Anguish, Forlornness, and Despair

Anguish, forlornness, and despair are technical terms. Each names one specific thing that goes missing once you accept that a person is not made for anything. Reading them as moods is the standard mistake, and it is the one that makes the essay look melodramatic.

The three in plain words, before the argument:

1. Anguish is what it feels like to notice that nothing outside you certifies your choice as correct, and that you are choosing for everyone.
2. Forlornness is having nothing to consult. No commandments, no values written anywhere, nothing to look up.
3. Despair is restricting yourself to what actually depends on you, and giving up any guarantee that the world or other people will carry your work forward.

They are not three names for feeling bad. They are three different absences, which is why they are not interchangeable.

The premise they all come from: a person has no given nature and no purpose installed in advance, so what he is is produced by what he does, and in choosing for himself he chooses an image of what any person should be.

1. Anguish

Anguish is what it feels like to be a legislator.

The derivation. The man who involves himself realizes he is not only the person he chooses to be, but also a lawmaker who is, at the same time, choosing all mankind as well as himself. He cannot escape the feeling of his total and deep responsibility.

Sartre anticipates the obvious objection, that most people do not walk around anguished. His answer is that they are hiding their anxiety or fleeing from it. His test case: when someone asks a person “what if everyone acted that way?” and they shrug and answer “everyone doesn’t act that way,” they are lying. A man who lies and makes excuses for himself by saying “not everybody does that” is someone with an uneasy conscience, because the act of lying implies that a universal value is conferred upon the lie. He is exempting himself from a rule he is relying on.

Abraham. Sartre borrows Kierkegaard’s case. An angel orders Abraham to sacrifice his son. If it really were an angel, everything would be all right. But everyone might first wonder, is it really an angel, and am I really Abraham? What proof do I have? Sartre adds a madwoman who received telephone calls she attributed to God, and asks what proof she had. If a voice addresses me, it is always for me to decide that this is the angel’s voice. If I consider that such an act is a good one, it is I who will choose to say that it is good rather than bad.

The point is not that revelation is fake. It is that even a genuine command has to be identified as genuine and accepted as binding, and that identification is mine. The decision cannot be delegated even when an authority is present, because accepting an authority is itself a decision.

Generalized: for every man, everything happens as if all mankind had its eyes fixed on him and were guiding itself by what he does. And every man ought to say to himself, am I really the kind of man who has the right to act in such a way that humanity might guide itself by my actions. If he does not say that to himself, he is masking his anguish.

Anguish does not lead to inaction, and Sartre is emphatic on this. It is the simple sort of anguish anybody who has had responsibilities is familiar with. His example: a military officer takes responsibility for an attack and sends a certain number of men to death. Orders come from above, but they are too broad; he interprets them, and on that interpretation depend the lives of ten or fourteen or twenty men. In making the decision he cannot help having a certain anguish. All leaders know this anguish. That does not keep them from acting. On the contrary, it is the very condition of their action, because it implies that they envisage a number of possibilities, and when they choose one, they realize that it has value only because it is chosen.

So anguish is not a curtain separating us from action. It is part of action itself.

2. Forlornness

Forlornness is the absence of anything to appeal to.

Sartre takes the term from Heidegger and defines it narrowly: we mean only that God does not exist and that we have to face all the consequences of this.

The consequence he cares about is the loss of a priori values. The existentialist is strongly opposed to a certain kind of secular ethics which would like to abolish God with the least possible expense. He describes French teachers around 1880 who proposed discarding God while keeping obligatory values, a little device making it possible to show that values exist all the same, inscribed in a heaven of ideas. Under that reformism, nothing is changed if God does not exist: we find ourselves with the same norms of honesty, progress, humanism, and have made of God an outdated hypothesis which will peacefully die off by itself.

The existentialist finds it very distressing that God does not exist, because all possibility of finding values in a heaven of ideas disappears along with Him. There can no longer be an a priori Good, since there is no infinite and perfect consciousness to think it. Nowhere is it written that the Good exists, that we must be honest, that we must not lie, because the fact is we are on a plane where there are only men.

Sartre quotes Dostoievsky, “If God didn’t exist, everything would be possible,” and calls that the very starting point of existentialism. Man is forlorn, because neither within him nor without does he find anything to cling to. He cannot start making excuses for himself.

