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Overcoming the Spirit of Seriousness in Serious Times
For anyone who pays even the slightest attention to the American news media and the contemporary political scene, it is common to hear talk about the values of "democracy" and "freedom" on the part of those who support the Bush Administration and the "war on terror", and the values of "peace" and "protest" on the part of many anti-war people. The values discussed on both sides seem to have a life of their own, an existence out there in the world apart from human action. Rather frightening things can happen when the values that have a life of their own lead people to violence in the name of their cause. What is also frightening is that the people who resist the drive for violence and war also get caught up in objective value worship because to do so is to deny their own freedom and potential avenues for actually countering the drive for war. This attitude of projecting values as objectively in the world instead of only coming about through human action and creativity is what Jean-Paul Sartre called the "spirit of seriousness".
Here I will first explain in more depth what the spirit of seriousness is for Sartre and how it relates to his view of freedom, of consciousness for-itself. Next I will show how the spirit of seriousness plagues contemporary times in America, especially since September 11th and the start of the retaliatory "war on terror" (Sartre's description of the "fool" in Notebooks for an Ethic will help some here). Next, I will discuss how to overcome this spirit of seriousness. This involves the notion of play. Finally, I will briefly show how this overcoming of seriousness through play is related to Sartre's later work in which the notion of praxis is vital.(1) In doing all of this, I will investigate two main texts, Sartre's Notebooks for an Ethic, and Linda Bell's essay "Play in a Sartrean Feminist Ethics" which is a wonderful and concise exploration of the notion of play and touches on its uplifting and even revolutionary potential. I will also draw on Simone de Beauvoir's The Ethics of Ambiguity and its discussion of the "serious man" and the "adventurer".
The Spirit of Seriousness
In his Notebooks for an Ethic Sartre discusses the spirit of seriousness in several places. The Notebooks were Sartre first attempt at providing the ethics promised at the end of Being and Nothingness. The latter work has been described by de Beauvoir as "in large part a description of the serious man and his universe."(2) Indeed Being and Nothingness is wrought with a kind of gloom and despair throughout the text, but the text seems to throw open the door of human possibility more than anything else, and one of these possibilities is the overcoming of this spirit of seriousness. (3) Yet this overcoming involves more than what Sartre is prepared to give in Being and Nothingness. (4), so he discusses the spirit of seriousness more thoroughly in Notebooks. It is important to keep in mind that freedom for Sartre is radical in that the human being is freedom, it is the way humans transcend the deterministic laws of nature, even though freedom is a brute fact of nature itself. For Sartre what seems to define humanity is the possibility of creativity because of individual spontaneity. We create a whole world of meaning, a truly human world where all values must come through us. Values are not out there in the world to be pointed to or called upon as existing unconditionally in the world. We, as meaning givers, are necessarily creators of values.
The spirit of seriousness comes about when a person comes to believe that values are out there and not human creations. When values are taken to be a part of the objective world one has alienated oneself from oneself since one is denying one's freedom. The spirit of seriousness is a "voluntary alienation, that is, submission to an abstraction that justifies one: the thought that man is the inessential and the abstract the essential." .(5) The individual views the abstraction (like the Good, or Truth, or Justice) as something in the world to appeal to in order for there to be a ground of justification for oneself. The "master is in the world" .(6) and is an unconditioned fact that the individual's freedom must adhere to instead of it being the other way around, that is, the value as conditioned by the individual's freely choosing to value it. So instead of the individual using her freedom to bring the value into the world, she with the spirit of seriousness takes the value to be in the world already as something that she must dutifully obey, to the point of denying her own freedom.
Here there is one form of violence already in that one does violence to oneself by denying one's own freedom. Sartre writes that the "spirit of seriousness is a kind of violence because it posits values as transcendent to freedoms. So instead of value, as a demand of freedom, only being able to be attained by freedom, it becomes a demand on freedom." .(7) One does violence to oneself by chaining one's freedom to the abstract in the world. Yet there is another form of violence, or at least the potential for another form of violence in that the value is objectively in the world, the intersubjective (if I can even use that word here!) world of other beings. So the value becomes something that" (8) others must abide by as well as their duty. "Wherever duty is, oppression is not far away. The attitude of seriousness justifies original violence against other humans because the duty to abide is something which can be forced.
