« June 2006 | Main | August 2006 »
July 28, 2006
Goodbye, dear Sunil
BHOPAL, JULY 27, 2006
Sunil Kumar died in his apartment in Bhopal on the evening of July 26, 2006. He was thirty-four years old.
Sunil was a survivor of the 1984 Union Carbide gas disaster, which took the lives of two of his brothers, three of his sisters, and both his parents in one night. Sunil was thirteen years old. In an interview in 1985, Sunil, who later founded the group Children Against Carbide, said that "The people must know who was responsible for the gas disaster- who killed their loved ones. And those who are found responsible must be hanged. What is the use of all the money if those who have killed so many go scot-free?" While those responsible for the disaster have still not faced trial, Sunil, troubled by mental health problems in his later life, was the one who finally hung himself. He was found hanging from the ceiling fan, wearing a t-shirt that said "No More Bhopals."
Born in Bhopal in about 1972, the son of a carpenter, he was living with his family in JP Nagar, Bhopal, across from the Union Carbide pesticide factory when the gas leak occurred. Sunil was left to care for his one and a half year old brother Sanjay and his nine year old sister Mamta. The siblings survived mostly on the generosity of neighbors, both Hindu and Muslim. He managed to study until the 10th standard despite his responsibilities, and his home in JP Nagar became known as a safe haven for children whose parents beat them. Sunil, with his acute sense of irony and nose for the anti-hierarchical, would open the philosophical discussion: "Is it better to have parents that beat you, or to have no parents at all?"
Sunil gravitated immediately towards those who were organizing for the rights of gas victims, attending meetings, listening quietly and absorbing everything. In June 1985, it was Sunil who laid the foundation stone for the first People's Clinic in Bhopal for treatment of the gas victims. In 1986 Sunil, a petitioner in the Bhopal civil suit, was sent by the Indian government to the USA to depose about the disaster before Judge John Keenan in New York. In 1987 he formed the group Children Against Carbide, which mobilized orphans and other young people affected by the disaster to fight for social justice. The group raised issues of compensation and health as well as demonstrating against the supply of bad food in daycare centers. He also became a long-term member of the Bhopal Group for Information and Action, and attended every single anniversary rally to commemorate the disaster - even when his illness became very severe.
Sunil toured the world in 1989 to garner support against the settlement made in the Bhopal case between the Indian Government and Union Carbide. He traveled to Ireland and Holland, toured the United Kingdom with Bianca Jagger, and was arrested in a Houston, TX, hotel for trying to deliver a environmental report to Union Carbide's annual meeting. After hundreds of people called the Mayor of Houston, he was released and charges dropped. He also toured India, speaking out for those in need. Along with others orphaned by the gas, Sunil sat on hunger strike in Bhopal for six days in 2003, demanding the jobs that the government had offered years before.
Throughout his twenties Sunil earned money in small lending and retailing ventures. He was known for his generosity and affinity towards his friends and those in need. When the government finally granted him a house as part of a gas relief scheme, he gifted his home in JP Nagar, free of cost, to a homeless friend. Sunil had a exceptionally sharp mind and an uncanny memory to the end. He scanned each day's newspaper for information about the Bhopal case, and could quote even the tiniest details many years later. He was a walking encyclopedia of information about the gas disaster. In recent years, he was also a volunteer at the Sambhavna Trust Clinic for survivors, working diligently and daily to fact-check medical folders and sometimes working in the medicinal garden. Although he had no source of income at that time, he refused to take money for his work.
In 1997, displaying his strong commitment to communal relations in the face of intimidation, Sunil refused to bow to extortion by a right-wing Hindu group that wanted him to fund the killing of a Muslim man from his gas compensation money. In turn, they threatened Sunil's life, and his mental health took a turn for the worse. He was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia; mental illness is common among those affected by the Bhopal gas disaster. Sunil began treatment at Sambhavna Clinic, and seemed to be improving. He also became a beloved member of the Sambhavna community, sometimes attending staff meetings and picnics. He was troubled by voices, and by constant fear and paranoia, and yet would still show courage to defend those he loved. When his activist friend had a bomb thrown at him whilst driving, Sunil insisted on riding on the back of his motorcycle for a month to keep lookout.
SUNIL, PHOTOGRAPHED BY RAGHU RAI
Sunil struggled and suffered terribly with his illness, but never lost his sense of humor. He was fully aware that the voices he heard were not real, but could not in the end control them. He made multiple suicide attempts and was finally successful. He left a note asserting that he was committing suicide because he was mentally unsound, but doing so with all his wits about him.
Sunil is survived by his younger brother Sanjay Verma, with whom he was living at the time, by his sister Mamta Verma, his brother-in-law Shiv Prakash Verma and their two children. He also leaves behind a large and loving community at Sambhavna, in Bhopal, and around the world. At his funeral, people of all religions, and leaders of organizations across Bhopal, came together to pay tribute to a remarkable man. Sunil struggled against the greatest of odds, and was an incredible example of strength, compassion, humor and intelligence in the face of unbelivable adversity. His death is an enormous loss and terrible tragedy. He will be sorely missed.
Posted by bhola at 05:54 AM | Comments (0)
July 26, 2006
At the UN, Dow Chemical's invited in, while teaming up With Microsoft is defended
MATTHEW RUSSELL LEE, INNER CITY PRESS, AT THE UN
UNITED NATIONS, July 25 -- How much would a corporation whose brand resonates with Agent Orange and Napalm, and which acquired in 1999 Union Carbide and liability for the deaths it caused in Bhopal, India, pay to be praised by the United Nations?
For the past two days on the East River behind the UN building, a tugboat has pushed a barge with a billboard bearing Dow Chemical's red diamond logo. On the second day, Tuesday, the Wall Street Journal carried an article, "Dow Chemical Plans Measures to Be More Green." The article quotes UN official Amir Dossal that "what companies like Dow are doing will raise the bar for others."
Mr. Dossal, the head of the UN Foundation for International Partnership, is described in one of his online biographies as the UN's "point person for partnerships with the private sector, foundations and civil society." Assuming that civil society includes global membership organizations like Amnesty International, it's worth nothing that in May 2006, Amnesty International protested Dow's annual shareholders' meeting, on Dow's continued failure to address the victims of Bhopal.
On the fourth floor of the UN on Tuesday, Dow was praised over lunch by Mr. Dossal along with Deputy Secretary-General Mark Malloch-Brown, who said of Dow: "we endorse it." He apologized for the absence of Kofi Annan, in Rome on the issue of Lebanon. It's worth noting that just before he flew to Italy, Mr. Annan spent an hour and forty-five minutes meeting with the chief executives of pharmaceutical companies in the UN's Conference Room 7, after which neither he nor the CEOs took any questions from the press.
Through the corporate looking glass
The purpose of the lunch, which included vegetable lasagna and either a burrito or a spring roll to the side of croutoned salad, was for Dow CEO Andrew N. Liveris to announce Dow Chemical's sponsorships of Blue Planet Run's around-the-word relay in June 2007. A video was shown, on plasma big-screen televisions. Children from Public School 116 came in to recite lines about clean water.
As the Wall Street Journal dutifully reported, "last month, the company acquired Zhejiang Omex Engineering Co. of China for an undisclosed amount because, Dow officials said, the smaller company specializes in water-purification systems." As Mark Malloch-Brown said, "This is a business proposition."
Among the questions raised is how decides what corporations are invited into the UN. Inner City Press asked this question earlier this month with respect to a program under which the UN's refugee agency "teamed up" with Societe Generale in an investment in a fund controlled by Ivan Pictet, who is on the UN Investment Committee for the UN staff's pension.
The answer, after days of telephone calls and unreturned emails, came from Mark Malloch-Brown, through the Secretariat's spokesman's office: "This case highlights the complexities of the UN's partnerships with the private sector and so current guidelines and practices of various funds and agencies and programs will be reviewed" to try to avoid "potential conflicts of interest" and misuses of UN logos.
Following receipt of that statement from the Secretariat's spokesman's office, Inner City Press wrote to another UN agency, the World Tourism Organization, asking for comment and documents regarding the press release last week, "UN tourism agency teams up with Microsoft to boost African tourism," on which [the] contact [is the] Special Advisor to the Secretary-General.
The request is for a explanation of the arrangement between the World Tourism Organization and Microsoft, and separately, for a copy of the written agreement between the World Tourism Organization and Microsoft. While it shouldn't need to be said, promoting tourism in Africa is laudable and needed, and Microsoft is a corporation with a venerable track record, but whether "teaming up" is the appropriate public description of this partnership is a matter we'd like you to comment on, along with the above-requested information. If possible, we'd also like you to comment on whether you believe that the UN World Tourism Organization (and other UN affiliated agencies) receive sufficient guidance on engaging with corporations, and any suggestions you'd like to make in this regard.
Five days after this request was sent, the following response was received:
-----Original Message-----
From: gl [at] st-ep.com
To: matthew.lee [at] innercitypress.com; glipman [at] unwto.org [and two UN lawyers and one spokesperson]
Sent: Fri, 21 Jul 2006 4:00 PM
Subject: RE: Document & comment request re press release re UN Tourism Agency "Teams Up" with Microsoft
Dear Mr. Lee
The key issues in the PPP between UNWTO and Microsoft, as we see, them are the following:
The agreement is designed to support the MDGs and is in the spirit of MDG 8
It is voluntary, non exclusive, carries no specific financial commitments, does not allow any use of our logo without agreement and provides for project defined activities based on the UNWTO work program and other international pro development initiatives.
It aims to capitalise on links between 2 "catalysing sectors" Tourism and ICT
It strengthens UNWTO's capacity to develop "e" programs in many areas of our mission that we otherwise would not be able to undertake so effectively, without committing us to any Microsoft systems or products unless we so choose.
By initially focusing on Africa it puts the emphasis where it is most needed because tourism can bring export income, infrastructure, jobs and new hope for poverty reduction. As you rightly note this is a laudable goal and Microsoft has a venerable track record.
The first projects are both designed to meet defined needs from our work program and intensive consultations held with Member States over the past year.
The portal for Africa developed with NEPAD will give an immediate new potential for African States and Communities to showcase their products through a new dynamic channel.
The Emergency Response System will allow us to respond to all types of crisis by providing consolidated information in a way which will help tourist administrations, tourists and concerned stakeholders. Its primary target of avian flu will be a key component in industry wide preparedness program.
In addition we ate starting to explore development of an eTourism curriculum for schools and other educational systems designed to provide opportunities for young people in poor counties, where none exist today.
We have no comment on the use of the expression "teams" and we don't have any problem with working closely with the private sector -- indeed the Constitution of the UNWTO specifically provides for direct involvement in our activities of the Private Sector and we have a vibrant, growing group of companies affiliated to UNWTO as well as academic institutions and ngo's.
We are quite open to "guidance" on relations with the private sector -- though at the present we feel we deal with this in a responsible fashion under the oversight of our governance bodies -- and we try to do it efficiently and fairly, as in all our cooperative activities.
Sincerely
Geoffrey Lipman
The requested documents, copies of the agreement, have yet to be provided. For now we'll only note that Microsoft is one of eleven corporations lists as "Corp Partners " on the UN Foundation for International Partnerships web site, along with
Ericsson www.ericsson.com
CISCO Systems www.cisco.com
Coca Cola www.coca-cola.com
Aveda Corporation www.aveda.com
MTV www.mtv.com
Equal Access www.equalaccess.org
American Electric Power www.aep.com
British Petroleum www.bp.com/
Globalegacy International www.globalegacy.com/
Hewlett Packard www.hp.com/
At Tuesday's noon briefing, Inner City Press asked the spokesman office to try to get a response from Kofi Annan to the issues raised in (the margin of) the Reuters article about Peter Karim, kidnapper of seven UN peacekeepers, being made a colonel in the Congolese army. We'll see.
