Sartre on Sin: Between Being and

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Freedom and Necessity in Modern Trinitarian Theology
Brandon Gallaher (2016)
Intercessory Prayer and the Monastic Ideal in the Time of
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Ottoman Puritanism and its Discontents
Aḥ mad al-Rūmī al-Āqḥ is.ārī and the Qāḍīzādelis
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A. J. Appasamy and his Reading of Rāmānuja
A Comparative Study in Divine Embodiment
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Kierkegaard’s Theology of Encounter
An Edifying and Polemical Life
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Qur’an of the Oppressed
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Ezra and the Second Wilderness
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Maternal Grief in the Hebrew Bible
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Sartre on Sin
Between Being and Nothingness

KATE KIRKPATRICK

1
 3
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 Acknowledgements

This research would not have been possible were it not for the support
of many individuals and institutions. I am grateful for the support of
the AHRC’s Block Grant Partnership for funding this project; to
St Cross College, the Faculty of Theology and Religion, and the
Udo Keller Stiftung Forum Humanum for travel grants that enabled
me to present work in progress at several conferences during the
period of research; and to the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript
Library at Yale University and Grégory Cormann for their assistance
in procuring the ‘Sartre’s Readings of Youth’ manuscript and mémoire,
respectively.
TORCH, the Maison Française d’Oxford, and the UK Sartre Society
supported the ‘Thinking with Sartre Today/Penser avec Sartre au-
jourd’hui’ conference I co-organized at the Maison Française d’Oxford
(30–31 January 2015), which was a source of both research leads and
relationships—in particular with Ârash Aminian-Tabrizi and Marieke
Mueller, whom I thank for their collaboration and camaraderie.
Several scholars have read and commented on aspects of this work
at various stages of its development. I am especially grateful to Pamela
Sue Anderson and George Pattison for the care and commitment they
have shown this project; to OUP’s anonymous reviewers; as well as
to Graham Ward, Joel Rasmussen, James Hanvey SJ, Katherine Morris,
Clare Carlisle, and Stephen Mulhall; and to Richard Parish, who
generously met with me to discuss Pascal’s works and twentieth-
century reception.
Excerpts from Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, translated
by Hazel Barnes © 1958 and the Philosophical Library (US & Canada)
and Routledge (UK & rest of world), are reproduced by permission
of the Philosophical Library Inc (philosophicallibrary.com) and by
Taylor & Francis Books UK. All rights reserved.
Finally I would like to acknowledge, with gratitude, the support
and love of my family. In particular, I would like to thank Matt—for
his encouragement and partnership, in words and in deeds.
 Contents

Chronology of Sartre’s Works, 1924–46 ix

List of Abbreviations xi
A Note on Translations xiii

PART I. SARTRE AND SIN

1. Introduction 3

PART II. A GENEALOGY OF NOTHINGNESS

2. French Sins, I: ‘Les mystiques du néant’ and ‘les disciples
de Saint Augustin’ 21
3. French Sins, II: Individuals and their Sins 62

PART III. A PHENOMENOLOGY OF SIN

4. Problems of Nothingness: Identity, Anxiety,
and Bad Faith 91
5. The Fallen Self: In Search of Lost Being 115
6. Lonely Togetherness: Shame, the Body, and Dissimilarity 137
7. Freedom: On Being Our Own Nothingness 161

PART IV. TOWARD A SARTREAN

HAMARTIOLOGY
8. Death of God, Death of Love: The Hermeneutics
of Despair 201
9. Sin is Dead, Long Live Sin! 228

References 243
Index 259
 Chronology of Sartre’s Works, 1924–46

Dates are dates of publication unless given in parentheses, in which case they
are dates of writing for works that were published later or that remain
unpublished. English titles are given in square brackets for works that have
been translated into English. This chronology ends at 1946 because this book
concerns Sartre’s pre-humanist phase, i.e. Sartre’s philosophy before Exist-
entialism is a Humanism.

(1924–5) Carnet Midy

(1927) L’Image dans la vie psychologique: rôle et nature (unpublished
mémoire for the Diplôme d’études supérieure)
1936 L’Imagination [The Imagination]
La Transcendance de l’ego [The Transcendence of the Ego]
1938 La Nausée [Nausea]
(1939–40) Carnets de la drôle de guerre, Septembre 1939–Mars 1940
[War Diaries]
1939 Esquisse d’une théorie des émotions [Sketch for a Theory
of the Emotions]
Le Mur [The Wall]
1940 L’Imaginaire [The Imaginary]
(1940) Bariona (staged) [Bariona]
1943 L’Être et le néant [Being and Nothingness]
Les Mouches [The Flies]
1944 Huis clos [No Exit]
1945 L’Âge de raison [The Age of Reason]
Le Sursis [The Reprieve]
1946 La Poutain respecteuse [The Respectable Prostitute]
Existentialisme est un humanisme [Existentialism
is a Humanism]
La Liberté [Cartesian Freedom]
 List of Abbreviations

B Bariona, trans. Mary Mayer and Bernard Seal, ADAM

International Review, Nos. 343–5 (1970), pp. 37–85.
BN Being and Nothingness, trans. Hazel Barnes, London:
Routledge, 2003.
CG Carnets de la drôle de guerre, Septembre 1939–Mars 1940, ed.
Arlette Elkaim Sartre, Paris: Gallimard, 1995.
CG Pléiade Les Carnets de la drôle de la guerre, in Les Mots et autres écrits
autobiographiques, ed. Jean-François Louette, Paris:
Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 2010.
CM Carnet Midy, in Jean-Paul Sartre, Écrits de jeunesse, ed.
M. Contat and M. Rybalka, Paris: Gallimard, 1990.
E Sketch for a Theory of the Emotions, trans. Philip Mairet,
London: Routledge, 2002.
EH Existentialism is a Humanism, trans. Carol Macomber,
London: Yale University Press, 2007.
EJ Écrits de jeunesse, Paris: Gallimard, 1990.
EN L’Être et le néant, Paris: Gallimard, 1972.
F The Flies, trans. Stuart Gilbert, New York: Vintage, 1989.
I The Imaginary, trans. Jonathan Webber, London: Routledge,
2004.
IFI ‘Intentionality: A Fundamental Idea of Husserl’s
Phenomenology’, Journal of the British Society for
Phenomenology I/2 (1970): 4–5.
IM L’Imagination, Paris: PUF, 2010.
IN ‘Intimité’, in Le Mur, ed. Walter Redfern, Bristol: Bristol
Classical Press, 1997.
IVP L’Image dans la vie psychologique: rôle et nature, unpublished
typsecript of the mémoire for the Diplôme d’études supérieure,
équipe Sartre, ITEM, École Normale Supérieure, Paris.
LC ‘La Liberté cartesienne’ (introduction), in Descartes
(Classiques de la liberté), ed. Jean-Paul Sartre, Paris: Trois
collines, 1946. The 1946 edition is cited herein; the text is more
widely available in Sartre’s Situations I (1947).
LE Liberté–Egalité: manuscript sur la genèse de l’idéologie
bourgeoise, in Études sartriennes 12 (2008): 165–256.
LL Lucifer and the Lord, trans. Kitty Black, London: Penguin,
1965.
xii List of Abbreviations
LM Les Mots, in Les Mots et autres écrits autobiographiques, ed.
Jean-François Louette, Paris: Gallimard (Bibliothèque de la
Pléiade), 2010.
LS Lettres au Castor et à quelques autres, Paris: Gallimard, 1983.
MWS Men without Shadows, trans. Kitty Black, London:
Penguin, 1962.
N Nekrassov: A Farce in Eight Scenes, trans. Sylvia and George
Leeson, London: Penguin, 1969.
NA Nausea, trans. Robert Baldick, London: Penguin, 2000.
NE No Exit, trans. Stuart Gilbert, New York: Vintage, 1989.
NM ‘A New Mystic’, in Critical Essays, trans. Chris Turner,
London: Seagull Books, 2010.
RP The Respectable Prostitute, trans. Lionel Abel, New York:
Vintage, 1989.
RY ‘Sartre’s Readings in Youth’, MS from the John Gerassi
collection, Yale University.
SI Situations I, Paris: Gallimard, 1947.
SII Situations II, Paris: Gallimard, 1948.
SIV Situations IV, Paris: Gallimard, 1964.
TE The Transcendence of the Ego, trans. Andrew Brown, intro.
Sarah Richmond, London: Routledge, 2004.
TS Un Théâtre de situations, Paris: Gallimard, 1992.
TW The Trojan Women, trans. Ronald Duncan, London: Penguin,
1969.
VLM Vers les mots in Les Mots et autres écrits autobiographiques, ed.
Jean-François Louette, Paris: Gallimard (Bibliothèque de la
Pléiade), 2010.
W Words, trans. Irene Clephane, London: Penguin.
WD The War Diaries: November 1939–March 1940, trans. Quintin
Hoare, New York: Pantheon, 1984.
WL What is Literature?, trans. Bernard Frechtman, London:
Routledge, 2003.
WML Witness to My Life: The Letters of Jean-Paul Sartre to Simone
de Beauvoir, 1926–39, London: Hamish Hamilton, 1992.
 A Note on Translations

