Sartre on Freedom and Education

DAVID DETMER

s the one hundredth anniversary of Sartres birth approaches, it is tting to consider some of the ways in which his thought remains relevant to our present concerns and to those of the foreseeable future. In this age of terrorism, most people would perhaps think rst of Sartres writings on political violence. Analytical philosophers, on the other hand, might be more inclined to cite Sartres early works on such hot topics as the emotions and the imagination, not to mention consciousness more generally. And historians of philosophy, mindful of the cyclical nature of philosophical fashions and enthusiasms, might well point to a developing resurgence of interest in phenomenology, and to Sartres distinctive contributions to that philosophical movement. Indeed, given the astonishing range of Sartres writings, on everything from art to biography to history to psychology to literary criticism, it is impossible in one short essay to identify every contribution of enduring (or perhaps even permanent) value. Accordingly, I will focus here on just two topics: freedom and education.

Sartre on Freedom
As a philosopher, Sartre is recognized, above all else, as a defender of freedom. His contribution in this area is somewhat obscured, however, by its embeddedness in a complex philosophical system. I will attempt here to clarify his ideas in such a way as to make them useful to those who are not committed to Sartres entire philosophical vision. I will do so, rst, by offering an interpretation of Sartres general strategy in arguing against determinism, and then by giving a brief sketch of Sartres positive account of freedom, underscoring what I take to be its strengths and briey defending it against objections. Lastly, in an effort to hint at some of the ways in which Sartres account stands in need of revision, I will indicate one area in which I nd Sartres theory of
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freedom (or at least one of his own applications of that theory) to be defective: his understanding of mental illness.

Against Determinism Sartre rarely offers proofs of the falsity of determinism,1 preferring instead to endorse Descartes declaration that freedom is known without proof and merely by our experience of it.2 Sartre points out, furthermore, that whereas determinism is not given as a reective intuition, and so even deterministic psychologists do not claim to found their thesis on the pure givens of introspection, those same determinists admit the existence of an immediate consciousness of freedom.3 Accordingly, determinists can defend their doctrine only by presenting it as a satisfying hypothesis, the value of which comes from the fact that it accounts for the factsor as a necessary postulate for establishing all psychology.4 Sartres insights on freedom, by contrast, are usually presented as phenomenological descriptions. As such, they are perhaps best understood not as strict refutations of determinism, but rather as a cumulative argument that determinism should be rejected (and freedom afrmed) on grounds such as parsimony, plausibility, and theoretical utility (not to mention the more straightforward and uncontroversial consideration of consistency with the data of introspective experience). Sartres descriptions also seem designed to offer an alternative, non-deterministic account of those facts (e.g., the predictability of much of human behavior and the obvious and extensive social, cultural, genetic, and more generally biological inuences on that behavior), which determinists typically point to in defending their doctrine. Lets look at a few details, beginning with the issue of parsimony. Many who accept the commonsense view that determinism holds sway in the purely physicalistic realm of non-conscious bodies regard it as awkward and messy in the extreme to postulate that there are other eventsnamely, human actionsthat are either uncaused or else caused in some radically different sense (that of agent-causality), about which little is understood. It seems so much neater and simpler to suppose that all events, including human actions, arise from the same kind of causes. On the other hand, the more that human actions can be shown to differ from other events, and the more one, accordingly, has to strain to make both of them t into one explanatory framework, the less it will seem an affront to parsimony to abandon the project and propose instead a non-deterministic account of human actions. Sartres strategy, I am suggesting, is to clarify and to vivify, by means of careful but highly dramatic phenomenological descriptions, the extent and signicance of the differences between actions and (other) events. As a rst approach to confronting these differences, consider the following contrast. On the one hand, lets imagine that a specic amount of force is being applied to an object (a book on a table, for instance) of a denite weight, pushing it due east, while a different, specic amount of force is being simultaneously applied to it, pushing it due north. Under these circumstances, it is possible to predict with perfect accuracy the precise northeasterly direction in

