“I start out
on a hike with friends.”[i] This is how the French philosopher, Jean Paul
Sartre, begins a particularly intriguing example. After several hours of walking together, his
fatigue builds and, after resisting it initially, he throws down his knapsack
by the side of the road and plops down beside it, letting the others know that
he has given up.
Someone
will reproach me for my act and will mean
thereby that I was free—that is, not
only was my act not
determined by any thing or
person, but also I could have
succeeded in resisting
my fatigue longer. I could have
done as
my companions did and reached the resting place
before relaxing. I shall defend myself
by saying that I was
too tired. Who is
right?
Now of
course he could have acted differently and gone on with his hiking companions,
but Sartre contends, this does not get to the heart of the issue. Instead, he asks whether he could have acted
differently without changing the network of fundamental projects which make up
his being-in-the-world. I’ll explain.
Consider
Sartre and his friends hiking together.
At some point Sartre gives in and quits because of his fatigue. Now, assuming that they are all roughly in
the same shape and feeling a similar amount of fatigue, what accounts for the
difference between his actions and those of his friends? Why do his friends want to go on? The fatigue cannot be a reason in and of
itself, because he and his friends are feeling many things as they journey
along, and fatigue is only one background element in their awareness as their
bodies interact with the surroundings.
There are other elements and different motivations which each hiker
carries, and these affect how they will respond to their fatigue. As Sartre asks, “How does it happen therefore
that they suffer their fatigue differently?”
Their choice to go on seems to be part of a larger perspective which
they have embraced.
Imagine,
Sartre continues, that one of his companions explains why he wants to go
on. He readily admits fatigue, but
emphasizes that he loves to give himself over to it, to feel it as part of the
way he encounters and discovers the world around him, to know the reality of
rocky paths and steep slopes, of sun on the back of his neck and strength in
his legs. His fatigue is part of his
passion for a larger project he has chosen and is now motivated by. It is a way of engaging the world more fully
and giving himself over to it with a kind of trusting abandon. “It is only in and through this project that
the fatigue will be able to be understood and that it will have meaning for
him.”
So the
difference between Sartre and his hiking companions is between the kinds of
projects they have chosen for their lives and the motivations connected with
them. Sartre did not want to go on
because he experienced his fatigue in relation to a different set of chosen
projects, ones not associated with pushing himself on a hike.
Now I don’t
want to pursue it further in detail here, but Sartre goes on to emphasize that
all our projects are part of a fundamental way we choose to live in the world,
and that we have some measure of freedom to make such choices in the face of the
contingencies which inevitably surround us.
What I am
interested in is thinking about our lives in terms of projects, which are always a mixture of what we embrace or find ourselves in or feel confidence toward. Some of these may be relatively small and
temporary, while others are profound and sustaining. But all of them form the basis of our living,
our ethical choices and our identities.
Bernard Williams, for example, writes that our projects involve:
The
obvious kind of desire for things for oneself, one’s
family, one’s friends,
including basic necessities
of life,
and in more relaxed circumstances, objects of taste. Or
there may be pursuits or interests of an intellectual,
cultural or creative
character. . . . Beyond these, someone
may have projects connected with his support of some
cause. . .
. Or there may be projects which flow from
some more general disposition towards human
conduct
Such
projects are primary in accounting for our lives, because there are no other
“deeper” reasons for what we do. My
projects and the commitments associated with them have a primacy because they
shape my character, comprise my sense of self, and give me reasons to live.
Quite
simply, if perhaps somewhat melodramatically,
projects confer meaning, or at
least
represent a necessary
condition for the possibility of a meaningful
life: no
Now, all of
this philosophical description is a long entrance into the place where I find
myself these days. I have some stable
projects in my life, to be sure, especially around family and friendships, but
my sense of work and vocation, my fundamental projects about the kind of work I
do, is now up in the air. For twelve
years, I have engaged in a project called “pastor of Twinbrook Baptist
Church.” A lot of my choices and
motivations over this time were associated with this fundamental project. Even more, for most of my adult years before
that, I engaged in projects which have constituted my sense of religious
calling and training. Now that my recent
twelve year project is over, and I’m feeling uncertain about the resilience of my
earlier projects, I am struggling with the affects and changes. All the usual motivations and choices
(whether or not to go on with the hike) are getting reshuffled. It makes for uneven days and uneasy feelings.
The challenge,
as I see it, is twofold: to find a fundamental
project which both resonates with me and which is doable in the present state
of things. It should resonate with me in
the sense that it connects with my own inner sense of interest, motivation and
values. This is not about selfishness;
it is about finding a place where I can give of myself and find some pleasure
and satisfaction in doing so. Yet it
should also be doable in that I have to find a place of work in the limits of our
present economy. I cannot just pick out the
terms of a project and slide into it. I
must see what’s out there, consider my options, allow myself to encounter the unexpected and go through a process of
achieving a position. These two
conditions, self-interest and economic viability, will almost certainly be in
tension with one another. I may need to
compromise in one or both areas. But this
felt need also connects to another fundamental project of mine, my family and its
support. So I will continue these days
to roam through the shifting boundaries of my projects and choices. As my projects go, so does my life.
[i]
Jean Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness,
trans. Hazel E. Barnes (New York: Gramercy Books, 1956), 453. Sartre’s
example of fatigue and subsequent discussion can be found on pages 453-59.
[ii]
Bernard Williams, “A Critique of Utilitarianism,” in Utilitarianism: For and Against (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1973), 110-11, as quoted by Mark P.
Jenkins, Bernard Williams (Montreal:
McGill-Queen’s Univ. Press, 2006), 33.
[iii] Jenkins,
33.
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