkegaard ccrtainly ranks among
the outstandmg cntIcs of Hegel and HegelIamsm or perhaps,
by ImphcatIon, of ontology a~ such Such cnticlsms are constantly recurrent throughout the works and papers.
One finc!.~~.!!1_a_I!c! _agaII!z J~m-l?lc:.. the_ 9Qi~.tiQ.llJ:hat..
the S.Y~te~n....!s sub s'p~I~_l!.eternitatis, whereas eXIstenc~j~
tempo_raL~~Il}!Jarly, the System is na..systel]1 uJlles...iL~
finished (and bas thus att~ined t.Q.. a.J.!!1l.el~s ~.t~Je) t whereas
exis.kw;~whIle e!ItIng 15 never ft'!illpecl-and the-System j~~
thus incapable of accountmg for existence This incompat-
-- ---_.-
----
- . ---_. "--'
2. S;ren Klerkegaard, Paplrer, eel P A Heiberg, V Kuhr, and E TorstIng
(Copenhagen, 1909--), Vol. VII, Part I, Thv A, No 182 (referred
to hereafter as "P").
[17 ]
DREADFUL
FREEDOM
4. P, V, C, 3.
[18 ]
THE
SELF
AGAINST
THE
SYSTEM
[ 19]
DREADFUL
FREEDOM
3
In fact, of course, that thmg between heaven and earth
which concerns Damsh phIlosophy m the pcrson of Klcrkegaard IS the ChnstIan paradox, whether considered as the
paradox of the God-man or as the paradox of the human
individual's f31th-that IS, hiS expenence of nothingness be~ fore God which IS yet the fulfilment of hiS eXistence. So
Klerkegaard's philosophizing, bounded on the one side by
the Hegelian tradition, i~ limited on the other side by the
constant presence of Chnstian faith (a "limit," of course,
only for the non-Chnstian, but as such it must appear in a
general philosophic account of Klerkcgaard). It is through
that presence, Klerkegaard himself says, that his dIalectic
"goes further than Socrates":
This project mdisputably goes further than the Socratic, as IS
evIdent at every pomt. Whether It IS therefore truer than the
Socratic IS an entirely different question, which cannot be deCided in the same breath, for here there was assumed a new
10. Ibid, VII, 107.
11. p. V. B, 41.
12 Ibid, V, A, 46.
[201
[21 J
DREADFUL
FREEDOM
[ 22 J
SYSTEM
4
The character of that question and the sense in which
attention to it genuinely involves a new dlIecbon in philosophy may be clarified by some brief historical comments.
/ a) Kant's revolution in philosophy inv~v~J:!I~ (~~l!si!1A.
?! Ehilosl?P~!c i~ves~&.ation on the guesbo!LW!tJltjs Plant
with its three su&llvisloI!Sz. What can I know( What ought
I tci d9? ~Ild Wh.~tt.1Jl~ l..b!!p~u:rkegaaI(l shares theKanba~ conviction that phl1osophy deals wit:4_ ~1}m_an pr~b
lems, that it can-consiller onlY tpe nature of our limited
p~w~rs of knowing or doi~I!ot the, c;sseJl~-of some vas.!
~smic reality. Within the. ~malysls Qf knowkdgez too, I<1erkegaarq shares the Kantian view of ~_~p"arabon-of- ~hougirt
and being, essence and eXistence (hiS theory of knowledge,
as a matter of fact, is more like Hume's thao.hke.Kant's, mor~
hke some modern poslbvisms than hke elthe.!,). But Kant's
treatment of human nature, though it demes our reason the
power to deduce the universe, leaves it umty and completeness enough in the deducnon of Itself It was the one system of reason that Kant hoped to have described a reason
everywhere unified even m ItS dIVersificatIons-where thought
supplements intmtIon, reason supplements understandmg,
will supplements intellect, and the whole IS one eternally
vahd structure of the human mind For Kierkegaard, however, there is no such one totality of human nature which
could be dlIectly and'systematIcally descnbed. There are just
these human eXistences, whose mner qualIty the subjecbve
thmker can attempt to communicate only by the most
devious sorts of indlIechon. It IS, much more concretely, the
"modes of human reality," as Jaspers calls them, that Kierkegaard wants to interpret-the vanations of human personalIty as they feel to the person himself; the development of
human personalities caught in the very flux of time, where
eternity enters as standard or ideal but not as system. For
Kant the thing in itself is beyond our knowledge, even the
[23 ]
DREADFUL
FREEDOM
[ 24]
[ 25 ]
DREADFUL FREEDOM
5
It may be saId, of coursc, that It IS unnecessary to go back
to Klerkegaard for a new Impulse m phIlosophy, that such
a movement as pragmatism, as we suggested earlier, has
already effected what eXIstential phIlosophy aIms at-that
is, It has rebelled agamst the arid technicahty of metaphySICS and has brought phIlosophy closer to the lIv10g problems of real people. The sense 10 whIch pragmatism falls to
accomplIsh at least the second of these alms and the sense m
whIch Klerkegaard points at least to a dIrection more appropnate for dealing with them may be indIcated by an
example, slIght in Itself but suggestive of a larger contrast.
Death IS certamly an Important fact in every man's life; look
at the way m whIch Klerkcgaard and a pragmatist lIke Dewey
treat it. In the course of hIS argument agamst the tradItional
means-end conception 10 Human Nature and Conduct,
Dewey analyzes the SItuatIon of a man building a house. The
man IS not buildmg the house 10 order to hve 10 It, Dewey
says, for he mIght dIe before it was fimshed; so he is bUIldmg
it for the sake of the present activity itself. Compare this
[ 26]
SYSTEM
(271
DREADFUL
FREEDOM
r 28 1
THE
6
But what of the phIlosophic implementation of Klerkegaard's thought? He calls himself a "dIalectical poet": "I am
[ 29]
DREADFUL FREEDOM
[ 30]
[ 31 ]
DREADFUL
FREEDOM
7
With these exceptions, however, KJ.erkegaard judged as
phIlosopher rather than as inspiration to philosophers cuts
an extremely poor figure. Pacing hIs eIght rooms at KongensNytorv, each of them equipped WIth a standIng-height desk,
Kierkegaard thought and thought and wrote and wrote. In
the papers certamly every passIng thought was caressmgly
noted, draWll out, repeated again and agam; and too much
of such verbIage found its way into the works thcmselves.
After all, there was no one to stop him He was not checked
by his friends, for hIs only "fnends" were the superficIal
acquaIntance of the coffee-house, who presumably remaIned,
.to use hIs language, at the aesthetIc stage of existence He was
not restramed by publIshers, for he lived on hIS caplt3lwhIch convemently survIVed as long as he dId-and depended
financially on no one He was not affected by popular acclaIm
or the reverse, smce he hated the crowd as cordially as a "subjectIve thmker" was bound to do. I do not mean to suggest
that no phIlosopher can wnte without contact or cntIclsm
from outsIde; there have been phIlosophers, hke Enugena,1
for example, who seem to have nsen smgly to greatness out
of the most barren enVIronment. But, if It can be done,
Klerkegaard was not the man to do it. The worst is not
even the repetItIous apologiae pro vIta sua, dealmg WIth what
Kierkegaard admIts to be bagatelles for the outsIde, though
.tremendous problems to hImself-the problem of the pseudonyms, for Instance; the problem of hIS relatIon to Regma,
rehashed years after the break with her; and so on. Besides
all these, one finds in the works and papers, interspersed
between brillIant inSIghts and movIng parables, page after
~age of chIldishly bad logIc-and, what is worse in a cnbc
[ 32 ]
THE SELF
[ 33 ]
DREADFUL
FREEDOM
[ 34 ]
THE
[ 35 ]
DREADFUL
FREEDOM
[ 36 ]
8
But Klerkegaard's greatest weakness IS not even his shabby
Hegeliamsm or hIS overindulgence In vcrbal sleIght of hand
It is the 10adequacy of the man 11l111Self to bnng to fruition
the redirection of phIlosophy that he InitIates
The sigOlfieanee of the eXIstentIal dIalectic hes, as I have
saId, in the final rehgious stage that alone gIVes meaning to .
the whole. The aesthebc IS trlVlal, the ethIcal merely tran!lltory; only 10 the relIgIOUS stage does subJectlVlty come into
Jts own. But what IS thIS relIgious lIfe that Kierkegaard exalts?
It is the lIfe of what he hImself calls "an mtenslve point."
SubjectivIty can be truly subjective only 1D the confrontation
of the individual with God, smce only the absolute is com27 IbId, IV, 230.
[ 37]
DREADFUL FREEDOM
pletely indescnbable, completely beyond the inroads of abstraction and objectlVlty. Only before God IS a man really
himself, because It is only before God that he IS finally and
irretnevablyalone. But before God the fimte indIvidual is{
as nothing; and it is the bItter reahzahon of that nothingness
that marks the relIgIOUS stage of existence. ReligIOUS experience for Kierkegaard, in other words, hes wholly in the
self's awareness of Its 10fimte dIstance from the God whom
alone It loves. And the quahty of that awareness, the way it
feels to the self, is pure and unmIxed suffenng. Sometimes,
to be sure, the relIgious hfe is described as a joyous onc:
"over 70,000 fathoms, mIles and miles from all human help,
to be glad." But the quahty of suffermg IS much more
frequently what Klerkegaard stresses 10 the "1Otensive" existence he has chosen. To permt m the dIrectIon of 1Otensiveness, he says, IS "nothmg more nor less than to be
sacnficed"; and the sheer unmitIgated agony of spmt that
accompanIes the sacnfice IS the tnumphant Issue of hIs
dialectIc of personal eXIstence-for the mtellect, pure paradox; for the spmt, pure suffenng ThIS is mdeed the hfe of
the intensive pomt, "zero-pomt eXIstence" (NulIpunktseXlstcn7) as some of Its cntIcs have called It. Granted that
the march of the We1tgClS,t IS mdlffcrent to the salvatIon of
one's smgle self; perhaps even that mdlfference IS preferable
to thIS sort of salvatIon.
The dialectIc that leads to it is SImple and stralghtforwardfrom outwardness to mwardness, that IS, to complete, wholly
Isolated 1Owardness, with the only really pnvate and incommumcable object, that IS, the absolute, for content. But the
absolute, whIch IS 1Ofimte, cannot be content for the fimte
self. So there IS noth1Og left but the tortured recogmtion of
that 10abIlIty to 611 out the whole of subJcctIve experience;.
