Sartre's Idea of Freedom in What is Literature: A Guide For Literary Mind/ By Priyankar Dey

 Sartre's Idea of Freedom in What is Literature: A Guide For Literary Mind

For a literature student, the matter of having a good literary sense is all about reading, writing, speaking and studying fresh content. It is a matter of consciousness that would make one be the voice in the society so as to speak up in any situation about relevant topics. After all, today's world is all about being steady in Juvenile's term- " mens sana in corpore sano" which means a healthy mind in a healthy body.

And for a sound mind, l always prefer to seek out a philosopher's guide for a better understanding of life and the literary essence associated with it.
And very recently, l was reading a very important work of an influential philosopher whose essential works on political philosophy and phenomenology inspired the whole world to respect him as the key figures of existentialism and phenomenology. He is Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre, a French philosopher whose idea about life is the understanding that one learns from books. And among all the enriching works, What is Literature is such a brilliant piece of demonstration of phenomenological attitudes that it really states the constructive idea of communication necessary for existence in the human world.

Sartre used to believe that understanding life, we need to commit ourselves with the significant view of perceiving every form of art and with proper utilization of language. Any writing according to him has associated the concept of political freedom and writing according to him is a "certain way of wanting freedom and once you have begun, you are engaged, willy-nilly".
Building up the consciousness is very much essential and the consciousness is very well stated in Why Write, an important chapter of this great literary document were talking about the generosity of the reader, Sartre speaks, '' It is to have the recourse to the consciousness of others in order to make one's self to be recognized as essential to the totality of being"

Paying importance on the prose to be the source of communicating properly, Sartre always tried to find the difference between prose and poetry in order to express the commitment that one pledge to be in writing. Poetry according to him, is not utilitarian. In a better understanding of words, prose writers are the best medium who can progress with a purposeful way of engaging as every word is treated as " a gentle breeze which plays lightly over the surface of things". As Sartre talks about literature, he comes with an appeal to the readers. And the appeal is with a polite touch so that it can bring an environment among the readers. As for reading in the eyes of Sartre, " an exercise in generosity ", he demonstrates the matter of inspiration from the point of mutual recognition-
"The author writes in order to address himself to the freedom of readers and he requires it in order to make his works exist."

The act of commitment in literature is definitely a step towards the foundation of a democratic society with absolute political freedom. In Being and Nothingness, Sartre produced a highly compelling form of existential freedom. In the human world, freedom is all about the way we choose to live in and that's what Sartre said with the process of transcendence. He argues that every action becomes a matter of commitment and that consciousness is not an ' abstract substance ' according to him, so the relevance of freedom and the connection of freedom in literature is somewhat in the synonymous sense attached with consciousness. The three ways of understanding the importance of commitment from the point of existentialism are from three propositions that Sartre declared while distinguishing consciousness as " being-for-itself" and "being-in-itself ".

The first proposition is the refusal of the idea of the world being a creation for a purpose or the glory of God being its creation - " being is what it is ". Second is the ' the being is in itself ' the historical view of the struggle for recognition that made Sartre under the matter of social connection from the ideals of humanism. Thirdly it's about 'the being'- that can be the structure of consciousness and it applies to the self. So the individual is free enough and as the freedom is limitless so one has to perform and prove their existence i.e human existence.

So Why Write or in whole What is Literature is such a beautiful piece of art that it almost provides a sense of exercising in your literary world with full responsibility and freedom, of creating and reviving any literary work with the collaborative approach of subjectivity and objectivity or a cool association among writers and readers.
As if literary dead was revived with the elixir of philosophical consciousness.

   Author's Introduction

                 

Priyankar De has just completed his Masters in English from the University of Calcutta. Currently, working as an academic content writer. The young signior has an interest in doing research on Dalit Literature and Contemporary Mythology. His dream is to publish his own book of poetry