Introduction
Authenticity has long since been an important topic of discussion for existential philosophy, as the concept of authenticity brings various aspects of the research field together. On the one hand, authenticity deals with a subject’s authentic relation to oneself (one’s self) and so it is a relevant topic for theories of identity: by saying that someone is authentic we express that they are ‘who they are’. On the other hand, authenticity is something that is expressed in our relations to the world outside of this self, and in relation to the other people in this world, and as such is relevant to theories of intersubjectivity as well. Authenticity deals with questions of truth, or ‘true Being’, and by investigating authenticity it may also be possible to say
something about untruth, or inauthentic Being - as quite often the point at which authenticity becomes a topic of discussion is when we find something to be inauthentic. In this sense authenticity can have strong ontological connotations, but it may also be a word with which to describe situations or people in everyday life.
Due to the fact the word can be used in so many contexts, the meaning of the term ‘authenticity’ in the way that we usually use it has become a bit vague. What does it mean to be ‘who one is’? What does it mean to express what or who one is authentically?
In this thesis I would like to undo authenticity of its vagueness by taking a close look at what two of the greatest philosophers who have written on the subject have to say about it in their most important works: I will focus on authenticity in Martin Heidegger’s Being and
Time and Jean-Paul Sartre’s Being and Nothingness. I will compare the two author’s views
on authenticity, see if and where they can provide a solution to each other’s problems on the matter, and set out their views on two aspects that play an important role in both authors’ theories of authenticity, namely projects and language. In the chapter on projects I will lay emphasis on what it means to be authentic in relation to oneself, and in the chapter on language I will try to find out what both authors have to say about language as a means of authentic communication. Can language help us in becoming authentic, either in relation to ourselves, or in relation to the world around us? Does authenticity require intersubjectivity, or is ‘being oneself’ something that happens in solitude per se?
My thesis has four chapters. In chapter one I will discuss Heidegger’s conception of authenticity in Being in Time, the role of it in Heidegger’s theory of Being, and the most important problem his theory brings forward, which I will prove is a ‘problem of wholeness’. I will discuss what it means to live in Das Man (Heidegger’s view of inauthenticity), and I
will discuss the three everyday-modes of inauthenticity that belong to inauthentic Dasein: idle talk, curiosity and ambiguity. These three modes will return in the final chapter on language, as they are closely linked to Heidegger’s visions on (in)authentic language.
In chapter two I will take a look at Sartre’s ideas on authenticity in Being and
Nothingness. I will prove that Sartre does not need such a strong idea of ‘wholeness’ as
Heidegger does. In fact, his theory of authenticity is characterized by a lack of wholeness that is founded in Sartre’s idea of radical freedom and as such is able to provide an alternative vision on authenticity. His idea of radical freedom does bring forward another problem though, namely a problem of contingency.
In chapter three I will introduce projects. Projects, it will turn out, can form a solution to both Heidegger’s problem of wholeness and Sartre’s problem of contingency. I will prove this by using for instance Jonathan Webber’s views on projects and character in Sartre. Introducing a notion of character will give us insight into how projects and authenticity are linked to for-itself’s relation to other people. It is other people who are able to ascribe
character to us because we choose projects for ourselves. The fact that the projects we choose for ourselves influence the way other people see us is one way in which the look of the Other comes into play, which I will discuss more thoroughly in chapter four. At the same time, projects can give us something in the light of which to choose our actions. In order to be authentic for Sartre, we have to act according to the values we have chosen in freedom, but in order for our actions not to be random, we need projects as giving us something in the light of which to act. For Heidegger, authentic projects are chosen in resoluteness. I will argue that in resoluteness the existential-ontological structure of Dasein is laid bare, and that projects are able to adhere to the temporality of Dasein, yet at the same time with projects Dasein’s actions do not need to be placed in the light of its life as a whole.
In chapter four I will add a final aspect to the discussion of authenticity, namely language. I will discuss recent papers by (a.o.) Steve Martinot, Cristina Lafont, Michael Eng and Gavin Rae to prove that language is an important point of entrance when it comes to authenticity. The word ‘authenticity’ is usually used to describe that someone is who they ‘really’ are, meaning that they do not let other people influence them, but in this chapter I will prove that we need other people in order to become authentic. Without language,
authenticity would not be possible, and without other people, language would not be possible. There will turn out to be an important difference between Heidegger and Sartre’s theories of authenticity. Where for Sartre language as communication with other people is necessary in order to be authentic, for Heidegger language is that with which we point out our
Jemeinigkeit to ourselves, that with which we are finally able to escape Das Man. However,
for Heidegger, too, it is thanks to Dasein’s existence in a linguistic community that
authenticity is possible. In this chapter I will come back to the importance of the look of the Other, as it will be by transposing the look of the Other into for-itself that for-itself is able to become authentic, and I will give an extensive description of the place of reticence and the call of conscience in Heidegger’s Being and Time.
All in all, what want to show in this thesis, is that it is language that confronts us with who we are in our Being, that allows us then to become who we are, and express who we are to the outside world in an understandable and authentic manner. As language is something that takes place in community, the existence of and communication with other people is necessary for a person to become authentic. Projects play an important role in this, for without projects, there would be nothing to communicate, either to ourselves or to the world outside.
I Authenticity in Being and Time
In this chapter, I will discuss Martin Heidegger’s views on authenticity in his most important work, Being and Time1. Authenticity plays an important role in this book, as it is closely
linked to the main project of Being and Time, which is to investigate the Being of beings2. Throughout western philosophical history, Heidegger asserts, one very important question has been overlooked, namely what it means to be. Philosophers have questioned that what is, but never what it means to be for ‘that what is’. Heidegger starts his investigation by
questioning Dasein in its Being, as Dasein is a special kind of being, namely the only type of being that is able to have some understanding of (and reflect on) its own Being. Furthermore, by being-in-the-world Dasein always already has a vague pre-ontological understanding of what it means to be. This understanding of Dasein (pre-ontological or not) of itself will turn out to be a key-concept when it comes to authenticity.
Throughout this chapter it is important to note that Heidegger’s definition of authenticity is not the definition of a state of being, something which we can achieve once and for all: an authentic Dasein is defined by the way it lives – but it is never entirely authentic (or inauthentic for that matter) as such; authenticity is an ongoing process.
Secondly, Heidegger’s vision on authenticity says nothing about which actions to undertake in a concrete sense in order to live an authentic life – his theory is purely ontological. The question he asks himself is how a being (Dasein) can be authentic in its Being (so not in its doing or acting): an authentic being could well go on to live its life making decisions that seem very wrong or inauthentic to us.
In this chapter (and in my thesis in general), I will mostly look into how Dasein can become authentic, because, as will become clear, for Heidegger authenticity is for a great part defined by the process leading up to it. Later on I will prove that language plays an important role in this process. In this chapter I will also give an extensive description of Heidegger’s concepts idle talk, curiosity and ambiguity, for those seem to be the modulations of inauthenticity that are linked closest to Dasein’s Being as everyday-being, and they will return in the chapter on authentic language.
1 When referring to passages of Being and Time I refer to the original page numbers of Sein
und Zeit.
