The truth is that our finest moments are most likely to occur when we are feeling deeply uncomfortable, unhappy, or unfulfilled. For it is only in such moments, propelled by our discomfort, that we are likely to step out of our ruts and start searching for different ways or truer answers.

(WisdomQuotes.com)

Here's a mini-bio about Sartre intertwined with commentary on a book by Henri-Levy that laments the lack of importance Sartre holds today. Excerpt:

Sartre’s protagonist in the hallucinatory Nausea, Antoine Roquentin, laments the “total gratuity and absurd contingency of the universe.” “Every existing thing is born without reason, prolongs itself out of weakness, and dies by chance,” Roquentin says, struggling against a powerful urge to vomit. Lévy sums up this bleak Sartrean vision of man adrift: “Life has no meaning. . . . No promise dwells in it. No invisible hand is guiding it in secret. It is chaotic. Shapeless. Pure disorder and fog. A tangle of moments in disarray. Chaos. A mess.”

Half-way through, the article cuts at Sartre for his extreme leftism, revealing some of Sartre's absurd political positions:

Depicting man as lost in an alienated world of institutions and social exchanges, Sartre maintains that freedom is possible only when men act collectively — and their unity should be enforced by “Terror.” The conservative British political philosopher Maurice Cranston captured Sartre’s argument in a line (it took Sartre nearly 700 pages): “Terror is the guarantee that my neighbor will stay my brother; it binds my neighbor to me by the threat of the violence it will use against him if he dares to be ‘unbrotherly.’” Forget such niceties as the rule of law.

once again, good old procipher sarte gets the last laugh.

yip-yip yee.

it's pretty tight actually...

okay, let's look at all the ways I can respond to any problem:

- think of how to respond
    - get confused (jumps to not choose)
    - choose (more thinking)
        - suffer
            - get scared/panic
            - get mad
            - get sad/depressed/cry
            - get uncomfortable and anxious
            - get irritated/annoyed
            - feel bad
            - get nauseous, etc..
        - ignore
            - do something else
            - block out of your mind
        - deal with it
            - bear the pain
            - work around it (accept its presence)
            - factor it in for the future
        - act on it
            - plan
            - move on it (scrawl)
        - fix-it
            - accept it
            - change your behavior to prevent it from happening
            - meditate on the opposite
            - make plan
            - many many many ways
    - or not choose (not thinking) (which means, let environment or circumstances determine what your concrete response will be)
        - respond by instinct
        - respond by intuition
        - respond by letting forces act on you
        - rely on the natural movement
        - rely on routine

As you can see, the nature of man's thought and time implies that as soon as you annoit a problem or situation with your thought, you cannot escape a choice. This is what Sartre meant when he said we are "condemned to be free." But what if you're not aware of this model, then you have less information, but either way, you're making a choice, it's just many of your choices may be active, as you're confused and haven't decided what to do. And being passive, is a sense of choosing, if you're about to think, but are like "fuck it" then after a while, you'll get a sense of what happens next, that events will take care of you, so in a way, you chose to let other events decide your fate... you're just not necessarily aware of that process, but that's how it works. Now, given that you're aware that it works, then like, you'll feel a sense of choice as opposed to those who may not feel a sense of choice, even though they're choosing in any case.

One of the problems, or rather features, of complete freedom is being constantly "threatened by the instant." I use quotes on this phase to vaguely borrow from Sartre. Basically, the point I'm trying to make is that when you unhinge yourself from guiding habits and things you're used to, such as your current religion, family, friends, school, work, etc...when you place the responsibility for everything's continuing persistence on your own freely chosen effort, then your only solace is faith in your own consistency. But consistency is still something you can switch on and off instantly given the circumstances. This type of mentality destroys the security one takes in a guaranteed trajectory for one's life. But, do people ever have guaranteed trajectories? I see people being guided by various forces outside their control and then they retroactively take pride in how much they did to move their lives in that particular direction. I think those that become aware of this dilemma are then quickly supplied by convenient defense mechanisms. These defenses are embodied in phrases like, "everything happens for a reason" "your part is to be what you'll be" "it's god's way" and other beliefs in things like fate and destiny.

