Exotic Journeys: A Tourist's Guide to Philosophy

brought to you by Ron Yezzi

Emeritus Professor of Philosophy

Minnesota State University, Mankato

(Author's Note: The account below, with slight modifications, is taken from Ron Yezzi, Philosophical Problems: The Good Life (Mankato: G. Bruno & Co., 1994), pp. 69-82.)

The Good Life:

Existentialism

Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, and Sartre

A distrust of reason and a stress upon choice, or commitment, are characteristic of an existentialist interpretation of the good life. The way you do something, not what you do, is primary―because it is the nature of the choice or commitment itself that establishes worth. Therefore, in a real sense, the question “What is the good life?” is distasteful to existentialists. For them, the question is overly abstract because it calls for an objective or rational account, when value judgments only mean something within the immediate, lived experience of individual persons. In what follows then, you should remember that the description is not properly “existentialist,” even though an attempt is made to be as accurate as possible.

We shall consider the positions of three existentialists—namely, Friedrich Nietzsche, Soren Kierkegaard, and Jean Paul Sartre. Nietzsche and Sartre are atheistic, whereas Kierkegaard is a Christian existentialist.

Nietzsche

Topics

Master and Slave Morality

Christianity and Slave Morality

Human Accomplishments and Suffering

Controversies: Some Objections and Possible Replies

Thought Excursions

Sources

Biographical Sketch

Friedrich Nietzsche(1844 - 1900 C.E.) was born in Prussia, the son of a Lutheran minister. His father died while he was a young child―after which time he grew up in a household consisting of his mother, sister, grandmother, and two maiden aunts. (His controversial views on women are often attributed to this upbringing in so largely female a household.) He suffered from health problems throughout his life―especially migraine headaches and gastric pains. While serving as a medical orderly in the Franco-Prussian War (1870), he contracted dysentery and diphtheria. At some time, he also contracted syphilis, the final stage causing insanity that persisted during the final decade of his life. (To avoid misunderstanding, we should note that Nietzsche was celibate nearly all his life.)

He was a brilliant student, specializing in classical literature and philosophy at the University of Leipzig. By the age of twenty-five, he was a full professor at the University of Basel, in Switzerland. Largely for health reasons, he gave up the professorship in 1879.

Although the brilliance of his insights is generally recognized, Nietzsche is not a philosopher who is easily understood. (One misunderstanding places him as an intellectual precursor of Nazism.) He did not try to be systematic; but he did try to be daring, shocking, mysterious, profound, and prophetic. His thought ranged over the areas of art, literature, music, ethics, metaphysics, intellectual history, social commentary, philology, and psychology. Beyond Good and Evil, The Birth of Tragedy, The Will to Power, The Antichrist, and Thus Spoke Zarathustra are major works.

Master and Slave Morality

Master Morality

According to Friedrich Nietzsche, there is a master morality exhibited by noble persons who choose for themselves what is valuable and a slave morality exhibited by weak persons who inculcate mediocrity in order to protect themselves from superior persons. Thus master morality is based upon choice, whereas slave morality is based upon resentment and fear. Of the noble person, Nietzsche says, in Beyond Good and Evil,

The noble type of man regards himself as a determiner of values; he does not require to be approved of; he passes the judgment: “What is injurious to me is injurious in itself;” he knows that it is he himself only who confers honour on things; he is a creator of values. He honours whatever he recognizes in himself. Such morality is self-glorification. In the foreground there is the feeling of plenitude, of power, which seeks to overflow, the happiness of high tension, the consciousness of a wealth which would fain give and bestow:—the noble man also helps the unfortunate, but not—or scarcely—out of pity, but rather from an impulse generated by the super-abundance of power. The noble man honours in himself the powerful one, him also who has power over himself, who knows how to speak and how to keep silence, who takes pleasure in subjecting himself to severity and hardness, and has reverence for all that is severe and hard. “Wotan placed a hard heart in my breast,” says an old Scandinavian Saga: it is thus rightly expressed from the soul of a proud Viking. Such a type of man is even proud of not being made for sympathy; the hero of the Saga therefore adds warningly: “He who has not a hard heart when young, will never have one.” The noble and brave who think thus are the furthest removed from the morality which see precisely in sympathy, or in acting for the good of others, or in desinteressement, the characteristic of the moral; faith in oneself, pride in oneself, a radical enmity and irony towards “selflessness,” belongs as definitely to noble morality, as do a careless scorn and precaution in presence of sympathy and the “warm heart.”¹