2 In accordance with most literature on Heidegger, I am capitalizing ‘Being’ when referring to the ‘being of being’.
1.1 Dasein losing itself in Das Man
Perhaps a good starting point for my inquiry about Heidegger’s ideas on authenticity is his conception of inauthenticity, a conception he clearly sets out in his discussion of Das Man (in English: ‘the they’, or sometimes ‘the anyone’). Inauthentic Dasein, according to Heidegger, loses itself in Das Man - Das Man representing the whole of (inauthentic) humanity. One of the ontological modes of Dasein is mitsein, which lies at the base of the relations Dasein has with ‘Others’ (other beings in the world). As mitsein is an ontological mode of Dasein, it should be possible to be-with Others authentically, but in an inauthentic relation to Others, those Others are what Heidegger calls Das Man - and in the case of inauthenticity, we are
with Das Man.
“By ‘Others’ we do not mean everyone else but me—those over against whom the ‘I’ stands out. They are rather those from whom, for the most part, one does not
distinguish oneself—those among whom one is too… By reason of this with-like Being-in-the-world, the world is always the one that I share with Others.” (BT 154-155)
Furthermore, life in Das Man is ‘uprooted’, by which Heidegger means it has no place to call ‘home’, neither in time nor in space - nor does it want such a place. It simply drifts along from present to present. Since it is not in touch with its past or its future, Dasein living in Das Man has no way of projecting its past onto its future, and so no way of ever
committing itself - more on which later. This leads to a situation in which life in Das Man is anonymous and interchangeable – there is no real ‘self’ for Dasein living in Das Man, for the self of Dasein living by the rules of Das Man has no distinctive features whatsoever: it does as ‘they’ do, speaks as ‘they’ do; it is trapped in the ‘everydayness’ of life, in which no actions have any specific meaning. Partly because the possibilities Dasein thinks it realizes as its own through living in Das Man are really not his own at all, partly because everything in Das Man is of an averageness that deflates everything to meaninglessness:
“…the ‘they’ maintains itself factically in the averageness of that which belongs to it, of that which it regards as valid and that which it does not, and of that to which it grants success and that to which it denies it. In this averageness with which it
prescribes what can and may be ventured, it keeps watch over everything exceptional that thrusts itself to the fore. Every kind of priority gets noiselessly suppressed. Overnight, everything that is primordial gets glossed over as something that has long been well known. Everything gained by a struggle becomes just something to be manipulated. Every secret loses its force. This care of averageness reveals in turn an essential tendency of Dasein which we call the ‘leveling down’ [Einebnung] of all possibilities of Being.” (BT 127)
One of the consequences this has is that ‘every Other is like the next’ (BT 126).Allowing yourself to be with the averageness of Das Man is allowing yourself to run away from your authentic Being - you too become ‘like the next’. There are various ways of interpreting this aspect of Heidegger’s theory3, but one way of interpreting it is by saying that there is no possible escape from Das Man for Dasein: all of the possible possibilities are always given in by Das Man – choosing to project a possibility as your own automatically means choosing a possibility of Das Man, as being-with-Others is Dasein’s ontological mode of relating to the world around it. In chapter four I will discuss an authentic way of world-disclosure that is nonetheless possible. I will discuss projects and projecting possibilities extensively in chapter three.
1.2 Falling: idle talk, curiosity and ambiguity
As a result of the process described above, Dasein is what Heidegger calls ‘falling’. As a result of seeking refuge in Das Man Dasein falls into the world, adopting the possibilities of Das Man as its own, since the uprootedness of Das Man has cut off Dasein from its own possibilities. Dasein’s projects are no longer projections of Dasein’s own Being (as having a past and a future), but projections of Das Man. It is important to note that to a certain extent every Dasein is always ‘fallen’ – the fallenness of Dasein reveals an ontological structure of Dasein and so one might argue that even authentic Dasein is falling. Heidegger distinguishes between that part of Dasein which is according to its own Being, the ‘mine-self’, and the part that is living in Das Man, the ‘they-self’. So it is possible to be both authentic (partly) and inauthentic (partly) at the same time. It is possible to reduce the ‘they-self’ to a very small part of Dasein, but it seems impossible to ever get rid of it entirely, since it is Das Man that 3 For a discussion of this aspect in Heidegger see for instance: Zimmerman (1981), p. 43-68 and Guignon (1984), p. 329
places Dasein’s possibilities for-Dasein. Heidegger writes: “Falling reveals an essential ontological structure of Dasein itself. Far from determining its nocturnal side, it constitutes all Dasein’s days in their everydayness.” (BT 179) Here it becomes clear how ‘falling’, as a result of Das Man’s uprootedness, is at the base of Dasein’s everyday-being: falling is not some sort of rare and extraordinary mode of Being, it defines everything (inauthentic) Dasein is inclined to do. It expresses itself through everyday ‘idle talk’ (Gerede – empty chatter), curiosity and ambiguity:
“Idle talk, curiosity and ambiguity characterize the way in which, in an everyday manner, Dasein is its ‘there’—the disclosedness of Being-in-the-world. As definite existential characteristics, these are not present-at-hand in Dasein, but help to make up its Being. In these, and in the way they are interconnected in their Being, there is revealed a basic kind of Being which belongs to everydayness; we call this the ‘falling’ of Dasein” (BT 175)
What these three modulations of falling have in common is that they have as goal to conceal: by falling Dasein conceals its own Being. Dasein wants to forget about the fact that it is mortal and always ‘open’, free (I will come back to this latter fact in the chapter about
Sartre). In a way, Dasein tries to forget about itself by making itself extra-present to the world outside, by falling into it. It gives itself to Das Man entirely, yet there is nothing to give (yet). Heidegger:
“Idle talk discloses to Dasein a Being towards a world, towards Others, and towards itself – a Being in which these are understood, but in a mode of groundless floating. Curiosity discloses everything and anything, yet in such a way that Being-in is everywhere and nowhere. Ambiguity hides nothing from Dasein’s understanding, but only in order that Being-in-the-world should be suppressed in this uprooted
‘everywhere and nowhere.” (BT 177)
For example, idle talk “is the possibility of understanding everything without previously making it one’s own,” (BT 169) by which Heidegger means that idle talk is groundless: the understanding that rakes up idle talk is a non-understanding in the sense that it is passed on from one person to the other without anyone ever really undertaking the task of understanding. It is rooted in nothing. It discloses everything at the same time, and as such
covers everything up, as all the distinctive qualities of entities in-the-world are lost in such understanding (more on this in chapter four). As a result, all that is disclosed becomes one big blur of meaninglessness, which we express with a language that is nothing but gossip:
“Idle talk is constituted by just such gossiping and passing the word along—a process by which its initial lack of grounds to stand on [Bodenständigkeit] becomes
aggravated to complete groundlessness [Bodenlosigkeit]. And indeed this idle talk is not confined to vocal gossip, but even spreads to what we write, where it takes the form of ‘scribbling’.” (BT 168-169)
Curiosity or Neugier is the desire to see, but not to understand. Heidegger
distinguishes different types of seeing. There is ‘circumspection’ – a practical way of looking at what is ready-to-hand, and, when there is nothing ready-to-hand, a looking that intends to bring the far-away world closer in order to understand it. Curiosity however “seeks novelty only in order to leap from it anew to another novelty. In this kind of seeing, that which is an issue for Care does not lie in grasping something and being knowingly in the truth; it lies rather in its possibilities of abandoning itself to the world.” (BT 172) In curiosity Dasein tries to conceal its own being-towards: it wants to see, but it does not want to relate to what it sees (“Curiosity has nothing to do with observing entities and marveling at them,” (BT 170)), let alone that it wants to be seen.
