{"id":1212,"date":"2025-11-26T08:00:42","date_gmt":"2025-11-26T08:00:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peterrphd.com\/wordpress\/?p=1212"},"modified":"2025-12-30T03:46:28","modified_gmt":"2025-12-30T03:46:28","slug":"beyond-othering-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peterrphd.com\/wordpress\/?p=1212","title":{"rendered":"Beyond Othering"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Sartre\u2019s Progressive-Regressive <\/strong> Method of Self-Realization<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Peter M. Rojcewicz, PhD <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bainbridge Island<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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ABSTRACT<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sartre\u2019s progressive-regressive method of self-comprehension is discussed as a counter to the dehumanizing effects of Othering. It resists the demonization of marginalized people considered inferior or deviant by dominant groups, as well as the consequent minimization to the self-awareness of hegemonic in-group members. Selfhood requires Otherness; no one realizes self-consciousness without progressive-regressive dialectical acts. Sartre\u2019s phenomenological method of an ongoing progression toward and identification with the subjectivity of the Other and the regressive return to an objectified self is a dynamic interaction between the existential conditions of solitude and community, resulting in a transcendence of self and an existential intimacy with the Other.   For Sartre, self-realization and the manifestation of one\u2019s identity are dependent upon a dialectical manner of living the concrete human relation that temporarily unites and mutually transforms self and Other. In Sartre\u2019s view, we make real our subjectivity and give meaning to our essence by choosing throughout a lifetime to live various roles of Others as engaged projects and thereby transcend our social situation, liquidating our needs (i.e. inhumanity), and enlarging our humanity. By engaging in projects of concrete resistance to Othering, we likewise acknowledge the worth of Others who are indispensable to our own existence and knowledge of ourselves in a field of possible social outcomes for which we bear ethical responsibility.  Sartre\u2019s progressive-regressive method of conscious self-realization requires empathic engagement with Others, and as such, it is an antidote to self-alienation caused by fear of losing ones\u2019 identity vis-\u00e0-vis live social engagements with Otherness \u2013 e.g., people, groups, perspectives, institutions, alliances, causes, relationships, etc. As a result of intimate social encounters, Others are free to be themselves and use their voices in ways that may threaten our views or our perceived sense of authority and control. As such, live encounters with Otherness are generative engagements resulting in human differentiation and integration that enlarge our capacities for self-transformation and broad connectedness through the praxis of concrete projects in society.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Key Words:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Becoming the Other, progressive-regressive method, project, self-comprehension, praxis, dialectic, Artist-Intellectual<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.<\/strong> Introduction<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

We perform our life\u2019s work not in a vacuum, but in a social theater of inescapable mutuality. We conduct research to nudge information toward meanings and meanings toward values to live by. We scholars are citizens, beholding to society. And yet, if our research is to show good faith, it must honestly perplex and disrupt social conditions as part of a critical endeavor, necessarily joining our work to that of Others. My project here is a phenomenological reading of Sartre\u2019s influential essay, \u201cThe Progressive-Regressive Method,\u201d supported by several of his related writings, wherein I unpack how Sartre\u2019s dialectic enterprise discloses self-comprehension, the volition and intelligence of Others, and a future of social possibilities better than the past. I reflect upon Sartre\u2019s phenomenological vision of a human being in which identity transcends and<\/em> includes Others in the broadest sense. I conclude with a discussion of the Artist-Intellectual whose method against personal arrogance and social cruelty is a progressive-regressive reach toward that which is preferable in life. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The phenomenological study of the Other has engaged the thinking of some of the Twentieth Centuries most capable and creative minds, including Martin Buber (1878\u20131965), Gabriel Marcel (1889\u20131973), Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980), Emmanuel Levinas (1906\u201395), and Paul Ricoeuer (1913-2005). They opposed the Enlightenment\u2019s presupposition of a radically autonomous self, which, as it later manifested in the rationalism of the eighteenth century and the materialism of the nineteenth, separated humans from one another and art from life, in favor of a philosophy oriented towards a intersubjective self that is relational to the Other. Sartre understands self-comprehension as a result of placing oneself in positions of Others and engaging their roles as projects in the world. Sartre\u2019s phenomenological method of an ongoing progression toward and identification with the subjectivity of the Other and the regressive return to oneself results in both a surpassing of the conditions of the self that includes knowledge of the Other.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As Sartre\u2019s progressive-regressive method of conscious self-comprehension requires active social participation, it offers an antidote to self-alienation caused by the fear of losing ones\u2019 identity vis-\u00e0-vis encounters with Others \u2013 that which is not-I, whether understood as people, perspectives, institutions, alliances, causes, relationships, or the more-than-human world of nature.[1]<\/a> It is only through choosing open, intimate encounters with those with whom we have issue that we learn to trust and affirm them in ways that enable them to be themselves and use their voices that may influence our views and our sense of authority, control, and privilege. As such, generative engagements with Others result in our own differentiation and integration, enlarging our capacities for self-transformation and social change. Being responsible for Others and for all humanity means assuming people\u2019s needs and a willingness to be called to account for them. It requires we surrender our desires in defense of Others with no certainty of the outcome resulting from our opening up to them. Assuming responsibility for the Other means we respect, safeguard, and learn from the singularity of people despite the risk of ontological shock of identity loss. Like our very selves, the Other comes into being only when affirmed and welcomed by our actions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Perspective Taking and Trans-existential Integrity<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Diverse views that are cultural, philosophical, political, epistemological, and aesthetic inform broad understanding and social connectedness, two values essential to counter all forms of Othering. How can we understand the perspectives, values, aesthetics, judgments, and actions that originate from people different than ourselves? Our socially constructed identities are necessarily hybrids that require that we regularly cross social and cultural borders. For example, James L. Winchester (2002, 8) reasons, \u201cWe must often cross gender borders to communicate with our spouses and generational borders to communicate with children and parents.