Jean-Paul Sartre VS. Mereleau-Ponty

While agreeing with Sartre's criticism of the classical conception of free will, Merleau-Ponty detects an unresolved difficulty in the Sartian notion of a global choice of ourselves and our whole way of being-in-the-world. If, as Sartre insists, that choice is synonymous with our way upsurge in the world, then it is unclear how i can be considered to be our choice at all. The very idea of such an initiatory choice is contradictory, inasmuch as choice implies as antecedent commitment. If, on the other hand, the Sartrian global choice is genuinely a choice of ourselves, then it must be a total modification of our existence which, once again presupposes a priori acquisition to be converted by that choice. Sartre's definition of freedom as perpetual rupture or secreting of nothingness is therefore merely the negative feature of our global commitment to, and involvement in, a world. Sartre contends that freedom cannot be 'a single undetermined power' but rather, that it must determine 'Itself by its very upsurge as a 'doing' '. Nevertheless Merleau-Ponty concludes that this 'ready-made freedom' reduces itself 'to a power of initiative' which must take up one of the world's propositions in order to become a doing. Merleau-Ponty maintains that 'concrete and actual freedom' lies in this transformatory exchange.

The very notion of an exchange precludes Sartre's conception of an entirely centrifugal signification. Sartre declares that human reality confers meaning on the brute given, and that 'nothing comes to it either from the outside or from within which it can receive or accept'. Further, he asserts that 'since freedom is a being-without-support and without-a-springboard, the project in order to be must be constantly renewed. I choose myself perpetually.....' Charging that Sartre's position is ultimately indistinguishable from classical idealism, Merleau-Ponty rejects the notions of exclusively centrifugal signification and perpetual choice. Since Sartre's own distinction between dreaming and waking life attests to the fact that freedom requires a field, signification must be both centripetal and centrifugal. ...... Page 140

...... Sartre's claim about the origin of nothingness can thus be supplemented: "it is through the world that nothingness comes into being". Far from being perpetually without support, my freedom is always buttressed by others; and my global commitment in co-existence sustains my power to effect a perpetual rupture. Nor is that power tantamount to perpetual choice -- for such choice would preclude the ambiguity and generality which can existentialist approach discloses