John Dewey had little to say about existentialism in his correspondence, but in November 1947 he wrote to Robert Daniels.
I have to confess—or perhaps boast—that I haven’t read either Toynbee or Existentialism.... The reviews of Nouy, spite of his being a best seller closed him off entirely for me. And much the same for existentialism. I think they are the reactions of people who are scared and haven’t got the guts to face life.... De Sartre [sic], I take it, is typical or symbolic of the present state of Europe; has to have some refuge from its terrible state—a kind of new-stoicism in which existence reduces pretty well to what the individual, giving up everything else as hopeless, can make out of it on his own hook. As I haven’t read a word of him, you don’t need to bother with what I say.1
Even though Dewey claims that he had not been reading existentialism, he feels little compunction about dismissing it and castigating the cowardice of those who find this sort of work appealing. This would seemingly include Sartre, who had been making an art out of reproaching the cowardly on his side of the Atlantic, especially those who dared to flee their freedom and deny contingency. Although perhaps not as direct on the topic of cowardice as Sartre, Dewey certainly wasn’t shy about criticizing those he thought unwilling to confront the uncertainties of life. Perhaps it is fair to say that Sartre, and to a lesser extent Dewey, had in their own inimitable ways over the years perfected a subgenus of the argument ad hominem, ad hominem propter ignaviam. (Although Dewey had the good grace to suggest that Daniels not take what he says about Sartre seriously, since he hadn’t read a word of him.)
In terms of Dewey’s comments, note that this is the same John Dewey who had chided William James in 1891 about his lack of perspective on Hegel in a letter that addressed James’s Principles of Psychology. In Dewey’s view, James simply hadn’t been generous or careful enough in his remarks on Hegel.
I am not going to burden you with my reflections or criticisms, but I cannot suppress my own secret longing that you had at least worked out the suggestion you throw out on page 304 of vol I. If I understand at all what Hegel is driving at, that is a much better statement of the real core of Hegel than what you criticize later on as Hegelianism. Take out your “postulated ” ‘matter’ & ‘thinker,’ let ‘matter’ (i.e. the physical world) be the organization of the content of sciousness up to a certain point, & the thinker be a still further unified organization [not a unify-ing organ as per Green] and that is good enough Hegel for me.... I surrender Green to your tender mercies, but the unity of Hegel’s Self (& what Caird is driving at) is not a unity in the stream as such, but of the function of this stream—the unity of the world (content) which it bears or reports.2
There are two points immediately worthy of note in comparing these letters. The first is the obvious point that Dewey’s generosity toward Hegel is not extended many years later toward Sartre and existentialism. Dewey was writing late in life, as a man approaching his nineties, set in his ways, when he heard about the postwar wave of existentialism. Hegel, on the other hand, was formative for Dewey. But what is also noteworthy about this correspondence is the specific passage that Dewey cites from the Principles when he is telling James that his own work is closer to Hegel than James realizes. This passage can be read as a precursor of Sartre’s account of consciousness in The Transcendence of the Ego and Being and Nothingness . Here is an excerpt from the passage to which Dewey refers. James is discussing the relationship of the self to the not-self in terms of the stream of consciousness.
Over and above these parts there is nothing save the fact that they are known, the fact of the stream of thought being there as the indispensable subjective condition of their being experienced at all. But this condition of the experience is not one of the things experienced at the moment; this knowing is not immediately known. It is only known in subsequent reflection. Instead, then, of the stream of thought being one of con-sciousness, “thinking its own existence along with whatever else it thinks,” (as Ferrier says) it might be better called a stream of Sciousness pure and simple, thinking objects of some of which it makes what it calls a ‘Me,’ and only aware of its ‘pure’ Self in an abstract, hypothetic or conceptual way. Each ‘section’ of the stream would then be a bit of sciousness or knowledge of this sort, including and contemplating its ‘me’ and its ‘not-me’ as objects which work out their drama together, but not yet including or contemplating its own subjective being. The sciousness in question would be the Thinker, and the existence of this thinker would be given to us rather as a logical postulate than as that direct inner perception of spiritual activity which we naturally believe ourselves to have.3
James is clear that he is being speculative in this passage, but it is not only a harbinger of his future analyses of the nature of conscious experience. 4 It is cited by Dewey’s intellectual soul mate, George Herbert Mead, in one of his most important articles, “The Social Self.”5 In other words, James’s speculations in the Principles were engaged and developed by the later James, as well as by Mead, although the latter reinterpreted James’s insights to include a social dimension. Yet what is so striking about this passage is its proximity to Sartre’s Transcendence of the Ego and Being and Nothingness. James appears to be trying to account for what in Sartrean terms would be understood as a nonthetic, nonpositional, prereflective consciousness, which Sartre, like James, contrasts with an (impure) reflective consciousness that has the self as an “object.” Both are eliminating any vestiges of a transcendental ego.6 Dewey—well before he fully appropriated naturalism and functionalism—did not see the self as a metaphysical substance. James A. Good makes this point by quoting Dewey: “As early as his 1897 Psychology, Dewey claimed that ‘Self is, as we have so often seen, activity. It is not something which acts; it is activity.’ This definition of the self demonstrates that he never believed in a substantial self.”7
In light of just these few passages, it is somewhat surprising that so little has been written on the relationship of Dewey and Sartre.8 And it is even more surprising given the degree to which they share insights and assumptions central to their respective philosophies. This shared terrain should be more adequately explored. The goal of this chapter is to further this exploration by highlighting similarities between these thinkers, fully acknowledging that there are striking differences. This exploration will provide basic elements of the model of individual self-determination—for example, prereflective awareness, reflection, anticipatory experience, deliberation, mediation, and spontaneity—that is further developed in Chapter 3. In this chapter I appeal to Sartre’s popular essay “Existentialism Is a Humanism,” in addition to more sophisticated works such as The Transcendence of the Ego and Being and Nothingness. I cite several of Dewey’s works, although I focus primarily on one section from his Ethics in order to clarify how Dewey’s understanding of action, choice, and responsibility is comparable to the early Sartre’s position on these notions.