I have used the Hazel Barnes translation of L’Être et le néant, although there
are some instances where I have found it necessary to cite the French, in
particular where the same English word is used for different French words
with different theological connotations. These instances are noted at relevant
points in the argument. Where citations refer to other works in French
(by Sartre or others) and cited matter is in English all translations are the
author’s own unless otherwise stated.
 Part I

Sartre and Sin

 1

Introduction

This book argues that Jean-Paul Sartre’s early philosophy retained a

recognizable inheritance from the Christian doctrine of original sin.
In particular, his philosophical anthropology in Being and Nothing-
ness presents the human condition as fallen. This contention may
come as a surprise, given that in his time there was ‘no more prom-
inent atheist.’1 But ‘atheism’ is by no means monolithic, and Sartre’s
atheism has recently begun to receive greater recognition—and greater
scrutiny for being ambiguous.2
Where Sartre’s prominence is concerned there is less ambiguity: in
his own country he dominated the mid-twentieth century.3 His
output was astonishing on account of its diversity (it traversed several
literary genres), quality (he was awarded, and famously refused, the
Nobel Prize in Literature in 1964), and quantity (‘once calculated at
20 published pages a day over his working life’4). In an age before
global publishing and mass-market trends, his first novel, Nausea
(1938), sold more than 1.6 million copies in his lifetime, and his play
Dirty Hands (1948) nearly 2 million. Even Being and Nothingness
(1943), his 700-page tome on phenomenological ontology, went
through five editions in its first three years and has never been out
of print.5
In light of such fame, one might be inclined to ask why this theme of
sin—significant as I am about to argue it is—has not already surfaced in
Sartre scholarship. It has surfaced: but it has not been pursued to the

1
Hopkins 1994: 113.
2
By ‘ambiguous’ I mean that there are many possible interpretations (see Gellman
2009; Kirkpatrick 2013; Gillespie 2013, 2014; Chabot 2016). I will elaborate on this in
the next section of this chapter.
3
Lévy (2003) dubbed him ‘the philosopher of the twentieth century’.
4 5
Economist 2003. Economist 2003.
4 Sartre on Sin
necessary depth. Several readers of Sartre have made passing com-
ments on resemblances between Being and Nothingness and Christian-
ity in general,6 and in particular to the doctrine of original sin and to
its interpreters, St Augustine,7 Kierkegaard,8 or Kant.9 In the English-
speaking philosophical literature Stephen Mulhall notes Sartre’s
‘Christian theological horizons’;10 Merold Westphal describes Sartre
as a ‘secular theologian of original sin’;11 Robert Solomon and Jonathan
Webber note similarities between bad faith and original sin;12 and
Hans van Stralen notes the close similarity between Sartre’s later view
of history and original sin.13
That there is no sustained scholarly work exploring the reputed
relationship between Sartre and sin can be explained on historical,
textual, and theological bases. Historically, Sartre’s existentialism is
just beginning to emerge from a period in scholarly purgatoire: it has
been seen by many as ‘of its time’—a philosophy of the post-war
period for the post-war period—or even as the ‘height of kitsch’.14
Textually, there is a neat proof text for Sartre’s disbelief in sin: in the
War Diaries he wrote that ‘what is certain is that from the start I had a
morality without God—without sin, but not without Evil’.15 And
theologically, the most common objection I have encountered to
this project is that ‘Sartre didn’t have a theological formation!’ How
could he keep theological concepts?
Cognizant that the latter two reasons for dismissal posed a greater
threat to my argument than the first, this research, therefore, initially
set out to test earlier scholars’ claims of resemblance—to compare
Sartre’s ontology of freedom to Augustine’s ontology of sin—and to
see what case (if any) could be made for Sartre having a ‘theological’
formation. On both historical and textual bases the research
found that Sartre’s intellectual formation included a theological elem-
ent which is often overlooked by Sartre scholars—especially in the

6
See Kirkpatrick 2017 on the influence of theology on Sartre and Sartre on twentieth-
century theology.
7
Westphal 2010: 172.
8
Theunissen writes that ‘In a certain sense, Sartre even incorporates Kierkegaard’s
theological conception of sin’ (2005: 31).
9
Philonenko suggests radical evil, rather than ‘original sin’, as the problem Sartre
sought to address (1981: 154), although radical evil itself can be considered a ‘secu-
larization’ or, in Kant’s case, a philosophical version, of original sin.
10
Mulhall 2005: 13, 31. See also Harries 2004: 28.
11 12
See Westphal 2010: 172. Webber 2009: 143; Solomon 2006: 13.
13 14 15
Van Stralen 2005: 182. Lévy 2003: 3. WD 70.
 Introduction 5
English-speaking philosophical community, where his German phe-
nomenological influences receive greater attention. Moreover, it found
that this theology was indeed Augustinian, but it was the Augustinian-
ism of l’école française de spiritualité and Jansenism, in both of which
the concept of le néant (nothingness) plays a profound role.
Before presenting my own reading of Being and Nothingness, there-
fore, I must advance a preliminary contention: namely, that the recep-
tion of Being and Nothingness among English-speaking philosophers
has placed such an emphasis on Sartre’s position in (or deviation from)
the German phenomenological tradition that it has missed significant
formative influences on his thought. In particular, I argue, French
theological and literary traditions are in evidence, but since these are
less well known to Anglo-American philosophers—or not considered
to be ‘philosophy’16—the text is often not read for this register.17
Sartre himself is partly to blame for the ease with which it can be
overlooked. In Sartre’s self-contextualization in Being and Nothingness
he frequently defines himself in agreement or opposition with ‘les trois
Hs’—Hegel, Husserl, and Heidegger—and with Descartes; theological
figures are rarely named. But this, I argue, is because Sartre’s own
methodology involved what I will call a ‘morganatic marriage’.
Sartre clearly drew on the German phenomenological tradition. But
his philosophical education was well under way by the time he encoun-
tered phenomenology in the early 1930s. English-speaking commen-
tators note his debts to Descartes and Bergson, but Sartre’s intellectual
formation did not just expose him to thinkers respected by the English-
speaking canon of philosophy, but to theological writers—whether
they went by the other names of mystiques or moralistes.
Where ‘mystics’ are concerned, Sartre’s little-studied ‘mémoire’ for
the Diplôme d’Études Supérieures (written in 1926–7) was dedicated
to the ‘image’ and included a section on Christian mystics. The work,

