Sartre’s Criticisms on Human Essence in the Light of Aristotle’s Philosophy

Our ability to engage in abstr encounterion is, indubitably, a laughable gift invest to our piece cognition. And the reason for such(prenominal) a tattle contention is near to being self-evident i. e. , just military psychenel persons dedicate the ability to follow out through otherwisewise distinct and separate entities, a unifying opinion that reveals these occasions common temperament, if non their defining nub. To this end, it is necessary to detail that our tender race intellects preponderance to abstracting the consequences is a nonher facet of gentle adult males gentleman cognition.This is because knowing, akin to seeing, affords us an immediate grasp of globes nature and purpose for by the mere experience of some topic, order a table, we about instantly furnish ourselves with a working concept about the things b champion marrow i. e. , we know what a table is, what is it for. Thus, it makes sense to say that abstracting middles form part and parcel of both the intuitive and inductive wait on of a persons ability to know reality. Our understanding of the concept of bone marrow draws chiefly from the scheme provided by the Greek metaphysics.And herein it would insightful to take cue from Aristotles hylemorphic framework. According to Aristotle, anything that exists say, a tree or a dog is constituted of both an man kind and an eye i. e. , on the whole things both accommodate material and formal constitutions. On the one hand, conception pertains to the act of being, or the facticity of a thing. For example, that table is being actual business when one sees it. On the other hand, essence pertains to the nature of a received thing.It is that which makes a thing to be what it is an abstracted concept which makes us see the connection between the entities that we atomic number 18 perceiving (say, a table) and the other things (say, a schoolroom filled with tables) belonging to the kindred genre or species (Lavine 71). Es sence thence defines the nature of a certain thing or describes the aspect comely to the same. If we proceed with this line of argumentation, we can go on to claim that one can apply the concept of essence to pertain to reality of homophile persons.From here, we can move to identify conspicuous aspects which may be deemed priggish to homosexual persons, so as to glean what we may c each world essence i. e. , that a person is an existing being, that he shows characteristic elements squ atomic number 18-toed to animals, alone that he possess a faculty of intellect and voluntary tight-laced to him and him alone. In the ultimate analysis, one can say that the essence defining a human person lies in framing him as a living creature that shargons certain characteristic traits of animals, but is endowed nevertheless with the unique faculty of intellect and freewill.Key to this process, it mustiness be argued, is describing the determinate aspects of his truly existence. To be sure, we may still identify a good number of characteristic elements that could equally describe what it nitty-gritty to be human person. And surely, we cannot stop at construing fundamental animality and cause as aspects that sufficiently capture the whatness of universe for the reasoned construction of human essences does not entail that we have completely circumscribed the total reality of human persons.That having said, Jean Paul Sartre believes that humanity has no doctor essence. In other words, he believes that humanity cannot be framed in spite of appearance the parameters of determinateness or the limits we impose by construing human essences. At the very least, Sartre contends that we cannot define the contours of what it means to be a person because our liberty determines the unique manner of our very existence. J. Sartres contention fundamentally draws from his concept of unconditional human license.A looker who belongs to the erstwhile group of philosophers kn profess as Existentialists, Sartres philosophy puts higher premium than most on appreciating human existence as a concrete and perpetual striving for ones own becoming (Marias 436). This means that, for Sartre, we as human persons must constantly calculate the fact we exist, more than the fact that we have an essence to frame our later(prenominal) courses of actions. Sartre believes that we are necessarily free, and that the burden of making our own human essence lies in the choices that we make (Marias 440).Put in laymans terms, Sartre believes that our freedom is authoritative, and that, even more importantly, the choices we make determine the kind of person that we are. In a way, Sartre reverses the logic of human essence i. e. , human actions does not flow from ones own essence instead, human essence is molded by the actions that we as persons commit to doing. For such reason, and as mentioned earlier, Sartre believes that humanity has no fixed essence.And insofar as the co ncrete form of our human essence takes cue only from the activities which human persons do, Sartre rests his case on the force field assumption that ones life cannot be placed within any restricting concepts of essence, for