Then the compressed statement: there is no determinism, man is free, man is freedom. In the bright realm of values, we have no excuse behind us, nor justification before us. We are alone, with no excuses.

“Man is condemned to be free.” Condemned, because he did not create himself, yet in other respects is free; because, once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does.

Two halves worth holding apart, because the sentence is usually quoted for only one of them.

• Thrownness: he did not create himself, and did not choose to be here. This is the “condemned” half. Freedom is not something he opted into.
• Radical freedom: once thrown, he is responsible for everything he does. This is the “free” half.

The consequence Sartre draws immediately is the rejection of passion as an excuse. The existentialist does not believe in the power of passion. He will never agree that a sweeping passion is a ravaging torrent which fatally leads a man to certain acts and is therefore an excuse. He thinks that man is responsible for his passion.

Nor does he think man is helped by finding in the world an omen by which to orient himself, because man will interpret the omen to suit himself.

3. Despair

Despair is confining yourself to what depends on your will.

Sartre says the term has a very simple meaning: we shall confine ourselves to reckoning only with what depends upon our will, or on the ensemble of probabilities which make our action possible.

The example is deliberately mundane. I may be counting on the arrival of a friend. The friend is coming by rail or streetcar; this supposes that the train will arrive on schedule, or that the streetcar will not jump the track. I am left in the realm of possibility. But possibilities are to be reckoned with only to the point where my action comports with the ensemble of these possibilities, and no further. The moment the possibilities I am considering are not rigorously involved by my action, I ought to disengage myself from them, because no God and no scheme can adapt the world and its possibilities to my will.

He aligns this with Descartes: “Conquer yourself rather than the world.”

The argument with the Marxists is where the term does real work. They reply that you can rely on the support of others in your action, meaning both on what others are doing elsewhere to help, in China, in Russia, and on what they will do after your death to carry on the action and lead it to fulfillment, which will be the revolution.

Sartre’s answer is a distinction. He will always rely on fellow-fighters insofar as these comrades are involved with him in a common struggle, in the unity of a party or a group whose ranks he is in as a fighter and whose movements he is aware of at every moment. In such a situation, relying on the unity and will of the party is exactly like counting on the fact that the train will arrive on time or that the car will not jump the track. But given that man is free and that there is no human nature for him to depend on, he cannot count on men whom he does not know by relying on human goodness or man’s concern for the good of society.

Pushed to the end: given that men are free and that tomorrow they will freely decide what man will be, I cannot be sure that, after my death, fellow-fighters will carry on my work to bring it to its maximum perfection. Tomorrow, after my death, some men may decide to set up Fascism, and the others may be cowardly and muddled enough to let them do it. Fascism will then be the human reality, so much the worse for us. Things will be as man will have decided they are to be.

Despair is not resignation, and Sartre closes the door on that reading explicitly. Does that mean I should abandon myself to quietism? No. First, I should involve myself; then, act on the old saw, “Nothing ventured, nothing gained.” Nor does it mean that I shouldn’t belong to a party, but rather that I shall have no illusions and shall do what I can. His example: asked whether socialization will ever come about, he answers that he knows nothing about it. All he knows is that he is going to do everything in his power to bring it about.

Quietism is the attitude of people who say, let others do what I can’t do. The doctrine Sartre presents is the very opposite, since it declares there is no reality except in action.

4. Why these three and not others

The three terms map onto three different things the reversal removed, which is why they are not interchangeable.

1. Anguish is what remains once nothing external certifies your choice as correct, and you notice you are legislating.
2. Forlornness is the removal of the values themselves, so there is nothing to consult.
3. Despair is the removal of any guarantee that the world or other people will carry your project forward.

A useful check when writing: if you find yourself using one where another belongs, ask which of the three absences the sentence is actually about.

Worked example: the student’s dilemma

This is Sartre’s own worked case and it is the most useful thing in the essay for a paper, because it is designed to defeat every ethical system in turn.

The situation. During the Occupation, a student comes to Sartre. The father is on bad terms with the mother and is inclined to be a collaborationist. The older brother was killed in the German offensive of 1940. The young man, with somewhat immature but generous feelings, wants to avenge him. The mother lives alone with him, very much upset by the half-treason of her husband and the death of her older son, and the boy is her only consolation.

