Wednesday, March 29, 2006 PHL105Y

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Wednesday, March 29, 2006PHL105Y

• For next Mondays class, read Richard Rortys
  Dismantling Truth pages 542-8 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?

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Jean-Paul SartreBad Faith

• 1943

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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!)

4
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

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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)

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Jean-Paul SartresExistentialism and Humanism

• 1945

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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)

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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)

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Our dignity?

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

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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)

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Willing and wanting

• You arent 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.

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Sartres 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)

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Sartres 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)

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The human condition

• ANGUISH
• FORLORNNESS
• DESPAIR

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ANGUISH

• Anguish is a sentiment of the depth of ones
  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.

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ANGUISH

• Anguish is a sentiment of the depth of ones
  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?)

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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)

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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

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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?

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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 Ill stay with her. If, on the
  contrary, I feel that my love for my mother isnt
  enough, Ill leave.
• How might one criticize this way of thinking?

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The existentialist view of choice

• Sartres answer we dont 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?)

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The limits of our existence

• Denying that there is such a thing as human
  nature means that we cant 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)