Nausea Opinion and Perspectives
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NeuroQuantology | December 2012 | Volume 10 | Issue 4| Page 670-675 670 Lifintseva TP., The Buddhist pill for Satre’s Nausea Opinion and Perspectives The Buddhist Pill for Satre’s “Nausea”: Phenomenological and Hindu-Buddhist Treatments of Intentionality Tatyana Petrovna Lifintseva ABSTRACT This paper deals with one of the most complicated issues in philosophy – the problem of intentionality of consciousness. The author seeks to answer the question of whether the intentionality of consciousness can be considered a universal anthropological characteristic. Two philosophical positions regarding intentionality are compared on the basis of Jean-Paul Sartre’s major works and the sacred texts of Hinduism and Buddhism. The author first identifies certain traits of Western metaphysics, which regards consciousness as something to be revealed and to be described as intentional, and second, takes up the approach Ancient Indian metaphysics’ that regards the “depriving” consciousness of its intentionality as having a soteriological purpose. Key Words: intentionality, being, freedom, subject, subjectlessness, negaion, sansaric subject, sacred, profane NeuroQuantology 2012; 4: 670-675 1 In this paper I dare to step into the unsteady discussion regarding just epistemology in the and ungrateful soil of comparativistics and to second half of the nineteenth century and in attempt to compare Western and Indian the beginning of the twentieth century metaphysics through the philosophical and (neokantianism, phenomenology, literary creativity of Jean-Paul Sartre (1905 – empiriocriticism, pragmaticism) generated an 1980) and through various Buddhist and Vedic explosion of interest in ontology in the first sacred texts. The concept of intentionality will half of the twentieth century – from the be the key in my attempt and my research “reigns of being” of George Santayana to “the question is: the possibility of intentionality “to fundamental ontology” of Martin Heidegger be or not to be” a defining characteristic of and Systematic theology of Paul Tillich. At the consciousness. beginning of his famous book Being and Time It is possible to describe Sartre's (1927) Heidegger repeated like a conjuration: philosophy of the 1930’s and 40’s as “the “We should raise anew the question of the search for Being.” One cannot say that during meaning of Being. … The concept of “Being” the epoch he was very original in this is rather the most obscure of all. … We see aspiration. The permanent philosophical the fundamental necessity of repeating a question on the meaning of Being anew. … To retrieve the question of Being means first Corresponding author: Tatyana Lifintseva of all to work out adequately the formulation Address: Tatyana Lifintseva Vlasov st., b. 6, app. 33, Moscow region, of the question” (Heidegger, 1996. pp. xix, 2- Lyubertsy, Russia 140002. National Research University Higher School of Economics, Moscow, Russian Federation. 3). Phone: +79099748119 First, I am going to address Sartre's [email protected] Received Sept 9, 2012. Revised Dec 04, 2012. Accepted Dec 08, 2012. fundamental work Being and Nothingness eISSN 1303-5150 (1943). In this text a classical (accepted in Contributors and Supporting: Laina Saul, George Mason University Western philosophy) relation of being and (final editorial correction). www.neuroquantology.com NeuroQuantology | December 2012 | Volume 10 | Issue 4| Page 670-675 671 Lifintseva TP., The Buddhist pill for Satre’s Nausea thinking, nature and spirit, matter and of an external being and its own past, its consciousness, object and subject are previous conditions. Being "nothing", Sartre’s transferred by Sartre to a plane of two person “secretes this Nothing as a gland "regions" of Being: “Being-in-itself" and secretes hormones” (Sartre, 1970; p.103). "Being-for-itself”. Briefly… ”Being-in-itself”, Sartre traces (certainly, not in an exhaustive according to Sartre, is “self-identical, way) the tradition of the description of undecomposed, dense, massive and compact.” consciousness as negative in European It is an absolute passivity; it is what it is, no philosophy. He quotes Spinoza's formula, “To more than that and any definitions are define means to deny”. Hegel admired this inapplicable to it. It is indiscernible, saying, and reformulated it in the judgment – undifferentiated, deprived of any qualitative “The Spirit is a negative”. Additionally earlier definiteness and self-sufficient; it does not in the Scholastics there exist a classical comprise any distinction between “this "and example of a bad artist who painted a lion, but “other”. It means that only the consciousness to the spectator, so it would be clear, the artist (“Being-for-itself”) introduces everything