Being-in-situationA second feature of authentic existence consists in recognizing one’s
“situation.” Again, that crucial term is discussed at great length inBN,
but it includes such features of our human condition as our spatial and
temporal existence, especially our mortal temporality, our existence
among other humans, our language – all of which, when increasingly
detailed, enable us to focus on our individually “situated” existence.
Contrasting this notion with Gide’s concept of purity, which Sartre
understands as “an entirely subjective quality of the feelings and will,”
Sartre states the matter in detail:
Authenticity is not exactly this subjective fervor. It can be understood only in terms
of the human condition, that condition of being thrown into situation. Authenticity
is a duty that comes to us from outside and inside at once, because our “inside” is an
outside.^17 To be authentic is to realize fully ones’s being-in-situation: whatever this
situation may happen to be: with a profound awareness that, through the authentic
realization of the being-in-situation, one brings to plenary existence the situation on
the one hand and human reality on the other. This presupposes a patient study of
what the situation requires, and then a way of throwing oneself into it and determin-
ing oneself to “be-for” this situation. Of course, situations are not catalogued once
and for all. On the contrary,they are new each time. With situations there is no label
and never will be.
(November 27 , 1939 ,WD 53 – 54 )^18
Two aspects of our situation hold Sartre’s special attention during
his wartime experience: our social being and our historicity. The former
is conveyed by his experience, not just of society – underscored by
the diverse roles and responsibilities allotted him by virtue of his being
conscripted into that impersonal phenomenon called “the Army”^19 –but
of the growing sense ofsolidaritythat linked him with his fellow soldiers
as distinct from the officer corps and the noncombatants. It is this
dawning sense of “we” as a force and not merely a passive object that
will attract him to collective action after his liberation and will move him
(^17) As he argues in his essay on intentionality in Husserl (see above,Chapter 4 ).
(^18) CompareBN 556 as well asAnti-Semite and Jewon the authentic Jew andWhat is Literature?
19 on “historialization” as living your unique historical situation to the fullest (Chapter^9 below).
For Sartre’s reflections on the “military personality” penned at the start of his service, see
CDG-F 27 – 32. He later analyzes the “serial” unity-in-otherness of the Army as a
“collective” in theCritique of Dialectical Reason.
Authenticity: initial sketches 169