{"id":3540,"date":"2015-08-16T12:41:46","date_gmt":"2015-08-16T17:41:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/tomzampino\/?p=3540"},"modified":"2015-08-19T19:54:33","modified_gmt":"2015-08-20T00:54:33","slug":"hell-is-other-people-or-where-bishop-elect-barron-and-jean-paul-sartre-intersect","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tomzampino\/2015\/08\/hell-is-other-people-or-where-bishop-elect-barron-and-jean-paul-sartre-intersect\/","title":{"rendered":"“Hell Is Other People” – Or, Where Bishop-Elect Barron And Jean-Paul Sartre Intersect"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

$\"\"$ <\/p>\n

Like most of you, back in either high school or college, I was assigned to read Jean-Paul Sartre\u2019s No Exit<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

Sartre\u2019s works were, of course,\u00a0used as a basic introduction\u00a0to existentialism<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

Not having spent much additional time in the study of philosophy beyond that, I for one would be hard pressed to impart even a basic working knowledge of what existentialism actually\u00a0entails \u2013 beyond, that is,\u00a0what I might be able to dig up after some quick Google research (which, by the way, can be a pretty effective\u00a0tool of learning).<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, if there is one take away from No Exit<\/em> that we are still likely to remember it\u2019s Sartre\u2019s infamous, condemning observation that<\/p>\n

