Sartre and Sadism

Abstract

Heidegger’s concept of authenticity could serve as the basis of a sceptical essentialist ethic of self-interpretation. Nevertheless, such an ethic would suffer from significant limitations. Since he rejects essentialism, it seems Heidegger must regard an authentic existence as at best meritorious, rather than in any sense obligatory. Moreover, although he is sensitive to the consequences of adopting an instrumentalised self-conception, he does not concern himself with the many ways in which we may induce such self-conceptions in others. Both Heidegger and Sartre denied that they had aimed to make contributions to ethics. Nevertheless, Sartre’s accounts of ‘bad faith’, and the sadomasochistic features of personal relationships, provide a way to augment the normative force of a sceptical essentialist ethic of self-interpretation. Sartre shows that there is positive mendacity in inducing instrumentalised self-conceptions in others. Such mendacity is sufficiently close to the forms of rational inconsistency that underlie Kant’s concept of moral obligation to serve as a focus of perfect duties of public obligation, in addition to imperfect duties of private perfection.