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which the book will move. By contrast, suppose that I am trying to decide what to do with my evening tonight, and that I am greatly attracted to two (and only these two) possibilities, one of which would require me to travel due east, and the other of which would necessitate my traveling due north. It is highly unlikely that I, having been pulled in both directions, will compromise by veering off in a northeasterly direction, thus missing out on both attractive possibilities. Rather, I will simply have to decide between them, utterly rejecting one and completely choosing the other. One of the many features that distinguish my action in this case from the movements of the vectorally pushed bookits intimate connection with negationis particularly signicant for Sartre. Whereas the pushed books movements are completely determined by the positive forces impinging on it (and this is the reason those movements are so predictable), my decision involves rejectingnegating, putting out of playone factor pushing or pulling me in one direction. Sartre repeatedly stresses that the introduction of negativity is characteristic of all genuine actions, but not of other kinds of events.5 This introduction of negativity takes two generic forms. One is that no emotion, psychic state, act, role, resolution, or anything of that sort can determine my action, since I, as a consciousness of that resolution (for example), am not that resolution. I differ from it temporally, to mention just one of the ways I am not it. I am not now my past resolution (to give up gambling, in Sartres example),6 but rather am conscious of it; and I am not yet the future consciousness whom I am counting on to carry out my present resolution. The second and perhaps even more fundamental way in which negativity is introduced in any genuine action is this. To act, in general, is to reject what is and to aim, instead, at a future that currently is not. To be sure, none of this disproves determinism. It could be that actions, no less than other events, are the necessary consequents of causal antecedents. However, given the differences that Sartre so vividly calls to our attention between the two categories, to assume this would seem to favor the more complicated, cumbersome, and counter-intuitive accountnot just in terms of introspective evidence, but also in terms of some of our other basic, experientially grounded beliefs, such as those concerning moral responsibilityover the simpler and more intuitive understanding. If this is what Sartre is attempting to show, then his entire ontology must be understood, in part, as an argument against determinism.7

Freedom The germ of Sartres own distinctive view of freedom is already contained in the preceding discussion of the connection between freedom and negativity. Sartres basic insight is that consciousness itself is, in its essence, absolutely free, for the simple reason that to be conscious of any would-be determining force is already not to be that force, and indeed to be separate from it. Similarly, while the specic facticities confronting me at any given time may be well out of my control, it is up to me to decide which of them I will focus on, which I will relegate to the background, which I will accept, which I will attempt to eliminate, which I will employ as aids to assist me in the undertaking of some project, which, in virtue of the project that I have chosen, will be revealed as

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obstacles to me, which I will regard only in terms of their positive aspects, which I will color with insufciency by regarding them as not some alternative state that I constitute through an act of imagination, and so forth. In Sartres view, while it may be largely beyond my control that I am paid X dollars a week, I can choose to regard this simply as a positive fact, or, contrasting it with a more just state of affairs that currently is not, struggle to improve my situation.8 This is freedom, and it is to be found in all circumstances. I nd this view of freedom to be distinctly superior to earlier, non-deterministic notions, which tend to claim that freedom can be found in some human actions but not others. Consider, for example, Aristotle. While holding that those who transport goods across the sea to sell them generally do so freely, he hesitates to attribute freedom to some of the actions that such individuals might engage in, such as throwing their cargo overboard during a storm in an effort to keep their boat from sinking.9 His reasoning is that the sailors certainly do not want to throw away their cargo. They take this action unwillingly and only when forced to do so by their dire circumstances. While Sartre, to my knowledge, does not address Aristotles reasoning on this point, I think it is clear what he would say. He would point out that the sailors action of throwing away their cargo has all the earmarks of a free action. They nd themselves in a certain situation, assess their options, and attempt to negate their present plight (in which they face death by drowning) and to bring about a future state of affairs that is not yet (in which they would be safe again). As for the sailors not wanting to throw away their cargo, Sartre would likely point out that desires make little sense in a vacuum, but rather require a context for their intelligibility. The sailors more usual activity of selling their cargo after carrying it across the sea, which Aristotle nds to be unproblematically voluntary, is probably not something that they have a burning desire to do for its own sake. Rather, they nd themselves in a certain situation, that of having to work for a living, having certain talents, interests, and opportunities, etc., in terms of which engaging in such behavior might indeed be their chosen option. But if they were to be in a different situationsay, if they were suddenly to inherit fortunes of great magnitudeit is quite possible that they would no longer want to sail across the sea and sell their goods. Thus, it seems best to regard both the normal selling and the unusual dumping of cargo equally as free acts (at least in one sense), and to look for some other way to mark the fact that in one case the range of options seems narrower and poorer than in the other. This brings me to perhaps the most widespread criticism of Sartres notion of absolute freedomthat it is insensitive to distinctions of the sort just noted.10 But Sartre does not conceive of freedom univocally. In addition to absolute freedom, which he also terms ontological or metaphysical freedom, or freedom of choice, he also discusses freedom of obtaining, or practical freedom, a freedom that is present in varying degrees in varying circumstances, depending on the range and quality (both subjective and objective) of the options open to me, and on the degree to which I have the actual ability and available means to carry out my chosen option successfully.11 Thus, when critics scold Sartre for maintaining, for example, that a slave in chains

