SUBJECTIVITY AND FREEDOM (William Luijpen)

SUBJECTIVITY AND FREEDOM
by: William Luijpen


To Be A Subject Is to Be Free

A thing can be fully explained in terms of its antecedents: its being is a being-result One who knows everything about the forces acting on a thing, knows everything about the thing: it is merely a temporary point of rest in the evolution of the cosmos, it is nothing new with respect to the forces acting on it, it does not itself transcend its antecedents. The being of a thing is nothing but its belonging to the material cosmos.

The fact that a thing is nothing but a result means that the thing is necessitated, for determinism governs the world of things. The cosmic forces operate with necessity and give to the processes the constancy which the scientists formulate in their physical laws. The deterministic forces operating in the cosmos work “blindly”; they do not have any knowledge of themselves as forces and of their results as results. Things are not for themselves or for other things. In short, the being of a thing is being a blindly determined result.

The statement, however, that things are not for themselves and for other things, that they have no meaning for themselves and for other things, that they have no meaning for themselves and for other things can only be made if the totality of reality contains more than things. If there were nothing but things there would be no meaning. Paradoxically expressed, if there were only things and processes, nothing would be, in the only sense which the verb “to be” can have, viz, being-for-man. But something, is, there are things, processes and forces.

Once this point is understood, it becomes impossible to say that the totality of man, all that man is, is the blindly determined result of processes and forces. For man would then be a thing and, therefore, strictly speaking, nothing would be. But something is, thanks to the appearance of man in the cosmos. Man’s being, then, cannot be called nothing but a result; being man itself also is something. True, man’s being is also a result, also necessitated, also a part of the cosmos, but it cannot be totally result, necessitated, part of the cosmos, for otherwise, nothing would be.

Subjectivity is the aspect of man’s reality by virtue of which he rises above being the blindly determined result of processes and forces. With the appearance of subjectivity in the heart of the cosmos, a breach occurred in the “darkness” of matter. Man as subject is the “natural light,” the light through which something is, in the only possible sense of this term.

Freedom, we said, negatively expresses a certain absence of determination. It should be evident, then, that being-subject is being free, for through his subjectivity man rises above his being-a-thing. If everything man is were the result of blind processes and forces, man would be a thing and nothing would be. Man’s being-subject is a being-free as the letting be of the cosmos. Obviously, w are not concerned here with freedom as the quality affecting a human action or power. Freedom here refers to the being of man on the proper level of his manhood. The being of man as a subject is a being-free. It is only on the basis of this more fundamental freedom of being that one can speak of freedom with respect to a power or an action.

Positively considered, man’s freedom as a subject implies a certain autonomy. The being of man as a subject is a being-a-self. Man cannot be fully explained in terms of his antecedents; the being of man as a subject is a being from himself, a being “original.” As a subject, man is a “substance” and belongs to himself. But what is man himself? The answer admits no hesitation: man himself is an “I”, a person. Thus a man’s freedom as a subject must be positively understood as a certain autonomy of being, an independence, a belonging to himself as a “being of his own” because he is not merely the result of processes and forces.

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If being a subject is to be free, then the way one conceives the subject is crucial for the more precise description of the freedom ascribed to man. If the human subject is conceived as an isolated subjectivity, then man’s freedom must be obviously called absolute. This is done by Sartre.

Absolute freedom, however, does not occur among men because the human subject is not an isolated subject. The “I” occurs only as involved in the body and the world, with which it is not identical. The “I” posits itself only as intentional and situated. The subject’s ontological autonomy, then, is relative, for it simply is not what it is without the body and the world. The freedom pertaining to man as a subject is equiprimordially a bond. Freedom is not an “acosmic” freedom, it is not the fully autonomous source of reality’s meaning for without this reality itself, subjectivity is not what it is. The “I” affirms itself only as involved in the reality of the body and the world.

The “I’s” self affirmation, however, lies on the twofold level, and the same holds for the affirmation of the reality in which the “I” is involved. It lies on the cognitive level and on the affective level. The subject is not only a thinking being but also a willing being. The “I’s” self-affirmation contains not only the recognition of the “I” as “I” and of reality as reality, but also a consent of the “I” to itself and fused with it, to reality.

The terms “affirmation,” “recognition,” and “consent” refer here to the implicit affirmation which the existent subject himself is and which underlies his judgments and decisions. Savoring a good glass of wine, the ecstasy of the bride, the happiness of finding a long-sought truth, the emotion resulting from seeing a sunset in the mountains all these are examples of affective involvement in, and affirmation of reality. The “I’s” consent to itself is fused with its consent to reality. The “I’s” self-affirmation on the affective level means a certain fullness of being, a certain rest and peace, which may be called “happiness.”

