Philosophy of Race: another existential perspective.

Van Deurzen (2001) proposes that ‘existential counselling and psychotherapy is, based on philosophy, and that training in this approach involves intensive exposure to all those philosophers who have written about the human condition’. She goes on to say that existential counselling and psychotherapy ’favours open exploration of individual difficulties and experiences, taking into account the cultural, social, political, and ideological context of a person’s existence’ (ibid, 32). The aim, Prof. van Deurzen tells us, is to enable a person to live more deliberately within these contexts of a person’s existence. This requires that we accept the limitations and contradictions that of life within these contexts. I would like to address some of these precepts from my own perspective as ‘a Black man’; not least, of al;, because there some limitations, and contradiction are not acceptable to me, as a black man.

To begin with, for me, the term ‘Black man’ is problematic. It immediately objectifies me in the world; irrespective of dimension, without giving my form, subjectivity. Nietzsche (1982) wrote:

It is decisive for the lot of a people and of humanity that culture should begin in the right place – not in soul (as was the fateful superstition of the priests and half-priests): the right place is the body, gesture, diet, physiology; the rest follows from that.

(Ibid, 9:47).

I, have a physicality that appears to call to the world in which I exist, and that in itself is very rarely, addressed within Existential counselling and psychotherapy. Sartre argues that this standpoint is in itself – sadistic. The denial that I am embodied; that I have a perspective on the world that can be seen by others, is sadistic. Similarly, the denial that I exist beyond my physicality; my objectivity, is masochistic. We, have now, created for ourselves, an object-subject dichotomy where we are situated somewhere along its continuum: never being completely an object (masochistic), nor a subject (sadistic) in actuality: always, either the black man making the Look of the victim (masochist), or the Look of the victimiser (sadist), within a given context.

Sartre (1943) argued that we are no more than the sum of our actions. But we are more than the sum of our actions; sometimes we are more, or less than, the sum of actions because we are of physical substance. Jean Améry writing about his experiences in the Nazi concentrations camps described how he became an object in –relation with his captives. He writes:

‘Painfully beaten, I was satisfied with myself. But not for reasons of courage or honour, but only because I had grasped well that there are situations in which our body is our entire self and out entire fate. I was my body and nothing else: in hunger, in the blow that I suffered….

(Ibid, 1980, p91)

Sartre argues that this in-itself, (i.e. our physicality), is an illusion; that we create others and the world around for ourselves. From another’s perspective, these same objects may take on a different description and meaning. Amery draws our attention to the way he was aware of himself, and of life itself, because he was beaten. This implies that if he had not experienced this kind of physical pain, he would cease to exist at all; at least in the eyes of his assailant(s). He writes:

In the punch, I was myself, for myself and for my opponent…. (ibid, p91)

For me, Amery’s descriptions of the way in which he became suddenly more aware of his physical body when he was punched is telling. The opportunity to engage in dialogue, to express oneself and one human being to another (Buber, 1923), was denied in-relation with the other. To communicate with him, the other punched him, he replied with a punch. He had become an object to be used, and abused, and the only way out he found was to fight; to become violent, he acknowledged the other in-relation. He became somebody in-relation other than an object. He writes:

I gave form to my dignity by punching a human face. (ibid, p91)

In this moment of persecution, he demanded that his body, the object of his existence, assume subjectivity in-relation with the other. His demands were accepted, and the punch was returned. He writes:

To be a Jew meant acceptance of the death sentence imposed by the world (lived-world) as world verdict. (ibid, p91)

Characteristic in the discourse is the view that, Jean Amery could escape from his Jewish-ness. He was a Jew from himself, and for others, and that Jewish-ness was realised in-relation by his experiencing body. In the context he found himself in, he could not choose not to be a Jew, he was reminded of the fact within the course of everyday life – in violent ways. This aspect of his physicality will not change with time, or space. It is fixed, immutable, and in the same ways, as a black man, I, too, can not escape nor avoid another person’s actions in world that may draw attention to this aspect of my person. ‘I think, therefore, I am’ draws attention to that content of my thought which must consider the object and the objects ability to do something’. That something seems dependent on the attributes of the object, and vice versa. Merleau-Ponty draws attention to our embodiment, and suggests that this shows some dynamicity, and subject to change over time. Again, I must argue that there are some aspects of our embodiment that do not change with the passage of time and space, and one of these aspects is the colour of our skin.

