RESISTENTIALISM
SIR,—Dr. Allen has brought up a problem which has already caused a split among the Resistentialists. The question whether a passive or active attitude should be adopted towards resistentia hinges on one's attitude to Ventre's two great concepts of chose-en-soi and chose-pour-soi-- representing the tragic, inherent ambivalence of man's attitude towards Things. Thing-in-itself is the pole of Ventre's philosophy—cold, im- placable, utterly indifferent to man. Thing-for-itself, Thing in function, stands for the bare minimum of relation with man, even though it be hostile. Ventre is so obsessed by chose-en-soi that he advocates, as I stated in my analysis, complete withdrawal. Qwertyuiop, leader of the newer activist school, sees in chose-pour-soi grounds for a more positive approach.
All questions of behaviour are treated relatively, of course. Philo- sophers, at least since Hume, have never really expected mundane actions to be performed as though there were no causality, or no self, or, in Ventre's case, too many Things ; and when Dr. Allen calls on*" philo- sophers and psychologists" to do something, it is really only the latter
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