In the quote above, Heidegger uses the word Care as a synonym for Dasein. He does this because Care, he says, is the most fundamental way of Dasein’s Being.Ideally, the process of becoming authentic leads to a situation (N.B. an ongoing situation; a situation that has to be reached again and again) in which Dasein is able to accept its own Being as Care. Being as Care, according to Heidegger, is that Being in which the Being of Dasein (the fact that it is) and Daseins temporality (the fact that it is in time) come together. As David Carr has explained clearly in his book Time, Narrative and History, revealing (unconcealing) yourself as Care means that you understand the fact that you are first of all always already situated in the world, thrown into it without your own consent (indicating that Dasein has a past), secondly that you are present (gegenwartig) to your surroundings (a relation that in itself is one of Care), engaged in the world around you through experience, and finally, that you are ‘ahead of yourself’ (indicating the future of Dasein)4. Here it becomes clear how Being as Care is opposed to the everydayness of Das Man. As Care, Dasein chooses its 4 Carr (1986), p. 80-81
projects for the present by looking at its life-project as a whole, ‘running ahead of itself’ in order to look back at the present in hindsight. These two features of Care, understanding and choosing projects, will prove to be very important when it comes to authenticity in a later part of my thesis. For now it is enough to know that there is such a thing as Being as Care and that it is the fundamental mode of Being for authentic Dasein. Heidegger’s decision to use words like ‘revealing’ and ‘unconcealing’ implies that what is, is always there no matter what – we can only choose to let it show.
In a way, in falling there is a shift from Dasein’s being-there (in the world), to Dasein wanting to ‘be there, where the action happens’ - as a safe and sound onlooker, but not as someone who is in the middle of the action, experiencing it. Often inauthentic Dasein wants to justify its existence by the things it has seen/the people it has met. And when we were not ‘there’, at the action site, we ask people how it was so that we can join in on the gossip. Curiosity is a great example of Dasein not wanting to acknowledge its own Being as Care: the knowledge gained through curiosity serves only to make Dasein’s existence denser, to preserve its existence. It is an act of egoism5: Dasein uses its subjectivity in order to preserve itself as an object, whereas ideally for Heidegger existing is a being-out-there; there being no difference between what is ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ of Dasein.
Finally, ambiguity as a mode of everydayness is a result of all the chatter and curiosity. Heidegger gives a clear description of what he means by this at the beginning of paragraph 37:
“When, in our everyday Being-with-one-another, we encounter the sort of thing which is accessible to everyone, and about which anyone can say anything, it soon becomes impossible to decide what is disclosed in a genuine understanding, and what is not. This ambiguity [Zweideutigkeit] extends not only to the world, but just as much as to Being-with-one-another as such, and even to Dasein’s Being towards itself.” (BT 173)
The three modes of concealing above should be seen in contrast with authentic Dasein, which chooses to accept and not conceal its Being as Care. I will go deeper into a genuine way of disclosing (versus the inauthentic way presented above) in the final chapter, when I discuss the role language plays in world-disclosure.
1.3 Becoming authentic in the light of death
In the above I have discussed Dasein’s tendency to lose itself in Das Man. However, Dasein does not just lose itself in Das Man – it has very good reasons to do so, whether Dasein is aware of those reasons or not. By losing yourself in Das Man you flee from the reality of your Being (as said, Das Man is a place where we seek refuge), the two most important things that we want to flee from the fact that every Dasein is always mortal and the fact that Dasein is always completely ‘open’ (both of which go hand in hand with Dasein’s fundamental Being as Care). On the one hand, everything is possible, and on the other hand, there is the certain possibility of our death – the event that will round up all the rest of our possibilities.Most often, we try to run away from, conceal this fact before we realize its full meaning.
So now how does Dasein start to lead an authentic life? Why should it even want to lead an authentic life? David Carr writes on this: “It is in the face of death that the question of wholeness arises for the individual, not as an interesting intellectual problem but as an existential issue.”6 Death, Heidegger argues, is the closure of all my projects. Since it is impossible to experience one’s own death, we are confronted with death when we experience the death of another human being. The passing away of someone else makes us realize that we, too, will one day die. This realization of the temporality of life leads to anxiety, because in reflecting on death as the closure of our life and its projects, Dasein realizes that it is alone. It is in confrontation with death that we are able to see the Jemeinigkeit of our existence. Heidegger’s idea of Jemeinigkeit points at the fact that a person’s life is (or should be) really their own. Death individualizes, because just like nobody can die for me, nobody can live for me.
This is surely a scary thought, because it confronts Dasein with the fact that is has been living not-for-itself all this time, using Das Man as a sort of tranquilizer in order to not have to look its own life in the eye.By living in Das Man we resist what this anxiety tells us: we just go on living our everyday lives, going from project to project justifying the one by the other, justifying our existence by the existence of others. This anxiety however forms a very good reason to want to live an authentic life: although it is possible to ‘tranquilize’ anxiety by turning to Das Man, Das Man is unable to take the anxiety away once and for all. As long as we seek refuge in Das Man, anxiety is doomed to return. The only way we can overcome it, 6 Carr (1986) , p. 81
is if we accept it for what it is, namely an indication of our Jemeinigkeit. As said, it is
impossible to be confronted with your own death, but we can ‘run ahead towards death’. By running ahead to your death, you take as it were an advance on your existence as round-up, with which you can place your existence in the present into the perspective of your life as a whole. This conception of wholeness in Heidegger is problematic: what the whole of Dasein contains is dependent on what Dasein will be in the future. Although in the following we will see how Dasein grasps its life as a whole in a moment of resoluteness, what this whole contains is still never determined fully until the moment right after its passing away: if Dasein could grasp its life as a whole ‘now’, then all of its future actions would be
determined. In chapter three I will look for a more realistic concept of wholeness, namely one that is given in by projects. Projects will prove to provide a conception wholeness, yet at the same time leave enough room for changes over time.
What is for sure, is that what when we die we stop existing. We are no longer in relation to our loved ones: although the people we leave behind might feel that they are still related to us, through memories, objects we leave behind, photographs… the relation is no longer a two-way relation, for we simply are no longer there to engage in the relationship ourselves. But how do I decide to run ahead to my own death? Is it even a decision? ‘They’ tell me not to worry about death, for death is only a possibility that, if I’m lucky, is still many years ahead of me. Das Man tries to soothe me, but it is a soothing with a double agenda: “The ‘they’ does not permit us the courage for anxiety in the face of death” (BT 254).
However, it is exactly in order to escape the ‘They’ that I must turn towards death. How does Dasein break out of this seemingly vicious circle? In the following it wil become clear, that ‘running ahead towards one’s death’ is something that can only happen in a moment of resoluteness.
