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Sartre And Religion Essay

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Bad faith is one of the central concepts of Sartre’s existentialism because it is the human choice to deny freedom. Individuals deceive themselves into believing they are only free to a certain extent due to limited opportunities. They do this because when the extent of human freedom is presented, it creates anxiety. Anxiety can be defined as the feeling one possesses when faced with their infinite freedom and responsibility. In the words of Sartre himself, ‘anguish is anguish before myself.’ (Sartre, 2003, p.649) Anxiety is felt in the face of my future, possibilities and freedom. Human beings are tempted by bad faith because it is the lesser of two burdens: it is a larger burden to choose from endless possibility, have limitless freedom and carry the vast responsibility that comes with this, rather than having to choose between limited possibilities that already exist. This idea is …show more content…

To support Sartre’s view, I used de Beauvoir’s corresponding argument that freedom stands at the root of existentialism. To refute this view, I used an argument from the later Sartre, who changed his initial stance to believe freedom is dependant upon existing social structures. Nevertheless, I believe the early Sartre was correct in his original claim, as it seems the later Sartre completely deviates from existentialism to focus on a materialist approach of the world. Furthermore, I consider instances of bad faith to still be very relevant in contemporary society. Human beings often shy away from their responsibilities to find the easy route out. This is the case for personal responsibilities as well as ethical situations happening on a global

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In the article “Jean-Paul Sartre on Bad Faith”, by Neel Burton, a British psychiatrist, philosopher, writer, and educator, claims that bad faith is “ the habit that people have of deceiving themselves into thinking that they do not have the freedom to make choices for fear of the potential consequences of making a choice.”. He supports this claim by first giving an example of someone with bad faith. Then, Burton analyses why this person has bad faith. One of the examples was a waiter that does everything that a waiter should do. This waiter would have bad faith because in order to act as a waiter, the waiter must be aware that he or she is not a waiter, but “a conscious human being who is deceiving himself that he is a waiter.

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The world we live in is filled with crime, evil, and injustice, but do people have the desire to do bad things knowing that they are bad, or do they do them thinking that they are good? In this essay, I examine Socrates argument, found in Plato’s Meno, that no one knowingly desires bad things. If Socrates were right, it would mean that it is impossible for someone to perform a bad action based on their desire for that bad thing. Instead, all bad desires result from the ignorance of the person performing the action in falsely believing that the action is good. Though Socrates presents a compelling argument, I argue that it is possible for someone to act badly, all the while knowing that what they desire is bad.

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He sets up a world in which man is alone, anxious, forlorn, anguished, without a God and without any external or even internal essence to guide him. Then, however, step by step, he dismantles these basic tenets in order to make his harsh philosophy palatable to others and himself. He also underestimates the anguish which non-existentialists experience. How can he be so arrogantly claim that a man who believes in God or a man who lives by secular ethics does not experience anxiety and forlornness similar to, or even more extreme than Sartre's? A man who believes in God but acts otherwise certainly can.

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He also insisted that refusing to choose or to act is the exercising of a choice. The concept of bad faith comes here as sometimes we deny ourselves freedom, and are in turn deceiving ourselves. Sartre insists that ‘existence precedes essence’, that we remain people irrespective of our professions or our relationships. Hence, we cannot use the demands of our position as an excuse for our actions; for we always have a choice and can always abandon our particular role or position. Recognition of an unconscious does not necessarily require the abandonment of Sartre’s moral insights and his assertion that we are more responsible for our actions than we would like to believe.

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The argument Jean-Paul Sartre, a French philosopher, presents on existentialism helps to prove the foundation which is “existence precedes essence”. Existentialism is normally understood as an ideology that involves evaluating existence itself and the way humans find themselves existing currently in the world. For the phrase existence precedes essence, existence’s etymology is exsistere or to stand out while the term Essence means “being” or “to be” therefore the fundamental of existentialism, literally means to stand out comes before being. This can be taken into many different ideas such as individuals having to take responsibility for their own actions and that in Sartre’s case the individual is the sole judge of his or her own actions. According to him, “men is condemned to be free,” therefore “the destiny of man is placed within himself.”

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