Merton, Sartre, and de Beauvior are
three existential philosophers who criticize our social tendency to avoid
taking existential responsibility at all costs. Merton begins this criticism
with a scathing attack on the very language we use to describe love. Merton
exposes the phase, “I fell in love” as complete bullshit. The implications of
such an utterance are clear, love is described like and accident, as if you had
tripped on something and tumbled into a foreign world. Falling in love is
described as if the lover was just walking down the street one day, minding her
own business, and then BAM! Love jumps out from behind a fire hydrant and
smacks you in the face with a frying pan. Good
god, that couldn’t have been your fault.
This phrase
“falling in love” views love as a choice you didn’t get to make. It paints love
as an assault, a rampage, a kidnapping. We allow our language to carry the
weight of our existential responsibility so we don’t have to take ownership of
our feelings. A lack of personal responsibility is engrained in the very
description of love. Interestingly, this manipulation of language as a means of
avoidance of culpability extends from the initiation of love, into the experience
of it. Have you ever heard the Beyonce song, Crazy in Love ? In the chorus she croons a common phrase: Im crazy in love. This choice of
language has the same motives as ‘falling in love’. By allowing love to appear
as a consuming, controlling force, we eliminate the responsibility for our
actions within a loving relationship. We talk about the lover as if he were a
drug addict- so overwhelmed with foreign influence that he has gone completely
mad- able to see his actions but helpless to stop them.
While Merton
thinks we avoid responsibility by allowing language to carry the weight, de
Beauvior claims that women have figured out unique ways to avoid such, by
allowing their men to carry the weight. de Beauvior claims that women are first
conditioned into an androcentric world- they are taught to believe men are more
capable than themselves. As they become adults, and move away from the parents
who controlled their liberty, they face the overwhelming fear of ‘taking the
reins’ of their lives. Wracked with anxiety, these women find means of avoiding
existential responsibility in the social convention of love. They gravitate
towards the strong, almost divine, male figure they have been raised to revere.
Women crave male authority to shield them from their own liberty. To accomplish
this, women tuck away their liberty and self-identity behind the husband
figure. Women assume the identity of their men (The first lady, Mrs. Dr.
Johnson, the army wife, the list goes on). This kind of woman abandons her
hobbies and picks up those of her husband. She does not formulate ideas; she
simply repeats those that her husband told her. She has no political opinions
outside of her husband, nor interests, nor value, nor anything at all for that
matter. She exists entirely within him. And doesn’t that just sound lovely. How relaxing to never have to
make any bothersome choices like what you believe
or who you are.
To a modern and
educated woman this prospect is repulsive and disgusting. But to the
existentially anxious woman, it’s far better than taking responsibility. Thus,
these women accept their oppression in order to remain warm and cozy behind
their man, and only just out of reach of liberty’s influence. Woman live vicariously through their
husbands, even their love for themselves comes through his eyes. In this way,
she can attribute her every action and behavior to her husband’s decisions. Her
beliefs, her religion, her mood, her life, all become his responsibility.
Finally, Sartre
chimes in and states his belief that not just women, but every human, longs to
dump their responsibility onto the shoulders of other people. Sartre claims
that we are desperate to have our own self-identity defined by the recognition
of others. Sartre argues that the only
true constraint of our radical freedoms (and therefore existential
responsibility) comes from the radical freedoms of those around us. We
desperately try to skirt our own freedom, by assuming the opinions others have
of us. Sartre says we want to be
judged by others, we want the recognition of another to define how we see
ourselves. In this way, we are able to see ourselves through the eyes of
another, but are never forced to take responsibility for the creation of our
identity- its been done for us. For example, in Sartre’s critical play No Exit, the character Garcin is
desperate to hear Inez tell him he is courageous. He believes that if a woman
whom he considers to be radically free, tells him he is courageous, then he
will be. However, when given the opportunity to make a radical choice to define
himself as courageous, he is too
afraid to claim it. Garcin would prefer to live within the unflattering
recognition of another person, than to live with a self-conception of his identity
and take responsibility for his liberty.
These three
authors attack various conventions (mainly love) that enable us to ‘unload’
responsibility for ourselves. Certainly,
all three would agree that conventions are the paradise of the weak- a
beautiful world of familiar, pre-defined roles we can slip ourselves right
into, with no explanations needed. There
is no need to think or develop one’s
own motivations. No need to define yourself- everyone has done it for you; they
heard that story before.
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