One may object to this and claim that Sartre simply leaps from this attitude to the justified use of force through this attitude. One could claim that such seriousness need not entail the use of force. But there is something important to remember about this attitude at its foundation: the human is inessential. The force is justified by the fact that the human is inessential, after all, and it is the world and its values which are essential. This situation is one where the "oppressor oppresses the oppressed in the name of the myth" (9) which is that values are objectively in the world. (10) Not only is there violence through alienation, but also violence to others because humans are taken as inessential. One's own freedom and the freedom of others may be suppressed in the name of duty to the objective value.
Two special cases of the spirit of seriousness will serve as transitions into my focus on contemporary America in the next section. The two cases are the revolutionary and the fool. First, Sartre discusses how the revolutionary may fall prey to spirit of seriousness. In the same way that one takes a value as objective, the revolutionary may take the cause to have objective importance and validity. Once again the individual makes himself inessential as his "cause appears to him in the form of duty and justifies violence." (11) She makes the cause to be vital, more vital than her own freedom. The seriousness toward the cause seems to put blinders on her as she ignores the fact that her valuing the cause has no ultimate justification since all values are created and brought to the world. It is much easier to believe that there is objective justification for one's cause, but this is to ignore that one is one's own ground of justification through one's freedom and through one's action.
Second, Sartre discusses stupidity and the fool. Earlier I stated, as Sartre did, that the spirit of seriousness is something that one always chooses oneself. This may not be the case with the fool though, according to Sartre. It may be the case that "one does violence to him by constituting him as a fool" (12) and the fool will react in kind because to react with violence, or at least to react in kind requires no thought---one just acts the same way that one was acted upon. Just as the revolutionary seeks some objective ground and secure justification for her cause to the point of denying her freedom, the fool makes the same exchange of freedom for security. (13) This security for the fool is vital for he "puts nothing into question" (14), he does not raise the possibility an alternative since "to tolerate another thought would be to admit to thinking in general." (15) Not thinking while bringing security (of sorts) obviously also brings a denial of freedom.
The fool does not necessarily come up with the idea of alienating herself by the active positing of values as being objective, but just accepts the violence of this form given by another who hands values to the fool as objective. "Truths come to him from outside; they are ready-made." (16) According to Sartre, anger and importance are two characteristics of the fool as he is reactive and refuses to doubt; the fool adheres to what is given and places a general importance on what is given to him. The objective value is the end and the end justifies the means no matter what, "simply because in doing so he sees more clearly and does not need to call the end into question." (17)
The revolutionary and the fool are relevant to the contemporary situation in America. The revolutionary I will take to be one of many who protest the war on terror and the war against Iraq in particular, in a particularly serious way. (18) That is to say, there are some who believe in their cause to the extent that they forget that it only can come about through their action and certain values they hold and actions they take need to be critiqued as well for various reasons. I take the fool to be, on the one hand, the current President of the United States, and on the other hand, many protesters who are simply recruited to the cause and handed certain objective truths and values. Both these protesters and the President do not seem to question the truths handed to them by the serious men and women who do such things (certain leaders in the peace movement and various members of the Bush Administration, respectively).
It is true that I am perhaps too keen on drawing such distinctions between certain "types of people", particularly in the peace movement and I do regret making such distinctions to some degree, but I believe this analysis to be insightful and even self-critical in many ways. Also, it is done in the spirit of jest, of play itself, of course. Finally, it is done with the hope of giving positive critique to the peace movement and all movements against the serious folks in positions of power.
Contemporary America
Before beginning here I would like to mention that Sartre refers to America in the Notebooks. He writes, "America or the human realm become complete externalized interiority. A modern society is made up in large part of: One) Man/machine, Two) Average man, Three) a leader alienated by the spirit of seriousness or serious man.(19) Written in the 1940s this passage is fitting for today as America's leader is indeed serious, perhaps one of the most serious presidents the country has ever seen. It is difficult to single just Mr. Bush out here, as it is clearly the case that millions of people in America seem overcome by this spirit of seriousness. Mr. Bush does indeed get fed the objective truths of those in his administration. To demonstrate his desire to not question anything and to keep as little information as possible from fogging up his clarity of thought he has even told his aides to produce one-page memos for his reading pleasure. (20) He talks in simple "good guy vs. bad guy" language and is always up for spreading the "good news" about "democracy" and "freedom" coming to the Iraqi people as a result of this war on Iraq.
These terms democracy and freedom are used a lot in these times and one wonders if the speakers and the listeners even know what these terms mean. But clearly they are values to be upheld, values that have lives of their own. Democracy and freedom are facts about the world.
