Tag: Sartre

Some brief thoughts on “bad faith”

On By BrettIn Philosophy4 Comments

A quick post for today. I’ve been working on a longer one, but I wanted to do some edits, and I have to run some errands this morning. Expect it later in the week. I hope the holidays have been good to everyone and that the new year is shaping up as it nears.

Lately I’ve been reading a lot of Existentialism, researching for a paper I hope to write examining the existential elements in O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh, especially as they connect to Jean-Paul Sartre’s unique brand of it.

One particular tension that has always struck me, which Sartre stresses, is the limited nature of “facticity” and the perceived limitless horizon of the “transcendent.” Facticity captures the “in-itself” nature of something, and is connected with objects. So a particular table could be wooden in itself, three feet tall, made by Stickley Furniture, etc. These are largely fixed properties and therefore limiting.

Transcendence covers the “for-itself” nature of the subjective: the comprehensive range of possibilities, hopes, plans, dreams, and perceptions individual people have. These do change. Constantly. They push and prod us into action, then shift as the action shapes us.

Sartre always stressed the tension between these two ideas as “bad faith.” Sometimes people try to be objects, limiting their transcendence. Sartre gives the example of the waiter who wants to be known only as a waiter, but he has a whole life beyond this. Other times we try to escape our facticity–like our past actions. These are fixed qualities that affect who we are and how others see us. I am a white male.

To me, this tension is a really interesting thing to puzzle over. How am I limited? How am I limiting myself?

Cheers.

“I Am”: A sense of self

On By BrettIn History, Philosophy, Politics, Pop culture4 Comments
Image courtesy of Forbes.com
Image courtesy of Forbes.com

In 1841 a little-known English poet escaped an asylum and wandered back to his childhood home in the farmland of Northamtonshire, convinced that he was married to a woman who had died three years earlier.

The poet, John Clare, said that separation from his childhood home–its fields, cottages, and the small taverns where he worked–had made him increasingly alienated from his own self. His later poems reflect his fixation. In one he claims that he was once Shelly and Lord Byron. In his most famous one, “I Am,” he reflects on his isolation:

I am—yet what I am none cares or knows;

My friends forsake me like a memory lost:

I am the self-consumer of my woes—

They rise and vanish in oblivious host,

Like shadows in love’s frenzied stifled throes

And yet I am, and live—like vapours tossed.

Isolated and unknown, Clare clings to the few activities, memories, and passions that adhere to his fragmented self. This raises an important question: Who is this “I Am” Clare speaks of, separated from his roots? Who is an I? What is a self?

Continue reading ““I Am”: A sense of self” →

Option overload

On By BrettIn Philosophy, Uncategorized4 Comments

Standing in the tea aisle of my local Wegmans, my heart pounded and my head froze. Too many choicesThe prim, brightly colored canisters and shiny, cellophaned boxes stared at me, rows of them, emblazoned with brand names, alleged health benefits, and flavors. Some were fair trade, some were organic. Others were just cheap.

I didn’t know what to do.

In the end, I picked a compromise of price and quality. The anxiety seems crazy. And, as my dad quipped when I mentioned the issue, it’s better to have too many choices than none at all. True. But option overload has become an increased problem in the West.

As absurd as it sounds, too many choices can be a bad thing.

Continue reading “Option overload” →

Dreyfus and Magee: Phenonomology and Existentialism

On By BrettIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

This week, I’ve been watching these 1980s videos with BBC host, author, and thinker Bryan Magee.

Each one is five parts, coming in at about 45 minutes, and is a great watch. Magee does a good job putting difficult concepts into fairly ordinary language and summarizing things.

I’ve uploaded one on phenomenology and existential philosophy, although most of it deals with Heidegger.

All of the videos are good. You get to see articulate, intelligent people discuss dynamic topics with extremely tallow-colored backgrounds! (What could be better than that?)Enjoy!