At Monday's noon briefing, Jan Egeland's implacable deputy Margaret Wahlstrom made the New York portion of the UN's flash appeal for Lebanon. Fuel pricing there have rising by 600%, due to the bombing of gas stations and storage points, and the need for fuel to run back-up generators. Inner City Press asked if Jan Egeland will be visiting the bombed-out Gaza power plant. "That is the plan," was the answer, pending approvals. We'll see.
On a less dramatic front, Friday the UN announced that its representative in Iraq Ashraf Qazi had been cleared in full. The UN statement criticizes the unnamed ex-employee who complained and Qazi's conduct, saying that a reprimand will be placed in the ex-employee's permanent file (so he or she can never again work for the UN).
The question is raised: how is it that the treatment of the Qazi case and complainant does not cast a chill on future prospective whistleblowers, whatever the UN's new written policy states?
Finally, after inquiries we can report the reappearance of sushi for sale in the Austria cafe in the UN conference building basement. It disappeared, sources say, because the supplier had to be re-accredited. Welcome back! The new plastic trays say Daruma of Tokyo. In light of Monday's Security Council straw poll of the so-far only four candidates to be the next Secretary-General (the real question regarding which is, which mission leaked it?) we close as we began, with a question: who'll next be running this casa de sushi? Sashi?
Update 10 p.m. July 25 -- In the aftermath of UNFIL deaths in Lebanon, the lights burned bright on the UN's 37th floor. Howeve as of 10 p.m. no statement would issue...
Feedback: editorial [at] innercitypress.com
UN Office: S-453A, UN, NY 10017 USA Tel: 212-963-1439
Reporter's mobile: 718-716-3540
Posted by bhola at 07:45 AM | Comments (0)
July 22, 2006
Gorby's warning: avoid nuclear power
ANNABELLE MCDONALD, THE AUSTRALIAN - THE NATION, JULY 22, 2006
"Don't do it! Mikhail Gorbachev, right, at a press conference with Peter Beattie in Brisbane yesterday. PICTURE: LYNDON MECHIELSEN
FORMER Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev has warned Australia to avoid nuclear power, urging the Howard Government to pursue it only as "a lesser evil" than coal.
Less than a week after John Howard indicated he wanted a domestic uranium enrichment industry, Mr Gorbachev said nuclear energy was dangerous and uneconomical.
The political statesman turned environmental activist, who as president oversaw the catastrophic Chernobyl nuclear plant meltdown in 1986, instead urged Australia, and countries including the US, France and China, to search for alternative sources of energy such as solar power.
Mr Gorbachev, 75, also called for all nuclear weapons to be destroyed, fearful that signs of a new arms race were emerging across the globe.
Twenty years after Chernobyl, the world's worst nuclear accident, former Soviet states have spent billions of dollars containing the radiation. But Mr Gorbachev said the full effects of the disaster were still unknown.
"(Chernobyl) changed our attitude towards nuclear power in a very significant way," he said in Brisbane, where he is a co-chair of Earth Dialogues Brisbane 2006, a three-day forum on the environment, economics and science.
"(I) believe, given there is a deficit of energy and the power situation in the world is very difficult, that nuclear power stations may be needed, but only as a lesser evil, and only in extreme need should such stations be built."
Mr Gorbachev said nuclear power became uneconomical when the cost of storing the waste was included in the equation.
"Nevertheless, a number of countries including the United States, China, Russia, France and others intend to build new nuclear power stations because they need energy and the alternative sources of energy are not yet available.
"Yet I believe alternative sources are not available precisely because not enough investment is being made into those new sources of energy."
Mr Howard has appointed a taskforce to examine the viability of nuclear power in Australia.
But Mr Gorbachev said his Geneva-based environmental group, Green Cross International, was calling for money from the public and private sectors to fund energy research.
"For the Iraq war, very quickly $100billion was found to execute that war, whereas we need just $50 billion over 10 years for research into solar power which could bring in a few percentage points more of power to the world," he said.
Despite predictions of an energy crisis within the next 20 years, Mr Gorbachev said signs of an emerging new arms race were of more immediate concern as he called for the destruction of all nuclear weapons. He said one Russian land-based SS18 missile had the power of "100 Chernobyls".
He also demanded Australia sign the Kyoto Protocol on reducing greenhouse gas emissions, adding: "The best scientists support this approach and all attempts to refute that science have been unsuccessful.
"I don't think it would be right to continue with the situation when the whole world is marching in the (right) way, whereas just a couple of countries, like the US and Australia, are marching in the (wrong) way."
Posted by bhola at 10:17 AM | Comments (0)
July 21, 2006
U.S. fuel costs are a 'noose' growing tighter
LOUIS UCHITELLE, NEW YORK TIMES, JULY 20, 2006
NEW YORK Every Monday morning, Dean England, chief executive of a family-owned trucking company in Utah, logs onto the U.S. Energy Department's Web site and checks the latest average cost of a gallon of diesel fuel. If it is up enough, he raises the amount he charges to haul produce across the country in his tractor-trailers.
A formula has evolved. For every 5- cent rise in the price of fuel, England's company, CR England, adds 1 percent to its freight rates. Since 2003, those rates are up 37 percent, yet demand has not slackened. The Salt Lake City-based company's 2,800 trucks are constantly on the road.
"The market has been good to us," England said. "But ultimately, the extra cost of hauling food has to fall on the consumer."
Demand is similarly strong at other energy-dependent operations, notably railroads, airlines and chemical companies. They, too, are raising prices to recapture as much as they can of the run- up in oil prices.
That is gradually adding to the inflation rate and appears to be contributing to a slowdown in growth - but it has not crippled the U.S. economy.
"As oil prices rise, a noose does tighten around the expansion," said Nigel Gault, chief domestic economist for Global Insight, a consulting firm.
Gault estimates that rising energy prices are currently shaving 1 to 1.5 percentage points from the economy's annual growth rate, which is one reason that he expects the rate to slow from the robust 5.6 percent of the first quarter to roughly 3 percent for the rest of the year.
"I'm guessing that if oil gets to $100 a barrel, that could provoke a recession," Gault said, "but even then, it depends on how quickly we get there. We do seem to be adjusting to gradual increases."
The $8-a-barrel jump last week, to $78 a barrel, as violence spread in the Middle East, was hardly gradual. But prices did fall this week, to under $73, and the Energy Department forecasts that West Texas intermediate crude oil, a benchmark grade, will finish the year at $73.50 a barrel, up $8 from January.
Whatever the cost of energy, many companies have managed to absorb much of the price shock and preserve profits, which have risen to record levels recently as a share of national income. The companies have done this by raising prices and instituting efficiencies that reduce the use of petroleum and natural gas.
Consumers have not fared as well. Rising gasoline prices constitute what economists sometimes describe as a consumption tax. When such a tax is imposed on millions of workers whose incomes have not kept up with inflation in recent years, those consumers eventually cut back on spending. That is one reason that economists see a slowdown coming.
The consumption tax is likely to be $100 billion higher this year than last year, Gault estimated.
The increased caution in spending is evident in the weekly consumer surveys conducted by the University of Michigan. Respondents seem to be losing faith that oil prices can be checked now that the average price of a gallon of gasoline reached $3.03 this week, up 75 cents since January.
"For a long time, people anticipated that gas prices would fall back, so they ran up more debt to cover their higher expenses without cutting back on purchases," said Richard Curtin, director of the Michigan surveys. "And now they have reluctantly concluded, in the past three or four months, that gasoline prices are not going to go down."
But cutbacks in spending have been concentrated among households with annual incomes of less than $50,000, according to Curtin's surveys. That is roughly half of all U.S. households. Most households with incomes above $50,000, which contribute to the bulk of consumer spending, are still managing to absorb the higher energy costs without cutting back much elsewhere.
Rising gasoline prices are really driving a wedge between lower- and higher- income households," Curtin said.
Companies often have more room to maneuver compared to average consumers. Railroads, for example, are operating at high levels of capacity, mostly in transporting ever greater amounts of coal to power plants. That has given them the leverage to raise rates enough to cover 75 percent of their increased cost of diesel fuel, said Philip Baggaley, a managing director and transportation analyst at Standard & Poor's.
The airlines, through surcharges and fare increases, are also covering three- quarters of the increase in their fuel costs, Baggaley said. After years of having to keep fares low, the big airlines have achieved a turnaround by shrinking their fleets and flying planes "jammed with people," as Baggaley put it.
Even food companies are getting into the act. Kellogg will raise cereal prices by about 2 percent in September, the first increase since July 2004, said Neal Goldner, the company's director of investor relations.
On the other hand, chemical companies are getting a break on natural gas. Petroleum and natural gas are often interchangeable feedstocks in the production of the chemical ingredients that go into foam for cushions, solvents for dry cleaning and plastic for bottles, as well as glues, synthetic rubber, electronic circuit boards and a host of other products.
While oil prices have remained high, natural gas has become cheaper. That is mainly because a milder-than-expected winter left the United States with huge unsold inventories of natural gas that cannot easily be shipped around the world, as oil is.
Dow Chemical takes advantage of the natural gas price drop in its American operations. But the real gain is overseas, said John Dearborn, Dow's vice president for energy. While natural gas is about $6 per one million British thermal units in the United States, it is only $1 in various Middle East countries. "At Dow, our production is about 50 percent in the United States and 50 percent elsewhere," Dearborn said, "but our preferential investment is elsewhere."
Even so, Dow's feedstock costs were $22 billion last year, up from $8 billion in 2003. "If we are going to survive, we have to get our prices up," he said. With the global economy booming, prices on all Dow products are up 44 percent on average since 2001, the company reported.
Alexei Barrionuevo contributed reporting from Chicago for this article.
NEW YORK Every Monday morning, Dean England, chief executive of a family-owned trucking company in Utah, logs onto the U.S. Energy Department's Web site and checks the latest average cost of a gallon of diesel fuel. If it is up enough, he raises the amount he charges to haul produce across the country in his tractor-trailers.
A formula has evolved. For every 5- cent rise in the price of fuel, England's company, CR England, adds 1 percent to its freight rates. Since 2003, those rates are up 37 percent, yet demand has not slackened. The Salt Lake City-based company's 2,800 trucks are constantly on the road.
"The market has been good to us," England said. "But ultimately, the extra cost of hauling food has to fall on the consumer."
Demand is similarly strong at other energy-dependent operations, notably railroads, airlines and chemical companies. They, too, are raising prices to recapture as much as they can of the run- up in oil prices.
That is gradually adding to the inflation rate and appears to be contributing to a slowdown in growth - but it has not crippled the U.S. economy.
"As oil prices rise, a noose does tighten around the expansion," said Nigel Gault, chief domestic economist for Global Insight, a consulting firm.
Gault estimates that rising energy prices are currently shaving 1 to 1.5 percentage points from the economy's annual growth rate, which is one reason that he expects the rate to slow from the robust 5.6 percent of the first quarter to roughly 3 percent for the rest of the year.
"I'm guessing that if oil gets to $100 a barrel, that could provoke a recession," Gault said, "but even then, it depends on how quickly we get there. We do seem to be adjusting to gradual increases."
The $8-a-barrel jump last week, to $78 a barrel, as violence spread in the Middle East, was hardly gradual. But prices did fall this week, to under $73, and the Energy Department forecasts that West Texas intermediate crude oil, a benchmark grade, will finish the year at $73.50 a barrel, up $8 from January.
Whatever the cost of energy, many companies have managed to absorb much of the price shock and preserve profits, which have risen to record levels recently as a share of national income. The companies have done this by raising prices and instituting efficiencies that reduce the use of petroleum and natural gas.
Consumers have not fared as well. Rising gasoline prices constitute what economists sometimes describe as a consumption tax. When such a tax is imposed on millions of workers whose incomes have not kept up with inflation in recent years, those consumers eventually cut back on spending. That is one reason that economists see a slowdown coming.
The consumption tax is likely to be $100 billion higher this year than last year, Gault estimated.
