When, across America, there become multiple ongoing instances of criminally overzealous law enforcement, for example, by police regularly murdering citizens in connection with enforcing extremely minor legal concerns, it becomes proper to critique the very notion of law itself, (via examining the most up to date thinking regarding how a human act comes into being), in order to consider whether American law enforcement is now an inacceptable absolute absolutism, of the very sort these United States of America was originally constituted to discard; and, in order to give ourselves reflective pause regarding the morality of doing law per se.
J. P. Sartre’s (1905-1980) account of how a human act originates is important for mankind and for the future of human civilization in the sense that it is a means to our attaining an honest and honorable system of justice.
Sartre’s account of the mode of origin of a human act is a template for organizing human civilization in accord, not in disaccord, with the very ontological structure of being an acting person, and, is a means of transcending ugly predatory and venal global con-games which are our current divers law enforcement/justice systems.
Via law mankind has currently structured a system of punishment and justice predicated upon the delusion that given language of law is determinative of the conduct of legislators, police and prosecutorial officers, magistrates and grassroots persons.
The constitution of a genuine, honest and honorable system of justice, and mode of human civilization, can be attained by reflectively transcending the extant delusional notion that language of law is a means of determining the course of a person’s conduct.
The subjoined is an delineation of the Sartreian account of the ontological mode of upsurge of a human act and, is key to recognizing the bad faith and dishonor exhibited by existing law enforcement/justice systems:
Out of 1943 France came a description of how all human action arises as a wholly negative procedure, explaining how and why what is absent and not yet existing, how and why what is desired and intended to be, is the fount of human action.
Language of law is a positive given factual phenomena, whereby police and prosecutorial officers, magistrates and legislators, invariably mistakenly claim, worldwide, to be originating social acts based upon existing factual law language.
This author endorses the following rationale set forth by J. P. Sartre (1901-1980): ” No factual state whatever it may be (the political and economic structure of society, the psychological “state,” etc.) is capable by itself of motivating any act whatsoever. For an act is a projection of the for-itself toward what is not, and what is can in no way determine by itself what is not.” (Sartre,J.P., Chapter Four, “Freedom”). And, further: “But if human reality is action, this means evidently that its determination to action is itself action. If we reject this principle, and if we admit that human reality can be determined to action by a prior state of the world or itself, this amounts to putting a given at the beginning of the series. Then these acts disappear as acts in order to give place to a series of movements...The existence of the act implies its autonomy...Furthermore, if the act is not pure motion, it must be defined by an intention. No matter how this intention is considered, it can be only a surpassing of the given toward a result to be attained. This given, in fact, since it is pure presence, can not get out of itself. Precisely because it is, it is fully and solely what it is. Therefore it can not provide the reason for a phenomenon which derives all its meaning from a result to be attained; that is, from a non-existent… This intention, which is the fundamental structure of human reality, can in no case be explained by a given, not even if it is presented as an emanation from a given.” And, further: “But if human reality is action, this means evidently that its determination to action is itself action. If we reject this principle, and if we admit that human reality can be determined to action by a prior state of the world or itself, this amounts to putting a given at the beginning of the series. Then these acts disappear as acts in order to give place to a series of movements...The existence of the act implies its autonomy...Furthermore, if the act is not pure motion, it must be defined by an intention. No matter how this intention is considered, it can be only a surpassing of the given toward a result to be attained. This given, in fact, since it is pure presence, can not get out of itself. Precisely because it is, it is fully and solely what it is. Therefore it can not provide the reason for a phenomenon which derives all its meaning from a result to be attained; that is, from a non-existent… This intention, which is the fundamental structure of human reality, can in no case be explained by a given, not even if it is presented as an emanation from a given.” (Sartre, J.P., Chapter Four, “Freedom”).
The ontological concept that no given factual state of affairs is per se efficient to determine a human being to act (or forbear action), is central to Sartre’s avant-garde explanation of how a human act originates. Human consciousness, which intentionally originates action, is an absolute freedom which cannot possibly be bound by what already exists, else innovation could not freely suddenly surge up in the world. Hence existing language of law, as a factual state of affairs, as an identity A=A, does not, cannot, itself determine the origination of either human action or, inaction. Nor can persons ontologically intelligibly claim to determine themselves to act or forbear action by law. Nor can persons correctly claim language of law to be the cause of their actions and or inactions, for human ontological absurdity consists in our being the indubitable sole free authors of the intentional acts which constitute our manifold projects, who, nonetheless, in bad faith, designate some given state of affairs already contained in the world, (e.g., a law), as motive, cause, reason for our act.
Language of law cannot rule except by delusion. Law is demonstrably not in fact a means to originate human action. Nonetheless, we mistakenly, immorally, murderously, delusionally, criminally, devilishly, treat law as if it is an absolutely absolute and indefeasible determinant of police, judicial, and, of all other forms of human conduct.
