Sartrean Responsibility Actually is Not a "Big Deal"

                Last class, I was a little surprised and upset by Sartre’s conception of responsibility. We are responsible for the entire world we live in; we are responsible for the things we are not aware of because we choose only to be aware of certain things; any choice we make is accompanied by the negation of an infinitude of other possible choices, and so by choosing or choosing not to choose we never do not choose; and we can never escape this responsibility because we possess Sartrean freedom and could always act differently. Sartre seems to build up this idea of responsibility and make it a heavy weight upon the shoulders of any individual, human being. One implication of this kind of absolute, universal responsibility of any single human to everything else in the world seems to be an overwhelming sense of responsibility.   Retrospectively, I am not certain whether or not it was I who created this point of view—who made it appear as if this responsibility were overwhelming—or if it was Sartre himself. Regardless, I do not think that this Sartrean conception of responsibility is the “big deal” I originally made it out to be, or that Sartre makes it out to be. In fact, it appears that Sartre must mean something else by the word responsibility, in the same way he intends something else by the word freedom, and that he actually trivializes the general conception of responsibility in that he removes the moral factor associated with it.

                This Sartrean idea of responsibility can be seen to trivialize, or make less important, the modern sense of responsibility in two ways. The first point seems well motivated in the following question: Are there degrees of responsibility in Sartre’s philosophy? It appears that Sartre would say no to this question and here is why. We are responsible for everything we do in the same way. That is, we are responsible for things we do because we are free and for no other reason. Thus, there is only one thing determining our responsibility, and this thing is constant and never changing. This thing is our freedom—in the Sartrean sense. This is why we can never escape our responsibility. However, due to this constant and unchanging mode of determining whether or not we are responsible—we are only responsible by the fact that we are free—Sartre’s existentialism does not differentiate between degrees or modes of responsibility. So I am no more responsible for the life of the infant I created than I am for the mess I made by my computer. That is, neither issue is more pressing based upon pure Sartrean existentialism.

                 Well, you may object to this and say this cannot be the case because we clearly do hold certain responsibilities as more important than others. This, I admit. We do hold certain things more important than other things. But this has nothing to do with Sartrean existentialism.  We create the value system by which we determine something’s significance. That is, Sartre would say that we are responsible for the value system we create, but by no means does this value system turn around and give us a lens by which to differentiate responsibilities  in the Sartrean sense. If we want to create a modified sense of responsibility, we are free to do so, but this sense of responsibility will be something we have created and not a Sartrean responsibility.

                So in this way, the Sartrean sense of responsibility is simply saying that we are connected to everything and anything we do* purely through our freedom to do it, and we cannot escape this connection. His sense of responsibility is not a lens by which to determine the moral value of our connection to the thing we do (aka our responsibility in the Sartrean sense)*. That is something we do beyond Sartrean responsibility. Any feeling of responsibility as overwhelming and stressful is something that we create for ourselves. If Sartre intends to be devastating and overwhelming in his revelation concerning the universality of our responsibility, he is mistaken. As we see here, his point is actually more of metaphysical one than an ethical one in this regard.

P.S. I will forgo the second point for now, as it is not nearly as interesting. 

*edit - "do" 11/3/13
*edit - rephrase to parenthetical 11/3/13