On the Perpetual Creation of Missing Gods

I’m currently putting together a new Atheism for Lent course to run in 2016 (click the link to find out more). As I’ll be providing content for all 40 days of Lent I’ve been busy sifting through some of the most interesting and penetrating critiques of religion to create an interesting, challenging and enriching experience.

As part of this I was re-familiarizing myself with Sartre’s existentialism, and came across a fascinating passage that expresses one of his critiques of theism. At first glance it can seem rather obscure, so I’ll take some time to unpack it,

Everything happens as if the world, man, and man-in-the-world succeeded in realizing only a missing God. Everything happens therefore as if the in-itself and the for-itself were present in a state of disintegration in relation to an ideal synthesis. Not that the integration has ever taken place but on the contrary precisely because it is always impossible (Being and Nothingness).

I’ll take each line in turn,

Everything happens as if the world, man, and man-in-the-world succeeded in realizing only a missing God.

Here Sartre is expressing an observation, namely that those who use the term ‘God’ always seem to be expressing a God who is at a distance from human experience. Even those who affirm a God who is present have to account for an experience of absence, whether this is due to sin, illusion, or ignorance. As such, absence seems to be one of the defining characteristics of affirming the Absolute, whether that is called God, Nirvana, Spirit etc. Hence religious traditions both East and West are always attempting to explain this distance and abolish it.

Everything happens therefore as if the in-itself and the for-itself were present in a state of disintegration in relation to an ideal synthesis.

There are, of course, many who speak of passing moments in which there is a type of presence with the Absolute. Terms like ‘thin places,’ ‘mystical union,’ and ‘oceanic experience,’ are employed to refer to some kind of oneness (ideal synthesis). Yet this is always passing, ethereal, incomplete, dissolving away. To understand why this is the case, Sartre refers to the philosophical terms ‘in-itself’ and ‘for itself.’

The in-itself basically refers to anything that does not experience a sense of alienation. This refers to rocks, coffee, seats, apples and anything else that simply is what it is. A stone is not alienated because it is not a question to itself, a stone simple abides. The universe is filled with things that are in-itself. In traditional theology ‘God’ is in-itself, insomuch as God is not self-alienated. God is described as simple (in the philosophical sense) and at one with God-self.

In contrast, the ‘for-itself’ refers to that which experiences alienation. At its most basic we might say that the for-itself is that which feels separate from other things. In other words, the for-itself refers to consciousness. For consciousness involves an experience of distance. If I look across the street at a car, for example, there is a distance (a nothingness) that I experience between myself and the car, if this nothingness wasn’t grounding my perception of the car then I wouldn’t be able to experience myself as separate from the car. But, not only do ‘I’ feel separate from the car across the road, I also feel separate from my own body and sense of self. I can look at myself objectively (considering aspects of my personality etc.), and thus I experience a sense of separation from my own self. In a sense then consciousness is the experience of distance (what Sartre refers to as ‘nothingness’).

For Sartre, the in-itself can’t be for-itself any more than a triangle can have four sides. To be in-itself is to be lacking the lack, while to be for-itself is to be constituted by it. As an aside, this means that there is a logical impossibility in the traditional notion of God, because that notion defines God as both in-itself and for-itself.

While there are points in our life when the barrier between the in-itself and the for-itself feels thin (in mediation, losing ourselves in a task, drugs, sex etc.), they never meet except in an experience of disintegration.

We might long for that oceanic experience of oneness with the universe, of perfect peace, knowledge and satisfaction, but we can only feel this to the extent that we engage in a certain level of self-deception. To extrapolate on Sartre’s point, there was a brief moment in our genesis when the in-itself becomes for-itself. This is the time when ‘we’ become a self in infancy.

This becoming a self is thus an experience of loss (the loss of the in-itself). But ‘we’ lose nothing. In the vocabulary of existentialism, we actually gain nothing. Nothing is a gain because it is the birth of our subjectivity.

Not that the integration has ever taken place but on the contrary precisely because it is always impossible

In this line Sartre is underlying the impossibility of the fantasy we have of some kind of synthesis  in the past or future where the in-itself and for-itself meet. This means that to be human is both amazing and terrifying. Amazing because nothingness becomes something. Terrifying because this means that alienation is part of our lives.

In short, Sartre is warning us that anyone who offers us certainty, satisfaction and an experience of oceanic oneness is writing cheques they can’t cash. There are obviously times in our lives that are haunted by all of these things. Moments when we look out at a beautiful sunset and feel a rush of peace, or during a powerful sexual encounter when we seem to lose a sense of where we end and the other begins. However, while these experiences enrich our lives wonderfully, they are always slipping through our hands, disappearing in the very moment when we try to grasp them. For in trying to grasp them we re-affirm our state as a for-itself and thus move away from the in-itself.

In the above passage Sartre provides us with a wonderful definition of an idol. Namely, a ‘missing God.’ Anytime a preacher, new-age practicer, drug dealer, salesman, or technological guru gives you the formula for losing yourself in the in-itself, they are peddling lies. Lies that gain their power from a profound sense of loss that is a constitutive part of being human. The trick, for Sartre, is to find a way to stop pursing the missing gods constantly being created in sacred and secular temples, and learn to embrace ones wonderful, terrifying, and intoxicating freedom. To take this seriously might not be the end of Christianity, but rather might help us understand it in a much more interesting way, a way that Bonhoeffer touched on in his provisional notes on religionless Christianity.