The question IS whether turmng to 10wardness neces
sanly means turning to the self as totally Isolated from other
selves, and so tummg completely away from any conception
[ 38 ]
[ 39]
DREADFUL
FREEDOM
[40 ]
CHAPTER THREE
[ 41 J
DREADFUL
FREEDOM
[ 42 ]
THE
FREE
RESOLVE
[ 43 ]
DREADFUL
FREEDOM
[44 ]
THE
FREE
RESOLVE
p.706.
[45 ]
DREADFUL FREEDOM
self through explanatIon of their origin in typical subconscious patterns as it is the use made of universal symbols by
this individual-and that IS a free use. The existentiahst does
not deny the reality of the indIVidual WIll by uncovering the
cause-and-effect relatIons that determIne its chOIces and
reducing It to them. Rather, he illuminates the individual,
will and heightens our sense of ItS reahty by dlscovenng
how, with respect to the fundamental project that constItutes myself, I determine myself in relation to such symbols.
But if the ordInary analyst's determInism is inadequate
from the existentialist point of view, at least as much so is
the Marxist attempt to reduce conscIOusness to matenally
determined cause-and-effect phenomena. The economic determinants that make me worker, farmer, or entrepreneur,
housewife, "career woman," or "sociahte," have for the exIstentiahst enormous and inescapable Importance for the
direction and purport of the history that is or becomes myself. There is, for eXIstentIalism, no free-Wlll-in-Itself existing
inwardly, in StOIC fashion, in eternal apartness from the
afflIctions or achievements of the eXistIng, embodied individual. There IS no mner versus outer, rabonal versus urational, In human histories. But, on the other hand, though
there is no self apart from thiS partIcular economiC, social,
physical situation, such a situation does not constitute the
self. No matter how bound by feudal oppression was the
peasant whom Gibbon sneered at, there was a difference between him and the ox he worked. He could work well or
ill, with docility or rebelliousness; he could even, on occasion, rise to rule Christendom; and he could sporadically, if
ineffectively, exclaim with Wat Tyler, "When Adam delved
and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?" Geographical,
historical, and economic facts far beyond the individual's
control do mdeed determine the scope and the limits of the
choices he can make. Yet, however narrow those limits, it is
stIll the choice within the situation, not the mere situation
[46 ]
itself, that makes the man. But materialism, as Sartre sees it,
nullifies that central freedom; it makes us not only determined by thmgs but ourselves things; and thus, in its revolutionary form, it involves the contradIctIon of seeking human
liberty through its demal. At least It appears to seek it,
though, at bottom, matenalIsm IS, for the eXIstentialist, an
endeavor not to find lIberty but to avoid it, to seek excuses
for rejecting a freedom one dare not face.
2
EXIstential phIlosophy, then-or that branch of it which
Sartre calls "atheistIc existentIalism"-is an attempt to reanterpret human nature in terms of human subjectIVIty itse'tf,
not through superhuman relIgious or sU9human material'
categories. It is this attempt to show how human values are
derived from a totally human-in fact, a desperately human
-SItuatIon that makes some of the analyses of Sartre or
Heldegger, if not valId, at least ternbly relevant to the dilemma of those who can find comfort m no creed of God or
sCIence.
Before we look at some of the partIculars of tIllS reinterpretatIon, however, it should be noted parenthetIcally that
to lImIt tlleir philosophies to the sphere of human values
and human problems would imply for eIther Sartre or Heidegger a very superficial and mIsleading conception of their
alms; for both of them profess not to be dealing with "ethical" or even "epIstemological" problems in the tradItional
sense but to be founding a new ontology, a new analysis of
bemg itself, not our being as distinct from being in general.
True, this new ontology is conspicuously focused on what
look like human categories-in Heidegger, such concepts as
concern, care, cunosity, dread of death, resolve, etc.; in
Sartre, consciousness, interrogation, dread, bad faith, etc.
Yet Heidegger is forever insistIng on the distinction between
the ontological significance of his principles llnd the merely
[-47]
DREADFUL FREEDOM
-and contemptIbly-"ontic" apphcation of them to partIcular actual situatIons. Sartre's Being and Nothing-as metaphysIcally entitled as Its German parallel Being and TimeIS expllcltly said to be a work in ontology which merely lays
the foundation for partIcular moral or psychological analysis
of speCIal human problems. Heidegger at the outset of
Sem und ZeIt declares he is embarking on a "destruction of
ontology" as the preface to a new ontology. And Sadre
claIms to be analyzing the conscious self-the pour-soiwIth the purpose of discovenng, through its relation to
thmgs, the nature of phenomena as distmct from self, of
what in Hegelian language he calls the en-soi. Yet, where
"being" enters both mvestIgations, It enters totally wlthm
the exphcit context of Its human bearing and personal significance; and to call this "ontology" seems, to one not
tramcd m the dISCIpline of HusserI and his school, a strange
extenslOn-or llmitatIon-of the name. We all hve, as HeIdegger puts It, "under Kant's shadow:' We all recogmze, m
some form, a distmction between what is and what appears
to us; and in the light of that dIstinctIon we recognize that
when we try to deal WIth being we must, from our limIted
perspectIve, deal WIth it not SImply as It is but as it seems to
us But what Sartre and Heidegger profess is the exact contrary of that Kantian restrictIon: that in dealing with things
as they seem to us we are dealmg with them as they are:'"
Here, I must humbly confess, I simply cannot follow them,
unless m the spmt in which one follows Allee down the rabbIt-hole. In ItS human relevance the analySIS of both philosophers is genuinely novel and, in part at least, genuinely
illuminating. But as ontology I cannot profess, and do not
propose, to expound it.
Admittedly neglecting, then, the aims and achievements
of eXIstentialism as a metaphysical revolution, let us look at
some of the baSIC conceptions of Sartre and Heidegger as
they bear, frankly, on the problems of human personality-
[ 48]
[ 49 ]
DREADFUL
FREEDOM
relation-tO-lts-world~transcendence always already in process, yet always not yet accomphsh. Thus It is no contradiction for men to be determIned and free; for freedom
would be meamngless, were there not these partIculars to
face or flee, use or discard-partIculars which make me what
I am, yet which I, by my transcendence of them in this
dlIection and not In that, make Into the world they are.
So It is that "man IS what he makes himself:' that there IS no '
essence of humamty but only actIons of men-responsible,
acts, yet acts whIch are not yet what they aim to be.
, Nor is thIs, as It may at first SIght appear to be, Just another easy way out of the problem of freedom and necessity.
It IS, on the contrary, an acutely uncomfortable way; for It
implIes not only hope of what I ~hall do, but lIteral and mescapable responslblhty for whJt I have done It imphes not
only that I may becomc what I may do, but that J am what
I have done: not what, out of well-meanIng InCapaCIty, I
meant but fallcd to do, but what, WIthIn the close yet fleXIble
bounds of my pcrsonal sItuatIOn, I have contnved to accomplish Of such accomplishment and faIlure to accomphsh I
and I alone must bear the credIt, the shame, the tnumph,
and the regret. It I~ meamngless to say with the matenalIst
that my enVlIomncnt has made me what I am; for It 15 I who,
have, by the values I rcad llltO It, made it an enVIronment. ,
If malnutntIon and bad housmg made me a cnmmal, so I
have malnutntIon and bad housing made poets, finanCIal
WIzards, and what not. But If, contrary to the enVlIonmentahsts' clmm, I, not my sItuabon, am responsIble for what I
am, such responsIbIhty is not to be weakened by the converMon of myself mto a sccret, mner WIll, convemently apart
from my concrcte, external, observable acts. There are, for
the eXIstentIahsts, no mute mglonous Mlltons-If they are
mute, they are not MI1tons There is no good saying I am
what, but for my situatIon, I might have done; for if my situatIon 1S not myself, neIther am I anything apart from it.
[ 50 ]
r 51 J
DREADFUL FREEDOM
[ 52 ]
rather than with an argument. Yet, WIth all that, the concept
of dread with its object that IS nothing and nowhere, the idea
of human freedom as revealmg Itself in the very realization
of its own meaninglessness, its own nonentity-such a con
ception lies ,t the core of eXistential phIlosophy and at the
core of ItS signl~cant contnbution to man's view of his own
nature.
~
That this dread is of nothmgness is especially clear, perhaps, in Heldegger's analYSIS of personal eXIstence; for in his
view what IS dreadful is the awareness of my death as the
inevitable end toward which my freedom projects itself.
Death in its utter negatIOn of meamng lImits, and so in the
deepest sense determmes, whatever resolve I make to tum
"the meradlCable past mto a significant future. Yet it is only
10 such a resolve as limited by death-in the realizahon of my
existence as essentially and necessanly being to death-that
I can nse out of the dlstractmg and decelVlng cares of my
day-by-day eXIstence to become authentically myself. Only in
such recognitIon of my radIcal fimtude, In the smking dread
with whIch I face my own anmhIlatIon, can I escape the
snares of a delusIve present, to create, in a free resolve, a genUIne future from a genumely lustorical past.