Well there is an enormous problem with thinking that democracy and freedom are two things that have been attained by anyone. A crucial part of the spirit of seriousness (the American version) is the complacency regarding these values. They are states that we as Americans have reached and we now must defend this state of being with force if necessary. By ignoring the fact that democracy and freedom (political) come about in the world through us as our creations, we posit them as facts of the world that have being. When one person or group of people claim to hold the key to this state of being there is the potential for violence at all times since others have a duty to abide by those who have attained this state.
This is the case right now and America claims to hold the key. When one is serious about values one forgets that these values came about through her creativity and actions. Also one does not reflect on his values as something to be questioned at all times, and to constantly question how one is achieving(21) these values as goals. So we have the Bush Administration and so-called experts who appear on cable news shows telling us that "these people" are "either with us or against us", or more recently, that nations like Syria, Iran, and North Korea should "learn from Iraq" what results when one does not obey America the key-holder. The American military will force democracy and freedom into places where it has not been chosen. (22)
The American media parrots the Bush Administration and its talk of "bringing democracy" and "bringing freedom", once again, as though democracy and freedom are objects that just need to be placed somewhere. Realizing that such values and goals result from our freedom and our actions in the world makes things harder, it makes it clear that thought is needed, that we have to work things out practically and allow the Iraqi people self-determination. The fool does not want to think but to keep things simple. The incredibly frightening thing is that there are millions of people in this country who seem to parrot the parrot (mainstream news media) of the government, with the desire to keep things simple and objective. (23)
Another frightening thing is the attitude towards art (the obvious example of human creation) that the establishment has if that art is voicing criticism or satire of the establishment. (24) The serious man wants to restrict "art to imitation" and the "obeying of nature" as "society as a whole is suspicious about creation." (25) When such creation is suppressed and scorned what humanity as that which brings creation to the world supposed to do other than be alienated from itself? The consciousness of the individual is of an "existent who springs up in a world that is to be preserved, cleansed, contemplated." (26)
Critiquing the American government and the mainstream media for having this spirit of seriousness is rather easy because they are so blatant about it. I will refrain from pursuing this further here and I will move on to something that is equally troubling in many ways.
Sartre warns about collective action in the Notebooks, "the goal, as soon as it is collective, becomes what is essential and the person becomes what is inessential." (27) For the purpose of drawing out the clearest example of how the revolutionary---in this case the protester---alienates herself through the spirit of seriousness, I will focus on those protesting the recent war with Iraq. As stated earlier, I do not particularly like giving labels and drawing distinctions between people but I will do so here. (28) I have a problem with three "types" of protester. The first is the protester who is a sort of revolutionary-fool. He is one who will just be handed the "truth of the cause" and is capable of just about anything in the name of the cause except thinking. He may even resort to violence (for example rock-throwing). This person is also so serious that he will join multiple opposition groups, student organizations(29) etc. in support of the cause, even though it is clear that he does so for the sake of belonging to some group and being able to tell others about his involvement. He joins these groups without thinking. The second is she who is stuck in a kind of revelry and carnival about the whole affair, but I will deal with this issue in the next section. The third type is the protester who actually does think, unlike the fool, but who is lost in the spirit of seriousness and objective value assuredness. This is the person I would like to focus on more here.
This person will believe strongly in "peace" and "protesting" as values. Unfortunately he makes these values grounded in the world as self-evidently valid and a part of the world objectively instead of there being the reliance on him to bring about these values through his free actions. Peace and protesting become absolute values and he will make his own freedom subordinate to these causes. "There is an ethical order to be realized but this order is already given." (30) Just as the pro-war people fall into the spirit of seriousness by oversimplifying values as already given unconditionally ("democracy" and "freedom" are examples), so does the anti-war person in her oversimplification of "peace" and "protest". One may hear something like "how can they not be for peace?" from this person as though such a value was waiting in the world to be grasped. Also, protesting becomes an end in itself so that one will protest just about anything and when a given protest fails to achieve the much sought after cause of peace, she will not know what to do with herself. (31) This, however, gets into the second kind of protester who pursues carnival as some sort of escape with a beginning and end. I will discuss this later.
