Friday, November 11, 2011

The Burden of Responsibility

The major idea that has stuck out to me during our past few class periods discussing Sartre is our intense aversion to the breadth of Sartre’s idea of responsibility. I feel like we’re all pretty much willing to accept the existence of some kind of essential freedom and the responsibility it entails in most situations. As I sit here working on this blog post for example, I accept the idea that I’m perfectly free to spend my time on a number of other potential activities. My decision to remain here is a choice I make as a pour soi that could be transcended, not an immutable fact of my existence.

The objections arise when Sartre’s ideas on responsibility begin to extend beyond the sorts of things we traditionally consider to be under our control. The tenuous lines between our facticity and our transcendence as well as our potential responsibility for the actions of others are just two of the places where people tended to start objecting. Many more things fall under the range of Sartre’s infinite responsibility than we seem willing to allow. Certainly, the prospect of responsibility for nearly every aspect of our personal life and the life of the world that we are aware of is intimidating, particularly with no set of rules engrained in the universe to guide us.

My main question, however, is how the attempt to escape responsibility for wider world problems with attempts at rational excuses is any different than our endeavors to avoid responsibility in our personal problems. Is our effort to evade moral culpability for huge issues like the continued existence of slavery in the 21st century and the severe strains human activities are placing on our planet really any different than the excuses we might create for turning in a paper late or sleeping through class? I feel like we’re more likely to accept excuses in the former case of larger issues but to hold people to personal responsibility in the latter. Are there reasonable arguments to agree with the idea of individual freedom and the responsibility that comes with it while discounting the larger venue of social responsibility?

Also, I think I’d rather live in a society filled with people who adopted the full Sartrian sense of freedom and responsibility than a society of people trying to fit into a more narrow and prescriptive moral code. The weight of choices would be more burdensome, but I think the ultimate quality of those choices would likely be higher and more thoughtful if you actually had to consider your decision in its own context instead of plugging it into to a standard moral formula. Thoughts?

3 comments:

  1. To your question about why we are more likely today to accept excuses for not solving world problems than excuses at a more personal level: I think the issue lies in our lack of faith in our ability to transcend. Most people believe that you are capable of solving your personal problems, thus, you are considered responsible for these issues. But many feel helpless in regards to larger scale issues, and because they doubt their own ability to transcend, they accept when others do not claim responsibility for more global issues.

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  2. Stephanie,

    I liked your post. I agree that a society with a widely held Sartrian sense of responsibility could be a very good place to live. On the other hand, as Thomas discusses at length in his blog post, existentialism alone does not attempt to determine moral behavior. It seems to me that this society hypothetically could end up with a lot of people who feel responsible for things that happen, but they might have a skewed sense of morality. They might feel responsible whenever someone is murdered, but they might think that murder is morally good.

    Therefore, existentialism would have to be paired with some other ethical theory or theories to be effective. However, I'm not quite sold on the idea that someone has to be an existentialist to feel a great sense of responsibility. I think I believe in a somewhat lesser degree of freedom than Sartre ascribes to humans. But I certainly do not think, simply because I am not an existentialist, that I am suddenly absolved of responsibility. To comment on the 21st century slavery example you mentioned, it seems to me that either utilitarianism or deontology would make an individual feel a sense of responsibility. A utilitarian would want to end slavery because doing so would cause good for many people. A deontologist could not will slavery to be a universal law, so he would also find it morally good to end slavery.

    If these people want to be moral, and if they believe in an ethical theory that prohibits slavery (as any good one should), wouldn't they do what they could to stop slavery? This does not go as far as the idea of infinite responsibility, but it seems more realistic to me.

    On the other hand, I suppose that existentialism paired with another good ethical theory could only do good, since the individual would have an expanded sense of responsibility. I don't see how that could do any harm.

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  3. I think that when the problem at hand is a larger, societal moral problem, we are less likely to take responsibility because we are selfish and try to convince ourselves that it is not directly affecting us or that there is nothing that we can do about it. In either case, according to Sartre, the moment that we think about what we COULD be doing about the situation, it is then our responsibility to act on the solution to it. I agree with you when you say that you would rather live in a Sartian society where each individual adopts freedom and responsibility; however, I still feel as if there is some merit to living in a society where people have to kind of check themselves individually and insure that they are behaving morally and in the best interest of everyone else.

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