Paul turned the knob to walk into the dark room like he’d
done so many times before. It was a cold, brass knob with
an antique finish that was worn shiny from years of use. The
latch bolt slid out of the notch in the threshold with a smooth
clicking noise, the kind of soft click that only thousands
of identical motions could wear into the metal, much like
the way an old key slides smoothly out of an old lock. Because
the door had one of those devices installed at the top that
keeps it from staying open, it whined to a close when he let
go and entered the room. As the light from the kitchen was
slowly drawn back behind the door and Paul’s eyes tried
desperately to adjust to the darkness, he made an attempt
to find the light switch on the wall in its old, familiar
place. Sometimes, no matter how familiar one is with a room
and the placement of its light switch, one’s hand will
still flop and pat ungracefully in the area thought to be
the target. And sometimes if one is even slightly disoriented
the flopping and patting of the wall will yield nothing but
frustration and continued darkness, as it did this time.
He quickly gave up finding the light switch after stubbing
his finger on some other protrusion on the wall by the door.
There were many protrusions on this wall as it was a wall
in a garage, which had many items hanging from numerous nails
and hooks, railings and knobs. Paul knew he could make his
way around the garage with his eyes closed, knowing what lay
or hung in every direction and at every height. To the left
was a counter that had been painted green years ago and it
had at least one drawer pull under it that had been carved
to match the others by his father and screwed on as a replacement.
It was the drawer pull of the middle drawer on the left side
of the counter, the drawer full of coiled string that had
been salvaged off of packages, left-over clotheslines, 20-year-old
balls of twine and even lengths found on the highway. You
never know when you might need some string. Even with no light
he could have removed whichever bundle of string he wished.
He knew the drawer well. An old surfboard hung over this counter
atop the drawer of string, and Paul knew just how the board
was hanging. He could have carefully removed it too, even
with his eyes closed or in this darkness of the garage.
An eerie feeling that Paul knew was coming drifted over him
a few moments after entering this room. His parents were gone
and the house was empty. The room was as cold as garages often
are, and still very dark, like a cave. Paul’s eyes had
not adjusted very well as there was very little light in this
garage. Almost none. The eerie feeling was one he’d
felt only a few times before. It was a self-induced feeling
that he had complete control over creating, but the lack of
control produced by the feeling was enticing to him. On the
few occasions he had created this feeling it gave him a lightness
in his head, a dizziness that allowed him to separate himself
from his body for a moment. He decided that this time in the
cold dark garage was going to be one of those moments, so
he proceeded without any light to the other door in the side
of the garage which opened up to the back yard.
This door had rubber gaskets around its threshold designed
to keep driving rains from forcing water around the door onto
the concrete floor. The gaskets had been added after a hurricane
had blown the door open and flooded the garage a few years
before. Had the door simply been carefully latched very little
water would have ever made it in, but somehow in the mind
of an adult a gasket would have prevented the flooding. Adults
don’t listen to 11 year- olds much, particularly regarding
maintenance of a house or its protection in case of a hurricane.
Like the felt padding around the door to a photographer’s
darkroom, these gaskets kept light from leaking into the garage
as well as water. But unlike the felt padding around the door
to a photographer’s darkroom, the opening of this door
made a sucking sound as the rubber gaskets slid tightly against
the threshold and the smooth garage floor. Paul pulled with
a tug he knew from many past tuggings would be just the force
necessary to open this door. And then there it was. This would
provide the lightness in his head and the dizziness that would
follow, if only for a moment. He was ready to let his mind
go.
It was simply the daytime outside. But it was the light surging
into his face. It was the sky. And the grass and the tree
and the fence and the bushes around the edge of the yard.
Paul stared up at the blue, and down at the green, and at
the forms in the yard and wondered to himself. “What
is all this?” “Where am I?” “Who am
I, and what is happening here?” Just like the few times
before, he knew which questions to ask himself and he repeated
them over and over in his mind. The dizziness came as he had
anticipated; it reached a crescendo then lingered and floated
off. “That’s cool,” he thought. “I
wonder why that happens, and why it goes away?” It scared
him a little, but it was the kind of fright that’s strangely
appealing. It was a kind of soft fright from this completely
personal experience that only on rare occasion he ventured
to have. This fright danced on the surface of his mind on
an area he knew held much more. That was the scary part. Behind
the backyard fence was the private, Church of Christ elementary
school he attended, on the grounds of which he also tried
to achieve this eerie mental state by thinking about God.