Many commentators are hesitant to cite “Existentialism Is a Humanism” in a scholarly work. It was meant to be a popular lecture, given to address current criticisms of existentialism, especially among Marxists. We know that Sartre had serious reservations about it and thought it contained ideas that needed clearer formulation.9 Two points here. First, the lecture was given without notes,10 lending spontaneity to many of its most memorable turns of phrase, which often parallel insights in his more sophisticated early works. Second, in a new edition of Sartre’s essay one can find a post-lecture discussion with the audience in which Sartre defends “popularization.” And the manner in which he does so is quite in line with the way in which Dewey thought about his more popular work. For example, Dewey’s (and Tufts’s) Ethics was meant to appeal to a relatively wide audience, and for years American students in colleges and universities used it as a textbook. Although it was certainly not a spontaneous lecture, neither was it a work meant solely for professional philosophers. The point here is that Dewey and Sartre shared a commitment to communication with “the public,” and this is a central feature not only of the men but of their philosophies. For both thinkers communication is a form of praxis. In this regard it’s worth looking at Sartre’s response to the issue of “popularization” in the post-lecture discussion. It occurs in the context of a question from the audience about an earlier article in Action.
In all sincerity, it is possible that the article in Action did somewhat dilute my arguments. Many of the people who interview me are not qualified to do so. This leaves me with two alternatives: refuse to answer their questions, or agree to allow discussion to take place on a simplified level. I chose the second because, when all is said and done, whenever we present our theories in the classroom, we agree to dilute our thinking in order to make it understood, and that doesn’t seem like such a bad thing. If we have a theory of commitment, we must be committed to the very end. If existentialist philosophy is, first and foremost, a philosophy that says “existence precedes essence,” it must be experienced if it is to be sincere. To live as an existentialist means to accept the consequences of this doctrine and not merely to impose it on others in books. If you truly want this philosophy to be a commitment, you have an obligation to make it comprehensible to those who are discussing it on a political or moral plane.11
Notice that Sartre reasserts a central claim of “Existentialism Is a Humanism,” namely, that “existence precedes essence,” in response to the question, and he frames his willingness to publish simplified versions of his work in terms of his commitment to engagement. He specifically mentions that if we are committed, we must be committed to making our ideas clear to audiences so they can respond. In answer to a question on the relationship of morality to existentialism, Sartre makes the following assertions.
We are dealing with a freedom-based philosophy. If there is no contradiction between our morality and our philosophy, we cannot wish for anything more. The types of commitment differ in accordance with the times. In an era when an act of commitment was perceived as revolutionary, writing the Manifesto was a necessity. In an era such as ours, when various parties are each calling for revolution, making a commitment does not mean joining one of them, but trying to clarify concepts in order to both identify respective positions and attempt to influence the various revolutionary parties.12
In addition to the importance Sartre attaches to clarifying concepts (for political ends), I call the reader’s attention to the memorable claim Sartre makes here that if we are dealing with a philosophy that is focused on freedom, we cannot wish for anything more than that there be no contradiction between our morality and our philosophy. This position is consistent with Sartre’s view of freedom as the highest value, the condition for the possibility of choosing other values.13 But interpreting the assertion that freedom is the highest value requires a reasonably nuanced view of what Sartre means by freedom, and this in turn requires, as David Detmer has argued, that freedom should be understood as ontological and practical for Sartre.14 And when freedom is understood in terms of the practical, Sartre and Dewey represent, as we shall see, kindred spirits.15
However, the project of comparing Dewey and Sartre may seem to falter on an obvious and seemingly intractable disagreement. Choice appears for Dewey to be a function of the reflections that ensue when we encounter problematic situations. Following in the footsteps of Hegel, Dewey brings the dialectic down to earth by reinterpreting mediation in terms of the overcoming of obstacles, that is, in terms of solutions to problems through a process of inquiry that involves reflection. The early Sartre, on the other hand, appears to argue for a radical notion of freedom that emphasizes spontaneity, and a phenomenological orientation to experience that suspends the need for a neo-Hegelian approach to mediation. Being and Nothingness is to be understood as a phenomenological ontology, and Sartre’s discussions of “being’s” relationship to what he calls our original project would not prove congenial to Dewey.16
Critics have claimed that the early Sartre offers an impossible notion of an omnivorously omnipresent freedom. In order to answer these critics, David Detmer argues in Freedom as a Value that that one must distinguish between Sartre’s understanding of freedom as ontological and as practical. This distinction will help avoid an apparent inconsistency in Sartre’s work. On the one hand, from the vantage of ontology, freedom appears to be absolute because of consciousness’s capacity to choose. On the other hand, there are facticity, the coefficient of adversity, the situation, and the human condition.17 All of the latter limit the scope of possible action. They help us understand that when Sartre is speaking of freedom as ontological, he is not claiming that the freedom to choose should be understood in terms of the success of our choices; that is, it should not be confused with practical freedom. He observes in Being and Nothingness, “In addition it is necessary to point out to ‘common sense’ that the formula ‘to be free’ does not mean ‘to obtain what one has wished’ but rather ‘by oneself to determine oneself to wish’ (in the broad sense of choosing). In other words success is not important to [ontological] freedom.”18 Our choices always confront specific conditions, for example, the crag that the mountaineer seeks to climb. And these conditions relate to our projects, which make certain “obstacles” appear as obstacles. The mountain climber has a project that entails viewing the crag as an obstacle to be overcome, whereas the individual who never seeks to climb a mountain does not experience the crag as an obstacle, as a challenge to his or her practical freedom.
