Hum Stud (2010) 33:191204 DOI 10.

1007/s10746-010-9163-8 RESEARCH PAPER

The Soul: An Existentialist Point of View

Shai Frogel

Published online: 16 October 2010 Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2010

Abstract The debate in relation to the soul suffers nowadays from a great lack of clarity. At least part of this cloudiness stems from a confusion among three different viewpoints that are not always reconcilable or mutually intelligible: the scientic point of view (natural sciences and empirical psychology), the therapeutic point of view (especially psychoanalysis) and the philosophical point of view. The goal of this paper is to blow away a little this cloudiness, and to introduce into the discussion a view that has not yet received its proper place in it: existentialism. The scientic approach investigates the soul as if it were an object in the world, a fact. This approach gives priority to objective observations over subjective ones, and steps in the direction of materialization of the soul (the soul becomes the mind and the mind becomes the brain). Transcendental philosophy and psychological therapies explain the relation between the subject and its objects, and by this reveal the subjective dimension of our reality as the ground not only for our objective knowledge but for our ethical life as well. Existentialism, I suggest, makes a further and important step in this direction by focusing on individualistic aspects of human existence, which science could not know and general theories of the subject do not see. Keywords Consciousness Existentialism Individual Object Ontology Psychoanalysis Soul Subject
Cest un garcon sans importance collective, Cest tout juste un individu e (1938). Sartre quotes Celine in the motto to his novel La Nause I intentionally choose the term soul in order to distinguish my discussion from the philosophy of mind. I believe that the paper justies this choice. S. Frogel (&) Department of Philosophy, Tel-Aviv University, & Kibbutzim College of Education, 69978 Tel-Aviv, Israel e-mail: shaif@post.tau.ac.il

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The debate in relation to the soul suffers nowadays from a great lack of clarity. At least part of this cloudiness stems from a confusion among three different viewpoints that are not always reconcilable or mutually intelligible: the scientic point of view (natural sciences and empirical psychology), the therapeutic point of view (especially psychoanalysis) and the philosophical point of view. The goal of this paper is to blow away a little this cloudiness, and to introduce into the discussion a view that has not yet received its proper place in it: the existentialist point of view. From the scientic point of view, the soul is an object for research as any other phenomenon of nature. As such, it requires a deterministic-empirical explanation. The scientic approach, which draws, understandably, in the direction of materialist thinking, sees in natural sciences not only an appropriate model, but also a more credible and promising key to knowledge concerning the soul. D. M. Armstrong denes well this approach: In this way, a posteriori Realism, Naturalism, and Materialism are seen to rest upon a common intellectual basis. The basis is the view that the best guide we have to the nature of reality is provided by natural science. Naturalism and Materialism, although of course very general theories, then emerge as specications of a posteriori Realism: they are views about the general nature of those properties and relations that particulars actually have (Armstrong 1981: 163). The development of genetics and neurology and the central role that medicinal and physiological doctrines occupy in psychological treatment increase this trend of materialization of the soul. One of the theoretical issues that curb this momentum, seemingly and in limited measure, is the psychophysical problem. For even the greatest believers in the possibility of translating mental states to physical states maintain, in explicit or implicit manners, a dualistic body and soul language. In this language, the soul is part of the human existence that is essentially different from the body: bodily states are observable and meaningless whereas mental states are unobservable and meaningful. Thus, the question of how to explain causality relations between these essentially different states continues to be central to every discussion concerning the soul including those with materialistic orientation. From a philosophical point of view, the psychophysical problem is born and really exists only at the ontological level, not at objective level, and hence it is entirely not within the scope of natural sciences. The stance that there are two essentially different types of entities in the worldbody and soulwhich nevertheless affect each other causally is an ontological claim and not objective one. Hence, one who does not develop his research on the ontological level should not, actually, be disturbed, either theoretically or practically, by this problem, unless a certain dead-end forces him to depart to this level. This is the scientist. It was Immanuel Kant who, by his Copernican Revolution, demonstrated that the status of scientic knowledge is objective rather than ontological, and at the same time introduced into philosophical discussion a concept that would become a key concept in thinking about human soulthe concept of subject.1 Kant draws our
1

The distinction between ontological knowledge and objective knowledge already appears in Descartes Meditations as a fundamental distinction that long exists in philosophy (see: Descartes 1978: 97).

