PHILOSOPHY - Sartre SARTRE ON: Bad Faith

Existentialism

A philosophy based on the idea that people give meaning to their lives through their choices and actions

Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980)

French existentialist most famous for his statement that "existence precedes essence"-i.e., first we exist and then our decisions and choices shape our character or essence.

Why did Sartre have a lifelong interest in Marxism

He knew that the one factor that most discourages people from experiencing themselves as free is money. He thought of capitalism as a giant machine designed to create a sense of necessity which doesn't in fact exist in reality: it makes us tell ourselves we have to work a certain number of hours, buy a particular product or service, and so on.

Being and Nothingness

Jean-Paul Sartre's philosophical work which argues that an individual's existence precedes his essence. - Sartre argues that nothingness cannot exist independently from an existing whole because it must be thought into existence by the mind. - consciousness cannot exist on its own. It needs to be aware of objects in order to exist, a state called intentionality.

Sartre spent most of his life in ________________, where he often went to ___________ on the Left Bank.

Paris / cafes

Nausea

Sartre's first novel, published in 1938, which is full of evocations of such moments when the world reveals itself as far stranger and more uncanny than we normally admit; moments when the logic we ascribe to it day-to-day becomes unavailable, showing things to be highly contingent and even absurd and frightening.

BAD FAITH

Sartre's term for when we deny our freedom and our responsibility for who we are

strabismus

abnormal deviation of the eye

Why does Sartre want us to have those strange moments where we notice the 'absurdity of the world'

because of their liberating dimensions; Things don't have to be quite the way they are; Humans are just making it up as they go along, and are free to cast aside the shackles at any moment.

Why did the FBI kept a large file on Sartre

for his radical politics, and that he visited Fidel Castro and Che Guevara and admired them both deeply.

Negative Ecstasy

scary, almost sickening moments when we realize that we are in fact far more free than we ever say we are and we have to acknowledge that we may be wasting our lives and that in the end this is our own fault

the 'absurdity of the world'

strip away the surface normality to show the radical strangeness lurking beneath.