Distinguishing between freedom of choice and the freedom of obtaining is an alternative way of differentiating ontological freedom and practical freedom. According to Detmer,
The slave, the unemployed worker, and the prisoner are free in one sense of the word, that designated by such expressions as “freedom of choice” and “ontological freedom,” but relatively unfree in another sense, that designated by “freedom of obtaining” and “practical freedom.” Moreover, according to Sartre, it is precisely because the slave, the unemployed worker, and the prisoner are free in the first sense, that it is possible to (1) describe them as being unfree in the second sense, (2) condemn those who render them unfree in this sense, (3) encourage them to become free in this sense, and (4) help them to do so.19
Although Dewey would not be comfortable with an approach that treats freedom as ontological, at least not in a Sartrean fashion, he would be quite comfortable discussing practical freedom. Yet, as we shall see, Dewey presupposes the possibility of freedom, in a quasi-ontological sense, as an ingredient in the “freedom of obtaining” or “practical freedom.” To defend this assertion will require addressing Dewey’s understanding of the relationship of the past to the future, which parallels in important ways Sartre’s understanding of it, sans the latter’s ontological aspirations. But before turning to the relationship of past to future, we should address the relationship of “the will” to “choice” for Sartre. Doing so will help clarify further the ontological “nature” of consciousness and freedom for Sartre, exhibit basic similarities between Dewey and Sartre on choice, and set the stage for the discussion of the past, the future, and anticipatory experience in the next section.
One of the great confusions that attend discussions of Sartre’s understanding of choice is that he is read as if he is referring to reflective, self-conscious choice. In spite of the virtues of “Existentialism Is a Humanism,” his account of choice in this lecture is seriously problematic, especially in some of its most memorable passages, for precisely this reason. For a readership that is unfamiliar with Sartre’s use of the distinction between prereflective and reflective consciousness, the lecture leaves the impression that he supports a view of choice as a primarily reflective or deliberative phenomenon. This is especially true if we underscore several passages that refer to “willing” and his famous example of the student who must decide whether to stay at home with his mother or go off to war, in spite of Sartre’s claim that the student must heed his feelings.20 However, as we know from Sartre’s early philosophical works, The Transcendence of the Ego and Being and Nothingness, consciousness is spontaneous, and its very spontaneity is such that choices are prereflective and nonthetic, that is, prior to a (self-)conscious “free will.” It is, nevertheless, possible that (impure) reflection or deliberation can play a role in our decisions.21 I return to this point later, for freedom in practice often does appear to include reflective activity for Sartre, although we will have to distinguish reflection as ontologically understood from ways that reflection can take place in practice. (Here is one place where “Existentialism Is a Humanism” will prove less misleading than it may appear to be at first.)
In The Transcendence of the Ego Sartre is quite clear about the fact that the will should be understood as “produced” by a spontaneous consciousness. So we have Sartre claiming, in a relatively well-known passage, the following:
Transcendental consciousness is an impersonal spontaneity. It determines its existence at each moment, without anything before it being conceivable. Thus each moment of our conscious life reveals to us a creation ex nihilo. Not a new arrangement, but a new existence. There is something anguishing for each of us, to experience directly this tireless creation of an existence of which we are not the creators. At this level man has the impression of ceaselessly escaping from himself, of overflowing himself, of an abundance always unexpected taking him by surprise. And he saddles the unconscious with the task of accounting for this transcending of the Me by consciousness. The Me cannot in fact cope with this spontaneity, for the will is an object which itself is constituted for and by this spontaneity.22
In Being and Nothingness Sartre modifies his claims regarding the impersonality of consciousness, and significant portions of his presentation defend the position that there is a personal quality to prereflective consciousness. This does not change the fundamental point that Sartre is making, that is, we choose before we reflect on our choices. Notice that this seems to put to him at odds with Dewey. From the latter’s perspective, problem-solving activity and choice require reflection. Here we clearly see the influence of a Hegelian sensibility regarding mediation and how the latter is necessary in order to overcome contradiction or conflict. For Dewey, Hegel’s “conflict” is transformed into “the problem,” and in the moral sphere resolution entails a synthetic activity that leads to a functionally unified self.
