In the last couple of weeks we have looked at different perspectives or ideas of what human nature is.
We have seen that the Rationalists believe that man is essentially a creature of logic and reasoning. Everything he is, does and how he functions is a result of his reason. He is able to survive, for the Rationalist purely because of his ability to work things out. For a Rationalist, if you think about it – reality itself is logical and things follow a rational, logical ordering. Every person is able to see and experience this rational, logical ordering and every person himself negotiates the rational ,logical world with the same kind of inner rational, logical processing. For a rationalist – in order to live an happy and fulfilled life man must follow and act on his reason. If man didn’t have reason he would not be able to live well. For, as Plato believes, within man exists two very strong parts – an appetitive part and a spirit part. Had we not have had reason as the controller of these two parts – we would not be able to survive – if the appetitive part was not checked by reason – it would lead to unlimited greed, indulgence and that could ultimately lead to death. For example Goldfish sometimes eat themselves to death. Goldfish do not have reason, so you can only feed them how much they are supposed to eat, if you put more fish food in your fish tank than they are supposed to eat, they will just continue eating until they eat so much that they die. They do not have the ability to think, to reason that they have had enough fish food for that particular setting so they just continue eating until they die from over eating. If the spirited part of man is unchecked – it might lead to extreme foolhardiness and recklessness and that might ultimately lead to death. If a person is too brave, he might do reckless things that cause his death. Everybody is brave and courageous to a degree but a fool without reason will act in a way that disregards rational sense. For example it might be a brave thing to run into a burning building to save a stranger if you have the right skills and knowledge of how to get you and the stranger out safely But it is a foolish and reckless thing to do to just run into a burning building just to be be brave. It is reason that helps you decide that running into a burning building is not amenable to your personal survival.
We have seen that the Christian or Religious Philosophers believe that man is essentially a creature of God. For a Christian Philosopher, man has an inner, burning desire to be in a relationship with his maker. And in a similar way that a child wishes always to please its parent, man always has a desire to please his maker. So whatever man does is in effect, a way to facilitate a harmonious relationship with his maker. For a Christian Philosopher, in order to live a happy life, man must be in a good relationship with his maker.
We have seen Freud’s perspective on Human Nature – that man is a product of the influence of his unconscious mind. Man’s quirky neurotic behaviour can be explained by the effect of his unconscious mind.
Now we move onto a different perspective of human nature – the EXISTENTIALIST perspective.
As we see above for the three different ideas there seems to be some kind of restriction on how man is. For the Rationalist it is reason that keeps us from being truly free, for the Christian it is the need to be in a harmonious relationship with God that keeps us from being truly free. For Freud it is the workings of the conscious, preconscious and unconscious mind that keeps us from being truly free.
For an existentialist man is ultimately free in all respects, there are no true limits to a persons ultimate freedom.
An existentialist believes that man is always, and without any limits free to make decisions and choices and directs their lives towards their own goals. Man cannot escape this freedom even in circumstances where the external influences (what the Existentialists call “facticity”) seemingly limit the person. For example – even under Apartheid, the people being oppressed were ultimately free to choose whether to accept their circumstances and surrender to their disempowered status, or to resist their circumstances in a non-violent way, or to resist their circumstances by counter-attack. The outcome of such resistance might not have been favourable to the individual – but it didn’t change the fact that ultimately the individual was free to make the choice of whether to resist or not to resist and accept the responsibility or live with the consequential outcome of his choices.
In other words, Existentialists argue that despite the facticity of external circumstances – man is always free to make his own choices about how he is going to approach his circumstance. Facticity can only limit a person in terms of the external circumstances but it cannot force a person to act one way or the other. Man always has that freedom of choice.
However, it also implies that man always chooses in a kind of pain. In Philosophical terms – we say that he chooses in anguish. We know that we must make a choice for ourselves and that choice will have consequences and we have to accept the consequences of our choice. When faced with the idea that we are that free and that we are responsible for every thought, every action, every choice we make – it becomes a very scary situation. It is such an enormous responsibility – that we - are at all times ultimately responsible for everything we do, everything that we are and how we react and behave is too much to handle. We have the freedom of choice in any situation regardless of the facticity of the circumstance.