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attention to the fact that our knowledge concerning the world is also a product of our consciousness. The appearance of objects in space, for example, reects, according to this view, an aspect of our consciousness structure, and not the world in itself. This is why geometry, which deals with pure spatial relations, can be such an exact science. It is not because it possesses some special access to the world that other sciences have not yet discovered, but since it does not depend, according to this view, on the world outside our consciousness. Thus, Kant constructs a conceptual world that replaces the ontological body-soul duality with the epistemological subject-object duality. He negates Descartes ontological claim that the ego is a nite substance, and replaces it with the idea of the transcendental Ego, which is, in fact, the idea of the subject: From all this it is evident that rational psychology owes its origin simply to misunderstanding. The unity of consciousness, which underlines the categories, is here mistaken for an intuition of the subject as object, and the category of substance is then applied to it. But this unity is only unity in thought, by which alone no object is given, and to which, therefore, the category of substance, which always presupposes given intuition, cannot be applied. (Kant 1992: B421B422) Kants idea of the transcendental ego expresses the idea that the subject is a constitutive condition of objects of experience (transcendental) and not a substance in itself. That is to say, Kants concept of transcendental Ego (i.e., the subject), just like the concept of object, was introduced as a better conceptualization for explaining the nature of experience and empirical knowledge, and not as an ontological counter view. Kant demarcates the boundaries of science between the subject and the object, and by this he determines the domain of objective knowledge, namely, scientic knowledge. The scientist, according to this conceptualization, does not deal with the thing in itselfnoumenabut rather with the world as it appears in human consciousnessphenomena. Science could be objective only when it limits itself to the objects of experience and does not attempt, like ontology, to reach beyond this sphere to the thing in itself: What our understanding acquires through this concept of a noumenon, is a negative extension; that is to say, understanding is not limited through sensibility; on the contrary, it itself limits sensibility by applying the term noumena to thing in themselves (things not regarded as appearances), But in so doing it at the same time sets limits to itself, recognizing that it cannot know these noumena through any of the categories, and that it must therefore think them only under the title of an unknown something (Kant 1992: B312). What does all this say about the subject? First, and most important to our discussion, a subject is not an object, and could not be an object, since it expresses the conditions by which our consciousness constitutes its objects. Kant reveals these conditions through critical abstraction of human empirical experience. His conclusion is that the forms of intuition (space and time) and understanding (twelve categories) are the conditions of the appearance of empirical objects and hence of objective knowledge. Thus, while objects are the things that appear in

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experience, the subject is the a priori condition for their appearance and hence for objective knowledge. Kant shifts the debate of knowledge from its classical focus in ontology, the world of substances and logical causality, to science, the world of objects and empirical causality.2 In this world, determinism is no longer logical, but rather empirical and it leaves place for the accidental and for the possibility of free will: But if our critique is not in error in teaching that the object is to be taken in a twofold sense, namely as appearance and as a thing in itself; if the deduction of the concepts of understanding is valid, and the principle of causality therefore applies only to things taken in the former sense, namely, insofar as they are objects of experiencethen there is no contradiction in supposing that one and the same will is, in the appearance, that is, in its visible acts, necessarily subject to the law of nature, and so far not free, while yet, as belonging to a thing in itself, it is not subject to that law, and is therefore free (Kant 1992: B: xxviixxviii). The justication of an empirical-causal relation does not pass through abstract speculation, but rather, by experiment and observationsnatural sciences. Induction, the basis of natural sciences, replaces deduction, the basis of ontology. In the realm of empirical knowledge, there is no logical problem in arguing for causal relation between body and soul, since both are objects of experience. If a critical observation or experiment proves a consistent causal relation between a certain bodily state and a certain state of mind, it is legitimate to see them as cause and effect. However, one should be aware that this is an empirical claim without logical necessity, which may hence be refuted in the future. The transition from ontological determinismthe world of entities (substances), to empirical determinismthe world of objectsblunts the sting from the psychophysical problem and transforms it, in many respects, to a virtual one. The new problem is to explain the connection between subject and object on the one hand, and subject and subject on the other; the connection between object and object has already been formulated in terms of empirical determinism. Kant presents the subject (i.e., the transcendental Ego) as playing a constitutive role in the world of empirical objects, but not as an object in itself. Therefore, it is completely baseless, according to this conceptualization, to offer objective equivalents for subjective states.3 Kant himself goes further and develops his view
2

