Sartre, George Bush, and Freedom
French philosopher Sartre said, ‘Man Is Condemned To Be Free’. It is not very difficult to guess that freedom — which is a good thing to have and in fact it is so desirable that the modern civilized world has to ensure it to every human being by a written constitution — was considered a ‘condemnation’ something like a curse by Sartre. What did he mean by that?
Sartre had a very profound understanding of freedom. He said that a man is more free in captivity than when he is free. Freedom to Sartre is not the freedom we think we have but the choices we make, whether in a free society or in a prison. During the Nazi occupation of France, he wrote that “Never have we been as free as during the German occupation… Since the Nazi venom snuck even into our thoughts, every correct thought was a conquest; since all-powerful police tried to keep us silent, every word became previous like a declaration of principle; since we were watched; every gesture had the weight of a commitment… The very cruelty of the enemy pushed us to the extremity of the human condition by forcing us to ask the questions which we can ignore in peacetime.”
Sartre’s idea of freedom is different and unique from previous philosophers because unlike the political freedom cogitated by Thomas Hobbes who said individuals must surrender all of their rights to the Leviathan under a social contract, except for one fundamental right — the right to self-preservation, and Locke who said an individual also has the rights to his property and fruits of his labour, Sartre talked about philosophical freedom. Sartre did not talk about objective freedom but of subjective that is with an understanding of the subject and of ‘human nature’ that is different from previous concepts.
Today in the globalised and almost completely interconnected world where ideas and materials flow without any constraint there still are regions in the world where freedom is not only unheard of but is also undesired. And the West’s otherwise considered benevolent thought of spreading the idea of freedom everywhere has backfired because they did not consider Sartre’s subjective philosophical freedom.
That’s where George Bush and Iraq come into the picture.
Ironically enough even if it was under the most condemnable wrong pretext, George Bush is the only politician in the post-WWII world who not only gave freedom to a country but also in a very Sartrean way condemned them with that freedom.
Humans are afraid of responsibility hence they chain themselves under various guises and think that they are doing it of their own volition. We cannot even begin to talk about ordinary people because even the most extraordinary people, thinkers, and artists also subconsciously abhor freedom or find it burdensome.
There are three kinds of people in this society when we think in terms of freedom.
The least free are the religious people who bind themselves willfully to the diktats of a God so they can have order and discipline in their life. It is useless even to mention that their religion provides them with a deterministic world where everything is controlled by a God. They abdicate their responsibilities to him and accept everything that happens to them. If good things happen they thank God and if bad things happened they console themselves by thinking that God wanted this to happen more masochists in religious groups think that God must have a plan for doing bad things to them and maybe something good will come out of it. According to Sartre, these people believe in essence before existence.
The second kinds are the ones who are not religious but follow a modicum of social norms and behaviors. They get educated, marry have kids, do a decent job or a business, and travel. In doing all this there is a set pattern or rules defined by society which they never break and or ever realize that they are captive to their own rules and not really free — they choose not to choose. Take, for example, a sixty-year-old man who has never traveled outside his country. If someone tells him at the time of his birth that he can never leave the country he will live a miserable life. And if no one tells him this he will never know that he was in captivity by his own choice. He never chose to exercise his freedom because he was not aware that he is captive. Because freedom as per Sartre is not the freedom to merely do something. He says “You are free” because you always have a choice, “therefore choose” but because freedom and constant reminder of choice create anxiety and anguish, individuals flee in self-deception and continue leading controlled lives.
Third kinds are the crème de la crème of the society that is scientists, artists (actors, writers etc,) philosophers, politicians, businessmen and sportsmen. These people enslave themselves in what Ernest Becker in his celebrated book The Denial of Death calls “immortality project” (or “causa sui project”). By choosing the immortality project, people feel they are different than the ordinary folks and will be remembered post death by what they leave behind in an abstract form and not the biological heir. This gives them the feeling that their lives have a purpose.
Coming to Iraqis, under Saddam, the minority Sunni to whom Saddam belonged had no complaints but the majority population of Shia and another minority of Kurds were systematically persecuted and killed. In the majority of the dictatorship or monarchy-controlled Islamic nations, the population never tries hard enough to free themselves because to them subjugation by the state is on a secondary level compared to their willful subjugation to the strict tenets of Islam. In fact, Islam makes them more pliable to live in a dictatorship (Pakistan, Libya, Saudi Arabia, etc.,). The interesting thing about the sects within the monolith Islam is that one is oppressed only till one is in the minority (or out of power) the moment they become the majority they become oppressors. So, the majority of non-Sunni Iraqis did want freedom from Saddam but they did not ask Bush for it, because to them, freedom meant freedom from the rule of other sects and not complete freedom along with the other sect.
So, according to Sartre, Iraqis were freer under Saddam because they were aware of their captivity and hence their every minor act of defiance was an act of freedom. But they became truly condemned once they were free of Saddam, not because in Sartrean sense freedom was bad but because they with the freedom to choose they chose to hate and kill the other sect. They truly personified the condemnation of freedom which overshadowed the historicity of different Islamic sects’ incapability of coexisting in peace with each other.
The West’s idea of ‘spreading’ democracy to places where it doesn’t exist also comes from Sartre. In Existentialism and Humanism, Sartre introduces the idea of community. “In willing freedom, we discover that it depends entirely upon the freedom of others” he adds that “I cannot make liberty my aim unless I make that of others equally my aim” In Being and Nothingness he explains this further and states that we have a responsibility towards our freedom and the freedom of others. This is completely absent among the various sects of Islam.
And once we criticize and get past the idea that Bush used wrong or a bad pretext (WMD, 9/11) to give freedom to Iraqis, only those who consider Iraqis incapable of being civil will criticize the post-Saddam situation in Iraq. Unless one thinks that Iraqis were circus animals who were well-behaved under a ringmaster and should never have been given a chance to explore the idea of democracy — no matter how much blood is shed in the process — one will have negative views on the Iraq war because they have thought about freedom in a political sense and never in a philosophical sense.
Many nations achieved freedom after WWII and some like India paid a heavy price (during the transition period) but have lived in harmony under democratic conditions ever since. History tells us that people die; what matters to a civilized society is how many and how they die. People die fighting wars which is acceptable but not when they are killed millions in a concentration camps.
Iraqis and many other Islamic nations, including Syria now, no matter how religiously subjugated they are, should be allowed their internal sacrifices to learn and live democratically. That is the only way.
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This article was originally published in New Delhi Times on 5th June 2017
