Jean Paul Sartre question?

Sartre explains that, because of our condition, we are beholden to anguish, forlomess, and despair. Explain what Sartre means.





Im trying to understand this for my final exam. Please help.|||Oh I had my existentialism exam in this last Friday so it's fresh in my mind.





Okay, so Sartre believes we live in a God-less world, and we also lack any predetermined human nature. Any coherence we get from our lives comes directly from ourselves as man paints his own portrait in life and has no one to blame but himself. Or as Sartre himself says 'Man is nothing else but what he makes of himself'. We literally cannot place the blame at anyone else's door for how our lives turn out.





This very fact is pretty terrifying for people and is overwhelming and it can lead to feelings of aloneness and abandonment. When we have such feelings we feel anguish - this comes from realizing the full weight of our responsibilities and the consequences that arise from our choices. Despair comes from that fact that we (as agents of free choice) are open to chance - things that may affect our choices etc. Once we embrace this possibility of chance it lead to feelings of hopelessness and ultimately despair.





Now pair these two together and you get bad faith. Bad faith is any form of self-deception that leads to the denial of human freedom and responsibility. People live in bad faith in order to escape the above feelings and to deny their freedom and responsibility. A good example of this is someone who believes in God. This person will say that ultimately God controls what they do, their choices and their lives. But Sartre says this is the very essence of bad faith, as the person is denying their responsibility and is putting their choices into the hands of a higher power - even though God doesn't exist! Things that people subscribe to like religion, science or social standings are good example of bad faith as people are here denying their facticity or transcendence.





Facticity are the qualities experienced by the third party, ie, height, skin colour, weight, job role - but these things cannot define you as a person. Transcendence is the inner relationship we have to the world and can only be experienced by the individual, it's highly subjective. Bad faith comes from denying one or both of these things. Look up Sartre's 'woman seduced' or 'waiter' example for bad faith. The woman is identifying solely in her transcendence and is denying any facticity, but the waiter is denying his transcendence and identifying with his facticity.





Phew...I hope this helps a little bit. Email me if you need more, I got tons of this stuff!|||Sartre’s bad faith is a term used to describe an individual who denies their general state of existence as a being who can transcend his or her own facticity. Bad faith comes from a natural need to lie to ourselves in order to regulate our impulses however it only comes to be fully developed when we begin to believe in this lie.This self-deception does not run into the problems faced by Freud when he tries to explain how the conscious interacts with the unconscious parts. For example when I say “I am not a murderer so I will not do it” it is alright to believe in this reasoning but it is a mistake to buy into it any more than as a regulatory process rather than some hidden drive.



We are induced into bad faith commonly during what Sartre calls “the look” which is when we perceive ourselves as though through others eyes as our own "facticity". Once we begin to define ourselves by what we are in any absolute way we are denying an even more basic definition of ourselves that humans are always free to choose (or free to transcend this facticity). However this freedom is not the remedy for bad faith. transcendence can run in to problems as well when we place too much emphasis on our ability of transcendence. For instance if I admit that I have in the past always acted cowardly but I have the opportunity to change this fact tomorrow I am in bad faith because I am denying a basic understanding of myself. Only by knowing what you are can you begin to change yourself.



In the end Sartre wants people to recognize themselves as brave when they are brave but not to hold too strongly to this definition because you are never more courageous than you are cowardly at the moment of decision. Sartre concludes a balance must be sought between our transcendence and our facticity. Bad faith is a dis harmony between facticity and transcendence.



Although Sartre argues that man can find a balance it seems we are always either in a state of transcendence's bad faith or facticity's bad faith.....swaying between the two never finding that sweet spot.