Social Choice Phenomenology — A Critique of Sartre (Part 9)

In this paper, we provide a summary of Chapter One. In that chapter, we mainly discussed Sartre’s theory of social choice. This theory holds that an individual’s choice is completely free; therefore, when making a choice, the individual must bear responsibility for it. Moreover, an individual’s choice is responsible not only to others but to all of humanity. We primarily used the theory of “transcendental existence” (or “meta-existence”) to critique Sartre’s theory, pointing out that individual choice is not completely free but is instead governed by transcendental existence. At the same time, we criticized the view that an individual’s choices must be responsible to others, or even to all humanity. Finally, we used the concept of transcendental existence to resolve Sartre’s dilemma of choice. In the following sections, we will see more applications of transcendental existentialism to solve additional problems in social choice.