It was Hume who blazed a trail in this respect, indicating that causality is an empiricaland not logicalrelation. Kant, in fact, agrees with Hume, but asserts that causality is one of the necessary forms of experience (category of understanding), and as such is a constitutive condition of objective knowledge. The Copernican Revolution which presents the empirical world as the world of phenomena (a revolution that Hume, of course, knew not) enables this stance. Both Hume and Kant share a metaphysical skepticism in relation to ontological knowledge (of logical validity) and the new position of knowledge as objective knowledge (of empirical validity). It seems that this distinction was not absorbed even in philosophical literature. Thus, for example, Flanagman (2002: 89) refers to materials (e.g., water, gold) as having an objective existence devoid of any perceptive consciousness (subject) and to mental states as objective states featuring subjective qualities. This problematic approach, which does not differentiate the objective from the ontological, paves the way to the wrong belief that states of mind could be converted into states of brain.

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regarding the subject beyond the empirical plane towards the aesthetic plane and the ethical one. He perceives human beings as living and acting simultaneously in the empirical world and in the metaphysical world (the world of ethical ideas). The aesthetic experience, he claims, well illustrates this existential duality of human beings. Thus, the subject is, for Kant, an irreducible and necessary concept for explaining human existence in its three dimensions: knowledge, ethics and aesthetics (see also Frogel 2008). Two important thinkers who develop their original theories out of this conceptual framework of subject and object are Edmund Husserl (phenomenology) and Sigmund Freud (psychoanalysis). Husserls new science investigates the structures of subjective states as prima philosophia. Freud establishes a new science and develops a new practice, at the centre of which stands the ego and its objects. Both Husserls and Freuds explanations of the relation between subject and object stand in opposition to the positivistic sciences of their era. Husserl argues that the rst and apodictic evidence is of the subjective existence and therefore objective knowledge should be understood as established on subjective structures (Husserl 1960: 8, 1821). In The Crisis of European Sciences he presents himself as one who arrives to rehabilitate psychology from its positivistic wrong track (objects without subject), and in a more general manner, to ght the battle of transcendental philosophy, which is, for him, the proper way for explaining the life-world (Lebenswelt) of human beings and their ethical commitment (Husserl 1970: 14, 6870). That is to say, for Husserl this is not only an epistemological controversy but mainly an ethical one. This explains his following declaration in the opening of this book: [m]erely fact-minded sciences make merely fact-minded people (Husserl 1970: 6). By the very act of his meticulous observation of mental life, Freud studies and teaches the way in which consciousness determines and xates its objects. His therapeutic practice is possible only on the assumption that the subject is able to reform his mental objects. Freud sees the relations inside the soul, and particularly between the conscious and the unconscious, as relations of meaning and not of causality. Indeed, he endeavoured to replace the relations of meaning with causal ones in order to cause psychoanalysis to be accepted as an equal member among the sciences; yet, he failed and actually could not succeed, since relations of meaning could not be reduced to relations of causality. Despite Freuds bitterness, it is totally reasonable that a world of science under positivist inuence, namely a science of objects alone, will refuse to accept a theory with such strong component of subject in it. Husserl and Freud, like Kant, believe that it is necessary and possible to present a science of the subject. It is, surely, not a positivist science but science in the old meaning of systematic theory. This science is indispensible, according to Husserl, since it is the subjective structures that constitute our empirical world as well as our ethical world. A science of objects that is not based on the science of the subject (phenomenology) is, therefore, wrong. Freud sees in his science of the subject (psychoanalysis) a new theory that leads to a better practice of psychotherapy. It explains systematically the relations between consciousness and its objects and thus enables to change, by conversation, the patients states of mind. Thus, although they are not positivists, both Husserl and Freud see science as the royal way to the understanding of the human soul.