Note the reversal of many traditional values within the master morality—approval of self-glorification, exhibition of power, happiness as high tension, and hardness combined with rejection of pity, selflessness, and compassionate feelings. Within the master morality, no action is objectively and automatically right or wrong. For the self-assertive person, any action is a possibility worthy of continual reevaluation rather than a final truth eternally embraced or shunned. And a hopeful future for humanity resides more with the master morality than with slave morality.

Slave Morality

The great majority of human beings, “the herd,” fears master morality. They fear superior persons and try therefore to control them through a morality of mediocrity:

It is by the loftiest and strongest instincts, when they break out passionately and carry the individual far above and beyond the average, and the low level of the gregarious conscience, that the self-reliance of the community is destroyed; its belief in itself, its backbone, as it were, breaks; consequently these very instincts will be most branded and defamed. The lofty independent spirituality, the will to stand alone, and even the cogent reason, are felt to be dangers; everything that elevates the individual above the herd, and is a source of fear to the neighbour, is henceforth called evil; the tolerant, unassuming, self-adapting, self-equalising disposition, the mediocrity of desires, attains to moral distinction and honour. Finally, under very peaceful circumstances, there is always less opportunity and necessity for training the feelings to severity and rigour; and now every form of severity, even in justice, begins to disturb the conscience; a lofty and rigorous nobleness and self-responsibility almost offends, and awakens distrust, “the lamb,” and still more “the sheep,” wins respect.²

Christianity and Slave Morality

The strongest, most successful advocate of slave morality, for Nietzsche, is the Christian church that—by teaching the virtues of love, self-sacrifice, and humility—distorts the nature of life and thereby makes human beings something far less than what they can be. In a work entitled The AntiChrist, Nietzsche asserts,

With this I complete my indictment and pronounce my judgment: I condemn Christianity! I bring against the Christian Church the most terrible accusation that has ever been uttered. I say that it is the worst of possible corruptions, that it seeks to effect the ultimate corruption, the most dreadful corruption. The Christian Church has befouled everything with its touch; it has reversed every sound value, turned every truth into a lie, and every impulse of integrity it has stigmatized with baseness. Then let no one dare to speak to me of its “humanitarian” blessings! By its inmost necessity it must stand forever opposed to the effort to abolish suffering; for it battens upon suffering—it requires and it creates suffering to ensure its continuance. . . The canker of sin, for example; it was the church which first conferred this misery upon mankind: or the “equality of souls before God”—this utter lie, this excuse for the rancors of all base minds, this bombshell concept bursting out in modern religiousness and subversion of human discipline—this is none other than Christian dynamite. . . The humanitarian blessings of Christianity indeed! My view of the so-called humanitarianism of Christianity is that it contradicts true humanism: it splits the human core with the art of self-pollution, the desire to escape from actuality at all costs, a mistrust of all healthy instincts, a contempt for them, even.³

Nietzsche leaves little doubt about his rejection of Christianity. In passing though, we should note that he has almost equally barbed remarks regarding philosophers, the Germans, Jews, Anti-Semites, the English, men, women, common people, and scientists in other passages of his works. So he does not single out Christianity alone for virulent criticism.

To avoid oversimplification, we also should take care not to interpret the distinction between master and slave morality too rigidly. Remember that no action is objectively and automatically right or wrong within the master morality. Thus, for example, the characteristic attributes of slave morality—pity, selflessness, compassion, humility, and love of neighbor—are not objectively and automatically wrong. A noble person, too, can exhibit these attributes—so long as they originate through self-assertion, not through resentment and fear. Although Nietzsche attacks Christianity, he expresses some respect for Jesus. And any complacency in the master morality about the need for reevaluation of values is a sign of decay. The “happiness of high tension” allows no one the luxury of complacently smug superiority.

