Contemporary Philosophies and Theories in Education 19

Alison M. Brady

Being a
Teacher
From Technicist to Existential Accounts,
in conversation with Jean-Paul Sartre
Contemporary Philosophies and Theories
in Education

Volume 19

Series Editors
Jan Masschelein, KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium
Lynda Stone, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC, USA

Editorial Board Members

Gert Biesta, Arts & Social Sci, Halsbury Bldg, Brunel University, Uxbridge, UK
David Hansen, Teachers College, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA
Jorge Larrosa, Barcelona University, Barcelona, Spain
Nel Noddings, Stanford University, Ocean Grove, NJ, USA
Roland Reichenbach, Erziehungswissenschaft, University of Zurich,
Zurich, Switzerland
Naoko Saito, Graduate School of Education, Kyoto University,
Sakyo-ku, Kyoto, Japan
Paul Smeyers, Psychology and Educational Sciences, Ghent University
and KU Leuven, Ghent, Belgium
Paul Standish, UCL Institute of Education, London, UK
Sharon Todd, Professor of Education, Maynooth University, Maynooth, Ireland
Contemporary Philosophies and Theories in Education signifies new directions and
possibilities out of a traditional field of philosophy and education. Around the globe,
exciting scholarship that breaks down and reformulates traditions in the humanities
and social sciences is being created in the field of education scholarship. This series
provides a venue for publication by education scholars whose work reflect the
dynamic and experimental qualities that characterize today’s academy. The series
associates philosophy and theory not exclusively with a cognitive interest (to know,
to define, to order) or an evaluative interest (to judge, to impose criteria of validity)
but also with an experimental and attentive attitude which is characteristic for
exercises in thought that try to find out how to move in the present and how to deal
with the actual spaces and times, the different languages and practices of education
and its transformations around the globe. It addresses the need to draw on thought
across all sorts of borders and counts amongst its elements the following: the valuing
of diverse processes of inquiry; an openness to various forms of communication,
knowledge, and understanding; a willingness to always continue experimentation
that incorporates debate and critique; and an application of this spirit, as implied
above, to the institutions and issues of education. Authors for the series come not
only from philosophy of education but also from curriculum studies and critical
theory, social sciences theory, and humanities theory in education. The series
incorporates volumes that are trans- and inner-disciplinary. The audience for the
series includes academics, professionals and students in the fields of educational
thought and theory, philosophy and social theory, and critical scholarship. Series
Editors: Jan Masschelein, KU Leuven, Belgium; Lynda Stone, University of North
Carolina, USA.
Editorial Board: Gert Biesta, Brunel University London, UK; David Hansen,
Columbia University, USA; Jorge Larossa, Barcelona University, Spain; Nel
Noddings, Stanford University, USA; Roland Reichenbach, University of Zurich,
Switzerland; Naoko Saito, Kyoto University, Japan; Paul Smeyers, Ghent University
& KU Leuven, Belgium; Paul Standish, UCL Institute of Education, London, UK;
Sharon Todd, Maynooth University, Ireland.
Alison M. Brady

Being a Teacher
From Technicist to Existential Accounts,
in conversation with Jean-Paul Sartre
Alison M. Brady
IOE, UCL’s Faculty of Education and Society
University College London
London, UK

ISSN 2214-9759     ISSN 2214-9767 (electronic)

Contemporary Philosophies and Theories in Education
ISBN 978-981-19-7322-2    ISBN 978-981-19-7323-9 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-7323-9

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Preface

Against the current grain of teacher accountability, this book aims to reconceptual-
ise how we might account for teaching through an engagement with Jean-Paul
Sartre’s early existentialist thought.
Part I situates the discussion in relation to school self-evaluation policy in the
Republic of Ireland, a concrete example that will serve as a springboard for explor-
ing how teaching is accounted for in current accountability regimes. Here, I investi-
gate the extent to which this policy represents a ‘technicist’ understanding of
teaching. I aim to show how this technicist understanding not only impacts the ways
in which we recognise effective practice, but also influences our conception of
teaching in a broader sense, particularly in terms of how we might account for what
teaching involves.
Part II turns to the demanding account of being a human in Sartre’s thought.
Here, it is argued that the classroom serves as a microcosm where many of these
ideas can be explored. By paying close attention to everyday examples of teaching,
I aim to build upon Sartre’s key concepts related to the self, freedom, bad faith, and
the Other, such that they might open up new ways of thinking about the practices of
teaching.
Part III considers how to account for teaching in light of this. Since so much of
teacher accountability is embedded within the paradigm of ‘effectiveness’, the cur-
rent focus is often on how to measure or ‘prove’ our accounts of teaching in neat,
accurate forms. But given the everyday complexities that underpin teaching, as well
as the vulnerabilities and uncertainty that it so often involves, I argue for the cre-
ation of a space in which to reimagine forms of accounting that move from techni-
cist ways of thinking to existential sensitivity in relation to one’s practice as a
teacher.