But somehow the thoughts of - and to - God never achieved
the same depth or detachment from his body that he knew the
backyard experience would bring. He knew he’d have that
backyard experience again.
Paul pulled the knob to his parent’s bedroom door as
close to his body as it would go. “Don’t move
or make a sound,” he thought to himself as quietly and
motionless as one can think to himself. He was pressed up
against the wall in such a way that with the bedroom door
all the way open and touching his body he would not be able
to be seen by his mother who had left the bedroom to see if
she could catch him watching television again. Paul regularly
spent time before bed evesdropping at this door. It was at
this door that Paul learned what his mother really thought
of him. She was completely unpredictable with what she might
say to his father during these evening sessions, except that
it would be hateful or at least derogatory, but during the
daytime her reactions were overly predictable. Paul knew exactly
how she would respond to a wide range of events or comments
that he might make. He could say one thing to send her off
on a facially contorted tirade, or he could say another to
produce precisely what praise he presumed she would give.
Often to the word. It was at times somewhat of a game, until
bedtime came anyway. He would be told to go upstairs to bed,
which he would, but as soon as he’d hear his parent’s
bedroom door close he’d venture down the stairs to hear
the other words, words never spoken to him directly. Paul’s
father rarely said a thing, and from the only occasional muffled
response he heard from outside the room, Paul could tell that
his father was face down in a pillow and uninterested or at
least in neutral disagreement with the berating of his son.
She would often go on about how Paul would “never amount
to anything,” “never get a degree from college,”
that he was a problem at school for his teachers, girls wouldn’t
like him and a host of other statements that Paul was always
very interested in hearing. Some of what she said Paul knew
was entirely untrue. The teachers in elementary school and
jr. high seemed to like him very much. He never got in trouble,
not once. He had “made-out” with a pretty girl
before most of the other guys had, and was the quarterback
of his little league football team. Those were good things,
he thought. But the other statements Paul couldn’t be
sure of. College was so many years away he couldn’t
even imagine what it was like, and certainly had no idea whether
he would finish it or “amount to anything” afterwards.
Perhaps he wouldn’t. Maybe she was right, but even if
she was right he knew he didn’t like that person, and
that person didn’t like him either. The next morning
she would smile at him and say “good morning.”
But he had turned it all off. Nothing hurt Paul. He was the
one his friends at school could rib in a friendly way knowing
that Paul would laugh too, and not get angry. He laughed a
lot at school, as he was something of the “class comedian”
who everyone liked. As the school years went by, Paul’s
male and female friends had girlfriends and boyfriends they
attached to and got upset over. Paul had many flings but could
never understand either being “with” someone or
upset at them. They all had something that he did not have,
but he was glad about it. Those sensations other people dealt
with seemed only to bring them difficulties. It must be some
genetic thing that he was lucky enough to be without. Paul
also knew nothing would ever hurt him the rest of his life
as he knew he had no feelings outside the fun times he had
with his friends. A few girls would tell him this too, later
in his life. He simply had no feelings. Except for his cat,
however. He knew he had an attachment to his cat.
He aimed and pulled the trigger just like he’d been
taught when he was five years old. Paul was on a hunting trip
with his father and a neighbor man who was a famous big-game
hunter. The neighbor man had written two books on hunting
in Texas and had killed a world’s record moose that
hung in his trophy room. The moose stared at Paul every time
he entered that room. A tiger, two bears, a leopard, 12 big-horn
sheep, a few elk and some species of deer from India that
had fangs hung on the walls in that room also, but the moose
was the only animal that really looked at Paul.
There was a loud crack and a jolt to his shoulder. This was
his first deer and although his arms were shaking a bit, the
bullet had struck the deer on the side of his neck prompting
the deer to jump six feet straight up in the morning fog,
only to drop crumpled to the ground. The deer was shaking
a bit, too. Paul stood still holding his rifle as his father
rushed over to the deer, sat on it, pulled out a big shiny
knife and began to cut and break the deer’s legs off
at the knee joints. The sharp snapping sound of twisting bone
and cartilage in the early morning silence sounded like a
green tree branch being broken when the branch is too green
to break cleanly, and one has to keep wrenching it before
the pieces are free of each other. The deer was still very
much alive, but couldn’t get up due to Paul’s
father. As Paul approached the deer he could see the strain
on the deer’s neck as it jerked and pulled against the
weight of his father sitting on its rib cage. The deer’s
eyes were open wide and wildly rolling around in their sockets.
