Abstract
This paper examines the tools used to mediate intersubjectivity as a central element in Jean-Paul Sartre’s phenomenological theory of ensembles. It first presents a brief account of ordinary individuals acting in and through violent groups from the viewpoints of psychology and phenomenology. Next, using Sartre’s ontology of consciousness, the paper establishes the phenomenological structure of consciousness and intersubjectivity to explain, with recent psychological findings, how individual agents in violent groups come to deny their moral responsibility for the group’s ideology and action. Finally, through Sartre’s theory of ensembles, the paper shows how collectives of individuals evolve into groups. In violent groups, instruments of terror are used to mediate intersubjective relationships, and this explains how individual perpetrators and those complicit may sense a lack of control and perceive that they have diminished moral responsibility even though they are responsible for collective violence.
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I have defended the position that Sartre’s ontological account of intersubjectivity is similar to the Heideggerian being-with-others rather than the Hegelian being-for-others. This means that the original relations we have with others is a subject-subject encounter rather than a conflictive subject-object encounter. See Ang, Jennifer. (2009).
I have presented a nuanced understanding of Sartre’s position on revolutionary violence in Sartre and the Moral Limits of War and Terrorism. See Ang, Jennifer. (2010). By revisiting Sartre’s methodologies, and reinterpreting his works on ethics and politics, I have shown that Sartre addresses the inevitability of dirty-hands in certain inhumane situations by questioning why violence is considered unjustified when it is the only way we can put an end to a situation that disparages humanity. His version of existential humanist ethics thus seeks to contain violent means within limits by establishing the situations and conditions that make violence morally excusable, and distinguishing the types and kinds of violence that are morally tolerable according to their causes and consequences. His critics on the other hand, start the debate from a different viewpoint by asking how one can, if ever, justify violence on behalf of a better and more just society without disparaging humanity, and also be on the path of humanity. This different starting point led to a misreading of Sartre’s position on revolutionary violence. An example is On Violence, where Hannah Arendt presented a criticism of Sartre’s preface to Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth. She deemed Sartre to have glorified violence when he argued that violence that is used for revenge “would be the cure-all for most of our ills” because violence “can heal the wounds it has inflicted”. However, Sartre consistently spoke of violence as something negative and the violent person to be acting in bad faith, even when violence is necessary for overthrowing inhumane situations. Thus, what is humanizing for Sartre is for the revolutionary to assume his responsibility for his own oppressive situation, and not that acting in counter-violence is in itself humanizing. Kathryn T. Gines also provided an explanation of Arendt’s misinterpretation of Sartre and Fanon’s analyses of violence and counterviolence in The Wretched of the Earth and Critique of Dialectical Reason. See Gines, T. Kathryn. (2014).
For example, following the Nuremberg trials, both U.S. and Britain tightened their army regulations regarding the recourse for using superior orders as a plea in 1956 and 1958 respectively. Before WWII, both nations argued that soldiers have an “unconditional obedience and with absolute non-liability for violations of international law when under superior orders.” There are further insightful readings on the removal of the plea of superior orders. See for example Robertson, Geoffrey QC. (2002). and Lewy, Guenter. (1970).
Emanuele Caminada made several interesting comparisons between Husserl’s concept of the common mind and social acts that are supported by collective intentionality and Gilbert’s plural subject theory. The details of the discussion are beyond the scope of this paper, but I would like to highlight that Caminada made an important point that Husserl, unlike Gilbert, does not presuppose individuals as non-social beings who commit themselves to become social, but rather, the individual is socialized already at the level of passivity. As for the personal life of the individual, Husserl explains that it is actively constituted through commitments and endorsements. Husserl’s account of collective intentionality thus emphasizes the dynamics of groupings rather than the structures of groups, and this is an approach that is seen in Sartre’s theory of ensembles as well. See Caminada, Emanuele. (2016).
Nicolas de Warren presented an interesting application of Sartre’s fraternity-terror relation to the Occupy Wall Street movement. He argues that the movement is “an exemplary instance of a group in fusion that faltered due to its failure to transform itself into a statutory group”. See Warren, de Nicolas. (2016).
Marc Crépon clarifies that a more detailed comparison of Camus’s works and Sartre’s plays (Dirty Hands and The Condemned of Altona) is beyond his project, but nevertheless, appeals to the important question of whether murder can be justified in the name of justice in Camus’s thought in the chapter “Justice” in Murderous Consent. See Crepon, Marc. (2019). Regrettably, a full discussion on complicity, guilt, and legitimate violence lies beyond the scope of this paper.
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Ang, J.M.S. Sartre on the responsibility of the individual in violent groups. Phenom Cogn Sci (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11097-021-09790-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11097-021-09790-7