Monday, March 27, 2006 PHL105Y

1
Monday, March 27, 2006PHL105Y

• For Wednesdays class, read Jean-Paul Sartres
  Existentialism and Humanism pages 510-514 in
  the Pojman volume.
• For Fridays tutorial, answer one of the
  following questions
• What does it mean to say that existence precedes
  essence?
• What does Sartre mean in saying that we are
  condemned to be free?

2
John Rawls A Theory of Justice

• Liberal Egalitarianism

3
The 2 principles of justice

• What principles would people choose from behind
  the veil of ignorance? Rawls thinks exactly
  these two
• 1. Everyone will have an equal right to the most
  extensive basic liberties compatible with similar
  liberty for others.
• 2. Social and economic inequalities must satisfy
  two conditions (a) They are to the greatest
  benefit of the least advantaged (the difference
  principle) and (b) they are attached to
  positions open to all under conditions of fair
  equality of opportunity.

4
The difference principle

• Rawls argues that in the original position you
  would allow inequalities as just as long as they
  were to the advantage of the least well off
• Why exactly does he think so? What is it about
  inequalities justified that way that should make
  them OK? (Note that he excludes envy as a factor
  why?)

5
The difference principle

• Is Rawls right that the correct way to look at
  inequalities is from the perspective of the least
  advantaged member of the society?
• If you are trying to keep your society as
  voluntary, as freely chosen as possible, you want
  even the low man on the totem pole to be able to
  say I like it this way!

6
Deserving things?

• Do the well-off deserve their advantages whether
  or not those advantages are to the benefit of
  others?
• Rawls under what conditions does talk of
  deserving things even make sense?
• Does the person born clever or beautiful
  deserve it?

7
Deserving things?

• Rawls argues that talk of desert only makes sense
  when we have a cooperative scheme in place you
  deserve something when you have a legitimate
  social expectation of it.

8
Do you deserve more because you tried?

• Does the person with greater natural endowments,
  or greater character, deserve more than others?
• Where does character come from?

9
Rawls and Nozick

• Does Rawls advocate end-state or historical
  principles of justice?
• Does Rawls believe in freedom? What kind of
  freedom?
• What would Nozick say?

10
Jean-Paul SartreBad Faith

• 1943

11
Consciousness

• Négatité is a word invented by Sartre to mean
  something like an experience of destruction,
  loss or absence humanity has a distinctive
  relation to négatité we alone are aware of what
  is not we alone can take negative attitudes to
  ourselves
• Consciousness is a being, the nature of which is
  to be conscious of the nothingness of its being
  (499)
• What does that mean?

12
What is negative about consciousness?

• Consciousness is a being, the nature of which is
  to be conscious of the nothingness of its being
  (499)
• Consciousness is translucent it is always
  consciousness of something (else) it isnt
  itself a substance or product in the world,
  something positive .

13
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)
• Its contrasted with authenticity embracing your
  freedom (harder than it sounds!)

14
Bad faith

• Bad faith is not the same as ordinary lying
• The ordinary liar must know the truth in order to
  lie (saying something in ignorance is not lying)
• The person who is guilty of self-deception is
  trying to hide the truth from herself (which is
  hard, if consciousness is translucent)

15
Bad faith

• How could you deceive yourself?
• Sartre thinks that in bad faith you take
  advantage of the split between what you really
  are and what you are to other people so in bad
  faith you are acting even to yourself like a
  character that exists for others)

16
The first case study

• Sartre invites us to consider a woman who is
  dating someone she knows is physically attracted
  to her. She decides, however, to pretend to
  herself that her suitor really loves her purely,
  and for her personality. But at the same time
  she accidentally lets physical contact
  continue .
• Why is this bad faith? (And why exactly is it a
  bad thing, if it is?)

17
Being and not being

• Bad faith is a project in which you try to
  establish that I am not what I am
• (But isnt it always true that I am not what I
  am? isnt this the fact of human
  transcendence, that we are more than meets the
  eye?)
• Sartre yes, but you have your facticity as well
  you do have real characteristics (which are
  invented or chosen by you yourself)

18
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

19
Being and not being

• If you are cowardly rather than courageous, this
  is not like being an inkwell rather than a
  table being cowardly is something that you do
  or choose, you make yourself what you are

20
The waiter

• The waiter is trying to imitate what a model
  waiter would do (a little too efficient, a little
  too friendly, but in a very professional way)
• He is playing at being a waiter in a café
  (504)
• But the waiter is not a waiter in the way that an
  inkwell is an inkwell. (Why not?)

21
The waiter

• A grocer who dreams is offensive to the buyer,
  because such a grocer is not wholly a grocer.
• So, are all tradespeople living in bad faith? Is
  Sartre really suggesting that the service culture
  be overthrown in favour of total authenticity?

22
The homosexual in denial

• Sartre considers the case of the homosexual who
  will not exactly admit to himself that he is a
  homosexual (thats bad faith)
• But it might not make things better for him just
  to apply a label to himself, to accept this label
  as defining what he is (being gay is not like
  being a desk or an inkwell)

23
Bad faith and sincerity

• one can fall into bad faith by being sincere
  (506-7)
• If you are constantly figuring out what you are,
  drawing up a list of your existing
  characteristics, taking a self-inventory, you are
  also at risk of bad faith, Sartre thinks.
• Why?

24
What I am and am not

• Bad faith could involve denying the qualities I
  have it could also mean taking myself to be
  something else.

25
The faith of bad faith

• Bad faith is not a cynical lie I am so
  courageous knowing perfectly that Im 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
• Its faith belief that stops short of having
  completely convincing evidence (if you could
  call it belief Sartre later argues that bad
  faith doesnt really succeed in getting us to
  believe what it wants to we dont really come
  to believe we are courageous)