any reason whatsoever (Marias 440-441). There are reasons to think, however, that Sartre may have framed human freedom quite radically and that his wholesale denial of an identifiable human essence may have been taken quite drastically.To this end, strains of Aristotles philosophy may be implemental in shedding light into some of the oversights Sartre may have attached in denying the tenability of human essence on bill of absolute freedom. Firstly, it may be insightful to be reminded of the fact that Aristotle understands human essence as an aspect of life that does not effectively restrict human capacity to determine ones path according to the sets of actions a person may willingly opt for. gentleman essence barely speaks of the kind or quality of existence which is construable from and identifiable in a certain thing (Lavine 71).It merely serves to avail man appreciate what kind of creature he is by way of categories and definitions. Conversely, the concept of human essence does not, in any whatsoever, imply an absolute determination of human reality according to these set of classification or categorization. An example may help further situate the conundrum when someone thinks of man as basically a spiritual being i. e. , the capacity for spiritual relations with perfection belongs properly to the characteristic trait of humanity one does not endure out the possibility of not believing in God all together.Instead, one merely makes a statement about the humanitys general preponderance to worshipping a deity, notwithstanding personal choice to dissent. The same goes true for human essence. Sartre thinks that humanity has not a fixed essence on account of a human freedom that determines a resulting human nature. Unfortunately for Sartre, human essence and human freedom are not mutually exclusive. In fact, a persons freedom is only affirmed, if not accentuated by the fact that the human essence is defined by a tacit acknowledgement of mans of basic rationality and capacity for freewill.Secondly, Sartres contention that human persons have no fixed essence is certainly difficult to argue precisely because human freedom is really not absolute and that humanitys basic essence does not depend on human choice but on what nature has fundamentally given. Two aspects come into play with in this detail rebuttal. In the first place, Sartre may have taken human freedom quite radically in debate that it our capacity to determine ourselves must be taken in absolute terms i. e. , we can do whatever we wish besides, we are the ones determining our resulting essence in the process.This, unfortunately, is untenable. For instance, if I, innate(p) as a human person, were to choose living like a dog, I would probably see to i t certain dog-like activities incongruent with my natural bodied processes. I would find it difficult to bark, let alone walk in a four-legged manner as these are not consistent with how was I born and raised. The point in contention here lies in arguing that human freedom, contrary to Sartres arguments, cannot be taken as an absolute determinant of human nature.On the contrary one may find it difficult to deliberately deviate from the demands of our basic human essence. Such problem should bring us more into an appreciation of our human nature not really as an aspect dependent on human choice, but an aspect that is made perfect by the choices that we make. Herein Aristotles teleological philosophy appears to take shape. According to Aristotle, essence precedes actions, or essence precedes existence and that the perfection of all actions comes when they fulfill the essence in question (Marias 74).For instance, when a person uses critical thinking before making a judgment, such an act can be considered as a perfection of the mans nature as a rational entity. The point in contention here lies in arguing that we cannot really do international with human nature. On the contrary, our actions must run consistent with it for only when we act according to our nature can our actions be perfected according to our essence. By way of conclusion, I wish to end with a thought that dismisses Sartres contention i. . , that humanity cannot find a common essence proper to himself and himself alone on account of its patent inability to take into account the true state of human affairs. In the discussions that were developed, it was learned that Sartres defense lawyers of human essence stems from his belief that human freedom is absolute, and that human persons are the ones molding their respective essences. However, there are surely good reasons to think that this philosophical stances does not hold water.First, it has been argued that the concept of human essence does not in any way defeat the reality of human freedom. Human nature and human freedom, it was argued, are not mutually exclusive. Second, Sartre appears to have neglect the fact that human freedom cannot be equated with the capacity to do what one wishes, regardless of what nature has already given. There is no such thing as an absolute freedom. And in the final analysis, we have to admit that we are bound by a certain essence, no matter how with child(p) try to deviate from it.