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is as free as his master, they overlook the fact that Sartre holds this to be true (and defensibly so, in my opinion) in one sense of the term, but not in another. Indeed, in Sartres view, it is because the slave is free ontologically that it is morally urgent to liberate him practically.12

Mental Illness Sartre does go astray, however, in his remarks on mental illness, as when he declares that mental illness [is] the way out that the free organism, in its total unity, invents in order to be able to live through an intolerable situation.13 I think there are at least two reasons to reject Sartres view. First, it seems to me highly implausible that anyone would freely choose or invent schizophrenia, paranoia, or manic depression, any more than they would choose cancer, leukemia, or Alzheimers disease. These illnesses tend to lead to a miserable existence. It isnt fun to hear menacing voices that arent there, or to feel that everyone is plotting against you, or to be severely depressed. Secondly, the evidence is now overwhelming that schizophrenia and manic depression are diseases of the brain, just as multiple sclerosis, Parkinsons disease, and Alzheimers disease are.14 (In Sartres defense, it should be pointed out that the evidence for this became conclusive only after his death, in the early 1980s, with the availability of brain-imaging techniques and other developments in neuroscience.) What has gone wrong? Here I think that Sartre, like so many of his critics, has conated ontological freedom with practical freedom, and perhaps both with the facticity against the background of which freedom operates. You choose how to deal with leukemia, once you have it (ontological freedom). You dont choose the leukemia itself (facticity). And having leukemia tends to narrow dramatically the range of choices open to you, and to diminish greatly your chances of successfully completing many worthwhile projects (practical freedom). A similar analysis, I would suggest, holds for mental illnesses, with the tragic difference that ones practical freedom is even more radically diminished, since these diseases greatly impair ones ability to assess accurately the facticities that one confronts. A consideration of mental illness also underscores the need to distinguish between the freedom of consciousness, on the one hand, and the freedom of a person (a relatively stable unity, responding coherently to its environment), on the other. Indeed, Sartres works, going all the way back to The Transcendence of the Ego, provide plentiful resources for constructing such a distinction. I will refrain from attempting to do so on this occasion, however, preferring, in good Sartrean fashion, to promise to do so in a future work.

Sartre on Education
Id like to turn, instead, to Sartres contributions on the subject of education, for these, in radical contrast to his ideas on freedom, are rarely recognized or acknowledged. While Sartre has written relatively little directly on education, I nd his philosophy to be rich in educational implications. In the remainder

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of this essay I propose to sketch, all too briey, a few of these implications, centering the discussion on a single incident from my own past experience as a graduate student in philosophy. In the early 1980s I took a course in symbolic logic at Northwestern University. The course was offered for graduate students and for advanced undergraduates. One day, the professor distributed to the class a handout featuring, on the left, a list of logical terms, and, on the right, a list of examples or illustrations corresponding to the logical terms on the left. This handout was intended to serve as a study guide for an upcoming exam. In glancing at the handout, I noticed an error. As an example of an inconsistent set with no inconsistent members, the professor had listed {p, p}. Noting the space preceding the second p, I conjectured that the professor had, in typing the handout, initially omitted the tilde (~), indicating negation, deliberately, as his typewriter (computers were not yet in common use) might not have been capable of making that sign. His error, then, would have been that he had failed to remember to go back to write in the tilde by hand. Upon forming this conjecture to myself, I was just about to raise my hand to call the mistake to the professors attention, when he began his lecture. I then gave my attention to the lecture, forgot all about the handout, which I subsequently ignored in preparing for the exam, and thus failed ever to inform him of his error. I did recall the error, too late for it to benet anyone else, when I received my copy of the exam and noted that one of the questions called on me simply to give an example of an inconsistent set with no inconsistent members. I made up an example of my own. A week or so later, when the professor returned the graded exams, he had to spend a good deal of time discussing the embarrassingboth for him and for the classfact that most of the students had, on their exams, made the idiotic claim that {p, p} is an example of an inconsistent set with no inconsistent members. It seems to me that this incident encapsulates a good deal of what is wrong with contemporary education. But what, specically, has gone wrong here? And what can be done about it? I would suggest that several aspects of Sartres philosophy are helpful in answering these questions, as I hope to show by discussing a few of these aspects in turn.