Nevertheless, as inclined as Dewey is to emphasize the overcoming of problems, the pre- or nonreflective does play an important role in his philosophy insofar as our actions involve nonreflective habitual “choices,” that is, preferences and practices. Much of our life is lived nonreflectively. 23 As a matter of fact, in the very first section of the chapter in his Ethics on the moral self, “The Self and Choice,” Dewey declares, “Prior to anything which may be called choice in the sense of deliberate decision come spontaneous selections or preferences.”24 For Dewey, human beings are continually making nonreflective choices, that is, spontaneous selections. If it is kept in mind that Dewey appears to be reserving the term “choice” for what Sartre refers to as “deliberation,” and that by “choice” Sartre seems to be referring to what Dewey means by “preference,” the parallelism between their positions is more apparent.
But aren’t choices free, truly spontaneous, for Sartre, whereas preferences for Dewey are determined? This objection appears credible, yet it will prove deceptive. Once again, I am not claiming that Sartre and Dewey have identical positions, only that there is a degree of similarity that has implications for our practices as agents. How and in what manner are their views of choice and freedom commensurate? To answer this question, we must first discuss the manner in which Dewey and Sartre address the relationship of the past to the future.
From Sartre’s vantage point, the fundamental duality of the in-itself and the for-itself should be understood in terms of the in-itself’s facticity and the for-itself’s relationship to the future. The for-itself is the nihilation or negation of the in-itself, and of its own past as an in-itself. In having a negative relation to the in-itself, consciousness “knows” that it is not-the-object-of-which-it-is-aware, for example, it has an immediate prereflective awareness of not being the inkwell sitting on the desk. As a prereflective, nonpositional, nonthetic consciousness, it is indirectly aware of itself as a “personal” consciousness, and it can have this awareness because of its relationship to what it lacks. We all have projects, and these projects, and our “original” project, define who we are nonessentialistically. They can do so because projects are by definition anticipatory and entail being aware of what we have not yet accomplished. Sartre declares, “I can assume consciousness of myself only as a particular man engaged in this or that enterprise, anticipating this or that success, fearing this or that result, and by means of the ensemble of these anticipations, outlining his whole figure.”25 One’s past is interpreted in relationship to one’s future, to what one lacks, to what one has yet to accomplish. In other words prereflective (self-)consciousness and projects involve an awareness of unaccomplished ends, which are my ends. But this awareness should not be understood as reflective. We move through the world with a prereflective (self-)awareness of that which we lack. These claims are elucidated by Sartre in Being and Nothingness.
We have seen that human reality as for-itself is a lack and that what it lacks is a certain coincidence with itself. Concretely, each particular for-itself (Erlebnis) lacks a certain particular and concrete reality, which if the for-itself were synthetically assimilated with it, would transform the for-itself into itself. It lacks something for something else—as the broken disk of the moon lacks that which would be necessary to complete it and transform it into a full moon. Thus the lacking arises in the process of transcendence and is determined by a return toward the existing in terms of the lacked.26
We are now in a position to elucidate the mode of being of the possible. The possible is the something which the For-itself lacks in order to be itself.... The Possible ... outlines the limits of the non-thetic self-consciousness as a non-thetic consciousness. The non-reflective consciousness (of) thirst is apprehended by means of the glass of water as desirable, without putting the Self in the centripetal position as the end of the desire.27
For Dewey, while there’s no question that habit and the past are fundamentally important, his notion of intelligence as a creative activity is bound up with future possibilities and anticipatory experience. Of course, he is not going to describe consciousness in terms of “nothingness,” as we find in Sartre, but in practice their positions resonate in interesting ways.28 The following passages are from Dewey’s “The Need for a Recovery of Philosophy” and Logic: The Theory of Inquiry.
The preoccupation of experience with things which are coming (are now coming, not just to come) is obvious to anyone whose interest in experience is empirical. Since we live forward; since we live in a world where changes are going on whose issue means our weal or woe; since every act of ours modifies these changes and hence is fraught with promise, or charged with hostile energies—what should experience be but a future implicated in a present! ... Anticipation is therefore more primary than recollection; projection than summoning of the past; the prospective than the retrospective. Given a world like that in which we live, a world in which environing changes are partly favorable and partly callously indifferent, and experience is bound to be prospective in import; for any control attainable by the living creature depends upon what is done to alter the state of things.29 The idea that negation is connected with change, with becoming other or different, is at least as old as Plato. But in Plato change, altering or othering, has a direct ontological status.... But in modern science, correlations or correspondences of change are the chief object of determination. It is no longer possible to treat the relation of the negative proposition to change and alteration as declarative of defective being. On the contrary, the negative proposition as such formulates a change to be effected in existing conditions by operations which the negative proposition sets forth.30
The “trick” to addressing the similarity between Dewey and Sartre is to see that they both assume that experience entails prereflective and reflective relationships to the future. Dewey often emphasizes the moment of reflection and its relationship to problem-solving activity, but this does not undermine the fact that pre- or nonreflective habitual activities can be understood as involving the anticipatory. This is clear at least as far back as Dewey’s analysis of stimulus and response in his famous article “The Reflex Arc Concept in Psychology.”31 Non- or prereflective anticipatory experience is in fact a condition for the possibility of habit functioning in the manner in which Dewey typically describes it. Sartre clearly thinks that projects are situated in the mode of prereflective consciousness, but he also speaks as if we can be aware of our projects when we reflect, especially when we confront dilemmas.