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As opposed to them, the individualistic perception of the soul, which developed primarily out of existentialistic thinking, negates the possibility of proposing a general and systematic (scientic) description of the soul. If the duality of object and subject has replaced the duality of body and soul for epistemological and ethical reasons, the idea of individuality replaces the idea of the subject for ethicalexistential reasons. From this standpoint, the idea of individualism should be understood as an ethical demand, which recognizes the individualistic existence of each human being and struggles against generalization of human identity. Whereas the positivist approach transforms human existence, consciously and unconsciously, to no more than an object of knowledge and control (a fact in the world), the transcendental approach (psychoanalysis and phenomenology) promotes, by emphasizing the common and normative existence of human beings, the idea of the subject. Keeping in mind of these two rival viewsthe positivist and the transcendentalI would like to discuss a third view that focuses on the individualistic character of human existence, in order to revolt against seeing the soul as a mere fact (an object) or as a member in a virtual kingdom of common end (a subject).

Sartre: Consciousness is Freedom Existentialism transfers the philosophical focus from the general and abstract truth to the existence of the individual. As early as the nineteenth century, it burst forth in Kierkegaards attack on the scientic philosophy of Hegel, which centered round the general subject (Weltgeist), and developed both in philosophy and in literature into a stream of thought that stresses the individuals need to confront with the meaning of her/his existence. This need is perceived by existentialists not only as existential foundation of being a human, but as the origin of knowledge and morality as well. Thus, the abstract unity of the world, which was replaced over time with the unity of the subject, was negated by giving priority to the concrete existence of the individual. Various authors who adopted this viewpoint emphasize each in his own way, both the arbitrariness that lies at the individuals existence and the existential distress born as a result of this recognition. One may nd these ideas, for example, in Camus atheistic philosophy of the absurd, in Kierkegaards theistic existentialism in Fear and Trembling, in the religious enlightenment of Raskolnikov at the end of Dostoyevskys Crime and Punishment, and in the dreadful recognition of Joseph K. before his execution in Kafkas novel The Trial. Sartre, in his most important philosophical book Being and Nothingness, attempts to elaborate this existential stance more systematically. He claims that freedom is the fundamental characteristic of being a human (a human being and not a subject!),4 and accordingly, that the existential state of an individual is determined
4

It is noteworthy that Heidegger is the rst to attempt to disassociate from the concept of subject. For this purpose, he introduces the concept of Dasein as a key concept for comprehending the human being. This is, actually, the fundamental idea that underlies his main book Being and Time (1962).

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by its choices. Human consciousness is presented in his account as the origin of nothingness in reality, which is composed of being and nothingness. This nothingness explains the human existential feeling of emptiness and the human steps taken in order to hide this emptiness. The outset of Sartres philosophy lies in Husserls phenomenology. Sartre adopts Husserls fundamental idea that consciousness cannot become an object of knowledge, since it is a dimension in which objects appear. In other words, every consciousness is that of a transcendent object (and therefore, external to it). From this aspect, consciousness is pure emptiness, for everything appears outside it as the thing that it grasps but that is not it in itself. No concrete content can be attributed to the consciousness, since every concrete content is an object of consciousness, and not consciousness itself. Thus, both in immediate (pre-reective) awareness, in which consciousness grasps an object that is perceived as outside of it, and in reective awareness, in which the gaze of consciousness is directed toward contents of itself, our consciousness perceives its objects and not itself. Sartre summarizes this point well in his essay The Transcendence of the Ego: The transcendental eld, puried of all ecological structure, recovers its former limpidity. In one sense, it is nothing, since all physical, psychophysical and psychical objects, all truths, and all values are outside it, since the me has, for its part, ceased to be part of it. But this nothing is everything because it is the consciousness of all these objects (Sartre 2004: 43). Sartre distinguishes between two types of being: the being of things, which he tre en soi) and a being of consciousness, which he names names being in itself (e tre pour soi).5 Consciousness is total emptiness, in that it is never being for itself (e what it is (the thing that it perceives) and it is what it is not (what is not the perceived thing). Things, as opposed to it, are complete fullness, because a thing is what it is (the sum total of the synthetic organization of its contents), no more and no less.6 The relation between these two types of beingconsciousness and thingsis that consciousness is a medium in which things appear, yet not in their separated existence but as objects of consciousness. This is the world of phenomena, according to Kantian terminology, which is the object of Husserls science, phenomenology. However, Sartre is interested precisely in the attempt of consciousness to transcend beyond the appearance of things as objects, an interest that Kant relates to reason. Consciousness, Sartre claims, can always pass beyond the existent, not toward its being, but toward the meaning of this being (1998: xxxix). In other words, any attempt of the consciousness to go beyond the being of things as objects