16
Roger Scruton, for example, notes that the French have ‘a completely different
conception of what philosophy is’ (2014: n.p.).
17
See, e.g., Flynn’s intellectual biography (2014), which starts in the 1930s with
Sartre’s discovery of phenomenology; or Catalano 1985, which moves from ‘Des-
cartes’ to ‘Husserl’ in its treatment of Sartre’s ‘background’. Many English-language
texts neglect his earlier intellectual development. Cormann 2015 (in French) examines
one of Sartre’s pre-phenomenological philosophical interlocutors (Alain), but there is
very little work devoted to this early formation in English. The ‘Sartre’s readings in
youth’ MS is helpful in this respect, for showing the sources that Sartre took to be
significant in his early development.
6 Sartre on Sin
entitled L’Image dans la vie psychologique: rôle et nature, was written
under the supervision of Henri Delacroix (professor of psychology at
the Sorbonne and author of Étude d’histoire et de psychologie du
mysticism, among other things—a work which included substantial
treatments of St Theresa of Avila, Madame Guyon, and Fénelon).
A heavily revised version of the mémoire was published in 1936, after
Sartre’s discovery of phenomenology, as L’Imagination.18 And where
moralistes are concerned, Sartre frequently cites them and relates his
own works to theirs.19
What we find in Being and Nothingness, therefore, is a morganatic
marriage of phenomenology and these ‘lesser’ methods: neither les
mystiques nor les moralistes shared the high status of les philosophes in
the intellectual climate of interwar France.20 It is not surprising that
Sartre did not acknowledge these influences: for in addition to feeling
that they were methodologically lesser, sub-, or un-philosophical
approaches, he could presume tacit familiarity on behalf of his French
readership.21
I will outline the contours of my argument in greater detail in
the concluding section of this Introduction. But before doing so it

18
The relationship between Sartre and mysticism is complex. In part, this is
because of the multiplicity of meanings assigned to the word ‘mysticism’. In Sartre’s
historical context, in the throes of a renaissance of interest in mystical thought, it was
a live question whether France herself had always had ‘a mystical soul’, or whether the
crystalline light of les philosophes’ reason shone brighter. It is clear from the endnotes
for Sartre’s mémoire that he read Baruzi (1924) and Delacroix (1908) as well as works
by Tauler and Theresa of Avila.
19
The French moraliste is not to be confused with the English ‘moralist’; the
former is often used to describe religious writers, ‘bad’ philosophers, or a particular
group of seventeenth-century authors. Sartre refers to les moralistes as a group and by
name in many of his works: In TE 17, for example, he refers to La Rochefoucauld and
les moralistes because he is not content to have a ‘purely psychological theory’ that rids
the presence of the me from consciousness. In the WD, Sartre describes himself as
‘affected by moralism, and . . . moralism often has its source in religion’ (WD 72).
See also BN 574 and 583, which will be discussed in Chapter 7.
20
See Kirkpatrick 2013 on Sartre and mysticism, and Connor 2000: 16, 19–20 on
the intellectual climate in France in the interwar years. The notion that ‘mysticism’
was a departure from reason was particularly important in the 1930s, when the word
‘mysticism’ took on connotations of National Socialism. It was the antiphilosophy:
where philosophy emphasizes doubt and critical reflection, mysticism was a kind of
being carried away, often against reason (Connor 2000: 129).
21
See Morris 2009: 10; the French educational system allowed Sartre to presume
knowledge on behalf of his (French) readers. In BN we find allusions to theological
controversies with which Sartre assumes his readers will be familiar: Manicheanism,
Arianism, and the religious politics of Constantine’s conversion (BN 467f.).
 Introduction 7
is necessary to make a few further introductory remarks about
(1) Sartre’s ambiguous atheism; (2) Sartre as secular theologian
of original sin; (3) and the scope, structure, and methodology of
this book.

SARTRE’S ATHEISM

As John Henry Newman wrote, ‘The word “God” is a Theology in

itself ’,22 and where Sartre is concerned scholars have yet to reach
precision about which God he spoke. Sartre’s atheism is ambigu-
ous, with its origins, nature, and duration subject to debate.23 His
philosophical rejection of belief in God in Being and Nothingness is
simple: since no being can be both en soi and pour soi, God cannot
exist.24 But as I have written elsewhere, there is good reason to
doubt that this argument persuaded its author: in conversation
with Beauvoir, Sartre said that his real reasons for denying God’s
existence were ‘much more direct and childish’.25 Moreover, it is
questionable whether any argument persuaded him. In What Is Litera-
ture? Sartre writes that ‘thought conceals man’: on their own, argu-
ments are uninteresting. ‘But an argument that masks a tear—that is
what we’re after.’26
Sartre provides several different accounts of the genesis of his
atheism in Words, adding fuel to the fire of uncertainty. In
addition to the genesis stories I have listed elsewhere,27 he
describes atheism as ‘a cruel, long-term business’ (W 157); himself
as ‘prevented’ from being a Christian (W 82); and God as an ‘old
flame’ (W 65). It is difficult, therefore, to define a precise philo-
sophical position or provide a clear biographical account with
respect to his atheism.

22
Newman 1907: 26, 36–7.
23
On origins see Gellman 2009 and Kirkpatrick 2013; on duration see Gillespie
2013 and 2014.
24
T. Anderson 2010 also draws attention to Sartre’s discussion of God as ens causa sui.
25
Beauvoir 1984: 438.
26
WL 22. Sartre continues, ‘The argument removes the obscenity from the tears;
the tears, by revealing their origin in the passions, remove the aggressiveness from the
argument.’
27
See Kirkpatrick 2013.
8 Sartre on Sin
Despite its ambiguity, however, it is clear that Sartre’s atheism is
not of the same variety as the naturalist atheism that is popular (and
perhaps, in some circles, the assumed meaning of the English word
‘atheist’) today. In this it is worth mentioning a passage in Words in
which Sartre offers a description of ‘the atheist’—and noting its
Jansenist hues. The atheist, Sartre writes, was
a man with a phobia about God who saw his absence everywhere and
who could not open his mouth without saying his name: in short, a
Gentleman with religious convictions. The believer had none: for two
thousand years the Christian certainties had had time to prove them-
selves, they belonged to everyone, and they were required to shine in a
priest’s glance, in the half-light of a church, and to illumine souls, but no
one needed to appropriate them to himself; they were the common
patrimony. Polite society believed in God so that it need not talk of him.
(W 62–3)
When Sartre uses the word ‘atheism’, therefore, it is wise not to
assume his intended meaning was synonymous with that of the
evidential atheism that is debated in the analytic philosophy of
religion today. Bertrand Russell’s famous account of what he would
say to God should the two ever meet—‘Not enough evidence, God!
Not enough evidence!’—is unlikely to have been Sartre’s mantra.28
Rather Sartre might better be viewed as belonging to the ‘school
of suspicion’.29 As Merold Westphal describes it, the hermeneutics
of suspicion involves ‘the deliberate attempt to expose the self-
deceptions involved in hiding our actual operative motives from
ourselves, individually or collectively, in order not to notice how
and how much our behaviour and our beliefs are shaped by values
we profess to disown’. As such, suspicion must be distinguished from
the scepticism that is characteristic of evidential atheism: ‘Skepticism
seeks to overcome the opacity of facts, while suspicion seeks to
uncover the duplicity of persons.’30

28
Quoted in Plantinga and Wolterstorff 1983: 17–18. Gellman 2009 argued that
Sartre is a ‘mystical atheist’, but I have argued elsewhere (Kirkpatrick 2013) that, on
the basis of the variety of Sartre’s genesis stories, it is difficult to accept Gellman’s
categorization as conclusive. Gardner (2009: 205) similarly interprets Sartre’s motiv-
ations as non-metaphysical, seeing them on ‘the same order as Jacobi’s assertion that
the being of God is intuited directly, but with an exactly opposite content’.
29
See Ricoeur 1970.
30
Westphal 1998: 13.
 Introduction 9
SECULAR THEOLOGIAN OF ORIGINAL SIN