For Sartre, on the other hand, my death IS for me so complete a nonreahty as to be of relatIvely little mterest eXistentially. In the tItle-story of Le Mur, for example, the condemned man faced With death at sunrise becomes no longer
a person but a mere mass of phYSIcal sensations. Existence
with so hideously definite a hmlt to Its future is no longer in
any personal sense eXIstence at all; for it is essentially the projection of myself mto the future that constitutes, for Sartre,
my personal reality. My own death, he says in L'P;tre et Ie
neant, is more real for others than it is for me. Yet dread for
him, too, is of a kmd of nothingness. For Sartre it is the free
. resolve itself that is dreadful, since it carries WIth it the awareness that, unjustifiably and absurdly but inevitably, I must of
[ 53 ]
DREADFUL FREEDOM
[ 54]
THE FREE
RESOLVE
[ 55]
DREADFUL FREEDOM
3
Freedom that is total, yet rooted 10 a determmate, historical situation; dread in the face of such freedom; and the concealment of dread in the comforting frauds of everyday exist- ,
ence-~uch IS the nexus of ideas that make up the core of the
. existentIalIst's concepnon of human lIfe. There is, perhaps,
nothing really new in any single one of these Ideas. Klerkegaard, as we have seen, thought of himself as a continuer,
though with a significant dIfference, of the tradition of SocratIc nony. Sartre finds, overlaId, to be sure, with the falSItIes of "dogmatism" and "ChristIamty," the seed of hIS conceptIon of free wIll in the unhampered lIberty of the Cartesian God, who is bound neIther by truth nor by good but
makes them both. Here is the recogmtIon, says Sartre, that
liberty is at one with creativity, that only pure freedom can
make a world. Even Heidegger, despite his scorn for nearly
all philosophers but Heidegger, claims, WIth the help, it IS
true, of some rather strange phIlology, that he finds 1D the
early pre-Socratics-Anaximander and Parmemdes-some
genuine existentIal insight. But, in general, phIlosophers
4 Sartre,op
CIt,
pp. 76-77
[ S6]
THE
FREE
RESOLVE
[ 57 J
DREADFUL FREEDOM
[ 58 ]
simply a device to find out the king (it IS put to httle use for
that or any other observable external purpose). It IS, as the
edge of Hamlet's Wlt continually bears wItness, the sign of a
deep wound-a wound ongmatmg m the sense of hIS mother's corruptlon but reflected more broadly in the rejection of
the whole outer surface of hIS world, the world m whIch a
man can sml1e and smile and be a v111am. So Rosencrantz
and Gmldenstern, who were once accepted as friends or at
least compamons in student revelry, are now despIsed for the
frauds they are; and Polomus IS fittmgly made a fool of. For
Hamlet, there IS that withm whIch passeth show; but show
is all the world of a Polonius or of Laertes, hIS youthful
countcrpart. Hamlet's apparent madness, lIke Kierkegaard's
irony, marks the final, irremedIable split between the worldly
wisdom that is appearance only and the tragic reahty whIch
we find when we face ourselves unmasked.
And Opheha's real madness echoes the same theme. Gnef
for her father may be the ImmedIate occasion; but that gnef
cannot be disentangled from her equally gnevous beWIlderment about Hamlet, and that agam is sharpened by the falSIty of her own posItIon. She has been preached at by father
and brother, shamelessly used as a tool by her father-only
m madness can a real Ophelia break through the restramts of
such a SItuation. Some awareness of the frauds she IS asked to
hve by is apparent even early m the play, m her reply to
Laertes
But, good my brother,
Do not, as !lome ungracIOus pastors do,
Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven,
WhIle.., hke a puffed and reckless hbcrtme,
HImself the pnmrose path of dalhance treads,
And reeks not Ius own rede.
[ 59 ]
DREADFUL
FREEDOM
[60 ]
In
THE
FREE RESOLVE
DREADFUL FREEDOM
As to the convicts, they went thelf way With the coach, and
I knew at what pomt they would be spmted off to the Ilver. In
my fancy, I saw the boat with Its convict crew waltmg for them
at the shme-washed stalIs-agam heard the gruff "Give way, youl"
hke an order to dogs-agam saw the wicked Noah's Ark lymg out
on the black water.
I could not have saId what I was afraid of, for my fear was altogether undefined and vague, but there was great fear upon me
As I walked on to the hotel, I felt that a dread, much exceedmg
the mere apprehensIOn of a pamful or disagreeable recogmtIon,
made me tremble. I am confident that It took no distinctness of
shape, and that It was the revival for a few mmutes of the terror
of childhood.
4
If the inSIghts of eXIstentIalIsm are not entirely novel,
however, theIr phIlosophIC formulation m large part is. Not
that age-old phIlosophIC problems are here suddenly solved;
but at least some of them are more adequately stated or some
phenomena of human hfe more adequately descnbed.
For example, look bnefly at the problem of taste, the clearest and perhaps the most fundamental part of the whole
question of the nature and ongm of values. DIsJomed from
a foundation In some sort of Neo-Platome world harmony,
beauty tends In recent phIlosophy to become merely the expreSSIOn of the sort of capneIOUS hking about whIch there is
proverbIally no disputmg Such preferences can be lIsted or
catalogued, and one can arrive statIstically at a sort of "theory
of value" just as one mIght arnve statIstIcally at a general
catalogue of the hair and eye color of various sections of the
( 62 ]
[ 63 ]
DREADFUL FREEDOM
[ 64 ]
THE
FREE RESOLVE
10 P.349.
[ 65 J
DREADFUL
FREEDOM
.
[ 66]
CHAPTER FOUR
[ 67 ]
DREADFUL
FREEDOM
labon of the free man, terribly alone WIth his own mortality,
yet splendidly arrogant in face of the common world of the
undifferentiated "one," that is realm Heidegger's analySIS of
human existence. To see in the surrender to the Nazi state
the fulfilment of that hard-won freedom IS, despite such
affimtIes, for Instance, as the anti-Intellectualism of both
Heidegger and the Nazis, to give away in advance whatever
valIdity Heldegger's portrayal of human nature has. True,
one ought not to consider existentIal philosophy apart from
the eXistentIal philosopher; for, If every vISion of the world IS
madc what It IS by the nature of ItS maker, so much the more
so for a philosophy which professes to find in personal eXistence the subJect, method, and frmt of Its speculatIon. Nevertheless, thc person behmd the eXistentialIsm of Heldegger IS,
I should guess, not so much the NaZI Heldegger-a character
as easily sloughed off as on, it seems-as the Heldegger of the
Black Forest skl-hut- more dramatIcally alone m hiS snowworld than KIerkcgaard or Sartre at their cafe tables of Pans
now or Copenhagen then, and Jt lea~t as sneenngly contemptuous as they of the self-delUSIOns of those less "free."!
Scin und ZeIt deals first With eXistence In the mode of
V crfallcnhelt, that IS, With eXistence as It loses Itself in the
dlstractmg Concerns of everyday. So the relation with other
exi~tences occurs, too, on thiS level One phase of being-inthe-world IS bCIng-wlth-others. As thmgs are "at hand" for
my handling of them, so other human eXistences are there,
too, ""lth then everyday cares abettIng or interfering WIth my
own. This Mltdasem-I.e., "existing-with"-is, as Sartre
justly observes, a highly abstract and impersonal relabon.
Heideggcr's contmual insistence on the "ontological" char1 For dISCUSSIons of Heldegger's pohtlcs, Ie, the extent and slgmficance
of hiS assocmtlon WIth the NaZIS, see a pair of mtervlcws fubhshed 10 Les
Temps modernes, Vol I, No 4 (January, 1946), and Kar Ldwlth's amcle
on the polltlcdllmphcatlons of JIeldegger's philosophy, 10 the same penodlcal,
Vol II, No 14 (Nmember, 1946). LbWlth's aIm IS to show that Heldegger's
naZllsm dId, 10 fact, follow from hIS phIlosophIcal pnnciples
[ 68 ]
THE
SELF
AND
OTHER
SELVES
acter of his analysis and hIs rejection of the "ontic:' that is,
of the partIcular happenings of particular lives, as irrelevant
to hIS profounder theme, do carry with them an emphasis on
generalities which seems almost to contradict his mitIal
aS5ertIon that Dasem is "mine m partIcular" (ie meines)
But even were such Mitdasein consIdered in partIcular cases
rather than in general, it would still be, m the sphere of
everyday existence, the conventIonal and therefore the general relation, say, of pupIl to teacher, laborer to foreman,
husband to Wife; for on the level of everyday dIstraction,
where the deepest dIrection of my own becommg IS hIdden
by subservience to the "one," my relation to another, however close superficIally, IS likeWise engulfed m the umversal
anonymity.
What one wonders is thIS: What..happens to the individual's r~ to others when he resolves to oe,-iiot a~
mass of conventIon5;1mfliiinserrrIilo[lierwords, what dOes
HeI~gel dCT"'WIth flle- question of our eXlstmg-togetherwith-others outsIde the conventIonal and unauthentic level
of eXIstence? The answer IS clearly "Next to nothm~My
freedum IS mine, and the awareness of It bears no mtruders,
for it l~ "Gecdoitrto death"; and from my loneliness II.! face
of death no one can save me; nor can I, if I would, save or
evmdty anoth~
Heideggcr does mentIon briefly that Fursorgc-the relatIon that I enter into toward others in my fraudulent everyday aspect-has an eqUIvalent m the sphere of genume eXIstence. But It IS a lltrange eqUIvalent. On the e\cryday level,
Fursorge, as dIstmct from my general togetherness wItll
others, IS my duect concern for them. It corresponds, for persons, to the care I gIve thmgs-and one's everyday lIfe conSIStS generally of a combmation of the two Thus as a houseWife I take care of pots and pans, floors and linens, but I also
take care of my husband and chIldren. Or as an office worker
I am concerned With files and accounts, papers and type-
[69 ]
DREADFUL FREEDOM
[70 ]
[ 71 ]
DREADFUL FREEDOM
2
As distinct from Heidegger, Sartre, at any rate, recogmzes
the importance of the problem of the relation betwcen indIviduals and has dealt with it explicitly in at least two places.
in the essay L'Existenbalisme est-II un humanisme?3 a talk
3 Jean Paul Same, L'EXJStentJalISme est-il un humamsme? (Paris: Editions Nagel, 1946) ThIS essay appeared 10 translation under the otIc EXistentIalISm (New York Phdosophlcal LIbrary, 1947)
[ 72]
[ 73 ]
DREADFUL FREEDOM
[ 74 ]
OTHER SELVES
self whom Kierkegaard sought, who has lost the whole world
but not himself.
The treatment of "ab~doI!!!!.ent" (delaissement) (Heidegger's Geworfenhelt or the facticite of L'~tre et Ie neant)
is, though in a dIfferent way, equally disturbing; for It is clear
from the example whIch he dIscusses that Sartre himself,
despite his profession to the contrary, is usmg "subjectivIty"
in the narrower, not the broader, sense. A young man has to
choose between staymg at home Wlth hiS mother, otherWlse
alone, and gomg to jom the Free French In England. The
point IS, of course, that the boy must create hIS own values
m hIS own SItuatIOn-he can only do what he IS and be what
he does; no supernatural values appear m the heavens to
guide him. Granted; but in the descnptIon of the SItuatIon
a sIgmficant factor IS omItted. the relation between the boy
and hIS mother whIch wIll or wIll not bear thIS or that deciSIOn, a deCISIon of hers as well as Ius and possibly of theus.