Subjectivity and Objectivity Part of the problem is that many, perhaps most, students, and a good many (though fewer) of their teachers (not to mention the authors of their textbooks), operate within the framework of a crude subjective-objective dichotomy that encourages passivity and inhibits thought. According to this widespread belief system, any question must either be objective (in which case there is just one answer to it, which has somehow been veried or proved, and about which there is no signicant controversy) or subjective (in which case either there really is no correct answer, or else all proposed answers are equally true, on the grounds that truth is relative to the feelings, tastes, opinions, or desires of individuals or cultures). Notice that if a given question is placed on either horn of this subjective/objective dilemma, there is little reason to investigate

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it. If, on the one hand, it is seen as a subjective question, then it follows that the opinion with which the student begins the study must have as much truth as any other opinion, so there is no possibility of nding, and thus no point in seeking, an opinion that might be closer to the truth. If, on the other hand, it is seen as an objective question, it follows that there is a single correct answer, acknowledged as such without signicant dissent. Hence, the student will, in all likelihood, passively wait to be told what it is, just as he or she presumably would have previously been told that 2 + 2 = 4 and that the earth is not at. It seems likely that this belief system, and its corresponding attitudes, gives us a partial explanation of the behavior of the students in the incident described above. In construing logic as objective, in the sense just explained, the students may have seen the course materials as calling for nothing but memorization on their part, and certainly nothing like active thinking, verifying, questioning, applying, and the like. Thus, when presented, by a presumed authority, with the obviously false, indeed ludicrously nonsensical, claim that {p, p} is inconsistent, they memorized it and repeated it without question. I nd Sartre to be quite helpful at this point, since so much of his philosophical project is concerned with undermining this simplistic subjective-objective dichotomy. In particular, as against naive realists and logical positivists, Sartre is everywhere concerned to emphasize the importance of freedom and of subjectivity, even in connection with such seemingly objective domains as mathematics and the physical sciences, without, in so doing, ever lapsing into the crude, facile sort of relativism or subjectivism described above. For example, consider these remarks of Sartres, written in the context of a discussion of the understanding of arithmetic:
As Heidegger has said, nobody can die for me. But Descartes had said earlier that nobody can understand for me. In the end, we must say yes or no and decide alone, for the entire universe, on what is true. This adherence is a metaphysical and absolute act. Commitment is not relative. But just as Kants moral man acts as a legislator for the community of ends, Descartes, as a scientist, decides as to the laws of the world. For this yes, which must nally be uttered in order for the reign of the true to come into being, requires the commitment of an innite power that is given in its entirety all at once. And mans yes is no different from Gods.15

It must be added at once that Sartre is not here defending the absurd thesis that the universe is innitely malleable to our will, so that we can render anything and everything true simply by at. Rather, his claim is that truth can emerge only against the background of certain interrogative acts of consciousness,16 that the issue of which truths emerge is partially determined by the focusing acts of consciousness, and that we are responsible for deciding, on the basis of the relevant evidence, what is true, a task at which it is entirely possible for us to fail miserably.17 In light of these Sartrean ideas, it seems to me that at least three specic implications for educational practice immediately suggest themselves. First, there is a need to address head-on the epistemological issues lurking unseen in the background of all teaching and learning, which means, in the present context, that the reductive,

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usually tacitly operating, subjective-objective dichotomy we have been discussing needs to be brought into the foreground and challenged. I do not have in mind a program of dogmatic indoctrination, but rather an open discussion of some of the relevant issues and an introduction of some alternatives. I have found the inclusion of Sartres ideas to be especially helpful in pursuing this goal.18 Secondly, as teachers we should be careful not to reinforce, especially through our assessment methods, the idea that education is primarily a matter of passively memorizing the ideas of others. Rather, our challenge should be to help our students achieve a genuine understandingto encourage them to respond, critically and creatively, to the ideas of others and, ultimately, to develop their own ideas.19 Finally, we should not hesitate to include in our teaching a discussion of the moral and political implications, not only of the subject matter at hand, but also of learning and of thinking in general. However, in order to clarify the reasons for this, let us consider some other aspects of Sartres philosophy.