The increased caution in spending is evident in the weekly consumer surveys conducted by the University of Michigan. Respondents seem to be losing faith that oil prices can be checked now that the average price of a gallon of gasoline reached $3.03 this week, up 75 cents since January.
"For a long time, people anticipated that gas prices would fall back, so they ran up more debt to cover their higher expenses without cutting back on purchases," said Richard Curtin, director of the Michigan surveys. "And now they have reluctantly concluded, in the past three or four months, that gasoline prices are not going to go down."
But cutbacks in spending have been concentrated among households with annual incomes of less than $50,000, according to Curtin's surveys. That is roughly half of all U.S. households. Most households with incomes above $50,000, which contribute to the bulk of consumer spending, are still managing to absorb the higher energy costs without cutting back much elsewhere.
Rising gasoline prices are really driving a wedge between lower- and higher- income households," Curtin said.
Companies often have more room to maneuver compared to average consumers. Railroads, for example, are operating at high levels of capacity, mostly in transporting ever greater amounts of coal to power plants. That has given them the leverage to raise rates enough to cover 75 percent of their increased cost of diesel fuel, said Philip Baggaley, a managing director and transportation analyst at Standard & Poor's.
The airlines, through surcharges and fare increases, are also covering three- quarters of the increase in their fuel costs, Baggaley said. After years of having to keep fares low, the big airlines have achieved a turnaround by shrinking their fleets and flying planes "jammed with people," as Baggaley put it.
Even food companies are getting into the act. Kellogg will raise cereal prices by about 2 percent in September, the first increase since July 2004, said Neal Goldner, the company's director of investor relations.
On the other hand, chemical companies are getting a break on natural gas. Petroleum and natural gas are often interchangeable feedstocks in the production of the chemical ingredients that go into foam for cushions, solvents for dry cleaning and plastic for bottles, as well as glues, synthetic rubber, electronic circuit boards and a host of other products.
While oil prices have remained high, natural gas has become cheaper. That is mainly because a milder-than-expected winter left the United States with huge unsold inventories of natural gas that cannot easily be shipped around the world, as oil is.
Dow Chemical takes advantage of the natural gas price drop in its American operations. But the real gain is overseas, said John Dearborn, Dow's vice president for energy. While natural gas is about $6 per one million British thermal units in the United States, it is only $1 in various Middle East countries. "At Dow, our production is about 50 percent in the United States and 50 percent elsewhere," Dearborn said, "but our preferential investment is elsewhere."
Even so, Dow's feedstock costs were $22 billion last year, up from $8 billion in 2003. "If we are going to survive, we have to get our prices up," he said. With the global economy booming, prices on all Dow products are up 44 percent on average since 2001, the company reported.
Alexei Barrionuevo contributed reporting from Chicago for this article.
NEW YORK Every Monday morning, Dean England, chief executive of a family-owned trucking company in Utah, logs onto the U.S. Energy Department's Web site and checks the latest average cost of a gallon of diesel fuel. If it is up enough, he raises the amount he charges to haul produce across the country in his tractor-trailers.
A formula has evolved. For every 5- cent rise in the price of fuel, England's company, CR England, adds 1 percent to its freight rates. Since 2003, those rates are up 37 percent, yet demand has not slackened. The Salt Lake City-based company's 2,800 trucks are constantly on the road.
"The market has been good to us," England said. "But ultimately, the extra cost of hauling food has to fall on the consumer."
Demand is similarly strong at other energy-dependent operations, notably railroads, airlines and chemical companies. They, too, are raising prices to recapture as much as they can of the run- up in oil prices.
That is gradually adding to the inflation rate and appears to be contributing to a slowdown in growth - but it has not crippled the U.S. economy.
"As oil prices rise, a noose does tighten around the expansion," said Nigel Gault, chief domestic economist for Global Insight, a consulting firm.
Gault estimates that rising energy prices are currently shaving 1 to 1.5 percentage points from the economy's annual growth rate, which is one reason that he expects the rate to slow from the robust 5.6 percent of the first quarter to roughly 3 percent for the rest of the year.
"I'm guessing that if oil gets to $100 a barrel, that could provoke a recession," Gault said, "but even then, it depends on how quickly we get there. We do seem to be adjusting to gradual increases."
The $8-a-barrel jump last week, to $78 a barrel, as violence spread in the Middle East, was hardly gradual. But prices did fall this week, to under $73, and the Energy Department forecasts that West Texas intermediate crude oil, a benchmark grade, will finish the year at $73.50 a barrel, up $8 from January.
Whatever the cost of energy, many companies have managed to absorb much of the price shock and preserve profits, which have risen to record levels recently as a share of national income. The companies have done this by raising prices and instituting efficiencies that reduce the use of petroleum and natural gas.
Consumers have not fared as well. Rising gasoline prices constitute what economists sometimes describe as a consumption tax. When such a tax is imposed on millions of workers whose incomes have not kept up with inflation in recent years, those consumers eventually cut back on spending. That is one reason that economists see a slowdown coming.
The consumption tax is likely to be $100 billion higher this year than last year, Gault estimated.
The increased caution in spending is evident in the weekly consumer surveys conducted by the University of Michigan. Respondents seem to be losing faith that oil prices can be checked now that the average price of a gallon of gasoline reached $3.03 this week, up 75 cents since January.
"For a long time, people anticipated that gas prices would fall back, so they ran up more debt to cover their higher expenses without cutting back on purchases," said Richard Curtin, director of the Michigan surveys. "And now they have reluctantly concluded, in the past three or four months, that gasoline prices are not going to go down."
But cutbacks in spending have been concentrated among households with annual incomes of less than $50,000, according to Curtin's surveys. That is roughly half of all U.S. households. Most households with incomes above $50,000, which contribute to the bulk of consumer spending, are still managing to absorb the higher energy costs without cutting back much elsewhere.
Rising gasoline prices are really driving a wedge between lower- and higher- income households," Curtin said.
Companies often have more room to maneuver compared to average consumers. Railroads, for example, are operating at high levels of capacity, mostly in transporting ever greater amounts of coal to power plants. That has given them the leverage to raise rates enough to cover 75 percent of their increased cost of diesel fuel, said Philip Baggaley, a managing director and transportation analyst at Standard & Poor's.
The airlines, through surcharges and fare increases, are also covering three- quarters of the increase in their fuel costs, Baggaley said. After years of having to keep fares low, the big airlines have achieved a turnaround by shrinking their fleets and flying planes "jammed with people," as Baggaley put it.
Even food companies are getting into the act. Kellogg will raise cereal prices by about 2 percent in September, the first increase since July 2004, said Neal Goldner, the company's director of investor relations.
On the other hand, chemical companies are getting a break on natural gas. Petroleum and natural gas are often interchangeable feedstocks in the production of the chemical ingredients that go into foam for cushions, solvents for dry cleaning and plastic for bottles, as well as glues, synthetic rubber, electronic circuit boards and a host of other products.
While oil prices have remained high, natural gas has become cheaper. That is mainly because a milder-than-expected winter left the United States with huge unsold inventories of natural gas that cannot easily be shipped around the world, as oil is.
Dow Chemical takes advantage of the natural gas price drop in its American operations. But the real gain is overseas, said John Dearborn, Dow's vice president for energy. While natural gas is about $6 per one million British thermal units in the United States, it is only $1 in various Middle East countries. "At Dow, our production is about 50 percent in the United States and 50 percent elsewhere," Dearborn said, "but our preferential investment is elsewhere."
Even so, Dow's feedstock costs were $22 billion last year, up from $8 billion in 2003. "If we are going to survive, we have to get our prices up," he said. With the global economy booming, prices on all Dow products are up 44 percent on average since 2001, the company reported.
Alexei Barrionuevo contributed reporting from Chicago for this article.
NEW YORK Every Monday morning, Dean England, chief executive of a family-owned trucking company in Utah, logs onto the U.S. Energy Department's Web site and checks the latest average cost of a gallon of diesel fuel. If it is up enough, he raises the amount he charges to haul produce across the country in his tractor-trailers.
A formula has evolved. For every 5- cent rise in the price of fuel, England's company, CR England, adds 1 percent to its freight rates. Since 2003, those rates are up 37 percent, yet demand has not slackened. The Salt Lake City-based company's 2,800 trucks are constantly on the road.
"The market has been good to us," England said. "But ultimately, the extra cost of hauling food has to fall on the consumer."
Demand is similarly strong at other energy-dependent operations, notably railroads, airlines and chemical companies. They, too, are raising prices to recapture as much as they can of the run- up in oil prices.
That is gradually adding to the inflation rate and appears to be contributing to a slowdown in growth - but it has not crippled the U.S. economy.
"As oil prices rise, a noose does tighten around the expansion," said Nigel Gault, chief domestic economist for Global Insight, a consulting firm.
Gault estimates that rising energy prices are currently shaving 1 to 1.5 percentage points from the economy's annual growth rate, which is one reason that he expects the rate to slow from the robust 5.6 percent of the first quarter to roughly 3 percent for the rest of the year.
"I'm guessing that if oil gets to $100 a barrel, that could provoke a recession," Gault said, "but even then, it depends on how quickly we get there. We do seem to be adjusting to gradual increases."
The $8-a-barrel jump last week, to $78 a barrel, as violence spread in the Middle East, was hardly gradual. But prices did fall this week, to under $73, and the Energy Department forecasts that West Texas intermediate crude oil, a benchmark grade, will finish the year at $73.50 a barrel, up $8 from January.
Whatever the cost of energy, many companies have managed to absorb much of the price shock and preserve profits, which have risen to record levels recently as a share of national income. The companies have done this by raising prices and instituting efficiencies that reduce the use of petroleum and natural gas.
Consumers have not fared as well. Rising gasoline prices constitute what economists sometimes describe as a consumption tax. When such a tax is imposed on millions of workers whose incomes have not kept up with inflation in recent years, those consumers eventually cut back on spending. That is one reason that economists see a slowdown coming.
The consumption tax is likely to be $100 billion higher this year than last year, Gault estimated.
The increased caution in spending is evident in the weekly consumer surveys conducted by the University of Michigan. Respondents seem to be losing faith that oil prices can be checked now that the average price of a gallon of gasoline reached $3.03 this week, up 75 cents since January.
"For a long time, people anticipated that gas prices would fall back, so they ran up more debt to cover their higher expenses without cutting back on purchases," said Richard Curtin, director of the Michigan surveys. "And now they have reluctantly concluded, in the past three or four months, that gasoline prices are not going to go down."
But cutbacks in spending have been concentrated among households with annual incomes of less than $50,000, according to Curtin's surveys. That is roughly half of all U.S. households. Most households with incomes above $50,000, which contribute to the bulk of consumer spending, are still managing to absorb the higher energy costs without cutting back much elsewhere.
Rising gasoline prices are really driving a wedge between lower- and higher- income households," Curtin said.
Companies often have more room to maneuver compared to average consumers. Railroads, for example, are operating at high levels of capacity, mostly in transporting ever greater amounts of coal to power plants. That has given them the leverage to raise rates enough to cover 75 percent of their increased cost of diesel fuel, said Philip Baggaley, a managing director and transportation analyst at Standard & Poor's.
The airlines, through surcharges and fare increases, are also covering three- quarters of the increase in their fuel costs, Baggaley said. After years of having to keep fares low, the big airlines have achieved a turnaround by shrinking their fleets and flying planes "jammed with people," as Baggaley put it.
Even food companies are getting into the act. Kellogg will raise cereal prices by about 2 percent in September, the first increase since July 2004, said Neal Goldner, the company's director of investor relations.
On the other hand, chemical companies are getting a break on natural gas. Petroleum and natural gas are often interchangeable feedstocks in the production of the chemical ingredients that go into foam for cushions, solvents for dry cleaning and plastic for bottles, as well as glues, synthetic rubber, electronic circuit boards and a host of other products.
While oil prices have remained high, natural gas has become cheaper. That is mainly because a milder-than-expected winter left the United States with huge unsold inventories of natural gas that cannot easily be shipped around the world, as oil is.
