On human behaviour
Jean-Paul Sartre, about 1950 Click for source
“We are left alone, without excuse. That is what I mean when I say man is condemned to be free. Condemned, because he did not create himself, yet is nevertheless at liberty, and from the moment that he is thrown into this world he is responsible for everything he does.”
It comes from a provocative 1946 lecture, “Existentialism is a Humanism”, short enough at 10,000 words to read in a single session. I call it provocative because he challenges the normal unconsidered views about freedom, responsibility, good and evil. You can certainly call it dated, that is to say, of its time, when France in particular was trying to recover from the Nazi occupation, sweeping up a chaotic litter of moral compromises and insidious betrayals. Some called the collaborators culpable for aiding and abetting the murderous invaders. But for every German soldier killed by a member of the secret Resistance, ten French hostages might be lined up and shot by way of reprisal. Who then had clean hands? The Catholic Church wasn’t able to provide guidance on this point, and in any case, Sartre was an atheist. He had been interested in Marxism, but saw that the Communists in practice were a hierarchy, with Machiavellian strategists at the top and no regard for moral principles at any level.
Sartre called himself an Existentialist, claiming that in the case of human beings, “existence precedes essence”. For him there is no God to define our “essence”, i.e. our true nature and purpose in life. We create it ourselves, each individually. It follows that he is the enemy of unthinking conformity.
“Thus, there is no human nature, because there is no God to have a conception of it. Man simply is. Not that he is simply what he conceives himself to be, but he is what he wills, and as he conceives himself after already existing—as he wills to be after that leap towards existence. Man is nothing else but that which he makes of himself.”
It’s a strenuous philosophy.
“We mean that man first of all exists, encounters himself, surges up in the world—and defines himself afterwards. If man as the existentialist sees him is not definable, it is because to begin with he is nothing. He will not be anything until later, and then he will be what he makes of himself. Thus, there is no human nature, because there is no God to have a conception of it. Man simply is.”
What provokes me first is that like most philosophers and the doctrines of most religions, he separates man from the rest of nature. To Sartre, you sense that the rest of nature is little more than a painted backdrop. He’s only interested in the actors strutting the boards.
Equally provocative is his absurd-sounding claim that there is no inbuilt human nature, nothing till we make a “leap towards existence”. So how does he see humanity? Foundlings left on the church steps, or in the bulrushes along the Nile, with no known forebears? Sartre sounds like a real city-boy, who thinks eggs are harvested from egg-plants, and philosophy comes from the École Normale Supérieure in Paris. He was first attracted to philosophy as a teenager, after reading Bergson, who had attended that same university 45 years before he did. Bergson was first attracted to philosophy by the Theory of Evolution, which Sartre appears to ignore in his later thought.
For myself, I’ve become convinced of a unity between all of nature; man being just one species of many, just one bundle of genes that can reproduce itself, if you will. My conviction arises not so much from the Theory of Evolution, Darwinian or Neo-Darwinian, but a series of intuitions, mystical revelations, call them what you will. If I were to try and debate with Sartre on his own terms, I’d posit a universal essence, which is both one and many. Does essence precede existence, or vice versa? I don’t care. If I am anything, I’m an animist. Every existence contains its own essence, call it soul if you like. This I feel with all six or seven senses, when I step outside this study into the fresh air, under the sky.
Is there such a thing as human nature? Despite his own denials, Sartre does accept the idea, as in this further excerpt from his lecture:
“Every purpose, even that of a Chinese, an Indian or a Negro, can be understood by a European. . . . In every purpose there is universality, in this sense that every purpose is comprehensible to every man. . . . There is always some way of understanding an idiot, a child, a primitive man or a foreigner if one has sufficient information. In this sense we may say that there is a human universality, but it is not something given; it is being perpetually made.”
Good, so we agree thus far. And just as he was aroused to concern after the traumas and moral dilemmas of the war which in 1946 had just ended, I’m aroused to concern today on the matter of human behaviour. It’s a topic as big as the world, so I’ll narrow it down to “good and evil”, or even more narrowly to “deliberate killing”, specifically “massacre”.