The spirit of seriousness is evident in both sides of the war issue. When values are reduced to their simplest "good vs. evil" formulation, it is apparent the idea of Manichaeism---that there is good and evil out there. So both sides see their side as "good" and that there must be a fight against evil, with "man as go-between Good and the world." (32) "Evil-doer" talk is prevalent, mainly on the part of the Bush Administration and some in the news media. On the one hand this oversimplification is blatantly dangerous because evil is something which must be eradicated. On the other hand, this oversimplification is blatantly dangerous because evil is something which must be eradicated. Both sides can seem fanatical. Ralph Netzky claims that perhaps many of the truly bad events that have happened in human history may "have been caused by just such fanaticism, by taking oneself and one's beliefs too seriously." (33)
So I have been discussing danger a lot here. Is there much hope for the future? How does one resist the spirit of seriousness fully realizing that values have no justification, that one is really nothing, without collapsing into a complete nihilism? Simone de Beauvoir addresses the question of nihilism quite wonderfully. She writes, "The nihilist is right in thinking that the world possesses no justification and that he himself is nothing. But he forgets that it is up to him to justify the world and to make himself exist validly." (34) To collapse into nihilism is to abdicate responsibility, that is the fundamental condition of the human being as free to give justification to a world without any and to simply make one's life valuable. De Beauvoir goes on to say that "a man who delights in freedom can find an ally in the nihilist because they contest the serious world together, but he also sees in him an enemy insofar as the nihilist is a systematic rejection of the world and man." (35) This brings in the individual who delights in freedom. She is different from the individual who alienates himself by subordinating his freedom to the objective world in the name of a value or cause, and she is different from the individual who, in realizing, the world has no value, escapes the responsibility to bring justification to the world. This individual who delights in freedom brings the notion of play which is the vital attitude and activity for the overcoming of the spirit of seriousness.
Play
It may seem that the obvious answer to seriousness is play. "What is play indeed if not an activity of which man is the first origin, for which man himself sets the rules, and which has no consequences except according to the rules posited?" (36) Play offers a different approach to existence and one's freedom altogether. In play, one's freedom is the end and the world is conditioned; freedom conditions the world in a certain way, placing rules on the world. Man uses freedom to surpass the situation. As Linda Bell writes, "in play, we create without being bound by any preexisting values, prescriptions, and proscriptions." (37) Play is central for consciousness, for the truly authentic free consciousness which grasps freedom as possibility, but as a possibility without any actuality, that is, without ground of justification. The individual is thrown into a subjective world of freedom even in an objective, determined world.
A particular passage in the Notebooks (and cited by Bell) brings out this notion of play as a challenge that calls one out:
"At the same time the challenge is play: it is a rupture with the spirit of seriousness, [it is] expenditure, annihilation, passage to the festiveside. The festival in effect is liberation from the spirit of seriousness, theexpenditure of economics, the ruin of hierarchy, and the absorption of theother by the Same, of the objective by intersubjectivity, of order bydisorder." (Bell translation) (38)
Play brings something out of the individual which is festive and uplifting. In play, the lighter side of reality becomes more apparent. This does mean pure caprice because games (like chess or basketball) have rules that are chosen to be followed in the context of the game. These rules are not ultimately binding---the person can choose to not play the game at all or to quit playing. Bell makes an excellent point about play with regard to the problem of relativism. The skeptic will ask, "why continue with this game?" to which Bell replies "why not?" Both are equally arbitrary, but there may be no reason for someone to cease playing the game (valuing certain values, engaging in certain activities). (39) There must be good reasons to quit playing, if there are none, why quit? Players engage in a game that is within their control to some extent. There are no ridiculously impossible goals that one is futile in trying to reach, but rather those goals serve as regulative. "To take goals as regulative is to take them as guiding behavior but not as depicting goals actually to be realized." (40) The end is carried the means at all times---the goal guides one's action as one plays. One keeps playing then trying to accomplish the ultimate goal but knowing full well that such a goal will not be accomplished. Thus we must struggle for democracy and justice at all times but to think that a truly just and peaceful society is to come about anytime soon is ridiculous. But the spirit of play makes this okay. Life is to be lived in all its possibilities, not its impossibilities.
Play as Revolutionary
It may seem strange to first put the revolutionary down as serious and then talk about the possibility of revolutionary play, and Bell does not mention Sartre's depiction of the revolutionary in the Notebooks. I believe this is okay though for two reasons. The first is rather obvious in that Sartre is making more of historical claim about the revolutionary and there is always the potential for the free individual to take up a position of resistance without succumbing to seriousness. Second, the later Sartre has some different things to say about the revolutionary and about sociality in general, outlining a theory of groups in his Critique of Dialectical Reason.
Here I will follow what Bell has to say about play giving examples from contemporary times. One problem with play is the question of the end of the game, or at least the end of active play (festival gatherings, demonstrations, marches, etc.). It is often the case that play serves to only create some general "dis-ease for the serious" who will replace the dis-ease with the familiar. (41) Temporary action may be used against such players, such as when anti-war demonstrations stop and some in the news media say "look they are admitting that they were wrong", thus belittling the activity, or, some who on the surface seem to favor the activity come out and say that demonstrations and the like serve to show the "spirit of democracy" or the "right as free Americans to protest and voice opinions."