In Being and Time, Heidegger wrote that the ‘ontology [of Dasein], as
a philosophical inquiry, “knows” nothing about sin’.31 On my reading
of Sartre, we shall see, Heidegger’s claim does not hold true for Being
and Nothingness. If there is one aspect of Sartre’s work that scholars
do not dispute, it is that freedom played a central role in his thought.
On the standard reading, Sartre’s most fundamental and attractive
idea—the idea that brought him his reputation as ‘the best-known
metaphysician in Europe’32 or ‘the philosopher of his generation’33—
is freedom.34 It is, in Christina Howells’s words, a ‘critical cliché’.35
But, as Sarah Richmond notes, Sartre’s interest in phenomenology
‘co-existed with and was an instrument for his wish to demonstrate
the existence of human freedom, and his sense that the way to do this
was by establishing an essential connection of consciousness with
nothingness’.36
In Christian theology, since Augustine at least, nothingness is an
alias of sin and evil. These concepts, on the Augustinian reckoning of
them, are indistinguishable: both are privations (or absences) of the
good, and both are possible on account of human freedom. The
genealogy of the human condition Sartre presents—as a tensive
state between being and nothingness—clearly has roots in sin.
This brings us back to the proof text cited above: for Sartre’s claim
there—that he believes in a world without God and without sin, but
with evil—only throws us off the wrong scent. Although we will
examine it in greater depth in Chapter 2, it is worth saying at this
stage that, broadly construed, the Augustinian view of sin holds to a
double meaning for sin as ‘actual’ and ‘original’, where actual sin
consists of discrete actions deliberately done against the will of God
and original sin is a state of corruption (which particularly affects the
human will) that ensued from the actual sin of the first human couple.
The double meaning of sin is important because holding these two
sides together has practical consequences: if actual sin, by definition,
is against God, then sin is a theocentrically defined concept and
humans can be held accountable for committing such sins. As actual,
sin is something of which we are conscious and for which we are

31 32
SZ 306, n. 1, cited in Harries 1995: 19. Murdoch 1999: 1.
33 34
Bernasconi 2006: 9. Philonenko 1981: 145.
35 36
Howells 1988: 1. Richmond 2013: 94.
10 Sartre on Sin
responsible. However, if it is only defined as such then the concept of
sin can seem moralistic and individualistic.
To call sin original checks both of these inferences, because our
actual sins follow from a corrupted state. We cannot, of our own
power, extricate ourselves from this state, however heroic our attempts.
Sin is thus a shared problem: it is not only a matter of individuals in
isolation, but also affects our relations with each other, producing
injustices of both small and large scales. Such a state is tensive, simul-
taneously active and passive: active in that the individual can choose to
perpetuate or resist actual sin, and passive in that the individual enters
a fallen world that is not of her creation.
My training is in both philosophy and theology, and my intention
is not to perpetuate the view that the boundaries of these disciplines
are impermeable. Rather, in this work I aim to attend to the theo-
logical themes in Being and Nothingness in order to see what emerges
from the text by so doing. The Sartre of Being and Nothingness clearly
rejects the notion of actual sin—discrete violations of prohibitions
would make no sense in a world without God to do the prohibiting.
However, he retains a recognizable descendant of the Christian doc-
trine of original sin in le néant.
Redressing a deracinated reading of Sartre is not my only aim,
however. I also argue that understanding Sartre’s theological sources
serves further conceptual ends. For philosophers, it clarifies Sartre’s
slippery conceptions of nothingness and bad faith; and for theologians,
it opens up a new, theological interpretation of Sartre’s account of
human reality. Theologically, I argue that Sartre’s phenomenology can
be read as anti-theodicy and as a hermeneutics of despair. Moreover,
this reading of Sartre may serve as a useful hamartiological resource: it
provides a phenomenology of sin from a graceless position.
The idea of ‘Sartrean theology’ will strike some as counterintuitive
or ill-advised. Turning to an atheist for theological insights may seem
backwards, methodologically, particularly for those who think know-
ledge of God can only come from God and those who claim to know
him. But my aim in this book (as Merold Westphal argued with
respect to Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud) is to demonstrate that Sartre
can be read as a ‘secular theologian of original sin’. As such, his works
should ‘be taken seriously as a stimulus to self-examination rather
than refuted as an error’.37 In what follows, therefore, I read Sartre’s

37
Westphal 1998: xiv.
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that he might be lacking in the executive faculty. His disposition of
business was orderly and rapid. His power of analysis, and his skill in
classification, enabled him to despatch a vast mass of detail with
singular promptness and ease. His Cabinet meetings were admirably
conducted. His clear presentation of official subjects, his well-
considered suggestion of topics on which discussion was invited, his
quick decision when all had been heard, combined to show a
thoroughness of mental training as rare as his natural ability and his
facile adaptation to a new and enlarged field of labor.
With perfect comprehension of all the inheritances of the war, with
a cool calculation of the obstacles in his way, impelled always by a
generous enthusiasm, Garfield conceived that much might be done
by his administration towards restoring harmony between the
different sections of the Union. He was anxious to go South and
speak to the people. As early as April he had ineffectually endeavored
to arrange for a trip to Nashville, whither he had been cordially
invited, and he was again disappointed a few weeks later to find that
he could not go to South Carolina to attend the centennial
celebration of the victory of the Cowpens. But for the autumn he
definitely counted on being present at three memorable assemblies
in the South, the celebration at Yorktown, the opening of the Cotton
Exposition at Atlanta, and the meeting of the Army of the
Cumberland at Chattanooga. He was already turning over in his
mind his address for each occasion, and the three taken together, he
said to a friend, gave him the exact scope and verge which he needed.
At Yorktown he would have before him the associations of a hundred
years that bound the South and the North in the sacred memory of a
common danger and a common victory. At Atlanta he would present
the material interests and the industrial development which
appealed to the thrift and independence of every household, and
which should unite the two sections by the instinct of self-interest
and self-defence. At Chattanooga he would revive memories of the
war only to show that after all its disaster and all its suffering, the
country was stronger and greater, the Union rendered indissoluble,
and the future, through the agony and blood of one generation, made
brighter and better for all.
Garfield’s ambition for the success of his administration was high.
With strong caution and conservatism in his nature, he was in no
danger of attempting rash experiments or of resorting to the
empiricism of statesmanship. But he believed that renewed and
closer attention should be given to questions affecting the material
interests and commercial prospects of fifty millions of people. He
believed that our continental relations, extensive and undeveloped as
they are, involved responsibility, and could be cultivated into
profitable friendship or be abandoned to harmful indifference or
lasting enmity. He believed with equal confidence that an essential
forerunner to a new era of national progress must be a feeling of
contentment in every section of the Union, and a generous belief that
the benefits and burdens of government would be common to all.
Himself a conspicuous illustration of what ability and ambition may
do under republican institutions, he loved his country with a passion
of patriotic devotion, and every waking thought was given to her
advancement. He was an American in all his aspirations, and he
looked to the destiny and influence of the United States with the
philosophic composure of Jefferson and the demonstrative
confidence of John Adams.

THE POLITICAL CONTROVERSY.