Human Accomplishments and Suffering

The greatest human accomplishments, according to Nietzsche, were the work of self-assertive persons who decided for themselves what was worthwhile, who struggled constantly to surpass prior achievements, and who forced their will upon others (although we cannot associate “force” here simply with “physical” or “political” force). For these great accomplishments to continue, a society cannot be based upon “equality” whereby each person is taken to have the same worth as every other one. Some order of rank must exist where great individuals recognize and exhibit their superiority, and where the inferior know their proper place.

Great accomplishments also require a willingness to suffer. Accordingly, Nietzsche rejects hedonism with its emphasis on getting pleasure and avoiding pain. Any way of life based upon pleasure and pain is superficial. More importantly, it allows no appreciation of the value of suffering. He says,

The intellectual haughtiness and loathing of every man who has suffered deeply—it almost determines the order of rank how deeply men can suffer—the chilling certainty, with which he is thoroughly imbued and coloured, that by virtue of his suffering he knows more than the shrewdest and wisest can ever know, that he has been familiar with, and “at home” in, many distant, dreadful worlds of which “you know nothing”!—this silent intellectual haughtiness of the sufferer, this pride of the elect of knowledge, of the “initiated,” of the almost sacrificed, finds all forms of disguise necessary to protect itself from contact with officious and sympathising hands, and in general from all that is not its equal in suffering. Profound suffering makes noble; it separates.⁴

As we might expect, Nietzsche himself was no stranger to suffering.

Nietzsche is well aware that his views will shock many people. In fact, he expects this effect because he regards most people as mediocre members of the herd, constantly upholding slave morality. However he hopes that his views will find favor among that minority of superior persons who will not allow themselves to be confined and controlled by the mediocre values of the herd. So he writes for a select audience.

In keeping with the existentialist stress upon style rather than content, Nietzsche does not lay out any specific moral code for the master morality. Instead he expects the noble persons to choose for themselves.

Controversies: Some Objections and Possible Replies

(Note About Objections and Possible Replies: You should look upon the objections and possible replies as opportunities for further thought rather than as definitive statements. Holders of the original position are not likely to be overwhelmed by the objections; and critics of the original position are not likely to be convinced by the possible replies. These objections and possible replies accomplish a proper goal if they push you to think more deeply about an issue, leading you to seek more clarity and justification in drawing your own conclusions.)

Contra Nietzsche

Regardless of his intentions, Nietzsche's master morality lends itself to viciously brutal acts and to exploitation. Moreover, he fails to understand the role of benevolence in human life. The benevolence or good will people show toward one another is just as important an element in human experience as any desires for power they may possess; and it makes life bearable and better whatever the situation—whether it be a triumph, a tragedy, or just a normal occasion of everyday life.

A Possible Reply: Master morality does not “lend itself” to anything; it only allows a person to go beyond the usual norms of good and evil so that nothing is absolutely excluded. Thus viciously brutal acts and exploitation, too, are not excluded absolutely. Nevertheless someone does not prove one's place in the master morality simply through willingness to act brutally or exploit. Besides, slave morality has certainly perpetrated more than its fair share of viciously brutal acts and exploitation; so it should be deserving of at least equal criticism.

As for benevolence, we should avoid the captivity of slave morality. Benevolence in a noble person is a virtue; but in a slave, it is a vice. Benevolence as a gift is noble; benevolence as an obligation, however, is merely a medium of exchange that assures mediocrity.

Thought Excursions

3.61 Nietzsche wants, and expects, most people to be shocked and outraged by what he says. Has he gauged their reaction correctly? How do you react? Can you criticize his position without embracing slave morality? If so, how? If not, then how do you justify your criticism?

3.611 What do you find either admirable or reprehensible in Nietzsche's thought?

Sources

Footnotes

1. Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil (New York: MacMillan Company, 1907), pp. 228-229.

2. Ibid., pp. 124-125.

3. Nietzsche, The Antichrist (New York: Arno Press, 1972), p. 59.

4. Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, op. cit, pp. 247-248.

