Althouse: Bad faith.

June 5, 2020

Bad faith.

35 comments:

Sebastian said...: Thesis: systemic racism is nothing but bad faith.; 6/5/20, 10:37 AM
hombre said...: Sartre would have seen things differently, but WHITE PRIVILEGE!; 6/5/20, 10:38 AM
RK said...: How come there were no racial minorities in there?; 6/5/20, 10:43 AM
wild chicken said...: Ah, that was good. I didn't last on the other vid.

I do like Sartre, and de Beauvoir, and read novels by both of them.

But they became such disgustingly predictable communists later on after their best work was done.; 6/5/20, 10:47 AM
Yancey Ward said...: There is a ton of good implied advice in that short video for every young person.; 6/5/20, 10:49 AM
n.n said...: Serenity now, insanity later.

"To be free as we really are." On one hand, on the other hand, always and forever.; 6/5/20, 11:13 AM
Fernandinande said...: But they became such disgustingly predictable communists later on after their best work was done.

Believing that communism or Marxism are Good Ideas™ reveals such a lack of understanding about human beings that you should probably ignore just about anything those believers said about people.; 6/5/20, 11:19 AM
narciso said...: They hated people individually

https://mobile.twitter.com/JackPosobiec/status/1268889085734785024; 6/5/20, 11:27 AM
William said...: Who better to argue the intricacies of bad faith than Jean Paul Sartre.; 6/5/20, 11:30 AM
rhhardin said...: His failure in women's magazines is from phrasing stuff like "being precedes essence."; 6/5/20, 11:34 AM
rhhardin said...: Systemic racism is an average IQ of 86 reinterpreted by the news media.; 6/5/20, 11:36 AM
rhhardin said...: Your velvet words of purple tint
In France they would be famous
Like all that bellybutton lint
From Kierkegaard and Camus; 6/5/20, 11:38 AM
rhhardin said...: Levinas has an excellent essay on the phenomenology of boredom.

Existence and Existents

serious recommendation, but you may want to find it in a university library owing to supply and demand pricing.; 6/5/20, 11:45 AM
AZ Bob said...: The French have a reputation for being unhappy. You have to wonder why. What with such a beautiful country and so much fine culture available, how can this be?

Having French family, I have traveled extensively there and have many French friends. I don't think they are a particularly unhappy people. But there is a tendency to find fault even if it is only a slight one. So nothing can be truly successful or satisfying.

People here do the same thing. So what does this have to do with mauvaise foi and Sartre? Does bad faith have anything to do with the current civil unrest? Ann, you are so clever.; 6/5/20, 11:49 AM
mezzrow said...: One day up near Salinas, Lord, I let him slip away
He's lookin' for that home, and I hope he finds it; 6/5/20, 11:56 AM
Jeff said...: So we should all just move to LA and get jobs as waiters and waitresses while we wait to be discovered. Right.

No, we can't all be movie stars. Nor can you always achieve your dream, if your dream is unrealistic. The waiter who doesn't quit the job he doesn't like has obligations to himself, his grocer, his landlord, and maybe to a family. It's not that he is fearful, it's that he makes a rational cost-benefit calculation and figures that he's better off doing what he's doing now. There's nothing wrong with that. That doesn't make him "deplorable", or "unfree". Responsibility is a real thing.

The example of the couple deluding themselves about how compatible they really are is a bit better. But even then, people change over time. The woman who used to love your sexual attentions loses interest over time. The man discovers that his wife really isn't as bright as he thought. One or the other adopts a religion that the partner can't live with. Or a million other things. Compatibility may be fleeting. If you wait to partner up until you find someone who is perfectly compatible and will stay that way, you may end up waiting forever.

So let's stop pretending that are simple changes we could all make that will make things so much better. Most people know far more about their choices in life and why they made them than the philosopher does. His condescending "You always have a choice" is just bullshit. Most of those "choices" would come at a horrendous cost.; 6/5/20, 12:17 PM
William said...: I like Camus. He was a leftist but, like Orwell, he could recognize a steaming pile of shit when he saw it. Also, unlike Sartre, he took real risks during the Nazi occupation. In some ways Camus was the man Sartre pretended to be....Nietzsche was unequivocally pro-slavery. It's a wonder the cancel culture doesn't come for him.; 6/5/20, 12:36 PM
narciso said...: remember sartre performed under vichy, and camus was with the resistance, even though both were sad sack, derrida had a similar lineage down the line,; 6/5/20, 12:40 PM
Ann Althouse said...: "Does bad faith have anything to do with the current civil unrest? Ann, you are so clever."

Clearly, you did not watch the video!; 6/5/20, 12:49 PM
Lurker21 said...: The French do love to complain and protest and riot, but they especially like to do it to and for and about Americans. We hurt their pride when we became top country, and they don't have the consolations that the British can fall back on.

The French are like the Scandinavians. They have a strong sense of what you could call solidarity if you want to be positive or envy if you want to be critical. But the Scandinavians really are afraid of outshining other people, while Frenchmen and Frenchwomen can be obsessive about showing off and displaying their superiority. The result is a more chaotic society than they have in the Nordic countries. Perhaps it's also more dynamic. It's certainly more showy.