True, the boy's chOIce IS thIS very concrete partIcular choice
wInch no pre-exultent values can determme. But he does not
therefore choose as If, suddenly and out of all relatIon to
the freedom of any other person, he alone had to deCIde. He
IS, as the eXIstentIalIsts say, already flung mto a world, a
'World that involves hIS relatIon to hIS motber and hers to
him; and his declSlon to leave or stay Wlth her is inseparably
bound to her acts, past and present, as well as to hIS own. It
IS the history of two people together that IS at issue Yet,
eXIstentIally seen, the son chooses not only m hIS SItuatIOn
but alone in It. l11e "deeper sense" of subjectIvity IS easIly
forgotten.
Finally, in deahng Wlth the objection that the existentIahst
cannot critIcize the morality of others, Sartre rephes that,
besides the critIcism m terms of bad faIth, the exIstentialIst
can also demand that one choose for the sake of freedom
itself, not only for one's self but generally, since "the freedom of one involves the freedom of others." Again, thIS is
[ 751
DREADFUL FREEDOM
3
The analySIS of "Le Pour-autrm" m L'P;tre et Ie Deant is
more honest, as well as more exhaustIve, and reveals morc
clearly, I tlunk, the blmd spots of thIs partIcular eXlstentiahsm, as well as ItS mSlghts. It IS an extremely detal1ed
account, of wInch we can here mdlcate only some of the
more SIgnificant or stnkmg features
Expenence, for Kant, Sartre relllll1ds us, was orgamzed I
ultImately as my cxpencnce-no bndge to another self was
proVlded in the KantIan analySIS The temporal flow of consCIOusness that forms the matenal of the inner sense I know,
m psychology, as a phenomenal self, much as I know the
matenal of the outer sense, m physIcs, as an ordered world
of objects. But only my own self IS so accessIble to me; for
only my consciousness IS open to the mner sense. So I can
. [76]
find no access to another subject. I cannot know It empirically; and a noumenal self, a self-in-itself, I cannot know
for anyone, myself or another. Thus the Kantian cnticism
leaves the way open for solipsism. However umversal may
appear the "understanding" or the "reason" with which
Kant is dealmg, it IS still an abstract, skeletomc I who possess
such understandmg or such reason, an I for whom there is,
as far as one can see, no meeting ground for any contact with
others of his kind. Moreover, Sartre demonstrates, neither
"realistic" nor "idealistic" solutions of this problem in the
nineteenth century were adequate; for each of these philosophies needed, inconsistently, to call the other to Its ald.
Such a Kanban idealist as Schopenhauer, for example, has
simply to take the other subject as a reality, which, properly,
his systematic Idealism should not allow. And such scientific
philosophies as posltlVlsm, on the other hand, have, just as
dlegibmately, to mfer another self as an ideal construct, when
all they know, strictly speakmg, is a set of mferences from
one set of sense-data to another such set, With no mtervening
"scI" at all. Even grantmg them such mconsistencles, moreover, neIther school could refute solipSism on a more than
probable basis, whereas, accordmg to Sartre, only some kmd
of certainty could really effectively banish this phdosophlcal
hobgoblin.
Some progress has been made, however, Sartre believes,
in the analyses of HusserI, Hegel, and Heldegger, and he
considers their attempted solubons as a preface to hiS own.
HusserI did try, he says, to show that I am what I am essentially in relation to another ego. But the relabon mvolved
was both external and intellectual and so, remaining doubly
within the sphere of the merely objective or merely probable, failed to touch the core of the problem. Hegel had
gone further, Sartre thinks, in that he understood the relation between two selves to be internal. In fact, the description of master and slave in the Phenomenology of Mind is
[77 ]
DREADFUL FREEDOM
[78 ]
ing at me, Sartre believes, that reveals the existence of another subject-not the mere physical presence of a pair of
eyes directed my way but the whole transformation of my
world that the look behind those eyes implies. For in thai
experience of being looked at by another I find myself becoming, not the transcendence I otherwise feel myself to
be, but a mere object, a body appearing thus and thus in
someone else's world. For myself, my body is the sheer
givenness of my bemg-in-sltuation, the closest and concretest reality in the widening range of contingencies that,
on the factual side, sets the limits and direction of my nature
For the other person, whom I find looking at me, I become
only a body, a thing WIthin his honzon, as "objective" as the
chair I am sIttmg on or the cup of coffee I am drinkmg.The revelatIon of the other eXistence observing me is, for
Sartre, lIke my awareness of my own existence, a direct experience, a "shghtly enlarged coglfo"; and by thIS experience,
not cognitIve m Its nature but, just for that reason, immedIate and final, the pOSSIbIlIty of solIpsism is once and
for all elImmated:
The CarteSIan COgIto does nothing but affinn the absolute
truth of a fact that of my exIstence; sImtlarly, the slIghtly enlarged COgItO we are usmg here reveals to us as a fact the exIstence
of another and my existence for another. That IS all we can say
Thus my bemg-for-another, lIke the emergence mto bemg of
my conSCIOUSneS'i, has the character of an absolute event,S
But the other eXIstence wluch thus reveals Itself is, at the
same time, anmhIlatIon of myself as subject; and such an
anmhilatlOn I am bound to try by every means In my power
to overcome. Therefore, between myself as subject and the
other who sees me as object, between my freedom and its
destruction In another's possession of me, there arises a Circle
In
[79 ]
DREADFUL FREEDOM
[ 80]
[ 81 ]
DREADFUL FREEDOM
victory for one or the other. Even murder cannot change the
fact that the vIctim, by havmg existed, has threatened and
bmited my lIberty. ll1ere can be no knockout blow or even
a decIsIon, only round after round of a bout that never
stops-and never starts eIther, for it is a continuous and
unbreakable circle.
There is, It IS true, an apparent escape from my objectIfication by another 10 the substItutIon of vamty for shame
In vanity I accept my object-status and try, by the kind of
object I am-clever or beautIful or the lIke-to affect the
other person In his very freedom. But thiS IS only another
case of "bad faith"-that IS, of the false objectIficatIon of
my freedom-wInch can find no satisfactory fulfilment;
for what I thus create IS an Image of myself 111 the other
person To find that Image, I must, In tum, obJec.tIfy hIm;
and what I find there IS only dlSllluslOnmellt, for I find a
false image that IS not what I am but what I seemed to h1l11.
My own essence falls stIll of the objectIficatIon that I thought
it could find. I am destroyed as surely by my own vamty
as I might have been by my antagomsfs pnde
There IS, then, at least In terms of tIns analySIS, no escape
from the alternative of fear/shame or pride as fundamental
to my relatIons WIth another. There are, however, further
vanatIons WIthIn tbese two typcs of relatIonships which
Sartre proceeds to analyze They are all aspects of sexuahty,
which, for Sartre, IS not merely psychologIcally but "ontolog-I
leally" essentIal to human eXIstence. Not the contIngent facts
of my havmg this or that sex or these or those particular
habits of expressing my ~exual nature but the fact that, qmte
generally, I am "a sexed beIng" is what he finds eXlstenbally so important. The basic variants m the expression of
that fundamental nature he descnbes, agaIn, in terms of
the origmal duality in all relatIons between mdlVlduals:
eIther I become object for another subject, or another
becomes object for me as subject.
[ 82 1
[ 83 ]
DREADFUL FREEDOM
am gUIlty to myself, because I consent to my absolute alienation, gUIlty to the other, because I furnish him the occasIOn
of bemg gUIlty, that is, of mIssmg radIcally my freedom as
such."8 But thIS attempt again carnes Its frustration WIthin
It; for, no matter how much I make myself an object, it is
I by my free effort who do so. In fact, masochism, Sartre
says, lIke every vice, "loves its own frustration." It is "a perpetual effort to anmhIlate the subjectiVIty of the subject in
makmg thc other assimIlate It and .... this effort is accompamed by the fatiguing and delicIous consciousness of
frustration, to the extent that it is the frustratIon that the
subject ends by seekmg as ItS chIef end:'D
If the attempt to accept my own object-character has no
satIsfactory Issue, then I may try as subject to reduce the
other to mere object. IndIfference IS an attempt of this sort
I take the others whom I meet solely m theIr functIonal
capacItIes as tIcket-collector, elevator man, receptIomst, and
what not, and hence deny ImplICItly theIr mdlVidual existence as personalItIes. Yet this IS an unsatIsfactory solutIon,
smce thcre IS the perpetual danger of the man m the parkone of these functIonal automata may at any moment destroy
my IllUSIOn of supenor solItude by lookmg at me.
More aggreSSIvely, I may seek to anmhIlate, rather than
merely to Ignore, another's freedom m sexual desiIl. Desue,
for Sartre, IS the endeavor to produce the mcarnatlOn of anothcr subJcct, that is, to ensnare the other's freedom in the
flesh, to reduce hIm not to body in general or to an object
m the mstrumental sense but to thIS very concrete present
flesh The means to thIS end is myself to become flesh m I
order, by phYSIcal contact, to reduce the other person to the
same purely fleshly eXIstence Therefore, the achIevement
of deSIre lIes, in Sartre's view, not in the fulfilment of the
sexual act itself but m the caress, m which the hand, beeomg IbId, P 446
9 IbId, P 447
[84 ]
r 85 1
DREADFUL FR.EEDOM:
[86 ]
are once more returned from the-bcing-who-Iooks to the-beingwho-is-Iooked-at, we do not leave the clrcle. 12
4
This is, at least, faCIng the questIon squarely. But as an
exhaustIve account of human relationshIps it is, to say the
least, depreSSIng. To lessen our despair a bttle, we might
look again at Sartre's exposition and, in partIcular, at the
examples WIth whIch he Introduces "the look of the other."
My relation to another is revealed, as we have seen, in the
moment at which, SIttIng in a park, I find a stranger lookIng
at me or at least about to look at me. But surely this IS a
hIghly artificial example on whIch to base an analySIS of personal relatIons An indIVIdual confronts another; but both
are abstracted by the pubbc nature of the place from the
personal settmg in whIch each of them, in fact, lives his
bfe. So It is not the two as bvmg human beings who face
each other but the faCSImIles of humanity who are, in Heidcgger's phrase, together in the "one:' I may, indeed, conjecture from the look of the stranger something of hIS personal reality; but in that case I project hIm in Imagmation
into his world, a world of other human beings to whom he
stands in as intimate relatIon as do J to those whom he, too,
can only guess at. In the anonymous togetherness of so-called
"career women" in a genteel restaurant, for instance, what
emerges as real behmd their mutual sIlence is the lack that
12. Ibid., P ",77.
[87 ]
DREADFUL
FREEDOM
[ 88 ]
[ 89 ]
DREADFUL FREEDOM
[ 91 ]
DREADFUL
FREEDOM
nent mark on me. In fact, of course, it is the very strangeness of the passengers to one another that gives thIs kmd
of mCldcntal "we" ItS peculiar character.