Responsibility An additional criticism that Sartre would make of the subjective-objective dichotomy we have been discussing is that both horns of the dilemma provide a convenient means by which we might deny either our freedom or our responsibility (or both). Thus, to consider a question to be objective, in the reductive, non-Sartrean manner described above, is to deny that it makes any connection with my freedom or that I am in any way responsible for it. The result is that I believe what is true only if what I passively memorize and accept happens to be true. But what if it is, instead, not only false but pernicious? Indeed, would not, say, a Nazi teacher favor such a docile student over an active, questioning, critical student, who would overtly take responsibility for testing and evaluating an idea before accepting it? In any case, Sartre would emphasize that there is no escape from responsibility. To choose to believe something merely because someone in authority has instructed you to do so, or perhaps additionally because that authority wields power over you in the form of grades, is still to choose so to believe. To follow orders is to choose to follow orders. Thus, since there is no escaping the responsibility for ones beliefs, the more coherent, prudent, and ethical path would seem to be that of actively engaging oneself with the verication and evaluation of ideas. I believe it is worthwhile to pursue this line of thought directly with students. On the other hand, regarding an issue as a subjective one, in the manner we have been considering, certainly does connect the question to my freedom, but at the risk of alienating me from my responsibility. Indeed, it relieves me of the obligation to determine whether or not my belief is well founded. Thus, I need not worry that my beliefs might be (really) unjust, and thus that I might be obligated to change them, as well as my conduct that is based upon them. To be sure, I would recognize that you might consider my belief and conduct to be unjustbut that would merely be your opinion. Thus does subjectivism drain from the world a sense of responsibility and of urgency. Indeed, this is the principal cause of its attractiveness, as Sartre reminds us:

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The word opinion makes us stop and think. It is the word a hostess uses to bring to an end a discussion that threatens to become acrimonious. It suggests that all points of view are equal; it reassures us, for it gives an inoffensive appearance to ideas by reducing them to the level of tastes. All tastes are natural; all opinions are permitted. Tastes, colors, and opinions are not open to discussion20 I am reminded of the bourgeois salons where the hostess knows how to avoid quarrels because she has the art of reducing objective value judgments (that play is bad, that political operation is blameworthy) to purely subjective opinions (I dont like that play, etc.). If it is taken for granted that you are merely depicting yourself in condemning police repression of a miners strike, you will not be disturbing anyone.21

Similarly, I nd it quite helpful to discuss with students the connections between knowledge and ignorance, on the one hand, and our moral responsibilities, on the other. Once again, Sartre has much to contribute to this conversation:
The will to ignore is the refusal to face our responsibilities. Since indeed, Being appears, in principle, as that for which we have to assume responsibility without having wanted it, the For-itself can project the veiling of Being in order not to be obliged to assume it. As a bourgeois I want to ignore the proletariats condition in order to ignore my responsibility for it. As a worker, I may want to ignore this condition because I am in solidarity with it and its unveiling obliges me to take sides. I am responsible for everything to myself and to everyone, and ignorance aims to limit my responsibility in the world. Ignoring = denial of responsibilities.22

This connection between knowledge and our responsibility to take sides and to act brings out yet another reason why we should not want to behave, and should not encourage our students to behave, like those I described above in connection with the {p, p} incident: even when the information that we are asked passively to accept turns out to be correct, still the project of putting that information to use in the world requires the full use of ones critical and creative powers. This becomes all the more apparent when we reect on the fact that most real-world problems are multi-disciplinary in character. Thus, even if one were to accept passively some true bit of scientic information that would be relevant to, say, environmental concerns, one would still, if committed to the responsible translation of knowledge into action, need to expend plenty of intellectual effort in coordinating that information with all of the other information (economic and political, for example) necessary to render that action effective. This point also suggests that any approach to education that would take seriously the responsibilities that correspond to the genuine pursuit of knowledge would be interdisciplinary in character, and would resist the increasing drift toward narrow specialization that so much characterizes contemporary education.