Kierkegaard

Topics

Rational Impasse and the Leap of Faith

Aesthetic, Ethical, and Religious Stages of Life

Intensity of Choice

Kierkegaard and Nietzsche

Controversies: Some Objections and Possible Replies

Thought Excursions

Sources

Biographical Sketch

Soren Kierkegaard (1813 - 1855 C.E.), a Danish philosopher, was strongly influenced by his father―who passed on to his son a considerable degree of religious anxiety, a vivid imagination, and a tendency toward melancholy. In 1830, he entered the University of Copenhagen―then passing through what he later described philosophically as the aesthetic, ethical, and religious stages of life. In 1841, about to embark on a vocation as a Lutheran pastor and also engaged to be married, he turned away from both callings to devote himself fully to philosophy and theology. His writing took up most of his time thereafter.

Although a Christian thinker, Kierkegaard had little respect for organized Christian churches. He thought that the churches were more interested in superficial allegiance to external trappings than in real Christianity. Being baptized, being married in church, contributing money, and announcing a belief in God took the place of being Christian in the depths of one's being.

The passages here are taken from two of his better known works, The Concluding Unscientific Postscript and Either/Or.

Rational Impasse and the Leap of Faith

Although he shares some of Nietzsche's dislike for organized Christian churches, Soren Kierkegaard (perhaps the first of the existentialists) does not reject Christianity. He looks upon religious commitment as the highest sort of commitment, one that solves fundamental problems concerned with the meaning of life. According to Kierkegaard, rational attempts to arrive at true value judgments eventually reach an impasse, that is, a state of objective uncertainty. To get beyond this impasse, persons must turn to subjective commitment—that is, they must make a leap of faith—thereby relating themselves personally to God and finding truth. He does not regard this leap of faith as a single, cataclysmic experience in a person's life; rather, it is a continuing choice, constantly in need of maintenance or renewal.

Lest anyone interpret Kierkegaard's position too simply, consider the following passage from The Concluding Unscientific Postscript:

Subjectively, what it is to become a Christian is defined thus:

The decision lies in the subject. The appropriation is the paradoxical inwardness which is specifically different from all other inwardness. The thing of being a Christian is not determined by the what of Christianity but by the how of the Christian. This how can only correspond with one thing, the absolute paradox. There is therefore no vague talk to the effect that being a Christian is to accept, and to accept, and to accept quite differently, to appropriate, to believe, to appropriate by faith quite differently (all of them purely rhetorical and fictitious definitions); but to believe is specifically different from all other appropriation and inwardness. Faith is the objective uncertainty due to the repulsion of the absurd held fast in the passion of inwardness, which in this instance is intensified to the utmost degree. This formula fits only the believer, no one else, not a lover, not an enthusiast, not a thinker, but simply and solely the believer who is related to the absolute paradox.

Faith therefore cannot be any sort of provisional function. He who, from the vantage point of a higher knowledge, would know his faith as a factor resolved in a higher idea has eo ipso ceased to believe. Faith must not rest content with unintelligibility; for precisely the relation to or the repulsion from the unintelligible, the absurd, is the expression for the passion of faith.¹

From the vantage point of reason, faith (according to Kierkegaard's use of the term) is always directed toward an objective uncertainty, an absolute paradox, the absurd, and the unintelligible. Yet these qualities, he thinks, are precisely the ones that establish the need for an intense, passionate, commitment—the leap of faith. For example, Christianity is an eternal truth to be recognized by a human being existing finitely in time. Rationally, such recognition is a paradox. Similarly it is rationally absurd for a finite human being to relate to an Absolute, infinite Being, namely, God. Reason can never prove God's existence or make possible a relationship with God. Yet the absurdity and paradox produced by reason should not leave us in a suspended state of doubt. Rather we should realize that truth is only attainable by rejecting reason altogether here and by making the leap of faith.

Aesthetic, Ethical, and Religious Stages of Life

Kierkegaard often regards the masses to be dull and spiritless. Yet he also takes account of different types of commitment by laying out three stages of life—the aesthetic, the ethical, and the religious—each of which requires a choice that is unavoidable.