The political events which disturbed the President’s serenity for

many weeks before that fatal day in July form an important chapter
in his career, and, in his own judgment, involved questions of
principle and of right which are vitally essential to the constitutional
administration of the Federal Government. It would be out of place
here and now to speak the language of controversy, but the events
referred to, however they may continue to be source of contention
with others, have become, so far as Garfield is concerned, as much a
matter of history as his heroism at Chickamauga or his illustrious
service in the House. Detail is not needful, and personal antagonism
shall not be rekindled by any word uttered to-day. The motives of
those opposing him are not to be here adversely interpreted nor their
course harshly characterized. But of the dead President this is to be
said, and said because his own speech is forever silenced and he can
be no more heard except through the fidelity and the love of
surviving friends. From the beginning to the end of the controversy
he so much deplored, the President was never for one moment
actuated by any motive of gain to himself or of loss to others. Least of
all men did he harbor revenge, rarely did he even show resentment,
and malice was not in his nature. He was congenially employed only
in the exchange of good offices and the doing of kindly deeds.
There was not an hour, from the beginning of the trouble till the
fatal shot entered his body, when the President would not gladly, for
the sake of restoring harmony, have retraced any step he had taken if
such retracing had merely involved consequences personal to
himself. The pride of consistency, or any supposed sense of
humiliation that might result from surrendering his position, had not
a feather’s weight with him. No man was ever less subject to such
influences from within or from without. But after the most anxious
deliberation and the coolest survey of all the circumstances, he
solemnly believed that the true prerogatives of the Executive were
involved in the issue which had been raised, and that he would be
unfaithful to his supreme obligation if he failed to maintain, in all
their vigor, the constitutional rights and dignities of his great office.
He believed this in all the convictions of conscience when in sound
and vigorous health, and he believed it in his suffering and
prostration in the last conscious thought which his wearied mind
bestowed on the transitory struggles of life.
More than this need not be said. Less than this could not be said.
Justice to the dead, the highest obligation that devolves upon the
living, demands the declaration that in all the bearings of the subject,
actual or possible, the President was content in his mind, justified in
his conscience, immovable in his conclusions.

GARFIELD’S RELIGION.

The religious element in Garfield’s character was deep and earnest.

In his early youth he espoused the faith of the Disciples, a sect of that
great Baptist Communion which in different ecclesiastical
establishments is so numerous and so influential throughout all
parts of the United States. But the broadening tendency of his mind
and his active spirit of inquiry were early apparent and carried him
beyond the dogmas of sect and the restraints of association. In
selecting a college in which to continue his education he rejected
Bethany, though presided over by Alexander Campbell, the greatest
preacher of his church. His reasons were characteristic: first, that
Bethany leaned too heavily toward slavery; and, second, that being
himself a Disciple and the son of Disciple parents, he had little
acquaintance with people of other beliefs, and he thought it would
make him more liberal, quoting his own words, both in his religious
and general views, to go into a new circle and be under new
influences.
The liberal tendency which he had anticipated as the result of
wider culture was fully realized. He was emancipated from mere
sectarian belief, and with eager interest pushed his investigations in
the direction of modern progressive thought. He followed with
quickening step in the paths of exploration and speculation so
fearlessly trodden by Darwin, by Huxley, by Tyndall, and by other
living scientists of the radical and advanced type. His own church,
binding its disciples by no formulated creed, but accepting the Old
and New Testaments as the word of God, with unbiased liberality of
private interpretation, favored, if it did not stimulate, the spirit of
investigation. Its members profess with sincerity, and profess only,
to be of one mind and one faith with those who immediately followed
the Master, and who were first called Christians at Antioch.
But however high Garfield reasoned of “fixed fate, free will,
foreknowledge absolute,” he was never separated from the Church of
the Disciples in his affections and in his associations. For him it held
the ark of the covenant. To him it was the gate of Heaven. The world
of religious belief is full of solecisms and contradictions. A
philosophic observer declares that men by the thousand will die in
defence of a creed whose doctrines they do not comprehend and
whose tenets they habitually violate. It is equally true that men by
the thousand will cling to church organizations with instinctive and
undenying fidelity when their belief in maturer years is radically
different from that which inspired them as neophytes.
But after this range of speculation, and this latitude of doubt,
Garfield came back always with freshness and delight to the simpler
instincts of religious faith, which, earliest implanted, longest survive.
Not many weeks before his assassination, walking on the banks of
the Potomac with a friend, and conversing on these topics of
personal religion, concerning which noble natures have an
unconquerable reserve, he said that he found the Lord’s Prayer and
the simple petitions learned in infancy infinitely restful to him, not
merely in their stated repetition, but in their casual and frequent
recall as he went about the daily duties of life. Certain texts of
scripture had a very strong hold on his memory and his heart. He
heard, while in Edinburgh some years ago, an eminent Scotch
preacher who prefaced his sermon with reading the eighth chapter of
the Epistle to the Romans, which book had been the subject of
careful study with Garfield during his religious life. He was greatly
impressed by the elocution of the preacher and declared that it had
imparted a new and deeper meaning to the majestic utterances of
Saint Paul. He referred often in after years to that memorable
service, and dwelt with exaltation of feeling upon the radiant promise
and the assured hope with which the great apostle of the Gentiles
was “persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor principalities, nor
powers nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth,
nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of
God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
The crowning characteristic of General Garfield’s religious
opinions, as, indeed, of all his opinions, was his liberality. In all
things he had charity. Tolerance was of his nature. He respected in
others the qualities which he possessed himself—sincerity of
conviction and frankness of expression. With him the inquiry was
not so much what a man believes, but does he believe it? The lines of
his friendship and his confidence encircled men of every creed, and
men of no creed, and to the end of his life, on his ever lengthening
list of friends, were to be found the names of a pious Catholic priest
and of an honest-minded and generous-hearted free-thinker.

THE ASSASSIN’S BULLET.

On the morning of Saturday, July 2d, the President was a

contented and happy man—not in an ordinary degree, but joyfully,
almost boyishly happy. On his way to the railroad station to which he
drove slowly, in conscious enjoyment of the beautiful morning, with
an unwonted sense of leisure, and a keen anticipation of pleasure, his
talk was all in the grateful and gratulatory vein. He felt that after four
months of trial his administration was strong in its grasp of affairs,
strong in popular favor and destined to grow stronger; that grave
difficulties confronting him at his inauguration had been safely
passed; that troubles lay behind him and not before him; that he was
soon to meet the wife whom he loved, now recovering from an illness
which had but lately disquieted and at times almost unnerved him;
that he was going to his Alma Mater to renew the most cherished
associations of his young manhood, and to exchange greetings with
those whose deepening interest had followed every step of his
upward progress from the day he entered upon his college course
until he had attained the loftiest elevation in the gift of his
countrymen.
Surely, if happiness can ever come from the honors or triumphs of
this world, on that quiet July morning James A. Garfield may well
have been a happy man. No foreboding of evil haunted him; no
slightest premonition of danger clouded his sky. His terrible fate was
upon him in an instant. One moment he stood erect, strong,
confident, in the years stretching peacefully out before him. The next
he lay wounded, bleeding, helpless, doomed to weary weeks of
torture, to silence and the grave.
Great in life, he was surpassingly great in death. For no cause, in
the very frenzy of wantonness and wickedness by the red hand of
murder, he was thrust from the full tide of this world’s interest, from
its hopes, its aspirations, its victories, into the visible presence of
death—and he did not quail. Not alone for one short moment in
which, stunned and dazed, he could give up life, hardly aware of its
relinquishment, but through days of deadly languor, through weeks
of agony, that was not less agony because silently borne, with clear
sight and calm courage, he looked into his open grave. What blight
and ruin met his anguished eyes, whose lips may tell—what brilliant,
broken plans, what baffled, high ambitions, what sundering of
strong, warm, manhood’s friendship, what bitter rending of sweet
household ties! Behind him a proud, expectant nation, a great host of
sustaining friends, a cherished and happy mother, wearing the full,
rich honors of her early toil and tears; the wife of his youth, whose
whole life lay in his; the little boys not yet emerged from childhood’s
day of frolic; the fair, young daughter; the sturdy sons just springing
into closest companionship, claiming every day and every day
rewarding a father’s love and care; and in his heart the eager,
rejoicing power to meet all demand. Before him, desolation and great
darkness! And his soul was not shaken. His countrymen were thrilled
with instant, profound, and universal sympathy. Masterful in his
mortal weakness, he became the centre of a nation’s love, enshrined
in the prayers of a world. But all the love and all the sympathy could
not share with him his suffering. He trod the wine-press alone. With
unfaltering front he faced death. With unfailing tenderness he took
leave of life. Above the demoniac hiss of the assassin’s bullet he
heard the voice of God. With simple resignation he bowed to the
Divine decree.
As the end drew near, his early craving for the sea returned. The
stately mansion of power had been to him the wearisome hospital of
pain, and he begged to be taken from his prison walls, from its
oppressive, stifling air, from its homelessness and its hopelessness.
Gently, silently, the love of a great people bore the pale sufferer to
the longed-for healing of the sea, to live or to die, as God should will,
within sight of its heaving billows, within sound of its manifold
voices. With wan, fevered face tenderly lifted to the cooling breeze,
he looked out wistfully upon the ocean’s changing wonders; on its far
sails, whitening in the morning light; on its restless waves, rolling
shoreward to break and die beneath the noonday sun; on the red
clouds of evening, arching low to the horizon; on the serene and
shining pathway of the stars. Let us think that his dying eyes read a
mystic meaning which only the rapt and parting soul may know. Let
us believe that in the silence of the receding world he heard the great
waves breaking on a further shore and felt already upon his wasted
brow the breath of the eternal morning.

