What Matters to You and I

What matters to you and I?

• Digby Tantam

• New School of Psychotherapy and Counselling

Croesus and Solon

05/01/2023

Michel de Montaigne, 1533-1592, agreed with Solon that no-one could be judged to have been happy until they had died.

www.nspc.org.uk

"That such a man wrote has truly augmented the joy of living on this

Earth” Untimely Meditations, Chapter 3, "Schopenhauer as

Educator," Cambridge University Press, 1988, p. 135

05/01/2023

What would Michel de Montaigne, 1533-1592, have said to himself on his deathbed?

www.nspc.org.uk

An authoritarian father who

brought him up by system

Insisted on him being fostered with farmers for the first 3 years

of his lifeClosest to his

friend, Étienne de la Boétie, who died, aged

32, when Montaigne was

33

Spent ten years isolated in this tower

Forced into marriage. Had 6 daughters of whom 5 died in

childhood End of his life in regular severe

pain because of kidney stones

Psychobiography

The youngest Sartre: phenomenology of biography

Son of Jean-Baptiste (a naval officer, who died when J.-P. was 1) and Anne-Marie (Schweitzer) Sartre;

Never married, but life long companion of Simone de Beauvoir

Children: Arlette el Kaim-Sartre (adopted).

Born June 21, 1905, in Thiviers, Aquitaine.

Inaugural existential

conference Doing to Being,

Sydney

Poulou as a boy: falling from graceBullied at school, and few friends

Mother remarried when he was 12 to an engineer and the family moved to La Rochelle where his step father had been put in charge of the dockyard.

Untreated squint

when his hair was cut ugliness was disclosed

Poor school results but then average

Ecole Normale Superieure (ENS—think of en soi), agrege de philosophie, 1929 failed, 1930 (1st. place, Simone de Beauvoir second)

Inaugural existential

conference Doing to Being,

Sydney

Sartre in his 30sCalled up to Meteorological Corps, 1929-31;

Lycee teacher in le Havre, and Paris. 1933-4

Fellowship to study in Berlin (

Conscripted to French Army, 1939-40;

Prisoner of war in France then Germany (Trier) for nine months (friendly guard gave him Heidegger to read), 1940-41. Some relationship to Resistance Movement, 1941-44, wrote for its underground newspapers, Combat and Les Lettres Francaises, but also had plays performed publicly in Paris with consent of German occupying forces.

Inaugural existential

conference Doing to Being,

Sydney

Sartre the celebrityMemberships: American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Modern Language Association of America (honorary fellow. Lived in hotels or with his mother for most of adult life.

Awarded Nobel Prize for Literature in 1964 but refused to attend ceremony.

Also refused to be Academicien .

Inaugural existential

conference Doing to Being,

Sydney

The intellectual as activistBecame strongly Marxist post-war and broke with Camus over the ethics of violence. Partisan of many minority causes, and moved from Russian communist support to Maoism

Inaugural existential

conference Doing to Being,

Sydney

The ageing SartreWrote last books under influence of amphetamine and other drugs, and heavy alcohol use.

Relied more on Simone de Beauvoir usually sleeping at her flat but going to his own flat during the day.

Sight in left eye deteriorated. Died April 15, 1980, of a lung ailment, in Paris, before completion of several magna opera.

Inaugural existential

conference Doing to Being,

Sydney

Being in him/her/it-self

• “The error (of psychologists) consists in confusing the essential structure of reflective acts with the essential structure of unreflected acts. It is overlooked that two forms of existence are always possible for consciousness. Then, each time the observed consciousnesses are given as unreflected, one superimposes on them a structure, belonging to reflection, which one doggedly alleges to be unconscious”. Being and Nothingness

Inaugural existential

conference Doing to Being,

Sydney

Ontology

• Being in itself• Being for others• Being for itself

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Eudaimonia

• Right action (arete/skill) i.e. actions that hit the target (typically the mean between two extremes)

• Phronesis or practical reason that enables us to achieve them

Etre pour autrui

Determines us/ etre en soi/ focus on our equipment

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Liberating oneself from the past

• Working through, coming to terms with, forgiving, forgetting, pitying,leaving it to God

• Railing against fate, regretting, pining, hankering, longing, wishing, waiting for justice, waiting for recognition, ruminating, hoping for vengeance

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Justice Punishing Injustice Called Madame Adelaide As Justice Greeting Card by Jean-Marc Nattier

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• Correcting

• Putting things right

• Witnessing

• Regaining reputation

• Punishing the unjust

• Betting understanding

• Morbid fascination• Paranoia litigans• Litigious complainant• Chronic complainer• Bore• Whitterer• A loss of faith in the world

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• Morbid nostalgia

• PTSD

• Hypochondriasis

• Shame proneness

• ?

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• Morbid nostalgia

• PTSD

• Hypochondriasis

• Shame prone