Sartre and the Rationalization of Human Sexuality Essay -- Philosophy

Sartre and the Rationalization of valet SexualityABSTRACT Sartre rationalizes sexuality much like Plato. Rationalization here(predicate) refers to the way Sartre tries to facilitate explanation by changing the terms of the word of honor from sexual to nonsexual concepts. As a philosophy which, above all, highlights those features of compassionate existence which seem most resistant to explanation, one would expect existentialism to highlight sexuality as a category that is crucial for considering tender existence. Descartes comes immediately to mind when one focuses on Sartres major categories. In Sartres character however, it is not mind and matter but consciousness and its opposite wind and being. This irreducible dualism is the key to the trouble benignant beings have with existence. Humans estimate to deal with the tensions implied by this dualism by trying to pretend people argon not subjects but objects. Sartre calls this boastful faith. He begins by attempting to ta ke human sexuality in earnest as a fundamental category, but ends by abandoning the effort in favor of other substitutes. Akin to Plato in his rationalization of sexuality is Jean-Paul Sartre. Sartre is probably the end of existentialist philosophy in twain senses in the first place in the sense of extending existentialist premise as far as they can be taken, and in the bit place in the sense of serving as the canonical type of existentialist thought.Since existentialism is the philosophy above all other philosophies which takes seriously the concrete existence of a human in all of its facticity, anxiety, temporality, and fleshliness, and testament place this existence before all decisions about essence, it would seem that above all others we can expect from Sartre a philosop... ...y important in sexuality. This is bad faith in reverse, the treating of objectivities as though subjective. On the other hand, the For-itself is likewise much bound or confined to abstract categori es. Is sexuality sincerely a dialectic of subject and object? It is this, but is it only this? These bulky categories cover all cosmic relationships. Sex disappears into an abstraction. Wherein lies the distinguishing loss of sexuality and what difference does this make? These considerations are nowhere in Sartre.This is Sartres sexuality, a bloodless and a passionless dance of the categories.Notes(1) Translated and with an introduction by Hazel E. Barnes and published by Philosophical Library, New York, 1956. Page numbers placed in parentheses in the text refer to this edition.(2) Sartre illustrates bad faith with a sexual illustration. take hold of pages 55-56.