As one examines the works of Thomas Aquinas and those of the existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre, there might be a temptation to find commonality. Such was attempted in the new book 'The Saint and the Atheist' by Joseph S. Catalano and reviewed in the WSJ ('The Wrong Side of Truth', Feb. 27-28, p. C10) by Aaron Alexander Zubia.
Zubia is correct when he points out that Sartre held us to a fearsome obligation in exercising our freedom, to the extent we have near total responsibility for the direction of our lives, incepting a degree of anguish. As Sartre himself explains (p. 73, 'Being and Nothingness'):
"In anguish freedom is anguished before itself inasmuch as it is instigated and bound by nothing. Someone will say, freedom has just been defined as a permanent structure of the human being; if anguish manifests it then anguish ought to be a permanent state of my affectivity. But, on the contrary, it is completely exceptional. How can we explain the rarity of the phenomenon of anguish?.....
Anguish in fact is the recognition of a possibility as my possibility; that is, it is constituted when consciousness sees itself cut from its essence by nothingness or separated from the future by its very freedom. This means that a nihilating nothing removes me from all excuse and that at the same time what I project as my future excuse is always nihilated and reduced to the rank of simple possibility because the future which I am remains out of my reach."
This is a lot to unpack, but let's keep it simple. Sartre is basically saying that anguish is spawned from the recognition of personal freedom by the individual consciousness. That freedom entails one or more choices of possible paths, possible futures, and almost inevitably each such choice forecloses all the others. I make choice 'X' but in so doing choices 'Y', 'Z' and 'W' are forever lost. Or in his parlance, "nihilated." Thus, those possible futures defined by Y, Z and W remain "out of reach" - foreclosed to my living them.
Zubia writes: "We can respond to this anguish either in bad faith, by continuing to live as we have lived or in good faith, i.e. 'No I wish to change my way of life." In fact, as Sartre explains, bad faith is not that simple and grasping its essence is the key to also grasping why an atheist is unlikely to be a "saint" as generally defined by church orthodoxy. To Sartre, being subject to bad faith basically meant not being true to oneself, one's innate nature. As he explains (op. cit., p. 101):
"If a man is what he is bad faith is forever impossible and candor ceases to be his ideal and becomes instead his being. But is man what he is?"
In the last question Sartre suggests that with consciousness of being it may not be so easy as to be what one is. One would have to be conscious of all the pitfalls, for example, if one were to be a totally free spirit all the time. As Sartre poses the quandary (ibid.):
"In this sense it is necessary that we make ourselves what we are. But what are we if we have the constant obligation to make ourselves what we are, if our mode of being is having the obligation to be what we are?"
It is from this secondary quandary that Sartre takes issue with sincerity, i.e., p. 105:
"What can be the significance of the ideal of sincerity except as a task impossible to achieve, of which the very meaning is in contradiction with the structure of my consciousness. To be sincere we said is to be what one is. That supposes that I am not originally what I am."
This then leads to the harsh conclusion (p. 109):
"Thus the essential structure of sincerity does not differ from that of bad faith since the sincere man constitutes himself as what he is in order not to be it. This explains the truth recognized by all that one can fall into bad faith through being sincere.... Total, constant sincerity as a constant effort to adhere to oneself is by nature a constant effort to disassociate oneself from oneself. A person frees himself from himself by the very act with which he makes himself an object for himself."
Aquinas, in his Summa Theologica, meanwhile writes (p. 333):
"It is, however, manifest that the form which makes a thing actual is a perfection and a good; and thus every actual being is a good; and likewise every potential being, as such, is a good, as having a relation to good. For as it has being in potentiality, so has it goodness in potentiality.
Therefore, the subject of evil is good."
If then every actual being is a good, we conclude the atheist human - as an actual being- is also a good. Is he a saint? No, because that extreme good - according to orthodoxy- demands a behavioral threshold which the atheist may not aspire to, or be capable of. At the top of the list is faith, and for Aquinas, faith - i.e in God, is non-negotiable. However, for Sartre (p. 112):
"The true problem of bad faith stems evidently from the fact that bad faith is faith. It cannot be either a cynical lie or a certainty if certainty is the intuitive possession of the object. But if we take belief as meaning adherence of being to its object when the object is not given or is given indistinctly, the bad faith is belief, and the essential problem of bad faith is a problem of belief."
In his April, 1965 PLAYBOY interview (p. 72), Sartre is direct about this matter of belief (e.g. in God) and freedom: "If I have this theory of freedom it's precisely because I do not believe in God." In this response, again, he is reinforcing his earlier position that bad faith is belief, in God, demons, witches, whatever. So he makes clear that - based on his existentialist position- that existentialist atheist cannot allow belief.
But Aquinas in Summa (p. 165), asserts the following proposition with which the actual atheist will take issue:
"The existence of God and other like truths about God, which can be known by natural reason, are not articles of faith, but are preambles to the articles; for faith presupposes natural knowledge, even as grace presupposes nature, and perfection supposes something that can be perfected. Nevertheless, there is nothing to prevent a man, who cannot grasp a proof, accepting, as a matter of faith, something which in itself is capable of being scientifically known and demonstrated."
The takeaway from this, as Aquinas himself would agree, is that even if the atheist is "good" in the most prosaic sense - say in performing some good acts like feeding the poor - he cannot be good in the fundamental Christian sense which demands acceptance of a supernatural deity.
Zubia is certainly aware of these contradictions to some extent, as he observes (ibid.): "The juxtaposition of the 'saint and the atheist' in the book's title is promising. It implies that, by putting these two diametrically opposed thinkers in conversation, the reader will disavow unexpected commonalities or rewarding insights. The promise goes unfulfilled. The supposed paradox, that Sartre and Aquinas possess some deep affinity unseen until now - turns out to be preposterous."
The conclusion is self-evident, indeed, given no proper saint (in the RC mold at least) can eschew belief in a divinity, and Aquinas himself would uphold this - as he does in his Summa. But it is Sartre's concept of radical freedom - also touched on in his PLAYBOY interview - that really sets him apart from Aquinas, e.g.
Expatiating by noting:
That such freedom is "not a cheerful thing" would be self-evident to anyone who has made a clean and clear break from his or her earlier formed background, say like a former Roman Catholic becoming an atheist. (Apparently, even my RC high school, Mgsr. Edward Pace, is loathe to acknowledge me as an alumnus.)
Thus, Zubia is essentially correct when he concludes:
"Sartre's ethic of radical freedom ... bears little resemblance to Thomas' worldview, in which human beings - made in God's image, are so designed that they find fulfillment by using their freedom in self sacrificial acts of charity that are not always political in nature."
In Sartre's defense, and having attended his lecture at Loyola University (New Orleans) in January, 1965, he would argue that it is precisely being rendered "self sacrificial" that imparts bad faith and undermines true freedom. Or at least his sense of radical freedom. And without such freedom, the critical human agency is destroyed and one is left more a conditioned puppet than a human being.
In any case, Zubio is correct when he writes that
"Sartre's post- religious ethics doesn't eliminate the categories of 'saint' and 'atheist'".
But neither does Catalano's book, which is as it should be. Thus, whether 'saint' or atheist one is able to pursue his own objective in authenticity - assuming there are no hidden puppeteer's strings! Given that we know the existence of such 'strings' foretells bad faith.
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