Wednesday, March 29, 2006 PHL105Y For next Monday’s class, read Richard Rorty’s “Dismantling Truth” pages in the Pojman volume. For Friday’s tutorial, answer one of the following questions: 1.What does it mean to say that ‘existence precedes essence’? 2.What does Sartre mean in saying that we are ‘condemned to be free’?

Jean-Paul Sartre “Bad Faith” 1943

Bad faith and authenticity Bad faith means lying to yourself; the worse form of that – denying your own freedom, seeing yourself as a product of your circumstances (race, class, gender, family dynamics) It’s contrasted with authenticity: embracing your freedom (harder than it sounds!)

Being and not being The fact that you invent or choose your own nature is what makes bad faith possible (and what makes it bad) We make ourselves what we are

The ‘faith’ of bad faith Bad faith is not a cynical lie “I am so courageous” – knowing perfectly that I’m not, not believing my lie for an instant Bad faith is not certainty; the person who is absolutely dead certain that he is courageous cannot be guilty of bad faith It’s faith: belief that stops short of having completely convincing evidence (if you could call it belief – Sartre later argues that bad faith doesn’t really succeed in getting us to believe what it wants to – we don’t really come to believe we are courageous)

Jean-Paul Sartre’s Existentialism and Humanism 1945

Existence and essence Manufactured items like pencil sharpeners have an essence (a blueprint – a set of instructions for making them, and a purpose for which they are intended) before they come to exist Human beings do not (if God does not exist); there is no recipe known in advance for making you the person you are, and there is no prior purpose which you must fulfill (you are free to make yourself and choose your own purpose)

For humans, existence precedes essence “What is meant here by saying that existence precedes essence? It means that, first of all, man exists, turns up, appears on the scene, and, only afterwards, defines himself. … There is no human nature, since there is no God to conceive it.” (511)

Our dignity? Problem: does the denial of human nature mean that we lack dignity? Does it lower us to the status of seaweed?

Our dignity? Problem: does the denial of human nature mean that we lack dignity? Does it lower us to the status of seaweed? No, says Sartre, because man is ‘a plan which is aware of itself’ … ‘man will be what he will have planned to be.’ (511)

Willing and wanting You aren’t defined by what you want to be; what you want is usually itself just the consequence of some earlier, deeper choice that Sartre calls will. You have willed or planned to be a certain sort of person; as a result you then later find yourself wanting to buy a condo and a Toyota.

Sartre’s ethics You might expect Sartre to be a deeply individualistic thinker (every man for himself!), but oddly enough he is not. “When we say that man chooses his own self, we mean that every one of us does likewise; but we also mean by that that in making this choice he also chooses all men. In fact, in creating the man that we want to be, there is not a single one of our acts which does not at the same time create an image of man as we want him to be.” (511)

Sartre’s ethics “To take a more individual matter, if I want to marry, to have children; even if this marriage depends solely on my own circumstances or passion or wish, I am involving all humanity in monogamy and not merely myself. Therefore, I am responsible for myself and for everyone else. I am creating a certain image of man of my own choosing. In choosing myself, I choose man.” (511)

The human condition… ANGUISH FORLORNNESS DESPAIR

ANGUISH Anguish is a sentiment of the depth of one’s responsibility. If there were a God who, say, instructed one to eat certain foods, we could offload some of the responsibility for how we live on that God; Sartre thinks that instead we have to go it alone, fully responsible for every tiny thing we do.

ANGUISH Anguish is a sentiment of the depth of one’s responsibility. We have no directions, no proof that we are doing the right thing (whatever that would be). Possibilities have value only because they are chosen. (Why?)

FORLORNNESS “The existentialist … thinks it very distressing that God does not exist, because all possibility of finding values in a heaven of ideas disappears along with him…” (512) We have nothing to cling to, and no excuses for anything. We are “condemned to be free.” (513)

DESPAIR “we shall confine ourselves to reckoning only with what depends on our will” (514) Existentialists do not hope for God to make everything OK at the end, or for our children or other people to carry on our life projects after we are gone, or for the eventual triumph of the working class…

The existentialist view of choice The student must choose between -staying with his elderly mother, and caring for her (knowing that if he leaves she will suffer, and might even die), and -going to England to fight in the underground resistance against the Nazis What could be the right choice, according to Sartre?

The existentialist view of choice Neither choice is specified as correct in advance (why not?) What the student says: “In the end, feeling is what counts. I ought to choose whichever pushes me in one direction. If I feel that I love my mother enough to sacrifice everything for her – my desire for vengeance, for action, for adventure – then I’ll stay with her. If, on the contrary, I feel that my love for my mother isn’t enough, I’ll leave.” How might one criticize this way of thinking?

The existentialist view of choice Sartre’s answer: we don’t choose the option we already recognize as right or valuable; the option becomes right because we have chosen it. “What gives his feeling for his mother value? Precisely the fact that he remained with her.” (513) (So how are we choosing?)

The limits of our existence Denying that there is such a thing as human nature means that we can’t claim ‘democracy is destined to triumph eventually’; our descendents really might all choose fascism instead. “Man is nothing else than his plan; he exists only to the extent that he fulfills himself; he is, therefore, nothing else than the ensemble of his acts, nothing else than his life.” (514)