ambiguity and anguish
Everyone suffers from anguish, in the Sartrian sense, but I have noticed that people acheive varying levels of success at coping with it. And indeed, anguish itself is not an evil in any sense, but I have noticed that those who suffer the most from anguish are unaware of what they suffer from. Here, I will attempt to explain what anguish is and what can be done about it.
A good place to start may be the tension between a desire for objectivity in values while being aware of subjectivity. It is a problem that all of us at one point or another have run into, but it seems to me that some people suffer more from it more frequently.
To begin investigating this problem, it may be appropriate to point out that today we live in a secular society; not simply in the sense of a separation of church and state but also that we cannot seriously accept any set of objective values handed down by God (or some other divinity). Sure, there are people of various faiths who essentially still believe in some sense of good and evil, but the point is that most of us, more or less, have become conscious of our freedom when it comes to values.
The result is that all values have become subjective. Without a God to support them, any one of us is free to declare any set of values. And most of us become aware of this, in fact we are taught that it is inappropriate to encroach on the values of others regardless of what you yourself believe is good. We are content to say, "whatever floats your boat."
On the other hand, when someone argues in advocates for something like eugenics or genocide, we don't sit down and have a discussion with them. We proceed from the assumption that they are in the wrong, or at the very least, hold a point of view that is so ridiculous it shouldn't be taken seriously. And for the most part, the vast majority of people align on what is considered unequivocally "bad", and this upholds some illusion of objectivity when it comes to that set of values cultivated by society.
But that is an extreme case. There are also other social values which we take for granted, not necessarily because we cannot question them, but rather that it is convenient not to question them. For example, it is rare to meet someone who has no interest at all in having some kind of a successful career, however they may define success. It is taken as a given that growing your career is a good, valuable thing.
I imagine many will object that growing your career is out of necessity, since being in poverty is the alternative and can be poverty painful in a physiological sense. I could reply that idea that pain and suffering are inherently evils is also a subjective point of view but rather I would like to point out that many people who have acheived modest professional success continue to push for more, even though they are surely not living in poverty by any definition. So the pursuit of a career is one of those social values.
We can list out many others:
- Getting married
- Having children
- Pursuing education
- Having a good social life
- Learning skills
- etc.
I am aware that some of these have come into question as of late. But the point is not to come up with a definitive list of social values but rather to point out that at any point in history we as a society do up hold some set of values at all, and that this value system ultimately drew support from God. Even if the society's values didn't align perfectly with any religious law, the existence of a divinity allowed the possibility of objective values.
Now let us take a slight detour and discuss the values of children. In this section I will paraphrase from Simone de Beauvoir's The Ethics of Ambiguity.
When we are children, values seem to us to be objective. Our parents, teachers, and other adults are the source of these objective values. They represent the world at large, a world which we feel runs fine without our involvement. We do not feel as though we have any major role or impact on the world, we simply live within it. But there comes a point at which we become more conscious of our own freedom, and begin to question the values which have been taught to us. This is a common picture of adolescence. But eventually, most of us "grow up" and cease our open rebellion against the values of society. Sure, we will reject or reinterpret a couple of them, but in order to become a part of society we must accept the majority of the values it mandates. Existentialists call this the spirit of seriousness. I understand it in the sense of taking societal values seriously, essentially treating them as objective givens. Most functioning members of society are serious people.
But there is a problem, which these values are not actually objective, and deep down we know this. Most of us don't have to question whether murder is bad or not, but we question whether we have the right to get mad at our partner or best friend when they do something that upsets us. We question whether it's better to choose the job that pays more over the one that we might enjoy more. We question whether we should tell a white lie or be honest.
In fact, it is abundantly clear to us that there is hardly an objective criterion for values, and at every moment we are forced to exercise our freedom. And this is fine for the most part. Most of us do not agonize over whether to have pasta or pizza for dinner, or wake up every morning wondering whether we should quit our jobs. It is only at select moments where we really wish there was an objectively better choice.
But what is really happening when we cannot decide whether to break up with that person or whether to switch careers? I would argue that it is in those moments that we become most conscious of our freedom, and it is terrifying. We don't want to have to choose, not only because we are afraid of making the "wrong" choice, but because to choose something is to legislate a value for all of mankind.
