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The Concept of ‘Bad Faith’ in the Philosophy of Sartre
Jean-Paul Sartre was the French philosopher and a versatile thinker and writer. He is today known for two systematic and extraordinary works in the field of philosophy. Besides these two phenomenal works- ‘Being and Nothingness’ and ‘Critique of Dialectical Reason’- Sartre developed some shorter philosophical versions including; several screenplays, plays, and novels; essays on art and literary criticism; short stories; an autobiography; scores of journalistic and political writing; and original and distinctive biographies of different writers. In the post-World War Two period, Sartre is regarded as one of the most famous philosophers with a large audience across the world. Sartre was the key representative of ‘existentialism’: a major philosophical movement that continued to dominate intellectual life especially in Europe in the decades of 1940s and 1950s. Understanding the concept of bad faith means to comprehend the existentialist philosophy of Sartre. The concept of bad faith forms the basis of his moral psychology. Also, bad faith continued to remain main theme throughout Sartre’s philosophical works. The concept emphasizes that bad faith, similar to all our attitudes, determines the manner in which the world and every person within it appears. Bad faith shapes all our beliefs, views, and actions specifically as agents in the world. In this context, the paper will discuss the concept of bad faith as included in the philosophy of Sartre.
Sartre- in ‘Being and Nothingness’- explains human relations basically as an opposition of Other and self. The Other interferes into the world of consciousness that is confronted with the anguished, fearful, and shameful identification...
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...warranted conviction and do not take into account any future evidence (Fox, 2008).
The paper has discussed in detail the concept of bad faith in the philosophy of Sartre. Jean-Paul Sartre was the French philosopher and versatile thinker and writer. The concept of bad faith forms the basis of his moral psychology. The concept emphasizes that bad faith, similar to all our attitudes, determines the manner in which the world and every person within it appears.
Works Cited
Detmer, D. (1988). Freedom As a Value: A Critique of the Ethical Theory of Jean-Paul Sartre.
Open Court
Fisher, T. (2009). Bad Faith and the Actor: Onto-Mimetology from a Sartrean Point of View.
Sartre Studies International, 15(1):74-91
Fox, M. A. (2008). The Remarkable Existentialists. Humanity Books
Webber, J. (2010). Reading Sartre: On Phenomenology and Existentialism. Taylor & Francis
In his lecture, Existentialism is a Humanism, Jean-Paul Sartre discusses common misconceptions people, specifically Communists and Christians, have about existentialism and extentanitalists (18). He wants to explain why these misconceptions are wrong and defend existentialism for what he believes it is. Sartre argues people are free to create themselves through their decisions and actions. This idea is illustrated in the movie 13 Going on Thirty, where one characters’ decision at her thirteenth birthday party and her actions afterwards make her become awful person by the time she turns thirty. She was free to make these decisions but she was also alone. Often the idea of having complete free will at first sounds refreshing, but when people
At the end of Being and Nothingness,Jean-Paul Sartre concedes that he has not overcome one of the key objections to existentialism viz., an outline of ethics, and states that he will do so later. Although Sartre attempted the project of an existential ethics, it was never quite completed. Enter Simone De Beauvoir. In this book, De Beauvoir picks up where Sartre has left us, refusing to answer the question of ethics. For De Beauvoir, human nature involves and ontological ambiguity whose finitude is bound in a duality. This duality of body and consciousness is the ambiguity which remakes nature the way we want it to be as a facticity of transcendence. It is within this understanding that the project of ethics must begin in ambiguity. However,
Fraud, murder, courage, and strong will are all words that can be linked to humanity. These words will often raise questions like, who did it, how they did it, or why. Can it be that the true answer to these questions lies in getting a better understanding of our human nature? Does man act according to his divine plan, or is he taught how to act? In analyzing the works of Hsün Tzu and Jean-Paul Sartre, I will determine which of these two philosophers offers the strongest foundation for living an ethical life in the modern era.
We choose, act, and take responsibility for everything, and thus we live, and exist. Life cannot be anything until it is lived, but each individual must make sense of it. The value of life is nothing else but the sense each person fashions into it. To argue that we are the victims of fate, of mysterious forces within us, of some grand passion, or heredity, is to be guilty of bad faith. Sartre says that we can overcome the adversity presented by our facticity, a term he designs to represent the external factors that we have no control over, such as the details of our birth, our race, and so on, by inserting nothingness into it.
In order to explicate Sartre’s notion of intersubjectivity I will follow the progression that Sartre takes in Being and Nothingness. I will first distinguish between “being-for-itself” and “being-for-others”. Second, I will provide an explication of the subject’s encounter with the Other as an object. Third, I will explain the significance of “the look”. Here I will show how the look provides the foundation for the self. I will also show how the look of the Other affects the subject’s freedom.