tre pour autrui), see: Later, Sartre will add an additional root of human existence: being for others (e 1998: 221302. Sartre asserts in this context that the law of identity is not analytic, but rather a constitutive condition of a specic being, a being-in-itself (the existence of things). It is not analytic since it is not valid in relation to being-for itself, which it is never what it is and it is what it is not (1998: xli). This is an additional point that stresses the departure of this view from the theories of a xed ego with self-identity (I am what I am). See Sartres discussion of sincerity in the chapter on self-deception (1998: 6267).

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does not lead to knowledge of their being in themselves, but rather, to their meaning for the consciousness in which they appear. How do these two types of being coalesce in human experience? Sartre claims that the lesson he derived from Descartes is not to separate two things that appear together in their original appearanceman and worldin order to reconnect them while seeking for an explanation. In other words, analysis does not enable reconstruction of an original synthesis anew. Advocating the original synthesis gives priority to the concrete experience over abstract conceptualization. From this perspective, the existential experience of the individual is the given that should be explained, and it is not a subject for doubt. Therefore, using Kantian terms, the crucial question is: What must a human be and what must the world be in order for this synthesis to be possible? What is the synthesis that we call human existence in the world? In order to answer this question, Sartre claries the very act of posing a question. This act, he claims, is a kind of human intention toward the world, which raises the possibility of different answers. In the case of questions concerning existence, the question opens the possibility of a negative response. Moreover, this possibility serves as a constitutive condition for any possible response: Being is that and outside of that, nothing (1998: 5). Thus, Sartres argument presents nothingness as a basic component of human reality, the origin of which can be only in consciousness. The idea that nothingness is a component that appears in the limits of human expectations does not make human reality merely subjective. Although an objective fact depends on a certain (concrete) synthetic organization of the subject, this organization is insufcient in order to determine an objective fact. The subjective expectation does not dene reality by itself, but rather takes part in its organization. Let us use in this context Sartres example, probably from his daily life: I arrive at and expect to meet Pierre, but I dont see him there. The objective fact that the cafe does not derive from my consciousness alone, yet it does not Pierre is not in the cafe exist without my consciousness (see 1998: 911). Kant highlights the idea that there is no objective fact without a subject in his Copernican Revolution. The knowledge is constructed as systematic and objective, Kant claims, due to the forms of the consciousness (forms of intuition and the categories of understanding). Sartre, a successor of the Kantian line of thought, stresses the status of the objective fact as subject to expectation of the subject. However, as opposed to Kant, Sartre has no interest in establishing methodological foundations for science; his discussion of consciousness arises out of his account of what is to be a human being. In this context, he claims that human reality consists of being and nothingness, while the origin of the latter could only be human consciousness. ) and to In order to be able to claim for negative facts (Pierre is not in the cafe ?), nothingness must be a given. And in order ask questions (Is Pierre in the cafe for nothingness to be a given, there should be a being from which nothingness reaches reality, a being whose nothingness is its ontological attribute. Sartre considers this being as human consciousness, which is always conscious of being that is not itself. By asking a question in relation to the existence of an object, Sartre