into signed: “This is a lion, but not a dog”. the world: discreteness, plurality, and Asserting that it is a lion, we thereby deny the causality, variability, movement, quantity, possibility for it to be a dog, a mouse, a fish, a quality, and also form, space, time (and, unicorn, a comet, etc... accordingly, mortal destiny), sense, meaning, Human activity, according to Sartre, good, harm, etc. Accordingly, all proceeds is absolutely unpremised: a person creates a from consciousness, the subject. And "Being- new existence every time, every moment he or in-itself" is absolutely indifferent to she “chooses him/her-self”. But then it turns consciousness, "Being-for-itself". Within the out that this instant creativity loses any person this indifference generates a double binding principle and dissipates in a set of feeling concerning the world: either a disgust separate acts which are not at all bound (as in the novel Nausea), or a painful envy (as between themselves. But then how is self- in the cycle of novels The Roads of Freedom), identification possible? Why is Jean-Paul but always this is the feeling of absolute Sartre nevertheless Sartre, instead of Mao- otherness and rejectedness. Zedong (whom he honored greatly), or not a What does this rejectedness mean for Parisian homeless (clochard)? Here, strangely consciousness and what does consciousness enough, Descartes comes, to the aid of Sartre. mean for Sartre? Consciousness, certainly, is Yes, Sartre struggled with Cartesian tradition not reduced to knowledge; it is a and denied the “thinking substance.” But in transphenomenal measurement of being of a the article “Cartesian freedom” (1957) (in the subject. "For-itself" literally means "not-in- preface to Descartes' collected works) Sartre itself", which means non-equality to itself, an makes an attempt of an existentialist orientation on something other and external to interpretation of Descartes. The starting point consciousness, e. g. the table, the chair, the of Descartes’ philosophy, which is the tree, the rat’s tail, Hegel’s Absolute Idea, lost methodical doubt, was interpreted by Sartre as youth, the actual infinity – everything that one an ability to say "NO", as the negating activity can think about. That the consciousness is of consciousness, as freedom (See Sartre, directed toward "something", toward an 1980, p.238). Descartes wrote: “The mind, "other", means that it is not that "something"; using freedom inherent in it, assumes that the consciousness is nothing. (The analogy there is none of things concerning which with the apofatic theology defining God as existence it should feel though the slightest “none of created things”, as "nothing", is doubt” (Descartes, 1952, p.185). And in rather transparent here. On a related note, in Sartre’s Being and Nothingness we read: Sartre’s novel Nausea it is possible to draw “Descartes following the Stoics has given a analogies with the Christian ascetics: the name to this possibility which human reality nausea in Sartre's anthropology seems to has to secrete a nothingness which isolates it – substitute the ascetics’ Christian disgust for it is freedom” (Sartre, 1970; pp.24-25). the all carnal and material. This is however a Therefore, the principle uniting activity of separate theme and we do not have the space human consciousness for Sartre was a to consider it here). permanence of negation, a freedom. The life of consciousness in Sartre's Sartre paraphrases Descartes: “I deny – description appears as a permanent negation hence I exist”. The liberation of a person was www.neuroquantology.com NeuroQuantology | December 2012 | Volume 10 | Issue 4| Page 670-675 672 Lifintseva TP., The Buddhist pill for Satre’s Nausea thought by Sartre as “the ability to self- every intentional object (whether it is a isolation.” “If "Being-in-itself" is self-identical physical thing, the city of Freiburg or “a and self-sufficient, than, for Sartre, “the thousandagon”) are equally ideal and belong consciousness (“Being-for itself”) represents a to consciousness as they are correlated with way not to be coincidence with itself, to escape intentional acts. Husserl understood identity” (Sartre, 1970; p.77). “Nothing is like a intentionality as a general property of hole of Being in the heart of Being”, – is consciousness – to be “consciousness about …” Sartre's well-known aphorism (Sartre, 1970; Sartre makes a certain inversion in p.617). relation to the Husserlian concept of The necessary condition for freedom is intentionality: in which it seems he comes choice, and choice is identical to back to the “intention” of the Stoics and the consciousness. Freedom is an ontological Scholastics, where the consciousness characteristic of a person’s being. Choosing corresponds with… no, not with an object, but one, we simultaneously