In the aesthetic stage, persons pursue sensuousness and beauty, which may occur in areas as diverse as sexual pleasure or poetry. Whim, impulse, and emotion characterize persons' lives; and new forms of excitement are a goal.

In the ethical stage, persons strive to act rightly according to universal moral rules that they arrive at through the use of reason.

In the religious stage, persons relate to an Absolute Being through a leap of faith that transforms their lives. In accepting Christian doctrine, they are ready “to live in it, to die in it, to venture one's life for it.” When a person chooses among these stages, there is no evidence that establishes a correct choice. Crises may well arise; for example, the aesthetic stage may lead to boredom and despair. Yet these crises are insufficient to establish a choice. Persons must rely on their own subjective commitments.

Kierkegaard uses the example of Abraham being commanded by God to sacrifice his only son. From an ethical standpoint, the sacrifice violates the duty of a father towards his son. On the other hand, from the religious standpoint, failing to sacrifice his son out of fatherly duty is a sin against God. What should Abraham do? No evidence establishes a correct choice, or even God's existence. He must choose for himself without the aid of any external standards for guidance.

Intensity of Choice

Although no external standards are available to establish a correct choice, Kierkegaard does suggest that the intensity of the choice provides passage to the truth. He says,

If you will understand me aright, I should like to say that in making a choice it is not so much a question of choosing the right as of the energy, the earnestness, the pathos with which one chooses. Thereby the personality announces its inner infinity, and thereby, in turn, the personality is consolidated. Therefore, even if a man were to choose the wrong, he will nevertheless discover, precisely by reason of the energy with which he chose, that he had chosen the wrong. For the choice being made with the whole inwardness of his personality, his nature is purified and he himself brought into immediate relation to the eternal Power whose omnipresence interpenetrates the whole of existence.²

In effect, Kierkegaard asserts that a sufficiently intense commitment leads sooner or later to the religious stage, where we are aware of having arrived at the truth.

Kierkegaard and Nietzsche

At first glance, Kierkegaard's Christian existentialism may not sit well beside Nietzsche's anti-Christian version. Yet common points of agreement are definitely present. Both reject reason in favor of choice, or commitment. Nietzsche's contempt for common people has its somewhat milder counterpart in Kierkegaard's conviction that the overwhelming majority of human beings prefer lives of illusion to the experience of despair that can lead them spiritually to the stage of the religious. Whereas Nietzsche, however, reacts with bitter rage toward what he calls “the herd,” Kierkegaard merely expresses sadness over the human condition. And whereas the former turns his back, the latter tries to make people fully aware of what a truly Christian life is.

Controversies: Some Objections and Possible Replies

Contra Kierkegaard

All these claims about overcoming the “absolute paradox” and “the absurd” and then arriving at truth subjectively through a “leap of faith” are quite simply nonsense. There is no real truth to be known subjectively through faith, because truth is a term that belongs to the category of objective thought. On the basis of subjectivity and intense, personal commitment, how can we even hope to discriminate among the “leaps of faith” by Lutherans, Catholics, Baptists, Jehovah's Witnesses, Amish, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Shintoists? The list can go on and on.

A Possible Reply: This objection amounts to nothing more than the claim that, rationally, the attainment of truth subjectively through a leap of faith does not make sense. Accordingly, the objection begs the question-at-issue and is simply irrelevant. The leap of faith is not supposed to make sense rationally; that is precisely why it is a leap of faith.

Furthermore, we should cast off any illusions that reason will provide objective answers with respect to basic questions about the direction of life. If we use reason in an attempt to discriminate among different religions or ethical positions so as to attain “objective truth,” the result will be just an impasse. Thus reason offers no alternative to the leap of faith.

Thought Excursions

3.62 How would you differentiate Kierkegaard's treatment of faith from what most people mean when they say, “I believe in God”?

3.621 In describing your life at present, would you say that it most closely approximates the aesthetic, the ethical, or the religious stage (as Kierkegaard uses these terms)? Explain. In your judgment, what percentage of Americans fall into each stage? Are many people too “dull and spiritless” to assign them to any of these stages? Does Kierkegaard err by entirely separating these stages when, in fact, there is a balance among them for most people? In replying, you should take into account whether Kierkegaard might regard a “balance” as being superficial and characteristic of the aesthetic stage. If you think that there is a balance of the three stages in your own life, what percentage of your activities would you assign to each stage? Would you agree with Kierkegaard that the religious stage is best?