London, UK Alison M. Brady

v
Acknowledgements

This book sprang from my PhD research, and in total, it has taken me the best part
of 7 years to complete. For that reason, I am sure there will be people I forget
to thank.
First of all, I would like to express my sincere and heartfelt gratitude to my for-
mer PhD supervisor, Prof. Paul Standish, who has had much input over the years,
particularly in my formative years as a PhD student. I would also like to thank the
other members of staff from the Centre for Philosophy at the UCL Institute of
Education as well as the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain for this
reason as well.
Of course, thanks to family and friends – particularly Giulio, who is most cer-
tainly a calming force in my life!
Finally, for those who have read or are reading this – colleagues, students, the
series editors, proofreaders, not to mention all those voluntary, anonymous review-
ers over the years – thank you.
But above all, this book is dedicated to teachers – I hope there is a resonance here
that validates and helps to make sense of your experiences.

vii
Contents

1 Introduction����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������    1
1.1 Why I Write��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������    1
1.2 Why Sartre and Why Now?��������������������������������������������������������������    4
1.3 Overview of the Book ����������������������������������������������������������������������    6
1.3.1 Part I: Evaluating Teachers ��������������������������������������������������    7
1.3.2 Part II: Sartre, Existentialism and Education������������������������    8
1.3.3 Part III: Being a Teacher ������������������������������������������������������   10
References��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   11

Part I Evaluating Teachers

2 
Self-Evaluation and the Technicist Logic of Teaching��������������������������   15
2.1 The Neoliberal Turn��������������������������������������������������������������������������   15
2.2 Neoliberalism in the Irish Context����������������������������������������������������   17
2.3 School Self-Evaluation: Autonomy, Accountability
and Evidence������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   19
2.3.1 The Balance of Accountability and Autonomy��������������������   22
2.3.2 Developing a Culture and a Common Language������������������   24
2.3.3 The Focus on Evidence��������������������������������������������������������   28
2.4 Towards a New Account ������������������������������������������������������������������   30
References��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   32

Part II Sartre, Existentialism and Education

3 Navigating Vocabularies: Transitioning from Policy
to Existentialism ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   37
3.1 The Origins of Existentialist Thought?��������������������������������������������   39
3.2 Common Themes in Existentialist Thought��������������������������������������   40
3.2.1 The Individual in a Disenchanted World������������������������������   41
3.2.2 The Lure of Nihilism������������������������������������������������������������   42
3.2.3 Reactions to Scientism����������������������������������������������������������   43
3.2.4 The Committed Individual����������������������������������������������������   44

ix
x Contents

3.3 Sartrian Existentialism����������������������������������������������������������������������   45

3.3.1 Existentialism and Phenomenology��������������������������������������   47
3.3.2 The ‘Pre-reflective’ Cogito ��������������������������������������������������   48
3.3.3 Facticity and Transcendence ������������������������������������������������   48
3.3.4 Bad Faith������������������������������������������������������������������������������   49
3.3.5 The Other������������������������������������������������������������������������������   50
3.4 An Educational Focus ����������������������������������������������������������������������   51
References��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   52
4 Putting Oneself Into Words: Sartre and the Production
of Selfhood������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   55
4.1 Phenomenology of the Self��������������������������������������������������������������   55
4.2 Transcendental and Material Conceptions����������������������������������������   58
4.2.1 The Transcendental Ego��������������������������������������������������������   58
4.2.2 The Material Ego������������������������������������������������������������������   61
4.3 The Produced Self����������������������������������������������������������������������������   62
4.3.1 Uncertain States��������������������������������������������������������������������   63
4.3.2 Actions and Dispositions������������������������������������������������������   64
4.3.3 The Self and the Other����������������������������������������������������������   66
4.4 Freedom, Responsibility and the Self ����������������������������������������������   67
References��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   68
5 
Freedom and Facticity in the Classroom ����������������������������������������������   69
5.1 Sartre’s ‘Phenomenological Ontology’��������������������������������������������   69
5.1.1 Being-In-Itself and Being-For-Itself ������������������������������������   70
5.1.2 Concrete Nothingness ����������������������������������������������������������   71
5.2 The Pursuit of Meaning��������������������������������������������������������������������   72
5.2.1 The Fundamental Project������������������������������������������������������   73
5.3 Freedom and Responsibility ������������������������������������������������������������   75
5.3.1 Freedom as a Response��������������������������������������������������������   76
5.3.2 Anguished Responsibility ����������������������������������������������������   78
5.4 Freedom, Responsibility and Ethics ������������������������������������������������   80
5.5 Freedom and Facticity in the Classroom������������������������������������������   84
5.5.1 Problematic Dualisms ����������������������������������������������������������   86
5.5.2 Concrete Nothingness ����������������������������������������������������������   89
5.5.3 Professional Judgement��������������������������������������������������������   90
5.5.4 Freedom, Facticity and the Fundamental Project ����������������   91
References��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   93
6 
Bad Faith, Sincerity and the Role of the Teacher����������������������������������   95
6.1 Uneasy Tensions ������������������������������������������������������������������������������   95
6.2 Bad Faith and Self-Deception ����������������������������������������������������������   96
6.2.1 The ‘Unconscious’ Explanation��������������������������������������������   98
6.3 Sincerity and the Forms of Bad Faith ����������������������������������������������   99
6.4 The Faith of Bad Faith���������������������������������������������������������������������� 102
6.5 Being Who You Are in the Classroom?�������������������������������������������� 103
Contents xi

