Devoir de Philosophie

Can we lie to ourselves?

Publié le 21/05/2017

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Can we lie to ourselves? Alexander Pushkin wrote in 1831: “to a flat and tenuous truth, I prefer an exhilarating lie.” For this illustrious writer, lying is thus an enviable alternative to a often boring and monotonous everyday life. This idea may sound charming but this dual act of trumpery does not seem to be able to exist among use as it requires two beings : an utterer we could say, who knows about the truth and a dupe, victim of the former. Thus, within the scope of this question appear the outlines of a paradox to which we will try to answer in this work : how could one, voluntarily or not, overshadow a truth from his consciousness whilst knowing that this truth is ? I will first demonstrate that the unity of the subject prevents the existence of such lies then that they could yet exist by the mean of the unconscious and I will eventually write about the essential necessity of self-honesty. Traditionally, the subject - the individual - has always been considerated as one by the classical philosophic way of thinking. Descartes for instance states in his Principles of Philosophy : « everything that happens among us is such that we immediately notice it by ourselves. » If an idea, a memory or a thought bothers me, I cannot make myself believe that it does not exist because doing this I am absolutely aware of its presence in my mind. The inner unicity of men is the very basis of most works on humans before the XXth century; for classical philosophers, men are composed of a body and soul, eternal or not but always one and only one. ...

« Human psyche according to Freud : Guardian Believing in this hypothesis of the unconscious, would enable us to understand the possibility of self-lying by repression.

The existence of an entity which is independent from all control and slips out from a spontaneous knowledge divides our mind into two independent beings that could deceive one another.

However exciting this idea is, I think misses from this reasoning an idea of will, it diminishes the extend of this lie.

Furthermore, the origins of the « psychic tendencies » which are in the unconscious are yet to be clarified.

If they spontaneously appear, can we talk of deceit ? And if it is nothing but an oversight, is it a real lie, designed to delude the conscious about the truth ? It could also very well be mere bad faith. For Jean-Paul Sartre, theorist of existentialism, bad faith is the other side of liberty ; like the two faces of a coin, they are absolutely opposed and yet inseparable.

He develops this thesis in a famous image of his, the Parisian « garçon de café ».

Everything, in the garçons de café's (basically waiters) behaviour seems to show that they are truly impregnated of their jobs, they think of themselves as being fundamentally and essentially waiters.

However : « the waiter cannot be entirely waiter, in the sense that this inkwell is inkwell, that this glass is glass » (J-P.

Sartre, Being and Nothingness , 1943).

When the waiter gets home for instance, does he still act the same ? Undoubtedly not, and yet he lies to himself all day long by thinking that his job is what he is,; he is not being honest to himself and thus renounces to his liberty.

According to Sartre, men lie to themselves permanently to escape from the harrowing liberty of our being which is nothing but nothingness, vacuity. This theory is very different from Freud's; by putting repression at the center of our identity, the latter determines men by their past and something that is beyond our sphere of influence.

On the other hand, Sartre states that the unconscious does not exist ; it is only a part of one's mind that is occulted by bad faith and our total liberty allows anyone to reinvent himself every second. There are other pieces of example that shows the absolute necessity of self-honesty.

We can think for instance of prejudices which are thoughts that we do not know about but that yet influence us.

They vanish as soon as we become aware, often through a third party, of their existence but I believe that they are lies that we tell ourselves, without knowing.

When a racist woman tightens her grip on her wallet when crossing the road of a black person, it is an unconscious lie. Another interesting case in my opinion happens when someone is driven by something overtaking himself or that he is yearning for something beyond his own existence.

It is for example probable that all Nazis did not believe in Unconscious Conscious. »

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