3.622 Kierkegaard asserts that “the energy, the earnestness, the pathos with which one chooses”—if they are intense enough—leads eventually to an immediate relationship with God. Are most people capable of making such intense commitments? Would you be inclined to take such intense commitments? Would it lead to the same result that happened with Kierfkegaard?

Sources

Footnotes

1. Soren Kierkegaard, The Concluding Unscientific Postscript (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1941), p. 540.

2. Kierkegaard, Either/Or (Garden City: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1959), Vol. II, p. 171.

Sartre

Topics

Values and Choice

Self-Deception

Choosing for All Human Beings

Anguish

Controversies: Some Objections and Possible Replies

Thought Exercises

Existentialism and Pessimism

Sources

Biographical Sketch

Jean Paul Sartre (1905 - 1980 C.E.), probably the best known existentialist philosopher, was born in Paris. From 1924 to 1928, he studied at one of France's most prestigious schools, the Ecole Normale Superieur. Thereafter, except for brief military interludes and two years in Germany (1933-1934) to study the thought of Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger, he held various teaching positions in philosophy until 1944. (During his second military interlude, he was captured by the Germans in 1940 and was held briefly as a prisoner of war.) During his teaching career, Sartre published a number of works; but he gave up teaching to devote even more time to writing. In 1964, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature; but he refused to accept it, not wanting to take on what he considered to be the confining social role of being a Nobel Prizewinner.

More so than most philosophers, Sartre went beyond the limits of scholarly philosophical writing. He wrote novels, plays, and political journalism. After his release as a prisoner of war in 1941, he became active in the French Resistance movement, until liberation. After World War II, he did not hesitate to take political stands and often supported left-wing causes―although he refused to join the French communist party.

His most important philosophical work is Being and Nothingness. His lecture, "Existentialism" (sometimes entitled, "Existentialism Is a Humanism"), is often taken (perhaps inappropriately) as the definitive, short statement of what existentialism is. His best known plays are No Exit and The Flies; his best known novels comprise the trilogy, The Roads to Freedom.

Values and Choice

In the existentialist thought of Jean Paul Sartre, we encounter again the rejection of the religious: “Even if God did exist, that would change nothing.”¹ Like Nietzsche and Kierkegaard, he recognizes the importance of commitment. For Sartre, there are no objective moral values because human beings only create values through their individual, subjective choices. He says,

. . . when a military officer takes the responsibility for an attack and sends a certain number of men to death, he chooses to do so, and in the main he alone makes the choice. Doubtless, orders come from above, but they are too broad; he interprets them, and on this interpretation depend the lives of ten or fourteen or twenty men. In making a decision he can not help having a certain anguish. All leaders know this anguish. That doesn't keep them from acting; on the contrary, it is the very condition of their action. For it implies that they envisage a number of possibilities, and when they choose one, they realize that it has value only because it is chosen [emphasis added].²

Thus, murder can be wrong for me only because I choose to regard it as being wrong and act accordingly. There is no morality consisting of objective truths.

Sartre insists most strongly upon the need to take responsibility for our actions: if values are the result of our choices, then we must accept the implications. For example, we cannot blame anyone else or any other thing, if we become drunkards, since our becoming drunkards results from our own choice of values. He does not allow for excuses. We are are what our choices make us; that is, we define what we are by the values we choose, and we cannot claim to be anything else than what our choices make us.

Self-Deception

If this position seems overly harsh, Sartre would not be surprised. He claims that most people try constantly to avoid responsibility for their choices—a process he calls self-deception or bad faith. The process occurs in numerous ways; it occurs whenever we excuse ourselves from responsibility for an action or a lack of action. We may turn away from making a choice when a decision is clearly called for—as in the case perhaps of a young woman who evades making a choice about what she will do, although she knows that her male companion is trying to seduce her. Or, we may fail to acknowledge what our choices make us—as in the case perhaps of a homosexual who attributes his sexual acts to bad luck or to past mistakes or to “a certain conception of the beautiful which women cannot satisfy” or to the passing results of “a restless search.” Sartre seems most concerned with the way we engage in self-deception by submerging the totality of what we are as human beings into social roles that allow us to evade personal responsibility for what we do. For example, the concentration camp exterminator evades responsibility with the excuse, “I was just following orders.”