1.4 The call of conscience and resoluteness
When living according to the rules of Das Man, I do not have a conscience of my own – I just look at what Das Man does in order ‘decide’ what to do myself. However, according to Heidegger we do always have a conscience that operates on a more ontological level, that
does not make us choose what to do in line with our mine-self, but that does make us choose
to choose in line with our mine-self (BT 184). Just as we are never completely authentic, we
are never completely lost in Das Man, because our fundamental Being is Care, be it concealed or not. And that is why we can call out to ourselves and answer our own call of conscience. In other words, Dasein calls itself and answers by choosing to choose - a choice which is a choice for leaving Das Man. Not only is Dasein able to call itself in this way, it calls itself as Dasein - calling out for that part of Dasein that makes Dasein so special, which is its Being as Care that has up to this point been concealed by its everydayness. I imagine the call of conscience as something that has to keep calling as we leave Das Man to the point where we are confronted with our Jemeinigkeit - to the point we come to terms with this
Jemeinigkeit, in order to lead us through the anxiety that so characterizes this process for
Heidegger. This is not a (one-time) temporal process, but a process that takes place at every
time. I will discuss the call of conscience (and to what extent it really is a ‘call’) extensively
in the final chapter of my thesis, where I will discuss the linguistic character of the call. For now it is important to know that such a thing exists according to Heidegger, and that is an important step towards becoming resolute and, eventually, authentic.
Right now another question is at stake: if we answer the call of conscience and start living our own lives, released from Das Man, how will we know which life to lead? It seems as though for Heidegger our choices have no point of reference outside of itself - that is to say, Heidegger does not give us any criteria our choices should meet. The only criterium is: live in line with your own Being - but Being is a merely ontological conception and does not have any direct ontic implications or consequences. It is true that we are determined by the age we live in as well as our physical limitation (i.e. I cannot become the emperor of Rome or a Wimbledon champion because I do not live in the right age/do not have the just physical abilities), but from all the possible things that we can become we seem to have no reason to choose the one over the other.
Heidegger offers a solution to this problem in the form of resoluteness. “(…) This distinctive and authentic disclosedness, which is attested in Dasein itself by its conscience – this reticent self-projection upon one’s ownmost Being in which one is ready for anxiety—we call ‘resoluteness’. (BT 296-297) In resoluteness, Dasein discloses all of the possibilities laid out for it by Das Man at once and, in a moment of ‘vision’ (Heidegger uses the word
Augenblick – which has both the word ‘vision’ and ‘moment’ in it) makes a decision to act.
Resoluteness is a way of being-out-there; actively engaging in the world around you, making decisions through your way of acting. But because in this Augenblick of resoluteness Dasein
is disclosed in its Care, these decisions are not just a consequence or constitutive of arbitrary agency - they are made in the light of Dasein’s totality of Being. Resoluteness is anticipatory: it anticipates the totality of Dasein’s possibilities and projects those which belong to the Being of Dasein onto the future. Authentic Dasein can“decide of its own accord whether, as the entity which it is, it has that state of Being for which it has been disclosed in the
projection with regards to its formal aspects.” (BT 315)
However, there is no moral code to which resolute action has to adhere: a resolute choice cannot be wrong or right at an ontic level, for if it could be wrong or right it would mean that there was a standard in the light of which it would be so – and that would take us back to Das Man. One can act morally despicable (according to common opinion) yet be very resolute. On an ontological level however the right way to handle is ‘resolute’, for, as we saw, the anticipatory character of resoluteness has great advantages for Dasein by allowing Dasein to get rid of its inauthentic everydayness. Another reason for Dasein to want to release itself from Das Man was anxiety: anxious Dasein used Das Man as a tranquilizer. However, in anticipatory resoluteness anxiety no longer needs to be tranquilized:
“…anticipation reveals to Dasein its lostness in the they-self, and brings it face to face with the possibility of being itself, primarily unsupported by concernful solicitude, but of being itself, rather, in an impassioned freedom towards death—a freedom which has been released from the Illusions of the ‘they’, and which is factical, certain of itself, and anxious.” (BT 267)
So, although Dasein is still anxious when released from Das Man, and although Dasein still does not know how to act at an ontic level - at least because of resoluteness it is now
anxiously itself. This gives anxiety a certain (certain) character, as the freedom that caused it at first has been given a certain character as well. Dasein no longer has to flee because its freedom has been turned into something positive rather than scary: anxiety has become useable in the sense that it impassions Dasein towards death, keeps reminding Dasein of the fact that it should be itself. Dasein can now take ownership of its own life: the actions Dasein now undertakes are its own actions. This might still be scary, but at least Dasein now has a point of reference to which it can compare its actions, namely its own Being disclosed as Care:
“The world, which is ready-to-hand does not become another one ‘in its content’, nor does the Circle of Others get exchanged for a new one; but both one’s Being towards the ready-to-hand understandingly and concernful, and one’s solititous Being with Others, are now given a definite character in terms of their ownmost potentiality-for-Being-their-Selves.”(BT 297-298)
It is important to note that it is possible to become resolute, but it is never possible to stay resolute. The state of resoluteness is one that must be won over and over again – in fact, it is not even a state, for it is not something that can be achieved.
Conclusion
In the above I discussed the different modes of everyday inauthentic Dasein (idle talk,
curiosity, ambiguity) and described how Dasein tries to conceal its being as Care in order not to have to face the truth of its being (mortal, free). Several aspects of inauthentic Dasein on its route to authenticity will come back in the following chapters, of which I will list the most important ones and the questions they call to life in conclusion here.
In running ahead towards its death, Dasein tries to grasp its life as a whole. The end of Dasein’s existence puts into perspective Dasein’s existence in the present. This means that the meaning of Dasein’s Being in the present should always be seen in the light of Dasein’s entire life. The concept of ‘wholeness’ is necessary in order to live an authentic life.
For Heidegger, the most authentic way of Being is Being-out there, the way of Being that belongs to resoluteness. Resolute Dasein is able to disclose the entirety of its Being in one Augenblick. It is involved in the world, it is not just a passive bystander. However, resoluteness may not be as ‘resolute’ (or as much of a ‘resolution’) as Heidegger proposes. Because Dasein is always in time it has a history that in part defines its being in the present, and although resolute Dasein can break the course of history at every moment, it cannot keep on breaking it at every moment, for that would leave Dasein forever in suspense and stop it from actually beginning to live its life. We have seen that Dasein is able to look at its life as a whole by running ahead towards its death, but how can this be so if what this whole contains is never fully determined until the moment right after its passing away? Resoluteness seems to be in contradiction with making decisions in the light of life as a whole; because although resoluteness discloses Dasein in its entirety of Being, it cannot disclose all of Dasein’s future
moments of resoluteness. The problems with wholeness that we have encountered in this chapter may find a solution by introducing projects. Projects provide some ‘wholeness’, while at the same time they limit the scope of what this ‘whole’ should entail. I will return to this issue in chapter three.