Authenticity While Sartre tends for the most part to discuss authenticity in connection with moral and political responsibility, he also frequently addresses it from a more

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personal, individualistic, and psychological standpoint.23 My students always nd this aspect of Sartres thought interesting and challenging, and are equally engaged by an application of these ideas to education. Granting that there is a tremendous temptation to drift along with the crowd, thinking and doing as everyone else does, when students are explicitly asked to evaluate such a method of conducting their lives, I nd that most will, without prompting, condemn it in the harshest terms as shallow and contemptiblea life unt for a human being. It is then easy to show that a passive, conformist, path-of-leastresistance approach to learning ts this inauthentic pattern. The realization that this is so, I nd, motivates students to diminish their tendency to lapse into such an attitude toward their studies.

Intellectual Content Finally, Sartre insists, contrary to some contemporary educational theorists, that the content of teachingin fact, he discusses writing, but I believe the same point would apply to teachingis of paramount importance. For example, consider the following passage from Sartres lecture, The Responsibility of the Writer:
If a writer has chosen to be silent on one aspect of the world, we have the right to ask him: why have you spoken of this rather than that? And since you speak in order to make a change, since there is no other way you can speak, why do you want to change this rather than that? Why do you want to alter the way in which postage stamps are made rather than the way in which Jews are treated in an antisemitic country? And the other way around. He must therefore always answer the following questions: What do you want to change? Why this rather than that?24

I will not at present address all of the implications of this highly suggestive passage, though some of them have already been hinted at in the section titled Responsibility above. Instead, I will content myself with making just two observations concerning ways in which our choice of contents in teaching can enable us to live up to not only our moral and political responsibilities, but also our educational responsibilities to our students. Specically, in keeping with the unifying theme of this discussion, I want to suggest two ways in which we can, by means of the content of our teaching, help our students overcome the {p, p} phenomenon. First, in addition to assisting our students in their preparation to t into existing social, political, and economic structures, as so much of our educational system is currently geared toward doing, we, perhaps especially those of us who teach philosophy, need also to encourage our students to think about how these structures might be signicantly changed for the better. The political benets of such an educational approach are obvious, and are well captured by Hazel Barness metaphor: A willingness to rethink all of our aims and to throw the whole system into question will prevent our painting the walls when we ought to be getting rid of the termites and strengthening the foundations.25 But such teaching should also have the effect of encouraging

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active, critical, and creative thinking on the part of the students, since there is no conventional wisdom on such matters waiting to be passively memorized, and since any serious attempt at such utopian thinking is bound to lead students to make interdisciplinary connections between the diverse fragments of their learning. Secondly, there is a need to counter the deadening falsehoods and halftruths that constitute so much of mainstream education. If Kafka exaggerates at all, in my judgment he does so only slightly when he chillingly suggests: Probably all education is but two things: rst, parrying of the ignorant childs impetuous assault on the truth; and second, gentle, imperceptible initiation of the humiliated children into the lie.26 Now if we know that our students have been taught lies, surely we have the responsibility to criticize these lies, not in a heavy-handed, doctrinaire waynot in a manner that would fail to respect the freedom and responsibility of our studentsbut rather in such a way as to suggest that what they have passively and uncritically learned may well be incorrect, and thus that they would be well advised to be on their critical guard in the future when assessing information fed to them by educational authoritiesor by anyone else, for that matter. As an illustration of this last point, and as a nal indication of what a Sartrean approach to education might be like, consider the controversy over political correctness in connection with the treatment of Columbus in contemporary education. While I think a Sartrean approach would, for the most part, side with the politically correct in this dispute, I think some members of the politically correct camp might merit two points of criticism from a Sartrean perspective. First, it hardly advances anyones freedom, creativity, or understanding simply to replace an old set of dogmas about Columbus with a new, radically different set, to be adopted with equal passivity and with the same punishments for dissenters from the (new) ofcial view. Secondly, the facile relativism of some politically correct or multi-culturalist positions seems to me inimical to a Sartrean approach to issues of objectivity and subjectivity, let alone of responsibility and authenticity. That Columbus initiated two of the worst acts of genocide in human history is not a perspective of Native Americans or of the descendants of African slavesit is the simple truth. To claim that it is just one perspective among many is to diminish it undeservedly. Moreover, to return to the rst point, this truth need not be rammed down anyones throat. It is enough to invite students to examine the relevant evidence and to think for themselves. Nor is it the case, to turn the attack now on the anti-political-correctness crowd, that the introduction of such information about Columbus is to politicize scholarship or teaching. For how can it be claimed that an emphasis on Columbuss feats as a navigator and explorer, at the expense of a consideration of his genocidal activities, is non-political? The irony of this charge of politicization is made more manifest when one notices that Columbuss accomplishments as an explorer seem to have a special relevance to one group of people, namely, the descendants of Europeans, whereas genocide is, presumably, a subject of universal human concern. Thus, it is the old, traditional

