Bad Faith

I really liked reading about Sartre's idea of bad faith. He states that "bad faith is an attempt to escape anguish by trying to represent one's attitude and actions as determined by one's situation, or . . . anything other than one's own choices" (190). I think that this is a great counter argument to all of the discussions we had about determinism versus free will. No matter whether or not our actions are predetermined by some greater force or not, we all make choices. These choices reflect our thoughts and cannot be pawned off on something other than ourselves. I think that people who have bad faith, in this sense, are those who cannot handle the radical responsibility that comes with radical freedom. They are not ready to handle the consequences of their actions when there is no longer a mediator watching everything that they do. If people can get over, or avoid totally bad faith, then I believe that they are capable of living a radically free life, but not until then.

Consciousness and Objects

Another of Sartre's ideas is that of conscious beings versus unconscious beings. He says that a human is a "being-for-itself" while an inanimate object is a "being-in-itself"(185). The distinction for this comes to subjectivity, or the awareness of being something other than an object. This is what happens in early human development. A baby is not sure of its identity for a while until it determines what it is not, and then it begins to understand that it is something, it is somebody and that there is a world outside of it. On the other hand, a sapling does not go through this process on the way to becoming a full grown oak tree. Trees, or any other unconscious object in the world have no ability to differentiate themselves from other objects and are thus in a different state of consciousness.
Sartre then goes on in the discussion to say that we want to become God because we want to be a being that is "in-itself-for-itself" (Sartre qtd. in 186). I disagree that this God is "perfectly complete and self-justifying" (186). In order to be God, one would be completely aware of everything in creation. This requires the asset I just mentioned in being able to distinguish oneself from another being. In doing this, God becomes simply a being-for-itself, not a being in-itself-for-itself.

Late Sartre and Existentialism

The chapter on Sartre's work starts off with a brief overview of the ideas of existentialism. It touches on the ideas that existentialism focuses on the individual and their experiences, if there is a point to life, and exercising one's freedom and encouraging others to do so. This made me think back to Sartre's later works in which he talks about helping others. He says that we must first “use our freedom to change ourselves for the better; and second, to do what we can to work toward a worldwide society in which all people have equal opportunity to exercise their freedom” (199). So while the first priority is still on the individual, Sartre turns to an idea of a more universal well being. Is this idea of helping others straying from the idea of existentialism? I honestly am not incredibly well versed in existentialism, but it seems that if the main focus is on the self and the debate over a meaning of life, helping others would not be high up in the priorities of an existentialist, but maybe I am seeing existentialists as more selfish than they are.

Radical Freedom

As I wrote my Q&A I thought about whether or not people really do want radical freedom? Obviously everyone would say that they do, because what is better than freedom right? It's what America stands for! (little bit of sarcasm for the conversation a few weeks ago...) But can people handle the responsibility that comes with this freedom? I think that laws are around to help us make the hard decisions in life. If there was pure anarchy and we all had radical freedom, why wouldn't we steal if we were hungry? We need to satisfy those basic human needs that Sartre admitted to in his later work, so what is to say that we wouldn't steal food for ourselves? The idea that stealing is illegal restricts our radical freedom in a way that allows us to avoid difficult situations. Without the law we would simply have a moral struggle with ourselves to decide whether or not to steal the food, but with that freedom slightly restrained, the decision is easy. So I still can't decide if people would want to live a truly radically free life, I think that many would find it far too demanding on their morals and would crawl back to the easy life of laws and regulations.

Sartre

I have never thought of the idea of anguish at all other than fear. However, I really like the way Sartre sees anguish, as "the reflective apprehension of freedom by itself" (Sartre qtd. in 189). Freedom, at its purest form, is pretty scary. We already have to deal with this as college students. We have new found freedom with where we go, when we go, what we do, when we do it; almost everything is completely up to us. I would say anguish is what happens when we wake up in the morning and contemplate not going to class. It would be so easy and so nice to crawl back under the covers, yet most of us (well some of us at least haha) make the decision to get up and get dressed and go to class. This is why we grow so much as people through college, we learn to deal with this anguish, this fear of having to make a decision, and we get conditioned to (hopefully) make the right decision. Now that I think of it, athletics seems to be a great example of anguish. It doesn't even have to be out on the court or the field, it can happen in the gym. We have the freedom to do what we want yet we decide to stay on the treadmill for another mile, we decide to squat another set, we decide to hold planks as long as we can. This may not be the best example, but I thought that it could fit in sorta kinda maybe.

Revolt Now or Later?

One of the main ideas of Marx is the fact that the capitalist system needs to be overthrown. The question then is, when? Obviously a huge revolution of a whole system is not an easy task, so many have tried to reform it and make it a little bit easier for the people. Is this a good thing? Marx's followers were split on the idea. On one hand there were people that did not want reform because they thought that reformations would distract the oppressed. Rather than thinking about, and struggling for their rights, they would be worrying about the levels of oppression they experienced. These thinkers wanted workers to be  held at the worst conditions without reform to force an overthrow of the system. On the other hand, those in favor of reforms thought that reforms were like windows to a better world; you're not there yet, but you can see it and now you want it. These people thought that the glimpses of a better world that are brought about by reforms would cause a chain reaction in the pursuit of better and better lives, culminating in the overthrow of the capitalist system. The editors then go on to note that the capitalist system in Marx's time is so changed by the reforms that have occurred that many communist ideas are actually embedded in it. So my question is; what do we have left to do? If all of these reforms have made today's capitalism merely a shadow of what it used to be, is it really that bad? To what further extent do we need to act towards communism to defeat capitalism?

Modern Economics

On page 172, the editors talk about how Marx's theories seem to have come out so wrong for the western world after being so accurate for China and Russia. China and Russia, notice, had communism rise up early in the 20th century, while it is still delayed in the west. What is the reason for this? Technology. We have been living in the information era. We are no longer a society that depends on the physical production of goods because we need many more services provided. We need someone to do our taxes and to cut our hair and take care of our pets. This is the reason that China is flourishing so much under communism these days. Since "there are now large numbers of white-collar workers such as office staff, government employees, medical staff, teachers, and lawyers" (171) here in America, all of our labor demands go to China. China is then the perfect habitat for production, because of communism, and they do what used to be slave work, for an incredibly low price. When the editor says that "Marx should have paid more attention to slavery" (172), I think he should have said that  Marx should have paid attention to the labor that slaves provide, not the slaves themselves. Through technology, we now have more needs than simply those of manufactured goods and harvested agriculture. Although those maintain their status as important goods, we are able to have them produced in China at a low cost. Until this changes, I don't see communism making its way to the United States because the labor market here with all the office workers and so on cannot be regulated in a way that physical, manufacturing labor can be.