In other words, when you choose one option over something else, you choose it because you believe it is better. And I don't mean the moments when you choose pasta over pizza, but when you really make a value judgement about something. What frightens us is the truth that we alone are responsible for that value. Sure, people may choose to adopt certain value systems provided by religion, philosophy, etc. But until they themselves chose to accept that system, it had no more validity than any other criterion. Maybe you choose something because most people believe it's right, and that gives it a sense of weightiness. The same fact still applies; you are the one who choose that you ought to accept values that are generally upheld.
Because you alone are reponsible for upholding that value, what follows is that you can just as easily revoke it. Because you are absolutely free to do so.
That sensation of freedom, that realization that you are condemned to be free is what Sartre calls anguish. I have noticed that some people suffer more from anguish than others. Many of them, I believe are more conscious of their own freedom than others, but are unable to cope with this freedom. They are constantly in a state of flux, of wanting to lean on concrete values, but simultaenously understanding that any value that they choose can just as easily but un-choosed. It is the consciousness of being free and wishing that you weren't.
And this freedom doesn't just extend to values, it extends to being itself. We are all constantly in the process of inventing and reinventing ourselves, but most people are unaware of this. A waiter is not really a waiter. Every morning, he is choosing to get up and arrive to the restaurant at the assigned time. With every customer he greets, he is choosing to act in a polite waiter-like fashion instead of abandoning his post. Every moment he is free, and he execises this freedom to become a waiter each time. And that is how he can declare without confusion, "I am a waiter." But the fact remains nonetheless that he is not the waiter, and will never be a waiter in the way that an apple is an apple. (That is because he is a consciousness, a being-for-itself.)
In the case of the waiter, he may be so immersed in his waiter roleplay that to him there is no question of whether he is one or not. He is a serious person. But let's look at another example of someone who is conscious of their freedom:
One day, a gambling addict has an argument with his wife over his addiction. They raise their voices, the kids start crying, and suddenly it hits him: he needs to stop gambling. It's ruining his family, it's making everyone unhappy. He makes a resolution never to gamble again.
But a couple weeks later, he comes upon a gambling table. And suddenly, he's struck by anguish. Why? Because he realizes that the resolution from before has no power. He realizes that he is not his past, he is not the person that resolved to stop gambling. Instead, if he is to continue to be someone who is not addicted to gambling, he must again recreate the resolution in this moment. He alone is responsible for recreating himself in every moment.
I have noticed that people who suffer especially from anguish are constantly reinventing themselves. They are constantly redefining what kind of person they are, and each time they wish that it will be the last time. They believe that they are "discovering new things about themselves," and have the goal to ultimately "become themselves." "Be yourself." That phrase itself is a clue as to the paradoxical nature of our being. A chair does not have to try to be a chair. But why is "being yourself" something we must actively engage in? The truth is that we are always at a distance from ourselves. That is the nature of consciousness. Consciousness is always at a distance from its objects. We are conscious of the table and the chair because we are simultaenously aware that we are not the table or the chair.
And this is not in the same way that the table is not the chair, or the chair is not the table. If tables didn't exist, the chair would still be the chair. It's not affected by the fact that it's not the table, that negation is external to it.
But when we become aware of the table and simultaenously are aware that we are at a distance from the table, that we are not the table, that is not an external negation; that is the very foundation of our being. We are a being that is at a distance from being. We are a Nothingness. And that is why we are free.
The human being, the consciousness, is eternally and without reason doomed to be free. Why is there being? Why is there Nothingness? Why do we exist? There is no reason or cause. As Heidegger says, Dasein is the being for which its own being is an issue. Unlike the table or the chair, we are a being for whom our own being is always in question.
So what do we do about it? Again, there can be no objective ethics prescribed here. But what Sartre recommends against is bad faith. And bad faith is being in denial of your own freedom. Bad faith is when we tell ourselves we had to have acted in a certain way, that the situation made us. It's when we try to deceive ourselves into believing that there is an objective good and evil, or that we really are a waiter. What we are instead is freedom itself, and the first step to becoming authentic and escaping bad faith is to accept that you are free. That you are responsible for defining your own Being and the Being of all humanity.
In this sense, perhaps the people who are already in anguish, who are very aware of their freedom, have some sort of a head start. I can vouch for that from my own experience.
As a footnote, if your reaction to all of this is that we must return to God, then you may be a Kierkegaardian. I am in the process of investigating the approach of countering anguish with faith. Sartre would say that it's a form of bad faith, most likely. But Kierkegaard viewed it as a noble struggle.