The choice: leave for England and join the Free French Forces, meaning leaving his mother behind, or remain with his mother and help her carry on.

Why it is hard, in Sartre’s own terms. He was fully aware that the woman lived only for him and that his going off, and perhaps his death, would plunge her into despair. He was also aware that every act he did for his mother’s sake was a sure thing, in the sense that it was helping her to carry on, whereas every effort he made toward going off and fighting was an uncertain move which might run aground and prove completely useless. On his way to England he might pass through Spain and be detained indefinitely in a camp; he might reach England or Algiers and be stuck in an office at a desk job.

So the two acts differ on two axes at once, and the axes are not commensurable.

• Certainty against uncertainty. One is concrete and immediate; the other is doubtful and may be interrupted en route.
• The individual against the collectivity. One concerns only one individual; the other concerns an incomparably vaster group, a national collectivity.

And underneath, two kinds of ethics. An ethics of sympathy, of personal devotion, on one side. A broader ethics of wider efficacy but more dubious on the other. He had to choose between the two.

Each system, and why each fails.

• Christian doctrine. Be charitable, love your neighbor, take the more rugged path. But which is the more rugged path? Whom should he love as a brother, the fighting man or his mother? Which does the greater good, the vague act of fighting in a group or the concrete one of helping a particular human being to go on living? The doctrine gives a rule that does not discriminate between the two options.
• Kant. Never treat any person as a means, but as an end. If he stays with his mother, he treats her as an end and not as a means, but by virtue of that very fact he runs the risk of treating the people around him who are fighting as means. Conversely, if he joins those who are fighting, he treats them as an end, and by doing that runs the risk of treating his mother as a means. Applied to a real case, the maxim yields both answers.
• Feeling. The student’s own proposal: in the end, feeling is what counts, so I ought to choose whichever pushes me in one direction. If I feel that I love my mother enough to sacrifice everything else, I will stay with her. Sartre’s objection is that this is circular. How is the value of a feeling determined? What gave his feeling for his mother value is precisely the fact that he remained with her. I may say I love my mother well enough to remain with her only if I have remained with her. The only way to determine the value of this affection is to perform an act which confirms and defines it. Since I require this affection to justify my act, I find myself caught in a vicious circle. And Gide’s point reinforces it: a mock feeling and a true feeling are almost indistinguishable, so to decide that I love my mother and will remain with her, or to remain with her by putting on an act, amount to the same thing. The feeling is formed by the acts one performs, so I cannot refer to it in order to act upon it.
• Advice. You will say, at least he did go to a teacher for advice. But if you seek advice from a priest, for example, you have chosen this priest; you already knew, more or less, just about what advice he was going to give you. Choosing your adviser is involving yourself. Some priests are collaborating, some are marking time, some are resisting. Which to choose? If the young man chooses a priest who is resisting or collaborating, he has already decided on the kind of advice he is going to get.

The answer given. In coming to Sartre, the student knew the answer Sartre was going to give him, and Sartre had only one answer to give: you are free, choose, that is, invent. No general ethics can show you what is to be done; there are no omens in the world. The Catholics will reply that there are. Granted, but in any case, I myself choose the meaning they have.

What this establishes, and this is the part to state in a paper rather than the anecdote: values are vague, and they are always too broad for the concrete and specific case that we are considering. It is not that ethical systems are wrong. It is that they underdetermine the case. Two of them here yield both answers, and the third defers to a feeling that only exists once the act has been done.

Sartre’s conclusion on it: the student, whatever he chose, made himself. Never let it be said that this man, who takes affection, individual action, and kind-heartedness toward a specific person as his ethical first principle, and who chooses to remain with his mother, or who prefers to make a sacrifice and go to England, has made an arbitrary choice. Man makes himself. He is not ready made at the start. In choosing his ethics, he makes himself, and force of circumstances is such that he cannot abstain from choosing one.

Worked example: the Jesuit, and what forlornness commits you to

A shorter case, useful because it shows the doctrine applied to interpretation rather than to action.