6.5.1 Role-Playing in the Classroom �������������������������������������������� 105

6.5.2 Responding to the Situation�������������������������������������������������� 107
6.5.3 From Individual and Institutional Bad Faith������������������������ 108
References�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 111
7 The Look of the Other and the Experience of Teaching:
The Failure of Solipsism and the Pursuit of Vulnerability������������������ 113
7.1 From Being an Individual to Being for the Other���������������������������� 113
7.2 The Look of the Other���������������������������������������������������������������������� 114
7.2.1 The Other and the Production of the Self ���������������������������� 115
7.2.2 Perpetual Struggle���������������������������������������������������������������� 118
7.3 Our Embodied Relationship with Others������������������������������������������ 119
7.4 The Self and the Other in the Educational Context�������������������������� 121
7.4.1 The Solipsistic Teacher �������������������������������������������������������� 122
7.4.2 Being Seen���������������������������������������������������������������������������� 123
7.4.3 An Armistice with the Other? ���������������������������������������������� 124
7.4.4 The Suspension of Being-for-the-Other�������������������������������� 125
7.5 Being an ‘Authentic’ Teacher?���������������������������������������������������������� 126
References�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 128

Part III Accounting for Oneself in Teaching

8  arrhesia, Bad Faith and Accounting for Oneself��������������������������������
P 131
8.1 Sartre, Foucault and Care of the Self������������������������������������������������ 131
8.2 Care of the Self as Parrhesia ������������������������������������������������������������ 136
8.3 Parrhesia and Bad Faith�������������������������������������������������������������������� 138
8.4 Autobiographical Writing as a Parrhesiastic Practice���������������������� 140
8.4.1 Frankness and (Self-)Criticism �������������������������������������������� 140
8.4.2 Truth, Sincerity and Bad Faith���������������������������������������������� 142
8.4.3 The Scene of the Address������������������������������������������������������ 144
8.5 The Beautiful Risk���������������������������������������������������������������������������� 146
8.6 Parrhesiastic Techniques in Teaching ���������������������������������������������� 149
8.6.1 Self-Examination������������������������������������������������������������������ 149
8.6.2 Self-Diagnosis���������������������������������������������������������������������� 150
8.6.3 Self-Testing �������������������������������������������������������������������������� 151
8.7 Trusting Teachers������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 152
References�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 153
9  owards an Existentialist Account of Teaching������������������������������������
T 155
9.1 An Anecdotal Account���������������������������������������������������������������������� 156
9.1.1 Analysing Accounts�������������������������������������������������������������� 159
9.2 Technicist Accounts�������������������������������������������������������������������������� 162
9.2.1 Language and Accuracy�������������������������������������������������������� 163
9.2.2 The Disposition of Account-Giving�������������������������������������� 165
9.2.3 Cultivated Distrust?�������������������������������������������������������������� 167
xii Contents

9.3 Towards an Existentialist Account���������������������������������������������������� 168

9.3.1 Language, Certainty and Commitment �������������������������������� 171
9.3.2 The Tendency to Explain������������������������������������������������������ 172
9.3.3 Response and Responsibility������������������������������������������������ 174
9.4 Giving an Account of Oneself���������������������������������������������������������� 177
References�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 179
10  oncluding Thoughts and Reflections �������������������������������������������������� 181
C
10.1 Summary of the Text���������������������������������������������������������������������� 181
10.2 Final Reflections ���������������������������������������������������������������������������� 183

Appendix: School Self-Evaluation Framework:

Statements of Practice ������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 187
About the Author

Alison M. Brady is a Lecturer at the IOE, UCL’s Faculty of Education and Society.
She has been teaching on a range of undergraduate and post-graduate programmes
there since 2015, specializing in the field of philosophy of education.
Dr. Brady completed her doctoral studies at UCL in 2020. Her research focuses
on re-conceptualizing how we account for educational practices through an engage-
ment with twentieth-century existentialist philosophy, particularly the early work of
Jean-Paul Sartre. She has published on this and related topics in the Journal for
Philosophy of Education, Studies in Philosophy and Education, the British Journal
of Educational Studies, and the Oxford Review of Education. She has also contrib-
uted to several books including Philosophy and the Study of Education: New
Perspectives on the Complex Relationship (Routledge, 2019) and The Promise of
the University: Reclaiming Humanity, Humility and Hope (Springer, 2021).
Dr. Brady was elected as a member of the Executive Committee of the Philosophy
of Education Society of Great Britain in 2018, who generously funded the final
years of her doctoral research. She also works closely with the ‘Phenomenology and
Existentialism’ Special Interest Group at the Philosophy of Education Society in the
USA. In 2020, she worked on a project with Warwick University that investigates
the role of philosophy in promoting a wider understanding of mental health in
schools. Recently, she has become interested in the intersection of literature, phi-
losophy, and education, and in particular, how education might be re-imagined
through an exploration of existentialist novels. She is currently working on a second
book on this topic.

xiii
Chapter 1
Introduction

1.1 Why I Write

Writing… is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One
would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one
cannot resist nor understand (Orwell, 2004, p. 10).