One must be careful not to overplay the similarities. Dewey has a naturalistic and functionalist bent that would surely be problematic for Sartre. But notice in the passages just cited the degree to which Dewey views the future and the anticipatory as fundamental features of human experience, and the existential context in which he sets these claims in the first quotation. The world is one of challenge and adversity, and any organism that is going to flourish in this sort of world requires an orientation toward the future. For Sartre, the orientation to the future is basic to the ontology of consciousness, but he is also attuned to adversity as an inescapable feature of the human condition and of freedom. As Sartre notes, there can be a free for-itself only as engaged in a resisting world. “Outside of this engagement the notions of freedom, of determinism, of necessity lose all meaning.”32 If we stress the nature of practical freedom, Sartre’s and Dewey’s shared sensibilities become apparent. Even though Sartre’s account of how the anticipatory is possible is different from Dewey’s more naturalistic account, their theories of action both depend on a practical orientation toward the future. For both, human beings actively anticipate possibilities, and this is directly linked to Sartre’s and Dewey’s understanding of freedom. This is not only explicit in Sartre but also explicit in Dewey, as the following passage from “The Need for a Recovery of Philosophy” shows.
As a matter of fact, the pragmatic theory of intelligence means that the function of mind is to project new and more complex ends—to free experience from routine and from caprice. Not the use of thought to accomplish purposes already given either in the mechanism of the body or in that of the existing state of society, but the use of intelligence to liberate and liberalize action, is the pragmatic lesson.... [T]he doctrine that intelligence develops within the sphere of action for the sake of possibilities not yet given is the opposite of a doctrine of mechanical efficiency. Intelligence as intelligence is inherently forward-looking; only by ignoring its primary function does it become a mere means for an end already given. The latter is servile, even when the end is labeled moral, religious, or esthetic. But action directed to ends to which the agent has not previously been attached inevitably carries with it a quickened and enlarged spirit. A pragmatic intelligence is a creative intelligence, not a routine mechanic.33
I suggest that we interpret Dewey’s critique of the mechanical as corresponding to basic features of Sartre’s claims regarding the in-itself. One of Sartre’s primary concerns is that deterministic models assume a set of causal connections that make freedom impossible. The mechanical, that which is simply an expression of efficient causality, is by definition the in-itself. The process of questioning, for Sartre, has affinities to Dewey’s understanding of the necessary conditions for resolving a problematic situation through detaching oneself from ingrained habits. Both thinkers dismiss determinism. Here is Sartre from Being and Nothingness.
It is essential therefore that the questioner have the permanent possibility of disassociating himself from the causal series which constitutes being and which can produce only being. If we admitted that the question is determined in the questioner by universal determinism, the question would thereby become unintelligible and even inconceivable. A real cause, in fact, produces a real effect and the caused being is wholly engaged by the cause in positivity; to the extent that its being depends on the cause, it can not have within itself the tiniest germ of nothingness.34
If we bracket the language of being, Sartre can be seen as saying something that Dewey would find quite congenial, that is, if we look merely to the past, creative responses to situations become impossible. And this is for reasons that both Dewey and Sartre would share, namely, that human beings are by definition agents who have projects that continually transform the given. For Dewey, it is best to refer to an awareness of the consequences of possible actions in order to avoid the morass of living in the past. Certainly this makes Dewey more comfortable than the early Sartre with science as a source of transformation. But an interesting question arises here. If science were interpreted in the way that Dewey understands it—as a practice that doesn’t make wide-ranging deterministic claims about the world—would Sartre be less at odds with Dewey’s orientation toward science? One can argue that it is not science per se that disturbs Sartre. What troubles him is the interpretation of the activities of scientists that understands them as discovering efficient causes that deny human freedom.
I had promised to address Dewey’s and Sartre’s views on choice after a discussion of the past and the future, but since questions have been raised about the transformation of the given and determinism, a brief exchange between Dewey and Sartre on action will prove useful. After this discussion, I turn to choice and responsibility in the final section.
Dewey and Sartre can be viewed as theorists of action. In what ways are their approaches similar? Toward the end of “Freedom: The First Condition of Action,” in part 4 of Being and Nothingness, Sartre summarizes the section in eight points. The first two are especially germane to a comparison of Sartre and Dewey on action. First, Sartre discusses psychologists of the nineteenth century, and the position that he outlines bears a marked similarity to those of James and Dewey.
The psychologists of the nineteenth century who pointed out the “motor” structures of drives, of the attention, of perception, etc. were right. But motion itself is an act. Thus we find no given in human reality in the sense that temperament, character, passions, principles of reason would be acquired or innate data existing in the manner of things. The empirical consideration of the human being shows him as an organized unity of conduct patterns or of “behaviors.” To be ambitious, cowardly, or irritable is simply to conduct oneself in this or that matter in this or that circumstance. The Behaviorists were right in considering that the sole positive psychological study ought to be of conduct in strictly defined situations.... Thus human reality does not exist first in order to act later; but for human reality, to be is to act, and to cease to act is to cease to be.35
Sartre is on target. This is an adequate summary of the position that Dewey presents in his Ethics, especially in the chapter on the moral self. For example, Dewey states,
If a man says he is interested in pictures, he asserts that he cares for them; if he does not go near them, if he takes no pains to create opportunities for viewing and studying them, his actions so belie his words that we know his interest is merely nominal. Interest is regard, concern, solicitude, for an object; if it is not manifested in action it is unreal.... Benevolence or cruelty is not something which a man has, as he may have dollars in his pocket-book; it is something which he is; and since his being is active, these qualities are modes of activity, not forces which produce action.36
If Sartre agrees that conduct is as important as Dewey takes it to be, then what is Sartre’s problem with “behaviorism”? Sartre outlines his major disagreement with it in the second point of his summary.
