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The Concept of Perversity As a Means Towards a Non-Humanist Existentialism in the Philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre and Friedrich Nietzsche

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The Concept of Perversity As a Means Towards a Non-Humanist Existentialism in the Philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre and Friedrich Nietzsche 1 The concept of perversity as a means towards a non-humanist existentialism in the philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre and Friedrich Nietzsche Thesis submitted in accordance with the requirements of the University of Liverpool for the degree of Doctor in Philosophy by David Mitchell October 2013 2 Contents Title page 1 Contents 2 List of abbreviations 3 Abstract 4 Introduction: A means towards a non-humanist existentialism 5 Chapter 1: Nietzsche [i] the free spirit as perverse genesis 22 Chapter 2: Nietzsche [ii] Perversity and genealogy 48 Chapter 3: Sartre [i] Nothingness and perversity 89 Chapter 4: Sartre [ii] Perversity and self-evasion 121 Conclusion: Ontology and ethics 158 Bibliography 164 3 List of Abbreviations Sartre BN Being and Nothingness EH Existentialism is a humanism TE Transcendence of the Ego Heidegger BT Being and Time LH Letter on Humanism Nietzsche BG Beyond Good and Evil EcH Ecce Homo D Daybreak HH Human, All too Human GM On the Genealogy of Morality BT The Birth of Tragedy GS The Gay Science TSZ Thus Spoke Zarathustra UTM Untimely Meditations Abbreviated forms are used after one full reference to the text in each chapter. 4 Abstract Existentialism, broadly construed, can be understood in terms of a desire to ‘return to man’. In other words, underpinning existentialist thought is a sense that modern philosophy has lost touch with the essential goal of allowing man to comprehend his own existence. And it is this aim then, of a return to man’s being as it is concretely lived and experienced, that it seeks to realise. However it will be argued in this thesis that, against familiar criticisms of such a project, this ‘return’ does not simply necessitate a return to, or acceptance of, ‘humanism’. For influenced by Heidegger’s Letter on Humanism, Marxist, structuralist and post- structuralist critics have all suggested this movement is synonymous with a naive or romantic ‘humanist’ idea of the subject. That is, they have suggested that existentialism’s ‘return to man’ amounts at best to the radicalisation of a discredited subject-entity concept. As such, against this, we will argue that existentialism and its ‘return to man’ is not simply another humanism. And we will attempt to demonstrate this point, and resolve this apparent contradiction, by exploring the idea of perversity in the work of Sartre and Nietzsche. For if man is understood as a ‘perversion’ of something other than himself then it may be possible to have a philosophy of man without appealing to the notion of an isolated subject-entity. How will we do this though? In the first half of the thesis we will look at the way in which for Nietzsche the human can be understood as a perversion of fundamental natural forces. We will attempt this first of all by looking at the genesis of the free spirit as a perversion of man’s normal, fettered state. Secondly we will look at On The Genealogy of Morality, and explore how man can be understood there as a ‘perverse animal’; as a perversion of the active force of will-to-power. Continuing, in the second half of the thesis, we will then explore the idea of man as a ‘perversion of being’ that we find in Sartre’s Being and Nothingness. We will see there how man exists, first of all, as a perverse non-being in relation to being. Next though we will look at how this ontological fact implies a secondary perverse attempt by man to conceal this reality from himself. Consequently then by exploring such a ‘perverse’ conception of man we hope to show how a non-humanist existentialism, and ‘return to man’, is possible. 5 Introduction: The concept of perversity as a means towards a non-humanist existentialism A. The meaning of existentialism And I say this to the overthrowers of statues: To throw salt into the sea and statues into the mud are perhaps the greatest of follies. The statue lay in the mud of your contempt: but this precisely is its law, that its life and living beauty grow again out of contempt! And now it arises again, with divine features and sorrowfully seductive; and in truth! It will even thank you for overthrowing it, you overthrowers! Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, ‘Of great events’1 It is not exaggerating to say that in recent decades the ‘statue’ of existentialism has very much been thrown into the metaphorical mud. Once dominating the intellectual landscape, along with a Marxism that has suffered a similar fall from grace, what became known as ‘existentialism’ and its concerns are now widely regarded as philosophically outmoded. Authenticity, angst, alienation, being-for-others?2 It would seem many have accepted Levi-Strauss’s claim that such talk is ‘Metaphysique pour midinette.’3 And whilst its most recognisable proponent, Sartre, is derided as a ‘philosopher of a world that has passed’4, its other seminal figures, Nietzsche and Heidegger, have been salvaged only at the price of expunging the ‘existentialist’ label from their thought altogether. Yet such ‘contempt’ is not as fatal as it might seem. Rather, following Nietzsche’s logic in our quote, we will argue in this thesis that from the ‘mud’ of such criticism a revitalised and philosophically credible existentialism can be recovered. That is to say, by responding to a particular misconception underpinning these critiques we can separate a genuine existentialism from the ossified image 1 F. Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra trans. by R.J Hollingdale [London: Penguin, 1961], p154 2 See J. Golomb, In Search of Authenticity [London: Routledge, 1995], for discussion of the ‘death of authenticity’ as a concept in light of post-modernism, p203-204: ‘‘There is today a grave danger that we are facing the death of authenticity. Post-structuralist thought and the other currently fashionable streams of what is vaguely called ‘post-modernism’ attempt to dissolve the subjective pathos of authenticity which lies at the heart of existentialist concern.’ 3 ‘Shop girl metaphysics’, See K. Morris, Sartre [Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2008], p54: FN 18 [Quoted in Moi 1990: 28] 4 N.F. Fox, The New Sartre [New York: Continuum, 2003], p1 6 with which it has become associated. And it is by doing this further that we will be able to recover its true distinctiveness and interest as a philosophy. In short, by doing this we will be able to ask, after Crowell, whether existentialism ‘...might not merely have a history, but also a future?’5 [i] Defining existentialism But what though is the basis of this misconception which will allow us to do this? What lies at the root of those criticisms which have led to existentialism’s dismissal, and which in being countered will help us to recover its true meaning? In order to answer this question we must ask initially what has been meant, and what can be meant, by ‘existentialism’ in the first place. And we begin in this fashion by noting that the very capacity of the term to describe anything meaningful at all has often been questioned. As Cooper notes, ‘It has been denied, that is, that there ever was a distinctive philosophical perspective or tendency shared by those thinkers who have been labelled ‘existentialists.’6 Yet whilst the term is certainly more problematic than say that of ‘empiricism’ or ‘phenomenology’ it would be an exaggeration to say that such thinkers have nothing meaningful in common. 7 Indeed, it is the very problematical nature of defining ‘existentialists’ itself that is taken by some as the starting point for a characterisation of the term. For, as Kaufmann argues, ‘Existentialism is not a philosophy but a label for several widely different revolts against traditional philosophy.’8 In this way, then one possible understanding of existentialism is that it is not so much a ‘philosophy’ in the conventional sense, but a sort of ‘anti-philosophy’. That is, based on a sense that traditional philosophy is incapable of grasping the richness or immediacy of human life, such an understanding says that ‘existentialism defined itself against systems.’9 In short it suggests that existentialism defined itself against any form of systematic thought. And in 5 S. Crowell, ‘Existentialism and its legacy’, in The Cambridge Companion to Existentialism, ed. by S. Crowell [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012], p4 6 D. Cooper, ‘Existentialism as a philosophical movement’, in The Cambridge Companion to Existentialism, ed. by S. Crowell [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012], p27 7 Gabriel Marcel first used the term in 1945 to describe Sartre and De Beauvoir. Nevertheless most of those associated with ‘existentialism’ rejected the label. See R. Schacht, ‘Nietzsche: after the death of God’, in The Cambridge Companion to Existentialism, ed. S. Crowell [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012], p112- 114 8 W. Kaufmann, Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre [New York: Meridian, 1956], p11 9J. Judaken, ‘Introduction’, in Situating Existentialism, ed. by J. Judaken and R. Bernasconi [New York: Columbia University Press, 2012], p1 7 this way, further, such an interpretation ties existential thinkers to what Solomon calls the ‘existential attitude.’10 In other words, such understanding ties existentialism to the figure of the ‘existential hero’, such as is given form in Sartre’s Roquentin, and Camus’s Meursalt. For it links existentialism to the attitude of figures whose primary goal is not philosophical knowledge. Rather for these figures the goal is an ‘authentic life’ based on confrontation with the true meaninglessness of existence, and resistance to all human endeavours to evade this.11 However such a notion, taken in itself, is of course for our purposes limited. That is to say, whilst this notion of existentialism as an ‘attitude’ doubtless captures something, and is an advance on jettisoning the term altogether, it is hardly the basis for recovering a philosophically credible mode of thought.
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