Bibliography:
Sartre, Jean Paul. Being and Nothingness: An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology. Trans. Hazel E. Barnes. Philosophical Library. New York. 1956.
J. P. Sartre’s (1905-1980) account of how a human act originates is important for mankind and for the future of human civilization in the sense that it is a means to our attaining an honest and honorable system of justice.
Sartre’s account of the mode of origin of a human act is a template for organizing human civilization in accord, not in disaccord, with the very ontological structure of being an acting person, and, is a means of transcending ugly predatory and venal global con-games which are our current divers law enforcement/justice systems.
Via law mankind has currently structured a system of punishment and justice predicated upon the delusion that given language of law is determinative of the conduct of legislators, police and prosecutorial officers, magistrates and grassroots persons.
The constitution of a genuine, honest and honorable system of justice, and mode of human civilization, can be attained by reflectively transcending the extant delusional notion that language of law is a means of determining the course of a person’s conduct.
The subjoined is an delineation of the Sartreian account of the ontological mode of upsurge of a human act and, is key to recognizing the bad faith and dishonor exhibited by existing law enforcement/justice systems:
Out of 1943 France came a description of how all human action arises as a wholly negative procedure, explaining how and why what is absent and not yet existing, how and why what is desired and intended to be, is the fount of human action.
Language of law is a positive given factual phenomena, whereby police and prosecutorial officers, magistrates and legislators, invariably mistakenly claim, worldwide, to be originating social acts based upon existing factual law language.
This author endorses the following rationale set forth by J. P. Sartre (1901-1980): ” No factual state whatever it may be (the political and economic structure of society, the psychological “state,” etc.) is capable by itself of motivating any act whatsoever. For an act is a projection of the for-itself toward what is not, and what is can in no way determine by itself what is not.” (Sartre,J.P., Chapter Four, “Freedom”). And, further: “But if human reality is action, this means evidently that its determination to action is itself action. If we reject this principle, and if we admit that human reality can be determined to action by a prior state of the world or itself, this amounts to putting a given at the beginning of the series. Then these acts disappear as acts in order to give place to a series of movements...The existence of the act implies its autonomy...Furthermore, if the act is not pure motion, it must be defined by an intention. No matter how this intention is considered, it can be only a surpassing of the given toward a result to be attained. This given, in fact, since it is pure presence, can not get out of itself. Precisely because it is, it is fully and solely what it is. Therefore it can not provide the reason for a phenomenon which derives all its meaning from a result to be attained; that is, from a non-existent… This intention, which is the fundamental structure of human reality, can in no case be explained by a given, not even if it is presented as an emanation from a given.” And, further: “But if human reality is action, this means evidently that its determination to action is itself action. If we reject this principle, and if we admit that human reality can be determined to action by a prior state of the world or itself, this amounts to putting a given at the beginning of the series. Then these acts disappear as acts in order to give place to a series of movements...The existence of the act implies its autonomy...Furthermore, if the act is not pure motion, it must be defined by an intention. No matter how this intention is considered, it can be only a surpassing of the given toward a result to be attained. This given, in fact, since it is pure presence, can not get out of itself. Precisely because it is, it is fully and solely what it is. Therefore it can not provide the reason for a phenomenon which derives all its meaning from a result to be attained; that is, from a non-existent… This intention, which is the fundamental structure of human reality, can in no case be explained by a given, not even if it is presented as an emanation from a given.” (Sartre, J.P., Chapter Four, “Freedom”).
The ontological concept that no given factual state of affairs is per se efficient to determine a human being to act (or forbear action), is central to Sartre’s avant-garde explanation of how a human act originates. Human consciousness, which intentionally originates action, is an absolute freedom which cannot possibly be bound by what already exists, else innovation could not freely suddenly surge up in the world. Hence existing language of law, as a factual state of affairs, as an identity A=A, does not, cannot, itself determine the origination of either human action or, inaction. Nor can persons ontologically intelligibly claim to determine themselves to act or forbear action by law. Nor can persons correctly claim language of law to be the cause of their actions and or inactions, for human ontological absurdity consists in our being the indubitable sole free authors of the intentional acts which constitute our manifold projects, who, nonetheless, in bad faith, designate some given state of affairs already contained in the world, (e.g., a law), as motive, cause, reason for our act.
Language of law cannot rule except by delusion. Law is demonstrably not in fact a means to originate human action. Nonetheless, we mistakenly, immorally, murderously, delusionally, criminally, devilishly, treat law as if it is an absolutely absolute and indefeasible determinant of police, judicial, and, of all other forms of human conduct.
Bibliography:
Sartre, Jean Paul. Being and Nothingness: An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology. Trans. Hazel E. Barnes. Philosophical Library. New York. 1956.
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