Reimagining Religious Identity

2015 Philosophy Week

Colegio de San Lorenzo
Congressional Avenue, Quezon City

Fray Johnny Abellera Esmilla Jr., OSA

Seminario San Agustin

“It is senseless to think of complaining

since nothing alien has decided
what we feel, what we live, or what we are.”
- Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness

This particular philosophy week of Colegio de San Lorenzo is especially dedicated to the 110th birth
anniversary of Jean-Paul Sarte, existentialist and philosopher par excellence. It is an understatement to say
that no philosopher alive today has not been influenced by his work - whether they disagree with it or not.
No philosopher, who thinks he is doing philosophy, can ever be one without him reading the works of Sartre.

Your theme, “Reimagining Identity, Remembering Sartre” is therefore a good way of celebrating
your philosophy week. Identity has been a cornerstone in Sartrean philosophy. In his work The Humanism of
Existentialism, Sartre proposes that our individual choices make us who we are.1 Though he is wary of saying
that there is indeed something like an identity, which would seem weird because he has rejected the notion of
a human nature, we can see in the works of Sartre that our identity is a dynamic process of becoming. We
choose our identity. Or to put it in another way, our choices determine who we are.

For us, that would seem as an ordinary thing already. Of course, we determine who we want to be.
Yet, for thousands of years, before the insistence of existentialists on the value of an existential choice, we
have placed our identity on the hands of everything besides ourselves: on God, on the cosmos, on fate, in
history. What we celebrate therefore today is that 110 years ago, a man was born who will definitely influence
philosophical thought so as to impose the fact which we now hold true: I create my own identity.

However, what I shall try to do today is actually a philosophical murder – or at least a philosophical
anachronism. I will try to fish out the possibility of fishing out a form of religious identity from the works of
Sartre. That, in itself, would make many eyebrows go up. After all, Sartre has been insistent that religion is
unnecessary. Yet, that is my philosophical project this afternoon. This talk will be divided into three parts.
First, I will discuss Sartre’s concept of identity and facticity. Second, I will discuss Sartre’s notion (or non-
notion) of religion. Finally, I will try to form a kind of religious identity from Sartrean themes which would
work in contemporary times.

On Identity and Facticity

Western philosophy before Sartre has always argued that essence precedes existence. Imagine having
a cookie-cutter. We are one big batch of dough and there is an “eternal” cookie maker with which human
being beings are fashioned. God is seen as this eternal cookie maker. We have been fashioned in God’s mind
(our essence) even before He created us (existence). However, when Nietzsche announced that “God is
dead” then the equation can be interchanged.

1cf. Jean-Paul Sartre, “The Humanism of Existentialism” in Jean-Paul Sartre: Essays in Existentialism ed. Wade
Baskin (New York: Carol Publishing Group, 1995), 36.
 We could say, figuratively speaking, that if there is no God, then there is no idea in God’s mind to
which the human must correspond. Or, as Sartre says, “There is no human nature since there is no God to
conceive it.” Each human being is alone, “abandoned,” and free. Each human being creates and re-creates his
or her “essence” in every moment through his or her choices and action. Thus, existence precedes essence. 2
There is no eternal cookie-cutter and we are free to become whatever cookie we want to be.

However, in the writings of Sartre, we see a dilemma. We are called to be the “cookies” that we want
to be. Yet, upon inspection, Sartre describes that there is nothing inside of us. How can that be? Let us ty a
thought experiment. Look at me. Of course, you will see a chubby person speaking in front of you. You have
that in your brain. That is called as unreflected consciousness. Now, I want you to look back at the moment
when I said that you should look at me. Now, in your brain, you see yourself looking at me. That is called
reflected consciousness. Now, you will notice that you only find your “self” in and only in the reflected
consciousness. The moment that I am back in unreflected consciousness, I am no longer aware of myself.

Sartre is just saying that Descartes may be wrong. Cogito does not automatically equate to ergo sum. To
think does not mean that “I am.” There is no “self” in thought except in reflected consciousness. Thus, the
corrected maxim should be “I think, therefore there are thoughts.”3 If there is no “self” in thought, what
does Sartre find there? He finds there an absent self. He literally found “nothing.” What he finds in
consciousness is “an impersonal spontaneity,” created ex nihilo (out of nothing), a tireless creation that
overflows the self.4

Remember that because there is no God, no eternal cookie-cutter, you cannot find in yourself a fixed
human nature. You create it with your every choice. Thus, when you look in your consciousness, you cannot
find anything but the “you” which you are trying to create. But because you are still creating it, there is
nothing there to find.

