Descartes and Sartre for Dinner What are some key points in our readings?

For Sartre, our fundamental project is to be God. We desire, in other words, to be complete. Technically speaking, freedom is the for-itself and being the in-itself. In that way, what we desire is that freedom and being become unified; we desire the completion of freedom. But freedom is never completed or fulfilled. It is a continually open-ended task. We reach out for what defines us, but must do so again and again for as long as we are free (71). What is humanism in Sartre? It is the fact that we are perpetually projecting goals beyond ourselves, beyond our present state. We are always outside of ourselves in this way because as we choose our identity we pass beyond present situations. This is different from other types of humanism in which the fulfillment of man is projected to reach an end pointas with a communist revolution, idyllic utopia, or state of Buddhist nirvana. There is no final goal, but only the constant passing beyond presence to create new goals. We must always make choices (60-61). If there are no true goals of history or mankind, couldnt we say that the existentialist makes it impossible to judge others morally speaking? In a sense, this is valid. But at the same time the existentialist reserves the right to assess others in accordance with freedom. Some people, for instance, flee from their own freedom; they hide from their inherent responsibility. They deny that they are responsible for who they are and pretend that society, God, or genetics is what makes them into what theyve become. The existentialist can objectively observe their stance as dishonest and incoherent. She can note how these people are denying their freedom in the very enactment of freedom, which is a contradictory and irresponsible position. These sorts of judgments can still be made (56). Sartre and Descartes are different in many ways. For Sartre existentialist transcendence implies passing beyond ourselves in choices; transcendence is simply the goal of an active choice. But for Descartes, God is pure transcendence. God is eternal and thus exists beyond choice. Pure transcendence for him shows that there is something beyond human subjectivity, whereas for Sartre transcendence actually helps to define and express our human situation. Even their understanding of the a priori is different since for Descartes we know some ideas as eternal truths untouched by bodily dimensions. Sartre, on the other hand, says that the human condition is a priori free, which is another way of saying that we dont have access to eternal truths or values. Also remember that for Descartes we know that God must exist since the very idea of God demands that we think of God as existing. The very essence of God includes existence, in other words. As Descartes argues, whatever we clearly and distinctly perceive in our minds must be trueat least as far as its essence is concerned. Thus when I think of a triangle I necessarily think of the fact that its angles add up to two right angles, or that its longest side is opposite of its

largest angle. There is no other way of thinking of a triangle, and these properties define the triangle as such. Likewise for God: as soon as I contemplate his essence I must immediately include his existence, for otherwise my clear and distinct idea of him wouldnt truly reflect the necessity of his perfection.