I have never discussed philosophy on a board before. I have been hesitant for varied reasons. But I will give your collective intellects a try.
I was perusing ‘being and nothingness’ and was a disturbed by an aspect. Sartre seems to express that it is our responsibility to avoid bad faith. More than that, he seems to imply that it would be immoral not to do so. This seems highly against his phenomenological roots. I can understand good faith and the resulting transcendence is preferable, but can Sartre defend the assertion that it is one’s imperative?
for those who haven’t read it recently,I’ll describe his apparent argument briefly(from his essay in defense of existentialism and being and nothingness:
- Existence precedes essence. We decide what the ‘form’ of human nature is through the acts we commit. Anything we do is what we think is ‘good’ in every action we choose how we feel human nature should be.
- Since creating the objective form of human nature is an evolving process; when we do an action, we in part define the universal. So any action we do is an action chosen for all of man.( almost kantean)
- Bad faith results in one keeping his facticity static. This is done by the individual deluding themselves into thinking they have no choice but to be something. For example, a coward who convinces himself that he was born a coward so he cannot be anything but one. He deceives himself into believing that he was born this way because it lifts any responsibility from him(otherwise being a coward would be his fault). But this limits his potential transcendence (he can never be a 'hero).
- since they are allowing their choices to be dominated by false observations of their facticity, they are limiting their transcendence (their ability to become more than themselves).
From this he draws that holding bad faith is bad considering it limits your transcendence and on top of this threatens to do this for all of mankind. But can he prove that limiting one’s transcendence is objectively bad? When a being does this he is emulating an object. To say that doing so is bad implies that either being an object is bad or the methodology to do so is. The former seems ludicrous, it would be like calling a rock immoral. The latter is juvenile, lying is bad… Great work Sartre, want a cookie?!
Can anyone defend Sartre’s assertion that bad faith is BAD. Or do you think it was simply his preference. That he was being true to his existentialism essay and simply turning his preference into the universal, by the action of writing.