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explains, the questioner is detached from being in a double process of negation: he negates the object and places it in a neutral position (between being and nothingness) and negates himself in relation to that object (observing it from outside). Thus, Sartre argues, in posing a question, a certain negative element is introduced into the worldMan presents himself at least in this instance a being who causes Nothingness to arise in the world, inasmuch as he himself is affected with non-being to this end (1998: 2324). Human being, if so, is a being who brings nothingness into the world. Only a being that bears nothingness in itself is able to negate or to suspend part of the world.7 This ability, which things do not have, reveals the being of freedom as a fundamental characteristic of human existence. There is no necessity in human consciousness, for it is not a thing, and nothing that appears in it is actually it. Yet, although this freedom does not exclusively determine objective reality, it enables consciousness to provide different meanings to this reality. This is the meaning of Sartres claim that by transcending the appearance of things as objects, consciousness does not reach things in themselves, but confers meaning to existent.8 Freedom, then, as Plato and Kant have already claimed, exists only on the metaphysical level, which transcends the empirical level. However, while freedom for Plato and Kant is freedom of reason to adhere to its unique objects (forms) and thus to transcend beyond the conditioned existence in the empirical world, Sartre sees freedom rst and foremost as an existential burden with which each individual must cope: The essential consequence of our earlier remarks is that man being condemned to be free carries the weight of the whole world on his shoulders; he is responsible for the world and for himself as a way of being. (1998: 553) This is, in fact, the primary and principal meaning of perceiving a human being as individual: a being that determines the meaning of its existence by its choices. This is not only an ideal of human life, but rstly the meaning of being a human. Consciousness as the origin of nothingness makes this being a being of freedom, even if humans attempt in many cases to deny this existential freedom, as Sartre makes clear in his detailed discussion of self-deception (mauvaise foi; see 1998: 4770).

Freedom and Body ) as internal motion of Aristotle long ago in his On the soul dened the soul (psyche a living natural body:
7

This ability of suspension lies at the foundation of philosophical thought. It can be found as early as in (e the Platonic epoche 9povg 9 ), which was revived by Husserl. It is also the idea behind Kants philosophy of as if (als ob), which was already used by Descartes, who proposed considering the doubtful as if it were fallacious. In the philosophies of Nietzsche and Kierkegaard this ability is linked to moral judgment. That is to say, Sartres claim settles well with the way in which many philosophers perceive human consciousness. Frankl (1967: 120), who imports existentialist ideas to psychotherapy, argues under the title The supra-meaning that Logos is deeper than logic. Logic should be understood in this context as a constitutive element of things, and Logos as a constitutive element of the human being. Frankel emphasizes that Logos is a Greek word which denotes meaning (1967: 98).

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The soul is the cause or source of the living body. The terms cause and source have many senses. However, the soul is the cause of its body alike in all three senses that we explicitly recognize. It is the source of movement, it is the end, and it is the essence of the whole living body (Aristotle 1995: 415b). Although his use of this concept in relation to plants does not suit its common use today, Aristotles denition still has a very important philosophical value. It exposes the conceptual gap that the notion of soul should ll in our thought. For Aristotle, this concept originally serves to explain movements of living bodies that possess internal motion, for body itself is completely passive. In other words, the origin of the body and soul duality lies in Aristotles study of inner activities, which he regards as belonging to living bodies. Because Aristotle identies different kinds of internal motion, he argues for different types of soul. Thus, the soul primarily expresses the inner vitality with which certain natural bodies are endowed. For the same reason, Plato, even before Aristotle, could present, in the Phaedo, an argument for the immortality of the soul, which is based on the idea that the soul is a concept of life that cannot inwardly accept the concept of death without contradiction (Plato 2001: 100b107a). One does not have to believe in the immortality of the soul9 in order to learn from Platos dialogue that the preliminary role of the concept of soul is to express the liveliness of a living body. Sartre claims that the unique internal motion of human soul is freedom. Therefore, he sees in freedom the key concept for understanding human soul. Any mental state, according to his view, should be comprehended as the result of an existential choice, the implications of which could be physiological and behavioral as well. Surely, not every physiological state or even human behavior originates from existential choices, but when a human state is dened psychologically (i.e., when the explanation is organized in psychological terms) it should be explained in terms of freedom.10 Therefore, a real change in a mental state may occur solely by changing the attitude of the consciousness toward its objects. That is to say, a real change in ones soul cannot occur by replacing the contents of ones consciousness, but only through transferring entirely its attitude toward its objects.11 This idea is as old as Platos philosophy and it lies at the foundation of psychoanalytical treatment today. Yet, while the Platonic view, as well as the psychoanalytic view, sends us to seek for hidden knowledge, Sartre does not assume such knowledge at all. According to his view, the transformation in neither from the empirical world to the world of ideas, as in the Platonic view, nor is it from false consciousness to unconscious complex, as in the Freudian view, but rather from denying human existential freedom to a recognition in this freedom, no more and no less. This recognition, according to Sartre, enables one to be aware of the fact that her/his existential situation is a result of her/his existential freedom and not of her/his
9