As a young man, I was often confounded by the way; other people behaved in-relation with me. Others seemed to behave in ways that were not obvious to me, when I was a child. I attempted to make direct correlations between what I had said and done, and what had been said and done by others, but found there were none. For instance, I would walk casually down the road towards an approaching person, only to find the oncoming person had crossed the road and continued walking; something that I had not experienced as a child. I had done nothing that might prompt such behaviour, (i.e. behave in a threatening way); except, be this black man walking down the road. My attention is, now, drawn to that aspect of my embodiment that is - physical. My subjectivity has been set aside, and I have assumed a position of objectivity in-relation with the world. Prof van Deurzen (2001, p32) argues that angst (existential doubt) or anxiety are the basic ingredient to vitality’. If, a person of colour expresses anxiety about the way he perceives himself in-relation as a person of colour, how might s/he learn how to be anxious in the right way? What is the right way to be anxious; experiencing others in this way as a person of colour? How anxious should Stephen Lawrence have been when he stood waiting for a bus? I do not suppose he was anxious at all; at least, not until it was too late.

Clearly, our physical features matter, and we are overly concerned with what we look like rather than what we say and do because we draw attention to these features in-relation whether we want to or not. To be judged purely on what we do and say, ignores the fact that our physicality presents limitations for our existence in ways that are not addressed in the existential psychotherapeutic literature. If, we look at the writings of those philosophers who wrote about the human condition, we see that they lived in times and place which were specific to those time and place. Nietzsche wrote extensively on the position of the German, and his relation with others within he mocked the way in which the German had de-valued himself in relation, and mourned for this loss; becoming angry as he considered what this might mean for him.

Van Deurzen (2001, p33), with reference to Heidegger’s ‘Being and time’, suggested that ‘we are ‘thrown’ into a world that is already there to start with’, and that ‘these situations have to be accepted and worked with: we can not avoid nor overcome them’. To this end, we are reminded of our own finiteness, and that all things must come to an end as a consequence of the contexts in which we live (ibid, 33). This may be why Heidegger, when confronted with Nazism and nationalism, opted to change his way of being-in-the-world such that his experience of anxiety was minimised. He wore the emblems of the National Socialist Party (Swastika), and in so doing, appeared to support the ruling hegemony, but said nothing neither in support not against the Jewish Question (Young, 1997, p214). We are embedded in limit situations (Jaspers, 1951) where we find we have choices that are directly related to the concept of the object-subject dichotomy – the “object doing”. This concept even considers the possibility of the “object doing nothing”. Heidegger has been accused in the literature of doing nothing, (e.g. P. Gilroy, Against Race). He said nothing about what was happening to those judged not German enough in his own country during the early part of the 20^th century, and confronted he simply replied that that time had now passed. Sartre writes most eloquently from a socio-political viewpoint about the condition of African-Americans during the early part of the 20^th century. He wrote about his experience of their human condition. For instance, in ‘Being and nothingness’, Sartre (1945) wrote:

These untouchable, you meet them on the street at any hour of the day, but you do not meet their eyes. Or if by Chance, they look a at you, it seems to you that they do no see you and it is better for you that you pretend not to have noticed them. They serve you at mealtimes, they shine your shoes, they run your elevator, they carry your suitcases into your compartment, but they do not deal with you, nor you with them: they deal with the elevator, the suitcases, the shoes; and they carry out the tasks as if they were machines. Not one of their words, not one of their gestures, not of their smiles are for you; it is dangerous to enter at night the sections of town reserved to them; if along the way you stopped them, if you showed them some attention, you would catch them off guard without pleasing them and you would risk their displeasure of the other Americans. (Sartre 1945)