Thus, we see that Sartrean identity is an identity of becoming. Our identity is an offshoot of that
impersonal spontaneity which we find in our consciousness. What does this say of us? We are used to place
our identity in things which we say are out of our control. How many times have you said that you are what
you are because of your parents, or your IQ or your emotional stability. These are resemblances of the
cookie-cutter which we think have made us. Sartre, however, challenges this notion. For Sartre, who you are
is a product of your choices. Remember that for him, there is no God to whom we get our human nature.
Thus, you can be who you want to be. You can be happy, or melancholic, or apathetic. You can find your
worth in your relationships, in money or in pleasure. You can say that who you are is what you can do, your
intelligence, your skills and abilities. In the end, you choose what you want to be. Choice is the operative word.
And as in all choices, we are responsible for what we become. Because we cannot blame God anymore, we
have to live with the fact that how we turn out to be is the product of our choice.

To further boost our idea of Sartrean identity, we must learn the difference between what he calls as
being-for-itself and being-in-itself. Being-for-itself is conscious human experience. This is us. We are the being-for-
itself. Reality prior to any human intervention is called Being-in-itself. Sartre contends that between us and
reality is the “world” which we have created. This world includes humanly-created structures fashioned to
deal with reality – language, theories, explanations, traditions etc.5 We can never confront reality directly
because our reality has been limited by our facticities. Together with the fear that comes with knowing that
we are “abandoned to be free” is the fact that we are born into a set of facticities. These are features of reality
that resist freedom’s desire to transform them into possibility.6 For example, I want to be an Olympic athlete

2 Dolald Palmer, Sartre for Beginners (New York: Writers and Readers Publishing, Inc., 1995), 25.
3 Ibid., 39
4 Ibid., 40.
5 Ibid., 149.
6 Ibid.,
but I was born with asthma. That is my facticity. Other facticities include your family, your IQ, your race,
your gender, and as I will try to prove later, your religion. There is one thing which we should remember
regarding facticties. Facticities are neutral concepts. They do not have a meaning. They only gather meaning
when we put meaning into them. You are born as a boy. You might like it or not, but the fact is that you were
born as a boy. You may want to change it or you may want to celebrate it. That is your choice. Your facticity
limits your freedom, yet it is only in how we look at them that they are given meaning.

On God and Religion

What is a god? This is a good place to start this section. Sartre defines God as “the only concept of
the Other pushed to the limit.” What does that mean? Let us go back to the concepts of being-in-itself and
being-for-itself.

If being-in-itself is always a fullness, being-for-itself is always an emptiness, an incompleteness. The

human being is primarily DESIRE, and desire is a lack – an emptiness that hungers for fullness. What the
human desires is the fullness of existence that has always already been achieved by being-in-itself. Therefore,
Sartre says, “Fundamentally man in the desire to be.” Desire can never be fully gratified. It can never fully
achieve its goal. Or, to use Sartre’s language, being-for-itself can never become being-in-itself. In fact, it does
not really want to do so, for then it would fail to be itself (that is, fail to be “for itself,” a freedom). What it
really wants is to be BEING-IN-ITSELF-FOR-ITSELF – that is, a freedom that is its own necessary source
of being. But this is precisely the definition of God.

Therefore, “man is fundamentally the desire to be God.” In every act we perform, according to
Sartre we are trying to become God. This is an ideal that Aristotle had introduced in the 4th century BC. The
trouble is, nobody can become God, not even God. The idea of a God is self-contradictory. (The idea of a
being-in-itself-for-itself – that is, of a fullness which is an emptiness.)7

If the idea of a God is self-contradictory, then why do we have it in the first place? Sartre blames this
on the fact that reason always tends to find meaning. Philosophers claim before Sartre claimed that if
something is happening, it is caused by something or someone. This creates a chain of action with which we
assume that there is something that started this chain of events. St. Thomas Aquinas appropriates that to
God. However, because Sartre believes that there is no God, what we have is an infinite “going back” which
by its nature is absurd. If nothing started this chain of events, why do we have these events now? Sartre
claims that those who do not have the courage to accept this absurdity would eventually invent God and
religion. It is only the brave which can confront this absurdity. This courage will be our foundation in
reimagining religious identity.

Reimagining Religious Identity

I would like to speak of five things which can characterize the process of reimagining religious
identity. Again, this will send Sartre back to the living if he hears this. However, I believe that certain
elements of Sartrean existentialism will help us re-think our concept of God and religion which may prove to
be helpful in our journey towards the creation of our personal meaning.

