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Jean-Paul Sartre held the position that human beings always have the capability to make rational, conscious decisions. He coined the phrase bad faith in order to describe the state wherein one denies his or her total freedom and sees oneself as an inert object. Sartre's The Look BAD FAITH A critical claim in Existentialist thought is that we are always radically free to make choices and guide our own life towards our own goals and desires. Our freedom is always with us, even in overwhelming circumstances. For instance, a mugger’s victim staring down a gun barrel has a choice: he possesses the choice to hand over his wallet or to die. We cannot escape making choices; moreover, although we are limited by circumstance, no circumstance can force us, as radically free agents, to follow one course over another. Even if we choose to ignore our freedom, we still make inadvertent choices, even when we choose to get up in the morning and brush our teeth. We are eternally bound to our freedom, yet we often ignore it by assuming social roles and value systems contrary to our eternal freedom. When I say "I am a philosopher", or purposely behave in a "philosophical" manner, I am denying my freedom by defining myself as an object in the world. I am not, in fact, a "philosopher". I am myself. When I define myself solely as "a philosopher", I deny my freedom to be anything else, and I am acting in "bad faith". Sartre cites a café waiter, whose movements and conversation are a little too "waiter-esque". When he takes your order, his voice oozes with an eagerness to please. When he carries your food, he does so rigidly, like a robot whose sole purpose in life is to be a café waiter. The waiter’s pretentious behaviours illustrate that he is not simply being himself, but he is play acting as a waiter, treating himself as an object in the world: an automaton whose essence is to be a waiter. Sartre, Jean-Paul, ''Essays in Existentialism'', Cidatel Press. 1993, p. 167-169 Another of Sartre’s examples involves a young woman on a first date. The goal of the man, as is the case with most romantic encounters, is sexual. The woman chooses to ignore this as the man compliments her physical appearance. She mentally delays the inevitable decision. At some point in the evening she will either go to the man’s apartment and engage in sexual activity or go back to her home leaving the man sexually unsatisfied. Even as the man takes the woman’s hand, an obvious symbol of things to come, the woman chooses to deny the underlying significance. She refuses either to return the gesture or to revoke it, by letting her hand rest limply in his. She considers her hand just a thing in the world, and does not acknowledge the implication of her hand resting in his. Sartre, Jean-Paul, ''Essays in Existentialism'', Cidatel Press. 1993, p. 160-164 Sartre tells us that by acting in bad faith, the waiter and the woman are lying to themselves. They know they are free, but they do not acknowledge their freedom. The waiter knows he is not "a waiter", but at the same time, he adopts the role of a waiter and behaves as if he is "a waiter". The woman knows the sexual inclinations of her suitor, yet she refuses to accept their existence. Bad faith is paradoxical in this regard. When acting in bad faith, a person both knows, and does not know, that they are free. Sartre offers his own solution to the paradoxical nature of bad faith. He tells us that the "knowing" in the knowing we are free is different than the "knowing" in the knowing we are not free. What this means is that we ultimately know we are free (that is, know with a capital 'K'), yet we are constantly telling ourselves otherwise in order to escape the consequences of our freedom. He says man is Doomed To Freedom in his choices, because no matter how much he tries to flee from his freedom by adopting a comfortable moral system to do the choosing for him, and provide him with inner calm to escape responsibility, in reality he can never escape his eternal freedom. There are many people in the world who would execute someone by stoning, or by other means, because the Bible said so, the Qur'an said so, or another moral system said so. They claim they had to do it, they had no choice, and felt no inner struggle, no troubled conscience at all. In essence one cannot escape responsibility by handing responsibility over to a moral system, but instead, the very adopting of a moral system in itself is a choice that one has to take full responsibility for. Truly dedicated professionals of their respective moral codes - such as priests interpreting sacred scriptures, lawyers interpreting the Constitution , medical ethicists interpreting the Hippocratic Oath - instead of robotically and callously administering the rules, they always feel a powerful inner struggle and questioning agony over every decision they make, over what it means to be humane, what it means to be a human being, otherwise they haven't acknowledged their own freedom, otherwise they are acting in bad faith. By being free, we are fully responsible for the actions we choose to commit. If we are truly free, then for every choice we make we should hold ourselves accountable. Understanding this is intimidating, and therefore we constantly want to push our freedom away from us by adopting social roles and moral systems that do the choosing for us. We try to represent ourselves, to ourselves and to others, as something which we are not. We distance ourselves from ourselves, in order to shield us from the fallout of our free predicament. It is here that Sartre utters one of the most simplistically complex utterances in existentialist literature. He tells us that 'human reality is what it is not and it is not what it is'. What he means here is that as free human beings, we cannot claim our actions are determined by forces exterior to us; we choose to endorse, implicitly or explicitly, these forces. This is the core statement of Existentialism , that, because of being 'doomed' to this eternal freedom, human beings exist before the definition of what it means to be a human being exists. The waiter is not a waiter, and the philosopher is not a philosopher. I can not define myself as a thing in the world, because I have the freedom to be otherwise. I am not "a philosopher", because at some point I will get tired of writing a paper and I will go outside and play baseball. At that point, I will not be "a baseball player", because at some point I will go inside and cook my dinner. At that point, I will not be "a chef", because after that I will choose to do something else. I am not what I am, because I cannot be pinned down to any particular thing. That which I am, cannot ever be pinned down, and therefore I am what I am not. A FREUDIAN FRAMEWORK (the Unconscious ), the Superego (polices the Id), and the Ego (reflective upper level consciousness). The split between conscious and subconscious allows for a person to consciously believe one thing, and unconsciously believe another. Thus, according to Freud, self deception is possible. In the case of the waiter, it is possible that his unconscious recognizes his freedom and expresses desires to engage it. Perhaps he unconsciously wishes to spit in his patron’s food. Under this framework, his unconscious desires are repressed by the Superego. He then consciously rejects his freedom and assumes the role of "a waiter". The Superego acts as a policeman and facilitator between both the Id and the Ego. A self-deception occurs when the Superego knowingly transmits false information to the Ego. The ego, our conscious faculties, fully believes what is transmitted to it by the Superego. The self deception is possible because there exist two separate "belief systems" which are divided. It is with the Superego that Sartre lodges his chief complaint. Sartre, Jean-Paul, ''Essays in Existentialism'', Cidatel Press. 1993, p. 155-158 He tells us that if the Superego is to perform its duties, it must possess knowledge about the information it is restraining from the Ego. Without knowing what it is restraining, the Superego would not be a policeman, but rather a sieve, arbitrarily restricting the Id’s drives. Sartre also tells us that the Superego must know that it is making choices concerning what information to facilitate. It must be aware of itself and what it is doing. Sartre, Jean-Paul, ''Essays in Existentialism'', Cidatel Press. 1993, p. 156-157 Sartre then makes two important moves that deserve fleshing out with some precision: (1) He believes that by "knowing" and "choosing", an entity must also possess the capability to "know itself" and know that it is facilitating false information. He tells us that in order to make the jump from sieve to facilitator, such upper level knowledge is necessary. (2) Sartre rejects the Freudian framework as a response to the paradox of self deception, because the upper level consciousness that knows it is facilitating false information is the same upper level consciousness present in the Ego, which accepts that information as true. Therefore, both the acceptance and the rejection that occurs during bad faith are in the same mental scope, and it is still paradoxical. SEE ALSO
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