Jean-Paul Sartre recounted his own skiing experience and compared it to how we relate to the slopes by making contact with the snow. highlighting three aspects of this relationship. He regards sliding as the opposite of grounding and the opening of potentialities for continuous creations. In overcoming the difficulties caused by the resistance of the snow, it is imperative that we overcome, conquer, and master the element we are confronted with. Finally, gaining appropriation of the slope in our desire to be connected with it and to create a qualitative relationship with its value. According to Sartre, these three aspects describe our existence as skiers.
In Sartrean existentialism, we relate to the skiing world in three forms. Firstly, the world of things that surround us insofar as they exist for us and for others, but do not exist for themselves, that is, being-in-itself. Another form is the being-for-itself, wherein our skiing holds significance exclusively for us as authentic skiers, i.e., a conscious existence that transcends mere physicality and becomes an activity, a procedure. Finally, the world of the skier’s self with others as being-with-others.
Being-in-itself is all that is; it is the thing: the mountain, the snow, the skis. It is reality as it is before any human intervention. Being-for-itself refers to the human, to our conscious experience. We are not skiers, but we are becoming skiers, and as we become, we are seeking, desiring, needing, and contemplating.
According to this thought, as skiers we are stripped of our composure and left in situation to be defined by continuous circumstances, with the only freedom being that of having to decide, run after run, our destiny as skiers. And as such, we are condemned to be free, to be what we ski, to be our choices, and to build ourselves per se. This is our power and, in turn, our limit.
It is true that we, as skiers, are a being-in-the-mountain, that is to say, entities that in order to exist have to be in another entity. This existing is not a passive being because the mountain must be constantly conquered by us. If we are to remain in this situation, we must recognize the possibilities, take advantage of the facilities, and overcome the obstacles presented by the mountain.
Once again, we are presented with the fact that, according to Sartre’s statement, we first exist, and then we define ourselves. With the phrase “existence precedes essence,” Sartre responds to Spinoza’s claim that we are determined by our surroundings. For him, a distressing situation, such as descending a terrain with icy moguls for the first time, is not insufferable or unbearable in itself, but is perceived as such by us, resulting in the descent becoming intolerable. If we project our intentions onto our current condition, we will be the ones who transform the situation into action.
If the environment is the mirror of our freedom, this for Sartre signifies that it compels us to act and to surpass ourselves in order to attain our transcendence. However, we must keep in mind that, for some, there are factors of resistance to change that come from past decisions but can be changed by better decisions in the present. This was the thinking of Simone de Beauvoir.
If we are experiencing distress due to a tragedy, skiing it-self may become an absurdity, leading us to believe that the skiing that made sense before may lose all meaning. This situation could lead us to become aware of our own instability and vulnerability, since we have experienced a distressing situation. One of the central themes of existentialism is getting in touch with our finite condition as humans.
At this juncture, Sartre distinguishes two facets of our existential condition: facticity and transcendence. The facticity refers to all the events and circumstances of our existence in which we were ‘projected’, such as, for example, our parents, our place of birth, the shape of our body, or finding ourselves stuck on a chairlift because of a mechanical malfunction, that is, events and situations in which we did not choose to live.
According to the Sartrean facticity of existence, we experience the mountain in the presence of other people, things, and objects that we must face, as well as our own executions, the control of our bodies, and our falls. This conditions our existence as skiers to the point of representing a ‘thing’, that is, feeling like a thing in the midst of so many events, but which we can overcome if we keep in mind the intentionality of our skiing.
Transcendence lies in our possibilities. We have the possibility of being the skiers we choose to be, within our facticity, as we are nothing but what we make of ourselves. We understand transcendence as going beyond, excelling, or exceeding our limitations.
To a certain extent, facticity defines our situation and who we are; however, transcendence opens up the possibility of altering our circumstances and our own selves. When attempting to change our skiing habits, the concepts of facticity and transcendence come into conflict.
For the common human being, facticity is the opposite of freedom, because he did not choose to be in the world, whereas as skiers, we do choose to be-on-the-mountain. Our purpose would be to balance the factual aspects of skiing, such as the environmental conditions in which it takes place, and the transcendental aspects, such as the possibility of excelling by overcoming our limitations.
We observed that a situation consists of facticity and transcendence, and that facticity cannot be the cause of any action. For example, if a group of people decides to go to a small ski resort to learn to ski, and when they arrive there is no longer any equipment available for rent, then one of them might be disappointed and think that it no longer makes sense to stay there, proposing to return back home. He chooses the factuality of the situation as an obstacle to giving up. Simultaneously, another member of the group begins to capture images of the location captivated by the splendor of the mountainous environs. He chose the environment as an aesthetic object and chose himself to be responsible for recording these beauties. Another member of the group starts building a snowman, since he had never seen snow before. For him, snow is a source of amusement. A fourth individual opts to experience sliding on a snowboard in order to enhance the value of the excursion.