What is “evil”? It’s a moral judgement, once defined by reference to the Ten Commandments, or “The Law and the Prophets” as Jesus put it, speaking as a Jew to other Jews. Even when such religions have been swept from popular consciousness, the concept of evil, “pure evil”, hangs in the air, especially in popular media for whom it is an invitation to the readers’ sense of blood-lust; a legitimate target to be hunted down and made extinct. What else is a “war on terror”? What else are all the violent movies?
Death-squad member Herman Koto re-creates his fatal acts
against fellow Indonesians via the lavish song-and-dance
number in the documentary “The Act of Killing” (click for source)
Fifty years later, in a largely atheist & progressive United Kingdom, the most unavoidable accidents can arouse mass mourning, floral shrines, soul-searching, the hunt for culprits, special Cathedral masses and headlines like “Archbishop cried with relatives of victims of Glasgow bin lorry tragedy”. Most noticeably of all, there was a rush by leading politicians of every party, however small, to express their own grief and condolences on behalf of just about everyone. (The vehicle went out of control after the driver’s suspected heart attack.)
My point here is not to blame politicians, media or a conformist public. I agree with Sartre that “In every purpose there is universality, in this sense that every purpose is comprehensible to every man”; except that I would use the word “behaviour” rather than “purpose”. His existentialist manifesto, expressed in the 1946 lecture, stresses the responsibility implicit in being “condemned to freedom”, that each one of us must will ourselves into existence, decide how we will behave. And so I call him “city boy”, who doesn’t understand that in nature, there is only behaviour, much of it instinctive, uncontrolled by will. In humans it is theoretically controllable, but freedom does not grow on trees.
According to the theory of evolution, nature is not controlled by purpose. Creation does not proceed by design, but a continuous process of natural selection, which has produced cats and Man. A cat doesn’t create itself by an act of will: it merely follows its nature. Man has the additional faculty of reason, which allows it to establish and pursue its purposes. Such is human nature.
What then is Evil: apart that is from the content of sermons, political speeches and popular sentiment as exploited by the media? It’s a moral judgement, as I’ve said. But why do we distance ourselves from it, and half-believe it’s a force in its own right, like a deadly virus? Fear, of course. It resembles the virus in that we must protect ourselves from massacre, genocide, stray bullets, passionate violence in the home or street?
But why do they, the perpetrators, do it? Are they vermin, to be exterminated by any means without trial or respectful burial? I ask the question not rhetorically, not to arouse emotions one way or the other. We are all blinded by fear and politics so much that we don’t take the trouble to answer the question properly. I think the answer is not very complex.
Firstly, the human race has always been warlike. Genocide has always occurred. Tribes have fought other tribes, and since agriculture was started, wars over land have never ceased. It is in the blood of young men to train themselves, test themselves competitively, and seek victory; and also to find fellowship in tribe or regiment, in the sacred bond of mutual defence.
Secondly the tribal instinct values conformity. Individual scruples are sacrificed to the leader, who takes on the moral responsibility.
Finally, and most significantly I think in the lands from the Levant east to Pakistan, the common factor in chronic violence is not Islam, but humiliation. This is an emotion stronger than the fear of death. On reflection I would not call it an emotion, for that implies a temporary state. Let’s call it a malady, for in the sufferer’s eyes, it can be cured by revenge. They say revenge is sweet, but the only sweetness is in the way it miraculously cures the sufferer of humiliation: not just when it is carried out, but from the moment when it is planned.
With this new understanding, we connect Raskolnikov, in Crime and Punishment, with every suicide bomber, every young man from a good family who goes off to join ISIL, every youth who goes into a school armed, and takes out as many as he can before turning the gun on himself, or being taken out himself by a SWAT team.
I discover that I don’t need a theory of evil. “Every purpose is comprehensible to every man.”
At this point we may say, as we think beyond mere senseless murder to other, darker crimes, “But what about such-and-such? I can’t understand that. I don’t even want to think about it. If the perpetrator wasn’t utterly insane, then what?” And we work ourselves up into a froth of speechless outrage. But again, I think the answer is straightforward, and explicable with aspects of human nature we can recognize within ourselves, from experience. Without being a diagnosed psychopath, we need only desensitize ourselves to the suffering of others, by invoking our personal or communal sense of righteousness. Or we can say, “There are things I prefer not to know about.”
Meanwhile, we live in a world ruled by power (political & brute force), commerce and the media. For most of us they, and the laws they have helped create, decide the sensitivities, and what is fair game.