\u201d To develop and maintain the skill of perspective taking, it is essential to study people in the life-worlds of their respective communities and cultures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The widespread absence of multiple-perspectives literacy today leads to the Othering of various groups: black, brown, and yellow bodied people, anti-vaxxers, pro-maskers, climate change deniers, pro-lifers, opposing political parties, gun lobbyists, and gay, lesbian, and transsexual communities. Possessing a wide repertoire of true but partial worldviews is an integral human value essential for effectively navigating an indeterminate world where understandings of truth and reality are deeply complex and fervently contested. Strategically engaging in projects across socio-cultural borders influences and is influenced by different peoples and cultures, bringing one a step closer to transcending bigotry, sexual minority harassment, neglect of the disabled, nationalism, economic chauvinism, sexism, and xenophobia. Perspective taking and cultural literacy require we understand diversity and inclusion in the broadest terms. The fact of the matter is that human beings possess fluid, malleable identities and possess simultaneous group memberships that can serve as starting points for understanding Others. Scientists who study the genome find no biological basis for race. Sharon Bagley (2003) reports, \u201cGeneticists find that when they add up the tiny genetic variations that make one person different from the next, there is greater difference within races than between races.\u201dThat fact makes it prohibitive to disdain people, causes, or alliances as outliers on the assumption that they are not our kind<\/em>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Linguistic anthropology points to the existential relationality understood by various peoples.  For example, an existential intimacy of self and Other is implied by the African Nguni<\/em> word ubuntu<\/em> – \u201cI am because we are\u201d (John S. Mbiti 1969, 219). In ancient Nguni <\/em>philosophy, a newly born child is not<\/em> a person. People are born without ena<\/em> or selfhood, and \u201cinstead must acquire it through interactions and experiences over time\u2019\u2019 (Abeba Birhane, 2017). Ubuntu<\/em> points to a common human condition and communal inter-connectedness. In that African conception of knowledge and ontological understanding, one\u2019s full humanity can only be situated among Others and is never an abstract, isolated entity (Moeketsi Letseka 2013). Elsewhere, Koreans prize the communal, good-fellowship of sansaeing<\/em> (conviviality) and Pilipino elders encourage the young to manifest kapwa-tao<\/em>, which in Tagalog<\/em> means \u201cas human beings we must respect each another because we need each other\u201d (Ramathate Dolamo 2013). The Japanese word Ningen<\/em> means that our human condition can only exist \u2018between or among people\u2019. It points to the fact that one cannot realize full humanity alienated from Others. Similarly, the traditional Chinese principle of jen <\/em>signifies inherent human benevolence that comes into being only as a result of social interactions (Smith, 1995:110). A final example of the existential intimacy of self and others comes from Zen Buddhist Thich Nhat Hahn (1987) who puts forth that healthy intersubjectivity emerges when self-regarding impulses are modified by knowledge that we are simultaneously intrapersonal (subjective) and interpersonal (social).He refers to this human condition as \u2018interbeing\u2019, an existential state that transcends tribalism and the \u2018us\u2019 vs. \u2018them\u2019 dichotomy at the core of Othering.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While our human condition is trans-existential, it hardly guarantees racial, social, religious, or political harmony; it quite often stimulates dissent. Dissent is kin to cultural and conceptual diversity. A diverse community is never without conflict; it is a place where opposing perspectives offer opportunities for learning and self-comprehension. A clearly stated \u2018no\u2019 may successfully launch a conversation about what constitutes someone making a positive commitment in a context of contested issues. As such, dissent is a form of caring and not a form of resistance. People can let go of doubts that lead to anger and violent resistance only if they can name and express them. Voicing dissent may lead others to discern alternatives as to how we currently see, structure, and value things. Without the possibility of \u2018no\u2019, a response of \u2018yes\u2019 is meaningless (Bloch 2005).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To be a healthy ecological system, communities require limiters and inhibitors of difference to grow and sustain themselves as vibrant interdependent entities. It is the case that there can be neither lasting transformation without inclusiveness nor holistic learning without difference. Diverse communities provide historically slighted groups meaningful assurance that \u2018community\u2019 is a true and authentic value of collective membership and ownership with plans for implementation of inclusion and redress of grievances and not<\/em> code for racism, colonialism, chauvinism, or xenophobia. In communities where one group wields authority that prevents consideration of divergent possibilities and information from different sources, we witness unhealthy social systems. Homogeneity too often means an autonomous part of the system subverts difference and traumatizes the whole. Political systems that control information flow and entrench the authority of one group become autocratic, dictatorial, or fascist. Difference and dissent are essential to sustainable healthy community growth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Consciousness is a balance of differentiations and integrations by which we grow. John Stuart Mill (1974) contends that any position, even if correct, is but \u2018dead dogma\u2019 until one has to defend it against someone who believes the opposite just as fervently. Likewise, the Colville tribal people from Okanagan esteem a perspective referred to as En\u2019owkin<\/em>, understood as \u201cGive me viewpoints opposed to mine to increase my understanding.\u201d Okanagan people are expected to adeptly include the concerns of others within their own perspectives, grasping, to the degree possible, how others may hold opposite positions. While it may be that everyone in the tribal community will never wholly agree on issues, it does help ensure that everyone is fully informed of what it will take to find a path forward and what each person will have to either concede or offer to get there (Fenton 2013).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The point has been made here that willing, active engagement with differing perspectives and views is essential to the health of our indivisible personal and social being. James L. Winchester (2002, 17) warns, “It is foolish to ignore any of the viewpoints accessible to us, but particularly when crossing cultural borders into poorly understood terrain, we should exercise extreme caution about our ability to understand others better than they understand themselves. We will not understand very much at all if we do not leave behind our assumptions of superior knowledge.” On the other hand, when communities define themselves as isolated enclaves of unchallenged views, they become the antithesis of diverse communities and can lead to \u2018enclave extremism\u2019. For as Cass R. Sunstein (2007), Law Professor, University of Chicago purports, “There is the general risk that those who flock together\u2026will end up both confident and wrong, simply because they have not been sufficiently exposed to counterarguments. They may even think of their fellow citizens as opponents or adversaries in some kind of \u2018war\u2019”. How does such antagonism come to be?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3. Individualism and Othering<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Seeds of Othering may be said to lie within the complex view of individualism. For example, individualism is a cornerstone of American culture, \u201cforming a constellation along with analytic thinking, methodological individualism, and free market capitalism\u201d (Montouri 2022). Consider the libertarian notion of people as independent stand-alone agents who make their own choices in all things and whose personal freedom comes before allegiance to others in community. Libertarians are united by a belief in a personal liberty of conducting their lives as they wish, economic freedom, as well as a fundamental distrust of group and government authority. While it is true that discrete individuals working free of group constraints and reluctant to compromise personal values for the collective welfare lead in some cases to innovation and entrepreneurship, it is equally true that isolated individuals working alone lead to finding oneself wanting, lonely, doubtful, and disquiet. Nevertheless, some people are quick to value the individual\u2019s subsequent alienation above imperfect community, misidentifying social retreat for freedom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is painfully true that historically disenfranchised and oppressed groups around the world have at times experienced \u2018community\u2019 as code for paternalism, imperialism, colonialism, or domination by any other name. Fascism in the twentieth century make many today understandably suspicious of the values, practices, and institutions of dominant groups. Rich, multiple perspectives and voices that are cultural, philosophical, political, religious, economic, gender-based, and aesthetic may serve to counter, repressive hegemonic systems. James Madison long ago observed in the Federalist Papers<\/em> that multiple factions in the United States serve to neutralize one another, thus preventing political extremism. Sartre (1968, 87 fn., 1), in the spirit of Marx states, \u201cThus the qualities of external determination and those of synthetic, progressive unity which is human praxis<\/em> are found inseparably connected\u2026\u201d but \u201cthat this wish to transcend the oppositions of externality and internality, of multiplicity and unity, of analysis and synthesis, of nature and anti-nature\u201d is assuredly no easy task.