As self-affirmation, the “I” is positivity of being. On the cognitive level, however, the recognition of the “I” implies also negativity, the denial of the “I’s” identity with anything the body and the world are: the “I” is not the All. Similarly, the cognitive affirmation of reality implies negativity, the denial that the reality of the body and the world is identical with the “I” and the denial of the identity of any particular reality with any other particular reality: no reality is the All, but any reality is a finite positivity of being.

On the affective level existence also has both positive and negative aspects. Existence on the affective level—which Heidegger calls “mood” or “tonality”—is both a “finding oneself to be well” and a “finding oneself not to be well”: the world is both a “home” and “alien to home.” The subject’s consent to reality is never unreserved; he can never fully say yes to any reality. Neither money nor sex, science nor power, health nor the Revolution—in a word, nothing fully satisfies man. The subject’s affective yes to the world includes also an affective no. All fullness of being-man is equiprimordially emptiness, all satisfaction is infected with dissatisfaction, all peace, rest and happiness contain conflict, unrest, and unhappiness. The “yes” within existence excludes absolute “nausea” (Sartre); the “no” makes absolute consent impossible. The world is my home in which I long for a better fatherland.

The negativity involved in the subject’s affirmation of and consent to himself and to reality is sometimes called “distance”: the subject distances himself from unreserved affirmation and consent.

When Heidegger wishes to point out that man is not just a thing among other things but a subject, a person, he calls man the “being for whom in his being this being itself is at issue.” A thin is not concerned with its being: it lies, as it were, “crushed upon itself.” Man, however, is not ill just as a cauliflower is rotten, he is not a hunchback just as a willowtree is gnarled, for man is concerned with the malfunctioning of his organism, his misshapeness. He has a relationship with what he is, and he has this by saying that Dasein (existence) has a essentially is, what makes man’s being differ from that of a thing. For this reason Heidegger says that for man in his being this being itself is at issue, thereby excluding that there would be merely question here of something accidental.

It is in the relationship of man as a subject to what he is, then, that there exists the above-mentioned positive and negative moments on both the cognitive and affective levels. Nothing of all this is found in a thing. A thing does not have a relationship to its own being, it lies “crushed upon itself”: it cannot ask questions, wonder, be bored, sad or anxious, hope or despair.

Man’s Freedom as “Having to Be”

Man’s freedom, phenomenologists say, is a “having to be”. Let us see what this expression means. Affectively, as we saw, the subject distances himself from reality. While the subject also undeniably consents to reality, the reserve or negation affecting this consent cannot be annulled. No experience of value is such that the subject’s yes is definitive and not also permeated with a no. This applies to every level of existence. For example, to the extent that an economic, social or political system has a certain value, man can consent to them and also to himself as an economist, a sociologist or a politician. But this consent is never such that it escapes all negativity. In this sense one can say with Sartre that man is a “hole in being.” Man is never finished, whether as an economist, an artist, a philosopher or a physician, etc. Because man’s yes can never be definite he must continually stretch himself forward to a new future. Man as a subject is not only a “natural light” but also a “natural desire.”

All this indicates what phenomenology means when it calls the being of man a “having to be.” Man is a task, a task-in-the-world. As long as man is a man, his being is and is essentially, a task. Man is never “finished,” for a finished task is no longer a task. True, man can disregard the tasklike character of his being-in-the-world, but then he disregards himself as a man. He then gives himself the mode of being of a thing; for a thing, being is not a task because it is not a subject, not free.

Freedom as “Project”

Man’s being cannot be a task if his being does not include any potential. It should be evident, however, that this potential exists. Man, it is true, “finds” himself as already merged with a particular body as already involved in a particular world. He finds himself as an American, a Jew, intelligent, cripple, a worker, emotional, ill, fat, rich etc. All this constitutes what he already is, his past, or, in present-day terms, his situation, and his facticity. This facticity means that man is up to a point fixed. Certain possibilities are excluded by it. An American, for example, can never realize himself as a Frenchman but at most as a frenchified American; a cripple cannot realize himself as a mountain climber; one whose IQ is 80 cannot realize himself as Secretary of Health, Education, or Welfare. There is, however, no facticity, which does not include any possibilities. If the determinations which make a man dumb, ill, fat, a worker or an American did not include any possibilities, he would not be really ill, fat, a worker or an American.