Other people, through their expectations, often push us to submerge ourselves in social roles. There are ceremonial ways of acting that people demand of tradesworkers such as grocers, tailors, and auctioneers: grocers are not supposed to offend buyers by showing that they dream or think; they are supposed to perform the “dance” of a grocer. Unfortunately, according to Sartre, we often bow to this social pressure and even engage in the self-deception of reducing ourselves to a social role.

He gives the example of a waiter in a cafe who tries too hard to play the game of being a waiter.³ The waiter's self-deception consists in his trying to submerge the totality of what he is as a human being into his social role of being a waiter and failing to admit that his having this particular social role is due to his own free choice. A human being always transcends any particular social role (and any particular attitude or action as well). Because of this strong willingness to submerge ourselves in social roles, Sartre is extremely wary of any sort of social relationship that requires conformity to a set of rules or expectations externally imposed by society or other persons. In keeping with this wariness, Sartre himself refused to join the communist party despite his strong leftist sympathies, never married, and refused to accept the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Choosing for All Human Beings

Sartre pushes the concept of responsibility even one step further. Although no objective morality—that is, no moral code that all human beings must recognize—exists, the choices that define my life also serve to define what all human beings are, since I am one of them. Therefore, in addition to deciding what I am I decide what human beings are and I take on responsibility for all humanity. He says,

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.⁴

Sartre is not asserting that we must consider the best interests of others in our choices; however he is insisting that we accept responsibility for the implications of our choices. Thus, if I choose to marry, then I am announcing that marriage is good for everyone—since, in defining my own image, I am also defining the image of humanity generally.

Anguish

We cannot accept the crushing weight of all our responsibility without experiencing anguish, according to Sartre; but we cannot avoid the responsibility either. Indeed, the experience of anguish (or of dread for Kierkegaard or of suffering for Nietzsche) is fundamental for existentialists. They are not simply rugged individualists who go their own way. The agonizing is essential to the existentialist style of life.

Controversies: Some Objections and Possible Replies

(1) Contra Sartre

Because of our biological nature and the effects of environmental conditions, we are something more than what our choices makes us. Hence our choices do not lead to our being totally responsible for what we are, as Sartre claims. Moreover, his exaggerated sense of responsibility is nowhere more evident than in his assertion that we take responsibility for all humanity when we make a choice. To say that a decision to marry makes some sort of statement for all humanity is wholly unconvincing.

A Possible Reply: Human beings create human nature by the choices they make. Once we grant this fact, we recognize that we do not choose simply for ourselves personally. Any account of human nature must consider our choices, because it is our choices that define human nature. Hence, in choosing to marry, I am also choosing to define human nature in a certain way. Therefore, in choosing, I take on responsibility for all humanity, in addition to responsibility for myself.

(2) Existentialism As a Distortion of Human Experience

Aside from their improper rejection of reason, the existentialists distort human experience by turning the whole of life into a series of continuing “existential crises” calling for intense, passionate commitments. In actuality, there is usually a normal pattern of living based upon habit and social conformity that is quite adequate for the overwhelming majority of people. So the dramatic over exaggeration of so many aspects of life by the existentialists is unnecessary and irrelevant.

A Possible Reply: That “normal pattern of living based upon habit and social conformity” that is supposedly “quite adequate,” referred to in the objection, happens to be the most destructive force in modern life. It leads to mediocrity, spiritual emptiness, and deception. It acts as a narcotic that erases from consciousness the reality of the human condition. In insisting upon seriousness in the matter of choices and upon the need for intense, personal commitments, existentialists are facing up to, not distorting, the realities of human experience.

