David asked:

I have been reading Sartre's Being and Nothingness and am interested in his account of freedom.
Does Sartre really account for freedom through an argument that I'm missing, because it seems that
he presupposes its existence. Is this because consciousness is 'not a thing'?! If consciousness is not
a 'thing' with causal relations/properties, how on earth does it affect that which does (i.e our bodies?)?
I can't help but think that Sartre fails to move away from Cartesian dualism — I assume that Sartre
would assert that he does move away from Descartes but I can't see how.

I accept that you might agree with this point of mine but I would be grateful if you might perhaps
respond in a way that looks at both the for/against arguments here. How do I become more
comfortable with Sartre's freedom?! I have heard that another existentialist, Merleau-Ponty, has
problems with Sartre's freedom. Namely that Sartre forgets about (a) the body (b) that we are already
in a meaningful world (c) we are 'in history' and our past 'has a weight'. What are these problems?? (I
am not really familiar with Merleau-Ponty). Why does he have them? Finally, are these problems the
same as my problem relating to dualism or are we worried about different things?!

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You're having trouble reading Being and Nothingness? Join the club! Sartre's dualism, if that is the
right word, is very different from Descartes'. You may have been mislead in that Sartre repeatedly
says that he begins with Descartes 'I think therefore I am', but the distinction for Sartre is not between
mind and body, but a dualism between things which are things in-themselves and those which are
for-themselves. A tree or a stone is a thing in-itself, because it is what it is and can be no other. A
stone is a stone is a stone, so to speak. But we humans are things for-ourselves; we choose to be
what we are. Not only do we have complete freedom to make ourselves, but we have no other choice
but to do so. That is why Sartre says that we are 'condemned to be free'. Unlike the tree or the stone
we cannot simply be what we are, we are left utterly alone to make choices to define ourselves, and
in doing so we have no hope of any help from outside. His view of consciousness is more like Hume's
than Descartes', he sees it as a vessel through which things pass, rather than a thing itself, aware of
itself only when 'nothingness' becomes apparent, and with it an awareness of all the possibilities
which we are free to fill it with. Failure to admit this freedom is to have 'bad faith' with yourself.
Freedom IS uncomfortable, very uncomfortable indeed.

Having said that, you, and M. Merleau-Ponty, are very probably correct in thinking that Sartre
overestimates freedom — if for no other reason than freedom for a prosperous leading French
intellectual of the 1940's is far from the same thing as freedom for the rest of us struggling humanity.
Being and Nothingnessis very obscure, deliberately so, I suspect. You might care to have a look at
Sartre's rather more straightforward Existentialism is a Humanism,which covers much the same
ground in a quarter of the words, but do try to get the Frechtman translation as the one by Philip
Mairet has some horrible errors which mess up the meaning.

Glyn Hughes