Now, I like
Sartre, but I love de Beauvoir. She’s
incredibly articulate—probably my favorite author in the class. That’s not to say, however, that I think I
fully understand everything she says. There’s
nothing to do but to get cracking!
I keep
coming back to de Beauvoir’s passage on freedom (Solomon, 294), which we spent
quite some time on in class, because I am utterly convinced she
describes a “third way” besides futile action and empty resignation in response
to barrier or adversity. I just have
trouble really understanding her description. “[I]n order for my freedom not to risk coming
to grief against the obstacle which its very engagement has raised [see the
parallel to Sartre’s crag, which becomes an obstacle only when one engages in
with intent that it blocks], in order that it might still pursue its movement
in the face of the failure, it must, by giving itself a particular content, aim
by means of it at an end which is nothing else but precisely the free movement
of existence.” I’ll try to dissect this
statement to understand it better.
The “content”
to which de Beauvoir refers is particularity—“the particularity of the project
. . . determines the limitation of [the actor’s] power, but . . . also . . .
gives the project its content and permits it to be set up.” Obviously, a project must have some
particular context, aim, and method, which, in constituting the project in the
real world, give it meaning. An abstract
project—“to open doors,” for example—does nothing unless one applies it to the particular
doors one encounters. Cool! But that particularity, that content, must be
means, not an end in itself—otherwise its failure would invalidate the effort
and send the actor into despair. No, the
particularity must be means toward “the free movement of existence.” This is the crucial phrase, and I’m really
not sure what it means.
Maybe de
Beauvoir’s example will help. For her
version of Van Gogh, “painting was a personal way of life and of communication
with others which in another form could be continued even in an asylum.” This is important! The painting is a means to a certain way of
life, one which may be pursued through other means if painting is denied. Is this the “free movement of existence” to
which she refers? The pursuit of the
abstract project, whatever it may be, over emphasis on important, but
replaceable, means? It may be. That’s my best shot, honestly. I’d be interested to hear your reading.
Moving on
to Sartre, I’ll stick to my interpretation and maintain that “bad faith” isn’t bad, per se, nor is it truly evitable. The waiter cannot be a waiter in the same way
as a cup is a cup; doing is being, and the only way to be a waiter is to
wait. But the waiter has transcendent
potential beyond his present facticity, the present state of affairs; he has
agency and choice, whereas the cup will remain a cup until broken. In waiting, the waiter wears the self of “waiter”
like a glove, emphasizing the waiter’s qualities and identity over his own, and
so is he constructed essentially in the observer’s mind (for, as we discussed
last week, “essence” is a contingent, assigned, and incomplete reading of the
world, a mental construct encompassing some, but not all, qualities of a
posited thing). The waiter is in bad
faith, for he presents himself to himself and others as, is perceived as, and
is (for a time) essentially constructed as something less than his whole—that is,
a waiter. And no label or posited “essence,”
not even his name, can conjure up to himself or others the whole of his
potential: what he has been, can be, and
will be. Others’ ideas of him are
incomplete, whether their ideas are labeled “waiter,” “friend,” “son,” “father,”
or anything else; even his own self-concept can’t encompass his entirety. This is an artifact of a mind that can see and
deal with only parts of reality, organized and metaphorically represented in a posited,
simplified world that we perceive; I don’t see any way to avoid it, and so I
see no reason why it should be a problem.
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