bad faith
to be authentic is to be WHO YOU ARE, not who someone else tells you to be
in order to be authentic when WHO YOU ARE is not being authentic
you have to be other than WHO YOU ARE
—Did Sartre point this out? I feel like my existentialism professor did… but I missed it until now. If Sartre pointed this out, please give me a quote & reference.
False ideas about the self are very common in human cultures i think.
Parasitic power forms.
Indeed, Dan!
This is a wandering summary of where I am at. Nietzsche denied freedom of will because “Is a predator free to power”? Maybe by will he meant the id devoid of ego (understanding) or superego (reason)? In other words, a lack of judgment. Persons are devoid of neither (have degrees of both), and denying their reality is what led to Nietzsche’s break from it.
Sartre swoops in & says we are condemned… compelled… to be free. Nietzsche condemned himself in his denial.
It is within our capacity to choose or defy self=other. To defy it is bad faith (vicious). If it is in our character to defy it, defying our vicious character is not in bad faith–it is virtuous. To choose in alignment with self=other (the only good interpretation of “In choosing myself, I choose man” - Sartre) is virtue, virtuous.
Our raw material or tabula rasa comes with certain functions or capacities we can either bring to fruition or nip in the bud.
Messing with the raw material denatures (loses function) or fixes glitches not part of the original image (regains function). Not all losses are a loss, and not all gains are a gain. Although ought implies can… just because it works (you can)… doesn’t mean it (you) should.
Defacing the image of God with vice doesn’t change the fact that we are made in the image of God. Reverse engineering artificial intelligence is no different than having twins. Or singletons, for that matter. Singularities, if you will.
Death is … what?
If anything, the privation of life.
Other is also self… mutually productive simultaneity, no first … no negation.
All apparent negation/privation merely points back/forward to the evergreen whole.
Death is a mere pruning making way for full development toward a preset end we cooperatively bring to fruition.
When there is a conflict between one or more thoughts, one or more feelings, and/or one or more behaviors (or a conflict between thoughts, feelings, and/or behaviors), dissonance happens until the conflict is resolved or rationalized. If it is left unresolved or responsibility is rationalized away, Sartre calls this bad faith.
Is that dissonance in response to conflict innate or learned?
Nietzsche seems to suggest it is learned via punishment in “Genealogy of Morals,” Essay 2, section 14, at least as it concerns a guilty conscience. Feeling. Section 13 dealt with actions and meaning.
What say you/science/etc? Can dissonance be learned AND we have an innate capacity for it in response to these sorts of conflicts?
Perhaps cognitive dissonance is the way cognitive distortions or incongruities between thoughts, feelings, and behaviors make us feel—why paradigm shifts done too rapidly result in identity crises that feel like death, and make us wonder what wholeness we would be (or what would be left of us… our tabula rasa) if we were free of distortion and incongruity.
Lorikeet, I think it was you that I was talking to…you brought up something like Philosophy is about the way things are.
Take your tree example.
If one snapshot encompassed the whole tree, then there is no such thing as the seed that it used to be or the fruit that it will bear.
It’s like Meno_ said in the other thread.
It’s not a snapshot - it’s a motion picture.
When you say Philosophy is about the way things are, you have to take the whole movie into consideration…seed to fruit.
If you don’t, you’re going to be dealing with dissonance…death.
Regarding distortion and wholeness. In order to know you’re wrong (factually, whether about moral facts, or otherwise) you have to have an established baseline/mean from which to depart.
After you depart, you either regret it or appreciate it, and then you start evaluating the baseline and how you departed in order to see if there is some standard by which to judge one baseline better (more truthful, good, or beautiful) than the other. Departing is good if it is departing to the best baseline. … in a world of so many incongruent baselines.
Only someone who is free to depart from the best baseline, but always chooses it, is truly defined by/as the best baseline.
The C Theory of time makes good sense of coeternal crappy baselines subsumed (concurred—not affirmed) and contingent under the greatest baseline (necessary being… both 100% possible and 100% probable).
In “the humanism of existentialism” Sartre says (incongruently) both, “we can never choose evil. We always choose the good…” (p. 293).
and:
301, 351 352, 355
“he has made himself a coward by his acts” (301)
“my shame is a confession” (351)
“Shame—like pride—is the apprehension of myself as a nature although that very nature escapes me…“ (352)
“I am ashamed of being born or I am astonished at it or I rejoice over it, or in attempting to get rid of my life I affirm that I live and I assume this life is bad. Thus in a certain sense I choose being born,” (355).
Ref: Existentialism/ Basic Writings” 2nd Ed., ed. Guignon/Pereboom, Hackett, 2001.
Broken ways of resolving cognitive distortions, or ego defense mechanisms, amount to false faces. Bad faith. That is forgivable, or full authenticity is not obligated, when you are under severe persecution and in order to be authentic to as many receptive people as possible (with their consent-–especially if they are asking), you have to hide your pearls from those who would trample them underfoot and attack you into silence.
We can freely opt, with every chiseling–modifying—choice, to restructure our essence (which we messed up with choices that chiseled—defaced—it into something that defies self=other) back into resembling the essential (the original, eternal, demonstrated intention/essence) grounded in a God who always treats the Other as Self [exists his essence - is the “in-itself-for-itself,” (358, BAN) as Sartre would say]. This is what we do when we are choosing/acting in good faith, according to Christians. It is said Sartre eventually converted, or as I prefer to say playfully with Socrates, followed his beloved inquiry where it led him.
Ref: [BAN] Being and Nothingness (Sartre). Existentialism Basic Writings, Indianapolis/Cambridge: Charles Guignon and Derk Pereboom, Hackett Publishing Company, 2001.
Indeed, Dan!
This is a wandering summary of where I am at. Nietzsche denied freedom of will because “Is a predator free to power”? Maybe by will he meant the id devoid of ego (understanding) or superego (reason)? In other words, a lack of judgment. Persons are devoid of neither (have degrees of both), and denying their reality is what led to Nietzsche’s break from it.
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Ego, self, superego, can be beautiful creations,
but they are not 100% necessary.
Is ego important for self=other?
Loving other as self requires self-love as a key component in loving others.
Also I think love can help restrict and improve self.
Sounds foolish to me, but not without reason.
I think nature produces virtues in a wide variety of ways.
The virtues just aren’t strong enough.
Mere pruning? What about extinction level events?
What sounds foolish? Which sense of reason—the why… or the how?
What sense of nature? Too weak for what? I think it is that they require cooperation with nature (the original song/virtuoso producing capacities for virtue…for beings subject to Time) to be brought to fruition/overflow…evident in the singing, laughter, and dancing. Against such things there is no just (self=other) law.
Extinction in what sense? Response in thought, feeling, behavior — with or without possibility of restoration? End of biological life — with or without the possibility of resurrection? Either way, there is one who makes whole.