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another view of individuality leading to contestation among individuals and groups is referred to as \u2018Identity Politics\u2019. To decenter Western cultural dominance and include the myriad voices of the world\u2019s culturally disenfranchised peoples, some scholars, at least since the 1980s, have promoted the value of ethnic and racial difference as antidotes to European hegemony. However, in doing so, some have uncritically privileged difference among peoples for its own sake. Advocates of identity politics, according to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2020), presume that divergent worldviews are ultimately incommensurate and that identity is an ahistorical product of a group.  From that perspective, no one exists or can be studied as if independent from the collective. In its extreme, identity politics confuses individuality and self-determination for separatism; it leads to cultural narcissism and chronic ethnocentrism. According to Cornel West,” African-American studies was never meant to be solely for African Americans\u2026It was meant to try to redefine what it means to be human, what it means to be modern, what it means to be American, because people of African descent in this country are profoundly human, profoundly modern, profoundly American. And so to the degree to which they can see the riches that we have to offer as well as see our shortcomings, is the degree to which they can understand the American experience ” (1991, 32-3).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some postcolonial and critical cultural-studies scholars attempt to counter the confusion between self-agency and group autonomy by arguing that traditional divisions among peoples are not absolute. Race, class, sexuality, and gender are unstable categories whose nature and influence are not fixed. Holding a facile conception of self, proponents of identity politics fail to grasp that we have fluid, malleable identities and possess simultaneous group memberships. Our multiple identities and inner diversity are starting points for understanding others. Trin T. Min-ha asserts that the presumed borders between you <\/em>and he, she, me, we<\/em>, and they<\/em> overlap and are porous (1989, 94). Similarly, Gregory Bateson asserts, \u201cIt is nonsense to talk about \u2018dependency\u2019 or \u2018aggressiveness\u2019 or \u2018pride,\u2019 and so on. All such words have their roots in what happens between persons, not in something or other inside a person\u201d (Nakagawa 2000, 36). As such, the dialectical self is a hybrid composed of familial, cultural, interpersonal, and intrapersonal properties. We are by nature empty of an independent existence. Since we necessarily contain many cultural and group identities simultaneously within ourselves, we are compound, inter-relational beings linked inexorably to multiple Others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Being devoid of an isolated self also means we live potentially open to connections, a precondition for such human values as love and caring for others. Living engaged relations of love alter the self-structure of the lover and the beloved. Martin Buber (1958) identified the archetype of love as an \u201cinclusive relationship where the \u2018I am\u2019 neither loses its identity nor prefers self-interest to the interest of others.\u201dWhen we are in love, we are and are not<\/em> ourselves. Unconditional love is a state of self that is not contingent upon conventional value-defining norms of the ego. As such, love opens the silos of ordinary consciousness, allowing for new ways of being to emerge that bridge the intrapersonal and interpersonal, private and public domains of selfhood. This paradox of love – that mirrors the paradox of selfhood – is a condition by which one is distinct but related, separate but not separated from the Other as a beloved. This is widely known but scarcely understood. Eric Fromm (1956) provides guidance, \u201cLoving is unified separateness,\u201d and affirms, \u201cWe can love as equals only because they are different from us, not because they are the same.\u201dSounding like Sartre, Fromm confirms loving relations as a quest for self-consciousness, a mysterious communion of individual with Others. As such, love is a project of creative receptivity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For our concrete human projects to be as transformative as love, the boundaries between self and Other must be seen as semi-permeable, so we can deeply engage Others, forming powerful intersubjective fusions by which to leverage understanding of ourselves and people forward and upward. This action presupposes a social courage by which we risk our belief in a discrete self in order to achieve social intimacies, taking full responsibility for our part in deep, if only momentary, integrative contacts with Others who may or may not reciprocate. Concretizing consciousness of our inter-relational being through our actions and commitments is a counter to prevalent cultural fears of ego-loss or domination by Others different from us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

4. Becoming the Other, Comprehending Oneself<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jean-Paul Sartre, identified with twentieth century dialectics, borrowed the terms \u2018objectification\u2019, \u2018progressive-regressive method\u2019, and \u2018becoming the other\u2019 from the master of dialectics, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. In \u201cExistentialism is a Humanism\u201d,[2]<\/a> Sartre expresses the problem of human consciousness, declaring, \u2018<\/strong>existence precedes essence\u2019. By this, Sartre means there is no a priori<\/em> concept of humanity. Humanity is an existence that chooses an essence. Sartre proclaims, \u201cIn this sense we may say that there is a universality to man; but it is not given, it is perpetually being made. I build the universal in choosing myself.\u201d With this pronouncement on our human ontology, Sartre unilaterally unseats Plato\u2019s ideal forms, the Judeo-Christian notion of God,[3]<\/a> and Hegel\u2019s Absolute Idea. Sartre (2003) approaches the problem of consciousness by distinguishing between two states of being: being-in-itself (i.e., l\u2019etre-en-soi<\/em>) and being-for-itself (i.e., l\u2019etre pour-soi<\/em>). Being in-itself describes the ontological state of a concrete object that appears stable and secure but is unconscious of itself, unable to alter its fixed being, and inherently devoid of meaning. Being-for-itself refers to a person as a conscious subject. It means the phenomenological experience of our self-consciousness is incomplete and non-determined; we must constantly invent ourselves out of nothingness. As much as we try, we can never possess our being, as we do any object. For an unconscious \u2018object\u2019, there is no problem of existence, but as conscious \u2018subjects\u2019in human reality we ask, \u2018Who am I\u2019?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sartre, following Hegel, avouches that self-comprehension is a social process and not a mental one.[4]<\/a> Each human being is in a constant process of becoming, and so the identity of an individual can never be defined by absolute values. Because we realize ourselves only by interacting with Others – to be understood as everything that is not<\/em> we – they are not to be dismissed or maligned. We are inherently indefinable beings moving toward reciprocal relationships in the world. It is through our social engagements that we effect the integration of self-comprehension and experience degrees of personal coherence. In \u201cExistentialism is a Humanism,\u201d Sartre proclaims, \u201cI can obtain any truth at all about myself only by way of some other person. The other is indispensable to my own existence, and so is he just as much regarding my knowledge of myself.