Sartre knew a young man in prison who had entered the Jesuit order. He had had a number of very bad breaks: in childhood his father died leaving him in poverty; he was a scholarship student at a religious institution where he was constantly made to feel he was being kept out of charity; he failed to get any of the honors and distinctions that children like; at about eighteen he bungled a love affair; finally, at twenty-two, he failed in military training, a childish enough matter, but it was the last straw.

He might well have felt that he had botched everything. It was a sign of something, but of what? He might have taken refuge in bitterness or despair. Instead he read the series as a sign that he was not made for secular triumphs, that only the triumphs of religion, holiness, and faith were open to him. He saw the hand of God in all this, and so he entered the order.

Sartre’s comment: who can help seeing that he alone decided what the sign was? Some other interpretation might have been drawn from the same series of setbacks; for example, that he might have done better to turn carpenter or revolutionist. He is fully responsible for the interpretation.

The general claim: forlornness implies that we ourselves choose our being. Forlornness and anguish go together. The facts did not come with their meaning attached, and reading them one way rather than another was an act.

Vocabulary to deploy

Anguish

• The lawmaker — “the man who involves himself and who realizes that he is not only the person he chooses to be, but also a lawmaker who is, at the same time, choosing all mankind as well as himself.”
• The liar’s tell — a man who excuses himself with “not everybody does that” has an uneasy conscience, “because the act of lying implies that a universal value is conferred upon the lie.”
• Abraham — “Is it really an angel, and am I really Abraham? What proof do I have?” Even a genuine command has to be identified and accepted as binding, and that is mine.
• Anguish is a condition of action, not a curtain — the officer ordering an attack. “That doesn’t keep them from acting; on the contrary, it is the very condition of their action.”

Forlornness

• The definition — “we mean only that God does not exist and that we have to face all the consequences of this.”
• The 1880 teachers — the secular ethics that abolishes God “with the least possible expense” while keeping values “inscribed in a heaven of ideas.” Sartre’s objection: this changes nothing, and it is incoherent.
• Dostoievsky — “If God didn’t exist, everything would be possible,” which Sartre calls “the very starting point of existentialism.”
• “We are alone, with no excuses” — “no excuse behind us, nor justification before us.”
• “Man is condemned to be free” — “Condemned, because he did not create himself, yet, in other respects is free; because, once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does.” Thrownness is the first half, radical freedom the second.
• Passion is not an excuse — he “will never agree that a sweeping passion is a ravaging torrent which fatally leads a man to certain acts.” Man is “responsible for his passion.”
• Omens — no help there either, since “man will interpret the omen to suit himself.”

Despair

• The definition — “we shall confine ourselves to reckoning only with what depends upon our will, or on the ensemble of probabilities which make our action possible.”
• The friend and the train — reckon with possibilities only “to the point where my action comports with the ensemble of these possibilities, and no further.”
• Descartes — “Conquer yourself rather than the world.”
• The reply to the Marxists — rely on comrades “involved with me in a common struggle… whose movements I am aware of at every moment,” but not on “men whom I do not know by relying on human goodness.”
• The fascism case — “Tomorrow, after my death, some men may decide to set up Fascism… Fascism will then be the human reality, so much the worse for us.”
• Not quietism — “Nothing ventured, nothing gained.” Quietism is “the attitude of people who say, let others do what I can’t do.”

The student’s dilemma

• The two axes — certain-and-concrete against uncertain-and-collective; “an ethics of sympathy, of personal devotion” against “a broader ethics, but one whose efficacy was more dubious.”
• Why Christian doctrine fails — “which is the more rugged path? Whom should he love as a brother, the fighting man or his mother?”
• Why Kant fails — staying treats the mother as an end but risks treating the fighters as means; going does the reverse. The maxim yields both answers.
• Why feeling fails, the vicious circle — “the only way to determine the value of this affection is, precisely, to perform an act which confirms and defines it. But, since I require this affection to justify my act, I find myself caught in a vicious circle.” Plus Gide: “a mock feeling and a true feeling are almost indistinguishable.”
• Why advice fails — “choosing your adviser is involving yourself,” since you already know roughly what advice a given priest will give.
• The answer — “You’re free, choose, that is, invent.” And the general finding: “values are vague, and… they are always too broad for the concrete and specific case that we are considering.”
• The Jesuit — the same series of setbacks could have meant “he might have done better to turn carpenter or revolutionist.” “He alone decided what the sign was.”