[Marxism-Thaxis] Fundamental difference: Menu of choices presented to a free will is socially determined

[Marxism-Thaxis] Fundamental difference: Menu of choices presented to a free will is socially determined

c b Fri, 21 Jan 2011 09:49:46 -0800

Bad faith

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_faith_%28existentialism%29

A critical claim in existentialist thought is that individuals are always free to make choices and guide their lives towards their own chosen goal or "project". The claim holds that individuals cannot escape this freedom, even in overwhelming circumstances. For instance, even an empire's colonized victims possess choices: to submit to rule, to negotiate, to act in complicity, to resist nonviolently, or to counter-attack.

Although circumstances may limit individuals (facticity), they cannot force persons as radically free beings to follow one course over another. For this reason, individuals choose in anguish: they know that they must make a choice, and that it will have consequences. For Sartre, to claim that one amongst many conscious possibilities takes undeniable precedence (for instance, "I cannot risk my life, because I must support my family") is to assume the role of an object in the world, merely at the mercy of circumstance—a being-in-itself that is only its own facticity

^^^^^ CB: Well yes, Comrade Sartre, Ye Olde problem of free will and determinism. Humans do have free will; so do dogs. But a human individual still exercises her choices among alternatives that are given to her _by society_. The alternatives or "menu" from which she chooses do not originate and well up from within her individual being or person. The feelings and emotions that determine her choices are learned from her society and culture; their genesis is not in her individual infinite "soul" or "psyche" or "Mind". Valuing supporting one's family is learned and socially determined.