Although Heidegger’s conception of wholeness may not be realistic, Dasein’s confrontation with death as closing off our life as a whole did lead to something very important, namely anxiety. It is in anxiety that the Jemeinigkeit of our existence is pointed out to us - in order to be authentic, we have to embrace our own Being. We have to release ourselves from Das Man, by projecting own possibilities instead of Das Man’s. By projecting possibilities as its own, Dasein engages in projects. The running ahead towards death is an indication of the fact that Heidegger sees life as a whole as a project.
As far as I was able to tell, authenticity for Heidegger is something that is always an option for every Dasein. No matter how lost we are in Das Man – it is possible to rid yourself of Das Man by answering the call of conscience. To a certain extent, Dasein is always both inauthentic and authentic – authenticity seems to be on a scale of which the poles are out of reach. In the next chapter, I will investigate Jean-Paul Sartre’s views on authenticity and inauthenticity in order to see how they differ from Heidegger’s views (or don’t), and in order to see if perhaps the two theories can solve some of each other’s problems. It will turn out that Sartre is able to avoid Heidegger’s problem of wholeness and in this sense provides a solution to the difficulties encountered in this chapter, but his theory does bring forth a new problem, namely a problem of contingency. In chapter three I will try to give a solution the problems encountered in both Heidegger and Sartre by introducing projects, after which, in chapter four, it will become clear that it is language which is at the basis of this solution and that it is language that is at the heart of authenticity for both authors.
II Authenticity in Being and Nothingness
In the previous chapter I have discussed Martin Heidegger’s views on (in)authenticity in
Being and Time. In this chapter I will take a closer look at Jean-Paul Sartre’s views on the
same subject in his most famous work, Being and Nothingness7. Do their ideas differ and if
so, in what sense? Is Sartre’s notion of authenticity able to solve some of the problems that came up in chapter one? I will show that for both Heidegger and Sarte anxiety (anguish)8 plays an important role in the process of becoming authentic. Although both have a clear view of what it means to be inauthentic, their views on authenticity are more complex. It will soon become clear that to Sartre, inauthentic living is living in bad faith. Is there a way of escaping bad faith and if so, what does it look like?
It will become clear that Sartre’s theory of authenticity is able to avoid the problem of wholeness that we encountered in the previous chapter. Where in Heidegger it was death that, at the end of a person’s life, rounded up a person’s existence and as such put every moment of a person’s life into the perspective of this death, by introducing ‘nothingness’ Sartre is able to insert ‘death’ (as nothingness) at every moment in time. Consequentially, one no longer has to run ahead towards death - every moment is rounded up as it is. However, this does lead to another problem, namely a problem of contingency: Sartre’s nothingness will prove to lead to a world in which we are radically free, and it seems as if Sartre does not provide a way in which we can live a life guided by reasons and plans. By introducing nothingness, the
benefits of Heidegger’s notion of Time (as that which allows us to live life in Time, providing coherency) are omitted. This disadvantage of nothingness leads Sartre’s subject to try to escape nothingness and live in bad faith, something I will discuss extensively in the second paragraph of this chapter.
Throughout this chapter it is important to keep in mind that according to Sartre consciousness is empty, and because it is so, it is impossible for consciousness to actually be something: its relation to the world is an intentional relation. In this sense it can light out reality’s content, but this content is never transposed or transcended from reality into
consciousness. Nor is it so that we already have (platonic) ideas in our heads with which we enter the world. Another thing to keep in mind is that existence, as Sartre famously put it, 7 Sartre, J.P., Being and Nothingness, Washington Square Press, 1956; hereafter cited BN. 8 I will stick to the translations of Being and Time and Being and Nothingness I used, which respectively employ the term ‘anxiety’ (German: Angst) and ‘anguish’ (French: angoisse). However, there is no reason to think that the two terms refer to different phenomena.
precedes essence. Authentic for-itself, it will become clear, acknowledges this fact and acts accordingly. In the following I will describe the consequences this has for conscious man: if consciousness is empty and if our being is undetermined in its Being, then how can we be (something)? How can we act without those actions being random? What happens if we treat what we do as what we are nonetheless?
2.1
The for-itself and the in-itself
Just like Heidegger sought to answer the question of Being in Being and Time, it is the question of Being that Sartre seeks to answer in Being and Nothingness, albeit in a different manner. The problem with (or for) being first arises in the first sections of Being and
Nothingness, in which Sartre makes a distinction between being for-itself and being in-itself.
Things in the world, for example trees and flowers and tables, are in-itself: they are what they are, they are completely identical with themselves. Furthermore, they do not have (a)
consciousness. Being for-itself on the other hand does have a consciousness: we are in the world, and at the same time we are able to reflect on our own existence. A human being is strange in this sense, because our being in the world makes us an in-itself to a certain extent: we can be objects for other people’s consciousness, we can reflect on our own way of acting, our body is our body. And yet we have a consciousness, one of the characteristics of
consciousness being that it is not self-identical in the sense that the in-itself is:
“The object does not possess being, and its existence is not a participation in being, nor any other kind of relation. It is. That is the only way to define its manner of being; the object does not hide being, but neither does it reveal being. (…) The existent is a phenomenon; this means that it designates itself as an organized totality of qualities. It designates itself and not its being.” (BN 8)
The for-itself on the other is hand responsible for its behavior, for the way in which it is, but not for the fact that it is, that it has been born. The fact of its existence is a good example of the contingency of for-itself’s existence (other examples: the time and place of its being, what kind of body it has, etc.). This is what Sartre calls the facticity of the for-itself. Although it is forever stuck with its facticity, it will never be able to identify with it fully. I will elaborate on this later.
As I already briefly mentioned in the introduction to this chapter, consciousness is empty. Its relationships with the world are purely intentional: an object is for consciousness:
“All consciousness, as Husserl has shown, is consciousness of something. This means that there is no consciousness that is not a positing of a transcendent object, or, if you prefer, that consciousness has no ‘content’. (…) A table is not in consciousness — not even in the capacity of a representation.” (BN 11)
Even things that we normally consider to be ‘inside’ of our consciousness, are really objects towards which consciousness is intended. So moods, for example, or thoughts. We are conscious matter, but that what’s conscious about us is not matter and that what is matter about us is not conscious of it.
The above leads to a strange situation in which we are, according to Sartre, ‘not what we are.’ I may think that I am a student, but because I am conscious of what I am, I also realize that I can never be a student in the same way that, for example, a glass is a glass. I am what I am, but on top of that I am also conscious of what I am. So I am always a bit more than what I am (what I am + conscious of it), which is to say that for-itself is not
self-identical (in the way that in-itself is self-self-identical). At the same time, consciousness nihilates9 what I am: I am also always less than what I am, namely nothing (or, more specifically: no-thing). Because one of the peculiar things about being is that if something is, it is also always possible to imagine that is is not. By being, the possibility of not-being is called to life. But calling this possibility to life is only possible for that what questions the being and imagines its not-being, which is consciousness. The fact that nothingness exists is thanks to the fact that for-itself exists. This leads to an even more important way in which nothingness plays a role in the being of for-itself, namely the fact that by being a for-itself, for itself is not an in-itself. And it is precisely this not-being-an-in-itself of for-itself that makes for-itself
undetermined. It is the fact that for-itself is ‘more’ than it is (namely consciousness of that what it is) that makes for-itself less than it is: by being more than an in-itself, for-itself is undetermined - unable to be what it is, because it ‘is’ nothing.
