FACTORES QUE AFECTAN AL RENDIMIENTO VOLUMÉTRICO

With respect to the first question, we can find the clearest (early) picture of authentic living in the Notebooks, in the form of “willing to will” our freedom, which is the result of a “thematic grasping of our freedom, of gratuity, of unjustifiability”.³⁸⁸ In what follows, we will take a closer look at the section of the Notebooks for an Ethics surrounding this concept.³⁸⁹

Sartre begins by effectively restating some earlier points about bad faith and identity: It is thanks to freedom and existential lack that “it is false that I am courageous and false that I am not so”, and so any non-contradictory attitude towards freedom must honour that fact, must accept that any state or property such as courage can always be transcended and never adheres to us as a fixed,

permanent being.³⁹⁰ In fact, attributing any quality or state to ourselves, or attempting to be courageous, cowardly, etc has been shown repeatedly³⁹¹ to be inherently doomed to failure. Any kind of argument over which state I am in, or which qualities I possess, implies that we can have that state for our being. It implies an appeal in bad faith either to a possible future or a definite past which is extended and taken to describe us forever. It doesn’t matter whether we are trying to be courageous or a coward; what matters is that in bad faith we attempt to be something, we attempt to adopt an identity. The choice of cowardice and courage here is unlikely to be a coincidence, and probably calls back to Garcin in No Exit. Whether he is trying to avoid being a coward, constantly defeated by Inez, or using her to fix himself down as one,³⁹² is ultimately irrelevant: avowing having an essence or specific, permanent being is the trap. Hence, “[a]uthenticity therefore leads to renouncing every project of being courageous (cowardly), noble (vile), etc. Because they are not realisable and because they all lead in any case to alienation”.³⁹³ So what is the alternative?

Absent being able to ever achieve a genuine, permanent nobility, vileness, etc., we end up losing the

388Notebooks, p. 474.

389It should be noted that the popular Existentialism and Humanism (Sartre, Jean-Paul, Existentialism and Humanism. Translated by Philip Mairet. Methuen: London, 1973.) is also concerned with ethics, although for reasons I will enumerate later it makes a much worse primary source than the Notebooks or Truth and Existence.

390 This much was implied by bad faith appealing to fixed (human) essences.

391 See the discussion of states and qualities in TE, pp. 20-28.

392 I.e. if we take the unorthodox and insightful reading offered by Webber in Webber, Jonathan, “There’s something about Inez” in Think Vol. 10 no. 27 (2011) pp.45-56.

393 Notebooks, p.475.

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right to (claim we have) continued states and identities, and each of these properties and the goals that instantiate them “becomes an undertaking”.³⁹⁴ For a goal to be an “undertaking” minimally indicates that it will take time, is vulnerable to interruption from outside or abandonment from within, and that it is only after the process is complete (or I am dead!) that we can judge its success.

It should be apparent that this attitude takes permanent essence away from us, but still allows for character if we take the Morris reading – nothing about it removes the ability for character to accrue through our acts, but an understanding of character as permanent and unassailable is out. Instead, we must accept that a project such as having/maintaining a friendship has to unfold over time,

“where an intuitive certitude will correspond to each particular time of this undertaking”.³⁹⁵ I take this to mean that, once we have committed to a long-lasting project,³⁹⁶ the demands it makes of us should be apparent to us as they emerge, as necessary conditions for the project continuing – we commit in the undertaking to respond to any circumstances that could threaten it in the future.

This does not mean having a definitive schedule/roadmap for all of our projects, since that would mean having literally decided in advance what all our actions will be. Apart from being impossible, this would amount to denying a) that complications could affect the execution of my projects, and b) that I might abandon the project thanks to a conversion. Conversely, if we understand from this that we have to decide whether or not to carry on repeatedly, we also fail to commit to the project – this is potentially a picture of unconnected moments of reverting back and forth on our projects. This, argues Sartre, is the same thing as not endorsing the project at all, since it is supposing that the first commitment we make is non-binding, or not binding enough to stand on its own.

Instead, we should see a project as unfolding over time and becoming increasingly concrete as it does so – when we initially start a project, at the stage of its being an intention to X, it is necessarily vague or abstract for one of two reasons.³⁹⁷ It might not be fleshed out with the specific, concrete means to its end - I might decide to work for a company, not really knowing what my job role amounts to. Or the abstractness can come purely because the project is not realised yet – because any plan can and will encounter obstacles, the final project might be unrecognisable compared to the original intent. I could adopt a wholly different style of conduct or attitude toward the project

394 Ibid., p.476.

395 Ibid.

396 And, in practice, most of the high-level projects we have are of this type.

397 Ibid, pp.477-8.

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without sacrificing the fact I am embarked on it. There is a meta-aspect to this uncertainty: it is uncertain both what material obstacles will emerge and how I will reply to them. As a result, an intention or project of this type is only ever seen in its fullness when it is complete: “the total intention coincides with the total work and it is the total work that reveals the total intention”³⁹⁸. In short, it is concrete engagements with the world and their results that really matter when it comes to adopting projects: an authentic attitude to a project is only concerned with producing the result, not with being cowardly, brave, etc: it is only concerned with the immediate demand to jump on a grenade or run for one’s life.

All of this amounts to an advance commitment to see through the results of one’s projects, it is a kind of solidarity with one’s future and past self to see that the goal, whether lofty like building a hospital or mundane like good pet ownership, is achieved. Insofar as it is open to the fragility of our projects, it is an acceptance of responsibility, and a lucid understanding of the situation, whatever the situation is, as one that demands effort from us and the maintenance and protection of a set of affairs in the world. Rather than supposing, implicitly or explicitly, that the work is destined to happen, and that my destiny is to make it come to pass, it acknowledges that concrete tasks, and so our projects, have a life of their own. This is why “[p]ure, authentic reflection³⁹⁹ is a willing of what I will. It is the refusal to define myself by what I am (Ego) but instead by what I will (that is, by my very undertaking … insofar as it turns its subjective face toward me)”.⁴⁰⁰

398 Ibid.

399 Readers of Sartre will know that, in the full picture, the notion of pure reflection is vital to authenticity, although we are only addressing its effects or upshot here, pure reflection itself will be covered later.

400 Ibid., p. 479.

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