And IS this all? As far as Sartre can see, it IS; but there are
some tlUllgS that he does not see. True, each man alone
mu~t mJke hUllself what he IS to be. Only he can make hIs
worlel the absurd order, the ordered absurdIty, that it is;
and of that ternble freedom no one can rob 111m. But there
are, I tlunk, at least two pomts at whIch the Chmese wall
of sllbJcctlVlty IS broken.
1 'he partIcular given sItuation out of whIch I make my
world IS not Itself entirely private, and, though It becomes
a world pnmanly for me, there are stIll, even m our socIety,
somc occaSIOns on whICh It bccomcs a world gcmllncly for
us. One can see tlus stIll, for mstance, m some agncultural
operatIons, such as a tlueshmg, \\-here the demands of the
facts themselves produce for a few hours a genume unity
111 the men who dcal WIth them. Obviously, those occasions wele more frequent in the old days of barn-raismgs,
hand-haymg, and so on; and obVIously, too, there are m
modcrn urban SOCIcty no such events at all Here, mdeed, t1Ierc IS tIle "one" and the despaIrIng freedom of
thc MathIcus who would not be lost m It-and perhaps no
more. But If we have lost those activIties-part work, part
ntual-m whIch mcn gemunely stand together to wrest the
goods they need from a co-operative, yet unwI1lmg, nature,
we have no nght, m consequence, to call our soplustIcated
lonclmess a umversal condition of mankmd.
On the SIde of freedom Itself, moreover, rather than of Itc;
contmgent conditions, there is, now and then, escape from
the sohtary confinement of the self-agamst-all-others. Even If
most human contacts are, as contacts Wlthm the "one,"
bereft of reahty, sometimes surely (as we suggested earher)
an indlVldual comes somewhere upon what he can only call,
lamcIy enough but rightly, "his own kind of pcrson"-one
I 921
THE
SELF
AND
OTHER
SELVES
[93 ]
DREADFUL FREEDOM
[94
CHAPTER FIVE
p.484.
Z See p. 91, above
f 95 J
DREADFUL FREEDOM
theory seems, at first sight, a strange addition to the existential view of the indivIdual and the values, mdiVIdually upheld, mdlviduall)' created, by which he lives. In other words,
in lookmg at the pohtJcal theory of French existentialism,
one is continually faced WIth the question which we have
already mentioned m connection with the Humamsm essay.
How, m this hIghly mdividuahstJc theory of human nature,
does the liberty of one involve the liberty of all? Or, 10 the
light of our examination of Vtre et le neant, how does one
reconcde a pnnclple of the mutual respect of free be10gs for
one another's freedom Wlth the principle that each man's
freedom reciprocally imphes the represslOn of every other?
Qmte apart from lOgIC and phdosophy, the first answer
to that qucstIon IS a hlstoncal onc. French eXlstentiahsm
did not begm WIth the ReSIstance Sartre's pre-war publications, hkc Le MUT and the Esquisse d'une tlleone des emotions, dIffer in no fundamental way from the latcr developments of hIS theory. But eXlstentIahsm as a popular movement m French phIlosophy and, in particular, eXlstentIahsm
as a pohtIcal philosophy did grow mto then present prominence out of the peculiar stresses of the Occupation and
the pecuhar pattern of hfe-that is, of torture and death10 the Underground. That pattern Illuminated, more dramatically and more mSlstently and on a natIonal scale, what
the inner self-torment of a Klerkegaard had revealed a century carher: the utter lonelmess of each of us in moral CnslS I
and the essential umon, almost the identity, of that lonelmess and the freedom that we find 10 it. Man makes himself,
but only in secrecy and solitude-publicity is betrayal or
illusion. ThIS contrast, in the Occupation, takes the extremer
shape of paradox: the more oppressed we are externally, the
freer we can be in our own decisions, in our single hves. So
Sartre says in "The RepublIC of Silence":
We were never more free than dunng the German occupatIon.
We had lost all our nghts, begmmng WIth the nght to talk. Every
[96 ]
THE
NEW REVOLUTIONARY
[ 97]
DREADFUL FREEDOM
Ing of the elIte among us who were real ResIstants, but of all
Frenchmen who, at every hour of the night and day throughout
four years, answered NO But the very cruelty of the enemy drove
us to the extremItIes of thIs condItIon by forCIng ourselves to ask
ourselves questIons that one never conSIders In tIme of peace. All
those among us-and what Frenchman was not at one bme or
another In thIS sItuatIon-who knew any detaIls concernIng the
ReSIstance asked themselves anxIOusly, "If they torture me, shall
I be able to keep SIlent?"
Kierkegaard's "70,000 fathoms," Heidegger's "being to
death," are interestmg phIlosophic conceptIons; but here is
the human actuahty that has given a new dimenSIOn and a
new vitahty to theIr eccentnc, If bnlhant, mSIghts:
Thus the baSIC questIon of lIberty was posed, and we were
brought to the verge of the deepest knowledge that man can have
of hImself For the secret of a man is not hiS OedIpus complex,
or hIS mfcnonty complex. It IS the hmlt of hIS own hberty, hisl
capacIty for resIstIng torture and death.
Whatever one may think of the theoretical correctness of
the existentIahsts' VIew of the mdlVldual and of ItS conSIstency
or otherWise WIth theIr pohtIcal phIlosophy, one must quahfy
such CrItIcism by recogmzmg the genumeness of this hardwon inSIght, and by concedmg that those of us who have
not known the daIly threat of death or torture have ultImately no rIght to speak agamst it. "It IS charactensbc of
the French," Edmund WIlson wrote in hIS otherwise exccllent reVIew of Sartre m the New Yorker" "that the destructIon of French mstItutions should have seemed to them
a catastrophe as complete as the Flood and caused them to
evolve a phIlosophy whIch assumes that the predIcament of
the patnobc Frenchman oppressed by the German occupahon represented the SItuatIon of all mankind." Perhaps so;
It may be that French existentiahsm more than other philosophIes expands a umque situatIon mto a umversal theory.
4 Edmund Wl1son, "Jean-Paul Sartre, the Novehst and the EXlstentiahst,"
New Yorker, August 2, 1947, P 61.
[98 ]
But Wl1son would scarcely be the last to admit that something simdar is true of phl1osophers generally, as it is of
artists, and that for each philosophy the umque experience
from which the resultant system has grown as much confirms as invalidates the theory Itself. And 10 this ease our
fortunate ignorance of the sltuabon must make us, at any
rate, heSitant in our judgment of the consequent theory. Perhaps It was unique only 10 the sense of histoncal aCCident;
perhaps It was unique, rather, as the eXlstentiahsts believe,
10 ItS revelation of the very hnuts of human hberty. rIbueydIdes, too, saw the effect of one war on one people and saw
mit the sltuabon of all mank1Od; that is, at least, good precedent for the eXlstenbahsts' procedure
\Vhat makes the ReSistance most significant for the polIbcs of the French school, however, is not simply the secret,
yet dramatIc, lonelmess of each Underground worker, but the
conJunction of sohtude With sohdanty 10 thiS 10Vlsible army. j
In the ReSistance It was true, undemably, that each man,
deCiding alone and of himself, did deCide for all So Sartre's
essay concludes.
To those who were eng,lgcd 111 underground actiVIties, the
conditions of theIr struggle afforded a new k10d of expenence.
1bey did not fight openly lIke soldiers In all Circumstances they
wcre alone.J'hey were hunted down In solItude, arrested In solItude It waS'complctcly forlorn and unbefnended that they held
out agamst torture, alone ,md naked 10 the presence of torturers,
cIc.m-sha, en, well-fed, and well-elothed, who laughed at theIr
cnngmg flesh, and to whom an untroubled conscience and a
boundless sense of social strength gave every appearance of bemg
m the nght Alone Without a fnendly hand or a word of encour
agement. Yet, 10 the depth of their solItude, It was the others that
they were protectmg, all the others, all thelI comrades 10 the Resistance. Total responsibilIty In total solItude-IS not thiS the very
defimbon of our lIberty? This bemg stnpped of all, thiS sohtude, I
thiS tremendous danger, were the same for all For the leaders and
for their men, for those who conveyed messages Without knOWIng
what their content was, as for those who duected the enbre Re-
[99 ]
DREADFUL FREEDOM
sistance, the pumshment was the same-Imprisonment, deportabon, death. There IS no army In the world where there IS such
equalIty of fISk for the pnvate and the commander-In-ehief. And
thIS IS why the ReSistance was a true democracy: for the soldIer as
for the commander, the same danger, the same forsakenness, the
same total responsibIlity, the same absolute liberty wltlun diSCIplme. 'I'hus, In darkness and In blood, a RepublIc was establIshed,
the strongest of RepublIcs Each of ItS cItIzens knew that he owed
lumself to all and that he could count only on himself alone.
Each of them, m complete Isolation, fulfilled Ius responsibility
and Ius role m history. Each of them, standmg agamst the oppressors, undertook to be lumself, frcely and ITTcvocably And by
choosmg for hllnself m liberty, lle chose the liberty of all. TIus
RepublIc wIthout lllstItubons, without an anny, without pohce,
was somethmg that at each lllstant every Frenchman had to wm
and to affirm agam!>t NMI~m No onc fatIed m hIS duty, and nOw
we are on thc tluc~hold ot another RepublIc May thIS Republic
about to be set up m broad daylight preserve the austere vtrtues
of that other Republic of SIlence and of NIght.
LIke the expencnce of lIberty m enslavement, the expenence of "total re!>ponslblbty In total solItude" IS here
undemably genume In the Remtance the freedom of onc
dId mvolve, unmedlatcly Jnd herOIcally, the freedom of
many It wa!> as humelf Jud JS J Frcnchm,lll that each man
had to ask, "If they torture me, !>hall I be able to keep SIlent?"