AFTER THE ORATION.

The eulogy was concluded at 1.50, having taken just an hour and a
half in its delivery. As Mr. Blaine gave utterance to the last solemn
words the spectators broke into a storm of applause, which was not
hushed for some moments. The address was listened to with an
intense interest and in solemn silence, unbroken by any sound
except by a sigh of relief (such as arises from a large audience when a
strong tension is removed from their minds) when the orator passed
from his allusion to differences existing in the Republican party last
spring. Benediction was then offered by the Rev. Dr. Bullock,
Chaplain of the Senate. The Marine Band played the “Garfield Dead
March” as the invited guests filed out of the Chamber in the same
order in which they had entered it. The Senate was the last to leave,
and then the House was called to order by the Speaker.
Mr. McKinley, of Ohio, offered the following resolution:
Resolved, The Senate concurring, that the thanks of Congress are
hereby presented to the Hon. James G. Blaine for the appropriate
memorial address delivered by him on the life and services of James
A. Garfield, late President of the United States, in the Representative
Hall, before both houses of Congress and their invited guests, on the
27th of February, 1882, and that he be requested to furnish a copy
for publication.
Resolved, That the Chairman of the Joint Committee appointed to
make the necessary arrangements to carry into effect the resolution
of Congress in relation to the memorial exercises in honor of James
A. Garfield be requested to communicate to Mr. Blaine the foregoing
resolution, receive his answer thereto and present the same to both
Houses of Congress. The resolution was adopted unanimously.
Mr. McKinley then offered the following:
Resolved, That as a further mark of respect to the memory of the
deceased President of the United States the House do now adjourn.
The resolution was unanimously adopted, and in accordance
therewith the Speaker at 1.55 declared the House adjourned until to-
morrow.
CIVIL SERVICE.
 Improvement of the Subordinate Civil
Service.

Speech of Hon. George H. Pendleton, of Ohio, in the Senate of the

United States, Tuesday, December 12, 1882.
On the bill (S. 133) to regulate and improve the civil service of the
United States.
Mr. Pendleton said:
Mr. President: When I assented yesterday that this bill should be
informally laid aside without losing its place, I had no set speech to
deliver, nor had I the intention of preparing a speech for to-day. I did
not intend to hold up the bill here as an obstruction to any business
before the Senate, or as an aid in passing any measure that might
receive my approbation, as my good Friend, the Senator from Kansas
[Mr. Plumb], so politely intimated. The bill providing for a bankrupt
law was very speedily, and to me unexpectedly, disposed of
yesterday, and this bill was called up several hours earlier than I
supposed it would be, and I thought the convenience of the Senate as
well as of myself would be subserved if I had an opportunity to
condense what I had to say on the subject.
The necessity of a change in the civil administration of this
government has been so fully discussed in the periodicals and
pamphlets and newspapers, and before the people, that I feel
indisposed to make any further argument. This subject, in all its
ramifications, was submitted to the people of the United States at the
fall elections, and they have spoken in no low or uncertain tone.
I do not doubt that the local questions exerted great influence in
many States upon the result; but it is my conviction, founded on the
observation of an active participation in the canvass in Ohio, that
dissatisfaction with the methods of administration adopted by the
Republican party in the past few years was the most important single
factor in reaching the conclusion that was attained. I do not say that
the civil service of the Government is wholly bad. I can not honestly
do so. I do not say that the men who are employed in it are all
corrupt or inefficient or unworthy. That would do a very great
injustice to a great number of faithful, honest, and intelligent public
servants. But I do say that the civil service is inefficient; that it is
expensive; that it is extravagant; that it is in many cases and in some
senses corrupt; that it has welded the whole body of its employès into
a great political machine; that it has converted them into an army of
officers and men, veterans in political warfare, disciplined and
trained, whose salaries, whose time, whose exertions at least twice
within a very short period in the history of our country have robbed
the people of the fair results of Presidential elections.
I repeat, Mr. President, that the civil service is inefficient,
expensive, and extravagant and that it is in many instances corrupt.
Is it necessary for me to prove facts which are so patent that even the
blind must see and the deaf must hear?
At the last session of Congress, in open Senate, it was stated and
proven that in the Treasury Department at Washington there were
3,400 employès, and that of this number the employment of less
than 1,600 was authorized by law and appropriations made for their
payment, and that more than 1,700 were put on or off the rolls of the
Department at the will and pleasure of the Secretary of the Treasury,
and paid not out of appropriations made for that purpose but out of
various funds and balances of appropriation lapsed in the Treasury
in one shape or another, which are not by law appropriated to the
payment of these employès. I was amazed. I had never before heard
that such a state of affairs existed. I did not believe that it was
possible until my honorable colleague rose in his place and admitted
the general truth of the statement and defended the system as being
necessary for the proper administration of the Treasury Department.
Mr. President, we see in this statement whence comes that
immense body of public officials, inspectors, detectives, deputies,
examiners, from the Treasury Department who have for years past
been sent over the States for the purpose of managing Presidential
conventions and securing Presidential elections at the public
expense.
 I hold in my hand a statement made before the committee which
reported this bill, showing that in one of the divisions of the Treasury
Department at Washington where more than nine hundred persons
were employed, men and women, five hundred and more of them
were entirely useless, and were discharged without in any degree
affecting the efficiency of the bureau. I read from the testimony taken
before the committee. Every gentleman can find it if he has not it
already on his table. The statement to which I refer I read from page
121 of report of committee No. 576:
The extravagance of the present system was well shown in the examination of
the Bureau of Engraving and Printing by a committee of which I was chairman. Of
a force of nine hundred and fifty-eight persons five hundred and thirty-nine, with
annual salaries amounting to $390,000, were found to be superfluous and were
discharged. The committee reported that for years the force in some branches had
been twice and even three times as great as the work required. In one division—
I beg Senators to listen to this—
In one division a sort of platform had been built underneath the iron roof, about
seven feet above the floor, to accommodate the surplus counters. It appeared that
the room was of ample size without this contrivance for all persons really needed.
In another division were found twenty messengers doing work which it was found
could be done by one. The committee reported that the system of patronage was
chiefly responsible for the extravagance and irregularities which had marked the
administration of the bureau, and declared that it had cost the people millions of
dollars in that branch of the service alone. Under this system the office had been
made to subserve the purpose of an almshouse or asylum.
In consequence of this report the annual appropriation for the Printing Bureau
was reduced from $800,000 to $200,000, and out of the first year’s savings was
built the fine building now occupied by that bureau.
And again, on page 126, this same gentleman says:
My observation teaches me there is more pressure and importunity for these
places—
That is, the $900 clerkship—
and that more time is consumed by heads of Departments, and those having the
appointing power, in listening to applications for that grade than for all the other
places in the Departments combined; and that when it is discretionary with a
Department to appoint a man or a woman the choice is usually exercised in favor
of the woman. I know a recent case in the Treasury Department where a vacancy
occurred which the head of the bureau deemed it important to fill with a man. It
was a position where a man’s services were almost indispensable; but the
importunity was so great that he was compelled to accept a woman, although her
services were not required. In consequence of this importunity for places for
women a practice has grown up in the Treasury Department of allowing the
salaries of the higher grades of clerkships to lapse when vacancies occur, and of
dividing up the amount among clerks, usually women, at lower salaries. In the
place of a male clerk at $1,800 a year, for instance, three women may be employed
at $600. Often the services of a man are required in its higher grade, while the
women are not needed at all; but as the man can not be employed without
discharging the women he can not be had. The persons employed in this way are
said to be “on the lapse.” Out of this grew the practice known in Departmental
language as “anticipating the lapse.”
In the endeavor to satisfy the pressure for place more people are appointed on
this roll than the salaries then lapsing will warrant, in the hope that enough more
will lapse before the end of the fiscal year to provide funds for their payment. But
the funds almost always run short before the end of the year, and then either the
“lapse” appointees must be dropped or clerks discharged from the regular roll to
make place for them. In some instances, in former administrations, the employès
on the regular roll were compelled, under terror of dismissal, to ask for leaves of
absence, without pay, for a sufficient time to make up the deficiency caused by the
appointment of unnecessary employès “on the lapse”. Another bad feature is that
these “lapse” employès being appointed without regard to the necessities of the
work, for short periods and usually without regard to their qualifications, are of
little service, while their employment prevents the filling of vacancies on the
regular roll and demoralizes the service.
In one case thirty-five persons were put on the “lapse fund” of the Treasurer’s
office for eight days at the end of the fiscal year, to sop up some money which was
in danger of being saved and returned to the Treasury.
Mr. Maxey. Do I understand the Senator to say that that
testimony was taken by the Senate Committee on Civil Service and
Retrenchment?
Mr. Pendleton. Yes sir. This testimony was taken in the month of
March, I think, of the present year.

