The Cambridge Companion to Sartre by Christina Howells

Author:Christina Howells
Language: eng
Format: azw3, pdf
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

GENEROSITY

If, on the historical level, Sartre’s ethical attitude can be characterized as relatively pessimistic, on the contrary, in the individual and interindividual area, in the area on which Being and Nothingness touched in terms of the darkest pessimism, the value of “generosity” becomes the conceptual instrument of a new and fresh optimism. Generosity in its individual dimension allows the acceptance of the in-itself and even its active disclosure, and an assumption of the deperdition of freedom in its incarnation.

In relation to the Other, generosity consists in grasping his “being-in-the-midst-of-the-world,” that is, his share of finitude and facticity, his “fragility” or his essential “exposedness” with respect to the in-itself, which falls, unbeknownst to him, as his lot to the extent that the active transcendence of his “being-in-the-world” is his perpetual surpassing of it as well as offering to him this dimension of himself of which he was unaware. Here, the in-itself, revealed by generosity, becomes positive mediation (qua opacity overcome) between myself and the Other and, as such, is even the possibility of authentic love. “We can understand what it means to love in an authentic sense: I love if I create the contingent finitude of the Other as being-in-the-midst of the world by assuming my own subjective finitude…. This vulnerability, this finitude, is the body” (pp. 516–17). Here Sartre is referring to the least significant aspect of the body, the body as flesh. What is given to me first of the Other, according to my most discerning comprehension, are his ends, his freedom, his existence. But if I love the Other,

I catch glimpses constantly of the being of this existent beneath his existence itself, like a sunken city beneath the water. I see dimly the perpetual relationship between the soles of the feet and earth, of body to weight; I see dimly through the physiognomy that masks the features of the face. This dancer is first of all dance. But the trembling of her breasts is not dance; it is inertia. This runner is sweating. Beneath the project I see dimly the order of life and beneath the order of life I catch a glimpse of the order of Being. (p. 518, emphasis in original)

To be sure, in some cases to perceive the being-in-the-midst-of-the-world of the Other can be useful with respect to the safety of the person: I see a man from the back, that is, from a dimension of his body that he cannot know and through which he is exposed to the in-itself in a certain way: A stone is falling from a slope behind him; it will hit him; I can prevent this, there is still time. But this useful information is only a specification of what is at stake in the relation: There is love because I save someone not just ontically, from some particular danger, but ontologically, in and by my freedom. If left to the Other, this would be opacity and loss of his being-in-the-midst-of-the-world. There is love because I save him for himself or, more simply, in order that this in-itself may become a being-for.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.