From Nietzsche, the best moment of practical philosophy, or rather, practical psychology, was in his discussion of free will. I can't remember where, but he says that there is no free will just as there is no unfree will. There are only weak and strong wills. And a strong will involves a sort of unification of the individual wills within us toward a singular, endorsed objective. This makes tremendous sense and is a good key to achieving happiness, fulfillment, consistency, etc. But, of course, a commons sense guide could have led you there without all the philosophical broo-hah....saying something like, "in everything we do, part of us wants to do it, another part doesn't, so the trick is getting everybody on board." Yay simple thinking.

From Sartre, my favorite moment of practical psychology comes when he discusses action and how actions retroactively determine for us what we think is right. If you want to know what you really want in life, all you have to do is look at what you actually chose to do. For you only let the strongest urges within you win, what reason is there to not endorse everything you do? The practical part is that it gives an argument for not worrying about what you do before you do it for you'll do what is best anyways. My counter-argument is that our "endorsement" will is a separate will outside of what we actually do. i.e. I may end up over-drinking, but I wouldn't be proud of my actions, and as a result, I'd be unhappy about that decision. Sartre would then argue well, your passion for drinking was stronger and by its strength, you chose to drink. Sure, one could say that on a technical level but that's not how we really work. We have guilt and regret and we don't find that everything we do is particularly great. Our sense of "great" does not line up exactly with doing what our emotions bubble up to choose what is great. Also, what if our will to regret is also strong and enforces itself over the desire to believe Sartre? Some people don't have this guilt and they permit everything within them. I presume that these people have a tremendous sense of self-satisfaction. Well, good for them, but I don't think that's the way I'm going to play the game.

Are a priori arguments inevitable? Can man exist without something that he holds onto just because. Not because of his own instinct, but, is holding up something a priori an aspect or proof of man's free will? Is the idea that someone will accept Christianity on faith alone, and not because it is right, is that the essence of man? Is man all faith and nothing else? Even as non-religious as Nietzsche was, he always made sure to balance his book by poking at philosophers who had a faith in truth. His criticism was also in the idea that as much truth as the philosophers claimed to have had, they always introduced something a priori somewhere. For Sartre, it's authenticity. For Nietzsche, it's certainty. For Christian's, it's strength of faith. For Mother Teresa, it's the power of love.

The only thing that can be devoid of a priori introductions is math. Unfortunately nobody has a good philosophy that is based completely in mathematical Tautologies. This is why I attempted the formation of the Tautrix. However, a true Tautrix would be irrelevant to man's condition because we don't think in abstract tautologies, we think in terms of emotions, automatic responses, intuition, etc.

It's almost like a priori introductions ARE man. Sartre's Existentialism illustrates this point very well. It is true, we invent what is now to be man. Our action determines what, to us, is real, what is right, and we change all the time. We make everything up. Conjecture is the rule, not the exception.

Finished Existentialism is a Humanism and I've learnt a lot about the particular mosaic of a construction of human life that Sartre has painted. Out of the philosophies I've seen out there, this is the most consistent. It tip-toes out of the way of a lot of questions and doesn't suffer from a lot of recursive problems. By recursive problems, I'm talking about statements which sound good at first but when they are taken as a rule and applied to themselves, defeat themselves. Sartre's statements suffer little from self-duping if you will.

However, there is a lot of things that are conjecture and a lot of things that are just description. It's confusing, of course, but that doesn't invalidate it.

What it does teach me is that EVERYTHING, all knowledge, all information, comes laden with an imperative. At least in the human mind. Uh...well, that "EVERYTHING" I mentioned will be revised or explained later...if I become a philosopher.

No, but the specific question I ask about Sartre, and I should ask about Nietzsche and others, is, what is it that I should do? I read Sartre's essay, and I think, what is he suggesting I do? Is he suggesting I take a particular attitude toward my life? For example, should look at all my decisions up to now in a super-positive way, going, well, I made my action, I invented my subjectivity, and I'll invent it now saying it was all good, or bad or whatever? Is he suggesting I just do things and stop having doubts or judging them because there is a reason behind everything?

What is the imperative? What is the desired effect of reading X? If I seek internal consistency, then THIS is one consistent view?

It seems answering these questions kind of do self-dupe his paper. If man invents himself and determines what is good and bad, then what the heck is "good faith" etc. And why must I feel anguish if I make a decision that I don't believe the rest of mankind should do? I agree in his assumptions that there is no God and that indeed, everything IS permitted on some level for we do make ourselves, but the conclusions he derives from it are more his free conjecture. You don't have to suffer from anguish and not everybody is in self-delusion about their anguish because they don't give a damn what the rest of mankind does.

