In this paper, a number of lines of argument buttress and support the contention that Dirty Hands is a comparatively undervalued part of the Sartrean oeuvre. Using commentary from Bell and Pellauer, and employing categories relevant also to the work of Beauvoir and Camus, the paper comes to the conclusion that Hugo, as the central character of the play, is an exemplary Sartrean protagonist, and that the play is worthy of more attention than it has received. An important part of (...) the central assertion is that the play is as critical a part of the Sartrean dramatic canon as The Flies and No Exit. (shrink)

This article seeks to develop an under-appreciated aspect of spectator activity: the way in which viewers make use of film to enter or sustain a project of bad faith. Based on Jean-Paul Sartre's account of bad faith in Being and Nothingness (1943), the article explains the aspects of bad faith that are pertinent to viewer activity, then explores the way viewers can make use of filmic depictions to facilitate self-denial. For example, spectators may emphasize the fact that persons are depicted (...) in narrow terms as corroboration for their belief that human nature is just as its depicted, thereby denying that we have the freedom to be otherwise. Or spectators may deny the relevance of problematic aspects of themselves when they find it depicted in characters who are admirable in other ways. I then consider whether films themselves can be described as being in bad faith. While technically they cannot, I identify ways that a film may encourage or discourage bad faith in viewers. I also examine how the immersive aspect of film enables viewers to turn attention away from themselves while they engage in self-denial. The case for this approach to viewer activity and film analysis is supplemented by a distinction between traits that do apply to film, e.g., being racist, sexist, or homophobic, and the resources it gives persons to be in bad faith about these social attitudes. I argue that a film can have traits like these while not encouraging bad faith and vice versa, demonstrating the unique perspective offered by approaching film and spectator activity in terms of bad faith. (shrink)

My interests lie in consideration of conceptions of authenticity and inauthenticity from the perspective of ethical theories which conceive of the good for man with reference to human nature and concomitant beliefs regarding the most appropriate realisation of human capacities. Here, I find particular interest in the philosophical styles embodied by the existentialist and Lebensphilosophie movements. Such approaches sit outside the traditional frames of reference provided by deontological and utilitarian approaches to ethical reasoning and yet do I shall argue, share (...) significant similarities with ancient aretaic styles of ethics. Here, I take Aristotle to represent those aspects of ethical thought which are quintessentially of this period of intellectual history. I find not merely points of comparison but a fruitful way in which to re-examine the thought of thinkers such as Nietzsche, Scheler, Heidegger and Sartre with reference to styles of ethical enquiry which place primacy upon an objective conception of happiness which centres upon the appropriate realisation of human capacity understood with reference to Aristotle's Function Argument. I argue that phenomenological analysis shares a conception of self-perspicuity in which the agent reflects upon the full contents of their conscious experience. By this means, certain self-delusions which impede entry into the ethical life, may be removed. Additionally, whilst Aristotle's 'non-law' conception of ethics shares with existentialist thought an understanding of the human situation and its normative concerns in isolation from dualistic and theistic metaphysical speculation, such philosophy is still able to provide clear and objective ethical standards - standards often lacking within existentialism. For instance, whilst Nietzsche's pronouncement of the 'death of God' signals the death also of Christian morality, we find that such philosophy is not without normative implications and in fact can be derived to a large degree from assent towards a radical and more severe ethical self-discipline. Indeed, central certainly to the thought of Nietzsche, Heidegger and Sartre is an understanding of the role of self-deception in the human condition. Here a useful distinction may be made between those types of self-deception which may be understood as structural that is to say which are representative of an essential characteristic of human being at the abstract level - and those types of self-deception which may be described as 'motivated' or 'psychological' which relate to more specific types of self-deceptive engagement. I believe it is useful to examine both Nietzsche, Heidegger and Sartre through the lens of such interpretation, I find for instance that it is of use to examine the early Sartre as having a purely structural interpretation of bad faith (described by Jeanson as 'natural' bad-faith) whilst moving towards a psychological account in his later work, an account which has more specific moral implications with the possibility of 'willed conversion' to authenticity (Santoni). Additionally with Nietzsche, we also find a similar distinction between a self-deception which is in some sense preconditional and a motivational account of self-deception in which the agent infused with ressentiment falsifies reality in favour of subjective needs which are ultimately destructive of life-enhancement. In this sense the vicious individual can be said to have achieved merely a false optimum, and moreover, false from an objective standpoint. (shrink)