First, we have to accept the facticity of religion. If we see religion as the way (or any way) to deal with
the problem of the absurdity of the word, then all men have a religion (in one way or another.) It need not be
as rigid and as formal as the religions of our times, but whenever we think of meaning (or lack of it), we are
turning to religion. Where does that lead us? A re-imagined religious identity is conscious of the fact that

7 Ibid., 140.
religion is a “given.” Religion is something that we are born into. Our very birth is sanctioned by religion.
Had I been born during the temple era of Judaism, and I were not a Levite, I would never become a priest.
Thus, we should not forget that religion is a facticity. However, as Sartre asserts, each person chooses to see
the meaning of that facticity. Because facticity, in itself, is meaningless, the source of that meaning of a
decision (or a choice) is always on the part of the individual. Religions do not have meaning if we do not
make a conscious effort of putting one of them in the first place.

Second, if religious identity is like human identity, then what we are seeing and what we actually have
are nothing but religious nothingness. Just like there is no human nature, there is no fixed religious nature.
This realization is important in the face of contemporary religious fanaticism. We create the meaning of our
religious identity and so to think, as some does, that by being a Muslim you are duty bound to carry out the
jihad, or by being a Christian you are automatically saved, is fooling one ’s self. Your religion cannot force its
meaning on you because you are the one who puts meaning on it in the first place.

Third, Sartre claims that seeing our identity is nothing but seeing ourselves in the future. Yet, to see
ourselves in the future is a futile exercise. He says, “I await myself in the future, where I make an
appointment with myself in the other side of that hour, of that day, or of that month. Anguish is the fear of
not finding myself at that appointment, of no longer even wishing to be there.” This is the problem of the
coward. Religious identity has been intricately linked to tradition which makes those who practice it afraid of
thinking about the future. Yet, it is only in bravely looking at the future that we continue to choose our
identity. For religions to meet the signs of the times, they need to look at the future no matter how fearful
they might be. Our religious identity is an appointment to a future which right now is bleak. Many people are
turning to the world instead of to religion for answers. Religion, however, is afraid to look for new answers
because as Sartre says “we might not find ourselves” there. However, people like Pope Francis are a breathing
space to the Catholic Church. You have here a man who is not afraid to look into the future of a Church who
kisses the feet of prisons, embraces a disfigured man, says mass in the midst of a typhoon-stricken country.
You have a man who not only wishes that the future would come, but that future must already be created
now.

Fourth, existentialism’s manta is “no excuses.” That should also apply to our exercise of religion and
in the formation of religious identity. We have forgotten that it is we who created religion. What we now have
is a religion who controls us, making it as if religion chooses for us. It is enough to think about the Catholics
who burned witches at the stake, of Muslim extremists offering themselves as human time bombs, of Hindu
widows being burned together with their dead husbands. I have nothing against religious traditions, but
nothing should be done just because your religion tells you to do it. If you want to go to EDSA and protest
what the DOJ secretary is doing against your religion, then feel free to do so. However, do it because you
want to do it and not because your minister told you to do so. The same was true of the Catholics who kept
on rallying against the RH Bill. They should have done it because they really felt that it was against their
belief, and not because the bishops and priests called for such action. Your religion should not be an excuse
for you to do something. If anything, your religion should be the fount from which you get the courage to do
things freely, not the other way around.

Lastly, remember that we have the desire to be God, but we can never be gods. The problem with
modern-day religion, as my professor in Liturgy says, is that we act more like God than God himself.
Religious institutions have decreed much which I think is really not part of the original intent of their
founders. Remember that Jesus criticized the Pharisees for creating burdens too heavy to bear. From the
single command that “Thou should keep the Sabbath Rest,” the Pharisees and scribes were able to deduce
more than 700 laws like no one should carry a pen with ink enough to write more than two letters. We are
not gods, and Sartre reminds us of the fact that we will never be. A reimagined religious identity reminds us
that if we want to create our identity, it should never include the identity of being gods, especially if being
gods mean that we impose what we want on other people.
 And so, to end, it will do us good to go back to the quote I said in the beginning of this talk: “It is
senseless to think of complaining since nothing alien has decided what we feel, what we live, or what we are.”
Indeed, in everything that we do, including how we do religion and how we look at our religious identity, we
should remember that nothing alien has decided for us. We create our own identity, so we cannot complain.
Instead, if we find ourselves not the person that we want to be, the we can create a new us. We do that
everyday.