The deer’s mouth was open too, and gasping with its
long tongue writhing clumsily but quickly around his snout
and canine-esque wet nose. It was a very long tongue. Paul
begged to fire a bullet in the deer’s head to kill it
but instead his father stuck the shiny knife point in the
back of the deer’s head, in just the right place, and
in a couple of seconds it was over. His father had killed
scores of deer in his life and was also a medical man who
knew exactly where to place the knife blade so the deer would
quickly pump its blood onto the ground. Paul was impressed
by his father’s skill with the shiny knife and how his
father’s knowledge lessened the time of the deer’s
suffering. So there on the bloody ground with a four inch
long gash in its neck that Paul had caused, the deer became
ours. “ It’s okay to kill animals,” Paul
thought, “I’ve killed lots of animals.”
The fog lifted shortly thereafter and his father and the neighbor
man repeatedly congratulated him on his kill this fine morning.
But Paul knew this would never happen again, at least not
for these reasons.
Paul turned the knob and walked into the room that was to
be his home for the coming year. “I guess I’m
a man now,” he thought. The room was on the fourth floor
of a military school dormitory and was very cold. It had a
slick floor, a bunk bed and two desks. It was tiny. He had
an armful of things brought from home. A mop, his duffle bag
and a notebook full of all that sort of stuff one needs to
have when joining an institution. Inside were a bunch of papers
that were really important at the time. It was a rectangular
room with one window in the center of the back wall, but Paul
had already learned that it wasn’t his privilege as
a first year cadet to look out of this window. He had also
learned he could have no carpet, radio or any other objects
other than his books and toiletries, his foot locker and one
photograph on his shelf. He had to speak in a particular and
individual manner to 30 other boys on his floor every time
they crossed a threshold in his presence or he crossed a threshold
in theirs. He had to shine his shoes such that the reflection
of both florescent light tubes in the ceiling of his room
was clearly visible in the polish on the toes. He and the
other freshmen had to regularly urinate in their sinks lest
they be hazed in the hallway on the way to the bathroom. And
there were many, many other rules. “This is what I’m
supposed to be doing,” he thought to himself in the
way people try to convince themselves of something. But the
old childhood questions from the side door of the garage entered
this room with him too. “Where am I?” “Who
am I and what is happening here?” Those questions and
the mornings that followed them came and went for what seemed
like a year, but three weeks into the month he turned the
knob and found himself standing in a silence not previously
experienced in that hallway. Not when it was full of other
people anyway. A boy had died that morning from a hazing incident.
“Thank God,” Paul thought. “Maybe they’ll
stop hazing us for awhile.”
He walked up the gangway to the boat’s hatch, turned
the shiny stainless steel knob and announced his presence.
Paul walked around the multi-million dollar luxury yacht for
a good look at his new home. The world was new, and a mystery,
and there were so many things he had never experienced. He
was 24. “I’m not supposed to be living like this,”
he thought over and over, “but I don’t care.”
Everything was shiny and gold. Not gold colored or gold painted,
but gold. The silverware was gold. The toilet flush handle
was gold. The plating was thick enough such that Paul could
shine the gold without rubbing it off. It was part of his
job. Gone were the questions from the backyard, and gone were
the eerie feelings and dizziness. He was busy doing new things
and those questions were far from his mind. Everything on
the yacht was so very expensive. The dinner plates were three
hundred dollars apiece. A thousand dollar’s worth of
champagne was stored in a compartment next to his cleaning
supplies, and a clear acrylic sculpture of a nude woman’s
bust placed above the television cost three times the price
of his car he left back home. A tank of gas for this vessel
was the same price as that same car. Paul was impressed, for
a while.
He turned the handgrip on the motorcycle as the engine roared
to life. “This is the way to live!” Paul said
to himself. He drove off down the highway with a full tank
of gas, the duffle bag strapped to the back seat, and a feeling
of freedom in his body. The white lines of the road flew past
him under his feet as the scenery drifted past along his side.
Everything changed quickly or slowly depending on where he
turned his glances, but the vision in front of him, the one
that projects from the mind, stayed far away. Minutes turned
into days and he turned the knob at his sister’s house.
“What am I supposed to do now?” he thought.
