Sartre and the Ethics of Authenticity

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Sartre and the Ethics of Authenticity
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Main Philosophical Works
Being and Nothingness An Essay on
Phenomenological Ontology Critique of Dialectical
Reasoning
Other Writings
Nausea Words No Exit (In Camera) The Flies The
Age of Reason
Jean-Paul Sartre 1905-1980
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The Flies
Orestes speaking to Zeus
Suddenly out of the blue, freedom crashed down
on me and swept me off my feet... I knew myself
alone, utterly alone in the midst of this
well-meaning little universe of yours. I was like
a man whos lost his shadow. And there was
nothing left in heaven, no Right or Wrong, nor
anyone to give me orders.
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Basic Ontological Categories

• In-itself
• For-itself
• Essence precedes existence
• Existence precedes essence

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From Existentialism is a Humanism If one
considers an article of manufacture - for example
a book or a paper knife - one sees that it has
been made by an artisan who has a conception of
it.. Let us say then of the paper knife that its
essence - that is to say, the sum of the formulae
and the qualities that made its definition and
production possible - precedes its existence.
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The in-itself
From Nausea The root, the park gates, the
bench, the sparse bits of grass, all that had
vanished the diversity of things, their
individuality, were only an appearance, a
varnish. This varnish had melted, leaving soft,
monstrous lumps, in naked disorder, with a
frightful and obscene nakedness.
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The for-itself
What do we mean by saying that existence
precedes essence? We mean that man first of all
exists, encounters himself, surges up in the
world - and defines himself afterwards... Man is
nothing else but that which he makes of himself.
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Basic Ontological Categories

• In-itself
• For-itself
• Is what it is
• Is not what it is and is what it is not

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A person who has terrible guilt feelings about
his homosexual behaviour refuses to consider
himself a homosexual. He thinks to himself that
his homosexual acts dont really mean anything or
that they are the result of chance or that they
are all in the past. Here is assuredly a man in
bad faith who borders on the comic since,
acknowledging all the facts which are imputed to
him, he refuses to draw from them the conclusion
which they impose. Being and Nothingness, 63
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His friend is irritated with his refusal to admit
his homosexuality and demands that he be sincere.
We ask here Who is in bad faith? The
homosexual or the champion of sincerity? The
homosexual recognizes his faults, but he
struggles with all his strength against the
crushing view that his mistakes constitute for
him a destiny... Who cannot see how offensive
to the Other and how reassuring to me is a
statement such as Hes just a pederast, which
removes a disturbing freedom from a trait and
which aims at constituting the acts of the Other
as following strictly from his essence.
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And what is the goal of bad faith? to cause me
to be what I am, in the mode of not being what
one is or not to be what I am, in the mode of
being what one is.
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You are in bad faith if you say...

• Its not my fault I was carried away by my
  feelings.
• I cant help falling in love with the wrong
  person. Its just the way I am.
• Of course Im greedy its just human nature.
• I have to go along with what my parents tell me
  to do I have no choice.

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Orestes to Electra Do you imagine that my
mothers cries will ever cease ringing in my
ears?.. And the anguish that consumes you - do
you think it will ever cease ravaging my heart?
But what matter? I am free. And at one with
myself.
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Bad faith and dating

• She knows the mans intentions and that she must
  make a decision, but does not know what she
  wants.
• She refuses to acknowledge the meaning of his
  conduct.
• She translates his desire into esteem and respect
  for her intellect.
• She regards her hand that he has grasped as a
  mere thing of no significance.

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Man makes himself

• Man is not made to serve God.
• There is no such thing as human nature.
• There is no such thing as the nature of an
  individual.

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Common Beliefs
Existentialism
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For what we usually understand by wishing or
willing is a conscious decision taken - much more
often than not - after we have made ourselves
what we are. I may wish to join a party, to write
a book or to marry - but in such a case what is
usually called my will is probably a
manifestation of a prior and more spontaneous
decision. If however it is true that existence is
prior to essence, man is responsible for what he
is.
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Freud and Sartre
Who we are is the result of psychological
mechanisms
We decide who we are
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Sartre on the Emotions
The existentialist does not believe in the power
of passion. He will never regard a grand passion
as a destructive torrent upon which a man is
swept upon certain actions as by fate and which,
therefore, is an excuse for them. He thinks that
man is responsible for his passion.
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From the entry on Sartre in the Stanford
Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Emotive behavior involves physical changes and
what Sartre calls a quasi "magical" attempt to
transform the world by changing ourselves. The
person who gets "worked up" when failing to hit
the golf ball or to open the jar lid, is, on
Sartre's reading, "intending" a world where
physiological changes "conjure up" solutions in
the problematic world.
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Every question supposes that we realize a
nihilating withdrawal in relation to the given...
It is essential therefore that the questioner
have the permanent possibility of dissociating
himself from the casual series which constitutes
being and which can produce only being.
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Holbach and the causal determination of reality
Every human action and characteristic is
determined by prior events. So if there were some
intelligent machine which knew everything about
the world, then from the laws of nature it would
be able to predict everything that you will do.
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The existentialist frankly states that man is in
anguish...There are many indeed who show no such
anxiety. But we affirm that they are merely
disguising their anguish or are in flight from
it.