One very famous Existential Philosopher called Jean-paul Sartre reacted to this kind of existential dilemma. Sartre argues that since this type of freedom is so much to handle, man uses a tactic called “Bad Faith “(Sartre wrote in French and the concept is sometimes referred to by it’s original French translation -“Mauvais foi” ) to get out of the responsibility that we are faced with in our ultimate freedom. Our ultimate freedom is painful, because everything we do is our own doing. We cannot hold anybody else responsible for our choices except ourselves. To respond to this overwhelming responsibility , Sartre says that man uses his freedom to pretend that there is no such freedom – this is what he calls “Bad Faith”.
Sartre uses the term “Bad Faith” to refer to any kind of “lie” we tell ourselves to pretend that ,that overwhelming freedom DOESN’T exist. For Sartre even things like believing in God, believing in Science or any other type of thing that we put our faith in is really an attempt to rationalise the choices we make for our existence. When we realise that our existence is nothing more than what we ourselves choose it to be, we are so scared of that fact that we have to deal with the consequences of our choices – that we tend to try to impose meaning on our existence so that we can shift responsibility.
So when Sartre used the phrase “bad faith,” it was to refer to any sort of self-deception which denied the existence of ultimate human freedom. “Bad Faith” is a little trick we use to avoid the anguish (pain) that comes with the realisation that we alone are truly responsible for everything in our own existence. For Sartre, bad faith occurs when someone tries to rationalize our existence or actions through religion, science, or some other belief system so that it assigns meaning or coherence, external from ourselves, on human existence.
“Thus, bad faith comes from within us and is itself a choice — a way that a person uses their freedom in order to avoid dealing with the consequences of that freedom because of the radial responsibility that those consequences entail. “ http://http://atheism.about.com/od/existentialistthemes/a/badfaith.htmFor instance – when we realise that things are completely out of our control, that we have the choice to either admit that we are in a bad situation and therefore have to make a decision that we either stay in the bad situation and deal with the pain it brings or make the decision to get out of the bad situation – me might tend to lie our to ourselves that we “leave it in Gods hands” to avoid the choice to either stay or leave. We have the freedom to make the choice ourselves, but the consequences might not be favourable in either of the choices – so to avoid the fact that we will be responsible for the choices and the resulting consequences – we might lie to ourselves, and believe our own lie – that the situations is under God’s control, in his hands and whatever happens – is “God’s choice” and not our own choice and therefore we do not have to deal with the pain of being personally responsible for that choice that we have made.
Or if a man chooses to act promiscuously, and sleep around and use as many women as he can to satisfy his own selfish desires without any commitment or regard for them, their feelings or their human worth. He might be frightened of the fact that it is ultimately himself that behaves with such selfish regard. It is only him who has made that choice, that he might be a bad person and that he is responsible for the pain that he causes to those women that he uses indiscriminately for his own pleasure. So to avoid that horrible realisation, and to make himself feel better he might lie to himself (act in Bad faith) that as a man he is biologically programmed to want and think about sex much more than women,that it is a physical trait and that therefore he cannot be held responsible for his ill-treatment of these women – because it is not his personal fault, it is the fault of nature!
Sartre gave us two examples of acting in “Bad Faith” - the first one is about a waiter who over exaggerates his role as a waiter to lie to himself that this is who he is, as opposed to who he is not. The way that the Waiter talks, the tone of voice that he uses, the way he carries the tray, the way he tries to please is all about him play-acting a role. Is he truly a waiter deep in his soul as his own authentic self ? No –it is just the choice that he made! Waiting on tables is a choice that he has made and so to make himself comfortable about the choice that he has made he over does his role as a waiter to lie to himself that this is who he is. He tells himself that all these things that he does that define him as a waiter.
The second example that Sartre gives us the example of a woman who has to make a choice about whether or not she wants to date a man who is romantically interested in her. He describes a situation where they meet at a restaurant. She is faced with a choice of whether she accepts his intentions and goes with it or to totally reject it. But she is not fully ready to make that choice. Thus may act in bad faith in her mind and behaviour, to put off the decision as long as possible.
She sits down and is talking with the man. He is making conversation to the effect that it is obvious that he is interested in her. She is not ready to make the choice of whether to accept this advance or not. So when he says something like “I find you so charming”, she ignores the sexual connotation of the statement and instead lies to herself that what he is referring to is her personality. You see she is still uncertain of whether or not she wants to embrace this intention of his or not.