9 From the ‘Key to special terminology’ at the end of my copy of Being and Nothingness, p. 804: “A word coined by Sartre. Consciousness exists as consciousness by making a nothingness arise between it and the object of which it is consciousness. Thus nihilation is that by which consciousness exists. To nihilate is to encase with a shell of non-being.” In the case of consciousness being conscious of itself, this means that consciousness nihilates itself, thus becoming aware of its own nothingness.
In short, for-itself calls to life its own not-being (a thing)10 and because of that for-itself is what it is in the mode of not being what it is. It is always a little bit more than it is, and at the same time it is aware of the possibility of its own non-existence and of its being undetermined. Or, as Sartre puts it at the beginning of the chapter on bad faith that I will discuss in the following paragraph:
“The Human being is not only the being by whom négatités are disclosed in the world; he is also the one who can take negative attitudes with respect to himself. In our Introduction we defined consciousness as ‘a being such that in its being, its being is in question in so far as this being implies a being other than itself.’ But now that we have examined the meaning of ‘the question’, we can at present also write the formula thus: ‘Consciousness is a being, the nature of which is to be conscious of the
nothingness of its being.’” (BN 86)
This leads to a very rigorous form of freedom at the core of the for-itself, because if I am aware of the fact that, again, let’s say, I’m a student, by being aware of this I become at the same time aware of my not being a student (in the sense that I can never be a student self-identically, I am always both more and less than that). By being conscious of my
consciousness, I am conscious of the fact that I am not an in-itself, and thus of the fact that my qualities are not those of an in-itself. The for-itself is dynamic, not static, and not self-identical. This awareness is an ontological awareness: itis given in by the fact that the for-itself exists, because the mode of the existence of the for-for-itself is to be directed towards the world around it and, thus, towards itself - in order to nihilate itself and recognize the
unnecessary (undetermined) character of its actions. So really the only thing that a for-itself necessarily is, is free, or, as Sartre puts it: existence precedes essence. So although
consciousness definitely calls nothingness and consequently freedom to life by just being, in the case of its own actions it can call to life but possibilities; these possibilities are never definite or necessary, nor can consciousness make them so. This leads Sartre to saying that not only are we free, we are ‘condemned to be free’ (BN 186). Our freedom is the only thing that is not just a possibility.However, as we will see in the next paragraph: consciousness does try to give its (realized) possibilities a necessary character. In the following paragraph 10 Sartre concludes: “.. we have reached the first goal of this study. Man is the being through whom nothing comes to the world. But this question immediately provokes another: What must man be in his being in order that through him nothingness may come to being?” (BN, p. 59)
will become clear why the being of for-itself described above leads to a situation in which for-itself is inclined towards inauthenticity, and subsequently what Sartre has to say about authenticity.
2.2 Bad faith
Just like I discussed Heidegger’s view on authenticity by discussing his views on
inauthenticity first, I will first take a look at Sartre’s idea of inauthenticity before going on to what he says about authenticity. In the following I will discuss chapter II of part I of Being
and Nothingness, in which Sartre sets out his ideas on bad faith (which is a way of being
inauthentic). Bad faith, it will become clear, is the manner in which the for-itself tries to cope with the radical freedom that lies at the heart of its existence. But, as the name of the
phenomenon already suggest, it is not the right way of coping.
Sartre begins this chapter by stating how living in bad faith is distinct from lying (to oneself). Living in bad faith is not like lying because in order to lie, one has to know the truth. If I lie to a friend of mine about what I have been doing this weekend, I will have to know what I actually did in order to change the facts in word. I can lie to someone, only because they don’t know the truth. Lying to myself in this manner is impossible: in order to lie, there needs to be a duality between the liar and the one lied to.
Sartre then problematizes the psychoanalytic solution to this problem in which
different layers of the I (id, ego, superego) lie to each other. This leads to a consciousness that has different stages, all of which are not empty in the way that Sartre thinks consciousness is empty. For example, there has to be something in the ego that the superego can reflect on in order to lie about it. Another problem arises: I can suppress or censure the truth about myself, but in order to suppress but the truth that what suppresses will still have to be aware of what is true and not true - which leads to an endless regression.
Consequentially, living in bad faith cannot be something that we consciously do. Sartre: “Let us understand clearly that there is no question of a reflective, voluntary decision, but of a spontaneous determination of our being. One puts oneself in bad faith as one
dreams.” (BN 68)
We do not decide to live in bad faith - it happens. In this sense it is similar to Heidegger’s living in Das Man. What exactly is living in bad faith though? And can we escape from it? Should we?
As we have seen above, the for-itself is not what it is. But in bad faith it tries to turn this fact around. Bad faith, Sartre says, is when a person ‘is what it is not’. This mainly has to do with the fact that in bad faith for-itself tries to be the in-itself that it is not, but, as Thomas Flynn has pointed out in his entry to the Stanford Encyclopedia, future and past also play an important role in this.11 One can be ‘not what it is’ in a way that is still in bad faith, namely if one is trying to escape one’s future possibilities. Ideally, when one does not live in bad but in ‘good faith’, being ‘not what one is’ means that one does not see one's facticity (that was has happened in the past, the way one is situated) as constitutive of one’s being: the things I do and have done do not constitute me in an ontological manner. At the same time one realizes that one ‘is not what it is’ - meaning that one is aware of one’s own being forever
undetermined. One way of explaining this undetermined-ness has to do with that part of being that is directed towards the future, in which all of one’s future possibilities are in a way brought to the present by the realization that they are indeed just possible. So one can be what one is not and be not what one is in bad faith, if the way one deals with past and future is distorted - when being what one is not is related to the past, and being not what one is to the future, instead of the other way around. Here you can clearly sense Heidegger’s influence on Sartre: by inserting a temporal dimension into the concept of inauthenticity, Sartre, just like Heidegger, underlines the importance of time for authentic Being.
It is in bad faith that for-itself tries to merge its facticity with its consciousness, in which it tries to be identical despite the fact that consciousness can never be self-identical. As I tried to make clear in the above it can do so either by forgetting about its facticity, or by forgetting about its freedom. Sartre goes on to approach the problem by studying a few examples in which someone is in bad faith, starting with the example of a cafe waiter that is ‘too much’ of a cafe waiter:
“…What I attempt to realize is a being-in-itself of the cafe waiter, as if it were not just in my power to confer their value and their urgency upon my duties and the rights of my position, as if it were not my free choice to get up each morning at five o’ clock or to remain in bed, even though it meant getting fired. As from the very fact that I sustain this role in existence I did not transcend it on every side, as if I did not constitute myself as one beyond my condition. Yet there is no doubt that I am in a sense a cafe waiter — otherwise could I not just call myself a diplomat or a reporter?