Socrates himself, toward the end of the dialogue, refers in an ironical manner to his own proofs concerning the immorality of the soul (Plato 2001: 114d).

10 Depression, for example, is a psychological concept, and therefore, any use of this concept assumes the activity of consciousness as its foundation. This means that it is impossible to consider depression in materialistic terms alone. 11

This idea echoes Platos psychological analysis in Cave Fable (Plato 2000: VII: 518c).

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destiny. Sartres discussion of existential psychoanalysis can throws light on this point.

Existentialist Psychoanalysis Toward the conclusion of Being and Nothingness, Sartre completes his philosophical discussion concerning the human being in an attempt to treat his possible contribution to psychological therapy in its psychoanalytical form. His position is that psychology of the individual fails when the abstract is perceived as prior to the concrete. This perception is typical to every psychological theory that refers to the individual solely as concrete realization of an abstract concept. The abstract concept of the subject (essence) precedes in these theories every concrete human being (existence), thus ignoring, according to Sartre, the concrete spontaneity (freedom) of each individual. Therefore, a psychotherapy based on such a conception never enables individuality, but rather judges each individual in accordance with its abstract concepts and norms.12 For Sartre, freedom renders individual existence a very concrete existence. Since freedom is the being of this being (human being), the existential choices of each individual determine the concrete totality that is this human being (and not other). Sartre, if so, reveals human being (human being and not the subject!) in his concrete existence as freedom, a being whose choices are expressed in each facet of his/her being. Hence, the purpose of existentialist psychoanalysis is to confront the individual with its existential choices. According to Sartre, the existentialist view and the psychoanalytical view share a number of fundamental assumptions: First, mental life is established by relations of meaning and not by relations of causality. Second, it is the individuals history and not an innate character that determines the individuals mode of existence (that is, the libido is not born along with its objects; a human is nothing before it realizes its freedom). Third, human existence is always in the world and there is no such thing as pure consciousness. Therefore, psychological investigation, according to both psychoanalysis and existentialist psychoanalysis, searches for a fundamental axis of ones psychology in ones own concrete existence (original complex or original choices). Despite the similarity between psychoanalysis and existentialist psychoanalysis, Sartre enumerates several prominent differences between the two. Psychoanalysis has a determined stance concerning the fundamental element of the human soul. The libido, which is a sort of psychobiological element, serving as an empirical hypothesis, should be the nal explanation of the individual soul, although the individual cannot directly perceive it. Existentialism seeks for a concrete choice that the individual can intuitively perceive. One can nd here the philosophical
12 Kristina Klockars claims that Sartre exchanges the idea of the theory concerning human nature with ontology of human existence, in order to propose a more proper viewpoint in relation to the possibilities of existence of the individual (Klockars 1998: 61). This point stresses the return of existentialist philosophy to ontology, although contrarily to classical ontology, it turns its focus to the existence of the individual within the world, and not to the existence of the world in and of itself.

