Authentic selfhood requires enduring anxiety rather than escaping it through self-justification

Evidence

Sartre read Kierkegaard, and was fascinated by his contrarian spirit and by his rebellion against the grand philosophical systems of the past. He also borrowed Kierkegaard’s specific use of the word ‘existence’ to denote the human way of being, in which we mould ourselves by making ‘either/or’ choices at every step. Sartre agreed with him that this constant choosing brings a pervasive anxiety, not unlike the vertigo that comes from looking over a cliff. It is not the fear of falling so much as the fear that you can’t trust yourself not to throw yourself off. Your head spins; you want to cling to something, to tie yourself down — but you can’t secure yourself so easily against the dangers that come with being free. ‘Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom’, wrote Kierkegaard. Our whole lives are lived on the edge of that precipice, in his view and also in Sartre’s. — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 61 (#expands, via linked claim)

It is impossible to account for this without starting from an existential fact: the subject’s tendency toward alienation; the anxiety of his freedom leads the subject to search for himself in things, which is a way to flee from himself; it is so fundamental a tendency that as soon as he is weaned and separated from the Whole, the infant endeavors to grasp his alienated existence in the mirror, in his parents’ gaze. Primitive people alienate themselves in their mana, their totem; civilized people in their individual souls, their egos, their names, their possessions, and their work: here is the first temptation of inauthenticity. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 128 (#expands, via linked claim)

Crucial to the intersection of trust with emergent social capabilities on the part of the infant, therefore, is absence. Here, at the heart of the psychological development of trust, we rediscover the problematic of time-space distanciation. For a fundamental feature of the early formation of trust is trust in the caretaker’s return. A feeling of the reliability, yet independent experience, of others—central to a sense of continuity of self-identity—is predicated upon the recognition that the absence of the mother does not represent a withdrawal of love. Trust thus brackets distance in time and space and so blocks off existential anxieties which, if they were allowed to concretise, might become a source of continuing emotional and behavioural anguish throughout life. — Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity, 237 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Existentialist anxiety is the vertigo of realizing one’s own freedom — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 61; Anxiety about freedom drives subjects to alienate themselves in things — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 128; Trust in another’s return brackets absence and blocks existential anxiety. — Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity, 237 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Existentialist anxiety is the vertigo of realizing one’s own freedom #expands (0.85) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 61
• Anxiety about freedom drives subjects to alienate themselves in things #expands (0.80) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 128
• Trust in another’s return brackets absence and blocks existential anxiety. #complicates (0.80) — Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity, 237
• Moral anxiety is intrinsic to existence, not imposed from outside #corroborates (0.78)