In Why I Write, George Orwell (2004, p. 8) argues that what someone chooses to
write about inevitably reflects not only ‘the age he lives in’, but a ‘[d]esire to push
the world in a particular direction.’ Strictly speaking, no account can be apolitical in
this sense. Even when we are not aware of it, we are always responding to the situ-
ation in which we find ourselves, responses that become manifest in the accounts we
give. At the same time, the explanations and motivations we assign to ourselves and
our actions are likely retroactive, and are not necessarily there in the initial moment
that moved us to act. This is certainly true of my own motivations for writing this
book, where it was only through the process of writing that I came to some sense of
what it is that I want to achieve in doing so. There was, of course, a starting point
that relates to my own experiences of being a teacher.
The feelings I have about teaching now are certainly different than when I was a
teacher starting out. When I began teaching, it was not something I particularly
enjoyed or took seriously. I found myself feeling constantly vulnerable and uncer-
tain in what I was doing, and in what right I had to be teaching in the first place. I
myself did not like school when I was a student. I found it mind-numbing at times –
not because it was excessively easy, but often because it was excessively difficult
and, at times, alienating. When it seemed like the students I was teaching were also
experiencing the same kind of mind-numbing experience, who was I to rectify that?
Yes, I was ‘the teacher’ – but what did that even mean?
Ultimately, it was this question that motivated my search for a way of speaking
about teaching that is more sensitive and more concrete than what I had thus far
encountered. When I was first training to be a teacher, for example, my main mode

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Ltd. 2022
A. M. Brady, Being a Teacher, Contemporary Philosophies and Theories in
Education 19, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-7323-9_1
2 1 Introduction

of speaking about my experiences was in the self-reflective forms I completed every

week. Despite the how I really felt, my means of expression were always couched
within a particular ‘language’ I did not use elsewhere. I referred to my practices in
terms of their ‘effectiveness’, judiciously selecting student work that I felt reflected
this. I romanticised what I was experiencing as a teacher, remarking on how reward-
ing the job was and the ways in which I felt I was making a ‘difference’. I tried to
convince myself that this was true – since, if I thought otherwise, should I even
pursue teaching in the first place? One time, one of my tutors informally asked me
and the rest of my seminar group how we were getting on in our teaching place-
ments. As I recall, this was the only that time I did share some of the uncertainty I
felt. I spoke about how humiliating teaching sometimes felt – when you lose control
of the class and another teacher has to step in, or when the students mockingly com-
ment on what you are wearing, or when you spend an inordinate amount of time
planning for what would eventually turn out to be a hugely unappreciated and
unsuccessful lesson. David Hansen (2017) accounts for similar uncertainties in the
teachers he mentored. But unlike them, I was met with a wall of silence. The others
shifted their glances to the floor. I felt embarrassed. I felt like they probably thought
that I was not very good at what I was doing, that perhaps I should think about a
career change, or that I was not focusing on what were the important aspects of my
job but instead on petty complaints.
Even writing about it now is difficult. I want to supplement my account with all
the positive feedback I have gotten from students over the years, with the kinds of
things I write in my CV and in cover letters. I find myself being judgemental about
the teacher I used to be – the persona I would adopt in the class, the tone I would
take with my students. I immediately jump to offering myself retrospective advice.
It is, indeed, really difficult to simply dwell on those experiences that at best make
you look ineffective or unsuccessful, at worst, not really cut out for the job. And
this, in turn, makes it difficult to be frank about what you experience. In a sense, the
features of the language that I incorporated in my reflective writing – the effective-
ness discourse, the continual focus on what to improve, on how to overcome chal-
lenges – allayed much of this discomfort. And yet, in doing so, I could not help but
feel alienated from my very human experiences in the classroom.
In many ways, this feeling of alienation comes from adopting what I will later
refer to as a ‘technicist’ account of teaching. In the educational sphere, a prime
example this is self-evaluation. Of course, self-evaluation is not the only example,
but it directly relates to a wider trend in how teaching is thought about and discussed
in both educational research and in the more practical arenas of teacher training and
development. I thus discuss it here as a springboard for what I contrastingly refer to
as an ‘existential’ account of teaching, garnered from my engagement with the work
of Jean-Paul Sartre. Self-evaluation has become a central component of many
teacher inspection systems, and it is also widely practised on teacher education
programmes. On the surface, it offers teachers and schools the means to communi-
cate their own goals for development, and to evidence their own examples of effec-
tive practice. It therefore appears to be a positive alternative to other inspection
approaches, where teachers are more directly coerced into adopting external
1.1 Why I Write 3

standards of effective practice. It emphasises capacity-building in developing the

