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

Our baron to engage in abstr doion is, indubitably, a unique adorn endowed to our valet de chambre cognition. And the reason for such a telling logical argument is near to being self-evident i. e. , only world soulfulnesss have the ability to see through otherwise distinct and separate entities, a unify concept that reveals these things common constitution, if non their delimitate heart and soul. To this end, it is necessary to point that our gentlemans gentleman intellects preponderance to abstr recreateing the centre of attentions is another facet of gentle cognition.This is because knowing, akin(predicate) to seeing, affords us an immediate grasp of realitys spirit and utilisation for by the mere experience of something, say a table, we almost promptly furnish ourselves with a working concept ab tabu the things gist i. e. , we know what a table is, what is it for. Thus, it makes sense to say that abstracting middles model part and parcel of two the intuitive and inductive process of a souls ability to know reality. Our understanding of the concept of internality draws chiefly from the scheme provided by the Greek metaphysics.And herein it would insightful to bump off cue from Aristotles hylemorphic framework. According to Aristotle, any(prenominal)thing that exists say, a tree or a dog is constituted of both an existence and an essence i. e. , all things both have material and formal constitutions. On the mavin and only(a) hand, existence pertains to the act of being, or the particularicity of a thing. For example, that table is being actual right when one sees it. On the other hand, essence pertains to the reputation of a original thing.It is that which makes a thing to be what it is an abstracted concept which makes us see the corporation between the entities that we be perceiving (say, a table) and the other things (say, a classroom fill up with tables) belonging to the same genre or species (Lavine 71). Essence thus d efines the nature of a certain thing or describes the reflection comme il faut to the same. If we give-up the ghost with this line of argumentation, we tramp go on to claim that one washbowl apply the concept of essence to pertain to reality of charitable persons.From here, we can move to identify conspicuous aspects which whitethorn be deemed proper to homo persons, so as to glean what we may call human essence i. e. , that a person is an existing being, that he shows characteristic elements proper to animals, tho that he possess a faculty of intellect and freewill proper to him and him unsocial. In the ultimate analysis, one can say that the essence defining a human person lies in framing him as a living creature that shares certain characteristic traits of animals, but is endowed stock-still with the unique faculty of intellect and freewill.Key to this process, it must be argued, is describing the unequivocal aspects of his very existence. To be sure, we may still i dentify a skinny number of characteristic elements that could equally describe what it means to be human person. And surely, we cannot stop at construing fundamental animality and rationality as aspects that sufficiently capture the whatness of humanity for the reasoned construction of human essences does not involve that we have completely circumscribed the total reality of human persons.That having said, denim Paul Sartre believes that humanity has no fixed essence. In other words, he believes that humanity cannot be framed within the parameters of determinateness or the limits we chaffer 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 immunity determines the unique manner of our very existence. J. Sartres dissension fundamentally draws from his concept of absolute human freedom.A thinker who belongs to the erstwhile group of philosophers known as Existentialists, Sartres philoso phy puts high premium than most on appreciating human existence as a concrete and perpetual striving for ones own bonny (Marias 436). This means that, for Sartre, we as human persons must constantly appreciate the point we exist, more than the fact that we have an essence to frame our subsequent 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 absolute, and that, even more importantly, the choices we make determine the diverseness of person that we are. In a air, Sartre reverses the logic of human essence i. e. , human actions does not give ear from ones own essence instead, human essence is mold 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 concrete form of our human essence takes cue onl y from the activities which human persons do, Sartre rests his case on the plain surmise 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 preferably radically and that his sell denial of an identifiable human essence may have been taken quite drastically.To this end, strains of Aristotles philosophy may be helpful in shedding light into some of the oversights Sartre may have committed in denying the tenability of human essence on account 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 aptitude to determine ones path gibe to the sets of actions a person may willingly opt for. Human essence merely speaks of the kind or quality of existence which is construable from and identifiable in a certain thing (Lavine 71).It merely serves to help 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 match to these set of classification or categorization. An example may help however situate the conundrum when someone thinks of man as essentially a spiritual being i. e. , the cognitive content for spiritual relations with God belongs mightily to the characteristic trait of humanity one does not rule out the possibility of not believing in God all together.Instead, one merely makes a statement about the humanitys cosmopolitan preponderance to worshipping a deity, notwithstanding personal choice to dissent. The same goes align 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 inverse ly 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 hostility that human persons have no fixed essence is certainly herculean to argue precisely because human freedom is actually 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 particular rebuttal. In the first place, Sartre may have taken human freedom quite radically in arguing that it our capacity to determine ourselves must be taken in absolute terms i. e. , we can do whatsoever 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 find certain dog-like activities incongruent with my natural bodily 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 decisive of human nature.On the contrary one may find it difficult to deliberately deviate from the demands of our basic human essence. Such difficulty should sum us more into an appreciation of our human nature not authentically 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 nonsuch 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 m ans nature as a rational entity. The point in contention here lies in arguing that we cannot really do away 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 align state of human affairs. In the discussions that were developed, it was learned that Sartres refutation 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 philosophic 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 natur e and human freedom, it was argued, are not mutually exclusive. Second, Sartre appears to have neglected the fact that human freedom cannot be equated with the capacity to do what one wishes, careless(predicate) 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 confine by a certain essence, no matter how hard depict to deviate from it.