Dow Chemical takes advantage of the natural gas price drop in its American operations. But the real gain is overseas, said John Dearborn, Dow's vice president for energy. While natural gas is about $6 per one million British thermal units in the United States, it is only $1 in various Middle East countries. "At Dow, our production is about 50 percent in the United States and 50 percent elsewhere," Dearborn said, "but our preferential investment is elsewhere."
Even so, Dow's feedstock costs were $22 billion last year, up from $8 billion in 2003. "If we are going to survive, we have to get our prices up," he said. With the global economy booming, prices on all Dow products are up 44 percent on average since 2001, the company reported.
Alexei Barrionuevo contributed reporting from Chicago for this article.
Posted by bhola at 09:12 AM | Comments (0)
Pesticides 'kill 90 billion French bees'
ALEX KIRBY, BBC NEWS ONLINE
Bees pollinate many crops PHOTO: 1999 Eyewire, Inc
French beekeepers say about 90 billion of their insects have been killed over the last 10 years by a pesticide.
The chemical, used on crops including maize and sunflowers, damages the bees' sense of direction so they become lost.
It is used in the UK on several crops, though not in exactly the way it is used in France, and British beekeepers have been urged to be on their guard.
UK apiarists say the value of bees to the agricultural economy is immense, and they fear bees are becoming rarer.
The chemical implicated in the loss of French bees is imidacloprid, marketed under a variety of names including Gaucho.
It is slowly released in the plants, protecting them against insect attack by destroying their ability to find their way.
A London newspaper, the Observer, reported: "Almost immediately after the chemicals were introduced 10 years ago, beekeepers reported that their bees were becoming disoriented and dying.
Used in UK
"Within a few years honey production in south-west France fell by 60%. According to the chairman of the national beekeepers' association, Jean-Marie Sirvins, a third of the country's 1.5 million registered hives disappeared.
"As a result, France has had to import up to 24,000 tons of honey annually." The pesticide companies say their products are not responsible for killing the bees.
French hives have been devastated. PHOTO: BBC
There are no reports of any ill effects from applications of imidacloprid in the UK, where it is licensed for use on beet.
There are restrictions on its use when the plants are in flower, or for spraying the foliage.
But Richard Jones, the director of the International Bee Research Association, told BBC News Online: "Beekeepers here have to be on the alert.
More needed
"The varroa mite, which feeds on the bees' blood, arrived from mainland Europe, and we know that bees' nests can travel a long way on container ships.
"People hear about bees and think only about honey, but it's the other side of the problem that's worrying.
"They add billions of pounds to the value of the agricultural economy every year because of their work in pollinating crops like apples.
"We don't have enough bees in the UK, and we have very few feral bees. Every time a hedgerow is destroyed, that means the loss of nesting places for bumblebees."
Posted by bhola at 04:34 AM | Comments (0)
July 17, 2006
Radiating propaganda
Have you noticed the recent upsurge in pro-nuclear stories? Chernobyl apparently was a mere blip in the nuclear industry's otherwise shining safety record.
One commentator went so far as to say that Chernobyl had actually benefited humankind by leading to improved safety standards. The same stance of course is used by the chemical industry vis a vis Bhopal.
Now the spin-doctors of government and multinational business have been instructed to promote nuclear energy as the only possible future. Nuclear critics are now "doomsayers", "scaremongerers" and "Cassandras".
Not a coincidence that this new pro-nuclear push began as fears about "Peak Oil" begin to be realised. Previously those worrying about the calamitous consequences of our heavy dependence on oil were also arrogantly dismissed by the same same clique of profit-at-any-cost enthusiasts.
The following article from The Hindu is typical of the politically directed journalism that nowadays lambasts those who based their prediction of the health effects of Chernobyl on data from Hiroshima and Nagasaki. What other data was there? Future hacks wishing to downplay the Chernobyl incident should first read the stories of the children who are still being born sick and study their pictures.
Radiating half-truths
THE HINDU, JULY 17, 2006
The ‘Doom soon’ generation can heave a big sigh of relief, thanks to the Chernobyl Forum, an international organisation of scientific bodies including UN agencies. It has reportedly found that the world has been living on edge for 20 years after the Chernobyl disaster for nothing, and that fears of Chernobyl’s radiation fallout killing tens of thousands and triggering a wave of slow and painful cancer deaths across Europe have probably been misplaced. In fact, the death toll directly caused by radiation from Chernobyl currently stands at an astonishing 56, which, the researchers point out, “is less than the weekly death toll on Britain’s roads”.
This agrees with available scientific evidence that rules out any cancer risk at radiation doses below 100 milliSieverts a year. On the contrary, at low levels of exposure, the body’s natural repair mechanisms seem to be adequate to repair radiation damage to cells soon after it occurs. Although ionising radiation was considered a scientific miracle until the end of World War II, subsequent development of nuclear weapons and increased use of nuclear power changed this into radiophobia, with even tiny doses of radiation triggering fear. Which probably prompted Cassandras to base their predictions on Hiroshima and Nagasaki (where the levels of radiation exposure were often in the range of thousands of milliSieverts). The unexpected outcome of Chernobyl would suggest the need for some moderation in all of today’s various doomsday scenarios, as well as the need for better methodology in the forecasts — oil depletion, bird flu, asteroid strike or the destruction of biodiversity. Malthusian forecasts of global population outstripping the planet’s food supplies to cause worldwide famine and death from starvation, were, after all, unfounded.
The only way for scientists to avoid scaring a world plagued by terrorism, drugs and taxes is to produce methodologically sound and nuanced reports — even if they do not make for good press.
Posted by bhola at 10:05 AM | Comments (0)
July 15, 2006
Existentialism is a Humanism
LECTURE GIVEN BY JEAN PAUL SARTRE IN PARIS, 1946, TRANSLATOR PHILIP MAIRET
My purpose here is to offer a defence of existentialism against several reproaches that have been laid against it.
First, it has been reproached as an invitation to people to dwell in quietism of despair. For if every way to a solution is barred, one would have to regard any action in this world as entirely ineffective, and one would arrive finally at a contemplative philosophy. Moreover, since contemplation is a luxury, this would be only another bourgeois philosophy. This is, especially, the reproach made by the Communists.
From another quarter we are reproached for having underlined all that is ignominious in the human situation, for depicting what is mean, sordid or base to the neglect of certain things that possess charm and beauty and belong to the brighter side of human nature: for example, according to the Catholic critic, Mlle. Mercier, we forget how an infant smiles. Both from this side and from the other we are also reproached for leaving out of account the solidarity of mankind and considering man in isolation. And this, say the Communists, is because we base our doctrine upon pure subjectivity — upon the Cartesian “I think”: which is the moment in which solitary man attains to himself; a position from which it is impossible to regain solidarity with other men who exist outside of the self. The ego cannot reach them through the cogito.
From the Christian side, we are reproached as people who deny the reality and seriousness of human affairs. For since we ignore the commandments of God and all values prescribed as eternal, nothing remains but what is strictly voluntary. Everyone can do what he likes, and will be incapable, from such a point of view, of condemning either the point of view or the action of anyone else.
It is to these various reproaches that I shall endeavour to reply today; that is why I have entitled this brief exposition “Existentialism is a Humanism.” Many may be surprised at the mention of humanism in this connection, but we shall try to see in what sense we understand it. In any case, we can begin by saying that existentialism, in our sense of the word, is a doctrine that does render human life possible; a doctrine, also, which affirms that every truth and every action imply both an environment and a human subjectivity. The essential charge laid against us is, of course, that of over-emphasis upon the evil side of human life. I have lately been told of a lady who, whenever she lets slip a vulgar expression in a moment of nervousness, excuses herself by exclaiming, ‘I believe I am becoming an existentialist.” So it appears that ugliness is being identified with existentialism. That is why some people say we are “naturalistic,” and if we are, it is strange to see how much we scandalise and horrify them, for no one seems to be much frightened or humiliated nowadays by what is properly called naturalism. Those who can quite well keep down a novel by Zola such as La Terre are sickened as soon as they read an existentialist novel. Those who appeal to the wisdom of the people — which is a sad wisdom — find ours sadder still. And yet, what could be more disillusioned than such sayings as “Charity begins at home” or “Promote a rogue and he’ll sue you for damage, knock him down and he’ll do you homage”? We all know how many common sayings can be quoted to this effect, and they all mean much the same — that you must not oppose the powers that — be; that you must not fight against superior force; must not meddle in matters that are above your station. Or that any action not in accordance with some tradition is mere romanticism; or that any undertaking which has not the support of proven experience is foredoomed to frustration; and that since experience has shown men to be invariably inclined to evil, there must be firm rules to restrain them, otherwise we shall have anarchy. It is, however, the people who are forever mouthing these dismal proverbs and, whenever they are told of some more or less repulsive action, say “How like human nature!” — it is these very people, always harping upon realism, who complain that existentialism is too gloomy a view of things. Indeed their excessive protests make me suspect that what is annoying them is not so much our pessimism, but, much more likely, our optimism. For at bottom, what is alarming in the doctrine that I am about to try to explain to you is — is it not? — that it confronts man with a possibility of choice. To verify — this, let us review the whole question upon the strictly philosophic level. What, then, is this that we call existentialism?
Most of those who are making use of this word would be highly confused if required to explain its meaning. For since it has become fashionable, people cheerfully declare that this musician or that painter is “existentialist.” A columnist in Clartes signs himself “The Existentialist,” and, indeed, the word is now so loosely applied to so many things that it no longer means anything at all. It would appear that, for the lack of any novel doctrine such as that of surrealism, all those who are eager to join in the latest scandal or movement now seize upon this philosophy in which, however, they can find nothing to their purpose. For in truth this is of all teachings the least scandalous and the most austere: it is intended strictly for technicians and philosophers. All the same, it can easily be defined.
The question is only complicated because there are two kinds of existentialists. There are, on the one hand, the Christians, amongst whom I shall name Jaspers and Gabriel Marcel, both professed Catholics; and on the other the existential atheists, amongst whom we must place Heidegger as well as the French existentialists and myself. What they have in common is simply the fact that they believe that existence comes before essence — or, if you will, that we must begin from the subjective. What exactly do we mean by that?
If one considers an article of manufacture as, for example, a book or a paper-knife — one sees that it has been made by an artisan who had a conception of it; and he has paid attention, equally, to the conception of a paper-knife and to the pre-existent technique of production which is a part of that conception and is, at bottom, a formula. Thus the paper-knife is at the same time an article producible in a certain manner and one which, on the other hand, serve a definite purpose, for one cannot suppose that a man would produce a paper-knife without knowing what it was for. Let us say, then, of the paperknife that its essence that is to say the sum of the formulae and the qualities which made its production and its definition possible — precedes its existence. The presence of such — and — such a paper-knife or book is thus determined before my eyes. Here, then, we are viewing the world from a technical standpoint, and we can say that production precedes existence.
When we think of God as the creator, we are thinking of him, most of the time, as a supernal artisan. Whatever doctrine we may be considering, whether it be a doctrine like that of Descartes, or of Leibnitz himself, we always imply that the will follows, more or less, from the understanding or at least accompanies it, so that when God creates he knows precisely what he is creating. Thus, the conception of man in the mind of God is comparable to that of the paper-knife in the mind of the artisan: God makes man according to a procedure and a conception, exactly as the artisan manufactures a paper-knife, following a definition and a formula. Thus each individual man is the realisation of a certain conception which dwells in the divine understanding. In the philosophic atheism of the eighteenth century, the notion of God is suppressed, but not, for all that, the idea that essence is prior to existence; something of that idea we still find everywhere, in Diderot, in Voltaire and even in Kant. Man possesses a human nature; that “human nature,” which is the conception of human being, is found in every man; which means that each man is a particular example of a universal conception, the conception of Man. In Kant, this universality goes so far that the wild man of the woods, man in the state of nature and the bourgeois are all contained in the same definition and have the same fundamental qualities. Here again, the essence of man precedes that historic existence which we confront in experience.