-Just as, conversely, It was hImself as much as France that
each collaborator betrayed But It IS here, too, that the
theoretical questIon becomes mSlstent The situatIon of the
ResIstance, m wInch each man does mdeed deCIde for everyone, was made a conSIStent whole by the dramatic force of
ItS actual eXIstence But when this SItuation I!> elevated to
the status of an abstract system, what lmk IS thcre to bmd,
theoretIcally, the sohtude WIth the responsIbIlIty, the one
WIth the all? 'The pIcture of the mdlVldual VIS-a.-VIS hIS torturer remams as the human, lnstoncal foundation of Sartre's
theory of the relabon to another as confhct. But what concepbon of commumty, country, or humamty prOVIdes, in CXIS-
[ 100]
tential theory, the lOgical equivalent for the other side of the
Resistant's solitary and dangerous decision?
2
Before lookmg at Sartre's explICIt formulation of polItical
or social theory, however, we should notice, short of such
general theoretical statements, a kmd of analysIs of human
types or behaVIOr patterns to wluch eXIstentialIsm lends Itself
WIth conspICUOUS success. That IS Illustrated, for example, as
we have already secn, 111 such analyses as those of vamty,
sadIsm, or masochIsm 111 Vtre et Ie ncant. TIle broader
social ImplIcations of some of thcse dIScussIons-as of the
concept of total, yet penlous, freedom on wInch they are
founded-arc ample. In part, for example, Sartre's mterpretatIons of sadIsm and of hate arc utIlIzed III Ins "PortraIt of
the Anb-Scnute,"5 or III SIlllonc de BeaUVOlr's discussion of
revenge and pumshment m "Eye for Eye "b
Take such a paragraph as tIllS, in the latter essay.
"He Will pay for It"-the word IS tcllmg, to pay IS to furnish
an eqUivalent for \\hat one has received or taken. The deSire for
eqUivalence IS expressed more cxactl)' m the famous lex tal1011IS or
law of retahatIon "An C} e for an eye, a tooth for a tooth" Doubtlesf>, thIS law retams, cven at present, a magIcal after-taste, It tends
to satisfy f>ome unknown, somber god of symmetry, but first and
foremost It wrresponds to a profound human reqUirement Once
I heard a member of the maqms tellmg how he had retahated
on a National Guard who had bcen gUIlty of torturmg a woman.
"He under<>tood," he concluded, soberly TIllS word, whIch IS
frequently med m thiS vIOlent and elhptIcal sense, IS a declaratIon of the pnnciple of vengeance, a ~tatcment of ItS profound mtcnbon No abstract conception IS mvolved here, but
exactly what HeIdegger IS talkmg ahout when he speaks of
5 Sartre, "Portr3lt de l'anhsemltc," Lcs Temps modemes, I, No. 3
(December, 1945), 442-70.11l1s essay also appeared In translatIon as No 1
In PartIsan RevIew's pamphlet ~enes
6 SImone de Bcauvou, "Ocll pour (11," Les Temps rnodcrnes, I, No 5
(February, 1946), 813-30. Translated by Mary McCarthy In POlItICS, JulyAugust,1947, pp. 134-40.
[ 101 ]
DREADFUL FREEDOM
[ 102 ]
cess of this dubious. Violence can be an inducement, a temptation, but never an absolute compulsion. What we really want is
to cast a spell on the enemy's freedom, to seduce It like a woman:
the alien conscIOusness must remam free With regard to the content of its acts; It must freely acknowlcdge Its past faults, repent,
and despair; but an external necessity has to force It to thiS spontaneous movement. It must be led from Without to extract from
Itself feelings nobody could Impose upon It Without ItS own
consent. 1111s contradiction IS the reason that revenge's alms can
never be satisfied. 8
In punishment there is a more complex problem, for we
have no longer the concrete struggle of one freedom against
another but the substitution of an abstract pattern in which
the condemned man, though he must suffer in his own flesh
and his own spirit, is at the same time, for his judges, rather
the symbol than the actualIty of the wrongdoer. ThiS difference of punishment from vengeance was particularly evident,
Mlle de Beauvoir says, in the trial of petam.
In vengeance, the man and the cnmmal are blended m the
concrete realIty of a umque freedom By bcmg able to discern in
Petam both a traitor and an old man, condemnIng the one, pardomng the other, the HIgh Court merely demonstrated, up to the
hIlt, one of the tendenCies of socral Justice It doce; not view the
gmlty man m the totalIty of hiS beIng, It does not engage m a
metaphYSical struggle WIth a free conSCIence that a body of flesh
and bone Impnsons, It condemns hIm insofar as he IS a substract
and a reflection of certaIn bad acte;. The pumshment, therefore,
takcs the form of a symbolIc display, and the condemned man
comes close to beIng secn as an expIatory VIctim, for, after all, It
IS a man who IS gomg to feel m hIS consciousness and hiS flesh
a penalty Intended for that SOCial and abstract reahty-the gUIlty
party.9
But such dualIty is mevltable, S1l1ce it is implICit in the very
nature of human acbon and hum~n freedom:
.... evcry attcmpt to counterbalance the absolute event whIch
IS a cnme mamfests the ambIgUIty of the condItion of man, who
8. Ibid.
9. IbJd., p. 137.
[ 103 ]
DREADFUL FREEDOM
[ 104]
THE
NEW REVOLUTIONARY
[ 105 J
DREADFUL
FREEDOM
hold reasomng by the leadIng-strIngs, It alone can remam Impenneable to expenence and SUbSISt through a whole life. The
antI-SemIte has chosen hate because hate IS a faIth; he has chosen,
at the outset, to devaluate words and reasons. How much at ease
he feels now, how futIle and shght seem to him the dIScussIons
on the nghts of thc Jew he IS sItuated from the first on a dIfferent
plane. If he consents, by courtesy, to defend hIS POInt of VIew for
a moment, he lends but does not gIve hImself, he SImply tnes to
project hIS mtmtIve eertamty onto the plane of dIscourse. 1
quoted earhcr some "mots" of antI-SemItes, aU absurd' "I hate
the Jews because they teach want of dIsclplme to servants, because a JeWIsh furner robbed me; etc." Don't think the antISemItes deceIVe thcmselves In the least about the absurdIty of
th~e replIes They know theu arguments arc ~hght, conte'ltable,
but they are amused by them It IS theIr adversary who has the
duty to use words senously because he belIeves m words, as for
themselves, they have the ng1lt to play. They even lIke to play
WIth arguments because, by gIVmg clowmsll reasons, they throw
discrecht on the scnousness of theu 111terlocutor, they are of bad
f.lIth and dehght m It, for WIth them It IS a questIon not of persuadmg by good arguments but of mhmidatmg or dI~onentmg.
If you press them too bnskly, they close up, they let you know
WIth a haughty word that the tIme for argumg has passed, It I~
not that they are afraId of bemg convmced, they fear only that
they may look ridIculous or that thelI embarrassment may have
a bad effect on a thud person whom they want to attract to theIr
party If, then, the anti-SemIte IS, as everyone has been able to
observe, Impermeable to reason and to expenence, It IS not became hIS convIction IS strong, but rather hIS conVIction IS strong
because he has chosen 111 the first place to be Impenetrable 11
Moreover, in Ius impenetrablhty, he ha~. Sartre contmue~,
chosen to be tcrnble' to be the objective Image of In111self
that mspires fear In others. He has chosen mcdIOcnty-agam
because Ius medIOcnty can be chenshed as a thmg, not
fought for m hazardous freedom; for he possesscs the mystic
hentage of blood and soil against the corroslve~ of a rootless
mtc1hgence. And in that possessIOn he has found an obJective Good, which he shares equally WIth all Frenchmen, all
II. Sartre, "PortraIt de l'antlscmltc," p 448
[ 106 ]
r 107 I
DREADFUL
FREEDOM
[ 108 J
[ 109]
DREADFUL FREEDOM
3
The problem of connecting, logically, the private and publIc aspects of exIstentialism becomes acute, however, if we
look at Its supporters' expliCIt statements of political and
social theory. The locus classicus for thIs theory, at present
wrIting, IS Sartre's pair of articles on J;I1aterialism and revolutIon In Les Temps modernes. 14 The first essay considers a
senes of contradictions in materialism, notably, In dialectIcal
matenahsm, the contradiction, as Sartre sees It, between the
unique concrete wholes envIsaged by dIalectic and the abstract, quantItatIve relations With which scientIfic matenalism IS bound to deal. So, for example, Engels IS incorrect, he
says, In his assertion that phySICS moves from quantItatIve
to qualItatIve concepts' It moves only from quantIty to quantity. Evcn Einsteinian physics deals wholly in external and
quantItative relatIonshIps, and, what is most essential, even
EinsteInIan phYSICS, lIke all SCIence, deals With the abstract
condItIons of the Ul11verse In general, not, lIke dIaleCTIC, wItlI
the growth of a l1Vlng concrete totalIty. Sartre admits freely
the usefulness, for revolUTIonary purposes, of the materialist
myth-or at least Its usefulness m the past. Yet both as phIlosopher and as revolutIonary he questions the long-term
efficacy of such a "monster" and proceeds, m the second
essay, to construct an alternative theory of revolution WIth,
m his VIew, a sounder, nonmaterialIstIc basis.
The revolutIonary, accordmg to Sartre, must be oppressed,
but eo;sentIally oppressed, that is, oppressed in such a way
that only a radical change in the structure of the SOCIety can
relieve his oppressIon:
What the Amencan Negroes and the bourgeOIs Jews want IS
an equalIty of nghts, whIch does not In any way imply a change
of structure in the regIme of property; they SImply want to be
14 Sartre, "Matcnahsme et rb'oIutron," Les Temps modernes, I, Nos.
9 and 10 (June and July, 1946) Selections from these two essays also appeared 10 translatIon 10 the July-August, 1947, PolItIcs
[ 110]
assimilated to the pnvileges of thelI oppressors, that is, at bottom they seek a more complete 1OtegratIon.
The revolutionary IS in a sItuatIon such that he can in no way
share those pr1V1leges; It is by the destructIon of the class that is
oppress1Og hIm that he can obtam what he demands. That means
that the oppressIOn IS not, lIke that of the Jews or Negroes, consIdered as a secondary and, as It were, lateral charactenstlc of the
SOCIal regIme but that It IS, on the contrary, constitutive. The
revolutionary is, then, at once a vIctim of oppresSIOn and a keystone of the society which oppresses hIm; more precIsely, It IS 10
so far as he IS oppressed that he is indIspensable to that soclety.llI
That means, secondly, that he IS a worker' it is those who
"work for the ruling class" who are indIspensable to the
society In their very oppressIOn. Such IS his situation; the
third charactenstic of the man, according to Sartre, is that
he goes beyond his situabon-ll 1a depassc-toward a radically dIfferent SItuatIon, whICh It is hIS aIm to create. A philosophy of revolution, then, will be a phIlosophy "in situatIon" but also a program of actIon beyond that SItuation.