professionalism of teachers, in part through cultivating their ‘evaluation literacy’. It
also encourages teachers to adopt ‘best practice approaches’, not only in their teach-
ing, but also in how they recognise and implement plans for improvement. It aims
to help teachers become familiarised with data, such that they can employ evidence-­
based approaches in their professional reflections. In short: it not only presents
teachers with a profile of effective practice to measure themselves against, to recog-
nise and to aspire towards in their own classrooms. It also enables them to think of
their practice in these terms, and to incorporate this in their own accounts of
teaching.
Self-evaluation has, in many ways, remained beyond reproach, and where it is
criticised, the focus is often on its practicality (McNamara & O’Hara, 2006, 2007;
McNamara et al., 2011; O’Brien et al., 2015), or its overall usefulness for impacting
practice (Ehren et al., 2013; Gustafsson et al., 2015). And yet, such criticisms do not
address the implicit problems that self-evaluation represents. This includes the
unexamined assumptions in its accounts of teaching, and the effects this has on
broader understandings of what teaching entails. In line with other trends in teacher
training and development, it also promotes a ‘measurement culture’ that assumes
that everything that happens in the classroom is explicit and thus easily captured and
‘proven’ through data. Measurement culture also pushes the assumption that
accounts ought to only be based on a pre-specified and narrowly technicist ‘lan-
guage of evaluation’, in turn prioritising a logic of effectiveness and a purely eco-
nomical vision of human relationships and practices. These technicist descriptions
are ingrained in current conceptions of accountability in teaching, even though they
fundamentally misapprehend what being a teacher involves in the very con-
crete sense.
I propose instead that a new way of thinking, speaking, engaging with, and
accounting for teaching must be reimagined. In order to open up this line of think-
ing, I turn to the work of Jean-Paul Sartre. To my mind, the strength of Sartre’s ideas
lies in their resonance rather than in the extent to which they might be used to rep-
resent ‘accurate’ accounts of being human. Indeed, Sartre does not offer us a defini-
tive picture of what being human is, but instead represents an attempt to navigate the
uncertainties that arise from our perpetual failure to answer that very question in the
first place. Rather than using Sartre as a new ‘lens’ through which teaching can be
described, my aim is therefore to investigate how and to what extent his ideas make
sense in the classroom. To what extent might they therefore open up new ways of
thinking through the experiences of teaching that go against the simplicity of the
‘technicist’ accounts commonly found in practices like self-evaluation?
An engagement with Sartre’s often controversial and destabilising thought serves
a different purpose than technicist accounts. It compels a response, and therefore a
responsibility, not only on behalf of the account-giver, but on the behalf of the
reader as well. Sartre thus points to a new model of account-giving in general, one
that is not thought of as a ‘product’ through which we hold others to account, but
instead, a process that involves a continual re-evaluation of who we are and what we
do in light of the accounts we give. Considering this, my hope is to create a space in
4 1 Introduction

which to reimagine forms of accounting that move from technicist ways of thinking
to existential sensitivity in relation to one’s practice as a teacher.

1.2 Why Sartre and Why Now?

It is worth mentioning from the outset that I do not think that we should take all that
Sartre says as absolute truth. Indeed, there are aspects of his thought that I not only
disagree with, but that I find quite reprehensible.1 Sartre and his lifelong writing
companion, Simone de Beauvoir, as well as the public intellectuals that surrounded
both at the time, were by no means uncontroversial. The extent to which those con-
troversies in Sartre’s private life extend to his thinking warrants proper consider-
ation, and yet this is not something I actively engage with myself in this book.2
Whilst we should, of course, acknowledge that the ways in which he conducted his
relationships with others were at times ambiguous, at times more clearly objection-
able, I see this book as an opportunity to examine Sartre’s ideas as they appear to us
now. In short: my aim is not to critically investigate the hidden intentions, attitudes
or discourses that shape his thinking, but to attend to them as an invitation to reflect
on what it means to be a teacher in the concrete sense.
This is broadly in line with the ‘post-critical’ approach I take throughout the
book. This may seem contradictory at first, given that the thinker I primarily draw
on is most certainly critical in their approach, and in the how their writings directly
invite readers to be critical in their thoughts and behaviour in the world. By ‘post-­
critical’, I don’t mean uncritical however, and I am not suggesting that criticality is
unwarranted in the case of Sartre and his ideas. Rather, this post-critical approach is
based purely on the conviction that ideas never belong solely to one person, but that
they proliferate and are (re)configured in relation to the responses they garner from
others. Such ideas might also be thought of as ‘transhistorical’ in that sense. They
are not encased within a singular time or a singular mind, but instead always have

1
I’m thinking here specifically of the ‘waiter’ example that I refer to in Chap. 6, but also the
example of the woman on the date who turns herself into a ‘passive object’ once the man she is
dating makes advances towards her. This example in particular reflects a dubious picture of consent
that I do not directly address in this book. Both examples feature in Sartre’s (2018) magnum opus,
Being and Nothingness, and are also reminiscent of characters in the Roads to Freedom trilogy,
particularly Ivich (Sartre, 2001), who is thought to be based on the real-life Olga Kosakiewicz,
with whom Sartre had a tempestuous relationship.
2
The recent publication, Tête-à-Tête: The Tumultuous Lives and Loves of Simone de Beauvoir and
Jean-Paul Sartre by Hazel Rowley, focuses mainly on the (very public) private lives and relation-
ships of both thinkers. Whilst Rowley does not fully consider the extent to which these correspond
to their thought, and whilst I personally found much of the book to be overly sensationalist, it is
nevertheless a useful resource in getting some sense of both the political milieux as well as the
private goings on of both thinkers. Interestingly, whilst both Sartre and Beauvoir were teachers,
and whilst this is mentioned in the book, this is not something of major focus. See: Rowley (2006).
1.2 Why Sartre and Why Now? 5