(3) Subjective Commitment As a Misrepesentation

The stress upon subjective commitment by existentialists results from the failure of lonely, alienated individuals to recognize and appreciate the influence of social conditions upon our attitudes and choices. First, these conditions mold attitudes and choices so that subjective commitments are not as free as existentialists would have us believe. Secondly, the molding of attitudes and choices through social conditions—to the extent that it trains people in good habits and fosters constructive social cooperation—is necessary for the betterment of all people in a society. The fact that social conditions sometimes lead to disastrous consequences only shows the need for change; it does not point out the need for elimination of their influence.

A Possible Reply: Existentialists recognize and appreciate all too well the influence of social conditions upon our attitudes and choices: They are protesting against mistaken attempts to interpret this currently prevalent state of affairs as an unalterable fact. Human beings need not be controlled by social influences; instead they need to be aware of the self-determining powers within them. If this awareness occurs in, or leads to, a state of loneliness and alienation, such a state is not a sign of failure. Rather it signifies realization of the need for subjectivity, personal commitment, as a starting-point for action.

Thought Excursions

Existentialism and Pessimism

... what we are accused of, at bottom, is not our pessimism, but an optimistic toughness.

Jean Paul Sartre, Existentialism Is a Humanism

Anguish, dread, suffering, self-deception, boredom, despair, mediocrity, nausea, the absurd, meaninglessness—these are the experiences often at the heart of existentialists' concern. For some persons, this concern exhibits a morbid preoccupation with whatever is unpleasant and a profound pessimism about life.

As the above quoted passage from Sartre shows however, existentialists reject the allegations. There is nothing morbid about a concern with the unpleasant, when the experiences illuminate the reality of our situation. Furthermore, pessimism is not a goal to be realized but rather a state to be transcended through our own individual choice.

Nietzsche's message is not merely a pronouncement of the mediocrity of the masses so that they curse and bemoan their condition. It is much more an arrow pointing in the direction of growth and development. He couples the message though with a firm insistence upon the necessity for risks, failure, and decay in the process. No pessimism resides in this recognition of a necessary price to pay—provided that we choose to go forward, and not to stand still in fear.

Likewise, Kierkegaard does not dwell on dread, boredom, despair, and the absurd to promote pessimism. Rather he uses these experiences to dispel illusions in the aesthetic and ethical stages of life and to initiate an awareness of the religious stage. Most people—including most so-called “Christians” and the Christian clergy—live spiritlessly or they live comfortably within the aesthetic stage, according to Kierkegaard. Recognizing their condition, however, is a starting-point on the path to religious commitment rather than a pessimistic conclusion.

For Sartre, the optimism of the existentialist follows from the assertion that human beings can be anything they choose to become. To be sure, some people turn out to be weak and cowardly; but that is their choice, and hence their responsibility. No inherent nature or set of environmental circumstances condemns a person to become or to remain a coward. We are what we choose to be; and we choose at every instant. There are no limits on human possibilities. What position can be more optimistic? Yet it is a stern, or tough-minded, optimism. We cannot make excuses or evade responsibility for our choices. Thus, if we are dissatisfied with what our choices made us, we have no one to blame but ourselves.

Further Thought: Suppose a person argues that existentialism, no matter how impressive its intentions, still fails to escape pessimism because the majority of people will not make the sort of choices or commitments that Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, and Sartre are advocating. In other words, existentialism leads to optimism for the few and pessimism for and about the many. What do you think?

3.63 Think about Sartre's conceptions of responsibility and self-deception. Would you agree that “most people constantly try to avoid responsibility for their choices”? Or is it fairer to say that they take responsibility for choices when they like the consequences and evade responsibility for choices when they dislike the consequences? If the latter, would this refute what Sartre says? Can you give some examples, other than those mentioned here, of self-deception or bad faith? If you think that Sartre exaggerates the problem of self-deception, explain why.

Sources

Footnotes

1. Jean Paul Sartre, Existentialism and Human Emotions (New York: Philosophical Library, 1957), p. 51.

2. Ibid., pp. 20-21.

3. See Sartre, Being and Nothingness (New York: Philosophical Library, 1956), pp. 59-60.

4. Sartre, Existentialism and Human Emotions, op. cit, pp. 17-18.

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