Atheistic existentialism, of which I am a representative, declares with greater consistency that if God does not exist there is at least one being whose existence comes before its essence, a being which exists before it can be defined by any conception of it. That being is man or, as Heidegger has it, the human reality. What do we mean by saying that existence precedes essence? We mean that man first of all exists, encounters himself, surges up in the world — and defines himself afterwards. If man as the existentialist sees him is not definable, it is because to begin with he is nothing. He will not be anything until later, and then he will be what he makes of himself. Thus, there is no human nature, because there is no God to have a conception of it. Man simply is. Not that he is simply what he conceives himself to be, but he is what he wills, and as he conceives himself after already existing — as he wills to be after that leap towards existence. Man is nothing else but that which he makes of himself. That is the first principle of existentialism. And this is what people call its “subjectivity,” using the word as a reproach against us. But what do we mean to say by this, but that man is of a greater dignity than a stone or a table? For we mean to say that man primarily exists — that man is, before all else, something which propels itself towards b a future and is aware that it is doing so. Man is, indeed, a project which possesses a subjective life, instead of being a kind of moss, or a fungus or a cauliflower. Before that projection of the self nothing exists; not even in the heaven of intelligence: man will only attain existence when he is what he purposes to be. Not, however, what he may wish to be. For what we usually understand by wishing or willing is a conscious decision taken — much more often than not — after we have made ourselves what we are. I may wish to join a party, to write a book or to marry — but in such a case what is usually called my will is probably a manifestation of a prior and more spontaneous decision. If, however, it is true that existence is prior to essence, man is responsible for what he is. Thus, the first effect of existentialism is that it puts every man in possession of himself as he is, and places the entire responsibility for his existence squarely upon his own shoulders. And, when we say that man is responsible for himself, we do not mean that he is responsible only for his own individuality, but that he is responsible for all men. The word “subjectivism” is to be understood in two senses, and our adversaries play upon only one of them. Subjectivism means. on the one hand, the freedom of the individual subject and, on the other, that man cannot pass beyond human subjectivity. It is the latter which is the deeper meaning of existentialism. When we say that man chooses himself, we do mean that every one of us must choose himself; but by that we also mean that in choosing for himself he chooses for all men. For in effect, of all the actions a man may take in order to create himself as he wills to be, there is not one which is not creative, at the same time, of an image of man such as he believes he ought to be. To choose between this or that is at the same time to affirm the value of that which is chosen; for we are unable ever to choose the worse. What we choose is always the better; and nothing can be better for us unless it is better for all. If, moreover, existence precedes essence and we will to exist at the same time as we fashion our image, that image is valid for all and for the entire epoch in which we find ourselves. Our responsibility is thus much greater than we had supposed, for it concerns mankind as a whole. If I a n a worker, for instance, I may choose to join a Christian rather than a Communist trade union. And if, by that membership, I choose to signify that resignation is, after all, the attitude that best becomes a man, that man’s kingdom is not upon this earth, I do not commit myself alone to that view. Resignation is my will for everyone, and my action is, in consequence, a commitment on behalf of all mankind. Or if, to take a more personal case, I decide to marry and to have children, even though this decision proceeds simply from my situation, from my passion or my desire, I am thereby committing not only myself, but humanity as a whole, to the practice of monogamy. I am thus responsible for myself and for all men, and I am creating a certain image of man as I would have him to be. In fashioning myself I fashion man.
This may enable us to understand what is meant by such terms — perhaps a little grandiloquent — as anguish, abandonment and despair. As you will soon see, it is very simple. First, what do we mean by anguish? — The existentialist frankly states that man is in anguish. His meaning is as follows When a man commits himself to anything, fully realising that he is not only choosing what he will be, but is thereby at the same time a legislator deciding for the whole of mankind — in such a moment a man cannot escape from the sense of complete and profound responsibility. There are many, indeed, who show no such anxiety. But we affirm that they are merely disguising their anguish or are in flight from it. Certainly, many people think that in what they are doing they commit no one but themselves to anything: and if you ask them, “What would happen if everyone did so?” they shrug their shoulders and reply, “Everyone does not do so.” But in truth, one ought always to ask oneself what would happen if everyone did as one is doing; nor can one escape from that disturbing thought except by a kind of self-deception. The man who lies in self-excuse, by saying ‘Everyone will not do it” must be ill at ease in his conscience, for the act of lying implies the universal value which it denies By its very disguise his anguish reveals itself. This is the anguish that Kierkegaard called “the anguish of Abraham.” You know the story: An angel commanded Abraham to sacrifice his son: and obedience was obligatory, if it really was an angel who had appeared and said, ‘Thou, Abraham, shalt sacrifice thy son.” But anyone in such a case would wonder, first, whether it was indeed an angel and secondly, whether I am really Abraham. Where are the proofs? A certain mad woman who suffered from hallucinations said that people were telephoning to her, and giving her orders. The doctor asked, “But who is it that speaks to you?” She replied: “He says it is God.” And what, indeed, could prove to her that it was God? If an angel appears to me, what is the proof that it is an angel; or, if I hear voices, who can prove that they proceed from heaven and not from hell, or from my own subconsciousness or some pathological condition? Who can prove that they are really addressed to me?
Who, then, can prove that I am the proper person to impose, by my own choice, my conception of man upon mankind? I shall never find any proof whatever; there will be no sign to convince me of it. If a voice speaks to me, it is still I myself who must decide whether the voice is or is not that of an angel. If I regard a certain course of action as good, it is only I who choose to say that it is good and not bad. There is nothing to show that I am Abraham: nevertheless I also am obliged at every instant to perform actions which are examples. Everything happens to every man as though the whole human race had its eyes fixed upon what he is doing and regulated its conduct accordingly. So every man ought to say, “Am I really a man who has the right to act in such a manner that humanity regulates itself by what I do.” If a man does not say that, he is dissembling his anguish. Clearly, the anguish with which we are concerned here is not one that could lead to quietism or inaction. It is anguish pure and simple, of the kind well known to all those who have borne responsibilities. When, for instance, a military leader takes upon himself the responsibility for t attack and sends a number of men to their death, he chooses to do it and at bottom he alone chooses. No doubt under a higher command, but its orders, which are more general, require interpretation by him and upon that interpretation depends the life of ten, fourteen or twenty men. In making the decision, he cannot but feel a certain anguish. All leaders know that anguish. It does not prevent their acting, on the contrary it is the very condition of their action, for the action presupposes that there is a plurality f possibilities, and in choosing one of these, they realize that it has value only because it is chosen. Now it is anguish of that kind which existentialism describes, and moreover, as we shall see, makes explicit through direct responsibility wards other men who are concerned. Far from being a screen which could separate us from action, it is a condition of action itself.
And when we speak of “abandonment” — a favorite word of Heidegger — we only mean to say that God does not exist, and that it is necessary to draw the consequences of his absence right to the end. The existentialist is strongly opposed to a certain type of secular moralism which seeks to suppress God at the least possible expense. Towards 1880, when the French professors endeavoured to formulate a secular morality, they said something like this: God is a useless and costly hypothesis, so we will do without it. However, if we are to have morality, a society and a law-abiding world, it is essential that certain values should be taken seriously; they must have an a priori existence ascribed to them. It must be considered obligatory a priori to be honest, not to lie, not to beat one’s wife, to bring up children and so forth; so we are going to do a little work on this subject, which will enable us to show that these values exist all the same, inscribed in an intelligible heaven although, of course, there is no God. In other word — and this is, I believe, the purport of all that we in France call radicalism — nothing will be changed if God does not exist; we shall rediscover the same norms of honesty, progress and humanity, and we shall have disposed of God as an out-of-date hypothesis which will die away quietly of itself. The existentialist, on the contrary, finds it extremely embarrassing that God does not exist, for there disappears with Him all possibility of finding values in an intelligible heaven. There can no longer be any good a priori, since there is no infinite and perfect consciousness to think it. It is nowhere written that “the good” exists, that one must be honest or must not lie, since we are now upon the plane where there are only men. Dostoevsky once wrote did God did not exist, everything would be permitted”; and that, for existentialism, is the starting point. Everything is indeed permitted if God does not exist, and man is in consequence forlorn, for he cannot find anything to depend upon either within or outside himself. He discovers forthwith, that he is without excuse. For if indeed existence precedes essence, one will never be able to explain one’s action by reference to a given and specific human nature; in other words, there is no determinism — man is free, man is freedom. Nor, on the other hand, if God does not exist, are we provided with any values or commands that could legitimise our behaviour. Thus we have neither behind us, nor before us in a luminous realm of values, any means of justification or excuse. — We are left alone, without excuse. That is what I mean when I say that man is condemned to be free. Condemned, because he did not create himself, yet is nevertheless at liberty, and from the moment that he is thrown into this world he is responsible for everything he does. The existentialist does not believe in the power of passion. He will never regard a grand passion as a destructive torrent upon which a man is swept into certain actions as by fate, and which, therefore, is an excuse for them. He thinks that man is responsible for his passion. Neither will an existentialist think that a man can find help through some sign being vouchsafed upon earth for his orientation: for he thinks that the man himself interprets the sign as he chooses. He thinks that every man, without any support or help whatever, is condemned at every instant to invent man. As Ponge has written in a very fine article, “Man is the future of man.” That is exactly true. Only, if one took this to mean that the future is laid up in Heaven, that God knows what it is, it would be false, for then it would no longer even be a future. If, however, it means that, whatever man may now appear to be, there is a future to be fashioned, a virgin future that awaits him — then it is a true saying. But in the present one is forsaken.
As an example by which you may the better understand this state of abandonment, I will refer to the case of a pupil of mine, who sought me out in the following circumstances. His father was quarrelling with his mother and was also inclined to be a “collaborator”; his elder brother had been killed in the German offensive of 1940 and this young man, with a sentiment somewhat primitive but generous, burned to avenge him. His mother was living alone with him, deeply afflicted by the semi-treason of his father and by the death of her eldest son, and her one consolation was in this young man. But he, at this moment, had the choice between going to England to join the Free French Forces or of staying near his mother and helping her to live. He fully realised that this woman lived only for him and that his disappearance — or perhaps his death — would plunge her into despair. He also realised that, concretely and in fact, every action he performed on his mother’s behalf would be sure of effect in the sense of aiding her to live, whereas anything he did in order to go and fight would be an ambiguous action which night vanish like water into sand and serve no purpose. For instance, to set out for England he would have to wait indefinitely in a Spanish camp on the way through Spain; or, on arriving in England or in Algiers he might be put into an office to fill up forms. Consequently, he found himself confronted by two very different modes of action; the one concrete, immediate, but directed towards only one individual; and the other an action addressed to an end infinitely greater, a national collectivity, but for that very reason ambiguous — and it might be frustrated on the way. At the same time, he was hesitating between two kinds of morality; on the one side the morality of sympathy, of personal devotion and, on the other side, a morality of wider scope but of more debatable validity. He had to choose between those two. What could help him to choose? Could the Christian doctrine? No. Christian doctrine says: Act with charity, love your neighbour, deny yourself for others, choose the way which is hardest, and so forth. But which is the harder road? To whom does one owe the more brotherly love, the patriot or the mother? Which is the more useful aim, the general one of fighting in and for the whole community, or the precise aim of helping one particular person to live? Who can give an answer to that a priori? No one. Nor is it given in any ethical scripture. The Kantian ethic says, Never regard another as a means, but always as an end. Very well; if I remain with my mother, I shall be regarding her as the end and not as a means: but by the same token I am in danger of treating as means those who are fighting on my behalf; and the converse is also true, that if I go to the aid of the combatants I shall be treating them as the end at the risk of treating my mother as a means. If values are uncertain, if they are still too abstract to determine the particular, concrete case under consideration, nothing remains but to trust in our instincts. That is what this young man tried to do; and when I saw him he said, “In the end, it is feeling that counts; the direction in which it is really pushing me is the one I ought to choose. If I feel that I love my mother enough to sacrifice everything else for her — my will to be avenged, all my longings for action and adventure then I stay with her. If, on the contrary, I feel that my love for her is not enough, I go.” But how does one estimate the strength of a feeling? The value of his feeling for his mother was determined precisely by the fact that he was standing by her. I may say that I love a certain friend enough to sacrifice such or such a sum of money for him, but I cannot prove that unless I have done it. I may say, “I love my mother enough to remain with her,” if actually I have remained with her. I can only estimate the strength of this affection if I have performed an action by which it is defined and ratified. But if I then appeal to this affection to justify my action, I find myself drawn into a vicious circle.