Another problem with play is the carnival(42) nature of play as a temporary escape from the hum-drum of normal, somber life. Such festivals may be a "temporary embodiment of the kingdom of ends" where people treat each other with respect and all forms of hierarchy are nowhere to be found. But then the festival is done and everyone goes home or back to work. There is no lasting effect. This leads me to return to my categorization of certain individuals in the anti-war movement. The third kind of individual involved in a mis-relation is this festival-goer who is more than willing to be visible in public. He may be involved in a demonstration/march in the streets of a metropolitan area in a self-gratifying, pat-himself-on-the-back-for-"resisting" activity. This ego-tripping does not produce a sustained effort which may require more subtle and less visible activities. This type of protester will be done and return to the private sector to sell insurance or the like. An example of this may be seen in the "Free Tibet" concerts of fairly recent year where a bunch of people come together to listen to and play music and then it is over and everyone goes home and Tibet still is not free. Or there are those who seek out the escape of something like the "Rainbow Gathering" which, even though it is held every year and is on the move throughout the country, is primarily a flight from activity and is ineffectual in bringing about any desired change. (43)
De Beauvoir writes about this problem of endings, "joy becomes exhausted, drunkenness subsides into fatigue" and hands are left empty. (44) People often take part in such play at festivals because they know they are going to end. The festive spirit is only there because everyone knows it is going to end.
Bell outlines four criteria for true revolutionary play. First, play must be set up against a clear opposition---the target of criticism should not be ambiguous. Second, the playful activity must be recognized as play while still being able to answer charges of frivolousness. Satire would be a good move to make. Third, play cannot be a mere venting of certain tensions that would simply appease those who are oppressed by easing the tension, nor can it be something that the status quo can easily use to its advantage to turn against the revolutionary players---this is very difficult since the status quo is very effective at appropriating the margins for its own benefit (for example "hippie", "punk", and "skater" have now all become fashions, that is, the market has left its mark.). Finally, revolutionary play must be ongoing to prevent the let down and the abandonment of further goals and to always keep pressure on the status quo.
With regard to this last issue, I would like to make a point that might serve to unite Sartre's two major works, Being and Nothingness and the Critique of Dialectical Reason. There has been a lot made about the differences between the early and later Sartre and I am not too interested in joining that debate, except I see play as a nice bridge, or an actual connection between both works. If Being and Nothingness really is the description of the "serious man's" world and the awareness that we are radically free to overcome seriousness (the notion of play is introduced in Being and Nothingness and developed more in the Notebooks) then the overcoming through play is that freedom which is praxis. The for-itself in recognizing its ultimate freedom as a value-creating
freedom without ground plays, and this play is the attitude of praxis. To go further into this "for-itself become praxis through play" cannot be done justice here, but I just wanted to point out that possibility to show that all along there is something common throughout Sartre's work, something which is in fact directly related to his idea of freedom. To carry into the Critique a bit here, however, is necessary to give some advice regarding ongoing play. If a group forms around a purpose, that is, if group fusion comes about through a common goal (and the activity to pursue this goal as common praxis), yet loses its freedom as it moves toward the pledge and more organization and institutionalization then perhaps multiple groups can co-ordinate at different times and places to keep critical play ongoing. The internet is a great tool to aid this process. Some of this was scene in particular in relation to the recent war with Iraq, but there really was not the spirit of play throughout. Fused groups can keep this play going and over time perhaps such play will cut enough holes in the overarching net of power and capture of the status quo to cause a break that is not temporary at all, not merely a dis-ease in the slightest. Hopefully the spirit of seriousness is not too overwhelming, and those who take pride in being serious not too violent.
Works Cited
Beauvoir, Simone de, The Ethics of Ambiguity (New York: Carol Publishing Group, 1948)
Bell, Linda, "Play in a Sartrean Feminist Ethics" in Sartre and Existentialism: Existentialist Ethics, William L. McBride (ed.) (New York: Garland Publishing, 1997), p.187-207
Netzky, Ralph, "Playful Freedom: Sartre's Ontology Re-appraised" in Philosophy Today Vol. 18:2, Summer 1974, p. 125-136
Sartre, Jean-Paul, Being and Nothingness, translated by Hazel Barnes (New York: Philosophical Library, 1956)
Sartre, Jean-Paul, Notebooks for an Ethic translated by David Pellauer (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992)