Do foreigners hate us for the ways that we are different from them or for the ways that we are the same?; 6/5/20, 12:49 PM
AZ Bob said...: I watched it twice. Clearly I didn't understand it.; 6/5/20, 12:52 PM
narciso said...: I find french philosophy hasn't gotten much anything right since montesquieu, rousseau was the well spring of the terror, that was about 300 years ago, sartre, derrida, foucault, they had their heads up their derriere, (with foucault it might have been literal) camus and perhaps raymond aron, are the exception, piketty falls definitely with the first group,; 6/5/20, 12:56 PM
effinayright said...: rhhardin said...
Your velvet words of purple tint
In France they would be famous
Like all that bellybutton lint
From Kierkegaard and Camus
**************

"SAID Agatha Christie to E. Phillips Oppenheim, "Who is this Hemingway, Who is this Proust?

Who is this Vladimir Whatchamacallum, this Neopostrealist Rabble?" she groused."; 6/5/20, 1:28 PM
mandrewa said...: I don't think there is anyone alive that is not guilty of restricting their vision and not seeing all the multitude of things that they could be doing.; 6/5/20, 1:33 PM
wildswan said...: An example of bad faith is the current marriage between the anarchists and the communists. Each dislikes the other, each thinks they will use the other more successfully than the other will use them; and both think that this bad faith can build a new social and political order. This is the marriage of Antifa and the pinko mayors standing down the cops. But of course the real leaders don't really think that socialism (Venezuela), communism (Russia) or anarchy (Cambodia) will build a better world. They simply realize that there rich pickings for the people at the top without tiresome demands from the people to listen to. All these people I think realized that they were going to lose the election to Trump even after covid and so they are making this coup attempt now in the name of the black community. Hard to say what will happen.

Ain't it hard when you stumble in some muddy lagoon.; 6/5/20, 1:51 PM
RichardJohnson said...: Sarte, as a Commie living in a free country, was the epitome of "bad faith."

In his defense, though Sartre initially was a Fidel fan, he later had a falling-out with Fidel. Sartre: sometimes "bad faith," sometimes not.; 6/5/20, 2:35 PM
Fernandinande said...: "being precedes essence"

Does that mean "blank slate"?

Systemic racism is an average IQ of 86 reinterpreted by the news media.

Pretty much; IQ 85 or so is generally the cut-off level for "can sort-of function usefully in a modern society".

Fun factoids:

There are more whites with IQ below 85 than blacks (about 32 million vs 21 million), but there are more blacks (about 6.8 million) with IQs below 70, "need to be taken care of", than there are whites (about 4.8 million).

Using 330 million people; 61% non-mestizo white, 13% black.; 6/5/20, 2:39 PM
Fernandinande said...: I watched it twice. Clearly I didn't understand it.

The front half-or-so consisted of a bunch of false statements; dunno about the back half.; 6/5/20, 2:53 PM
Francisco D said...: @Ferdinande,

You cannot provide those statistics in a college classroom any more. 30+ years ago, I needed to provide a trigger warning to a Masters-level class when discussing psychological testing. Now, it will very likely get you fired.; 6/5/20, 3:17 PM
Clark said...: The priority of existence over essence (the video referred to this as the priority of being over essence) is rich and profound in Heidegger. It comes through in the video in a very watered down way. (I don't know if that is the fault of Sartre or the video maker.)

I have always liked the idea that Sartre would become so absorbed in his thinking while riding his bicycle that he would sometimes fall over. (h/t Simone de Beauvoir); 6/5/20, 3:45 PM
William50 said...: Jeff said;
So we should all just move to LA and get jobs as waiters and waitresses while we wait to be discovered. Right.

L.A. is a great big freeway
Put a hundred down and buy a car
In a week maybe two they'll make you a star
Weeks turn into years how quick they pass
And all the stars that never were
Are parking cars and pumping gas; 6/5/20, 3:59 PM
Ann Althouse said...: “ I watched it twice. Clearly I didn't understand it.”

You must be choosing not to understand.; 6/5/20, 4:26 PM
Ignorance is Bliss said...: Ann Althouse said...

You must be choosing not to understand.

I am honestly not choosing to not understand, and I would be interested in your understanding.

I can easily see how someone watching that, amid the background talk about white supremacy, could reach the conclusion that people who say they are oppressed by white supremacy are in fact held down by their own bad faith.

I'm not arguing that is the case, just that it is a possible way to apply the message of the video to our current times.

So again, I would love to hear your understanding.; 6/5/20, 4:53 PM
Night Owl said...: People who lie to themselves do it because it's often more comforting than the truth. Telling someone they are free to quit their dead-end job and follow their passion ignores that some people have little or no talent, and are lucky to have their dead-end job. It also ignores the reality that someone who is timid by nature-- or nurture-- doesn't have a brain that is 'wired' to take big risks, even if they would like to.

It's preferable for some to blame their lack of success on others than face the fact that they're just a mediocrity, or too timid, or ugly, or have a rotten personality.The people who are best at lying to themselves can become bitter, angry miscreants who blame the world for their failure, or virtue-signaling leftists who fall in love with the lies they tell themselves. You know... like Democrat voters.; 6/5/20, 6:26 PM
Banjo said...: Sartre was an increasingly comic figure until death brought the curtain down on his act. It is strange to see people still quoting him, even from the springtime of his life. The best you can say about Sartre is he was not as obscurantist as those practicing his craft today.; 6/5/20, 7:00 PM