Moreover, as Gide has very well said, a sentiment which is play-acting and one which is vital are two things that are hardly distinguishable one from another. To decide that I love my mother by staying beside her, and to play a comedy the upshot of which is that I do so — these are nearly the same thing. In other words, feeling is formed by the deeds that one does; therefore I cannot consult it as a guide to action. And that is to say that I can neither seek within myself for an authentic impulse to action, nor can I expect, from some ethic, formulae that will enable me to act. You may say that the youth did, at least, go to a professor to ask for advice. But if you seek counsel — from a priest, for example you have selected that priest; and at bottom you already knew, more or less, what he would advise. In other words, to choose an adviser is nevertheless to commit oneself by that choice. If you are a Christian, you will say, Consult a priest; but there are collaborationists, priests who are resisters and priests who wait for the tide to turn: which will you choose? Had this young man chosen a priest of the resistance, or one of the collaboration, he would have decided beforehand the kind of advice he was to receive. Similarly, in coming to me, he knew what advice I should give him, and I had but one reply to make. You are free, therefore choose that is to say, invent. No rule of general morality can show you what you ought to do: no signs are vouchsafed in this world. The Catholics will reply, “Oh, but they are!” Very well; still, it is I myself, in every case, who have to interpret the signs. While I was imprisoned, I made the acquaintance of a somewhat remarkable man, a Jesuit, who had become a member of that order in the following manner. In his life he had suffered a succession of rather severe setbacks. His father had died when he was a child, leaving him in poverty, and he had been awarded a free scholarship in a religious institution, where he had been made continually to feel that he was accepted for charity’s sake, and, in consequence, he had been denied several of those distinctions and honours which gratify children. Later, about the age of eighteen, he came to grief in a sentimental affair; and finally, at twenty-two — this was a trifle in itself, but it was the last drop that overflowed his cup — he failed in his military examination. This young man, then, could regard himself as a total failure: it was a sign — but a sign of what? He might have taken refuge in bitterness or despair. But he took it — very cleverly for him _s a sign that he was not intended for secular success, and that only the attainments of religion, those of sanctity and of faith, were accessible to him. He interpreted his record as a message from God, and became a member of the Order. Who can doubt but that this decision as to the meaning of the sign was his, and his alone? One could have drawn quite different conclusions from such a series of reverses — as, for example, that he had better become a carpenter or a revolutionary. For the decipherment of the sign, however, ho bears the entire responsibility. That is what “abandonment” implies, that we ourselves decide our being. And with this abandonment goes anguish.
As for “despair,” the meaning of this expression is extremely simple. It merely means that we limit ourselves to a reliance upon that which is within our wills, or within the sum of the probabilities which render our action feasible. Whenever one wills anything, there are always these elements of probability. If I am counting upon a visit from a friend, who may be coming by train or by tram, I presuppose that the train will arrive at the appointed time, or that the tram will not be derailed. I remain in the realm of possibilities; but one does not rely upon any possibilities beyond those that are strictly concerned in one’s action. Beyond the point at which the possibilities under consideration cease to affect my action, I ought to disinterest myself. For there is no God and no prevenient design, which can adapt the world and all its possibilities to my will. When Descartes said, “Conquer yourself rather than the world,” what he meant was, at bottom, the same — that we should act without hope.
Marxists, to whom I have said this, have answered: “Your action is limited, obviously, by your death; but you can rely upon the help of others. That is, you can count both upon what the others are doing to help you elsewhere, as h China and in Russia, and upon what they will do later, after your death, to take up your action and carry it forward to its final accomplishment which will be the revolution. Moreover you must rely upon this; not to do so is immoral.” To this I rejoin, first, that I shall always count upon my comrades-in-arms in the struggle, in so far as they are committed, as I am, to a definite, common cause; and in the unity of a party or a group which I can more or less control — that is, in which I am enrolled as a militant and whose movements at every moment are known to me. In that respect, to rely upon the unity and the will of the party is exactly like my reckoning that the train will run to time or that the tram will not be derailed. But I cannot count upon men whom I do not know, I cannot base my confidence upon human goodness or upon man’s interest in the good of society, seeing that man is free and that there is no human nature which I can take as foundational. I do not know where the Russian revolution will lead. I can admire it and take it as an example in so far as it is evident, today, that the proletariat plays a part in Russia which it has attained in no other nation. But I cannot affirm that this will necessarily lead to the triumph of the proletariat: I must confine myself to what I can see. Nor can I be sure that comrades-in-arms will take up my work after my death and carry it to the maximum perfection, seeing that those men are free agents and will freely decide, tomorrow, what man is then to be. Tomorrow, after my death, some men may decide to establish Fascism, and the others may be so cowardly or so slack as to let them do so. If so, Fascism will then be the truth of man, and so much the worse for us. In reality, things will be such as men have decided they shall be. Does that mean that I should abandon myself to quietism? No. First I ought to commit myself and then act my commitment, according to the time-honoured formula that “one need not hope in order to undertake one’s work.” Nor does this mean that I should not belong to a party, but only that I should be without illusion and that I should do what I can. For instance, if I ask myself “Will the social ideal as such, ever become a reality?” I cannot tell, I only know that whatever may be in my power to make it so, I shall do; beyond that, I can count upon nothing.
Quietism is the attitude of people who say, “let others do what I cannot do.” The doctrine I am presenting before you is precisely the opposite of this, since it declares that there is no reality except in action. It goes further, indeed, and adds, “Man is nothing else but what he purposes, he exists only in so far as he realises himself, he is therefore nothing else but the sum of his actions, nothing else but what his life is.” Hence we can well understand why some people are horrified by our teaching. For many have but one resource to sustain them in their misery, and that is to think, “Circumstances have been against me, I was worthy to be something much better than I have been. I admit I have never had a great love or a great friendship; but that is because I never met a man or a woman who were worthy of it; if I have not written any very good books, it is because I had not the leisure to do so; or, if I have had no children to whom X could devote myself it is because I did not find the man I could have lived with. So there remains within me a wide range of abilities, inclinations and potentialities, unused but perfectly viable, which endow me with a worthiness that could never be inferred from the mere history of my actions.” But in reality and for the existentialist, there is no love apart from the deeds of love; no potentiality of love other than that which is manifested in loving; there is no genius other than that which is expressed in works of art. The genius of Proust is the totality of the works of Proust; the genius of Racine is the series of his tragedies, outside of which there is nothing. Why should we attribute to Racine the capacity to write yet another tragedy when that is precisely what he — did not write? In life, a man commits himself, draws his own portrait and there is nothing but that portrait. No doubt this thought may seem comfortless to one who has not made a success of his life. On the other hand, it puts everyone in a position to understand that reality alone is reliable; that dreams, expectations and hopes serve to define a man only as deceptive dreams abortive hopes, expectations unfulfilled; that is to say, they define him negatively, not positively. Nevertheless, when one says, “You are nothing else but what you live,” it does not imply that an artist is to be judged solely by his works of art, for a thousand other things contribute no less to his definition as a man. What we mean to say is that a man is no other than a series of undertakings, that he is the sum, the organisation, the set of relations that constitute these undertakings.
In the light of all this, what people reproach w with is not, after all, our pessimism, but the sternness of our optimism. If people condemn our works of fiction, in which we describe characters that are base, weak, cowardly and sometimes even frankly evil, it is not only because those characters are base, weak, cowardly or evil. For suppose that, like Zola, we showed that the behaviour of these characters was caused by their heredity, or by the action of their environment upon them, or by determining factors, psychic or organic. People would be reassured, they would say, “You see, that is what we are like, no one can do anything about it.” But the existentialist, when he portrays a coward, shows him as responsible for his cowardice. He is not like that on account of a cowardly heart or lungs or cerebrum, he has not become like that through his physiological organism; he is like that because he has made himself into a cowardly actions. There is no such thing as a cowardly temperament. There are nervous temperaments; there is what is called impoverished blood, and there are also rich temperaments. But the man whose blood is poor is not a coward for all that, for what produces cowardice is the act of giving up or giving way; and a temperament is not an action. A coward is defined by the deed that he has done. What people feel obscurely, and with horror, is that the coward as we present him is guilty of being a coward. What people would prefer would be to be born either a coward or a hero. One of the charges most often laid against the Chemins de la Liberte. is something like this “But, after all, these people being so base, how can you make them into heroes?” That objection is really rather comic, for it implies that people are born heroes: and that is, at bottom, what such people would like to think. If you are born cowards, you can be quite content. you can do nothing about it and you will be cowards all your lives whatever you do; and if you are born heroes you can again be quite content; you will be heroes all your lives eating and drinking heroically. Whereas the existentialist says that the coward makes himself cowardly, the hero makes himself heroic; and that there is always a possibility for the coward to give up cowardice and for the hero to stop being a hero. What counts is the total commitment, and it is not by a particular case or particular action that you are committed altogether.
We have now, I think, dealt with a certain number of the reproaches against existentialism. You have seen that it cannot be regarded as a philosophy of quietism since it defines man by his action; nor as a pessimistic description of man, for no doctrine is more optimistic, the destiny of man is placed within himself. Nor is it an attempt to discourage man from action since it tells him that there is no hope except in his action, and that the one thing which permits him to have life is the deed. Upon this level therefore, what we are considering is an ethic of action and self-commitment. However, we are still reproached, upon these few data, for confining man within his individual subjectivity. There again people badly misunderstand us.
Our point of departure is, indeed, the subjectivity of the individual, and that for strictly philosophic reasons. It is not because we are bourgeois, but because we seek to base our teaching upon the truth, and not upon a collection of fine theories, full of hope but lacking real foundations. And at the point of departure there cannot be any other truth than this, I think, therefore I am, which is the absolute truth of consciousness as it attains to itself. Every theory which begins with man, outside of this moment of self-attainment, is a theory which thereby suppresses the truth, for outside of the Cartesian cogito, all objects are no more than probable, and any doctrine of probabilities which is not attached to a truth will crumble into nothing. In order to define the probable one must possess the true. Before there can be any truth whatever, then, there must be an absolute truth, and there is such a truth which is simple, easily attained and within the reach of everybody; it consists in one’s immediate sense of one’s self.
In the second place, this theory alone is compatible with tho dignity of man, it is the only one which does not make man into an object. All kinds of materialism lead one to treat every man including oneself as an object — that is, as a set of pre-determined reactions, in no way different from the patterns of qualities and phenomena which constitute a table, or a chair or a stone. Our aim is precisely to establish the human kingdom as a pattern of values in distinction from the material world. But the subjectivity which we thus postulate as the standard of truth is no narrowly individual subjectivism, for as we have demonstrated, it is not only one’s own self that one discovers in the cogito, but those of others too. Contrary to the philosophy of Descartes, contrary to that of Kant, when we say “I think” we are attaining to ourselves in the presence of the other, and we are just as certain of the other as we are of ourselves. Thus the man who discovers himself directly in the cogito also discovers all the others, and discovers them as the condition of his own existence. He recognises that he cannot be anything (in the sense in which one says one is spiritual, or that one is wicked or jealous) unless others recognise him as such. I cannot obtain any truth whatsoever about myself, except through the mediation of another. The other is indispensable to my existence, and equally so to any knowledge I can have of myself. Under these conditions, the intimate discovery of myself is at the same time the revelation of the other as a freedom which confronts mine. and which cannot think or will without doing so either for or against me. Thus, at once, we find ourselves in a world which is, let us say, that of “inter-subjectivity”. It is in this world that man has to decide what he is and what others are.
