We began reading Sartre yesterday.
“And when we say that man is responsible
for himself, we do not mean that he is responsible only for his own
individuality, but that he is responsible for all men.”
This is hard for me to accept. I can
understand the full impact of personal freedom and responsibility, but I do not
view my actions as a universal claim towards the “best.”
“What we choose is always the better; and
nothing can be better for us unless it is better for all.”
Is it more complicated than that?
Because it seems like it needs to be. It needs to be for me to accept it. And
again I ask myself, am I missing something?
Allow me to insert myself into an
example. Right now, it is the morning. I am only just starting to write this
post because I avoided it last night. Does that mean that my actions support the
claim that all humanity should procrastinate their homework? I do not feel the
responsibility of mankind weighing on my conscious. At the most I can take responsibility of
humankind upon myself for some
actions -- maybe, but not every single one. Which ones then? I don’t know.
So an individual doesn't know her values
until she acts and even then she doesn't know them because in a few hours they
may change. It makes it seem like there
are no values at all. In the class discussion Nihal said something about how
contradicting actions can be attributed to reshaping one’s character. And I
thought of how a rich NRA member who loves meat can turn into a poor vegetarian
yoga teacher, but had he died before that transition no one would have believed
that it was possible. That who we are
when we die is not who we could be or would be. Identity seems so fragile except in the
moment. Right now I am undeniably myself. Next year I will reflect on who I was and undeniably be someone else.
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