As mentioned in the last essay, this section of Rorty’s book strikes me the wrong way. I understand and appreciate his setup. There is something unattainable about Nietzsche’s self overcoming. And to live a purely Kantian existence feels like following God without God. We can’t all be secular saints and strong poets.
Rorty believes there’s a path out of this (and I agree) but he chooses as a guide … Sigmond Freud? I didn’t find his argument persuasive. But before I go through it step by step (and yes, I am procrastinating on this) I’m going to take this essay to suggest an alternate route.
I believe that Jean-Paul Sartre in his book/lecture “Existentialism is a Humanism” provided the clearest path out of this morass. I don’t expect this to be a very popular statement. While existentialism was probably the world’s most popular philosophy in the late 1950s, I often feel like I’m its last follower. There’s a widespread belief that existentialism is too difficult for any human being to follow (and I’ll try to address that below), but even an existential-lite approach, I believe, is superior to Rorty’s tortured Freud-inspired postmodern morality.
But let’s return to the late 50s for a a moment. William Barrett, in his wonderful overview of existentialism “Irrational Man,” described Sartre’s moral philosophy this way:
When God dies, man takes the place of God. Such had been the prophecy of Dostoevski and Nietzsche, and Sartre on this point is their heir. The difference, however, is that Dostoevski and Nietzsche were frenzied prophets, whereas Sartre advances his view with all the lucidity of Cartesian reason and advances it, moreover, as a basis for humanitarian and democratic social action. To put man in the place of God may seem, to traditionalists, an unspeakable piece of diabolism; but in Sartre’s case it is done by a thinker who, to judge from his writings, is a man of overwhelming good will and generosity.
It’s quite a trick to get from Nietzsche’s social nihilism to a call for humanitarian action, but Sartre somehow pulls it off. While it’s impossible to boil down Sartre to a single thought, this is a good starting point:
Man is condemned to be free: condemned, because he did not create himself, yet nonetheless free, because once cast into the world, he is responsible for everything he does. Existentialists do not believe in the power of passion. They will never regard a great passion as a devastating torrent that inevitably compels man to commit certain acts and which, therefore, is an excuse. They think that man is responsible for his own passion. Neither do existentialists believe that man can find refuge in some given sign that will guide him on earth; they think that man interprets the sign as he pleases and that man is therefore without any support or help, condemned at all times to invent man.
This framework gives rise to some wonderful, provocative Sartrean thoughts, such as:
You are free, so choose; in other words, invent. No general code of ethics can tell you what you ought to do; there are no signs in this world.
Man is nothing other than his own project. He exists only to the extent that he realizes himself, therefore he is nothing more than the sum of his actions, nothing more than his life.
And (my favorite of all:)
We should act without hope.
I could probably write a full essay on that last thought alone, but I’ll file that away for now. These thoughts do echo’s Nietzsche’s self invention and Kant’s moral imperatives, but with an important distinction:
Nonetheless, saying “You are nothing but your life” does not imply that the artist will be judged solely by his works of art, for a thousand other things also help to define him. What we mean to say is that a man is nothing but a series of enterprises, and that he is the sum, organization, and aggregate of the relations that constitute such enterprises.
We are not defined by our greatest feats or some kind of moral perfection, but rather by the sum total of our actions across a lifetime that define who we are. Our inborn traits are irrelevant to this definition as well:
What the existentialist says is that the coward makes himself cowardly and the hero makes himself heroic; there is always the possibility that one day the coward may no longer be cowardly and the hero may cease to be a hero. What matters is the total commitment, but there is no one particular situation or action that fully commits you, one way or the other.
Unlike Nietzsche, Sartre believes that there are universal values and goods, but they are contingent, chosen on a daily basis by the people alive at the moment:
We can claim that human universality exists, but it is not a given; it is in perpetual construction. In choosing myself, I construct universality; I construct it by understanding every other man’s project, regardless of the era in which he lives. This absolute freedom of choice does not alter the relativity of each era. The fundamental aim of existentialism is to reveal the link between the absolute character of the free commitment, by which every man realizes himself in realizing a type of humanity—a commitment that is always understandable, by anyone in any era—and the relativity of the cultural ensemble that may result from such a choice.
Sartre’s view of ethics does not wall off any human behavior in particular—but it makes one unbreakable demand: you must choose. Faced with an ethical dilemma, indecision is not an option:
Choice is possible; what is impossible is not to choose. I can always choose, but I must also realize that, if I decide not to choose, that still constitutes a choice. This may seem a purely technical difference, but it is very important since it limits whim and caprice.
Man makes himself; he does not come into the world fully made, he makes himself by choosing his own morality, and his circumstances are such that he has no option other than to choose a morality. We can define man only in relation to his commitments.
The final, important concept of Sartre’s philosophy is bad faith. He introduces it this way:
One should always ask oneself, “What would happen if everyone did what I am doing?” The only way to evade that disturbing thought is through some kind of bad faith. Someone who lies to himself and excuses himself by saying “Everyone does not act that way” is struggling with a bad conscience, for the act of lying implies attributing a universal value to lies.
Sartre’s morality is highly non-judgmental—we make our choices and own them, but we should not reproach others for making their own moral choices. We can, however, reproach them for acting in bad faith:
If we define man’s situation as one of free choice, in which he has no recourse to excuses or outside aid, then any man who takes refuge behind his passions, any man who fabricates some deterministic theory, is operating in bad faith. One might object by saying: “But why shouldn’t he choose bad faith?” My answer is that I do not pass moral judgment against him, but I call his bad faith an error. Here, we cannot avoid making a judgment of truth. Bad faith is obviously a lie because it is a dissimulation of man’s full freedom of commitment.
In Sartre’s view, acting in bad faith is surrendering your freedom, and that’s the greatest reproach we can make to ourselves.
Add this all up and the Sartrean existentialist becomes responsible for all humanity in every action. This isn’t meant to be punitive. We’ll all make bad decisions along the way, act hastily, and weigh moral conundrums poorly. Our mistakes will simply become part of our full definition and perhaps give us greater humility—and empathy for others who choose poorly.
But all of us, regardless of our station in life and our abilities, has the freedom to act in good faith towards a better world. To me, this combines Nietzsche’s self overcoming with Kant’s moral mission. It may not be perfect, but I think it does a much better job of it than trying to shoehorn Sigmond Freud into the discussion.
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