Insincerity (sartre)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Insincerity ( French: mauvaise foi ) is a philosophical term by the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre , who describes the phenomenon that people adopt false values through the pressure of conformity and give up their absolute freedom so that they no longer ask themselves who they are needs to ask. The French expression “mauvaise foi” literally means “bad faith” and can be translated as infidelity, disloyalty, dishonesty, even malice or malice. According to Kathi Beier, Sartre's term meant exactly what is now usually referred to as self-deception .

Concept history

In the story “ The Childhood of a Boss ”, written by Sartre in 1938 , Lucien Fleurier solves his identity problem by adopting the fascist ideology and defines himself through the rights he has been given from birth. The “mauvaise foi” thus disguises the total freedom and responsibility of commitment by pretending that people have a solid nature.

Based on Martin Heidegger's analysis of the “ dictatorship of 'Man ”, which was not morally intended, Sartre carried out some phenomenological analyzes in Das Sein und das Nothing in 1943 , which contributed to the popularity of existentialism . In the chapter “the origin of negation ”, Sartre defines the “mauvaise foi” as the attitude of one who lies to himself in a kind of doubling of consciousness . In short, if I can't stand the dizziness of being myself, then I can be someone else. Sartre describes a waiter who is completely absorbed in his role as a waiter, so that he identifies with the social conditions that have shaped him and loses his free will. But he can play his role perfectly because he is watching himself to a certain extent and thus gains inner freedom in relation to his role play. Alfred Dandyk defines the existential mauvaise foi as "incorrect coordination of facticity (actual behavior) and transcendence (design)". An example of this is the main character of the play " Closed Society ". The revolutionary Joseph Garcin does not want to assume that he was a coward. “Hell, that's the others!” Says Garcin, because the insincerity towards others no longer works.

Sartre also defines the “mauvaise foi” as a lie in which the distinction between what is deceived and what has been deceived is abolished in the unity of one consciousness. In existentialism , mistrust arises as a paradoxical basic condition of consciousness: “The human being is first a blueprint that lives subjectively”. The striving for identity must necessarily take place as a drama: “For sheer sincerity , one can succumb to the 'mauvaise foi'. Total and constant sincerity as a constant effort to remain true to oneself is naturally the constant effort to disaffiliate oneself. ”But“ that is not to say that one cannot radically escape the 'mauvaise foi' ”. The worker leader Pierre Dumaine, who was active in the Resistance in the script “ The game is over ” written by Sartre in 1943, is said to be the representative of honesty ( bonne foi ).

Sartre used his concept of insincerity or untruthfulness against Sigmund Freud and the then influential psychoanalysis . He rejected Freud's unconscious because it was nothing more than “mauvaise foi”. He called the defenders of such deterministic theories, which deny the inner freedom of man, “cowards” or “scoundrels” ( salauds ). Examples are the petty bourgeoisie, the born again Christian who flees responsibility in religion, or the gay man who claims that his homosexuality is innate. The philosopher Martin Heidegger, who joined the NSDAP in 1933 , temporarily supported Adolf Hitler and had a complex relationship to National Socialism , quoted Sartre in an interview in 1969 and accused some of his critics of “mauvaise foi”.

Alfred Dandyk distinguishes five applications of the term insincerity (incorrect coordination of actual behavior and design):

  1. Inferiority: The inferiority is chosen pre-reflective. And the person concerned fails (mostly) on the reflexive level because of his inferiority because he does not achieve his goal of being great and superior.
  2. Belief and knowledge: Knowledge is based on intuitive evidence, belief on non-convincing evidence. See Tertullian : credo quia absurdum (I believe because it is absurd). Belief is insincere because uncertainty is denied.
  3. The other: Only those who find the balance between being-for-oneself and being-for-others, neither absolutizing themselves nor others, live honestly.
  4. The sticky thing: Our design for matter, the in-itself, also corresponds to our basic design.
  5. The coward ( le lâche ) and the scoundrel ( le salaud ): The coward shuns the choice to which he is condemned because of his freedom. He seeks appropriate excuses (e.g. in a determinism). His counterpart is the scoundrel who denies that his being is contingent . The scoundrel is represented by the bourgeoisie in the portraits in Der Ekel , who look down on Roquentin in Bouville.