There came to be many more door knobs to turn and thoughts
to have. Each door led to a different set of thoughts, or
a different thought, or the same thought or thoughts from
different angle. Sometimes the thoughts would replace previous
ones. At those times that they did, Paul would be amazed that
he had ever had such a thought as the previous one, or the
one before that. He wasn’t going to never finish college,
he wasn’t made a man by walking into a military dormitory,
he isn’t glad that boy died, and he stopped believing
a three hundred dollar plate made food taste better. Freedom
doesn’t exist on the seat of a speeding motorcycle,
either. Paul wanted to believe those things though, because
believing them makes life easier. An answer! Answers! Ones
that you don’t have to find out for yourself! That’s
what people want, someone else’s answer for them. These
answers are handed out like flyers for free by most people.
Even Paul. To spend life taking these handed answers and exchanging
them for others, handing them out and then changing what you’re
handing out, is the marketplace of the second-hand life. This
market is busy and gets the job done, but when the job is
over, everything is over. Paul no longer gets an eerie feeling
from the sky any more and his thoughts to God are to his own
mind, like everyone’s. This makes Paul’s writings
divinely inspired and part of the bible that is human individual
thought. Others’ adherence to these thoughts would be
second-hand. There was a self-deception by a saint named Paul,
and for those who believe and engage in this self-deception.
Self Deception
Sartre states that there is a facticity and a transcendence
to a human being. These two elements ought to be able to coordinate
with each other but a person’s self-deception will not
allow it. Instead, this form of deception attempts to both
affirm the identity of the facticity and transcendence while
at the same time preserving their differences. A conflict
arises whereby the moment a person realizes one, he is faced
with the other.
Sartre provides us with an example of a woman in engaged in
self-deception. She agrees to go out on a date with a man
and is fully aware of the intentions he has, but wishes not
to think about this. She is aware she must make a decision
at some point, but maintains concern for only what is in the
present. The woman staves off the decision, eliminating it
for the present, her consciousness keeping her between –
and yet aware of both - the horror of the man’s desire
for her as object and the respect he may have for her only
as a person. He may take her hand forcing her into a point
of making a decision, but if she leaves her hand with him
she fears the decision it makes. If she withdraws she makes
a decision still, a decision of engagement. So she leaves
her hand but does not notice that she does. In this way she
has implemented self-deception. The desire is enjoyed so long
as it is not apprehended as such. She reduces her hand to
being only her hand in the hand of another. The implications
as a result are further unacknowledged. This state of self-deception
is maintained with an effort.
This example of self-deception takes numerous forms, not necessarily
in the manner taken in this case, but in the scenario. The
importance lies in the nature of the deception being made
aware to some extent by the actor of it. Perhaps the cruelest
form of self-deception is in the case of hope surrounding
dire circumstances. This brings to mind the events in New
York City on September 11, 2001. Soon following the collapse
of the World Trade Center Towers, thousands of flyers were
placed in the vicinity of the tragedy. The flyers were “missing”
posters containing a photograph and a description of a person
who was employed in the towers who was currently “missing.”
The fact was, as everyone could see, the towers collapsed
completely and the personally detached individual (detached
in the sense that no loved one was known to be in the towers)
was very aware that survivability was at the very most almost
impossible. Those human elements Sartre calls facticity and
transcendence were displayed in the flyers in that an awareness
of the loss of the pictured individuals was evident, but the
attempt at self-deception occurred in the use of the term
“missing.” The loved one was lost, like a lost
pet is pictured on a flyer, not “lost” like one
is lost at sea, and yet they were. The form and common design
of the “missing” flyers was manifested effort
of this deception. This was a way to stave off the decision
to believe in a death, while the acknowledgement of the loss
maintained. The loved one was gone, but not gone. Not yet
anyway. The woman was engaging in the desire without engaging
in desire.
Another example from Sartre regards sadness.
“I am sad. One might think that surely I am the sadness
in the mode of being what I am. What is the sadness, however,
if not the intentional unity, which comes to reassemble
and animate the totality of my conduct? It is the meaning
of this dull look with which I view the world, of my bowed
shoulders, of my lowered head, of the listlessness in my
whole body. But at the very moment when I adopt each of
these attitudes, do I not know that I shall not be able
to hold on to it? Let a stranger suddenly appear and I will
lift up my head, I will assume a lively cheerfulness. What
will remain of my sadness except that I obligingly promise
it an appointment for later after the departure of the visitor.”
