Group 21 presented on Jean-Paul Sartre on The Emotions: A Phenomenological Sketch. This was actually my group so of course we did awesome. Actually, it was funny; I am terrible at presenting in front of people. I don’t mind talking, but I’m clumsy and lines will be messed up. Overall, I think we did a good a job. We should have prepared for it more, but it ended up just fine. During the skit I was supposed to say, “Do you have any raisins?” and she would respond with no. Then I would ask, “Then how about a date?” I screwed up the line and I’m not too sure if anyone got the reference that date is another fruit, but at the same time I was asking her out. Oh well.
Jean-Paul Sartre’s two core concepts are freedom and responsibility. I feel like so many times we try to connect morals to the idea of responsibility, but that is not what Sartre is talking about. Sartre is a true believer in freedom, everything you do and everything you are is a choice. And you need to accept the responsibility of the actions that you take from the freedom that you exercise. With this absolute freedom that we have; your whole world could come crashing down on you, and you could still remain happy. You could be beaten up. Your family could have just murdered. You could have been fired from your dream job. The whole time, according to Sartre you have control over your emotions and could then in fact maintain happiness throughout the whole ordeal.
Talking about the emotions, one thing I wanted to touch on is that according to Sartre these emotions are complete fabrications that we make up in order to avoid responsibility with the real world. We cannot change the world physically all the time to make it a more pleasing place, but we can alter our consciousness with the world. All of Sartre’s ideas sound like the basis for free will. We have so much potential to do anything, but you have responsibility that the actions that we make affect those around us.
Sean,
ReplyDeleteI think we got your date joke, if people from around here don't know what a date is and can't get that joke I don't have much faith in humanity! That's an aged pick up line anyways, so i'm sure mostly everyone understood. I liked what you wrote about how we fabricate emotions to avoid responsibility. I wrote my blog for Monday's class on that and I talked about a friend I had who lives his whole life like this. He just makes up excuses to not take responsibility for his emotions, and Sartre really opened my eyes to see just how many people live like this. I can admit that I have done it too, it's really unavoidable because it can be a really helpful coping mechanism. Like the fox and the grapes example. Sometimes our fabricated emotions can have some truth to them but they don't really expose the entire issue. I feel like in some cases they can resurface later as well. I really enjoyed your group's presentation I think you guys had a good grasp of the reading.
Great blog post too.
-Lizz