Jean-Paul Sartre claims that there can be no human nature, or essence, without a God to conceive of it. This claim leads Sartre to formulate the idea of radical freedom, which is the idea that man exists before he can be defined by any concept and is afterwards solely defined by his choices. Sartre presupposes this radical freedom as a fact but fails to address what is necessary to possess the type of freedom which would allow man to define himself. If it can be established that this freedom and the ability to make choices is contingent upon something else, then freedom cannot be the starting point from which man defines himself. This leaves open the possibility of an essence that is not necessarily dependent upon a God to conceive it. Several inconsistencies in Sartre’s philosophy undermine the plausibility of his concept of human nature. The type of freedom essential for the ability to define oneself is in fact contingent upon something else. It is contingent upon community, and the capacity for empathy, autonomy, rationality, and responsibility.
First, we will learn what Sartre’s “Bad Faith and Falsehood” teaches us. Sartre defines “consciousness” as a being conscious of its nothingness. He explains that humans start from zero (birth), and that the actions taken throughout our development take us from being nothing to being something. Humans have the capacity to deny themselves, we tend to negate what we are and to aspire for what we have yet to become. Close attention has to be given to the term of “bad faith”, since it can result to be highly deceitful. Before going into bad faith we should have clear idea of what “falsity” and “falsehood” mean. Falsity describes all forms of consciously lying. In other words, when a person is aware of the truth but expresses a contradicting thought. Falsehood, on the other hand, is a neutral lie committed out of ignorance. It can be considered an unintentional lie, since the person has to be fully aware of the truth in order to lie. These two forms of lying are what Sarte distinguishes as “lying in general”. Now that we have a better idea of what falsity and falsehood are, let’s approach the idea of what it consists to be in bad faith.
“We are left alone, without excuse. This is what I mean when I say that man is condemned to be free” (Sartre 32). Radical freedom and responsibility is the central notion of Jean-Paul Sartre’s philosophy. However, Sartre himself raises objections about his philosophy, but he overcomes these obvious objections. In this paper I will argue that man creates their own essence through their choices and that our values and choices are important because they allow man to be free and create their own existence. I will first do this by explaining Jean-Paul Sartre’s quote, then by thoroughly stating Sartre’s theory, and then by opposing objections raised against Sartre’s theory.
Schlipp, Paul Arthur ed. The Philosophy Of Jean-Paul Sartre. The Library of Living Philosophers Vol. XVI, La Salle, Ill: Open Court 1981.
...e’s theory relies upon his belief that because there is no creator, human beings have no essence, and so they are “left alone, without excuse” and “born without reason.” He says that people realize this “the moment you lose the illusion of being eternal.” Similarly, White too admits to Black that he has always hated life and that when he realized that religion was just a “guise,” his hatred turned into boredom (138). White’s skepticism about life and God echoes throughout the play and through the suicidal choice that White makes even before the dialogue begins. Comparably, Father Vincent Minceli voices similar concerns about Sartre, concluding that Sartre’s philosophy leads directly to despair and suicide. McCarthy’s comparison of White and Sartre is remarkable, as both are not only atheists, but also convey life’s useless nature through using synonymous phrases.
Sartre based his views on the basic ideas of existentialism. The idea that existence precedes essence is the central factor in the atheistic view of man. The belief that existence precedes essence states that there is "no pre-existing concept of man." (2) In the existentialist view, man is what he makes of himself.
In his defense of existentialism, Sartre first defines the unifying factor of existentialism, (for both atheist and deist alike), as the belief that existence precedes essence. To help illustrate his point he presents the example of a paper knife, an object that possess a set of qualities that enable it to carry out its purpose. He states that it would not have been created without a particular purpose, therefore its essence precedes its existence. (Sartre) Sartre rejects this idea when it comes to mankind and declares that humans in themselves have no nature and define themselves after coming into existence. This stems from his atheistic worldview, in which the rejection of a higher power leads him to accept the fact that humans are the “Creator”, the first to exist, and it is our job to give meaning to the rest of the world.
Sartre, Jean-Paul. “Existentialism is Humanism.” Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre. Ed. Walter Kaufman. Meridian Publishing
It is only natural for humans to question why we have been put on this wonderful earth of ours. What does it mean to be these lucky ones called humans? Do we really have a human nature that is all our own? Are there really living beings that kind find something within this world to call our life purpose? And if there are, how do may we achieve it? It is happiness or simple the drive to survive that propel us forward? These are just some of the types of questions that philosophers have been wrestling with for centuries. Some argue that human nature is very much a real thing and that it is essential to living a happy fulfilled life, while others reject that idea completely. However, despite the completely opposite stances that philosophers can take when it comes to human nature, it’s not uncommon to see some surprising similarities between those who support it, and those who do not. One of the biggest examples of this, would be in regards to the Aristotle and his books on Nicomachean Ethics and Sartre with his writing of Existentialism Is a Humanism. When it comes to these two philosophers in particular it would appear on the surface that they are nothing alike. Aristotle being quite the supporter of human nature and it’s ability to give humans fulfilling lives, and Sartre who rejects the human nature completely for the idea that we as humans are essentially just going through life and making choices. Having said this, I would now like to discuss the individual views and arguments that both men have in regards to their views on human nature, it’s relationship to purpose, free will, and politics, and show that within these both Aristotle and Sartre give us the ability to see, that maybe to a certain that we are in fact responsible fo...
Sartre, Jean-Paul. “Existentialism is Humanism.” Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre. Ed. Walter Kaufman. Meridian Publishing