A Brief Reflection on Existentialism and Political Correctness
Thomas L. Lynn, Jr.
To realize that one is free is to realize in the like instant that one is radically responsible… and that not only for one’s own self, but for all human beings: that one exists is only possible in virtue of that one’s identity, one’s being is, from the start, both indeterminate, and yet proceeding to some concrete determination. Or, as Sartre put it more concisely, “Man is at the start a plan which is aware of itself.” (Sartre 16) If the situation was otherwise, if one was ruled inexorably by some essence, some nature, some specified definition...then one would merely be. Such a bare being is dishonest as it flees from the very fact that I am aware, and that I act; and that you are aware and that you act. What lends to our actions a power which ramifies for all people is that is precisely through the election of those actions, those decisions that human being moves beyond its origin towards concrete determination, towards its meaning. This though, is not a process which unfolds but once with finality, but rather which recurs in every moment. Thus even the most mundane of our gestures assume a great significance. Or, to recall Sartre again,
If...existence precedes essence, and if we grant that we exist and fashion our image at one and the same time, the image is valid for everybody and for our whole age. Thus, our responsibility is much greater than we might have supposed, because it involves all mankind…Therefore, I am responsible for myself and for everyone else. I am creating a certain image of man of my own choosing. In choosing myself, I choose man. (Sartre 18)
From this point of departure, I would like to draw out a quick line of implication for our current public discourse.
The plaint that ‘political correctness’ hampers effective or honest communication has been a staple refuge on the American scene for some time now, and most recently has resurged with the distressing candidacy of Donald Trump. Where it is invoked, caution and sensitivity in language is generally dismissed as but an inauthentic posturing, or even as participation in a regime of thought control. As such, to invoke the charge of political correctness is often an effective rhetorical stratagem for evading the question at hand by displacing the focus from a statement’s content to questions about the speaker (It is, in effect, a version of ad hominem fallacy.).Concommitent to the denouncement of ‘politically correct’ speech is often the exhortation to a kind of roughness of talk that is unconcerned with the potential offensiveness to some involved. There is no small irony in this, when one recalls the original charge that forward conversation has been impeded. For is it not precisely offensive tone which translates into an alienation which nullifies the possibility of a deeper mutual understanding?
The question is forthcoming though as to what we are really seeking to accomplish in our speech. For the tacit presumption that has operated here so far is that by such speech we are seeking to in fact effect a deeper mutual understanding. However, it must be granted that this is not always the case. There remains the possibility of a talk that is in bad faith. And thus, the realization of our radical responsibility then assumes a marked poignancy in connection with our words, our speech. For within our words, our speech the determination of human being arrives in an all but explicit manner. Through our utterances, we are expressing an evaluation of the human project itself. As such, to insist upon preserving manners of articulation which carry within them implications which demean, or which ratify prejudice is to insist upon a diminished or truncated view of our potential.
And so, to be sure, bad faith is also a possibility within speech delicately chosen. And perhaps, at the end of the day, an ‘authentic roughness’ is preferable to a ‘refined insincerity’. Yet, while this logical possibility remains, in the great preponderance of situations the use of mere force in speech is an escapism. As a rule, forceful speech aims to present a curtailed or simplified reality, an easier reality than the one which confronts us. It aims, ultimately, to reduce the terms of choice, and perhaps even to eliminate the very fact of choice under the guise of providing certitude. Certitude, though, is a luxury not afforded to the free.
Source Cited
Sartre, Jean Paul (Bernard Frechtman, trans.). Existentialism and Human Emotion. New York: Kensington Publishing Corp., 1957, 1985.
And here is a brief gloss on Sartre's essay Existentialism which I did for YouTube:
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