In partIcular, It wIll substitute a new conceptIon of value for
that of the rulIng class; and, SInce this rulIng class founds ItS
dominatIon on Its conceptIon of the nghts of man, that is
of the dIvine nght of the bourgeOIS ruler to oppress the proletarian worker, It wIll be not an assertion of nghts but a denial
of them. Hence, presumably, the appeal of matcrialIsm, SInce
It substItutes a natural conceptIon of the human species for
the bourgeOIS pretense of human dIgnity, whIch is only the
digmty of ruler-person against worker-thing. But, by so domg,
it negates all values, whereas what the revolutIonary seeks
IS a new conceptIon of values, one which goes beyond the
present SItuatIon, whIch enVIsages goods to be created In
revolutIon rather than imposed by reaction.
To describe adequately the revolutionary attitude, then,
Sartre says, four POInts are needed.
15. Les Temps modernes, No. 10, P 2
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DREADFUL FREEDOM
[ 112]
[ 113 J
DREADFUL FREEDOM
[ 114 ]
r 115 J
DREADFUL
FREEDOM
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[ 117]
DREADFUL FREEDOM
[ 118 J
THE
NEW REVOLUTIONARY
to make society pass by VIOlence hom a state wherem lIberties are alIenated to another state founded on theIr reCIprocal
recogmbon.24
Here we have the explicit statement of the oppressor-oppressedjsubject-object equatIon It IS in terms of conflIct
and, as far as one can see, conflIct only that the revolutIonary
recognizes the "pluralIty of lIberties." But suddenly out of
this grim pIcture "one understands the revolutIonary move
ment and Its project, whIch IS to make SOCIety pass by
violence from a state wherem lIberties are alIenated to another state founded on theIr reCIprocal recogmtion." From
what human SItuatIOn, from what ncw and marvelous source
in the depths of a subjectIVIty otherwise so lonely, so closely
and so constantly endangered, does thIS balm of reciprocal
recognition flow? WIthout It the whole theory of revolutIon as the phIlosophy of human liberty, as man's call "to hIS
total destmy," collapses mto unrealIty. Yet m the eXIstentIal
VIew of the mdlvidual there IS no place for such recogmtion and therefore, one is bound to conclude, no foundatIon
on which to buIld the polItIcal theory whIch Sartre himself
has sketched
ThIS IS, as a matter of fact, apparent at some pomts, even
in the less general and therefore, on the whole, more satisfactory dISCUSSIOns that we quoted earlIer For example, the
passage on torture and vengeance by SImone de Beauvoir
contInues'
An obJect for others, every man IS a mbject to himself, and
he lays the sharpest claIm to bemg recogmzed as such. Everybody knows, for example, how many fights m crowded places
start WIth a bump or an aCCIdental kIck: the person that gets
jostled madvertently IS not SImply a body, and he proves Ithe defies the other person WIth a word, a look; finally he hItS
hIm. The respect he IS exactmg for hImself each of us claIms
for hIS near ones and finally for all men. The affirmation of recIproCIty in interhuman relatIons IS the metaphysIcal baSIS for
24 Sartre, Matenal1sme et rbolutlon (second half), p 28
[ 119]
DREADFUL FREEDOM
[ 120 ]
[ 121 ]
CHAPTER SIX
f 122 I
THE
NEW REVELATION
[ 123 ]
DREADFUL FREEDOM
r 1241
THE
NEW REVELATION
duced average man. This does not mean, despite hIs talk of
such things as a "genuine war" or a "true anstocracy," that
Jaspers is opposing polItical democracy. The "genuIne war"
I cannot claim to understand-like Marcel's genuine relIgIOus COmmUnIty, it sounds, to say the least, a bit disqUIeting.
But the "true anstocracy" is merely the commUnIon of those
few indiViduals who have, each in his umque faslllon, realIzed
the pOSSibilIty of genuIne inner eXIstence that is In all men
and who reach out to one another In that achievement.
What Jaspers is objecting to, as against such rarc and hardwon achlCvement, IS the unIversal predomInance of mediocrity as fact and standard in our SOCICty. Actually, this same
medlOcnty, thc process of "wearing down into umformlty all
that IS IndiVidual," IS more clearly described, from the POInt
of view of the EnglIsh reader, In Mill's chapter "Of IndiVidualIty" In the essay On LIberty. What Jasperll has to say
in DIe geIstIge SItuatIOn IS essentIally, despIte the differcnees
In termInology, an elaboratIon of that chapter, as our Hollywood-radIO-ndden world is an elaboratIOn of the SituatIOn
that it dcscribes
On the other hand, Jaspcrs' attack on the cra of tcchnology
15 qualified at several pomts. He recogmzes the Inevitabihty
of further technical advance and appears to hope that we
may yet learn to use such skIlls m the serVIce, or at least not
to the disscrvicc, of the goals of gcnuIne perllonal existence.
And he does not, as Marcel at least appears to do, condcmn
the mcthods and attitudes of posItIve science as such as necessarily dcstructIve of slgmficant human lIfe He admires
Kant too much for that; and more espeCIally hIS great fnendship and reverence for Max Weber made him consider even
the extensIOn of SCientIfic techniques to human problems as
pOSSIble and important. Weber's greatness, he felt, was hIll
ruthless honesty In lImitIng every SOCIOlogical l11vesbgation
to a SIngle sectIon of expenence and In refUSIng to construct a dogmatic philosophy of human lIfc as such out of
[ 125 ]
DREADFUL FREEDOM
hIS carefully restncted empirical researches. Such social science is doubly modeled on natural SCIence in the KantIan
spirit. It involves the search for truth WIthin a stnctly limited
area, limited both by the phenomenon studIed and by the
defimng principles applied to It, yet unlImIted In the sense
that It can nevcr, thanks to Its phenomenal nature, be saId
to be completed. And It leaves, as Kant's sCIence does, an
open field for thc moral and relIgIOUS aspIratIons of men,
SInce In ItS dISCIplIned objectIvIty It neIther Imposes on nor
is Imposed on by the umquely mward, outwardly InexpreSl)Ible conflIcts or tnumphs of the concrete IndIVIdual self.
Klerkegaard, of course, would find such a separatIon absurd, but It IS an Important mgrcdlent In Jaspers' modIfied
eXlstcntIahsm
A certam respect for pmlhve sCIence IS nnrrored, too, In
Jaspcrs' treatment of posItIvIsm III the first volume of his
PhllosopIllC. s IIe deals there WIth pOSItIVIsm and IdealIsm as
thc two pllllosophlcs whIch have tncd, m recent tImes, to
aSSImIlate all realIty mto a complete and umfied system Both
faIl, he thmks, whcn they fall to recognllc thcIr own lllmtatIons; but tIley may be useful to genume, eXIstentIal phllosoplllzmg If they do rccogn17e those 11l1UtatIons The lImit
of PO~lhvlSln IIcs, ultImately, m ItS mabllIty to know Itself
and, ~ hat II) evcn worse, to lIve Itself "If I wanted to lIve
posltlVlshcally, I ~hould not be myl)clf, thIs I know morc or
less consoausly and havc no rest." The lnmt of IdealIsm, con
versely, lIcs m Its mabIlIty to recogmzc what cannot be
under~tood, the brute facts of empmcal realIty, or, If It recogm7CS them, It dIsmIsses them, as IIcgel dId, as triVIal and
Irrelevant to phIlosophy The common usc and the common
\\ caknesl) of the two systems he 111 thclr mm of statmg
uncqUIvocally the whole and complcted nature of the real;
for 111 that they at once fulfil a human need and lead to a
3 Karl Jaspers. PhI1osophle (, vols Berlm JulIUS Spnnger, 1932), Vol I
PlulosopJusehe WeltonentIerung
[ 126]
2
To escape thc spmtual dangers of our time, then, both
thcse wnters turn, m rather different ways, to eXIstential concepts as remmders of those aspccts of human nature whIch
should not and cannot be mechanized
Marcel IS careful to !>pecify that m phIlosophizing in
Kierkegaard's tradItion lIe I~ not dcnymg the valIdity of the
ThomIstIc CJtholIc syntheSIS But, he says, the me1igious
character of our agc unhappIly renders thc great mSIghts of
that system valId only for some, not for all, of our contemporanes. So the phIlosophcr must somehow lead bewIldered
humamty back to the fmth by wluch it used to lIve and by
which It needs to hve And to do this It IS necessary to turn
to the very concrete problems-or rather, for Marcel, the
mystcnes deeper than mere problems at the heart of personal eXIstence. Here there is hope of findmg the hvmg root
from whIch faIth may grow agam
The method whIch Marcel pursues in thIS endeavor-if It
deserves the name of "method"-IS pnnclpally that of the
4 IbJd., 1,236.
[ 127]
DREADFUL FREEDOM
r 128 1
THE
NEW REVELATION
CJt,
p. 75.
[ 129]
DREADFUL FREEDOM
r 1301
l131 ]
DREADFUL FREEDOM
3
If MclICcllS mmg eXIstentIal concepts to effect a return
to the CatholIc faIth and the church, Jaspcrs-for whom such
a return would be unlustoncal and therefore eXIstentially
false-is usmg EXlstellzerhellung to modIfy and supplemen't
the dIstInctIvely Protcstant KantIan tradItIon Jaspers IS not
In any tcchmcal sense a KantIan, but he is certamly deeply
under Kant's mfluence. 111at IS reflected In the very orgamzatIon of Ius Plulosopl11e Its three volumes deal WIth three
essentIal aspects of human expenence' the knowable objectIve world open to SCIence, the expenenced, but unknowable,\
process of the mdlVldual's mner hIstory; and the equally unknowable, yet inexhaustIble, symbols of cosmIC meamng
vanously interpreted in art, relIgIOn, and metaphySICS. The
relatIons bctween these three spheres appear to be conceived m a manner not unlIke the Kantian relatIon between
SCIence, moralIty, and relIgIOn. But the emphaSIS on the
concrete uniqueness of my personal eXIstence, of course, in-
[ 132 )
THE
NEW
REVELATION
( 133 ]
DREADFUL FREEDOM
[ 134 ]
[135 ]
DREADFUL FREEDOM
[136 ]
gaard's God, in agony and paradox. All the fimte self can
do, accordmg to Jaspers, IS to read the Chitfreschritt of tIllS
inexhaustIble reality that IS forever beyond his duect VISIon
or understandmg. In art, rehgIOn, and metaphysics one 15
only reading this puzzlmg cosmic language in various more
or less mduect, but never final, forms.
