Thursday, April 28, 2011

Kierkegaard and Sarte's Dispute

Soren Kierkegaard purports three separate ways of living: the aesthetic, the ethical, and the religous. In class we were given "the lover's example" to better illustrate the differences between these ways of living, and the characteristics/responses to a situation associated with each given way of living. The Lover's Example reads: "a man loves a woman but they cannot be together". The religious person's response to this situation is to NOT give up on love, despite all odds; he would have faith that he and the woman could be together in this world, in this time.

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Jean-Paul Satre defines living in "Bad Faith" as living life while disregarding either facticity (practical limitations, situational obstacles) or transcendence (your ability as subject to will outcomes into actuality, choose your own course).

Satre might potentially argue that the lover from the example living religiously (believing in the viability of his true love against all odds) is living in Bad Faith because he fails to aknowledge the facticity, the real-life, situational boundaries.

For me, the philosophers' conflict of opinion regarding this specific instance raises some questions:
1) Is 'love' actually an exception to facticity?
2)If you choose to believe unconsitionally in the romantic idea of love, are you exempt from being labled as living in Satre's Bad Faith?
3)Are there 'practical limitations' on love?

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