She has to make a choice but she is not ready to do so yet. However, the flattery and attention that he is giving to her is intoxicating. It feels good that someone is paying so much attention to her, and her alone, out of all the other women. She is enjoying the fact that she has his attention, his flattery. BUT STILL, she is not sure that she wants to enter into a more explicit declaration of her intentions. She starts to act in bad faith and lies to herself that she is being charming and interesting and that he is interested in her intellectuality, what she has to say about life and her philosophical opinions. She does this so that she can still keep his attention (because she is enjoying that) and she doesn’t want to lose that attention. So she will not tell him that she is still not sure whether she is going to accept his intentions or not because she herself has not made that choice.
But she has to make herself feel better about the choice that she is making right now – which is not a really honourable choice – which is the choice of “playing him” or giving him the wrong idea that his attention to her is going to lead to something more amorous. The consequences of admitting that choice is a hard thing for her to admit to herself, this choice that she is making is not something that personally she can be proud of, because it would mean that she is giving him the man the wrong idea just so that she can prolong the sexual validation she is getting from him and that she wants to keep that for herself and not have it be redirected to any other woman. So what she does instead, to make herself feel better is that she acts in “Bad Faith”, she lies to herself that all she is doing is being polite and interesting and that he is responding to her great personality and interesting ideas, she pretends to herself not to acknowledge or be aware of his romantic intentions, she pretends to herself to be innocent and not aware of it by saying to herself that this is all just really good conversation. Although, deep down somewhere in her being she knows that that is not why he is paying attention to her, it is not about her intellect at all, he is paying attention to her because he wants it to lead to a romantic encounter.
She needs to make a choice of whether she is going to accept that and go with it or not – she does neither – she is enjoying his attention so she tells herself a lie (acts in Bad Faith) that he is interested in her engaging personality, that she is a fun person to talk to so that she can both keep his attention, and still not have to make the decision of whether to accept his advances or not.
Then the situation changes slightly, the man who feels that she is giving him all the favourable signals that she is amenable to his advance, reaches over and takes her hand in his. Now the intention of the man is more explicit, this gesture is very direct in terms of what he wishes for from her. The choice is upon her again to make a decision. Now what shall she do?
If she shows any acknowledgement of him taking her hand – for instance if she looks down at him holding her hand and then smiles at him, it becomes explicit that she accepts his romantic intentions and wants it to go down that route for herself as well. If she takes her hand away, it indicates to him that he has gotten the wrong idea and that she is not interested in his advances.
She wants to do neither. She still wants to keep his attention even though she is not entirely ready to commit to a decision and go with it. She wants to preserve the “harmony of the hour” – the state of pleasing and comfortable non-committal. So what does she do? Again she commits an act of “Bad Faith”, she decides to leave her hand there in his but in her mind she lies to herself that she does not realise that she is leaving it there in his. She pretends to herself that she is unaware of the gesture of his intention. It is almost as if she removes herself or distances herself from her hand. She doesn’t use her hand to return his gesture, she just leaves it lifeless. Her hand is no longer a part of her person. Furthermore, she becomes as Sartre writes:
all intellect, all personality, all consciousness, by speaking of "Life, her life," etc. (Being and Nothingness - pg97)”So, even though it does seem rationally impossible to lie our to selves – Sartre argues that life is not as rational as the Rationalists would like us to believe. It is rationally impossible to lie to ourselves because in order to lie, you must know the truth and purposefully tell an untrue thing. It is possible to lie to others but lying to your self seems rationally impossible – how can you tell yourself a lie, if you already know the truth? But as we have seen – Sartre says that lying is possible and that it happens all the time.
Sartre would reject the idea of man of both the Rationalists and the Christian Philosophers because as we saw earlier – he views the idea of religion, a way to escape from the responsibility and consequences of the choices we make.
Sartre would reject the Freudian Idea of the nature of man as being controlled by interactions of the conscious and unconscious mind because Sartre doesn’t believe that the Unconscious mind exists at all. For Sartre Anna “O”’s hysteria would be a result of “Bad Faith”. She lies to herself that she has all these symptoms because she wants to escape the reality of all the choices she is capable of making and being solely responsible for the outcome of those choices.
What do you think? Which Philosophical perspective on Human Nature do you agree with?