Furthermore, although it is impossible to find in each and every man a universal essence that can be called human nature, there is nevertheless a human universality of condition. It is not by chance that the thinkers of today are so much more ready to speak of the condition than of the nature of man. By his condition they understand, with more or less clarity, all the limitations which a priori define man’s fundamental situation in the universe. His historical situations are variable: man may be born a slave in a pagan society or may be a feudal baron, or a proletarian. But what never vary are the necessities of being in the world, of having to labor and to die there. These limitations are neither subjective nor objective, or rather there is both a subjective and an objective aspect of them. Objective, because we meet with them everywhere and they are everywhere recognisable: and subjective because they are lived and are nothing if man does not live them — if, that is to say, he does not freely determine himself and his existence in relation to them. And, diverse though man’s purpose may be, at least none of them is wholly foreign to me, since every human purpose presents itself as an attempt either to surpass these limitations, or to widen them, or else to deny or to accommodate oneself to them. Consequently every purpose, however individual it may be, is of universal value. Every purpose, even that of a Chinese, an Indian or a Negro, can be understood by a European. To say it can be understood, means that the European of 1945 may be striving out of a certain situation towards the same limitations in the same way, and that he may reconceive in himself the purpose of the Chinese, of the Indian or the African. In every purpose there is universality, in this sense that every purpose is comprehensible to every man. Not that this or that purpose defines man for ever, but that it may be entertained again and again. There is always some way of understanding an idiot, a child, a primitive man or a foreigner if one has sufficient information. In this sense we may say that there is a human universality, but it is not something given; it is being perpetually made. I make this universality in choosing myself; I also make it by understanding the purpose of any other man, of whatever epoch. This absoluteness of the act of choice does not alter the relativity of each epoch.
What is at the very heart and center of existentialism, is the absolute character of the free commitment, by which every man realises himself in realising a type of humanity — a commitment always understandable, to no matter whom in no matter what epoch — and its bearing upon the relativity of the cultural pattern which may result from such absolute commitment. One must observe equally the relativity of Cartesianism and the absolute character of the Cartesian commitment. In this sense you may say, U you like, that every one of w makes the absolute by breathing, by eating, by sleeping or by behaving in any fashion whatsoever. There is no difference between free being — being as self-committal, as existence choosing its essence — and absolute being And there is no difference whatever between being as an absolute, temporarily localised that is, localised in history — and universally intelligible being.
This does not completely refute the charge of subjectivism Indeed that objection appears in several other forms, of which the first is as follows. People say to us, “Then it does not matter what you do,” and they say this in various ways.
First they tax us with anarchy; then they say, “You cannot judge others, tor there is no reason for preferring one purpose to another”; finally, they may say, “Everything being merely voluntary in this choice of yours, you give away with one hand what you pretend to gain with the other.” These three are not very serious objections. As to the first, to say that it does not matter what you choose is not correct. In one sense choice is possible, but what is not possible is not to choose. I can always choose, but I must know that if I do not choose, that is still a choice. This, although it may appear merely formal, is of great importance as a limit to fantasy and caprice. For, when I confront a real situation — for example, that I am a sexual being, able to have relations with a being of the other sex and able to have children — I am obliged to choose my attitude to it, and in every respect I bear the responsibility of the choice which, in committing myself, also commits the whole of humanity. Even if my choice is determined by no a priori value whatever, it can have nothing to do with caprice: and if anyone thinks that this is only Gide’s theory of the acte gratuit over again, he has failed to see the enormous difference between this theory and that of Gide. Gide does not know what a situation is, his “act” is one of pure caprice. In our view, on the contrary, man finds himself in an organised situation in which he is himself involved: his choice involves mankind in its entirety, and he cannot avoid choosing. Either he must remain single, or he must marry without having children, or he must marry and have children. In any case, and whichever — he may choose, it is impossible for him, in respect of this situation, not to take complete responsibility. Doubtless he chooses without reference to any pre-established value, but it is unjust to tax him with caprice. Rather let us say that the moral choice is comparable to the construction of a work of art.
But here I must at once digress to make it quite clear that we are not propounding an aesthetic morality, for our adversaries are disingenuous enough to reproach us even with that. I mention the work of art only by way of comparison. That being understood, does anyone reproach an artist, when he paints a picture, for not following rules established a priori. Does one ever ask what is the picture that he ought to paint? As everyone knows, there is no pre-defined picture for him to make; the artist applies himself to the composition of a picture, and the picture that ought to be made is precisely that which he will have made. As everyone knows, there are no aesthetic values a priori, but there are values which will appear in due course in the coherence of the picture, in the relation between the will to create and the finished work. No one can tell what the painting of tomorrow will be like; one cannot judge a painting until it is done. What has that to do with morality? We are in the same creative situation. We never speak of a work of art as irresponsible; when we are discussing a canvas by Picasso, we understand very well that the composition became what it is at the time when he was painting it, and that his works are part and parcel of his entire life.
It is the same upon the plane of morality. There is this in common between art and morality, that in both we have to do with creation and invention. We cannot decide a priori what it is that should be done. I think it was made sufficiently clear to you in the case of that student who came to see me, that to whatever ethical system he might appeal, the Kantian or any other, he could find no sort of guidance whatever; he was obliged to invent the law for himself. Certainly we cannot say that this man, in choosing to remain with his mother — that is, in taking sentiment, personal devotion and concrete charity as his moral foundations — would be making an irresponsible choice, nor could we do so if he preferred the sacrifice of going away to England. Man makes himself; he is not found ready-made; he makes himself by the choice of his morality, and he cannot but choose a morality, such is the pressure of circumstances upon him. We define man only in relation to his commitments; it is therefore absurd to reproach us for irresponsibility in our choice.
In the second place, people say to us, “You are unable to judge others.” This is true in one sense and false in another. It is true in this sense, that whenever a man chooses his purpose and his commitment in all clearness and in all sincerity, whatever that purpose may be, it is impossible for him to prefer another. It is true in the sense that we do not believe ill progress. Progress implies amelioration; but man is always the same, facing a situation which is always changing. and choice remains always a choice in the situation. The moral problem has not changed since the time when it was a choice between slavery and anti-slavery — from the time of the war of Secession, for example, until the present moment when one chooses between the M.R.P. [Mouvement Republicain Poputaire] and the Communists.
We can judge, nevertheless, for, as I have said, one chooses in view of others, and in view of others one chooses himself. One can judge, first — and perhaps this is not a judgment of value, but it is a logical judgment — that in certain cases choice is founded upon an error, and in others upon the truth. One can judge a man by saying that he deceives himself. Since we have defined the situation of man as one of free choice, without excuse and without help, any man who takes refuge behind the excuse of his passions, or by inventing some deterministic doctrine, is a self-deceiver. One may object: “But why should he not choose to deceive himself?” I reply that it is not for me to judge him morally, but I define his self-deception as an error. Here one cannot avoid pronouncing a judgment of truth. The self-deception is evidently a falsehood, because it is a dissimulation of man’s complete liberty of commitment. Upon this same level, I say that it is also a self-deception if I choose to declare that certain values are incumbent upon me; I am in contradiction with myself if I will these values and at the same time say that they impose themselves upon me. If anyone says to me, “And what if I wish to deceive myself?” I answer, “There is no reason why you should not, but I declare that you are doing so, and that the attitude of strict consistency alone is that of good faith.” Furthermore, I can pronounce a moral judgment. For I declare that freedom, in respect of concrete circumstances, can have no other end and aim but itself; and when once a man has seen that values depend upon himself, in that state of forsakenness he can will only one thing, and that is freedom as the foundation of all values. That does not mean that he wills it in the abstract: it simply means that the actions of men of good faith have, as their ultimate significance, the quest of freedom itself as such. A man who belongs to some communist or revolutionary society wills certain concreto ends, which imply the will to freedom, but that freedom is willed in community. We will freedom for freedom’s sake, in and through particular circumstances. And in thus willing freedom, we discover that it depends entirely upon tho freedom of others and that the freedom of others depends upon our own. Obviously, freedom as the definition of a man does not depend upon others, but as soon as there is a commitment, I am obliged to will the liberty of others d the same time as my own. I cannot make liberty my aim unless I make that of others equally my aim. Consequently, when I recognise, as entirely authentic, that man is a being whose existence precedes his essence, and that he is a free being who cannot, in any circumstances, but will his freedom, at the same time I realize that I cannot not will the freedom of others. Thus, in the name of that will to freedom which is implied in freedom itself, I can form judgments upon those who seek to hide from themselves the wholly voluntary nature of their existence and its complete freedom. Those who hide from this total freedom, in a guise of solemnity or with deterministic excuses, I shall call cowards. Others, who try to show that their existence is necessary, when it is merely an accident of the appearance of the human race on earth — I shall call scum. But neither cowards nor scum can be identified except upon the plane of strict authenticity. Thus, although the content of morality is variable, a certain form of this morality is universal. Kant declared that freedom is a will both to itself and to the freedom of others. Agreed: but he thinks that the formal and the universal suffice for the constitution of a morality. We think, on the contrary, that principles that are too abstract break down when we come to defining action. To take once again the case of that student; by what authority, in the name of what golden rule of morality, do you think he could have decided, in perfect peace of mind, either to abandon his mother or to remain with her? There are no means of judging. The content is always concrete, and therefore unpredictable; it has always to be invented. The one thing that counts, is to know whether the invention is made in the name of freedom.
Let us, for example, examine the two following cases, and you will see how far they are similar in spite of their difference. Let us take The Mill on the Floss. We find here J certain young woman, Maggie Tulliver, who is an incarnation of the value of passion and is aware of it. She is in love with a young man, Stephen, who is engaged to another, an insignificant young woman. This Maggie Tulliver, instead of heedlessly seeking her own happiness, chooses in the name of human solidarity to sacrifice herself and to give up the man she loves. On the other hand, La Sanseverina in Stendhal’s Chartreuse de Parme, believing that it is passion which endows man with his real value, would have declared that a
grand passion justifies its sacrifices, and must be preferred to the banality of such conjugal love as would unite Stephen to the little goose he was engaged to marry. It is the latter that she would have chosen to sacrifice in realising her own happiness, and, as Stendhal shows, she would also sacrifice herself upon the plane of passion if life made that demand upon her. Here we are facing two clearly opposed moralities; but I claim that they are equivalent, seeing that in both cases the overruling aim is freedom. You can imagine two attitude exactly similar in effect, in that one girl might prefer, in resignation, to give up her lover while the other preferred, in fulfilment of sexual desire, to ignore the prior engagement of the man she loved; and, externally, these two cases might appear the same as the two we have just cited, while being in fact entirely different. The attitude of La Sanseverina is much nearer to that of Maggie Tulliver than to one of careless greed. Thus, you see, the second objection is at once true and false. One can choose anything, but only if it is upon the plane of free commitment.