\u201d In this intersubjective world, \u201cman decides what he is and what others are.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We can better grasp the intersubjectivity we share with Others, if we recognize that in order to be, say, courageous or loving, we must act<\/em> courageously or lovingly. It is not enough that we should think we are courageous or loving. If we are to be honest, we must perform honesty in our personal and public life. Comprehension of our self-consciousness is not a result of abstract reasoning or philosophical thought but a product of our engaged activities in the world. For Sartre, there is no reality but the concrete actions we choose to realize in the world. Realizing who we are, for Sartre, is always a dialectical way of living \u2013 in struggle or complicity \u2013 the concrete human relation that unites self and Other (Sartre 1968, 11, 156).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the process of affirming the Other, we simultaneously discover and affirm our needs. For Hegel and Sartre, comprehension of the self is a matter of placing ourselves in the position of Others and thereby assuming their roles. Sartre (1968, 107) maintains, \u201cOur roles are always future.\u201d They appear to us as acts to perform, problems to solve, decisions to decide, commitments to keep, or talents to live. By assuming new roles, we engage ourselves in a process of transcending our present condition, a future to be created. By living selected roles of Others as concrete social projects, we display \u201can oriented life, an affirmation of our human essence through action\u201d(Sartre 1968, 108). Through praxis, objective knowledge is acquired through dialectic of living-as-a-human in society.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The nature of our existential condition is manifest by what Sartre refers to as \u2018the progressive-regressive method\u2019. In living day to day we necessarily project ourselves outward into the world, temporarily alienating ourselves from our thoughts and feelings. We invest our emotional, intellectual, and creative energies into our work projects, referred to as praxis. Through praxis, we realize in and through our projects a certain revelation of the Other, and so, knowing is itself an act of praxis (Sartre 1968, 92). We are subjects insofar as we consciously direct our own projects based on our needs, and objects<\/em> insofar as we submit to the action and nature of the Other (Sartre 1968, 128). Our historical conditions vary, but what never varies is the requirement to exist in the world, to take up work there, and engage different people. While it is impossible to discern a universal human essence, Sartre (1968, 39) insists that the progressive-regressive activity is the universal human condition that is not provided us but rather is what we perpetually make through projects that engage the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The word \u2018project\u2019 is a key concept at the core of Sartre\u2019s philosophy and should be understood as both a verb and a noun.  As a verb, \u2018to project\u2019 oneself into an Other means we move away from our private selves and progress outward into society. The \u2018Other\u2019 may be a job, artwork, institution, activity, cause, alliance, or person. As a noun, one\u2019s \u2018project\u2019 is one\u2019s work, commitments, relationships, or alliances. We willfully choose our work projects based on our felt needs in a world of scarcity (Sartre 1968, 91). We recognize the lacks (i.e. inhumanity) we possess and attempt their liquidation through our work, relationships, and meaningful events in the world. Through praxis, we reinvent ourselves and define new realities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sartre (1968, 150) purports, \u201cMan defines himself by his project.\u201d By projecting ourselves outward into some Other in a specific situation, we temporarily leave behind the inner contradictions of our existence through the dialectic of interiorization and exteriorization. Our thought, however, must ceaselessly turn back on itself in order always to apprehend itself. Removed from ourselves via projection, we can view our strengths and lacks more objectively; we see ourselves as Others do. We unveil our hypocrisies by that observation and self-assessment. The transcendence of our contradictions comes from the perpetual reversal of perspectives in the dialectical operation of interiorizing the Other and re-exteriorization our interior life. Concerning this relational give-and-take process, Sartre (1974, 248) declares, \u201cthe self is referred to the world and the world is referred to the self.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

5. Progressive-Regressive Method of Realizing Self-Comprehension<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It has been established here that our self-comprehension is simultaneously progressive toward the Other and regressive toward ourselves (Sartre 1968, 154). This progressive moment of engagement with another consciousness or condition is not permanent, however. Within moments, we regress by coming back to our previous condition. This return is essential, since failure to do so is a form of pathology, as if actors would believe they are<\/em> the characters they play. We return to ourselves, yes, but it\u2019s a modified self. In the words of Derek Attridge (2020, 29), \u201cWe bring the new into being by refashioning the old rather than jettisoning it.\u201d The ongoing process of our self-comprehension involves a reflexivity of self and Other in the sense of our \u2018pausing\u2019 after each back-and-forth of the dialectic to interrogate us. At a distance from ourselves, we are better able to consider who we are and who we are becoming. In effect, we walk in the Other\u2019s shoes through a concrete activity, gesture, relationship, or commitment. We sense that our internal world is shared and that our mind resides within the Other. We freely change ourselves by taking on new thoughts, strengths, weaknesses, and contradictions. We enlarge our consciousness and expand beyond our needs toward some potential at the dynamic intersection between self and sentient Others and interior and exterior lived experience. The dialectical process continues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Within seconds, we again project ourselves outward through our work and again return to a renewed self. It is this ongoing dialectic process that results in the perpetual recreation of who we are and who or what Others are (Sartre 1968, 154). In this way, we simultaneously realize ourselves through concrete actions and define humanity. While this may sound abstract and overly academic, this process is nothing more than our daily life as we live it in its total movement and arc, gathering in its sweep our neighbors, environments, and history into a unified experience (Sartre 1968, 155). We fulfill our felt needs not by simply turning inward but in paradoxically seeking outside of ourselves a goal that is our possible liberation. Objectifying ourselves through praxis involves the recasting of our given condition, and so it is a negation of alienation, a moment of a past surpassed<\/em> and a process of past-surpassing<\/em> (Sartre 1968, 92, 100). This surpassing of our situations is not an instantaneous movement but an extended work. The generative engagement of self and Other produces a new self and a different Other.[5]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