the capacity to resonate with us beyond these boundaries.3 I hope that, throughout,
these ideas not only reverberate with readers, but that at they are actively taken up,
reworked and re-envisioned in line with particular contexts and experiences. In
short: I suggest the extent to which these ideas might serve as a ‘touchstone’ by
which we can test our own understandings and commitments to this thing we call
‘teaching’. We might think of this book, then, as a book about teaching in conversa-
tion with Jean-Paul Sartre.
Of course, writing in the midst and aftermath of the Second World War, Sartre’s
generation could not be further apart from ours in many respects. They were a gen-
eration faced with extreme conditions, ones that in some ways highlighted the need
for a radical reconceptualization of how we (should) live. And whilst many of the
examples Sartre draws on are certainly in need of greater nuance for modern life, his
ideas remain particularly significant in allowing for an alternative discourse that
forces us confront the often-unquestioned ways in which we understand ourselves
and our situatedness within wider society, which is also relevant for how we account
for the practices of teaching. In the second part of the book, I will attempt to offer a
framework where this is possible by paying close attention to the development of
Sartre’s early thought. The move from Part I to Part II will be jarring for this reason,
since in doing so, one is moving from a technicist to an existentialist form of
account-giving: the former of which emphasises that which is measurable and
explicit in teaching, the latter of which values instead the implicit challenges and
uncertainty that teaching – and our accounts for it – necessarily involve.
The term ‘existentialist’ itself is also complex and multi-layered. It is popularly
applied in retrospect to philosophers who, in one way or another, departed from the
lived experience of the individual (e.g. Barrett, 1962; Saeverot, 2013). The reason
for choosing Sartre is not to suggest that he alone is representative of this rich and
historically diverse movement. Nevertheless, he was one of the only philosophers
who defined himself as an existentialist, and he can also be credited with making the
term accessible to a much broader audience through both his academic and literary
works (Sartre, 1973). Sartre places the individual at the centre of his (early) philo-
sophical exploration, not as a subsidiary to his main ideas but as an essential starting
point for his entire body of work. Although somewhat abandoned after his death, his
writings are experiencing a ‘revival’ of sorts (Litchfield, 2005; Aronson, 2018), as
evidenced by the re-translation of Being and Nothingness by Sarah Richmond in
2018, the popularity of the non-fiction book At the Existentialist Café by Sarah

3
Much of my thought here can be credited to the writings of Rita Felski, particularly The Limits of
Critique, where she argues for an expansion of the vocabulary we use when discussing literary
works, such that we focus not only on ‘suspicious’ interpretations of texts characterised by the
methods of deconstruction, demystification, denaturalisation, denouncement etc. Her approach,
which I try to emulate here, includes seeing the text (a) as an ‘agent’ (in the Latourian sense) who
is capable of responding to the reader, (b) as transhistorical in the sense that it is not encased within
particular time periods in history, and (c) as reactive rather than inert, being shaped by the particu-
lar ‘mood’ or ‘sensibility’ through which we engage with it and, in turn, having the capacity to
shape our own moods. See: Felski (2015).
6 1 Introduction

Blakewell in 2016, as well as Beauvoir’s 2020 biography by Kate Kirkpatrick which

looks at their relationship in a new lens.
But also, perhaps we are experiencing a time where this line of thinking makes
sense, a time of upheaval in which questions surrounding the place of the individual
are paramount. And although aspects of Sartre’s thought are controversial at times –
and, in fact, misplaced on many levels – it nevertheless serves to counteract the
distinctly non-human ways that individuals are described in technicist discourses,
instead capturing some of the complexity of the situations teachers find themselves
in. As I will demonstrate in the third and final part of the book, Sartre’s ideas help
us to not only disrupt current discourses on teaching, but to open up new avenues of
thought on teaching that suggest other – and, indeed, more important – ways of
accounting for being a teacher. This alternative model of account-giving involves
relating oneself to what is rendered in accounts, as testament to the deep and ines-
capable freedom and responsibility that is inherent in the very act of teaching itself.

