“Yes, I see.”
“This is not least the case as regards our ethical choices. We can never
lay the blame on ‘human nature,’ or ‘human frailty’ or anything like that. Now
and then it happens that grown men behave like pigs and then blame it on
‘the old Adam.’ But there is no ‘old Adam.’ He is merely a figure we clutch at
to avoid taking responsibility for our own actions.”
“There ought to be a limit to what man can be blamed for.”
“Although Sartre claimed there was no innate meaning to life, he did not
mean that nothing mattered. He was not what we call a nihilist.”
“What is that?”
“That is a person who thinks nothing means anything and everything is
permissible. Sartre believed that life must have meaning. It is an imperative.
But it is we ourselves who must create this meaning in our own lives. To exist
is to create your own life.”
“Could you elaborate on that?” /
“Sartre tried to prove that consciousness in itself is nothing until it has
perceived something. Because consciousness is always conscious of
something. And this ‘something’ is provided just as much by ourselves as by
our surroundings. We are partly instrumental in deciding what we perceive by
selecting what is significant for us.”
“Could you give me an example?”
“Two people can be present in the same room and yet experience it
quite differently. This is because we contribute our own meaning—or our own
interests—when we perceive our surroundings. A woman who is pregnant
might think she sees other pregnant women everywhere she looks. That is not
because there were no pregnant women before, but because now that she is
pregnant she sees the world through different eyes. An escaped convict may
see policemen everywhere ...”
“Mm, I see.”
“Our own lives influence the way we perceive things in the room. If
something is of no interest to me, I don’t see it. So now I can perhaps explain
why I was late today.”
“It was on purpose, right?”
“Tell me first of all what you saw when you came in here.”
“The first thing I saw was that you weren’t here.”
“Isn’t it strange that the first thing you noticed was something that was
absent?”
“Maybe, but it was you I was supposed to meet.”
“Sartre uses just such a cafe visit to demonstrate the way we ‘annihilate’
whatever is irrelevant for us.”
“You got here late just to demonstrate that?”
“To enable you to understand this central point in Sartre’s philosophy,
yes. Call it an exercise.”
“Get out of here!”
“If you were in love, and were waiting for your loved one to call you, you
might ‘hear’ him not calling you all evening. You arrange to meet him at the
train; crowds of people are milling about on the platform and you can’t see
him anywhere. They are all in the way, they are unimportant to you. You might
find them aggravating, unpleasant even. They are taking up far too much
room. The only thing you register is that he is not there.”