L'enfer, c'est les autres

n'est-ce pas?

I promised I would comment on this. I like how my earlier post about la rue des Blancs-Manteaux immediately followed the one about Danny and Armi's music video. They kind of cancel each other out -- or maybe they compound each other, it depends. But that really wasn't the intention. It was more of a preparation for Lent.

Jean-Paul Sartre's classic Huis Clos was an attempt to illustrate his rather atheistic assertion that Hell (l'enfer) is other people (les autres). That is, Sartre's existentialism held that man can only define himself (or ascertain his image) according to how he is perceived by other people. However, what is fundamental to Sartre's beliefs is that man's existence has no universality: He is born, he lives, he dies; there is no second life, no afterlife, and no eternal life. Therefore, he has nothing to prepare for and no grand ideal to measure himself against, save what the others see. And so, he is therefore responsible for determining who he is to be.

According to Sartre, because man must gauge himself according to what the others perceive, he is doomed because other people only see the superficial -- they don't see what drives the man. Though man may strive to obtain heroic virtue, all it takes is one cowardly act for him to be branded a coward by the others for the rest of his life. And so man is trapped between the loneliness of himself and the judgments of the others. If he is to engage the world, he must contend with the others, and if he cares about their perceptions of himself, he abdicates his liberty.

In Sartre's world, man creates his own values. But Sartre's world is characteristically selfish. Man is focused on himself and his needs, he is subject to judgment by the others who care only about themselves, and there is a constant battle between what man keeps as his own liberty and what he sacrifices to the bondage of the others. Sartre's world can only exist if there is no grace, no love, no redemption, and no reconciliation. Sartre, being an atheist, would have no trouble admitting this, but when Christ enters Sartre's world, it ceases to exist.

I was reflecting on this recently because there are times when my observations about the world mirror Sartre's. A world that is morbid, dark, and weak. It is at those times that I find myself to be the most most selfish and the most superficial, even while I call myself a Christian, and I despair -- Thus, I enter Sartre's world. But, that is a lie. Sartre's world doesn't truly exist. It represents man's world at its worst, but there is a deeper, spiritual reality that is part of the physical world. And there is a grace that moves us beyond despair and into repentance and reconciliation. If we allow ourselves to be transformed by grace, which is unmerited favor granted to us by God, we can enter Christ's world. This is the world we encounter even at the height of our prayer in the Sacrifice of the Mass. It's a world that doesn't mask Sartre's world, but rather redeems it through self-sacrifice and the supreme self-sacrifice of Christ.

I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and your joy may be complete. This is my commandment: love one another as I love you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends. - John 15:11-13

Sartre observes a world without grace, unloved, and beyond redemption. Christ observes a world greatly loved and therefore, purely out of that love, worthy of grace and redemption. Sartre observed a selfish, physical world in which man is left to his own devices. Christ observes a spiritual world that is fundamentally transformed by the most unselfish act possible, where man is given everything he needs to know God, love God, and be with God forever. Christ obliterates the darkness forever because He has given us hope.