That last statement needs explanation. The intermittent fusion of self and other carries enormous transformational potential not only for us but also for the Other. Let us consider how our inter-relational condition is objectified and transcended in an educational setting. For example, say, that over the course of an academic semester, faculty members project themselves with great energy into their students\u2019 learning processes. The instructors grasp something of how students think, learn, and fail to learn. They use this knowledge to employ effective pedagogical strategies and design complex learning spaces in which to actively engage students. The cumulative result of the ongoing dialectical back-and-forth passage between teacher and student triggers learning in the students\u2019 minds. This assumes, of course, that the faculty member\u2019s intention of commitment is greater than possible student indifference or unwillingness to learn.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Conversely, teachers can also be affected by students\u2019 ongoing progressive-regressive realization of their own self-comprehension. Consider as an example, new assistant professors who place themselves in the learners\u2019 role over many months, or even years.  If the students are consistently hostile, bored, or resistant to instruction, the professors\u2019 praxis will likely be shaped along the same attitudinal lines. Parker Palmer (1998, 72) understands well this dialectical dance with students, \u201cMy sense of self is so deeply dependent on others that I will always suffer a bit when others refuse to relate to me.\u201d As such, instructors may lose commitment to purpose and referencing a personal teaching incident described by Palmer (1998, 71), they may simply \u201cmake peace with the class by giving up on it\u201d. Instructors may no longer diligently prepare their classes, becoming indifferent to their students\u2019 learning needs. They can either continue teaching as such, transcend their condition by engaging enthusiastic students in the future, or perhaps leave education altogether. If they perceive their students as existential threats, the instructors may try to realize themselves by using their authority to dominate the class, but in this they fail.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On this point, Hegel is helpful. In \u201cLordship and Bondage,\u201d Hegel (1977) asserts that only when self-consciousness is fully reflected and recognized in another\u2019s self-consciousness will it be fulfilled as \u2018free\u2019 and \u2018self-determined\u2019. In the first stage of the encounter between the master and the slave, the master attempts to realize himself and gain recognition through domination of the slave. The existence of the slave as another consciousness is seen initially as a threat to the self-sufficiency of the master. Hegel suggests that only by \u2018risking\u2019 life vis-\u00e0-vis another is freedom possible. In the public mind \u2018freedom\u2019 is often understood as the absence of limiting restraints, and as such, means lack of relationship. That sense of freedom is expressed when people assert, I can do anything I want<\/em>. Such radical autonomy leads to estrangement from self and community. For Sartre, however, our need to establish our essence through social engagement means we are freest when deeply engaged in relationships that portray and disclose our being. If we fear the Other and attempt to destroy our \u2018nemesis\u2019, we cannot succeed in gaining the recognition we need to assert ourselves as free, self-conscious beings. Rather, we have, in effect, enslaved ourselves.[6]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In regard to the student-professor example discussed previously, the need to learn confers on the students a substantive relationship with the professor. At the same time, professors are paradoxically dependent on the students for their own existence. A teacher\u2019s inward and invisible sense of identity becomes concretely known only as it manifests itself in ongoing encounters with students (Parker 1998, 63). To achieve an existential intimacy of learning, an instructor must seek to recalibrate the alienated relationship between student and teacher, generating creative permutations of self beyond hyper-individualism, capable of relational exchanges with Others. If they do not know themselves concretely as teachers through their students, teachers do not know their students and, therefore, cannot help them learn. Professors need<\/em> and are dependent on students in order to orient their life and affirm their human essence through acts of instruction. It is by noetic<\/em> recognition (Rojcewicz 2021) of themselves in<\/em> and through<\/em> students that professors realize themselves as free and self-determined beings. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Similarly, Sartre professes in \u201cThe Progressive-Regressive Method\u201d essay, \u201cit is the sick man who needs a doctor.\u201d Sickness confers on the doctor a profound connection with people in society who suffer, are in physical danger, and consequently need medical attention. This connection is both social and material. It is social because society decides<\/em> its sick and its dead; it is material because sickness is a manifestation of physical life, of needs, and of death. The doctor-patient connection engendered by the sickness is \u201ca bond even more intimate than the sexual act\u201d (Sartre 1968, 106, fn. 5). The intimate bond is realized by the project of medical \u201cactivities and precise, original techniques engaging both persons\u201d (Sartre 1968, 103-4, fn. 6).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the progressive-regressive process of committed living, we perpetually go beyond the condition of our lives by assuming over a lifetime the roles of Others. We determine our identity and our life situation by transcending them, realizing ourselves through the praxis of work, in the forms of relationships, gestures, commitments, and various projects. We comprehend our consciousness through acts that concretize our subjectivity; our abstract inner lives become objectively real. Our consciousness-defining projects – say, writing a novel or book of poems \u2013 give social form to our ideas, feelings, and materials. In that case, ideas and feelings are<\/em> who we are as authors, externalizing our expressive talents in the material of language (Sartre 1968, 115). Through a writing project, our aims, aspirations, and goals take objective form and produce consequences in the conditions of society. It is through writing that our unformed potentials become substantially real. The writer and the written mutually contribute to and influence one another. By objectifying our subjectivity, we enter society, stepping out of our isolation from Others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

6. Creativity through Self-comprehension<\/strong>         <\/p>\n\n\n\n

To better understand how objectification overcomes existential self-alienation, let us take a literary turn. In Virginia Woolf\u2019s landmark novel, Mrs. Dalloway<\/em>, the protagonist Clarissa Dalloway continually concretizes her inner life of emotional needs through social relations, cultural life, and well-planned society affairs. Clarissa\u2019s life situations oscillate between happiness and anxiety, hopeful expectations and foreboding of doom, self-satisfaction, and self-contempt. She is reserved, emotionally shy, and reluctant to assert her agency.  \u201cShe had a sense of the comedy that was really exquisite, but she needed people to bring it out\u2026\u201d (Woolf 1985, 118). She loves London\u2019s cultural activity, urban energies, and its numerous gardens. From her need to be more outgoing and self-assured, Clarissa projects herself wholeheartedly into city life and her associates and friends, and thereby, undergoes moments of expanded comprehension and intimate connection with social and natural environments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“\u2026on the streets of London, on the ebb and flow of things, here, there, she survived, Peter survived, lived in each other, she being part, she was positive, of the trees at home: of the house there, ugly, rambling all to bits and pieces as it was; part of the people she had never met; being laid out like a mist between people she knew best, who lifted her on their branches as she had seen the trees lift the mist, but it spread ever so far, her life, herself “(Woolf 1985, 12).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To know Clarissa, others must seek out the people, places, and events that define her. Clarissa\u2019s well-healed parties are her social projects. Her commitment to the community is to gather Others together in order to realize themselves in her, and in turn, herself in them. Her high society affairs are means by which she takes raw youth, wakes them up, and sends them into life (1985:116). She has a gift for inviting guests and artfully positioning them in conversation in different rooms, as if designing a garden or arranging a floral bouquet. Clarissa has noetic ability for comprehending herself and others through her parties. \u201cEvery time she gave a party she had this feeling of somehow being not herself, and that everyone was unreal in one way; and much more real in another\u201d (Woolf 1985, 259). Taken as a whole, Clarissa\u2019s parties are her work objects, her praxis. Her social gatherings constitute what Sartre (1968, 100 fn. 5) refers to as a creative \u2018work without an author\u2019. Her parties open her consciousness and identity to the collective wisdom of Others beyond her own agenda. She tacitly comprehends that living life through her projects at the border of the private and the public gives reality to her and simultaneously also makes her vulnerable to ridicule, should her parties flop. The consequence of self-comprehension for Clarissa, as for us, is creativity<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In both art and artful living, creativity emerges from collaborative encounters with people, causes, concepts, images, objects, or aesthetic visions. From this ongoing encounter and re-encounter, creative change comes to the subject and the object alike. Sartre (1968, 100, fn. 5) points out that in the progressive-regressive passage \u201cindividuals do not collide like molecules, but that, upon the basis of given conditions and divergent and opposed interests, each one understands and surpasses the project of the other.