But if human reality is action, this means evidently that its determination to action is itself action. If we reject this principle, and if we admit that human reality can be determined to action by a prior state of the world or of itself, this amounts to putting a given at the beginning of the series. Then these acts disappear as acts in order to give place to a series of movements. Thus the notion of conduct is itself destroyed with Janet and with the Behaviorists. The existence of the act implies its autonomy.37
Dewey would reply that one does not have to assume the either/or position that Sartre defends with regard to the freedom of the act, that is, we do not have to assume that we are either completely autonomous or determined. For Dewey, Sartre’s dualism is an artifact of an outdated set of philosophical problems that leads to unnecessary disputes about the ontology of freedom. Yet he too refuses to accept that freedom is undermined by “causality.” Here is Dewey.
No argument about causation can affect the fact, verified constantly in experience, that we can and do learn, and that the learning is not limited to acquisition of additional information but extends to remaking old tendencies. As far as a person becomes a different self or character he develops different desires and choices. Freedom in the practical sense develops when one is aware of this possibility and takes an interest in converting it into a reality. Potentiality of freedom is a native gift or part of our constitution in that we have capacity for growth and for being actively concerned in the process and the direction it takes. Actual or positive freedom is not a native gift or endowment but is acquired.38
The Sartrean response would be that in spite of Dewey’s invocation of “freedom,” he is still working with a neo-Hegelian model of the self adjusted to suit the language of habit and conduct. Hence, mediation and determinism reign. But this would be to simplify what is in fact a more complex position (on both sides of the equation). For Dewey, the self is not a fixed being-in-itself that changes solely due to forces that impinge on it. There are multiple selves, including old, fixed, and somewhat retrograde selves, and new selves that address new possibilities. Dewey notes that “a self changes its structure and its value according to the kind of object which it desires and seeks; according, that is, to the different kinds of objects in which active interest is taken.”39 Is this not another way of saying that a self can be “defined” by its projects (or that it can become self-determining)? For Dewey, what fosters active interest is not only prior experiences and given habits but an orientation to the world that is open to new possibilities.
At each point there is a distinction between an old, an accomplished self, and a new and moving self, between the static and the dynamic self.... The growing, enlarging, liberated self ... goes forth to meet new demands and occasions, and readapts and remakes itself in the process. It welcomes untried situations. The necessity for choice between the interests of the old and of the forming, moving, self is recurrent. It is found at every stage of civilization and every period of life.... For everywhere there is an opportunity and a need to go beyond what one has been, beyond “himself,” if the self is identified with the body of desires, affections, and habits which has been potent in the past.40
It is unlikely that Dewey’s account of the transformation of the self, or of transcendence, would persuade Sartre that Dewey has overcome treating the self as a bundle of habits, an object of reflection, an in-itself, and this in turn would suggest that Dewey can’t appreciate the fundamental spontaneity of prereflective consciousness. But even in Being and Nothingness Sartre is well aware that what we call character traits, dispositions, are linked to the for-itself in a fashion that is more “intimate” than that of the in-itself of, say, an inkwell. In discussing Leibniz’s treatment of Adam, in which he is attempting to show that Adam does not have an essence, Sartre makes the following comment.
For us, on the contrary, Adam is not defined by an essence since for human reality essence comes after existence. Adam is defined by the choice of his ends; that is, by the upsurge of an ekstatic temporalization which has nothing in common with the logical order. Thus Adam’s contingency expresses the finite choice which he has made of himself. But henceforth what makes his person known to him is the future and not the past; he chooses to learn what he is by means of ends toward which he projects himself—that is, by the totality of his tastes, his likes, his hates, etc. inasmuch as there is a thematic organization and inherent meaning in this totality.41
Notice that Sartre is not denying that one can learn about oneself. To do so, one must look to the ends toward which one projects oneself in the context of one’s original project.42 Insofar as one does, it is possible to relate to oneself as thematically organized, that is, as someone who has certain tastes, likes, hates, and so on. However, these can change depending on one’s orientation to the future. They are not fixed essences. Sartre affirms in Being and Nothingness, as he does in “Existentialism Is a Humanism,” that existence precedes essence. And for Sartre, “My essence is what I have been.”43 But what I have been is subject to reinterpretation depending on changes in my orientation toward the future, the projects that I undertake. How different is Sartre’s position in practice from Dewey’s, which involves the possibility of transforming one’s habits in light of new interests?
Dewey insists that his position embraces free acts, and his insistence is in large measure related to the future directedness of human beings. We are not fixed by the past because we can anticipate multiple courses of action and the consequences of these actions.44 For Dewey, our openness toward alternative courses of action is a way of speaking about choice without the ontological assumptions entailed by Sartre’s description of consciousness as nothing. Dewey’s position is in fact congenial with that of the later Sartre, in which the project remains a central motif, but social conditions are more internalized than is suggested by his treatment of facticity in Being and Nothingness.45 What I am arguing is that even though the language of character that Dewey invokes in his Ethics would be unacceptable to Sartre, in practice there is an affinity between their approaches. And this can be seen in how they discuss the practical implications of choice.