(Kaufman, ed. p.316)
This case of the sadness as appearing in the person as feeling
and conduct, given a particular circumstance changing to its
opposite case, forces the question of the nature of that which
causes the sadness. It is apparent that the presence of the
other person is in some form the cause of the happiness, or
loss of sadness, or at least a change in the conduct. So we
ask if the sadness itself is merely a conduct. If so, the
implication would be to simply alter a conduct in order to
alter the feeling associated with it. Whether the feeling
causes the conduct or the conduct causes the feeling is unimportant
with regard to self-deception. Either case reeks of the individual
deceiving himself in some manner. Were the feeling of sadness
to cause the conduct then a deception occurs upon the change
of conduct in the presence of another person. Either the conduct
changes to one of happiness in accordance with social norms,
thereby changing the feeling for the time being, or the presence
of the other person changes the feeling to happiness thereby
changing the conduct. In both cases the individual has deceived
himself into a state of happiness, AND/OR the individual had
deceived himself into sadness only to deceive himself into
happiness and back to sadness. And this of course raises the
question as to whether all emotional states are in some way
self-deception.
It is my contention that not unlike Sartre’s woman on
a date, or the example of the “missing” flyers,
the nature of religions that contain an idea of an after-life
is that they promote a self-deception. And like Sartre’s
statement about facticity and transcendence in conflict and
unison at the same time, the self-deception of life after
death is one that takes effort to maintain. The believer is
aware of death as finality but deceives himself with a literal
transcendence of that death. The believer, at some level aware
of the prospect of despair, is fully engaged in self-deception
of never ending life, under the assumption that there is no
loss in the deception, only gain; and that there is no gain
to losing that deception, only loss. This awareness, like
the woman aware of herself as object of desire, but keeping
herself away from that awareness, enables the believer to
justify his self-induced deception. Regular ritual and methods
of deception are implemented to stave off the fear of mortality
that is pressed up against the underside of their consciousness.
With some regret I regard a form of hope as self-deceptive
as well. Hope is a very broad idea that includes the hope
of an afterlife, hope that the loved one is merely missing
and not dead, hope that a deer died a painful death with some
justification, and hope that military involvement makes a
boy a man. But not all kinds of hope are as broad as these,
as there are hopes that are rationally held such as the hope
that a pair of dice will roll to a seven. The knowledge of
gaming odds provides a more aware/less deceptive hope that
the odds will favor one in this case, but there is conscious
awareness that they may not. The deceptive kind of hope I
speak of is the type that is used when there is no evidence
to the realization of the hope, but possible evidence to its
contrary. To hope for the best under dire circumstances. To
hope an over-arching happiness will be found. To hope a person’s
gruesome death was not a painful one. This is deception, I
think.
Arguably, as with Sartre’s implication of emotional
states as self-deception, or some form of it, self-deception
is as much an element in humanity as emotionality. It is necessary
to deal with pain and provide pleasure; it is necessary to
deal with pleasure and provide pain. The hopes that I regard
as self-deceptive are not to be discarded as such. There is
an unknown point whereby the extent of self-deception becomes
harmful to one’s self or others, but there is still
a range within which the human condition survives.
I spoke of the cases of Paul in different scenarios and manners
in which forms of self-deception are implemented. To stare
at the backyard and wonder where you are is a way to stay
where you are but leave where you are at the same time. To
let go and float off the ground you are not floating off of
provides the dizziness. The dizziness drifts away as the effect
of the deception wanes and the reality, or “a familiar
reality” re-emerges. You are physical and mortal again.
If feelings are forms of self-deception then to be without
them is a meta-deception. To believe one has no feelings,
unaware that pain and conscious decision shut them off, is
a deep and true self-deception. A deception so strong it functions
almost equal to the same case without deception, perhaps a
neurological malfunction that doesn’t permit pain. It
is the difference being between the believer who so much believes
in a life after death he allows himself to die to be in paradise,
or the parents who refuse their dying child a blood transfusion,
and the type of believer who hides from the tornado instead
of simply praying in the midst of it.
“In self-deception there is no cynical lie, nor knowing
preparation for deceitful concepts. But the first act of
self-deception is to flee what it cannot flee, to flee what
it is. The very project of flight reveals to self-deception
an inner disintegration in the heart of being, and it is
this disintegration which it wishes to be.” (Kaufman,
ed. p.328)
The paradox of believing what one suspects to not be true,
to leave where one remains standing, to be free but affixed
at the same time is what Sartre is calling a wished-for disintegration
even though it is somewhat removed from the consciousness
of the individual. To disintegrate is to become disengaged.