Says this gentleman further—

I have no doubt that under a rigid application of this proposed system the work
of the Treasury Department could be performed with two-thirds the number of
clerks now employed, and that is a moderate estimate of the saving.
Mr. President, a Senator who is now present in the Chamber and
who will recognize the statement when I make it, though I shall not
indicate his name, told me that the Secretary of one of the
Departments of the Government said to him, perhaps to the
Committee on Appropriations, at the last session, that there were
seventeen clerks in his Department for whom he could find no
employment; that he did need one competent clerk of a higher grade,
and if the appropriation were made for that one clerk, at the proper
amount according to the gradations of the service and the
appropriation for the seventeen were left out, he could, without
impairing the efficiency of his Department, leave those seventeen
clerks off the roll; but if the appropriation should be made the
personal, social, and political pressure was so great that he would be
obliged to employ and pay them, though he could find no
employment for them.
Need I prove, Mr. President, that which is known to all men, that a
systematic pressure has been brought upon the clerks in the
Departments of the Government this year to extort from them a
portion of their salary under a system which the President himself
scouts as being voluntary, and that they are led to believe and fairly
led to believe that they have bought and paid for the offices which
they hold and that the good faith of those who take from them a
portion of the salary is pledged to their retention in their positions?
I have said before upon the floor of the Senate that this whole
system demoralizes everybody who is engaged in it. It demoralizes
the clerks who are appointed. That is inevitable. It demoralizes those
who make the appointment. That also is inevitable. And it
demoralizes Senators and Representatives who by the exercise of
their power as Senators and Representatives exert pressure upon the
appointing power.
I repeat that this system, permeating the whole civil service of the
country, demoralizes everybody connected with it, the clerks, the
appointing power, and those who by their official position and their
relations to the executive administration of the Government have the
influence necessary to put these clerks in office.
Mr. President, how can you expect purity, economy, efficiency to
be found anywhere in the service of the Government if the report
made by this committee to the Senate has even the semblance of
truth? If the civil service of the country is to be filled up with
superfluous persons, if salaries are to be increased in order that
assessments may be paid, if members of Congress having friends or
partisan supporters are to be able to make places for them in public
employment, how can you expect Senators and Representatives to be
economical and careful in the administration of the public money?
I am sure there is no Senator here who will forget a scene which we
had upon the last night session of the last session, when the Senator
from Iowa [Mr. Allison], the chairman of the Committee on
Appropriations, the official leader of the Senate, rising in his place
with the last appropriation bill in his hand, and the report of the
committee of conference, made a statement to the Senate of the
result of the appropriations. He stated that the appropriations that
were made during that session amounted to $292,000,000—I throw
off the fractions—and he felicitated the Senate and himself as the
organ and mouthpiece of his party, that this was an excess of only
$77,000,000 over and above the expenditures of the year before.
Instantly the Senator from Connecticut [Mr. Platt] rose in his place
and reminded the Senator that there would be a deficiency in the
Pension Bureau alone of $20,000,000 or $25,000,000. The
honorable Senator from Georgia, who now occupies the chair [Mr.
Brown], inquired of the chairman of the Committee on
Appropriations whether there would be any deficiencies in the
expenses of the current year, or whether the statement was supposed
to cover probable deficiencies in addition to the appropriations, and
the honorable Senator from Kentucky [Mr. Beck], certainly as
familiar with all these subjects as any member of this body, rose in
his place and said that notwithstanding the utmost scrutiny of the
Committee on Appropriations, undoubtedly at the end of the fiscal
year the ordinary deficiencies would be found.
Two hundred and ninety-two millions of dollars of regular
appropriations; $20,000,000 of deficiency in one bureau alone, the
usual deficiencies occurring during the course of the year of
$20,000,000 more! As if this were not enough, my honorable
colleague arose in his place and took up the tale and called attention
to the fact that the permanent appropriations amounted annually to
one hundred and thirty-seven or more millions of dollars. According
to his statement made in that speech, which I am sure nobody will
forget, the expenditures of the Government during this present fiscal
year would amount to $402,000,000 or $403,000,000—nearly $9 a
head for every man, woman, and child in the United States—more
money than was appropriated for all the expenses of the Government
during the first forty years of its existence, I will venture to say,
though I do not speak by the book.
Harbor and river appropriation bills of $18,000,000! Thirty-two
new buildings commenced in the States, almost every one of which
has had buildings before! Two million five hundred thousand dollars
appropriated for the commencement of those buildings, for laying
the foundation! Before they are finished $25,000,000 more will be
needed to complete them! While these enormous appropriations
were being made there came up from the country a demand for a
revision of the tariff, which was confessedly greatly needed; for a
revision of the internal-revenue laws, which was equally necessary;
for a reduction of taxation pressing so heavily upon all the interests
of the country. Our honorable friends upon the other side of the
Chamber chose to answer that demand by a bill repealing the taxes
upon perfumery and cosmetics and bank checks, and met with a
sneer of derision and ridicule every effort that was made on this side
of the Chamber for a reduction of taxation.
Mr. President, it was these methods of administration, it was these
acts of the Republican party, which made it possible for the
Democratic party, and other men who prized their country higher
than they did their party, to elect in Ohio a Democratic ticket by
eighteen or twenty thousand majority, and elect sixteen out of the
twenty-one members of Congress assigned to that State. I say elected
sixteen, perfectly conscious of the fact that thirteen of them only
have received their certificates at present. If three of them, against
whom the aggregate majority is only sixty votes, do not receive
certificates under the action of the returning board or under the
powers of our judiciary which have been invoked, they will be seated,
as they ought to be, at the beginning of the next session of Congress
in the other house.
Under the impulse of this election in Ohio, upon these facts and
influences which I have stated as being of great importance there, it
became possible for the Democratic party and its allies, whom I have
described, to elect a Democratic governor in New York, in
Massachusetts, in Kansas, in Michigan, and various other States in
which there has been none but a Republican governor for many years
past. The same influences enable us, having accessions to our ranks
from Iowa and Wisconsin and Michigan and Pennsylvania, to have at
the beginning of the next session of Congress an aggregate of
perhaps sixty or more Democratic majority in the House of
Representatives.
Mr. Hale. Will the Senator from Ohio let me ask him a question
right here? As he is confining himself very closely to the civil service
of the Government, I should like to ask him one question here
relating to that. He has appealed directly to the Chairman of the
Committee on Appropriations, who was not present at the time,
although he has just come in. The Senator from Ohio has alluded to
the remarkable speech made by the chairman of the Committee on
Appropriations upon the expenditures of the Government at the last
session, and the wonderful scene that was exhibited there at that
time. In that speech on the expenditures of the Government, by the
chairman of the Committee on Appropriations, was the admission