1.3 Overview of the Book

Let me first clarify what this book is not about. What this book does not try to do is
to offer a new way of teaching in light of existentialist theory.4 It is not that I avoid
any normative assertions about what good teaching might involve. Like Orwell,
Sartre indicates that this would, in fact, be impossible, given that the very situation
in which one finds oneself is brought to light by the values of the person involved.
Nevertheless, these accounts should not serve as examples of ‘good’ or ‘bad’ prac-
tice that we can try to emulate in our own. Rather, they serve as points of resonance
that, to my mind, demonstrate where Sartre’s ideas make sense in the classroom,
acting as examples for what I term ‘existentialist forms of account-giving’. In short:
my aim is not to offer a manual for teaching, but instead, to open up the space in
which teachers, themselves, can account for their practices on their own terms, not-
withstanding the complexities that this involves.
In relation to this, I do not explicitly consider the ethical dimensions of teaching,
although these considerations are certainly there in much of what I write. This is
not, of course, to deny the ultimate significance of these ethical dimensions, nor that
we can ever really think about teaching without them. However, my focus here is on
descriptions of teaching – what it actually ‘feels like’ to be a teacher in the class-
room, amidst many of the challenging scenarios that we often associate with this
experience. In creating a space in which all of these experiences can be accounted

4
Saevort’s (2013) book, Indirect Pedagogy: Some Lessons in Existential Education, most closely
represents this – i.e. by engaging with a range of existentialist ideas and concepts, Saevort aims to
open a space in which pedagogy can be reimagined. For those wishing to understand how existen-
tialist theory might therefore apply to the ways we teach, then this text is surely a very good place
to start. Kneller’s (1958) book Existentialism and Education also attempted a similar feat some
decades before.
1.3 Overview of the Book 7

for, I do not wish to dismiss, suppress, or overcome them as such, but rather, to
appreciate them as part and parcel of the very endeavour of teaching. In relation to
this, the text itself is very ‘teacher-centred’. It does not call for teacher-centred ped-
agogy, nor dismiss the role of the student or other important stakeholders as central
to any educational experience. It merely starts from the perspective of being a
teacher, pointing to ways that we might account for this in more existentially sensi-
tive ways.
I am also not suggesting that my writing here will overthrow all of the well-­
documented constraints of being an educator today, even though these are directly
acknowledged throughout. Indeed, finding ways in which to account for one’s prac-
tices within these difficult circumstances is based on the hope that, in doing so,
those experiences normally characterised as ‘negative’ – vulnerability, anxiety,
uncertainty – come to be acknowledged and appreciated, not only as ‘valuable les-
sons’ but as central to teaching. The same might be said of other educational and
education-related concepts that contain negative connotations for other reasons – in
this book, the most notable of which is accountability. Through engaging with
Sartre’s ideas, I aim to offer a new way in which to conceptualise accountability –
i.e. as a means by which we come to account for ourselves on our own terms, and
through which we reveal as well as test the commitments made manifest in our
practices, commitments which are always beyond the explicit responsibilities
assigned to teachers in accountability regimes today. This in turn requires that we
rethink the functions of accountability mechanisms – not only as a way to ‘measure’
how accurate a teacher is in their accounts and, in turn, how trustworthy these
accounts are as a result. Rather, the question of accountability becomes more about
how sincere one is in their attempts to account for themselves and their practices –
in simple term, how willing they are to lay themselves and their commitments bare,
despite the risks and the challenges that this in itself involves.
So what, then, is this book about? Let’s turn to a brief overview of the text.

1.3.1 Part I: Evaluating Teachers

Chapter 2 will begin by situating the discussion in relation to school self-evaluation

policy in the Republic of Ireland (DES, 2016), a concrete example that will serve as
a springboard for exploring how teaching is accounted for in current accountability
regimes. Here, I investigate the extent to which this policy represents a ‘technicist’
understanding of teaching. Self-evaluation, as well as similar policy initiatives and
practices, hierarchises evidence-based communication norms in its accounts of
teaching, in part in its aims to uphold the precarious balance between teacher
accountability and autonomy. These particular norms of communication are ‘culti-
vated’ in teachers such that alternative discourses on teaching are difficult to imag-
ine, and are underpinned by a narrow conception of ‘evidence’ that harbours a
number of problematic assumptions: the use of ‘objective’ data in making judge-
ments in favour of so-called ‘subjective’ values, the focus on what is explicit in
8 1 Introduction

classroom practices at the expense of what is implicit, and the emphasis on recog-
nising ‘effectiveness’ only in terms what is instrumentally rather than ultimately
valuable for education. I aim to show how this ‘technicist’ understanding of teach-
ing not only impacts the ways in which we ‘recognise’ effective practice. It also
influences our conception of teaching in a broader sense, particularly in terms of
how we might account for what teaching involves. In turning away from the inher-
ent reductionism that characterises such accounts of teaching, I instead turn towards
the rich but demanding work of Jean-Paul Sartre.
Ultimately, I argue that the classroom serves as a microcosm where many of
Sartre’s ideas make sense. In order to demonstrate this, I not only offer an exegesis
of some of his most central ideas but explore these in relation to everyday examples
of teaching, many of which come from reflections on my own experiences. As men-
tioned, these examples are not meant to generalise the experience of teaching but to
resonate with the reader in ways that serve to illuminate Sartre’s ideas. I aim to
demonstrate why Sartre’s account of ‘being human’ acknowledges the often para-
doxical and fragmentary ways in which individuals navigate their existence in the
world with others, something that is noticeably absent from the more reductive
accounts of teaching offered in policies like self-evaluation.