This statement applies to any facticity whatsoever. For example, I am never factically ill, my actual illness always includes possibilities. I can use my illness as a means to raise myself above those who never experienced illness, I can seize it as an opportunity to revolt against God, to become the radiant center of attraction in the family, or to tyrannize my surroundings. Any illness which does not include possibilities is not a real illness.

We should keep in mind that the possibilities of which there is questions here are real possibilities, they are base on certain specific actualities, and not to be confused with purely logical possibilities, the mere absence of contradiction between two terms. Similarly, the subject’s potential being is not like the passive being-possible of mere things to which something “can happen.” Likewise, they should not be conceived as little plans which one can drop if he likes. The ability-to-be of which there is question here is an existentiable, an essential characteristic of man.

Human existence is the unity-in-opposition of factical being and potential being, of already and not yet, of past and future. The term project is reserved to indicate this unity-in-opposition which man is. Man does not lie “crushed” in his facticity, but has elbow room, the leeway of his potential being.

Man’s being, however, is a being-in-the-world; therefore, his potential being is a being-able-to-be-in-the-world. To every possible way of existing there corresponds a possible meaning of the world. The project which man is, is equiprimordially the project of his world.

Meaning as Direction

On the basis of the potential being contained in any factical meaning, it is possible to give a more profound sense to the term “meaning” than that of “appearing reality.” Meaning reveals itself as “direction.” For example, the factical meaning of the world for the college graduate contains many references to possible modes of existing which are, as it were, the “direction” his existence can take in the world.

The statement that for “man, in his being, this being itself is at issue” also assumes a new and more profound sense: it now means that for man his possibilities and those of his world are also at issue. Man is always “ahead” of himself and his world because of the leeway of potential being implied in his facticity. This leeway indicates the “direction” in which his existence can go. Note that his potential being is the potential of the subject. Man’s possibilities are his own. To a thing something can “happen,” but its various possibilities cannot be called possibilities of the thing itself because the thing is not a self. Man, on the proper level of his manhood, is “master of his situation,” and holds his possibilities in his own hand. The project man is, is a self-project.

Man’s being-a-project is not like a “little plan” which he can discard if he so wishes, but is an essential characteristic of man. In his own way Sartre expresses this idea very aptly when he points out that man “is not what he is but what he is not.” Man is not what he is (already), his facticity, for facticity leaves him the leeway of his being-able-to-be.

If man as project is called “freedom,” there is not stringent reason why one should reject Sartre’s statement that man is “doomed to be free.” This expression means that there is question here of an essential characteristic which man cannot discard. Freedom as project, however, is not absolute but relative because it is connected with a particular factical situation, and this situation implies certain possibilities while excluding others. I am free, for example, to realize myself as a classical philologist, but this mode of potential being is implied only in the facticity of a college major in classics and not that of a physical education major. I am free to realize myself as a mountain climber, but not on the basis of a facticity which makes me a cripple. The situation, then, binds and limits me in many ways and it is only within these bonds to my situation that I am free.


Review Questions:

1) “The being of a thing is being a blindly determined result.” Explain. Cite examples to illustrate your explanation. (p.1)
2) Why would there be no meaning if only things exist? What, then, do you think, makes it possible for there to be meaning? (pp. 1-2)
3) Human freedom implies both a certain absence of determination and a certain sense of autonomy; a certain sense of man rising above being the blindly determined result of forces and processes and a certain sense of man as “a being from himself”, “a being of his own.” Explain (pp. 1-2)
4) Absolute freedom does not exist among men for the human subject is not an isolated subject. Explain.(p.2)
5) Explain the following statements using your own experiences as a guide.

a) Human existence inseparably involves the positive and negative moments of consent and denial, respectively. (pp. 2-3)
b) The “yes” within existence excludes absolute denial, while the “no” within existence makes absolute consent impossible. (pp. 2-3)
c) It is in the relationship of man as a subject to what he is, that there exists the positive and negative moments in human existence. (p. 4)

6) Explain the statement, “Man is a task.” Why does man disregard himself as a man if he disregards himself as a task? Do your experiences conform to our contradict with these statements. Why? (p. 4)
7) “Human existence is the unity-in a opposition of factical being and potential being, of already and not yet, of past and future.” Explain. (p. 5)
8) “The project which man is, is equiprimordially the project of his world.” What application would this statement have for a student, a member of a family, for others? (p. 5)
9) Why is it said that meaning reveals itself as “direction”? (pp. 5-6) Does the meaning of freedom, also involve a sense of “direction”?