From a Sartrean perspective values are subjective and must be understood in light of the lack that “inhabits” consciousness. As Detmer argues, “The point to be noticed is that what I am calling ‘the subjectivity of values’ is an ontological thesis, that is, a thesis about what exists and the manner in which it exists. Sartre is arguing that values do not exist, or, more precisely, that they owe such existence as they have to human consciousness which bring them into being—they have, in other words, only a ‘subjective’ existence.”46 Interestingly, Detmer goes on to argue that there may be a tension in Sartre’s position, for there are places in which he seems to be claiming that there are objective values. This would place him closer to Dewey’s position in which values, as social values, become part and parcel of one’s funded experience. Dewey thinks of this experience as potentially retrograde, because old values, which we “intuit,” do not help address new and different situations. “There is a permanent limit to the value of even the best of the intuitive appraisals of which we have been speaking. These are dependable in the degree in which conditions and objects of esteem are fairly uniform and recurrent. They do not work with equal sureness in the cases in which the new and unfamiliar enters in. ‘New occasions teach new duties.’ ... Extreme intuitionalism and extreme conservatism often go together.”47
We know that for Sartre choice must be seen as prior to the will—or better, as coeval but ontologically prior to the will48—and prior to reflection, although, as we shall see, in practice reflective consciousness can play a role in our decisions. How, then, does Dewey understand choice? He tells us, “Prior to anything which may be called choice in the sense of deliberate decision come spontaneous selections or preferences.”49 So even if Dewey does not supply the same sort of ontology for understanding these preferences, he recognizes that there are “choices,” preferences, which appear to arise spontaneously, that is, without deliberation. He thinks of these preferences as “organic rather than conscious.”50 We move toward some objects rather than others because of temperament and habit. Another way of stating this is to say that human beings have unrealized interests, for even habits typically involve ends. And once put in these terms, our future directedness can be viewed as a significant factor in our preferences.
Sartre wants to argue that at every moment consciousness is “separated” from its past by “nothing.” Therefore, at each moment we are free; we are free from our past, and we are free in relationship to a future that entails what we lack. Now this is the ontological story. However, when Sartre actually talks about a moral decision in “Existentialism Is a Humanism,” he provides us with the example of his student. What is challenging about the situation, from a Sartrean vantage point, is that the student cannot rely on prior principles or religious beliefs to make his decision. He is presented with alternatives that conflict—stay at home to care for his mother or go to war—and he must make a choice because the alternatives are at odds. The very recognition of the alternatives, of the moral dilemma, appears to require reflection, that is, a positing of oneself as the actor who can take alternative paths. Now framing choice in this manner is actually congenial with Dewey’s position. Dewey assumes that there are preferences, which for our purposes we can relate to the spontaneity of consciousness, but these preferences will not help us when confronted by new situations, specifically, situations in which there is a conflict. Dewey states in his Ethics,
We are so constructed that both by original temperament and by acquired habit we move toward some objects rather than others. Such preference antecedes judgment of comparative values; it is organic rather than conscious. Afterwards there arise situations in which wants compete; we are drawn spontaneously in opposite directions. Incompatible preferences hold each other in check. We hesitate, and then hesitation becomes deliberation: that weighing of values in comparison with each other of which we have already spoken. At last, a preference emerges which is intentional and which is based on consciousness of the values which deliberation has brought into view. We have to make up our minds, when we want two conflicting things, which of them we really want. That is choice. We prefer spontaneously, we choose deliberately, knowingly.51
Sartre does not dismiss deliberation, which is a mode of reflection, in Being and Nothingness. Instead, he argues that one can choose to deliberate in a manner consistent with his ontology.
Actually causes and motives have only the weight which my project—i.e., the free production of the end and of the known act to be realized—confers upon them. When I deliberate, the chips are down. And if I am brought to the point of deliberating, this is simply because it is a part of my original project to realize motives by means of deliberation rather than by some other form of discovery (by passion, for example, or simply by action, which reveals to me the organized ensemble of causes and of ends as my language informs me of my thought). There is therefore a choice of deliberation as a procedure which will make known to me what I project and consequently what I am. And the choice of deliberation is organized with the ensemble motives-causes and end by free spontaneity.52
It may seem that we now have a clear-cut way of bringing Sartre and Dewey together. Both seem to accept the importance of deliberation. Sartre might say to Dewey that he has chosen a project or an original project—for example, to engage life as an educator—that includes deliberation. Dewey’s mistake would not involve a commitment to deliberation but believing that he didn’t need an ontology to describe freedom as the necessary condition for choosing deliberation. But in terms of action, is there a substantial difference between deliberating because of an original project and deliberating in order to address a significant, perhaps lifelong, concern? This doesn’t appear to be a difference that makes a difference.
