Aquinas and Sartre: On Freedom, Personal Identity, and the Possibility of Happiness

328 Pages·2009·17.82 MB·English

by  Stephen Wang

AquinA s & sArtre

Stephen Wang
Aqu i nAs & sArtre
On FreedOm, PersOnal IdentIty, and
the POss IbIlIty OF haPPIness

The Catholic University of America Press
Washington, D.C.
Copyright © 2009
The Catholic university of America Press
All rights reserved
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements
of American national standards for information science—
Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984.
∞
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Wang, stephen, 1966–
Aquinas and sartre : on freedom, personal identity, and the possibility
of happiness / stephen Wang.
p. cm.
includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8132-1576-1 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Thomas, Aquinas, saint,
1225?–1274. 2. sartre, Jean-Paul, 1905–1980. 3. Liberty. 4. identity
(Psychology) 5. Happiness. i. title.
B765.T54W25 2009
128.092ʹ2—dc22 2008038321
COntents
Preface ix
Acknowledgments xix
Abbreviations xxiii
notes about the text xxv
introduction 1
Aquinas: Historical and Intellectual Background 1
Aquinas: Philosophical and Theological Influences 6
Aquinas: Subsequent Interpretation 8
Sartre: Historical and Intellectual Background 10
Sartre: Philosophical and Theological Influences 13
Sartre: Subsequent Interpretation 16
Part One Human Being
1. identity and Human incompletion in sartre 23
The Nature of Human Action 23
Anguish, Vertigo, and the Ambiguity of Identity 24
Consciousness and Intentionality 32
Self-Consciousness and Being-for-Itself 37
Imagination and the Power of Negation 43
Lack, Possibility, and the Projection of Values 48
The Self, Selfness, and Personhood 53
2. identity and Human incompletion in Aquinas 58
Plants, Animals, and Human Beings 58
Intellect, Knowledge, and Immateriality 63
The Openness of the Human Form 69
Being, Goodness, and Perfection 74
The Will as Rational Appetite 79
Human Beings Are Not Sheep 84
vi =  contents
Part Two Human Understanding
3. The subjective nature of
Objective understanding in sartre 93
Being-in-the-World 93
The Subjective Nature of Perception 96
Instrumentality and Purpose 98
The Perspective of the Body 103
The Objective Resistance of the World 107
Knowledge Is Human 111
4. The subjective nature of
Objective understanding in Aquinas 117
Objectivity and the Human Subject 117
The Interdependence of Intellect and Will 121
Exercise and Specification 124
Reflexivity of Intellect and Will 128
The Will Activating the Intellect 135
The Possibility of Different Points of View 139
An Example: People in a Station 144
Understanding as a Subjective Objectivity 148
Part Three Human Freedom
5. Freedom, Choice, and the
indetermination of reason in sartre 155
The Intentional Structure of the Act 155
Indetermination and the Projection of Ends 159
Choice and Self-Constitution 163
The Reasonableness of the Project 168
Temporality, Conversion, and the Unity of Life 175
Facticity and the Limits of Freedom 180
The Persistence of Existential Freedom 186
6. Freedom, Choice, and the
indetermination of reason in Aquinas 192
Desire for the End 192
The Indetermination of Particular Goods 196
The Indetermination of Ends 201
Freedom, Choice, and Preference 205
The Inconclusiveness of Reason 209
contents =  vii
The Influence of the Will over Reason 217
Intellectualist Readings of Aquinas 226
The Self-Movement of the Will 233
Part Four Human Fulfillment
7. The Possibility of Human Happiness in sartre 243
The Goal of Happiness 243
The Ideal of Self-Coincidence 245
Existential Denial and Human Relationships 247
The Link between Ontology and Theology 250
Failure and Hope 253
8. The Possibility of Human Happiness in Aquinas 256
Different Kinds of Happiness 256
The Impossibility of Perfect Happiness in This Life 259
The Possibility of Perfect Happiness in God 264
Sartre’s Theological Pessimism 267
A Natural Desire That Cannot Be Fulfilled Naturally 270
Conclusion 275
Bibliography 281
Works by Sartre 281
Works by Aquinas 282
Works about Sartre 282
Works about Aquinas 286
Other Works 289
index 293

PreFaCe
There are some profound similarities in the thought of Thomas
Aquinas and Jean-Paul sartre. The purpose of this book is to
show that these two thinkers, despite their many differences,
have a common philosophical understanding of the nature of
human freedom.
i am well aware that this suggestion will strike many read-
ers as being far-fetched. There are some obvious historical and
philosophical difficulties in the task of comparing Aquinas and
sartre, let alone finding any connections between them. Aqui-
nas is the scholastic theologian par excellence, completely im-
mersed in the atmosphere of medieval Christendom, a man
formed by his prayer and his preaching. sartre is one of the
twentieth-century’s most notorious and influential iconoclasts,
the great antinomian, who could write that “existentialism is
nothing else but an attempt to draw the full conclusions from a
consistently atheistic position.”1 Though they spent many years
in the same area of Paris, their lives were separated by seven
hundred years of intellectual and cultural history and by the
most fundamental differences in faith.
Perhaps for these reasons there have been very few writers
who have been interested in comparing the thought of Aqui-
nas and sartre.2 not even Maritain’s well-known work, some
of which sets out explicitly to evaluate and refute sartre, re-
1. Jean-Paul sartre, “existentialism and Humanism,” in Jean-Paul Sartre:
Basic Writings, ed. stephen Priest (London: routledge, 2001), 45. sartre himself
softens this polemical statement in the lines that follow.
2. see, e.g., Joseph C. Mihalich, Existentialism and Thomism (new York:
Philosophical Library, 1960); Frederick J. Crosson, “intentionality and Atheism:
sartre and Maritain,” The Modern Schoolman 64 (1987); Joseph J. romano, “Be-
tween Being and nothingness: The relevancy of Thomistic Habit,” Thomist 44
(1980); Gianfranco Basti, Filosofia Dell’uomo (Bologna: edizioni studio Domen-
ix