[MD] Does Existence precede Essence?

[Ham Priday]

Hi Marsha:

> In my mind, neither
> experience or an event are material.

What is it that you experience as an object or event, then?  Pirsig would
say that it is Quality because he considers it the "building block" of
reality.

Sartre's reality is divided between "being-in-itself" which, from our time
perspective, is "being beyond becoming", and "being-for-itself" which is the
"becoming" of individual experience.  If you can follow his reasoning, he
spells it out in this passage from the paragraph I quoted in my last post to
you and David:

"Consciousness [experience] is the revealed-revelation of existents,
and existents appear before consciousness on the foundation of their
being...Consciousness can always pass beyond the existent, not toward its
being, but toward the meaning of this being."

There's a bit more to it than that, however, as Sartre goes on to show how
"nothingness" creates things (existents).  "The self which I am depends on
the self
which I am not yet (future) to the exact extent that the self which I am not
yet does not depend on the self which I am. ...Essence is all that human
reality apprehends in itself as having been.  It is here that anguish
appears as an apprehension of self inasmuch as it exists in the perpetual
mode of detachment from what is; better yet, in so far as it makes itself
exist as such. ...So the self is separated from its essence by the
nothingness its freedom creates."

Heidegger does a cleaner job of this, in my opinion, but Sartre obliquely
develops his ontology with cryptic inferences, like: "Nothingness lies
coiled in the heart of being -- like a worm"; "Man is the being through
which nothingness comes into the world, inasmuch as he is affected with
non-being to this end."; "Man does not exist first in order to be
free_subsequently_; there is no difference between the being of man and his
being-free."  Whereas Heidegger is a metaphysicist through and through,
Sartre, ever the dramatist, articulates his philosophy in the psychological
terms of anguish, fear, doubt, questioning, and "bad faith".  I don't think
he ever succeeds in putting together a complete cosmology.  In his summary
of "Immediate Structures of the For-Itself", he quotes Heidegger:

"As for the world -- i.e., the totality of beings as they exist within the
compass of the circuit of selfness -- this can be only what human reality
surpasses toward itself.  To borrow Heidegger's definition, the world is
'that in terms of which human reality makes known to itself what it is.' The
possible which is my possible in possible for-itself and as such a presence
to the in-itself  as consciousness of the in-itself."   -- [Sartre: Being
and Nothingness]

I see that Matt has joined us.  It's probably about time that we benefited
from his informed analysis of the relationship, if any, between
Existentialism and the MoQ.

Thanks and regards,
Ham