It makes no sense whatsoever to talk about our human condition as the black person can never be white and vice versa. For Sartre, the black person is the ‘they’, and speaks about us as being untouchables in relation with the White American population. Sartre (1945) speaks about the fear within American society of being supplanted by the Black race, when he says, ‘even though what the black American wanted was merely to integrate fully with other within American society; not to replace the ruling hegemony with their own (ibid, ). Clearly, we can see that being black takes on a life of it own that has, yet to be acknowledged, for what it is. Sartre makes analogy between the ways black Americans he observed seemed to have more in common with the objects they were asked to deal with during the course of their everyday lives than they did with the White American population. He suggested that we pretend to be like the object, ‘the waiter’, but we are deceiving ourselves because we are always free to choose to be something else. He argues that, ‘we are never completely determined by history or even material conditions but are free to act’, (i.e. to refuse to be objects for ourselves, and anybody else of that matter. To this end, Sartre suggests that we must change the structure of our eyes’ (p571). By this, he means we should change the way we look at things. As a black man, how is this possible?

I would argue that this is not possible, and the reasons are made quite clear in Sartre’s Play ‘The Respectful Prostitute’ (1955). In this play is about a prominent White family’s attempts to defend a nephew, ‘Thomas’, who is accused of killing a black man on a train. The family coerce ‘Lizzie McKay’, a white prostitute, who had also been riding on the train, into signing a statement that suggests that Thomas’ had killed the black man whilst defending Lizzie from an attempted rape. Another black man, mistaken as an accomplice, has already been lynched for the alleged rape. Most striking for me about this whole play is the namelessness of the black man pleading for his life. Sartre reduces the black man to an “it”; an object, within this play, and makes no apologies for his. Sartre writes eloquently about the way this black man’s fate is sealed by the conspiracy that is weaved in-relation with him by those in a position of power, and the black man’s reluctance (bad faith) to become anything else an object for himself, and everybody else. Lizzie, estranged by her choice of profession, covets a sense of belonging to the dominant race, and signs the statement. For her, this sense of belonging calls to her soul far more strongly than any existential guilt she might harbour in betraying the black man. She appears to apportion no value her own social status over, and above that of the black man’s life: in-relation he has been reduced to an object; an object to be used and abused, and discarded as you might so do with any other object. What are we to make of these relative positions of power? Are these positions given over to us? How do we take up such positions within the course of our daily lives?

I am uncertain. Van Deurzen suggests that we recreate ourselves each and everyday, that we never really reach our full potential as how we are, and these things in themselves invoke existential guilt with us (ibid, 33). The black man recreates the power relation between him and the his lived-world each day, and never really reaches his full potential within the time allotted to him. He must therefore be consumed by existential guilt because he has failed in this respect; particular at the end of his life when there is no time. Van Deurzen goes on to suggest that, ‘existential counselling and psychotherapy helps put all these current issues into perspective’. There is also scope to help and support the person ‘to find a satisfactory direction for their future life with full recognition of the contradictions and dilemmas that to be faced in this process’ (ibid, p33).Courage and humility is required in this endeavour (Tillich, 1952). For me, this is tall order. The black man is required to confront the world everyday with courage and humility, even though he feels himself to be an object for others. What direction should he choose for himself in such a world where he is objectified by the virtue of his skin colour? Natanson wrote:

In situational terms,…. one thing is clear; race in some color-wheel sense has little to do in reality of being black, white or anything else in the present world. It is in the situation of the individual that race categories have significance, and that means that the definition of the situation by the actor on the social scene establishes the meaning which objectivity and the constant have social reality. Definition in this sense is a modality of choice.

