ABSTRACT
I have taken Sartre as the obvious example of a philosopher for whom human reality is transcendent, that is, self-renewing and only retrospectively given. There are other writers of similar outlook, of course, but it may be better to defer consideration of these until the discussion of authenticity is broached. What one may call the Sartrian view, however, is not universal and indeed its exposition is not the most difficult to follow or reproduce, as one might imagine it to be from reading Being and Nothingness. The approach which contrasts with the creative view of existence is the one which considers experience as participation. Since to participate is to enter into a relationship with what is in some sense already there, this view has been described, in its axiological aspects, as the objective theory of values.1 I think, however, that this description is likely to lead to confusion, since it would be impossible to be less objectivist concerning the source of the act and of action than, for example, Lavelle and M.Alquié. The word ‘transcendent’ indeed also fails to designate anything distinctive in either of the two schools compared with the other, so it will be necessary to choose other terms, and I think that perhaps ‘the act as creation’ and ‘the act as participation’ will establish the necessary distinction, or come near to doing so.