I find philosophy kind of iffy when it seems confused about itself. There's practical psychology, like ways of thinking that operate on conclusions of our mental states and how to move them in certain directions. There's the study of life, such as looking at actions, at human existence, and drawing conclusions ABOUT it. Then there's the love of wisdom, (which is where the word philosophy comes from), that involves good advice, wise-sayings, or things loaded with smarts in them.

All three of these things get lumped into the word "philosophy" and a philosophical paper that is confused about all three of them well, is well, terrible, disingenuous, etc.

So, that furthers my critique on "philosophy" which raises my support of Philosophistry even more. :-)

The more I read in philosophy, the more I find it futile to come up with a consistent system. Hence, in the battle for my endorsement, I'd still give Nietzsche a better high-five because if he always knew that inconsistency was the rule and that man's attempts to do otherwise were just bunk. He, unfortunately, had to recursively dupe himself all the time, even duping his desire for duping. So what is his strength, probably the fact that he was willing to bare everything. This, I think, is very nice of him.

I have a little bit of a problem with Sartre's Existentialism is a Humanism

In the example of the youth deciding whether to stay with his mother or fight for country, Sartre states:
If values are uncertain, if they are still too abstract to determine the particular, concrete case under consideration, nothing remains but to trust in our instincts. That is what this young man tried to do; and when I saw him he said, “In the end, it is feeling that counts; the direction in which it is really pushing me is the one I ought to choose. If I feel that I love my mother enough to sacrifice everything else for her — my will to be avenged, all my longings for action and adventure then I stay with her. If, on the contrary, I feel that my love for her is not enough, I go.” But how does one estimate the strength of a feeling? The value of his feeling for his mother was determined precisely by the fact that he was standing by her.

The problem I have with this is But how does one estimate the strength of a feeling?. Just because it's difficult to estimate the strength of one's feelings does that mean one should abandon estimating one's feelings? Sure, everything is permitted, but there have got to be good and bad decisions. Sure, technically, every decision is good in the existentialist world because everything was you inventing good along the way. But, this is a different kind of good, a good in the sense that yes, congratulations, you invented, or you applied your freedom as everybody else does. But dumbing down this a bit, there are beneficial decisions and unbeneficial decisions. Of course, one could retort, all your decisions have to be the best of your decisions. Then what's the point of deliberation? You deliberate to consider a wide range of options. Now, you could short-cut, maybe to cut down your range of options. Then in that case, cutting down was good? You see there's a problem with Sartre's thinking because it is good for painting a conception of all your past actions, but it doesn't give you an effective way to make decisions for the future.

I'm weary of the strength of my argument there, but let's return back to the jump from But how does one estimate the strength of a feeling? to "let's invent everything." I'm not sure that our will, the thing that makes an action, truly acts in accordance with the strength of all our feelings. We have all sorts of feelings, some that are automatic and some that are deliberate. In addition, we have some feelings that tyrannize and take over the other feelings, and others that permit other feelings to be accomodated. When I make an action, sure, whatever bubbles up ahead will become my action... hmm... in which case, the tyranny of one feeling, or the unity of other feelings, would be what was important? But there, there's the crux, what determines what is "important"? Well, hmm, I guess existentialist makes that completely empty and then says that by existing and fashioning our own "essence" we then determine what exactly it is that was important. It's a little bit of a retroactive determination of importance.

Man, I can't win with Sartre.

This will require more thought.

The method for figuring out the purpose of life is the same for figuring out the purpose of any object or tool. You see a knife, you know it's for cutting. You see a camera, you see it's for taking pictures. To figure what life is for, look at yourself, your hands, your eyes, your mind, your heart, etc., and then imagine what it could possibly be designed for. That's, hopefully, one way to respond to the big "Search for Meaning."

(thanks Sartre for the paperknife analogy in Existentialism is a Humanism.)

Sartre's Rejection of the Nobel Prize in Literature 1964 Mr. Sartre expressed his regret that his refusal of the prize had given rise to scandal, and wished it to be known that, unaware of the irrevocability of the Swedish Academy's decisions, he had sought by letter to prevent their choice falling upon him.