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preference of immediate and clear consciousness over scientic preference of methods of conjecture and empirical evidences. Existentialism, Sartre asserts, is more consistent from this aspect with the common starting point that it shares with psychoanalysis: preferring the concrete to the abstract. The libido is an abstract hypothesis that serves as a tool of interpretation, but unlike the existential choice, it does not appear in a direct and concrete manner in the individuals consciousness. Existentialism rejects the assumption that the environment necessarily inuences human existence. The environment affects ones existence only insofar as one transforms it into a human situation. Transforming an environment into a human situation passes through granting meaning to things, which is a result of human freedom (there is no necessary meaning to given events). This freedom also rejects the possibility of general interpretation by symbolic conicts, since the human freedom enables new and different interpretations.13 Therefore, the existentialist psychoanalyst should be attentive to the individuals existential choices since they organize the individuals mental life and can be changed at any given moment. This is the reason why theories play a less important role in existentialist practice than in traditional psychoanalysis. It is true that both existentialism and psychoanalysis explain their practice in terms of experience rather than theoretical knowledge; yet existentialism is more radical in this line of thought, since it places in its center human intuition and not psychological knowledge. The transition from the concept of subject to the concept of individual expresses a revolt against the traditional tendency to relate the same meaning of life to all human beings. From this perspective, it is wrong to consider ones existence by a well-dened psychological theory. Paraphrasing Sartres claim, this metaphysical stance expresses the priority of existence over essence, which means, as we have seen, preferring the concrete existence of the individual to abstract models of the subject. The trailblazers of this approach are Nietzsche and Kierkegaard, who categorically negated the possibility of developing this approach into a scientic method. Sartre, in contrast to them, denitely explores in the direction of systematic theory. This enables him to create such a close contact with psychoanalysis, which the philosophies of Nietzsche and Kierkegaard do not allow. Nietzsche and Kierkegaard are possibly right. Perhaps the medium that suits existentialism is literary expression, which always considers the individual, rather than systematic philosophy or psychology, the strength of which lies in general conceptualizations. But the attempt to propose a bridge from philosophical intuitions to systematic psychology could be fruitful, even if it is doomed to collapse in the nal analysis. It is at least evidence of the struggle for individuality which is shredded by the over objectivization and over subjectivization of
13 This point is vital also for the controversy of existentialism with structuralism and post-structuralism. Existentialism, as it is asserted in this article, was the rst to oppose the perception of the human as a subject (as early as Kierkegaards criticism against Hegels philosophy), and Sartre continues to develop this line of thought. Therefore, Nik Farrell Fox is able to explain why criticisms emanating from structuralism and post-structuralism concerning Sartres conception of the subject are within the realm of bursting through an open door (Fox 2003: 2542). Furthermore, these approaches present humans as objects, if only in the semiotic eld, and by this show a lack of awareness to the intrinsic conceptual relation between the concept of object and the concept of subject (a sort of pseudo-positivism).

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contemporary science and psychology. Sartres words regarding self-deception, which emphasize the unique existence of the individual, t this context: On all sides I escape being and yetI am (1998: 60). The lack of objective or subjective general modes of existence does not make human existence less real, but rather more genuine, yet solely in the private experience of each individual. This is the weak point of existentialism, from a scientic point of view, but herein lays the existential and ethical power of this philosophy. It can play an important role in emphasizing the very individualistic existence of each human being, and by this improving our ethical life as well as our therapeutic practices. By recognizing that scientic materialism and determinism are not ontological but rather empirical (in fact methodological), as Kant showed us, one can make room for more accurate and meaningful discussion concerning human soul. It is indeed empirical science that provides us with the most reliable objective knowledge concerning our reality, yet human reality is not only objective. Hence, although empirical sciences can help us cope with psychological issues, it is a theoretical and ethical mistake to reduce mental life to this knowledge alone. Transcendental philosophy (including phenomenology) and psychology (especially psychoanalysis) help us to avoid this mistake by teaching us that objects are of subject and not entities in themselves. These theories explain the relation between the subject and its objects, and by this reveal the subjective dimension of our reality as the ground not only for our objective knowledge but for our ethical life as well. Yet, just as (positivist) objective approaches to human life, as Husserl warns us, turn it to a mere fact with no ethical value, theories of the subject, existentialism warns us, might reduce human life to general concepts and ignore their particular aspects. Existentialism helps us not to ignore these aspects of human existent by emphasizing the singularity of each individual. This singularity should be taken into account, argue the existentialists, in every consideration to human beings. In fact, this singularity, according to this view, is the only reality one knows and the rest, as Camus claims, is only construction (Camus 1955: 19).

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