Essay 3, Page 505 question 5

In this essay I will discuss the concepts of complete responsibility and bad faith as defined by the principals of Sartre. I will also discuss if I agree with his thoughts. In addition I will debate if I think if a person should always be held accountable for their actions. I will also give some examples that I think will help to illustrate my thoughts and feelings on Sartre’s ideas on complete responsibility and bad faith.

Let’s first begin with an explanation of the concept of living in bad faith. I interpret this as a term used by Sartre to describe how we live our lives in an existentialist world without taking the responsibility of our own actions. When I say an existentialist world, this needs some explanation. It is meant as how Sartre describes how we find our self in the world. We are born without any essence (given by God) and we are only born as human being with existence at first. But without any essence, this means we are entirely free, free to act as we wishes, and free to make our own choices. This again means that we must take responsibility for our own actions, for our own choices in life. And this is where bad faith fits in. If you don’t take this responsibility, the responsibility of facing your own actions and yourself in life, you are living in bad faith Sartre is convinced that human responsibility makes sense only if there is no God; otherwise divine foreknowledge and predestination necessarily exclude alternative options and consequently responsibility. The example of bad faith that Sartre gives is the woman on the first date with a man. He said “Take the example of a woman who has consented to go out with a particular man for the first time. She knows very well the intentions which the man who is speaking to her cherishes regarding her.” … “If he says to her, ‘I find you so attractive!’ she disarms this phrase of its sexual background.” ” (Rosenstand 497)

A modern day example of bad faith is a Christian that preaches good morals and says only God is to judge others, than goes and says gays are going to burn in hell or if you join another faith you will burn in hell because Christianity is the right religion. They get so caught up in what they think is right or what they were raised on that the truth become masked.

Complete responsibility is what we choose, act, and take responsibility for everything, and thus we live, and exist. Life cannot be anything until it is lived, but each individual must make sense of it. The value of life is nothing else but the sense each person fashions into it. To argue that we are the victims of fate, of mysterious forces within us, of some grand passion, or heredity, is to be guilty of bad faith. Sartre says that we can overcome the adversity presented by our facticity, a term he designs to represent the external factors that we have no control over, such as the details of our birth, our race, and so on, by inserting nothingness into it. The way that Sartre described complete responsibility was “I am responsible for everything except for my very responsibility, for I am not the foundation of my being. Therefore everything takes place as if I were compelled to be responsible. I am abandoned in the world in the sense that I find myself suddenly alone and without help, engaged in a world for which I bear the whole responsibility without being able, whatever I do, to tear myself away from this responsibility for an instant.” (Rosenstand 496) In order to act with compete responsibility one must have angst when making a decision. The concept of complete responsibility can also be called authenticity. In order to have complete responsibility or authenticity one must experience angst.

Angst is a profound and deep-seated condition of insecurity and fear in the free human being and general frustration associated with the conflict between actual responsibilities to self, one's principles, and others. It is generally held to be a negative feeling arising from the experience of human freedom and responsibility. It relates both to the inherent insecurity about the consequences of one's actions, and to the fact that, in experiencing one's freedom as angst, one also realizes that one will be fully responsible for these consequences. Not every choice is perceived as having dreadful possible consequence), but that doesn't change the fact that freedom remains a condition of every action.

A modern example of complete responsibility is a person choosing what to major in when they go to college. If their father wants them to major in Computer and Information Sciences because that is what they majored in college and they choose art history because that is what they love. That student has made an authentic choice in his life. He choose to use his freedom to make that choice and was aware that there might be consequences from his father if did not listen to him.

I agree with Sartre that people are responsible for their own actions. Of course, whether you like it or not, the problem's that we rarely use our freedom for real. Consider how many times a day you do really 'arbitrary' things. You voluntarily eat chocolate - but isn't it the desire that's making you eat it? You go to work - do you really do it voluntarily? Real, pure freedom means you do things without any sense - because if there's a reason for doing them this very reason is enslaving you and making you do things you wouldn't do otherwise! That's why freedom is so unusual while being the most natural human trait. I find that people have a tendency to reduce themself to "things" such as social roles and categories. Human beings have a tendency to "objectify" themselves. Whenever you put a label on yourself ("student," "father," "brother," etc.), you are defining who you are and are taking away from your other possibilities. That is, at any given moment you are always *more* than any label you can put on yourself. For Sartre, the individual exists in "bad faith" when it "lies to itself" by reducing itself to a social role or category.

The question, and main problem many people have with existentialism, is how we can draw a line between “having a choice” and “having no choice”. Many situations people find themselves in still have a choice, but one choice is so impossible for a person to make that we can hardly classify it as a live option. For example, the classic situation where a man would have to do something or his family would be killed. Sartre would, in his black and white view of the world, say that there is still a choice. But to me, a choice can only be a choice if it is live to us. Something that threatens a part of our life that is so close to our hearts that we could not exist without it is not a real choice, it is an impossible option set out by existentialists to support that we have a choice and must make a decision. The decision is already made for us when it is about something like family, or our own wellbeing; we are forced into these decisions because they are so entrenched into our being that we cannot decide against them. We are not defining ourselves in these decisions, because the answer is essentially forced upon us.

So in conclusion if you don’t take responsibility, the responsibility of facing your own actions and yourself in life, you are living in bad faith. The concept complete responsibility is we choose, act, and take responsibility for everything, and thus we live, and exist. Sartre thought we are completely free to do whatever we want to, and that there is no excuse not to. He believed that it is always possible to choose to do otherwise (even if it meant your death) and so you could not deny that you had freely chosen something. Therefore we are all totally responsible for every decision we make. I believe Sartre summed up best when he said “Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does.” (Rosenstand 513) In order to become an authentic, existential being, one must experience both bad faith and angst.