The classes we have spent discussing Sartre have been really interesting. The fact that the conversation keeps getting prolonged definitely speaks to the complexity and interesting characteristics of his ideas.
One of the parts I enjoyed learning about was the idea of bad faith. Dr. J made it clear that although bad faith exists, there is no distinguished opposite known as good faith. The bad faith story we heard about the woman on a date was very interesting. I think most people can relate to the basic idea of this story, which is the act of choosing, or lack thereof, is choosing nonetheless. While listening to this story I kept thinking about a passive character who was struggling between taking a bold stand or being permissive. As she walks the line in between, she is fooling herself into thinking that she can avoid making a choice.
This concept of a non-choice choice is most definitely a relevant topic. There are many situations where it is easy to look the other way and convince yourself that by not taking a clear stand on either side, you are staying in a neutral area when in fact you are choosing to not take a stand and therefore nothing is getting solved and nothing can be let go. In class today we talked a little bit about the situation happening up at Penn State and the implications of each possible approach.
So, if we acknowledge that not making an active choice is still making a choice then why do we sometimes attempt to fool ourselves into thinking we cannot make a choice? Why don’t we just pick one side and go with it?
For lack of better terminology, I am going to with "it's human nature."
ReplyDeleteWhat I mean is, do you remember at the beginning of the school year this precise debate was heavy in class when applied to the trolley problem. There were some that decided to pull the lever, and those that strongly believed that they should not get involved. and the the trolley problem was switched to the lady standing over the bridge, and Dr. J asked us which one of us would be willing to push her off the bridge in order to save the lives of the others. And again the debate over not doing anything and doing something arose.
I think this debate kept popping up because of how we viewed responsibilities. Before reading Sartre, a lot of us would have argued that when pushing the level or the lady off te bridge we would be directly responsible for the death of that individual, but by doing nothing, we could absolve ourselves from that responsibilities. We believed that by not getting involved, we could not take the "blame" nor the responsibilities for the subsequent events.
This where, I think, where Sartre wanted to show us the fallacy in our thinking. For he would argue that by being present in the situation, knowing of the situation, with the ability to do something about the situation, but still we do nothing, then we are making a choice to do nothing. And with that choice, comes the responsibility of whatever may happen next.