But if I am one, this can not be in the mode of being in-itself. I am a waiter, in the mode of being what I am not.” (BN 103)
The waiter acts as if his essence precedes his existence. A person living in bad faith in this way will explain his or her choices by saying: This is simply what I am. I simply am an unfaithful person, so I had no other way but to cheat on you. Just like this the waiter serves the tables as if he has no other way of acting. We have already seen though that a person is always more than its facticity, a person is what it is + consciousness, and consciousness is a being for which in its being it is consciousness of the not-being of its being. Trying to be what you are in the mode of an in-itself is doomed to fail, because it is simply impossible. Sartre compares this example to society, in which people try to ‘be’ the social roles they ascribe to themselves. They let what they do be decided by those social roles, thus giving away their autonomy to an illusion. This is similar to what we saw in Heidegger, when he spoke of Dasein living in Das Man, although for Sartre the for-itself really tries to be those social roles, tries to mold its own being into the being of such a role, where for Heidegger society was mostly something distracting Dasein from its own being. Sartre’s for-itself flees from itself by becoming something else, where Heidegger’s Dasein flees from itself by forgetting about itself.
The second example of bad faith is that of a woman who is on a date with a man. She has feelings for the man, but she tries to deny them. She suppresses them in two ways. First of all she takes everything the man says extremely literal, paying attention only to the now, not to what the man’s intentions might mean for the future. She tries to forget about her facticity. Then, when the man takes her hand in order to take things a step further, she tries to transcend her facticity: she is no longer paying attention to nothing but the now - she is not even in the moment anymore. She doesn’t even notice someone holding her hand - she is so caught up in herself, her own consciousness, that everything outside of her, the actual situation, loses all meaning:
“If I were only what I am, I could, for example, seriously consider an adverse
criticism which someone makes of me, question myself scrupulously, and perhaps be compelled to recognize the truth in it. But thanks to transcendence, I am not subject to all that I am. I do not even have to discuss the justice of the reproach. (…) I am on a plane where no reproach can touch me since what I really am is my transcendence. I
flee from myself, I escape myself, I leave my tattered garment in the hands of the fault-finder.” (BN 99)
This example of bad-faith is explained clearly in for example William Smoot’s article ‘The concept of authenticity in Sartre’. Smoot makes evident that where the cafe waiter tried to constitute himself as a thing, the woman tries to be pure transcendence, escaping any form of responsibility for her way of acting.12
The final example is that of a homosexual who has difficulties accepting his sexuality. He recognizes that he has been involved in homosexual activity in the past, but he is not willing to call himself a homosexual. Rather he sees those activities as out of his control, things that happened to him - not actions he wants to hold himself responsible for. Basically what he says is: I am not what I am. Although this sounds a lot like the not being what you are that distinguishes the for-itself from the in-itself, it is still bad faith. Because what the man is actually saying is that he is not what he is in the manner of being what he is not, namely heterosexual. Nothingness is here something that is used in order to be the opposite of what one is, not in order to be aware of the arbitrariness of one’s situation. The
heterosexuality that he thinks suits him better than his homosexuality is just another role he is willing to play. He treats heterosexuality as an in-itself. The homosexual has a friend who gets annoyed by this and says that he (the homosexual) should just accept his destiny, but this too would lead him to living in bad faith - because then homosexuality would be treated as an in-itself.
What the last example points out is that things like sexuality should be seen as existential projects, rather than as destiny. Bad faith comes into the picture the moment that one of these projects is said to be final: identity then becomes a thing in-itself. I will return to Sartre’s vision on existential projects in the next chapter. What has become clear from the above is that the for-itself tries to flee from its radical freedom, from the fact that it is paradoxical in its own nature, by living in bad faith - although it does not do so consciously, for Sartre has proven that living in bad faith is different from lying to oneself. We still haven’t found an answer to the question if there is a way out of bad faith, though, or, if we cannot escape it, how we should deal with it. In the next paragraph, I will take a closer look at Sartre’s ideas about anguish and the answers it might provide. Is anguish a necessary evil towards becoming authentic, as it was for Heidegger? What does being authentic entail for Sartre?
2.3 Becoming authentic: anguish
In the following I will show that if one wants to leave bad faith behind, one will need to confront oneself with one's radical freedom rather than trying to deny it, which will lead to a state of anguish. We have seen how in bad faith one tries to escape one’s freedom. Sartre writes:
“If our analysis has not led us astray, there ought to exist for the human being, in so far as he is conscious of being, a certain mode of standing opposite his past and his future, as being both this past and this future and as not being them. We shall be able to furnish an immediate reply to this question; it is in anguish that man gets the con-sciousness of his freedom, or if you prefer, anguish is the mode of being of freedom as consciousness of being; it is in anguish that freedom is, in its being, in question for itself.” (BN 65)
Sartre sets out his ideas on anguish in the paragraph called ‘The Origin of Nothingness’. Apparently, anguish is closely linked to nothingness. An important thing to note about anguish is that it is distinct from fear. Fear, Sartre says (an idea he borrows from Kierkegaard), is what we feel when we encounter a frightening in-itself: “fear is fear of beings in the world whereas anguish is anguish before myself” (BN 65). We fear a being in the world when we feel that it might have a negative effect on our being (for example a man with a gun coming our way), likewise we experience anguish when we think that we
ourselves might have a negative effect on our being. However, as we already saw,
nothingness (literally a negative effect) is inherent to the fact that we are, and so anguish is inherent to human existence as well. This does not mean that we are continuously anxious, but anguish is an ontological consequence of what it means for for-itself to be.
Fear and anguish can never exist within the same person at the same time “since fear is unreflected apprehension of the transcendent and anguish is reflected apprehension of the self.” (BN 66) They can however follow on one another. It is usually the case, Sartre says, that we first experience fear, and then, upon reflection, anguish. When walking on a small path along an abyss, one fears the depth of the abyss, the fact that falling into it could mean one’s death. But then, reflecting the situation, fear changes into anguish, for one suddenly becomes afraid that one might in fact not fall into the abyss, but might consciously decide to
throw oneself into it. In the case of fear, for-itself sees itself as having no influence on the situation; it is just another being in the world amongst other phenomena. Then, it escapes this fear by realizing that it is able to be of influence. However, this makes the situation even worse, because in order to stop itself from walking into the abyss, it has to rely on a future self. Reflecting on my possibilities regarding the abyss, I will have to conclude that all of my future possibilities are indeed possible: for-itself is undetermined, and so it is impossible to say what I am to do ‘now’ - let alone what I am to do in the future. And so my situation in the future is also completely undetermined. My future possibilities are dependent on me, but not on me ‘now’.
One can also experience anguish in the face of the past, in which case the anguish “is that of the gambler who has freely and sincerely decided not to gamble anymore and who, when he approaches the gaming table, suddenly sees all his resolutions melt away.” (BN 69) One could say that although our past is often constitutive of our facticity, decisions made in the past can never be treated as an in-itself. No matter how definite our decisions may seem, they are always open to revision in the (future) present. Consequently, one feels anguish.
From these two examples, the abyss and the gambler, it becomes clear that Sartre’s conception of anguish is closely linked to nothingness. The anguish that makes a person (unconsciously) flee in bad faith, can no longer be fled from the moment consciousness starts to reflect on itself in moments of anguish, and thus on the fact that its being is rooted in nothingness. Where living in bad faith is a choice13, living in anguish is not a choice, for it is given with existence. Anguish is in the for-itself necessarily, since it follows necessarily from the confrontation of consciousness with its freedom, its freedom which in turn follows necessarily from the existence of consciousness (as the origin of nothingness): “This freedom which reveals itself to us in anguish can be characterized by the existence of that nothing which insinuates itself between motives and act.” (BN 71) A motive can never be enough reason for something to happen necessarily or causally, because no matter how pressing, it, too, is only for consciousness, disconnected from any act by nothingness. This realization is what lies at the base of anguish, and this realization is inherent to the (self)conscious
character of for-itself. So, either one is in anguish, but suppressing this anguish by bad faith, or one is in anguish - period.