\u201d Through consciously choosing projects to answer our needs, we participate both in our ongoing transformation and the world coming-to-be. This joint action between self and Other in a cultural context is arguably what existential psychologist Rollo May (1975, 50) had in mind, \u201cWe can never localize creativity as a subjective phenomenon\u201d and \u201ccan never study it simply in terms of what goes on within the person.\u201d Our inner landscapes and social relations are re-structured in the social performance of our creative projects. This is why the Other is indispensible to our identity and the transcendence of our historical condition toward larger personal and social possibilities. The objects, relationships, and events we create from our felt needs, as life-defining projects, are signs<\/em> of the perpetual formation and reformation of ourselves. We are signifiers; we assign meanings and values to life. Our projects and those of Others are significations revealing the conditions of people and their relationships across the fabric of society (Sartre 1968, 102, 156). The purpose of our praxis is to learn from and about Others; we seek to learn humility and cooperation antithetical to Othering.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sartre assumes a radical teleology (i.e., purposefulness) that is social rather than metaphysical. We give our life meaning and purpose by strategically choosing engagements with Others from the portfolio of our needs in a world of scarcity. We are the product of those engagements (Sartre 1968, 92) and therefore, indolent or cavalier acts are to be eschewed, for they may define our essence in ways that only enhance our lacks (i.e., inhumanity), determine a miserable destiny, and contribute negatively to society.[7]<\/a> By our actions, we define who we are and simultaneously define humanity. Sartre (1968, 125-126) lays emphasis on human freedom and choice, and so necessarily rejects the Marxist \u2018big laws of history\u2019 hypothesis that reduces human acts and art to symbolic or mechanistic manifestations of unyielding universal laws. While our projects may be influenced by specific conditions of history that furnish a direction and material reality to our lives, they remain individual acts of freedom that transcend social conditions.[8]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

For example, Sartre took on as his personal project writing a three-volume biography of Flaubert. Sartre\u2019s analysis of Flaubert, enriched by phenomenological, psychoanalytic, symbolic, and cultural considerations, \u201ctakes into account human need, frustrations, and ambitions\u201d (Harcourt 1960). Why did Sartre choose Flaubert as his project? Sartre saw Flaubert as contrary in every way to himself. \u201cFlaubert represents for me the exact opposite of my own conception of literature: a total disengagement and a certain idea of form, which is not what I admire\u2026\u201d (Cohen-Solal 1987). The biography of Flaubert as Other to Sartre allowed him to question all aspects of himself. Flaubert was an aesthete, taciturn, self-doubting, innocent, awkward, and fearful of death. He was an average student, easily humiliated by the success of his fellow students and his brother\u2019s academic prowess. Fastidious by nature, Flaubert could spend days rewriting the same sentence of prose fiction (Sartre 1968, 140-5). He was largely disengaged from socio-political conditions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sartre, on the other hand, was a gifted intellectual, confident, assertive, gregarious, and opinionated. For him, death was an absurdity. An energetic social activist, Sartre urged associates to join him in solidarity and common political cause with union workers. When we chose to become the Other and take on qualities we ourselves lack, like Sartre choosing Flaubert, we expand our mental understanding and emotional possibilities. Realization of what is possible in life comes not from private dreaming or conceptualizing but from creation of a concrete reality of relationships work projects and social events for which we are ethically responsible. Sartre\u2019s notion of praxis is an ethic of action and not of abstract moral reasoning. As a writer-philosopher, he sought liberation and freedom. Of Sartre, Harcourt (2021) proclaims, \u201cAnd thus, the project of the engaged writer, of the engaged intellectual, or more simply, of the engaged person must be to transform society, to work toward a just society.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

7. The Artist-Intellectual: work objects, methods, and goals<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sartre\u2019s progressive-regressive method of self-comprehension offers an antidote to present day racism, sexism, xenophobia, and all forms and manner of Othering. The ongoing engagements of synthesis between self and Other required by our projects are foundational to personal morality and a social ethic of care. As an interaction-based ethic of self-comprehension, the progressive-regressive method of social engagement counters and reverses the reductive notion do as I do and be as I am<\/em>. By assuming roles of socially disenfranchised or politically incompatible Others, we step back from our bias and privilege and into much of what we previously devalued or dehumanized. In that moment, we question our life and worldview, pushing back limits of our stereotypical perceptions and expanding awareness of the human condition. By choosing to launch projects of concrete resistance to colonialism, racism, misogyny, and ecological abuse, we can realize what is good<\/em>, beautiful<\/em>, and true<\/em> in different races, genders, ethnicities, cultures, religions, and nature as acts of personal liberation and social transformation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It has been argued here that we gain truth about Others and ourselves through engrossing dialectical encounters. Through acts of existential intimacy with different people and opposing perspectives, we encounter their singularity and avoid the self-righteous belief that we alone hold precious principles or traits not held by other individuals or groups. The fact of the matter is the Other is our existential \u2018teacher\u2019 who helps us move beyond our social conditions, giving shape to our essence and defining a purpose. In dialectical logic, \u201cWe are what we make of what others make of ourselves\u201d (O\u2019Donohoe 2005). We assume the role of \u2018apprentice\u2019 as we seek to comprehend our personal and social worlds in ways that counter colonialism, ethnocentrism, and xenophobia. Because there is no certainty of outcome in giving oneself to the Other to affirm our human essence, the dialectical process of becoming self-consciously aware involves emotional, intellectual, and ontological risks and requires commitment, courage, authenticity, and good faith.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dialectic operations of the progressive-regressive method assume everything carries their opposite, and that this tension of contrasts leads to further change.  When Flaubert declared, \u201cI myself am Madam Bovary,\u201d Sartre (1968, 141) saw him acting to \u201cmetamorphose himself into a woman artistically,\u201d and thereby overcoming his historical conditions of a petite bourgeois male and refusing misogyny in favor of a richer human possibility(Sartre 1968, 147). By virtue of his engaged literature biography of Flaubert, Sartre creatively asserted freedom over how he would show up in the world and recast himself concretely as an artist and intellectual. Sartre externalized himself in the materiality of language through his Flaubert biography. The projects of Flaubert via Emma Bovary and Sartre via Flaubert point out how creativity unfolds in the field of possibilities from our socio-historical exchanges with Others (Montouri and Purser 1995), configures our perspectives, and displaces us from subjective zones where our personal and cultural perspectives lay.  