The third objection, stated by saying, “You take with one hand what you give with the other,” means, at bottom, “your values are not serious, since you choose them yourselves.” To that I can only say that I am very sorry that it should be so; but if I have excluded God the Father, there must be somebody to invent values. We have to take things as they are. And moreover, to say that we invent values means neither more nor less than this; that there is no sense in life a priori. Life is nothing until it is lived; but it is yours to make sense of, and the value of it is nothing else but the sense that you choose. Therefore, you can see that there is a possibility of creating a human community. I have been reproached for suggesting that existentialism is a form of humanism: people have said to me, “But you have written in your Nausée that the humanists are wrong, you have even ridiculed a certain type of humanism, why do you now go back upon that?” In reality, the word humanism has two very different meanings. One may understand by humanism a theory which upholds man as the end — in-itself and as the supreme value. Humanism in this sense appears, for instance, in Cocteau’s story Round the World in 80 Hours, in which one of the characters declares, because he is flying over mountains in an airplane, “Man is magnificent!” This signifies that although I, personally have not built aeroplanes I have the benefit of those particular inventions and that I personally, being a man, can consider myself responsible for, and honoured by, achievements that are peculiar to some men. It is to assume that we can ascribe value to man according to the most distinguished deeds of certain men. That kind of humanism is absurd, for only the dog or the horse would be in a position to pronounce a general judgment upon man and declare that he is magnificent, which they have never been such fools as to do — at least, not as far as I know. But neither is it admissible that a man should pronounce judgment upon Man. Existentialism dispenses with any judgment of this sort: an existentialist will never take man as the end, since man is still to be determined. And we have no right to believe that humanity is something to which we could set up a cult, after the manner of Auguste Comte. The cult of humanity ends in Comtian humanism, shut — in upon itself, and — this must be said — in Fascism. We do not want a humanism like that.
But there is another sense of the word, of which the fundamental meaning is this: Man is all the time outside of himself: it is in projecting and losing himself beyond himself that he makes man to exist; and, on the other band, it is by pursuing transcendent aims that he himself is able to exist. Since man is thus self-surpassing, and can grasp objects only in relation to his self-surpassing, he is himself the heart and center of his transcendence. There is no other universe except the human universe, the universe of human subjectivity. This relation of transcendence as constitutive of man (not in the sense that God is transcendent, but in the sense of self-surpassing) with subjectivity (in such a sense that man is not shut up in himself but forever present in a human universe) — it is this that we call existential humanism. This is humanism, because we remind man that there is no legislator but himself; that he himself, thus abandoned, must decide for himself; also because we show that it is not by turning back upon himself, but always by seeking, beyond himself, an aim which is one of liberation or of some particular realisation, that man can realize himself as truly human.
You can see from these few reflections that nothing could be more unjust than the objections people raise against us. Existentialism is nothing else but an attempt to draw the full conclusions from a consistently atheistic position. Its intention is not in the least that of plunging men into despair. And if by despair one means as the Christians do — any attitude of unbelief, the despair of the existentialists is something different. Existentialism is not atheist in the sense that it would exhaust itself in demonstrations of the non-existence of God. It declares, rather, that even if God existed that would make no difference from its point of view. Not that we believe God does exist, but we think that the real problem is not that of His existence; what man needs is to find himself again and to understand that nothing can save him from himself, not even a valid proof of the existence of God. In this sense existentialism is optimistic. It is a doctrine of action, and it is only by self-deception, by confining their own despair with ours that Christians can describe us as without hope.
Posted by bhola at 01:04 AM | Comments (0)
Sartre Redux: A new generation of scholars explores the philosophy and politics of the founder of existentialism
SCOTT McLEMEE, PARIS
The flowers at the grave do not look fresh, but there are a lot of them. And the marker itself is plain, unlike many of the slightly ostentatious tombs crowding Montparnasse Cemetery, a final resting place of the illustrious bourgeoisie.
When Jean-Paul Sartre died in 1980, some 50,000 people turned out for the funeral of France's most famous modern philosopher. Six years later his lifelong companion, Simone de Beauvoir, joined him here in Montparnasse. The stream of people coming to pay tribute has never really dried up. On a cold autumn morning, at least half-a-dozen visitors make their way to the spot in the course of about 15 minutes.
"I saw him at the Sorbonne in 1958," says a British engineer in his 60s, on vacation with his wife. "His lecture went right over my head. What I do remember is that there seemed to be 600 people trying to squeeze into an auditorium meant to hold 75."
Even philosophers in the crowd that day might have had difficulty with Sartre's arguments, for he was then struggling to reconcile existentialism with Marxist theory by writing a long, dense work called Critique of Dialectical Reason. His powers of concentration were fueled, in part, by Corydrane, an over-the-counter pill containing amphetamines, popular with students cramming for exams.
It is the stuff of legend. And the hunger for that legend today is unmistakable. It has been a long time since any thinker left so large a mark on an age as did Sartre. The first sign of a revival came three years ago, on the 20th anniversary of his death, when the mediagenic French intellectual Bernard-Henri Lévy published a best-selling book, recently translated into English as Sartre: The Philosopher of the Twentieth Century (Polity Press). A team of scholars, including several American professors, is now finishing the Dictionnaire Sartrean, with entries on the thinker's concepts, influences, and political alliances -- as well as a directory of his sizable entourage, mistresses included. It is scheduled for publication in 2005, as part of the centenary of the thinker's birth. That anniversary will also be celebrated with an international conference in Paris.
Growing interest in Sartre is by no means an exclusively French phenomenon. Strangely enough, his philosophical writings may now be receiving more scrutiny in the United States than in his native country. At the annual meeting of the Sartrean Studies Group, in Paris, scholars tend to analyze his literary work and his role in cultural history. By contrast, at the convention of the North American Sartre Society held at Purdue University in September, most panels focused on his ethical theory and his political thought, with particular attention to the philosopher's writings on violence. A wave of new and forthcoming work by American scholars examines the development of his analysis of terrorism and third-world insurgency, with a special emphasis on his cold-war-era duel with his friend turned foe, Albert Camus. Whether or not Sartre was "the philosopher of the 20th century," the passions and problems driving his work continue to haunt the 21st.
And anyone who expects an American gathering of Sartreans to consist of middle-aged white men waxing nostalgic over the thinker will be in for a surprise. The demographics of the Purdue conference were strikingly diverse, with a strong representation of women, African-Americans, and scholars just beginning their careers.
"We've really tried to encourage broad participation," says Ronald E. Santoni, a professor of philosophy at Denison University. "We've gone out of our way at times to say, 'We established people should step out of the way a bit.'"
Free to Be (or Not to Be)
What makes today's renewal of interest in Sartre all the more striking is how completely his intellectual influence went into eclipse, even during his lifetime. Feminist scholars might have reservations about aspects of Simone de Beauvoir's work -- including, for one, her reliance in The Second Sex on Sartre's philosophical terminology. Yet her importance as the "founding mother" of feminist theory was never in doubt. By contrast, many schools of thought emerging in France during the 1950s and '60s, such as structuralism and deconstruction, tried to consign Sartre's concepts to the dustbin of philosophical history.
Indeed, insulting the thinker became something of a rite of passage for younger intellectuals. Michel Foucault once described Sartre's Critique of Dialectical Reason as "the effort of a 19th-century man to imagine the 20th century." Many of the left-wing students who nearly toppled the French government during the mass demonstrations of May 1968 absorbed their radical politics from the writings of Sartre, but repaid the debt with condescension. When he tried to speak at a rally to express his support for the movement, someone handed him a note that read, "Keep it brief."
All of which was, in its way, a backhanded confirmation of just how decisively Sartre once defined the terms of public intellectual life. He captured the zeitgeist in arguments that were both complex and spellbinding. With his early philosophical writings, especially Being and Nothingness (1943), he had worked out a philosophy that summed up both the destructiveness of world war and the possibility of new beginnings.
Human consciousness, according to Sartre's "phenomenological ontology," finds itself thrown into a universe in which it has no fixed course of action, no final structure of meaning. There is only one absolute: the distinction between the "being in itself" of objects and the "being for itself" of humans, who are "condemned to be free." A piece of paper is not free to quit being a piece of paper. But you are free to stop reading this article at any given moment. (Please don't.)
Awareness of such freedom can be terrifying. Sartre gives as an example the experience of vertigo while standing on a cliff: One is aware that the freedom to move just a few inches would mean plunging into an abyss. But human beings are exceptionally good at hiding from our own freedom, a condition Sartre calls "bad faith." We treat our routine actions and familiar roles as if they were built into the order of the world, rather than something we are responsible for creating.
This was not simply a philosophy urging people to pull themselves up by their metaphysical bootstraps, however. It became a tool of social criticism. In the pages of Les Temps Modernes -- the journal he founded in 1945 with Simone de Beauvoir and other intellectuals -- Sartre interpreted, and denounced, the bad faith embodied in anti-Semitism, imperialism, economic exploitation, and other forms of domination. From the extremely individualistic conception of freedom found in his early work, Sartre moved on, during the 1950s, to begin a complex engagement with Marxist and third-world politics.
"What's interesting in Sartre from the late 1940s on," says Lewis R. Gordon, a professor of Africana studies at Brown University, "is that he's always linked to groups internationally that were trying to find new ways to address social problems. Precisely because of that, he's been attractive to third-world scholars, and to people involved in the development of feminist theory." The existentialist thinker has been a lasting influence on Mr. Gordon's own work, beginning with his first book, Bad Faith and Antiblack Racism (Humanities Press, 1995).
While some developments in American academe appear to be in keeping with Sartre's left-wing politics, Mr. Gordon says any resemblance is coincidental. "On the one hand, Sartre has a radical critique," he says. "But at the same time, he preserves various conceptions of value that are not particularly fashionable among postmodernists. He poses questions about responsibility, about community, about truth. Those questions are very Sartrean."
Mr. Gordon also notes that the thinker's later philosophical work, especially the Critique, emphasized the concept of scarcity as a factor in human existence. "Freedom is conditioned by protein," as Sartre once put it. "Since the 1980s, postmodernism tried to push a cultural conception of politics," Mr. Gordon says, "leaving out the more material dimensions of economic reality that someone influenced by Sartreanism would focus on."
Bad Faith and Bootlicking
Unfortunately, Sartre's legacy does not consist entirely of challenging ideas about freedom and human liberation. His hatred for the oppression he found in Western capitalism led the philosopher into some extraordinary displays of bad faith of his own. In 1954, following a trip to the Soviet Union, he declared that the country's citizens enjoyed the freedom to criticize their society. By the early 1970s, he was allying himself with young Maoist revolutionaries in France. After threatening a few factory owners with violence, his young friends abandoned their plans for "armed struggle" -- unlike their comrades in Germany, the Baader-Meinhof gang, whose leaders Sartre visited in jail in 1974.
Indeed, it often seems that, for much of his life, Sartre's deepest instinct when faced with a totalitarian movement of the left was to find something encouraging to say. All of which makes it surprising to find Sartre being championed by Bernard-Henri Lévy. In 1978, Mr. Lévy's book Barbarism With a Human Face announced his conversion from Maoist radicalism to a curiously strident middle-of-the-road politics. It was the beginning of a seismic shift in French intellectual life. Many other thinkers have followed Mr. Lévy's course, though few have done so with quite his flair.
"An anti-totalitarian philosopher like me, how can he write a book about Sartre?" says Mr. Lévy, speaking by telephone from Morocco. "How can Jean-Paul Sartre be praised, in spite of being one of the intellectuals who made the biggest number of mistakes?"
Mr. Lévy's solution is nearly as elegant as his rather ornate prose: He treats Sartre as a thinker at war with himself. One dimension is deeply skeptical about human beings. "By virtue of his very pessimism," writes Mr. Lévy, this Sartre "was one of our intellectuals best prepared to think, problematize, and reject despotism." The other dimension of the thinker, Mr. Lévy calls "the prototype of the man who lost his way ... the paragon of a submissive, compromised philosophy," embodying "the intellectuals' tendency to lick the dictator's boots." Mr. Lévy finds the thinker's admirable side displayed in his early existentialist writings, as well as in his fiction and drama -- but also in a set of interviews published shortly before his death in April 1980, in which Sartre repudiated Marxism.
American scholars have been decidedly unimpressed with this strategy of bifurcating the thinker into manageable portions. A frequent complaint is that Mr. Lévy is more of a publicist than a philosopher. In a review in Sartre Studies International, Elizabeth A. Bowman, an independent scholar, describes the book as a set of "nicely crafted mini-articles" and "engaging anecdotes" presented "in attractive TV magazine format." She notes that Mr. Lévy treats the neo-Marxism of Sartre's Critique of Dialectical Reason as a philosophical system completely at