On Existentialism and Ethics

I was too tired to write tonight, but wanted to post. Here are excerpts from my side of an old e-mail debate with a friend. The topic was Sartre's essay "Existentialism is a Humanism", particularly as it relates to ethics or the lack thereof.

"The responsibility part of existentialism is also tied up with ethics. Say I kill you. From an existentialist perspective, no one has a monopoly on absolute truth and can condemn that as absolutely bad. But I have chosen to give value to killing through my action, and existentialism says the responsibility is wholly mine. I can't blame it on societal influences or religious fanaticism or anything else. Sure, that doesn't stop the fact that it's not absolutely wrong, but few people want to accept that kind of responsibility. And you can't be a half-existentialist. If you want a philosophy of freedom, you have to take the consequences.
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There is also the existentialist idea of good faith and bad faith, which is sort of ethics-related. Good faith is recognizing your freedom and making your own decisions (actively determining your essence), not blindly following society or a religious dogma, or trying to delay the moment of choice on a matter. Because of this, existentialists tend to place a lot of value on courage, not as something objectively valuable (because that would be inconsistent), but as an important quality for living an honest ("good faith") life. This is where you're really allowed to judge others' actions. You can't condemn something as "bad" based on objective values, but you can condemn it as dishonest. A lot of existentialist literature touches on this--exposing the cowardice of people who try to fake their way through the preset paths of life.
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You can also be heroic and magnanimous as an existentialist. Perhaps the reason people think existentialists are gloomy is because many of them point out that there is always a choice--death. (This means you can also never shirk responsibility by saying you were forced to do something. Even if someone is holding a gun to your head and telling you to do x, you are responsible for the consequences of x if you do it.) In most cases, death is an absurd choice. But in some cases, it is the only honest choice. To be a "good faith" existentialist generally involves performing actions that give value to freedom, and in some cases that may mean making the choice to die for it."