Troy Southgate

Jan 06, 2025

THERE is a curious similitude between the Absolute Idealist, T. H. Green (1836-1882), and the well known Existentialist thinker, Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980). The former, an English philosopher who was based at Oxford, advanced the view that there is an ‘Eternal Consciousness’ towards which the human mind and the natural world relate quite differently.

Physical nature is the object of this consciousness, he argued, whilst the human mind is tantamount to the consciousness itself. Not in its entirety, but by appearing in the natural world at a particular time and in a particular place. Human actions are not to be accounted for in naturalistic terms and this allows us to retain a sense of freedom and independence. Nature is the story and the mind is the story-teller.

Green’s attitude towards naturalistic interpretations in general, which were becoming increasingly popular during the nineteenth century, is that they present humans with a convenient means of evading their moral responsibilities and therefore any identification between humans and nature reduces us to the level of mere beasts. This, he described as ‘bad faith’.

During the following century, when Sartre was developing his own ideas, the expression ‘bad faith’ was revived – some might say ‘appropriated’ – to create a juxtaposition between the Frenchman’s use of the terms ‘Pour Soi’ (For Itself) and ‘En Soi’ (In Itself). Just as Green had sought to explain that mankind’s identification with nature allows us to blame our actions on instinct, thereby emerging with a clear conscience, so Sartre was to borrow the notion that character is not a cause of action but an example of our freely chosen nature.

Whilst I share Green’s embrace of Absolute Idealism I remain a convinced amoralist and reject his value system, believing that the subject-object dichotomy has already been overcome by Friedrich Schelling. As for Sartre, whilst I believe in free will and taking responsibility for our own actions it is also clear that certain behaviour is genetic and this, most undoubtedly, accounts for one’s character.