Jean Paul Sartre's philosophy of existentialism centers around the fact that we as human beings have a certain type of freedom that no other being on earth has. It is because we possess this freedom that we are to be held accountable for our actions at all times. This seems like a fair enough principle. I mean, aren't we all told by our parents and authority figures to always take responsibility for our actions? Humans are by no means perfect beings, but there is a clear difference between me and a dog, for example. A dog can go do its business on the neighbor's lawn, and sure it might be reprimanded by its owner, but it is the dog owner who eventually will have to clean up the mess and apologize to the neighbor. However, if I exercise my freedom and ability to trash my neighbor's lawn, then I am the sole person responsible for my actions, and I will be the sole person responsible for receiving punishment. This part of Sartre's reasoning sits pretty well with me, but what are your thoughts on human freedoms and responsibilities versus that of other beings?
Let's move from the logical part of Sartre's argument and step into the more controversial side. Sartre argues that because of the existence of human freedoms and our ability to have dictatorship over our freedoms, any form of denying these freedoms would be a show of bad faith. Bad faith can be more simply defined as self deception. Now of course I can agree that lying to myself can never be a good thing, but Sartre seems to take the concept a step further. According to Sartre, we are exhibiting bad faith when we try to rationalize our existence or actions through anything other than ourselves. If we are to follow Sartre's philosophy in its entirety, then this automatically rules out religion, science, or any other belief system. For Sartre, God's wrath doesn't exist; people with mental disabilities don't exist. Any and everything that happens in our lives, happens because we make a choice and exercise a certain freedom to make it so. There is no higher power or physical limitation beyond our control that is affecting our lives. Therefore, is believing in anything, science included, an exercise of bad faith?
- Jessica Ealy
I agree with many of your points but I think you are misunderstanding the concept of bad faith in some sense. As we said in class "bad" is not really pejorative in this sense and Sartre is not saying bad faith is evil, just an occurrence. I agree with you that bad faith is ever present in society. In any case, take the waiter in the cafe as an example. Any person acting in a role like that is acting in "bad faith". But if the waiter makes the conscious decision to act like the stereotype out of his own free will because he wants to, Sartre does not consider that to be bad faith
ReplyDeleteI don't necessarily agree with your assertion that science is bad faith because, by definition, isn't really a "belief" in the sense that religion is. In science, belief doesn't occur without evidence, and science doesn't tend to make moral claims or claims about what people must do, at least short of physical limitations (e.g. science says I can't fly, but "believing" that does not equate to bad faith). Furthermore, I don't think that "believing" in other limitations, such as disabilities, is bad faith either - I think that Sartre would very much agree that the freedom and responsibility come from one's ability to exercise that freedom, and someone with a severe mental handicap, for instance, is obviously less able to weigh options and exercise freedoms than someone who is not disabled. Therefore, their responsibility is diminished.
ReplyDeleteAccording to Sartre there is no higher power then man. The only higher power in Sartre’s viewpoint, if there was one, was that of man trying to reach complete transcendence and therefor become God. This impossible climb seems to negate Sartre’s idea that of complete responsibility as if we are limited in some way by facticity, and therefore ruled by something out of our control, then we are not in complete control of our destinies. If we cannot completely control our lives, if we are in fact not gods ourselves, then we cannot be held responsible for all the wrongs and evils in our lives.
ReplyDeleteJessica,
ReplyDeleteI believe Sartre's answer to your question is "yes." Pour-soir are responsible for themselves in their entirety. There are no external necessities causing us to be the way we are, or to do the things we do. If one believes that a god has made them a certain way and that nothing can be done about it because it is this particular god's will that they are that way, then they are denying their full transcendent being. They are playing at the religious zealot. This is a vague example, but I think it is not too far off to say that one can take many different scriptures regarding the nature of man and see that it in some way denies either facticity or transcendence.
Now, science is different story. The intent of science seems to be an ontological one.That is, science is bent on discovering the nature of being and the casual relationships of being. It is not meant to explain life, or purpose, or any of the other questions we would expect a religion to attempt to answer. Sometimes, however, we hope that it will provide these answers. But I must say, that no sane scientist goes out to scientifically discover of the meaning of life. It is just that that particular question is not really a scientific question.
Science is purely based on repeated events. If something happens a particular way 99% of the time, then we say that this is the way it happens. Is this a belief in consistent experience? Perhaps, but even a wrong belief in this respect does not mean that the belief is in bad faith. It may simply mean that the belief is wrong. I think this is more akin to reality, since most "beliefs" concerning science deal with things other than one's self and one's own being. Remember that bad faith occurs only when one denies either their transcendence or their facticity. Thus, most of the time, there should not be a denial of one's transcendent being and/or a denial of one's factual being when the object of concern is vacuously removed from general reality (as is often the case in science). All I mean by this last statement is that science specifically tackles one object (of scientific inquiry) at a time, and there does not seem to be room for errors of bad faith unless the question (of scientific inquiry) itself was predicated upon bad faith or the question concerns the human being. Even in the case of the social sciences, however, the data can never be in bad faith, only misguided human interpretations can be.
Sartre's philosophy as it regard responsibility is almost butterfly effect like, i.e the butterfly lands on a giraffes nose and before you know it the outbreak of world war 3 happens. He loosely ties responsibility to everyone's wrist, saying that a particular persons actions are responsible for something happening, possibly by a semblance of cause and effect, or through the act of not practicing a negation of the event. Now science is a tricky subject to answer a question about as far as Sartre is concerned. Science itself is exact and nobodies actions effect the true nature of it, but the research done, the results found, the way the results are communicated, and how it is received is subjective, and open to mistake and the transcendence of those both conveying and receiving the "science" in question. So even if science itself is not held to these standards how we can understand it is.
ReplyDeleteI think you're sort of making Sartre's philosophy into a caricature. People with mental disabilities don't simply "not exist", they can't practice freedom in the same way uninhibited people can-the property which Sartre believes makes us most human. People acknowledge the fact that mentally disabled people, depending on the level of their disability, are not able to do the same things as uninhibited people.
ReplyDeleteAs far as religion goes, Sartre is a staunch athiest. It would be contradictory to believe in his philosophy and be religious. However, for scientific theory and schools of thought, there is no reason somebody could not make the project for themselves to better understand something (like science).
I would like to excerpt and amend one statement from you. You say that according to Sartre disabled persons do not exist. Perhaps according to Sartre disabled persons become disabled because they make certain choices which cause them to become such, but I believe Sartre would acknowledge a mentally handicapped person as being capable of transcendence and free will in the same way as other humans - perhaps just not to the same complex degrees. A mentally handicapped person is a mentally handicapped person just as I am a female person. We were born that way. We are both capable of degrees of complex thought that extend beyond the capacities of animals. By exercising our human reasoning capacities, whatever degrees to which we may have them, we are being our true selves and are therefore not in bad faith.
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