Unfortunately the situation is more complicated than it might first appear. Sartre’s passage on deliberation occurs in the context of his attempt to show how causes, motives, and the will can be used to undermine the spontaneity of consciousness. We employ them to try to gain control of this spontaneity. By our grasping them through reflection, they appear to supply a capacity for voluntary choice. However, employing them in this fashion in effect turns the for-itself into an in-itself. (The individual seeks to utilize them in order to satisfy the desire to be a for-itself-in-itself simultaneously, that is, God.) Read in this light, the passage is not talking about deliberative choice but a kind of self-revealing that is a quality of deliberation. “And if I am brought to the point of deliberating, this is simply because it is a part of my original project to realize motives by means of deliberation rather than by some other form of discovery.”53 Sartre also states, “The result is that a voluntary deliberation is always a deception. How can I evaluate causes and motives on which I myself confer their value before all deliberation and by the very choice which I make of myself?”54
Sartre’s ontological commitments here are questionable. It is hard to see how one’s original project or projects are going to avoid encountering situations in which reflection on one’s past, perhaps through a consideration of causes and motives, is not a feature of the overcoming of obstacles and “voluntarily” choosing new projects. And interestingly enough, in the very same section of Being and Nothingness as the passages just cited, Sartre notes,
The recovery of former motives—or the rejection or new appreciation of them—is not distinct from the project by which I assign new ends to myself and by which in the light of these ends I apprehend myself as discovering a supporting cause in the world. Past motives, past causes, present motives and causes, future ends, all are organized in an indissoluble unity by the very upsurge of a freedom which is beyond causes, motives, and ends.55
So in spite of insisting on a “freedom which is beyond causes, motives, and ends,” Sartre also acknowledges that seeing former motives “is not distinct from the project by which I assign new ends to myself.” Although one shouldn’t interpret this passage as implying that deliberation initiates new projects for Sartre, it appears that our past, which surfaces in deliberation, does at times become intertwined with new projects.56 These claims suggest that the ontological is intertwined with the empirical in a manner that undermines Sartre’s exorbitant claims for ontological freedom. His ontology is in fact often a philosophical anthropology, but proving this is beyond the scope of this chapter.57 However, if the latter claim about the ontological and the empirical is correct, then it may prove prudent to expend our energies looking to empirical and practical “expressions” of human freedom, which for both Sartre and Dewey entail guiding interests and projects that involve anticipatory experience. And this brings us to the question of responsibility. Sartre asserts in “Existentialism Is a Humanism,”
Thus, the first effect of existentialism is to make every man conscious of what he is, and to make him solely responsible for his own existence. 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.... When we say that man chooses himself, not only do we mean that each of us must choose himself, but also that in choosing himself, he is choosing for all men.... I am therefore responsible for myself and for everyone else, and I am fashioning a certain image of man as I choose him to be. In choosing myself, I choose man.58
Sartre is committed to fashioning a “better” world, and this is not an inconsequential aspect of his philosophy. When we choose, we should choose with regard to the world that we are shaping. If one were to ask him what is more basic, taking responsibility for one’s (past) failings or ridding oneself of one’s failings, in his more purely philosophical moments he might not wish to choose. He might say, ontologically speaking, they are both choices. But they aren’t equal choices in practical terms. In fact, ridding oneself of one’s failings must take priority. Sartre, we assume, is an existentialist, not a Kantian. If he were to emphasize the confessional aspect of responsibility, he would betray his own notion of committed action. The only reason to dwell on what one has done is to stop doing it, that is, to act differently. And acting differently is not only more important in the sense of “making a better world” or fashioning myself in a “better” way. It is more important because it entails at least an indirect acknowledgment of the original failing; whereas the acknowledgment of the failing is in itself no guarantee that change will ensue. One is left wondering how different in practice Sartre’s position is from Dewey’s regarding responsibility. Here is Dewey on the topic of responsibility.
Now the commonest mistake in connection with the idea of responsibility consists in supposing that approval and reprobation have a retrospective instead of prospective bearing. The possibility of a desirable modification of character and the selection of the course of action which will make that possibility a reality is the central fact in responsibility.... A human being is held accountable in order that he may learn; in order that he may learn not theoretically and academically but in such a way as to modify and—to some extent—remake his prior self. The question of whether he might when he acted have acted differently from the way in which he did act is irrelevant. The question is whether he is capable of acting differently next time; the practical importance of effecting changes in human character is what makes responsibility important.59
If Sartre were to focus his efforts on taking individuals to task for not recognizing that their choices are their own, I submit that he would be less of a (committed) existentialist in (Sartre’s own terms) than is Dewey. If Sartre were to get trapped in a rhetoric of responsibility that is not future directed, he would betray the projective character of his own project and the heart of his philosophical project in Being and Nothingness. Although at times he appears to be tempted to “scold” others (or characters in his fiction) for their failings, especially their cowardice, of course he doesn’t simply do this. He is quite clear that we have a responsibility to view our actions in terms of their impact and to see them in light of the larger world. This becomes ever more apparent in his later works, but it is right there in “Existentialism Is a Humanism.”
Sartre clearly endorses maximizing freedom, which means that ontological freedom is inseparable from practical freedom. That the latter is crucial is clear in Being and Nothingness, as well as in “Existentialism Is a Humanism.” And when we talk about practical freedom, responsibility entails giving priority to consequences—moving from transcendence alone to a thoughtful process of deliberation, which requires a consideration of consequences—that is, if you are a pragmatist or an existentialist of a certain stripe. As different as Dewey and Sartre may be—and one could very well write a book on the differences—if the practical orientation of their philosophies doesn’t make them siblings, it at least makes them philosophical cousins, which is also true for Bourdieu and Mead, to whom we now turn.