103
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
M. C. Tobias, J. G. Morrison, On the Nature of Ecological Paradox,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64526-7_11
Chapter 11
Heavy and Light Contingencies
of Consciousness
11.1 Jean-Paul Sartre and the Contingencies of Being
Sartre, in the Conclusion of Being and Nothingness, affirms that “Being is without
reason, without cause, and without necessity; the very definition of being releases to
us its original contingency.”
1
Sartre’s translator, Hazel Barnes, offers an example of
what she believes Sartre means by “contingency,” namely, “The contingency of
freedom is the fact that freedom is not able not to exist.”
2
Intriguingly, this declaration (more sentiment than empiricism) dovetails with the thinking of a contemporary of Sartre, photographer August Sander (1876–1964), who wrote in a lecture
entitled “Photography as a Universal Language” that “Humanity has constantly
been compelled to solve the problems arising from altered surroundings.” His storyline has our species uniquely driven by its own irrepressible range of motives, geographical settings, and compulsions regarding all those Others who, for Sartre,
operate at the level of the most startling of all contingencies, a word whose Medieval
Latin etymology confirms a sense of both circumstance and contingere = befall.
3
We note that with migrating flocks of waterfowl, as distinguished from solitary
migrants, such as the Wandering Albatross, the “geomagnetic data” helping bird
navigation is augmented by the intergenerational knowledge base embedded in the
flock.
4
There are other flocks in addition to the extrinsic one most immediately associated with birds. That concerns the flock of nerves, the synaptic commons fueling
1 See Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness – An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology,
Translated and with an introduction by Hazel E. Barnes, Philosophical Library, New York, 1956,
p. 619.
2 ibid., p. 630.
3 See August Sander – Seeing Observing and Thinking, Photographs, With texts by August Sander
and Gabriele Conrath-Scholl, Die Photographische Sammlung/SK Stiftung Kultur, Foundation
Henri Cartier-Bresson, Schirmer/Mosel, Paris, 2009, p. 25.
4 See The Migration of Birds – Seasons on the Wing, by Janice M. Hughes, Firefly Books, Buffalo,
NY, p. 156
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
M. C. Tobias, J. G. Morrison, On the Nature of Ecological Paradox,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64526-7_11
Chapter 11
Heavy and Light Contingencies
of Consciousness
11.1 Jean-Paul Sartre and the Contingencies of Being
Sartre, in the Conclusion of Being and Nothingness, affirms that “Being is without
reason, without cause, and without necessity; the very definition of being releases to
us its original contingency.”
1
Sartre’s translator, Hazel Barnes, offers an example of
what she believes Sartre means by “contingency,” namely, “The contingency of
freedom is the fact that freedom is not able not to exist.”
2
Intriguingly, this declaration (more sentiment than empiricism) dovetails with the thinking of a contemporary of Sartre, photographer August Sander (1876–1964), who wrote in a lecture
entitled “Photography as a Universal Language” that “Humanity has constantly
been compelled to solve the problems arising from altered surroundings.” His storyline has our species uniquely driven by its own irrepressible range of motives, geographical settings, and compulsions regarding all those Others who, for Sartre,
operate at the level of the most startling of all contingencies, a word whose Medieval
Latin etymology confirms a sense of both circumstance and contingere = befall.
3
We note that with migrating flocks of waterfowl, as distinguished from solitary
migrants, such as the Wandering Albatross, the “geomagnetic data” helping bird
navigation is augmented by the intergenerational knowledge base embedded in the
flock.
4
There are other flocks in addition to the extrinsic one most immediately associated with birds. That concerns the flock of nerves, the synaptic commons fueling
1 See Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness – An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology,
Translated and with an introduction by Hazel E. Barnes, Philosophical Library, New York, 1956,
p. 619.
2 ibid., p. 630.
3 See August Sander – Seeing Observing and Thinking, Photographs, With texts by August Sander
and Gabriele Conrath-Scholl, Die Photographische Sammlung/SK Stiftung Kultur, Foundation
Henri Cartier-Bresson, Schirmer/Mosel, Paris, 2009, p. 25.
4 See The Migration of Birds – Seasons on the Wing, by Janice M. Hughes, Firefly Books, Buffalo,
NY, p. 156