So how should we deal with this anguish? Bad faith is not an option. For Heidegger, 13 Although to live in bad faith is a choice that for-itself does not reflect on when it first starts to do so, it is still a choice. This means that for-itself, once it realizes it is living in bad faith, should be able to choose to leave this state.
anguish (anxiety) helped Dasein in leaving Das Man. Anxiety proved an important step towards becoming authentic as it helped Dasein to become ‘anxiously’ itself. From that point on, from the point at which Dasein had become certain of itself, anxiety seemed to lose its grip on Dasein, and functioned merely as a reminder of the fact that authenticity is not a state one can achieve once and for all, but rather something that needs to be won over and over again in the process that Being oneself as Care is. Sartre’s view on anguish and authenticity is slightly more pessimistic: anguish is not something that loses force as soon as we become authentic, and it is impossible to be one’s self in the sense that Heidegger proposed, since for-itself is undetermined. Where for Heidegger it was the confrontation with death (the fact that there is an end to man’s possibilities), for Sartre it is freedom (the fact that there are endless possibilities) that is at the core of anguish. It is impossible to find an answer for this anguish since it is so intertwined with Being, but for Sartre anguish is not something that actually needs an answer. It does not need to be overcome, or pressed beneath the fields by bad faith. We ‘simply’ have to live with it.
Where Heidegger gave anxiety a slightly more positive character by letting the certainty of one’s self in, for Sartre, if it were even possible to overcome anguish, doing so would reduce one's chances of becoming authentic to zero. Where for Heidegger anxiety was a part of becoming authentic (authenticity being a continuous becoming), for Sartre anguish is a necessary part of authenticity as such. Being authentic means being anxious, because being authentic for Sartre is accepting the reality of your existence, the reality of your existence being as such that it causes anguish. In one of his later works, Sartre writes that authenticity “consists in having a true and lucid consciousness of the situation, in assuming the
responsibilities and risks that it involves, in accepting it in pride or humiliation, sometimes in horror and hate.”14
It has become clear that for Sartre an authentic person is not in a ‘certain’ way (where for Heidegger an authentic person is in a certain way, namely itself), because authentic for-itself is aware of its radical freedom and aware of the fact that trying to ‘be’ something in a certain way leads to bad faith. Consequentially, authenticity for Sartre cannot be found in being, but lies in acting - keeping the nothingness at the heart of one’s being in mind. What does an authentic person do, though? Although Sartre says that one has to accept the responsibilities and risks that living in freedom involves, he does not say what those responsibilities are. This is the same kind of problem as the one we saw in Heidegger: because Sartre’s idea of authenticity has an ontological character, it can only tell us that we 14 Sartre (1948), p. 90
should act, but not how we should act. Although Sartre’s work is full of words with a moral connotation (‘bad’ faith, responsibility), his radical freedom might ultimately lead to a morality that is completely free as well. In the conclusion of this chapter I will elaborate on the problems with Sartre’s notion of authenticity a bit more, in advance of trying to solve some of those problems in the following chapters.
2.4 Conclusion
The above has shown that man, according to Sartre, is ‘condemned to be free’: not only are we free, we are ‘freer than free’, because the freedom of the for-itself is necessarily linked to the existence of its consciousness. It is consciousness that is the origin of nothingness by giving nothingness the being that it itself could impossibly have. Nothingness is inserted into everything that exists by the existence of the for-itself, since by existing, for-itself calls to life (the possibility) of non-existence: by being (conscious) for-itself, for-itself (is aware of the fact that it) is not an in-itself. This gives everything an arbitrary character, which is
something that becomes even more clear when we keep the temporality of human beings in mind: we can never be sure of the being or non-being of our future possibilities. What we will do in the future depends on our future selves, and what we decide to do in the future cannot be determined by reasons we think of in the present. Furthermore, we have no means of acting upon our own consciousness in order to make it choose something in the future, since consciousness is empty and so, motives, too, are only for consciousness.
In order to flee from this radical freedom, for-itself lives in bad faith. It tries to be more (or less) than it is, either by being more of an in-itself than it is, or by being more transcendent than it is. In order to get out of this bad faith, for-itself needs to confront itself with its radical freedom. However, consciousness’ reflective awareness of its own freedom leads to anguish. Where for Heidegger anguish lost some of its force in the process of becoming authentic, for Sartre anguish and authenticity go hand in hand. One does not have to conquer anguish, nor does one have to accept it. Sartre’s way of dealing with anguish lies somewhere in-between accepting it and using it in order to give how you act a responsible character (I will not emphasize on the importance of responsibility in Sartre in this thesis, but authenticity in relation to responsibility might be an idea for further research).
One could say that Sartre’s theory is ontological in the same sense that Heidegger’s theory of authenticity is ontological, meaning that authenticity is contained within the
approach to one’s way of acting, but not within the actual actions one undertakes. It is rather
that we act that makes us authentic. Heidegger’s conception of ‘being-out-there’ lays a
similar emphasis on agency, but Heidegger gave us at least one criterion for action - namely that we have to act in accordance with our own Being - the meaning of which we find in a moment of resoluteness. Since for Sartre such a being does not exist, how should or can we decide how to act? Sartre’s use of words like ‘bad faith’ and ‘responsibility’ even suggests that for him there is a moral question at stake. Does this mean that one cannot just do
anything authentically - but that one is also responsible for doing the right things
authentically? Furthermore, is it possible for a person living in a Sartrean world to ever have the idea of living one’s life coherently? Is it possible to have motives if the for-itself is never what it is?So far the answer to this question is ‘no’. Perhaps Sartre’s idea of freedom is a little too radical? And, in that respect, is bad faith really that bad?
These are questions to which I hope to find an answer in the following chapters. I will see if there might lie a clue to a more meaningful (or livable) idea of authenticity in the idea of projects that Sartre introduces at the end of Being and Nothingness, and take a look at what Heidegger has to say on this topic as well. Both authors have so far not been able to give us criteria with which to decide what to do. As both authors lay emphasis on being-in-the-world when it comes to authenticity, it seems relevant to take a closer look at what this being-in-the-world should look like. It was perhaps not their intention to provide us with a practical idea of what the right things to do are, but in the following I will argue that there are
definitely places in their texts where they give us some clues as to how everyone can decide for themselves how to act - without these decisions having an arbitrary character. In the final chapter of my thesis I will prove that they both say something about how to act when it comes languages (in which case acting can mean either uttering speech acts or staying silent). For now, in the following chapter, it will become clear that on the one hand, projects might make one’s actions slightly less free, because with projects one acts against the background of a project. On the other hand, they might still be free enough, for one could always change one’s projects. In other words, can we be free, perhaps even condemned to be free, but not
doomed to be so?