In \u201cA Plea for Intellectuals,\u201d Sartre (1974) discusses diverse models of possible living as an intellectual from which to fashion a creative life of inquiry, self-reflection, ethical action, and deep purpose.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One possible permutation of the self to be made evident by praxis is that of the Artist-Intellectual that Sartre (1974) distinguishes from the intellectual as historian and intellectual as technician. The intellectual as historian is a collector of ideas. Historians love the objects of their study — chronicles, travel logs, letters, and various other documents needed to tell a story of the directly unknowable past that meets the present needs of a professional community of historians. We need intellectuals as historians, of course.  A possible problem, however, is that their object-love may lead to a dangerous insularity, a self-satisfied retreat from the world situation. Secondly, the intellectual as technician offers a valuable but different model of showing up in our world of complex change, racial and viral pandemics, brute nationalism, and climate change. Technicians, as practitioners of pragmatic knowledge, love their methods of study — efficient, cool, theoretical, and pure. Research methods, however, can be fickle, faithful only in a theoretical, unchanging setting. Method-love is no advance over object-love, and so another move is needed — the Artist-Intellectual.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Artist-Intellectuals may be artists in the generally understood sense of one who writes novels or plays, paints, dances, sculpts, etc. Sartre was himself a philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and literary critic. It is the ongoing recreation of oneself through the progressive-regressive method that forms an intellectual like Sartre into an artist<\/em>. That is the necessary condition. The sufficient condition, however, requires that Artist-Intellectuals possess awareness of the relationship of their goals (i.e., the whyof their work) to their study objects (i.e., the what), and methods of inquiry (the how). Why one studies connects one\u2019s projects to purpose, values, and ethics.  Artist-Intellectuals set and adroitly arrange and rearrange the relationship of their work objects, methods, and goals to desired outcomes at the level of concrete social events. They know that the same strategic approach to an issue may not succeed from one socio-historical situation to another. The historical setting may require them to creatively chose and apply appropriate alternate methods of inquiry to selected objects of study in order to discern solutions to social issues consistent with goals. This is not to say they can control the world or always find solutions. This is<\/em> to say, however, that Artist-Intellectuals move fearlessly toward unknowns as opportunities to un-learn what has led us into current dilemmas, displaying radical vulnerability and creative responsiveness to what emerges in the social theater. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For Artist-Intellectuals, creativity is first a matter of intention <\/em>\u2013 giving to and communicating with Others to grasp the humanity behind their projects and secondly of response<\/em> \u2013 freely taking Others into oneself and moving outward through their roles to learn how they negotiate the world we share. Henry Glassie (Barefoot 2011) upholds that engagements with Others are means for \u201cjoining in appreciation of their creations, in hatred of forces that thwart them, overcoming our separateness in a oneness of humanity.\u201d The praxis of Artist-Intellectuals is action of thoughtfulness, to be understood here not as a pursuit of irrefutable logic but rather as a commitment to avoid the bad faith of self-deception in favor of acts of authenticity. Just as artists address and surpass their conditions by concretizing their subjective vision with the materiality of words, stone, canvas, paper, movement, and melody, so Artist-Intellectuals form and reform personal and social conditions through the dialectic of living as engaged people in society, ethically linking their praxis to alliances, associations, and values that include and transcend conditions of reality. The progressive-regressive dialectical reach toward that which is preferable in life is a body-slam against banality and cruelty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Artist-Intellectual is conscious of the repositioning of ontological boundaries. The creative give-and-take of their dialectical projects allows the outside world to be inside<\/em>, while simultaneously entering its situational beingness in the world, conflating social and personal distance, opening channels of possibilities, sharing diverse voices, and inspiring action. If one cannot respectfully enter the life of Others and identify with them so as to recast our personal prejudices, values, and lacks, then our life\u2019s work is hollow and humanity diminished. As intellectuals, our projects may add beneficially to the knowledge of our disciplines, but failing to question our personal biases and practices, or those of our academic and social communities, we work ultimately in bad-faith[9]<\/a> as inauthentic intellectuals, mere \u2018watchdog thinkers\u2019, who Sartre (1974, 252) puts forth as \u201ccreated by the dominant class to defend its particularist ideology by arguments which claim to be rigorous products of exact reasoning.\u201d Artist-Intellectuals, on the other hand, choose liberating projects that question both themselves and existing historical conditions and thereby operate in good faith.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sartre purports that everything across society must be subjected to ongoing interrogation, including the project that is oneself. That is to say, the progressive-regressive inquiry of Artist-Intellectuals, and all who work in good faith, reveals not only positive attributes about themselves but also points to where they act complicit with racism, sexism, colonialism, and xenophobia. Sartre (1974, 249) avows, “The intellectual\u2019s labour will come to nothing, even if he demonstrates the aberrant character of racism, unless he constantly returns to himself to liquidate the traces of racism within him leftover from childhood, by a rigorous investigation of the \u2018incomparable monster\u2019 that is his self.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Transcending dehumanizing perspectives in order to move \u2018toward the field of possibles\u2019 (Sartre 1968, 93) through creative projects is essential to the Artist-Intellectual as a true scholar. The progressive-regressive method of making real our human and social possibilities creates value in service of personal and social critique. Criticism that doesn\u2019t degenerate into cynicism refuses to settle for less than the possibilities of what might be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

8. Conclusion<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Projects that overcome social conditions that facilitate Othering will not come in accidentally through the backdoor. We must actively affirm and change the world as a commitment to ethical action, dependent upon a dialectical way of living. Because it is through our works we define ourselves and objectify values that people may live out concretely in their own lives, Sartre (1946) has it that we are \u2018obliged to perform exemplary acts\u2019and bear responsibility for<\/em> Others. Each of our acts creates images of human possibility and value that, by choosing them, we deem them \u201cvalid for everybody and for our whole age.\u201d We must constantly ask ourselves, \u201cAm I really the one who has the right to act in such a way that humanity might guide itself by my actions?\u201d Assuming responsibility for the Other means we respect, safeguard, and learn from the singularity of diverse people, despite the risk that they may not open kindly to us. We disclose the essence of one another, not through conflict but through being-with-others<\/em> in community (Sartre 2003, 435).Our being-for-others<\/em> precedes and is the foundation for being-with-others<\/em> (Sartre 2003, 436). Our ethical responsibility for those with whom we are existentially connected is pre-requisite for social concord and requires we stand up against racism, eco-madness, misogyny, binary gender oppression, refugee abuse, and all forms of xenophobia on behalf of the common good, despite intimidation from powerful actors. Our existence and identity require engagements in the world to serve as exempla for humanity. Our ethical choices are analogous to fashioning a work of art, since art, like ethics, presupposes free acts of subjectivity, will, decision-making, and choice. Our goal as fully engaged citizens is to artfully disclose our situated freedom to live ethically with, for, and on behalf of Others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