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manner of teaching Columbus, rather than the new politicized way, that is political in the more narrow and parochial sense. It is little wonder, then, that such a teaching could succeed only by parrying the ignorant (students) impetuous assault on the truth. I would suggest that the rst order of educational business, from a Sartrean perspective, would thus be to help the student renew this assault.

Notes
1. He does do so occasionally, however. See, for example, Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, trans. Hazel E. Barnes (New York: Washington Square Press, 1992), 58, 562; hereafter cited BN. 2. Jean-Paul Sartre, Cartesian Freedom, in Sartre, Literary and Philosophical Essays, trans. Annette Michelson (New York: Collier Books, 1962), 196. 3. BN 79. 4. Ibid. 5. See, for example, Sartres discussions of the question, the experience of absence, and anguish in BN 3485. 6. BN 6970. 7. Especially relevant to this argument are Sartres efforts to provide non-deterministic accounts of phenomena ordinarily thought to support determinism, such as the facts that much of our behavior seems to be inuenced by various external factors, and that a good deal of it is predictable. On the former point, see Sartres extensive discussion of facticity (especially, BN 619707). On the latter, see his famous hiking example (BN 584619). 8. See BN 560561. 9. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, book 3 (1109b1110a). 10. Documentation for this claim, as well as extensive discussion of the issue, can be found in David Detmer, Freedom as a Value (La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1988), 3656. 11. Once again, documentation and detailed discussion can be found in Detmer, Freedom as a Value, 5780. 12. Many quotations documenting this claim can be found in Detmer, Freedom as a Value, 6263. 13. Jean-Paul Sartre, Foreword, in R. D. Laing and D. G. Cooper, Reason and Violence, trans. A. M. Sheridan Smith (New York: Vintage, 1971), 6. 14. For a good, brief discussion of this evidence, see, for example, E. Fuller Torrey, Brieng Paper: Schizophrenia and Manic-Depressive Disorder Are Diseases of the Brain, http:// www.psychlaws.org/BriengPapers/BP7.htm (accessed 27 October 2004). 15. Sartre, Cartesian Freedom, 183. 16. See, for example, BN, especially Part One, Chapter One: The Origin of Negation, 3385. 17. See, for example, Jean-Paul Sartre, Truth and Existence, trans. Adrian van den Hoven (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992). 18. See Hazel E. Barnes, Existentialism and Education, in Barnes, An Existentialist Ethics (New York: Vintage Books, 1971), 281317. 19. Ibid., 312313. 20. Jean-Paul Sartre, Anti-Semite and Jew, trans. George J. Becker (New York: Schocken Books, 1974), 7.

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21. 22. 23. 24.

Jean-Paul Sartre, Saint Genet, trans. Bernard Frechtman (New York: Mentor, 1964), 606. Sartre, Truth and Existence, 52. See, for example, BN, Part One, Chapter Two: Bad Faith, 86116. Jean-Paul Sartre, The Responsibility of the Writer, in The Creative Vision: Modern European Writers on Their Art, ed. Haskell M. Block and Herman Salinger, trans. Betty Askwith (New York: Grove Press, 1960), 170. See also Jean-Paul Sartre, What Is Literature? trans. Bernard Frechtman, and Introducing Les Temps modernes, trans. Jeffrey Mehlman, in Sartre, What Is Literature? and Other Essays (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988), 21267. 25. Barnes, Existentialist Ethics, 306. 26. Franz Kafka, quoted in Howard Kahane, Logic and Contemporary Rhetoric, 4th ed. (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1984), 275.