The Teddies Review - Dec 2021

on a train and could be in Latvia by evening – if they so wanted (and had the money). And so, Sartre would be the first to point out the complicity of students in their condition. He labelled those cases where we say we’re forced to do something (when we’re not, really) as “bad faith” . Bad faith are those moments in a person’s life where they refuse to accept responsibility for the situation, they are in. In very few moments in life is anyone (including a student) “made” to do something. To be authentically human, we ought to see th e choices that we’ve made. You choose to go to school. You choose to wake up early and go to period one. You choose to not do your prep. You choose to go the detention you receive. To avoid bad faith is to accept that we are the ones who have made the choices that brought us to this moment. The fact is, schools do not exist to entrap, diminish, and limit anyone. They are not institutions of immanence, as Sartre and de Beauvoir would see it. In fact, the opposite is true. For de Beauvoir, immanence means an inability to flourish as a human being. It means being reduced to an object. But (good) schools seek to give students the responsibility over their own actions, and to teach a crucial existentialist lesson: we are free to choose as we want, but this comes with consequences. Sartre once wrot e that we are, “condemned to be free” because with freedom comes responsibility, and with responsibility comes anxiety, pressure, and blame. Being an object is not authentic, but it is really easy. It’s easier to be told what to do and when to do it, than Responsibility and flourishing

to choose that yourself. So, some people, and some students, reduce themselves again to objects. They hide, again, in the “I have to do this” or “Miss made me do that”, because it’s the easier option than taking hold of life and directing it. It’s easier to blame a teacher, a parent, or a headmaster, than it is to blame yourself. But the hard wisdom of existentialism is that when you awake to how free you are, you also must take responsibility. Every action, every piece of work, and every word you say – you have chosen them. And all the reward and punishment, praise and blame, is yours alone.

By Jonny Thomson

Chess Puzzle

White to mate in one move. But which?

By Arya Cont