In reading over our conversation so far, there seems to me an underlying connection between Bad Faith and our emotions. Sartre gives us facts, our facticity, and he also gives us transcendence, but what I feel screaming for attention every time I revisit Sartre is the impact of our emotions as motivation for bad faith. Yes, I still stand by the idea that in bad faith we are attempting to evade responsibility, but why?
When I draw upon the concept of bad faith, Sartre’s examples fall short. It feels as though his whole philosophy of existentialism contradicts the notion of providing examples through the other. A process so personal to the self, that to understand it through the other devalues it somehow. So I seek inwardly for examples from my own path, that through reflection seem to capture elements of we have thus far defined as bad faith. Admittedly, these are deeply emotionally intertwined. When we are angry, our anger can often become our choice, the same goes I believe for any overbearing emotion, and if you remember Sartre believes we always have choices in any given circumstance. So, if our emotions can override these choices, and furthermore, if we are in essence made by our choices, then surely the source of our driving emotion is to be the source of our bad faith.
Is Sartre to imply that our emotions- from anger, love, pain, to cowardice- are all part of our seeing and shaping, our negation, of our Being-for-itself, which can be understood as our reflection and awareness of self? And likewise, if our transcendence is the “ability to intend and reach beyond” our facticity, as we have defined, then does this not also necessitate our emotions? So simply by being-for-itself, we are automatically submitted to bad faith by default. Simply by being we contradict ourselves. And this is yet to mention being-for-others?
Being-for-others is a concept that Sartre only divulges into once he has outlined and discussed bad faith in ‘Being and Nothingness’. This can, in simple terms, be understood as our inquiry into the existence of other minds. Sartre again agrees with Heidegger in that ‘the other’ is more an issue of being, and therefore existentialism, rather than that of an epistemological problem. According to the Internet Encyclopaedia of Philosophy Sartre provides us “with a place for the other as an a priori condition for certain forms of consciousness which reveal a relation of being to the other.” So, if I understand the concept correctly, that in relation to others we become objects of their subjectivity, and that this can be reversed so that others in turn become the object; and this seems to me, in the crudest of terms, the last ingredient into the emotional melting pot. This subject-object relationship with others suggests to me that Sartre is really paving the way to make an ethical point on authenticity, however I believe that it also highlights how the balance of our transcendence and facticity, so crucial to the concept of being-for-itself, is subject to being-for-other, and that both are, or can often be, ruled by our emotions. This brings us back to Sartre’s key doctrine, at least by my understanding: by being, we have choice, and these choices we become.
So choose wisely, because 'Bad Faith' and 'others' are here to fuck with your being.
To close, Sartre himself: “Man is fully responsible for his nature and his choices”
[Existentialism and Human Emotions, 1957]
Peace
When I draw upon the concept of bad faith, Sartre’s examples fall short. It feels as though his whole philosophy of existentialism contradicts the notion of providing examples through the other. A process so personal to the self, that to understand it through the other devalues it somehow. So I seek inwardly for examples from my own path, that through reflection seem to capture elements of we have thus far defined as bad faith. Admittedly, these are deeply emotionally intertwined. When we are angry, our anger can often become our choice, the same goes I believe for any overbearing emotion, and if you remember Sartre believes we always have choices in any given circumstance. So, if our emotions can override these choices, and furthermore, if we are in essence made by our choices, then surely the source of our driving emotion is to be the source of our bad faith.
Is Sartre to imply that our emotions- from anger, love, pain, to cowardice- are all part of our seeing and shaping, our negation, of our Being-for-itself, which can be understood as our reflection and awareness of self? And likewise, if our transcendence is the “ability to intend and reach beyond” our facticity, as we have defined, then does this not also necessitate our emotions? So simply by being-for-itself, we are automatically submitted to bad faith by default. Simply by being we contradict ourselves. And this is yet to mention being-for-others?
Being-for-others is a concept that Sartre only divulges into once he has outlined and discussed bad faith in ‘Being and Nothingness’. This can, in simple terms, be understood as our inquiry into the existence of other minds. Sartre again agrees with Heidegger in that ‘the other’ is more an issue of being, and therefore existentialism, rather than that of an epistemological problem. According to the Internet Encyclopaedia of Philosophy Sartre provides us “with a place for the other as an a priori condition for certain forms of consciousness which reveal a relation of being to the other.” So, if I understand the concept correctly, that in relation to others we become objects of their subjectivity, and that this can be reversed so that others in turn become the object; and this seems to me, in the crudest of terms, the last ingredient into the emotional melting pot. This subject-object relationship with others suggests to me that Sartre is really paving the way to make an ethical point on authenticity, however I believe that it also highlights how the balance of our transcendence and facticity, so crucial to the concept of being-for-itself, is subject to being-for-other, and that both are, or can often be, ruled by our emotions. This brings us back to Sartre’s key doctrine, at least by my understanding: by being, we have choice, and these choices we become.
So choose wisely, because 'Bad Faith' and 'others' are here to fuck with your being.
To close, Sartre himself: “Man is fully responsible for his nature and his choices”
[Existentialism and Human Emotions, 1957]
Peace
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