Terms like “disengagement,” “disintegration”
and “self-deception” have a definite negative
sense about them, but I’m not sure Sartre should hold
them entirely in that light. He speaks of self-deception as
a “threat to every project of the human being,”
but also that “…consciousness conceals in its
being a permanent risk of self-deception. The origin of this
risk is that the nature of consciousness simultaneously is
to be-what-it-is-not and not to be-what-it-is.” This
statement itself is as paradoxical as self-deception. To use
words like “threat” and “risk” connotes
a negativity, but to claim it is the nature of human consciousness
is either condemning of that consciousness or embracing the
risk and the threat as part of what it is to be human.
However, Sartre is interested in the actual, the real, and
the true case of being. He says that self-deception fails
in believing what it wants to believe. It is only an attempt.
Self-deception is the acceptance of not believing what it
believes.
“Good faith wishes to flee the ‘not-believing-what-one-believes’
by finding refuge in being. Self-deception flees being by
taking refuge in “not–believing-what-one-believes.’
It has disarmed all beliefs in advance – those which
it would like to take hold of and, by the same stroke, the
others, those which it wishes to flee.” (Kaufman,
ed. p.328)
This statement has the sense of disfavor with self-deception,
but the key word in all that this says is “refuge.”
To take refuge is to make one’s self safe from that
which endangers it. To take refuge in a reality of being or
to take refuge in not only something false, but something
even believed to be false is what we are left with. I am forced
to ask Sartre if these refuges allow for, or provide, the
same amount of security. I suspect they don’t, as self-deception
has never waned in popularity. I would also wager that to
go from “Good faith” to self-deception is for
the purpose of gaining security, or at least a sense of more
security. But to lose one’s self-deception will likely
enter one into despair. At least for a time. If I were to
argue for the usefulness of self-deception it would be easy.
This method has saved many lives from physical death and salved
the wounds of painful experiences. To be raised into adulthood
with a default self-deception, having never been exposed to
the beliefs otherwise obtainable creates a quandary in me.
If the individual could maintain - either from a protection
from exposure to other beliefs, or due to his own inability
to become aware of his consciousness and the deception it
is capable of - his state of self-deception may not actually
be self-deception, but simply an incorrect belief. To believe
that the world is flat if you are alive in the 14th century
is not self-deception. To believe a placebo will lower your
fever because a doctor told you it was a tested drug is not
self-deception either. So, if one were to have a belief of
this nature, that doesn’t qualify as self-deception,
and maintain it, it would be arguable that his life would
be no less for it. One may go through life with any number
of sincerely incorrect beliefs without any hint of a possible
otherwise. Is this a lesser life? I ask Sartre to answer this
question, but I think he would disagree with my implication.
The sincerely deceived life is still deceived although it
is true to itself. I think Sartre would find that the life
deceived without attempt to question and search for deceptions,
from himself or other sources, is a lesser life. I am not
certain of this. Although deception and self-deception are
very different in their reprehension, and reprehension begets
value judgment, I still grapple with the happiness of the
pig who knows not that he is swine. Were a pig to live entirely
free of this fact supposing he was taught that he was a duck,
or live a self-induced lie that he is a duck, a lesser amount
of shame occurs as a result. This is where I am stuck. I might
say, “What difference does it make?” The pig has
less shame. And when the pig is dead is it not better to say
that the pig had less shame or fear than had more? We might
say, “The poor dumb pig never was aware or never faced
the fact that he was a pig.” Is this not our own displeasure
of the pig’s deception? I am reminded of the Socratic
quotation, “The unexamined life is not worth living,”
and I can’t help but recognize the words of a person
who has made discoveries, become aware, and sees value from
the perspective of the non self-deceived. I also ask if this
quotation is not of self-deception. That perhaps the unexamined
life may be worth living, but to the one who has opened the
door to self-examination, who is unable to direct a blind
eye at himself, a deception may be necessary in this way.
Otherwise, the examiner is awash in his sincerely known fate.
He tries to save his life. However, imbedded in the argument
against the use of self-deception or sincere deception is
that the lives saved through this method aren’t real
lives. They are dead before their deaths. Sartre would agree
to this. They aren’t true to their being, and in that
way the deception has indeed cost them their lives. And there
is a dear freedom. Perhaps the only truly one.
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Literature Cited:
Kaufman, Walter. (1956) Existentialism
from Dostoevsky to Sartre, New York: Penguin Books.
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