Philosophy: Sartre, anguish, and bad faith

The one who realizes in anguish his condition as being thrown into a responsibility which extends to his very abandonment has no longer either remorse or regret or excuse; he is no longer anything but a freedom which perfectly reveals itself and whose being resides in this very revelation. But as we pointed out at the beginning of this work, most of the time we flee anguish in bad faith (Being and Nothingness, p.711).

Part of my (barely surviving) MA thesis in Philosophy examines Sartre’s understanding of the self or subjectivity. The above is also quoted in a paper I wrote for my class last year on that topic. I find in Sartre one of the most poetic and poignant critiques of Western dualism – and yet Sartre the man is hardly the exemplary figure of emancipation, freedom, and spontaneity.

The power of the very idea of realizing in anguish the fact that I am in a world which goes beyond my choosing, beyond my ability to escape, brings with it relief. Realizing this, accepting it, I become the freedom I always have been, between an unclear future and a similarly changing past. Yet, Sartre is probably all too correct to say that we flee anguish in bad faith. That is, we can’t handle our own freedom; we desperately seek to pin down a future or live in our past joys and accomplishments.

Perhaps my favorite part of Sartre’s work is his realization of the radical solution to bad faith: play.

Play, like Kierkegaard’s irony, releases subjectivity. What is play indeed if not an activity of which man is the first origin, for which man himself sets the rules, and which has no consequences except according to the rules posited? As soon as a man apprehends himself as free and wishes to use his freedom, a freedom, by the way, which could just as well be his anguish, then his activity is play (BN, p.741).

How can we make all of life a play? Is it in the smiling eyes of a lover gazing into your own? Is it in running like a child in nature, finding new worlds amongst the trees? Is it in deep meditation, when ego yields and openness reigns? Or the stillness of a sunset, and gazing upward in the night at eternity…

We have the power to set our own rules; to live the epics, the heroic tales and the romances within our hearts. Yet we too often flee to others, to institutions, to secure abodes, to rules set out for us. Sigh… Paint your life as a master portrait of infinity. Find colors bolder than the sun and softer than silk lace; find them within and share them with all.