Such an interpretatIon of the common function of metaphysIcal, artIstIc, and religIous actIvitIes is probably correct,
and should certamly lend Itself to IllustratIon with an mdefinite range of examples. Yet, once more, we have m
Jaspers only a long senes of vague and sentImental generalIzations, which only dim to the vamshing-pomt the sense of
real, If dIstorted, rehglous expenence that one feels in someone lIke Klerkegaard. That Protestantism does mean sometlung very real for Jaspers one knows, for example, from hIS
speech at the openmg of the medical faculty in Heidelberg
and from the expansIOn of its theme 111 DIe Schuld/ragc. IlI
But no such livmg rehglOus traditIon shows through the
dense mIsts of the Phl1osopll1c When It come5 to art, too,
though therc IS nothmg especially wrong With hIS general
statements, there are no dlummatmg partIculars to bear
them out. In talkmg of the relatIon of phIlosophy to Existenz, for in~e,..he I,nentIons The Brothers Karamazov,
which IS for many obvious reasons a favonte text of eXistential cntIcs. All Jaspers has to say about It is that It has too
much of phIlosophy for a novel and too much of a novel for
phIlosophy. WIth all the absurdItIes of hiS absurdlsm, one
would vastly prefer the expOSItion of Camus m hiS Mythe
de SIsyphe to that
One more dIfficulty It IS not made clear in what way the
achievement of freedom by the mdlvldual depends on communication with another mdlvidual. Nor is it at all appar13 Jaspers, Die Schuldfra~e (Zunch ArtemiS Verlag, 1946) TIllS IS a
powerful and genume1y movmg statement of the types of gudt and their
atonement, as applied to the present situation of Germany and Its people
[ 137]
DREADFUL
.
FREEDOM
4
Lookmg elt both these wnters, fiuaIIy, oue feels 111 them,
despIte theIr dIfferent anTIS, a common lack l\1arcel would
return to the authOrIty of a supreme church to Sel\le humanIty, Ja!lpcrs ,,,ould go forward stOIcally WIth a kmd of watereddown Goethean Stub' uud WeIde as a source of mner salvatIon amId nun Both lack. as cXlstenbalIsts, the ternble
re::ih7<lhon of dread as the core of human lIfe. Perhaps, mdeed, the stress on dread and despaIr makes existentIalIsm
merely another mlllhsm, a gesture of abnegatIon rather than
a pO!lIhve phIlosophy. But It IS that stress that gIVes the
movement such sIgmficance, however transIent, as it ObVlomly does have. When dread turns to good cheer and despaIr
to hope, "eXIstence" becomes merely the catchword for anothcr pllllosophlc system, vaguer and less precise but no
marc real than most Marcel finds m Klcrkegaard the thinker
who saw the pos!llbI1lty of dread and Its sigmficance for
human life. But It is not the posslblhty of a dread that can
be eU'lIly obviated by God's good grace that IS significant in
[ 138 ]
[ 139 ]
DREADFUL FREEDOM
two after his question about Sartre and angoisse, quotes with
eloquent praise the passage on ethIcal dread (whIch we also
quoted in chap 111): "I emerge alone and m dread m the face
of the umque and first project whIch constitutes my being;
all the barriers, all the rallmgs, collapse, anmhllated by the
conSClOusness of my lIberty .... I deCIde It, alone, unJustifiable and without excme" Of such a passage Wahl says ..
"Let the detractors of Sartre read pages 76 and 77, and they
Will recogl1l.le there, If they havc good faith rather tIlan those
good mtcnhons that do not lead to ParadIse, the phllosopher."ll He IS nght, 1 t1unk, and It IS the lack of such clear
and stnkmg cxpressIOn of the meaning of dread that IS the
central wcakness of the apparently gentler and more chcering, but mfimtely duller, phIlosophIes of Jaspcrs and Marcel.
14 Jcan Wahl, "E\Sal sur Ie ncant d'un problcme," DeucallOD, I, No 1
(1946),39-72
r 140 J
CHAPTER SEVEN
POSTSCRIPT
And It came to pass after these tlllngs, that Cod dId tempt Abraham, and saId unto hun, Abraham; and he saId, Behold, here I am.
And he saId, Take now thy son, Isaac, whom thou Iovest, and
get thee mto tlle land of Monah; and offer 111m there for a burnt
offering upon one of the mountams whIch I wIll teU thee of.
W;
[ 141 ]
DREADFUL FREEDOM
[ 142]
POSTSCRIPT
[ 143 ]
DREADFUL
,
FREEDOM
[ 144 ]
POSTSCRIPT
( 145 ]
DREADFUL FREEDOM
Those values are not created by his acts but are already implicit In the acts. Even SUppOSIng that I have made the wrong
judgment m these partIcular cases, suppose Garcm was not
a coward or Lord Jim m fact a man dishonored; the moral
situatIon remams the ~ame, the standard of courage or honor
IS found in, not made by, the situatIon. True, Sartre admits
that we are always already engaged in proJect'i, mvolved in
the values which we have chosen-hence, he might say, the
a priori look of values III such cases But they are still values
that we ha\e chosen and, m that sense, have made for ourselves out of what, without our agency, would be a meanmgless, valueless succeSSIOn of mere facts Yet that IS not, I
thmk, a suffiCient answer. It I~ qUIte true that we have, m
the deepest sense, cho~en our own \-alues, and the descnphon of that ChOlte. m Its absurd and dreadful finalIty, IS the
eXlstentIahst's undelllJblc mcnt But we 11a\ e chosen them,
m the eXlstcntI..Ih~t's o\\n terms, m ~ltuatIoll. 'Ve have not
made them out of whole cloth but have chosen them out of
a scnes of alternatIves offered us-offercd ns by personal dlspOMtIon, natIonal traditIon, the chance mfluence of other
personahtIe~, and so on Agam, the eXlstcntIalI'it would probably ansv.er that he cert.nnly does take mto account the
Inmts of situatIon FactIClt) as v.cll as frecdom, freedom-mfactIclty. IS what he IS tryIng to descnbe But sOl1lchow--a~
IS app.ucnt, for 1I1st.lncc, m the. treatment of hl,>tory 111
S.utrc l as well J~ III HCldeggcr-the back\\ard stress IS not ~o
effectne III the findI Is~ue as I~ the forwcud one So Sartre
can a~k ',"'llat, tlIen, IS a value If not the calI of tllat whIch
IS not yeP
But a value IS also the appeal of what has been, and perhaps onc can say, very tcntatncly, that what the eXlstentIahsts
lack is a conceptIon of somethIng like tradItIon or commumty
1 The explICit treatment of hlstorv In L'Etre et Ie llcant IS adnuttedly
bnef, but It doC'l seem rather forced and narrow In comparIson \\lth other
a~pects of Sartrc s anal}"Sls
r 1461
POSTSCRIPT
[ 147 J
D_R.....!-,E_A_D_F_U_L_F_R_E_E_D_O_M
the ease with which the one IS held subordinate to the other
by the inevitable nghtness of the moral law. The usual claIm
of overabstractness agamst the categoncal imperative is often
made on superficial grounds-because, for instance, for the
supporters of an "empmcal" morality, whatever is a pnon is,
IpSO facto, wrong. But there IS truth back of the objection,
all the samc. In the theoretical sphere Kant was genuinely
puuled, and out of hiS puzzlement grew a cntIque of knowledge that was truly the great event of modern philosophy.
But m the field of practical reason he had no doubts. He was
happIly at home m an unquestIoncd moral-rehglOus tradItion; and m that SItuation a solution came easIly because
there was, at bottom, no problem to be solved. True, the
practical Impcrahve: Treat every person as an end and nevcr
a!l a meam, IS agam, I should agree, the great modcrn statement of thc baSIC law wInch an adcquate moralIty ought to
!ltate But to the Impmmg nghtnc!ls of such a general statement onc must contrast the human wrongness of much of
Kant's particular reasonmg-the hIdeous unlovelmess of hiS
nmanthropc-plnlanthropIst, thc absurdity of hiS dlrcct applIcatIon of the Law of Contradiction, m Its bare abstractness,
,IS a tC!lt for moral conduct, and so on There IS a grand moral i
VIsta here that IS nght, but It IS aelneved at the sacnfice of a
morc concretely human VISIon, that of the !ltumblmg, uncertam, half-blmd, half too-far-sccmg proccss by which
<Ilone, 111 eeleh smgle IIvmg person, moral values can anse.
So one gcts a system of value not as solutIOn to, but as substitute for, the problem of value In the eXistentialists, on the'
other hand, the problem of values, the dilemma that IS our
human destmy, IS envisaged m phIlosophic argument and
m lIterary or JournalIstic portraiture m all the ternble realIty
of Its concrete, factual eXistence. To ~ay that in that picture
a gcneral pnnclple lIke the KantIan IS lackmg IS not to ask
for its supenmpositIon but to admit the radIcal opposition
of the two kmds of analysIs, despIte their superficial hkeness;
[ 148 ]
POSTSCRIPT
[ li9]
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
IaERKEGAARD
Some of the novels, plays, and essays of Sartre have been appeeIIlng 10 English. To date the followmg are available.
"TIlC FIlcs" and "In Camera" London H Hamilton, 1946.
TIle Age of Reason ("Paths of Freedom," Vol I) New York'
Alfred A. Knopf, 1947
TIle Repneve ("Paths of Freedom," Vol. II.) New York: Alfred
A Knopf, 1947
. EXIstcnhaImn. Translation of the essay L'ExIstenhaIIsme est-II
Ull llUlIlallisme? New York Plulosophlcal Library, 1947.
PortraIt of tIlC Anh-Semlte "Partisan ReVIew Pamphlets," No.!.
For dlsClmlOns of contemporary existentialism see
BARRI:rr, \VILLIAM. \Vhat I~ EXlstcnhaIIsm? "Parb5an ReView
PdOlphlets," No 2.
.
BROCK, WERNER. An IntroductIOn to Contemporary Gennan
PhdosopIlY Cambndge. Cambndge Umverslty Press, 1947.
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] ASPERS AND MARCEL