that the aggregate expenditures were seventy-odd millions of dollars
more than the year before—remarkable when in that speech of the
Senator from Iowa, the chairman of the Committee on
Appropriations, he showed that every dollar was accounted for by
deficiencies on the part of the previous Democratic Congress and by
the increase of pensions and some other matters.
Mr. Pendleton. I remember the speech of the Senator from Iowa
very well; I have quoted it repeatedly from the Record, in which I
found it. I did him no injustice; I know he will not believe I would
intentionally do him injustice at any time. I stated then, I stated a
moment ago, I have stated it on the stump, I repeat it now, that the
Senator from Iowa in that speech said that the appropriations for the
current year were $292,000,000, and that they were $77,000,000 in
excess of those made for the last year: and I might have added if I
chose to make it a partisan affair, that the last Congress was under
Democratic control.
Mr. Hale. And did he not account for every dollar of that
$77,000,000 increase? But I think I will leave it to him, as he is
present now.
Mr. Pendleton. Undoubtedly he accounted for it, for he gave all
the items that went to make up the $77,000,000.
I am confining myself more closely, Mr. President, to the
discussion of the reform of the civil service of the Government than
the Senator seems to apprehend. I was showing to him the causes of
this very remarkable revolution in public sentiment which we have
seen as exhibited by the last election. I attributed that result in great
measure to the defects in our civil-service system and to the
demoralization which, arising there and in its practices, has reached
the other departments of the Government.
Mr. President, I was about to say when the Senator from Maine
interrupted me that I begged gentlemen on this side of the Chamber
and I beg the Democratic party throughout the country not to
mistake this result of last fall as a purely Democratic triumph. It was
achieved by the Democratic party with the assistance of men of all
parties upon whom their love of country sat heavier than their love of
party. It was a protest made by an awakened people who were
indignant at the wrongs which had been practiced upon them. It was
a tentative stretching out of that same people to find
instrumentalities by which those wrongs could be righted.
The people demanded economy and the Republican party gave
them extravagance. The people demanded a reduction of taxation
and the Republican party gave them an increase of expenditure. The
people demanded purity of administration and the Republican party
revelled in profligacy; and when the Republican party came to put
themselves on trial before that same people the people gave them a
day of calamity.
I beg that my colleagues on this side of the Chamber may
remember, I desire that our party associates throughout the country
shall remember, that the people will continue to us their confidence
and increase it, that they will continue to us power and increase it,
just in the proportion that we honestly and fairly and promptly
answer to the demands which the people have made, and which were
thus responded to by the Republican party. They asked revenue
reform and they received none. They asked civil-service reform and
they obtained none. They asked that the civil service of this
Government should not either as to its men or its expenditures be
made the basis upon which political contests were to be carried on,
and they received for answer that that was an old fashion and a good
method of political warfare.
I beg gentlemen upon this side of the Chamber to remember that if
they desire to escape the fate which now seems to be impending over
their adversaries they must avoid the example which those
adversaries have set them.
Mr. President the bill which I have the honor to advocate to-day,
and which is reported by a committee of the Senate, is the
commencement, in my humble judgment, of an attempt to answer
one of the demands which the people have authoritatively made. I
speak advisedly. It is the commencement of an attempt to organize a
system which shall respond to one of the demands which the people
have made.
I suppose the most enthusiastic supporter of this bill will not
pretend that it is perfect. I suppose he will not pretend that upon the
adoption of this bill a system will immediately spring into life which
will perfect and purify the civil service of the Government. But it is
the commencement of an attempt to lay the foundations of a system
which, if it shall answer in any reasonable degree the expectation of
those who by experience and faithful study have framed it, it will in
the end correct the abuses to which I have alluded, and which have
been delineated by no enemy of the Republican party or of the
Administration in the report which I have read to the Senate.
The bill has for its foundation the simple and single idea that the
offices of the Government are trusts for the people; that the
performance of the duties of those offices is to be in the interests of
the people; that there is no excuse for the being of one office or the
paying of one salary except that it is in the highest practicable degree
necessary for the welfare of the people; that every superfluous office-
holder should be cut off; that every incompetent office-holder should
be dismissed; that the employment of two where one will suffice is
robbery; that salaries so large that they can submit to the extortion,
the forced payment of 2 or 10 per cent. are excessive and ought to be
diminished. I am not speaking of purely voluntary contributions.
If it be true that offices are trusts for the people, then it is also true
that the offices should be filled by those who can perform and
discharge the duties in the best possible way. Fidelity, capacity,
honesty, were the tests established by Mr. Jefferson when he
assumed the reins of government in 1801. He said then, and said
truly, that these elements in the public offices of the Government
were necessary to an honest civil service, and that an honest civil
service was essential to the purity and efficiency of administration,
necessary to the preservation of republican institutions.
Mr. Jefferson was right. The experience of eighty years has shown
it. The man best fitted should be the man placed in office, especially
if the appointment is made by the servants of the people. It is as true
as truth can be that fidelity, capacity, honesty, are essential elements
of fitness, and that the man who is most capable and most faithful
and most honest is the man who is the most fit, and he should be
appointed to office.
These are truths that in their statement will be denied by none,
and yet the best means of ascertaining that fitness has been a vexed
question with every Administration of this Government and with
every man who has been charged with the responsibility of its
execution. We know what is the result. Pass examinations have been
tried; professions have been tried; honest endeavors have been tried;
a disposition to live faithfully up to these requirements has been
tried; and yet we know and the experience of to-day shows it, that
they have all made a most lamentable failure. We do now know that
so great has been the increase of the powers of this Government and
the number of officers under it that no President, no Cabinet, no
heads of bureaus, can by possibility know the fitness of all applicants
for the subordinate offices of the Government. The result has been,
and under the existing system it must always be, that the President
and his Cabinet and those who are charged with the responsibility
have remitted the question of fitness to their own partisan friends,
and those partisan friends have in their turn decided the question of
fitness in favor of their partisan friends. The Administration has
need of the support of members of Congress in carrying on its work.
It therefore remits to members of Congress of its own party the
questions of appointment to office in the various districts. These
gentlemen, in the course of their political life, naturally (I do not find
fault with them for it) find themselves under strain and pressure to
secure a nomination or a re-nomination or election, and they use the
places to reward those whose friends and families and connections
and aids and deputies will serve their purpose.
I put it to gentlemen, particularly to my friends on this side of the
Chamber, because you have not the opportunity to exercise this
patronage as much as our friends on the other side, whether or not