9. Acknowledgments<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I extend appreciation to Henry Glassie, PhD for rich conversations concerning Sartre\u2019s works; Scott De Francesco, PhD for his insightful comments on earlier draft of this work, and Richard Rojcewicz, PhD for permission to use his unpublished translation of Sartre\u2019s 1946 essay \u201cExistentialism is a Humanism\u201d and his pertinent thoughts provided in emails of 10\/28\/23 and 10\/29\/23 concerning Sartre\u2019s Being and Nothingness. I am grateful to Amy Victoria Dachs for her encouragement and support during the research and writing of this project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Levinas, Emmanual. The Levinas Reader (1989).  ed. Sean Hand.. Cambridge MA: Basil Blackwell, 294-295.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trin T. Min-ha. Woman, Native, Other. (1989). Bloomington: Indiana University Press.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

West, Cornel and hooks, bell. Breaking Bread: Insurgent Black Intellectual Life. (2016). Toronto, Ontario: Between the Lines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Winchester, James L. Aesthetics Across the Color Line, Why Nietzsche Sometimes Can\u2019t Sing the Blues. (2002). New York: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Woolf, Virginia. Mrs. Dalloway. (1985). New York: Brace Jovanovich. [1925].<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Zimmerman, Michael E. \u201cEncountering Alien Otherness,\u201d The Concept of the Foreign An Interdisciplinary Dialogue. (2003) Rebecca Sanders, ed. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                                                            11. Endnotes<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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[1]<\/a> Continental philosophers have not recognized non-human entities of the biosphere as<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Others that make moral claims upon us, focused only on humanity. Emmanuel Levinas, as noted by Michael Zimmerman (2003), further limits the Other to members of one\u2019s affiliated group and, therefore, excluded Palestinians as morally significant beings. See The Levinas Reader<\/em>, ed. Sean Hand (Cambridge MA: Basil Blackwell, 1989), 294-295. Sartre doesn\u2019t directly address the issue, but I see nothing in his work that precludes projects involving sentient nonhumans as Others who make moral claims upon us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[2]<\/a> All references to Sartre\u2019s essay \u201cExistentialism is a Humanism\u201d come from the unpublished translation by phenomenologist Richard Rojcewicz, PhD, Point Park University (retired.) Used by permission of the translator.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/a>2 All references to Sartre\u2019s 1946 essay \u201cExistentialism is a Humanism\u201d come from the unpublished translation by phenomenologist Richard Rojcewicz, PhD, Point Park University (retired.) Used by permission of the translator.\u2028<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[3] For Sartre, \u201cGod\u2019s existence is not the issue. Man must find himself again and persuade himself that nothing can relieve him of himself, not even a valid proof of the existence of God.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[4]<\/a> Sartre\u2019s WW II experiences of conscription, detention in a German prisoner of war camp, and involvement in the French Resistance constituted powerful concrete experiences that led Sartre to see his existentialism in terms of social engagements and not in purely intellectual terms. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

[5]<\/a> The progressive-regressive method is recognition of our interdependent human condition. This reciprocal mutuality in which a subtle sense of self emerges from engagements with other beings is frequently recognized in Buddhist philosophy as the \u2018dependent co-arising of self and other\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[6]<\/a> It\u2019s worth noting Sartre took the opposite position earlier in Being and Nothingness <\/em>(BN), holding instead that human interaction culminates not in mutual self-recognition but in binary opposition wherein one contesting party becomes a free subject, while the other is reduced to an object imprisoned by \u2018the gaze\u2019 of the Other. However, Being and Nothingness is in places so exaggerated and contradictory that it\u2019s difficult to know if it\u2019s meant to be taken on face value. Either Sartre\u2019s ideas evolved, or he simply expressed himself in his later writings in a more direct way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[7]<\/a> In \u201cExistentialism is a Humanism\u201d Sartre states, \u201cTomorrow, after my death, certain men may decide to establish fascism and others may be cowardly and muddled enough to let them do it. Fascism will then be the truth of man, so much the worse for us.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[8]<\/a> From 1932 and 1962, France engaged consistently in war, except for a few months, involved in the German occupation and colonial fighting in Indochina and Algeria. In a 1975 interview, Sartre acknowledged that the wars engendered significant changes in his thinking and material reality that moved him to social activism. Sartre reflected in a 1969 interview,  \u201cI was not made for politics, and yet I was remade by politics so that I eventually had to enter them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[9]<\/a> As we are \u2018condemned to be free\u2019 with nothing beyond us to hold on to, some choose to deny or overlook ethical responsibility for oneself and humanity. Sartre considers anyone who invents a form of determinism to disguise their freedom is wrong and is a coward. We witness this fleeing from freedom when someone complains that making a free choice was impossible since \u2018circumstances were against me\u2019. By assuming this more sinned against than sinning<\/em> attitude, they are in Sartre\u2019s view inauthentic and live in \u2018bad faith\u2019. Conversely, those who accept responsibility for their freedom and do not make excuses for their life display authenticity and live in \u2018good faith\u2019.Abstract <\/strong>(322 words)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sartre\u2019s Progressive-Regressive Method of Self-Realization Peter M. Rojcewicz, PhD Bainbridge Island ABSTRACT Sartre\u2019s progressive-regressive method of self-comprehension is discussed as a counter to the dehumanizing effects of Othering. It resists the demonization of marginalized people considered inferior or deviant by dominant groups, as well as the consequent minimization to the self-awareness of hegemonic in-group members. … Continue reading Beyond Othering<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1212","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterrphd.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1212","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterrphd.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterrphd.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterrphd.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterrphd.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1212"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/peterrphd.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1212\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1225,"href":"https:\/\/peterrphd.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1212\/revisions\/1225"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterrphd.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1212"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterrphd.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1212"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterrphd.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1212"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}