By T.C. Lo (盧天賜); March 6, 2015
Jean-Paul Sartre was an atheist. One of his reasons for not believing the existence of God appears weird to my mind. R.C. Sproul in his book “The Consequences of Ideas” wrote the following paragraphs which I put in quotations in an effort to explain to us what Existentialism is all about. (Ref. 1):
“One of Sartre’s most fascinating and unique arguments against the existence of God has to do with man’s subjectivity. Remember the chief premise of Sartre’s existential philosophy: Man is a subject, not an object. Sartre believes that this subjectivity would be destroyed if there were a God.”
Why so? Let us look at his other book entitled being and Nothingness in which Sartre devotes a section to what he subtitled the Look.
“Sartre describes what happens when people are subjected to the gaze of others. Beneath another person’s stare I am reduced to the status of an object. It is appropriate for people to stare for protracted periods at paintings in a museum, or at monkeys in a zoo. But it is not acceptable for people to stare at each other or to maintain eye contact beyond a couple of seconds while passing on the street. We interpret a stare as a hostile act.”
We do share the experiences that Sartre describes except when we play in the game of see-who-blinks-first. But with whom we play such game? We play with a friend not a stranger. Right?
“Sartre muses about sitting at a table in a café on the Left Bank of Paris and feeling someone’s gaze upon his back. (Due to his fame he undoubtedly had to endure the rudeness of people whispering about him and rubber-necking to see him in public places.) This reduction to an object creates what he calls “existential self-awareness” and the destruction of subjectivity.”
I am ready to argue against the generalization of his claim: “Beneath another person’s stare I am reduced to the status of an object.”
My question is who that person is. The answer to this question determines the validity of his claim. If that person is a stranger, I partially agree. I said “partially” because I am determined that my status is not going to be determined by other people’s actions for if I do, then I am truly an object of other people’s actions.
However, if that person is my wife, it is a totally different story. The longer she look at me eye to eye, the more I feel worthy and unique in her sight, and the more I feel being loved; my subjectivity and identity are all the more confirmed. Another example: What if that person is my granddaughter? I’ll feel the same way—her gaze is my joy. I have a six month old granddaughter, Madeline, I love to hold her in my arms and I enjoy staring at her for a long period of time and she gaze me back in return; she studies every tinny movement I make and every wrinkle on my face; we both enjoy each other by the gaze upon each other.
Then we beg the question: What is the difference between the gaze I get from a stranger and the gaze I receive from my granddaughter or my wife? The answer is simple: a loving relationship. The lover’s eyes are made to gaze each other and confirm each other’s subjectivity and dignity.
If the gaze of other people destroys our subjectivity as Sartre believes, he would wonder, how much worse would it be to be constantly under the gaze of God? Sartre’s logic is: Since man is really a subject, there can be no God because beneath God’s eternal gaze we would all become objects which we are not.
R.C. Sproul gave a counter perspective regarding God’s gaze. He wrote: “Scripture frequently records the discomfort of the guilty who seek shelter from God’s sight, calling on the hills to cover them. Sinful man does not want God to look at him; he wants God to overlook him. Yet from a biblical perspective the forgiven sinner knows no blessing equal to God’s benevolent gaze; he enjoys the light of God’s countenance upon him and wants God to make his face shine upon him.”
Who are the forgiving sinners? Forgiving sinners are those who believe in Jesus Christ in the New Testament time and those who put their trust in the Jehovah God in the Old Testament days. The Bible teaches us that God love to gaze at His beloved children and urges people to pray to Him. In Psalm 17:7-8, God’s people prayed:
7 Show me the wonders of your great love,
you who save by your right hand
those who take refuge in you from their foes.
8 Keep me as the apple of your eye;
hide me in the shadow of your wings
It is fascinating to know that in Hebrew the phrase “you are the apple of my eye” means “you are the little maiden in my eye.” It refers to the reflection a maiden seen by her inside God’s pupils when she is gazing at God. For her reflection to be caught in God’s eye and for her to be able to see that reflection she must also have God’s gaze fixed on her, and she must be standing close enough to God to see that reflection. This close-range mutual gaze is significant. In the Book of James, God’s people are reminded to come close to God because God delights to come close to them.
4:8 Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded.
So here we are talking about a personal God and an intimate relationship. When God gazes upon a forgiven, He is in effect saying to him: You are more special to me than anyone else! In Deuteronomy 32:9-10, Moses describes how God sustained and cared for His people:
9 For the Lord’s portion is his people, Jacob his allotted inheritance.
10 In a desert land he found him, in a barren and howling waste. He shielded him and cared for him; he guarded him as the apple of his eye.
To be the apple of God’s eye is to experience God’s Love and protection. Why would Sartre not experience such sweetness of God’s gaze? The answer lies in our understanding of his worldview. But this is not an easy task. Increasingly, I discover that in order to understand one’s philosophy, we can approach it from the art level. This explains why so many philosophers are artists also. Sartre himself was also a playwright. We may take a glimpse of his philosophy of Existentialism from one of his play.
In another book (Ref. 2), the author writes: “The best introduction to Sartre’s view of the way conscious beings (i.e., human beings) related to one another is his play No Exit (Huis Clos, 1944), which was the first play to be performed in Paris after the liberation from the German army. It was performed on September 20, 1944, and was immediately a huge success, and it has become a classic of the theater, performed constantly ever since. No Exit has only three actors, and no change of scenery. The three characters, a man and two women, one of whom is a lesbian, walked separately into a brightly lighted room furnished with three small sofas, knowing that they are dead and have been sent to hell. Yet there are no instruments to torture them, there are no hell fires to burn them, there are only the other two people. Soon the horrible truth dawns upon them that they are one another’s torture, their damnation is for all eternity to torment one another. By the end of the play they have tortured each other excruciatingly and they have made the discovery that in hell there is no need for hell fire—as the male character says, “Hell is other people.”
In the absence of loving relationship, people’s gaze is indeed like hell. Thomas Merton (1915-1968) was right when he wrote, “Man is not at peace with his fellow man because he is not at peace with himself; he is not at peace with himself, because he is not at peace with God.” (Ref.3)
In summary, Jean-Paul Sartre’s logic goes this way:
- I am a subject not an object.
- If God exists, his omnipresence cast a gaze on me.
- God’s gaze reduces me to an object.
- But I am not an object.
- Therefore the gaze of God does not exist.
- If God’s gaze does not exist, it means God does not exist.
- If there is no God of peace,
- it follows that I cannot be at peace with myself.
- Since I cannot be at peace with myself, how can I be at peace with other people?
- If I cannot be at peace with other people, people have become hell to me.
The stark contrast exists: People bring hell to my life in the Existential View, but Christians bring heaven to people’s lives. One of Sartre’s short comment may well summarize his philosophy of despair, “Death is philosophy’s only problem.” (Ref. 3)
References:
- “The Consequences of Ideas” by R.C. Sproul; p. 183-184.
- “From Socrates to Sartre: The Philosophical Quest” by T.Z. Lavine; pp. 375-376.
- “The Real Face of Atheism” by Ravi Zacharias; p. 142 and p. 90.