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ J. Childers / G. Hentzi eds., The Columbia Dictionary of Modern Literary and Cultural Criticism (1995) p. 103
  2. ^ Paul Geyer: "On the dialectic of 'mauvaise foi' and ideology in Flaubert's Madame Bovary". Literaturwissenschaftliches Jahrbuch 40/1999, 199–236, p. 199. PDF ( Memento of the original from February 25, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.romanistik.uni-bonn.de
  3. ↑ Kathi Beier: Self-deception . Walter de Gruyter, 2010, ISBN 978-3-11-022931-8 , p. 44 .
  4. ↑ Jean-Paul Sartre: Das Sein und das Nothing, p. 171. Quoted from Heil, Joachim / Zimmermann, Bastian: Medical ethics as ethics of care. Towards clinical pragmatism. 2015, p. 118. See Maurice Nadeau : Proteus. The French novel since the war, Berlin 1964, p. 108: “ The childhood of a boss is the image of a 'mauvaise foi', this falsehood of the human being, pushed to the limit of its possibilities.” Vincent von Wroblewsky: “How humanistic is Sartres Existentialismus? ”, In: Richard Faber / Enno Rudolph (eds.), Humanismus in Geschichte und Gegenwart, Tübingen 2002, pp. 119–137, here 125 :“ The stories of Sartre from the thirties, especially next to Herostrat also the childhood of a boss , let us understand [...] what he will analyze as mauvaise foi in L'Etre et le Néant . "
  5. ↑ See Katja Frank: Existential absurdity and no way out ?: Intoxication and art from French decadence to literature. Bamberg 2012, p. 63f. ; Claude Heiser: The motive of waiting with Ingeborg Bachmann. An analysis of the prose work with special consideration of the philosophy of existence. St. Ingbert: Röhrig 2007, p. 162f.
  6. ↑ Dictionnaire de la langue française , Paris, Bordas 1988. Quoted from Paul Geyer: "On the dialectic of 'mauvaise foi' and ideology in Flaubert's Madame Bovary". Literaturwissenschaftliches Jahrbuch 40/1999, 199–236, p. 204. PDF ( Memento of the original from February 25, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.romanistik.uni-bonn.de
  7. ↑ Peter Caws: "The Origin of Negation" in Bernard N. Schumacher (Ed.): Jean-Paul Sartre: Das Sein und das Nothing , Berlin, De Gruyter 2014, p. 58.
  8. ↑ Sartre, Jean Paul: Being and nothing. Reinbek near Hamburg, 1995; Paul Geyer: "On the dialectic of 'mauvaise foi' and ideology in Flaubert's Madame Bovary". Literaturwissenschaftliches Jahrbuch 40/1999, 199-236, pp. 206f. PDF ( Memento of the original from February 25, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.romanistik.uni-bonn.de
  9. ↑ Otto Friedrich Bollnow : "Freedom from the role", in Jürgen Mittelstrass a . Manfred Riede (Ed.): Reasonable Thinking: Studies on Practical Philosophy a. Theory of Science , Berlin, De Gruyter 1978, p. 378.
  10. ^ Alfred Dandyk, Insincerity: The existential psychoanalysis of Sartre in the context of the history of philosophy , Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2002, p. 14.
  11. ↑ Ulrike Bardt: "Closed society or the 'morality in situation'." In: Ders. (Ed.): Jean-Paul Sartre: a philosopher of the 21st century? Darmstadt: Wiss. Buchges., 2008, p. 47: "One can even live 'insincerity' as a permanent form, as a constant lifestyle, as Garcin did all his life."
  12. ↑ Gustav Jager: "Sisyphus and Homo faber." In: Fischer Kolleg Vol. 12. Religion / Philosophy. Edited by Wolfgang Hinker, Frankfurt a. M. 1973, pp. 106–124, here 108: "Self-deception and insincerity are lifted."
  13. ↑ Claudia Jünke: The polyphony of discourses. K&N, Würzburg 2003, p. 38.
  14. ↑ Max Apel, Peter Ludz: Philosophical Dictionary . Walter de Gruyter, Berlin 1976, p. 247.
  15. ↑ Jean-Paul Sartre: Is Existentialism Humanism? Three essays, Ullstein, Frankfurt 1989, p. 20
  16. ↑ Jens Bonnemann: The scope of the imaginary Sartre's theory of the imagination Meiner 200è, p. 266.
  17. ↑ Sartre, Jean Paul: Being and nothing. Reinbek near Hamburg, 1995; Paul Geyer: "On the dialectic of 'mauvaise foi' and ideology in Flaubert's Madame Bovary". Literaturwissenschaftliches Jahrbuch 40/1999, 199–236, p. 205. PDF ( Memento of the original from February 25, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.romanistik.uni-bonn.de
  18. ^ Wolfgang Drost: Paris sous l'Occupation , University Press C. Winter, 1995, p. 169.
  19. ↑ Uli Buchner: Jean-Paul Sartre's existential psychoanalysis. Grin 2011, p. 52.
  20. ^ Alfred Dandyk: Insincerity: The existential psychoanalysis of Sartre in the context of the history of philosophy , Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2002, p. 14.
  21. ↑ Robert Denoon Cumming: Phenomenology and Deconstruction: Volume Four: Solitude, Chicago 2001, p. 117 u. P. 118 fn. 37.
  22. ^ Alfred Dandyk: Insincerity: The existential psychoanalysis of Sartre in the context of the history of philosophy , Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2002, p. 14f.