The following examples of choosing oneself are purposefully controversial and thus bring up strong feelings often.
A person is asked if they could change one thing about his or herself in which this change would give him or her a qualitatively better life. For instance, this person could have the choice to relive life as a heterosexual rather than face the traumas of homophobia, or a black person might be given the choice to live as a white child, thus benefiting from inequality rather than suffering from it.
Many people argue that by changing themselves like that they would lose some essential part of themselves. In other words, they choose homosexuality, blackness, or any other identity for themselves. The quality is no longer an accident and changing it is linked to self-denial or destruction. To choose to change is to choose not to be.
Why do people choose some qualities as essential while others as not. For instance, transgenders deal with two kinds of essentialism. One is the essentialism that says the body determines gender and changing that is denial of the body. This essentialism is associated with the cisnormative society. The other is that psychology is essential to gender and denying that is denying self. This essentialism is associated with the transnormative progressive position.
Jean-Paul Sartre would argues that the self has no essence. This means that neither cisnormative and transnormative narratives are right. This leaves us with the question of what a person should do under any circumstance where they can change something about themselves. Ought a black person choose blackness or whiteness? (Not choosing is the same as choosing blackness)
Jean-Paul Sartre argues that we choose for everyone. Does that mean that what the black person chooses all should choose? Does that mean everyone ought to be white or stay the complexion they currently are? Does the transsexual reassign the sex of everyone? Does the homosexual have sex with men for all men and women?
This seems absurd to me, so perhaps I misinterpret Jean-Paul Sartre's moral theory.Perhaps choosing the self is only for the self and not the business (or responsibility) of the world. This would mean that choosing blackness is an equal choice to choosing whiteness.
I think it is dangerous to ascribe to Sartre a 'moral theory.' His work can help illuminate a kind of theory Sartre might not be opposed to, but I think fundamentally what Sartre is trying to do is move away from 'theories of morality' like those of the Enlightenment (Kant, Mill, etc). I don't think that we read this part of Existentialism is a Humanism, but there is a story about a student who comes to Sartre seeking advice. Sartre's response is basically that he cannot solve his student's problem, and that asking for advice is a form of bad faith. The student chooses to ask for advice or not, and from whom. By choosing to ask Sartre, the student has made a choice about what kind of advice he wants to hear.
ReplyDeleteI guess what I'm trying to say is that Sartre's understanding of freedom and responsibility leaves questions of right action completely up to the individual, as opposed to God or some universal moral principle. Trying to determine what someone else should do is idle speculation at best, and extremely harmful at worst.
I agree with Ben. Sartre is not necessarily concerned with a moral theory, but rather a greater understanding of freedom and personal choice. He places the importance of the choice upon the individual rather than the influences of outer society and existent moral codes. I think you said it best when you said choosing the self is only for the self and not the responsibility of the world. No moral theories involved here, but theories about personal freedom and choice and its implications.
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