\n
\u201cHell\u201d is other people<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
I\u00a0recently ran across two different resources which, at first blush, might seem as if they would have nothing at all philosophically in common with one another.<\/p>\n
But, bear with me, I believe that they do intersect.<\/p>\n
The first is this video by Bishop-Elect Robert Barron on why a supposedly\u00a0all-good, all loving God would condemn people to hell:<\/p>\n<\/iframe>\nThe second is this\u00a0blog post dissecting the meaning of Sartre\u2019s famous\u00a0line, mentioned above, and\u00a0entitled <a href=\"http:\/\/rickontheater.blogspot.com\/2010\/07\/most-famous-thing-jean-paul-sartre.html\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">The Most Famous Thing Jean-Paul Sartre Never Said<\/em><\/a>, written by Kirk Woodward.<\/p>\nLet\u2019s start with Woodward.<\/p>\nHere\u2019s what\u00a0Woodward quoted from a talk given by Sartre himself in 1965:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\u201cHell is other people\u201d has always been misunderstood. It has been thought that what I meant by that was that our relations with other people are always poisoned, that they are invariably hellish relations. But what I really mean is something totally different. I mean that if relations with someone else are twisted, vitiated, then that other person can only be hell. Why? Because. . . when we think about ourselves, when we try to know ourselves . . . we use the knowledge of us which other people already have. We judge ourselves with the means other people have and have given us for judging ourselves.<\/p>\nInto whatever I say about myself someone else\u2019s judgment always enters. Into whatever I feel within myself someone else\u2019s judgment enters. . . . But that does not at all mean that one cannot have relations with other people. It simply brings out the capital importance of all other people for each one of us.<\/p><\/blockquote>\nWoodward then\u00a0observed that<\/p>\n<blockquote>The Other<\/em>, Sartre says in the quotation, is that by which we define ourselves, and the punishment of his three characters is that they will only ever be able to define themselves through the distorting mirrors of other people who reflect them badly, while at the same time they see themselves reflected badly in others as well.<\/p><\/blockquote>\nWoodward then developed his theme:<\/p>\n<blockquote>Sartre does not really play with traditional ideas about why people might go to hell. There are perfectly good reasons for these people to be there . . .<\/p>\nBut Sartre makes it clear that actions alone are not the only reasons the characters of the play find themselves in hell. They are damned in their essences. . . . But there is even a further element in Sartre\u2019s presentation of hell, one that makes its presence felt at the very beginning of the play \u2013 in the set design . . .\u00a0The furniture echoes the dialogue \u2013 it feels superficial even when it is ornate.<\/p><\/blockquote>\nAnd then he drove his point home:<\/p>\n<blockquote>In other words, the characters are in hell because they are trivial, pretentious people. This is Sartre\u2019s satiric point: they are in hell because they are petty-bourgeois.<\/p>\nTheir concern for the world goes only as far as the extent to which the world services their needs.<\/p>\nWhen it doesn\u2019t adequately cater to their desires, they blame the world and the people in it \u2013 that is, they say that \u201chell is other people.\u201d<\/p>\nAu contraire<\/em>, the people in No Exit<\/em> are in hell because they themselves made the decisions that put them there<\/strong>. [Emphasis added]<\/p><\/blockquote>\nThese characters \u2013 like us \u2013 have free will. And they\u00a0alone\u00a0have made a final and definitive choice, one for which they\u00a0remain totally responsible.<\/p>\nAnd God is nowhere in this picture:<\/p>\n<blockquote>In blaming \u201cother people\u201d the characters in the play, Sartre says, are pointing fingers in the wrong direction. Why should the world be responsible for the actions of any of us?<\/p>\nWho should I blame for what I am except myself?<\/p><\/blockquote>\nNow, let\u2019s quickly cut back to\u00a0Bishop-Elect Barron.<\/p>\nBarron explains that the biblical depictions of hell <\/em>necessarily flow from two doctrines that most of us would be loathe to deny:<\/p>\nFirst, God is <\/em>love.<\/p>\nNot that he has love, or that he gives love.<\/p>\nBut that he is<\/em> love.<\/p>\nSecond, humans have been given the gift of free will. Once you recognize that, you have to acknowledge the possibility of the abuse of that freedom. That is\u00a0the nature of freedom.<\/p>\nBut you cannot, says Bishop-Elect Barron, conceptually hold on to these last two\u00a0precepts\u00a0without<\/em> also holding\u00a0out\u00a0the possibility of hell<\/em>. For we are always free to say yes \u2013 or no \u2013 to our deepest eternal purpose, to our best selves, to God.<\/p>\nOur\u00a0no<\/em> would mean that we have paid greatest heed to our deepest earthly desires \u2013 desires which\u00a0may well resist or reject the things of\u00a0God.<\/p>\nThat resistance, through our freedom to choose,\u00a0can lead to\u00a0suffering, to torment, and \u2013 theologically speaking \u2013 to something that we might\u00a0well describe as an\u00a0everlasting fire<\/em>, forever aflame in our souls.<\/p>\nBarron put it this way:<\/p>\n<blockquote>Hell would be that final and definitive NO! <\/em>to God\u2019s love uttered from the depth\u00a0of one\u2019s soul.<\/p><\/blockquote>\nBarron rejects\u00a0the notion that God sends<\/em> or condemns<\/em> anyone to hell merely because of their earthly mistakes, or because God is a vengeful, spiteful, harsh, exacting, source of power.<\/p>\nNo, people send themselves off\u00a0into this state by their own definitive and final\u00a0refusal<\/em> to accept God\u2019s eternal and divine love.<\/p>\nQuoting C.S. Lewis, Barron concludes that the door to hell is always locked from the inside. <\/em>The door, in other words,\u00a0has been locked by us and we\u00a0were given\u00a0the key<\/em>!<\/p>\nWe\u00a0cast\u00a0ourselves in, away from divine love.<\/p>\nAnd it is by our own choice, not His.<\/p>\nBarron makes one final, very important point (which has sometimes been misinterpreted): the Church does not oblige <\/em>us\u00a0to believe that anyone is actually in hell at this moment<\/em>.<\/p>\nWe just don\u2019t know. Not yet anyway.<\/p>\nBut if anyone is<\/em> there, it\u2019s because of their own insistence <\/em>on being there.<\/p>\nNow, as Woodward observed about Sartre above<\/em> (in a somewhat parallel consideration):<\/p>\n<blockquote>Why should the world be responsible for the actions of any of us?<\/p>\nWho should I blame for what I am except myself?<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\nFreedom, in both world-views, is\u00a0the potential source of our greatest happiness, as well our\u00a0own worst self-condemnation.<\/p>\nUltimately, whether one places one\u2019s trust fully in God, or in one\u2019s own earthly desires and prowess, freedom in the here and now may well one day\u00a0deliver us to\u00a0a place, measured back to us, by the definitive\u00a0paths that we have\u00a0chosen here.<\/p>\nPerhaps something to keep in mind as we start each day anew.<\/p>\nPeace<\/p>\nUPDATE<\/b>: LarryD at Acts of the Apostasy<\/i> has much more <a href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/actsoftheapostasy\/2015\/08\/19\/bishop-elect-barrons-reasonable-hope-isnt-unreasonable-at-all\/\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>\u00a0concerning Bishop-Elect Barron\u2019s \u201cReasonable Hope\u201d that hell is actually empty. Don\u2019t miss it!<\/p>\nImage Credit: Wikimedia Commons, <a href=\"https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/File:John_Martin_002.jpg\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">Fallen Angels In Hell<\/i><\/span><\/a>, Public Domain<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Like most of you, back in either high school or college, I was assigned to read Jean-Paul Sartre\u2019s No Exit. Sartre\u2019s works were, of course,\u00a0used as a basic introduction\u00a0to existentialism. Not having spent much additional time in the study of philosophy beyond that, I for one would be hard pressed to impart even a basic […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1976,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3540","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n<title>"Hell Is Other People" - Or, Where Bishop-Elect Barron And Jean-Paul Sartre Intersect<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Like most of you, back in either high school or college, I was assigned to read Jean-Paul Sartre's No Exit. 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