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4368032 No.4368032[DELETED]  [Reply] [Original]

Hello philosophers, I have a brain bender question.

Could an existentialist claim that dying in a death camp as a Jew in World War Two was their own fault?

>> No.4368059
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4368059

>>4368032

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_faith_%28existentialism%29

But I wouldn't rely too much on the thoughts of that particular faggot. He wanted to push his students into militancy. And came out with this crap, he probably even organized the pressure around them.

>> No.4368073

>>4368032

Yes because we are free.

>> No.4368082

>>4368059
What does that have to do with OP's question? Is it about the causality involved in going with society's trends until it's too late or something? So, in choosing freely to not do anything about German society or (a bit later) the Nazis, the Jews sealed their own fate?

>> No.4368098

>>4368082

Sartre and Beauvoir used that example (concentrarion camps), and the french surrender to the nazis, as example of bad faith choice.

Given the fact how he thought, his political background, his militancy, and the fact he hated Camus, I call crap on his party propaganda.

>> No.4368101

>>4368098
>concentrarion
concentration

>> No.4368112

>“Half victim, half accomplice, like everyone.”

That is, we are all bound by that which is beyond us, our context, our class, our history, our nature. And as conscious beings, we are also responsible for the decisions that are put in forward us.

It's useless to say whose fault things are, to point out to others and say how much they are to blame. But when it comes to ourselves, we must be aware of our role in it, exactly by not blaming others. That's why I think claiming the other's fault is not something Sartre would do, at least not in such a simple way.

>> No.4368125

>>4368112

>we are also responsible for the decisions that are put in forward us

If decisions are put in forward us, we are in no way responsible for them.

It's the persons, or beings that put them in forward us who are responsible for them.

Not choosing between what's put under your nose, is an act of rebelion, and making your sense out of it another.

>> No.4368150

If I were to take your question literally, I would say Existentialism is partly at fault for the holocaust due to Heidegger's intellectual support of the Nazi party. Debatable? Not really, it' a fact.

>> No.4368158

>>4368150
Heidegger wasn't an existentialist.

I mean, existentialism comes immediately and wholly out of his thought, but he wasn't an existentialist in the meaning of the term. Existentialism is what the French (mostly) did with Heidegger's thought.

>> No.4368189

>>4368125
I expressed myself poorly, I meant the conditions that are put forward us is not our responsibility, but what we do with them is our decision.

>> No.4368338

>>4368189

decision != responsibility

They would be your responsibility, if you had a sufficient understanding, and will, to control them once they unleash their consequences.

But you do not. As a matter of fact, no one does fully, that's why revolt, or the refusal to choose, is a valid choice, and not a bad faith one.

It's the choice of the eye looking to itself, of a fractal structure, of a camera pointing to a feedback screen, and so on...

>> No.4368353

>>4368338
>8338

Noice palindrome numbers.

q:^)

>> No.4368364

Well, it was their fault for being fucking Jews, yeah, I don't see what does it have to do with Sartre.

>> No.4368372

>>4368364

His reasoning was: They could have revolted against the nazis, like people of Warsaw, if they choose not to, they where partly responsible of being camp concentrated.

I find this argument easy to say from a desk in Sorbonne, but unlikely to accomplish in 1939, specially by Sartre & Beauvoir themselves.

>> No.4368373

What does that have to do with existentialism?

>> No.4368383

How come existentialism is by far the most popular part of philosophy discussed here yet nobody knows what it is?

>> No.4368401

No. Sartre says that the Jew is in good faith if he, for example, is forced into a position where he would be exiled or discriminated for being Jewish and adheres to his identity as being-Jewish. The Jew would be in bad faith is he were to deny being Jewish and abandon the Jewish community. For the existentialists, it is always their own fault.

source: http://isites.harvard.edu/fs/docs/icb.topic468841.files/Sartre__Anti-Semite_and_Jew.pdf

>> No.4368402

>>4368338
I completely agree with you. I just think the whole thing embraces that which you are saying. We don't have the understanding to control these things, but the possibility of a decision emerges in face of the understanding that you do have, don't you agree?

Refusal to choose is indeed a valid choice, definitely.