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Not Dark Yet #266: Brexit and 'bad faith'

11/2/2018

7 Comments

 
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​A curious by-product of the Brexit negotiations is the return of existentialism, or, more accurately, the language of existentialism.
 
Every debate, every vote, every meeting is now an ‘existentialist crisis’. Every pundit peppers their arguments with words such as ‘freedom’, ‘responsibility’, ‘choice’, ‘essence’ and ‘identity’. I have even read of one columnist’s ‘existential angst’ at the prospect of a possible result.
 
And, then, a couple of days ago, David Davis accused the European Commission of ‘bad faith’.
 
‘Mauvais foi’ is, of course, a key concept in Sartre’s thinking, and in the context of the Brexit negotiations, it is damning. It refers to self-deception, the way in which we think that we do not have the freedom to make a choice because we are afraid of the consequences of making this choice. (It’s more complex than that of course but it is early on Monday morning after a late night- see below!)
 
Sitting in Deux Magots or Café Flore, comme d’habitude, the example which springs immediately and inevitably to Sartre’s mind is that of the waiter, who is striving to be everything which he thinks a waiter should be. In other words, he is play-acting a rôle, the role of a waiter whose essence is to be a waiter.
 
But in order to play the role, he must know, by definition, that he is not actually a waiter at all. He is a conscious human being who is deceiving himself into thinking that he is a waiter.
 
From the example of this waiter, Sartre develops the notion that while we may pretend that we do not have freedom of choice, we cannot pretend that we are not ourselves; that we are not conscious human beings disconnected from our pragmatically-lived lives. (His conclusion, famously, is that we are ‘condemned to be free’.)
 
Many of the ‘players’ in the Brexit melodrama are clearly playing roles. I am thinking here in particular of Johnson and Rees-Mogg.
 
The former is the jester, the fool, the buffoon. The latter is the “MP for the eighteenth century”, the toff from the kids’ comics of my generation.
 
Sartre points out that his waiter is too “waiteresque”: “his movement is quick and forward, a little too precise, a little too rapid”.
 
Johnson and Rees-Mogg – and Davis and Barnier also in different ways – are deceiving themselves into thinking that they are authentic politicians. Their over-exaggerated histrionics, their method acting, betrays them.
 
They are acting inauthentically.
 
 
Today from the everysmith vaults: My late night was the result of attending a gig by Live Dead 69. Tom Constanten of the Dead, Slick Aguilar of the Starship and Mark Karan of Ratdog gave forty or fifty ageing groovers a great show last night, close - on occasion - to authentic performances of some of the songs that defined us.
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This is the set list. Not just any set list either. This is Slick Aguilar's set list!

​The show is firmly and clearly in my head, but as part of a continuing winding down from last night's high, I'm playing a show from Asbury Park a couple of years ago: Live Dead 69 with the Jefferson family.
7 Comments
Steve
12/2/2018 11:44:36 am

It would be wonderful to think that Davis used the phrase in the same sense as Sartre. But I doubt it. He's just being disingenuous comme d'habitude.

Reply
Allan
12/2/2018 03:10:37 pm

Up to a point. clearly, they are all acting inathentically and in so doing denying themselves and their essence.

But, to be prosaic and non-political, which you and Sartre would probably deny was possible, aren't they simply acting as politicians do and always do. We can wrap this up in existentialist concepts, but like the waiter being a waiter they are being politicians. That's what they do. Was never convinced by this tangent from phenomenology and not at all convinced that it helps us to understand the 'players' in these negotiations.

A nice conceit, and worth a post, but if it doesn’t help us to understand, what the hell is the use?

Reply
Jamie
12/2/2018 04:42:54 pm

You want to understand? Self-interest. That's all. No need to wrap it up and make it more than it is. It is nothing more than self-interest.

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Phil
12/2/2018 04:53:53 pm

Slash the foreign aid budget. Is that the authentic voice of Rees-Mogg? Or is he acting? The scary thing is, it is what he really believes.

CJ
13/2/2018 08:09:40 am

I see you are still following the old dinosaurs as they play smaller and smaller venues to fewer and fewer aficionados. Good for you. And good for them.

Reply
Max
13/2/2018 08:14:39 am

It was a poor turnout, even by Leamington standards. But it did mean that the few of us there could stand a couple of feet away and interact with the band. And Slick said to me, “If you guys keep turning out, we'll keep playing”.

If you build it, they will come!

Reply
david
13/2/2018 09:06:53 pm

As a restaurateur, you must welcome a Sartrian waiter whose movements are a little too precise, a little too rapid. I would certainly welcome someone like that serving me in my local.

Reply



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    Max Smith

    British writer, radical, retired restaurateur and Red Sox fan. 60-something (pretty close to 70-something) husband, father, step-father, grandfather and son. Resident in Leamington Spa, England.

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