We are not what we are—a portfolio manager, sales clerk, or a CEO—in the same sense that a chair is a chair because of the possibility of choosing our manner of being. To impose a fixed role in a story upon oneself, as though that were the nature of things, is, in short, to reject our awareness of human responsibility and freedom. Bad faith rests upon the dual aspect of human nature: being at once (1) a facticity and (2) a transcendence. Judgments of ourselves in bad faith “aim at establishing that I am not what I am.”53 We affirm some aspect of our character, for example, to avoid the possibility of being different: the firm's budget administrator, explaining his explosive reaction to an erroneously completed expense report, quips, “Oh, I've always had this quick temper, it's too late to change now.” Or, standing on the possibilities of transcending our past selves, we say that the past doesn't count, that we're really different from that. Whereas we should be able to coordinate these two aspects of human reality, in bad faith, instead of valid coordination, we stand on or in a view of one to avoid taking responsibility for the other. “The goal of bad faith,” writes Sartre, “is to put oneself out of reach; it is an escape.”54 By way of summary about bad faith, Sartre's translator, Hazel Barnes, offers a concise account:
It consists in not accepting one's responsibilities as a For-itself, in seeking to blame someone or something for what one has done freely oneself, in choosing to assert one's freedom only where it is expedient and on other occasions to seek refuge in a theory of psychological determinism. It is to pretend that one is born with a determined self instead of recognizing that one spends one's life pursuing and making oneself. It is the refusal to face the anguish which accompanies the recognition of our absolute freedom.55
Thus, rationality, as the conscious and deliberate acceptance of the human condition, requires that we avoid the ever-present plays of bad faith, which undermine the authentic acceptance of our freedom and responsibility.
Summary of Key Points
We can distill the preceding discussion down to a few central tenets, which will help in relating Sartre's ideas to relevant problems in business ethics in Part 2.
Existence precedes essence. In other words, what we do, how we act, determines our apparent character traits (or virtues). It is not that someone tells the truth because he is honest. On the contrary, one defines oneself as honest by choosing to tell the truth again and again. A “courageous” person is basically just someone who usually acts bravely. Each act contributes to defining us as we are. But at any moment we are free to start acting differently. We can always start afresh, making different kinds of choices than we have in the past.
People are subjects, not objects. Humans are not objects to be used by corporations or other organizations. Nor are people to be “motivated,” “controlled,” or “molded” into roles, to act as merely a waiter, or secretary, or programmer, or accountant. Treating people as objects is contrary to treating them as free subjects. Our freedom is what constitutes our humanity.
Choices matter. We are our choices. We cannot avoid or escape choosing. Opting not to choose is still choosing. Even if stuck in inevitable conditions, we nonetheless still choose how we are in those circumstances, for instance, what attitude to adopt with regard to our working at a job that we hate.
Universality of decisions: although we may be choosing what appears to be for ourselves only, we are, in a profound sense, choosing for all humankind.56
Bad faith (self-deception) poses a persistent and pervasive threat to living authentically. We act in bad faith whenever we regard ourselves first and foremost as objects—for example, our professional roles within organizations—instead of as free persons.
Part 2: Implications for Business Ethics
In considering the ramifications of these Sartrean reflections for business ethics, a few cautionary notes should be made. First, I am inclined to believe that, in its normative aspect, business ethics does not, nor should it, purport to mandate or restrict itself to any one theoretical orientation. Rather, normative business ethics is most successful and illuminating when it perspicaciously deploys the strongest parts of moral theories, which may harbor significant defects standing on their own, for instance, utilitarianism,57 rule utilitarianism,58 deontological approaches,59 rights perspectives,60 justice conceptions,61 contractuarian approaches,62 stakeholder conceptions,63 and virtue ethics,64 as needed for understanding and resolving moral problems in the real world. It is in that spirit that I recommend including Sartre's ideas along with some of the more conventional philosophical concepts listed above. One chief benefit of taking a Sartrean point of view on business ethics is to foster one's awareness that the deepest moral dilemmas are not quite as amenable to being objectively “solved” as applications of traditional moral theory have suggested.
Second, for business ethics to draw on philosophical concepts in interesting and illuminating ways no particular process needs to be deployed. Indeed, with a notion like authenticity, it would be odd to specify, say, particular corporate initiatives or business school curricula to promote “training in authenticity.” Any such regimen would no sooner be specified than it would become an insidious form of indoctrination, a front for imposters of authenticity. Thus, the points raised can only be sincerely transformed into practice by the art of inventive minds. Finally, as significant and potentially transformative as Sartre's concept of authenticity is, such a notion is certainly not the only one, and it is not necessarily the most important one for business ethics. It would pay to keep in mind a version of Dewey's phrase that it takes a good moral character to know when to raise the moral issue;65 that is, perhaps it also takes an authentic character to know when to raise the question of authenticity. If character is interpreted from an “intellectual academic” standpoint, then the educational implications would run toward exercises in analytic and deductive skills, and so on. If character is interpreted from a socioemotional standpoint, then one might expect an emphasis on teaching approved or “rational” attitudes. If, by contrast, character is interpreted in light of Sartrean reflections, attention must be given in business ethics education to fostering the conscious and deliberate acceptance of the human condition of freedom in our manner of being, that is, authenticity. The short recapitulation of the main tenets of Sartre's view provided above suggests a number of points of attack for the present state of business ethics with regard to the task of fostering authenticity. The focal points to be considered are: (1) business ethics education, (2) managerial deliberation and decision making, and (3) corporate structures. In the following sections, fundamental changes in these areas that are prompted by a Sartrean point of view will be explored.
Changing Assumptions About Teaching Business Ethics
A Sartrean point of view suggests that, beyond learning processes of ethical reasoning, business students would be assisted by seeing that such reasoning processes are embedded in larger structures of action. In the delineation of reasons, the role of evaluator is critical. Reasons are constituted as one defines a situation, say, a Harvard Business School case study or an ethical dilemma. Situations are not simply the objective state of affairs or “the facts”; rather, situations come into being as one questions the facts from some point of view.66 Thus, the coefficient of adversity in situations reveals as much about the manager or executive as about givens. The present custom in many business schools of taking the winner's view of history and of downplaying the extent to which economic decisions embody value positions and the moral dimension obscures the wider structures within which reasons are constituted. A treatment of “the facts” from conflicting points of view would begin to show (intellectually, at least) the import of choice of starting points in intellectual analysis. If point of view or attitude or, more generally speaking, created self has such a role in the constitution of reasons, it is not the original or generative element, for our choices actualize and specify what we are. Sartre shows how each of us has a fundamental project. Our free acts are always outlined for us against the backdrop of this project. We can see our choices in the selves we have created, and the projects that give meaning to reasons and motives are basic choices of ourselves in our modes of responding to the