(ibid, p102-3)

Natanson ascribes to the Sartrean view of ‘bad faith’ by arguing that, ‘bad faith consists of the individual’s moving from subject to object in social roles which have congealed consciousness into routine expectancy impact and which have made of intersubjectivity a masked and masking reality’ (ibid p45). For Natanson, and Sartre bad faith is a means by which the individual can absolve themselves of freedom to be, and the responsibility that goes with that having chosen to be in either this way or that. So in bad faith, I know that others can see my blackness and I perform in such a way as to deny my own freedom to choose, and thus absolve myself of any responsibility for those actions. “I am not free, and therefore I can not be held responsible for my own actions”. To act in bad faith then indicates that I am either purely an object for the other, or purely a subject for the other; the object-subject dichotomy is lost to avoid/escape from judgement. Supposing “I am free”, my next question must then be “to what extent”. I can not know this before hand. This need to be discovered for myself over, and over again.

Concluding Comments:

Clearly, I am not totally free as life to become, or realise my full potential, as life continues to present to me, a number of limit situations, from which there is neither escape nor avoidance. To discover myself in-relation with others I must confront the prejudices of others within the context of my everyday life in ways which reflect the demands made upon me. Hence, I must acknowledge the changes in facial expression of the shop assistant as she turns to me in ways that ensure that I will be able to purchase what I wanted. Stephen Lawrence must wait the bus stop or would have had difficulty getting to his destination. I must endure the jeers and crass comments of my neighbours as I go to the supermarket, or I would have difficulty getting enough supplies for the week. In all these situations, I need to find the courage to be in-relation, and endure the uncertainty of living in time where the immediate past prohibits my actions in the future.

I can only conclude that more often than not, others have what I want, and/or need. This presents with the eternal dilemma, as whatever I choose to do will invoke anxiety/fear at the possibility that that which covert may never be realised. Deciding what must do to get what I want, and/or need requires courage and humility; especially, when confronted with what I perceive as being hostile and sometimes offensive behaviour by others. To deny myself the freedom to be courageous and humble in-relation, is to deny the responsibility that goes with that freedom. To exist in ‘bad faith’ is too great a sacrifice for me. There is no reason to expect others to meet the demands I make on them, when I am not prepared to meet the demands they appear to make on me. I must, therefore, ask myself to what extent am I to assume the Look of the other; to become the other in-relation without loosing myself in-relation. How much of myself will I lose in the process, and how much guilt will that invoke within me, consequently. To do or die is a question we must all ask ourselves; ultimately, we must accept the view that there can be no winners in this debate as to win, one of us must lose, and it seems neither of us is prepared to lose out to the other.

References:

Améry, J., (1980) At the Mind’s Limits: Contemplation by a Survivor On Auschwitz and its Realities. Trans,. Sidney and Stella P. Rosenfeld. Indiana: Indiana University Press, (1980), p91).

Gilroy, P., (2001) Against Race: imagining political culture beyond the colour line. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

Heidegger, M., (1927) Being and time. Trans. J. Macquarrie and E.S. Robinson. London Harper Row, 1962.

Jaspers, K., (1951) The Way to Wisdom. Trans. R. Manheim. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Natanson, M., (1970) The journeying Self: a philosophy and social role. Reading: Addison-Wesley.

Nietzsche, F., (1982) Twilight of the Idols. In, The Portable Nietzsche. Trans. Walter Kaufman (ed.) New York: Penguin.

Sartre, J-P., (1943) Being and Nothingness: an essay on phenomenological ontology. Trans. H. Barnes. New York: Washington Square Press, 1956.

Sartre, J-P., (1955) The Respectful Prostitute. Trans. Kitty Black. In, Stuart Gilbert (ed.) ‘No Exit’, and ‘Three Other Plays’. New York: Vintage. La Putain respecteuse. Paris: Gallimard, 1946.

Tillich, P., (1952) The Courage to Be. Newhaven: Yale University Press.

Van Deurzen (2001) The Meaning of life. Counselling and Psychotherapy Journal, December 2001, p32-33.

Young J., (1997) Heidegger, Philosophy, Nazism. Cambridge University Press. P214.