Wednesday 3 March 2010
Jean-Paul Sartre and the waiter (a philosophical legend)
Par Pierrot Cabale, Wednesday 3 March 2010 à 19:00 :: Legends of Paris
Philosophers to present their theories, like to use examples. In Being and Nothingness, Sartre chooses a waiter to illustrate his very personal definition of bad faith.
Was it at the Café de Flore? Jean-Paul Sartre enters, sits on the bench, ordering coffee, lights a cigarette, grabbed his pen and is a continuous outpouring of ideas, concepts and brilliant insights. With lightning speed, it blackens the page of his writing compulsive, obsessive, neurotic. Sartre is writing notes. It has the squinting eyes, but piercing look. Is this beautiful woman he undresses in a sight? No, what fascinates him today is the comings and goings of the waiter.
Behind the thick glass of his spectacles, Sartre believes: "It has the quick movement and intense, a little too precise, too fast, it comes to consumers too vivaciously, he bows a little too eagerly, his voice, his eyes express an interest too solicitous for the customer's order, finally she comes back, trying to imitate in his walk the inflexible rigor of some unknown automaton while carrying his tray with a kind of tightrope walker boldness[...]. All his conduct seems a game [...]. He plays it fun. But what is he? One does not need to observe him long to realize he plays at being a waiter."
He will understand: this guy does too much, he "adds". His behavior is redundant. He tries to persuade himself that it merges so perfectly with its function that he is its function. But it is not, in essence, a waiter. In fact, his essence escapes him. he may not be aware that his existence, the contingent and uncertain emergence in the world of the living.
In contrast, the plateau that our server bring so lightly is indeed a tray, a being-in-itself. His reality is massive, unambiguous, undeniable, without inner part or becoming. It is closed on itself, its form and function are determined. This plateau is in itself what it is, just what is and what it is.
If the board is, the server exists. He is a Being-for-itself a conscious one. Consciousness has no form, no content or function: it is pure nothingness and pure freedom. A gaping hole in the world, a dizzying and frightening abyss. It is only by constant movement beyond itself, that it project into reality to internalize some disjointed scraps of reality. The man, because he is a conscious being, therefore, has no essence, no stability, no continuity. He is condemned to never being what he is. But who can resign himself to being nothing?
The dream of every consciousness is to coincide with itself, to give indubitable consistency of one thing and thus abolish its agonizing freedom. This is what Sartre calls bad faith. By his grossly stereotypical conduct, the server will assume an evasion from his own nothingness. He "plays" waiter, as others play the policeman or the perfect employee, for consolation of their own sense of emptiness.
But now that Jean-Paul Sartre gets up to greet Simone. Together, they will be playing Sartre and Beauvoir at the Café de Flore.
Was it at the Café de Flore? Jean-Paul Sartre enters, sits on the bench, ordering coffee, lights a cigarette, grabbed his pen and is a continuous outpouring of ideas, concepts and brilliant insights. With lightning speed, it blackens the page of his writing compulsive, obsessive, neurotic. Sartre is writing notes. It has the squinting eyes, but piercing look. Is this beautiful woman he undresses in a sight? No, what fascinates him today is the comings and goings of the waiter.
Behind the thick glass of his spectacles, Sartre believes: "It has the quick movement and intense, a little too precise, too fast, it comes to consumers too vivaciously, he bows a little too eagerly, his voice, his eyes express an interest too solicitous for the customer's order, finally she comes back, trying to imitate in his walk the inflexible rigor of some unknown automaton while carrying his tray with a kind of tightrope walker boldness[...]. All his conduct seems a game [...]. He plays it fun. But what is he? One does not need to observe him long to realize he plays at being a waiter."
He will understand: this guy does too much, he "adds". His behavior is redundant. He tries to persuade himself that it merges so perfectly with its function that he is its function. But it is not, in essence, a waiter. In fact, his essence escapes him. he may not be aware that his existence, the contingent and uncertain emergence in the world of the living.
In contrast, the plateau that our server bring so lightly is indeed a tray, a being-in-itself. His reality is massive, unambiguous, undeniable, without inner part or becoming. It is closed on itself, its form and function are determined. This plateau is in itself what it is, just what is and what it is.
If the board is, the server exists. He is a Being-for-itself a conscious one. Consciousness has no form, no content or function: it is pure nothingness and pure freedom. A gaping hole in the world, a dizzying and frightening abyss. It is only by constant movement beyond itself, that it project into reality to internalize some disjointed scraps of reality. The man, because he is a conscious being, therefore, has no essence, no stability, no continuity. He is condemned to never being what he is. But who can resign himself to being nothing?
The dream of every consciousness is to coincide with itself, to give indubitable consistency of one thing and thus abolish its agonizing freedom. This is what Sartre calls bad faith. By his grossly stereotypical conduct, the server will assume an evasion from his own nothingness. He "plays" waiter, as others play the policeman or the perfect employee, for consolation of their own sense of emptiness.
But now that Jean-Paul Sartre gets up to greet Simone. Together, they will be playing Sartre and Beauvoir at the Café de Flore.