1.3.2 Part II: Sartre, Existentialism and Education

In Chap. 3, I briefly consider some of the early examples of existentialist thought in

philosophy, not only those who were directly influential for Sartre but who might
help us make sense of what an ‘existentialist’ account involves. In doing so, I aim to
point out several common themes that allow us to understand the context in which
existentialist thought flourishes, as well as the distinctive demands it places on read-
ers. These demands stand in stark contrast with the neatness of the policies repre-
sented in Chap. 2, and thus Chap. 3 serves as a transition into a more complex
vocabulary that is drawn on throughout the text. One of these common themes is the
rise of scientism and the ways in which this is counteracted through a committed
engagement with one’s life projects. Since scientism is inherent in technicist
accounts, I argue that Sartre’s existentialism thereby serves as an appropriate and
necessary alternative to this line of thinking.
In Chap. 4, I begin with a closer analysis of Sartre’s (2011) early work, turning
first to his conception of the ‘self’ in the essay Transcendence of the Ego. Whilst
also touching on his other relevant literature that explores this, I use concrete edu-
cational examples in order to show how these ideas can help us to make sense of
teaching experiences. As we will see, Sartre’s conception of the self is central to his
overarching philosophy, particularly in terms of the distinction he draws between
‘pre-reflective’ and ‘reflected’ forms of consciousness, and the radical reconceptu-
alization of our conventional understanding of selfhood that follows from this. It
also, as we will later see, has implications for the ‘self’ that is produced through the
accounts we give.
1.3 Overview of the Book 9

Chapter 5 expands on this absence of innate selfhood by introducing Sartre’s

(2018) conceptions of freedom and facticity. I explore the ways in which human
beings, for Sartre, exist in an uneasy tension between these – i.e. between our con-
crete situatedness in the world and the ways in which we (freely) respond to this. In
elucidating Sartre’s notion of the ‘fundamental project’ as related to this tension,
several issues of educational concern are therefore reimagined – the problematic
fact/value divide that underpins evidence-based evaluations, the nature of (profes-
sional) judgement and responsibility, and the ways in which such judgements take
into account both the implicit and explicit aspects of the situation in which they are
made. Highlighting the fallacies by which self-evaluation and related policy con-
ceptualises the nature of judgement allows us to begin to reconsider the possibility –
and, indeed, desirability – of accounting for the practices of teaching in new ways.
Chapter 6 turns to the idea of ‘bad faith’ in Sartre’s (2018) work. I demonstrate
how this concept is closely related to role-playing. Although role-playing seems to
be an inescapable component of teaching, it nevertheless fails to capture the extent
to which actors (in whichever role they are ‘assigned’) are always and implicitly
responding to the situation in which they find themselves. I further explore this
concept in both an individual and an institutional sense, arguing that the environ-
ment in which teachers work makes it difficult to take notice – or indeed, think
outside – of the bad faith in institutionalised conceptions of their practices.
In Chap. 7, I examine Sartre’s (2018) account of the Other, particularly as our
existence with others impinges upon the ways in which our ‘self’ is produced. I
explore the sense in which, for Sartre, one always exists as ‘being seen’ by the
Other, and how this, in turn, leads to an irresolvable conflict that underpins much of
our self-understanding. I consider this in relation to teaching in various forms –for
example, the failure of the ‘solipsist teacher’ in her attempts to feign indifference
towards her students, thus highlighting the immediacy through which we experi-
ence our existence with others. But I also consider the possibility of a suspension of
this seemingly conflictual relation with the Other, and the important and necessary
sense in which the teacher – and, indeed, the students – make themselves vulnerable
to one another and to the subject material in the classroom.
Sartre’s account of our existence in the world with others demonstrates a com-
plex, challenging, and often paradoxical view of being human. As such, a conversa-
tion with Sartre’s thought in relation to teaching offers us a very different way in
which to account for such practices, one that values anxieties and uncertainties,
struggles and challenges, exposure and vulnerabilities, confusion and disorienta-
tion, so much of which is present in teaching. These should not be valued in a purely
instrumental sense (e.g. by recognising uncertainty, I can therefore ‘overcome’ this
in becoming more assured of myself as a teacher). Rather, they are valuable as part
and parcel of teaching – indeed, as essential to it – much as they are central to what
it means to be a human.
10 1 Introduction

1.3.3 Part III: Being a Teacher

The final part of the book considers how to account for teaching in a way that
embraces these complexities. In order to explore a more ‘practical’ example of this,
Chap. 8 offers a reading of Sartre’s (2000) autobiographical writing, Words, in rela-
tion to Foucault’s (2001) conception of parrhesia. This might seem strange – indeed,
Foucault and Sartre diverged on many aspects. And yet, it is in Foucault’s later writ-
ings on ‘care of the self’ (of which parrhesia is a part) that some common ground
can be established between the two thinkers. The inclusion of this discussion also
ensures that not only is a ‘space’ created in which new accounts can be offered, but
a concrete suggestion is made, albeit tentatively. By examining the ways in which
Sartre accounts for his own life in Words, I aim to show here how he demonstrates
a parrhesiastic relationship with himself, in which he navigates his own philosophi-
cal thought in reference to his concrete experiences in the world. This, I argue, can
serve as a model for rethinking the accounts we give of ourselves as teachers in light
of Sartre’s brand of existentialism, and how we might be held to account for this not
on the basis of accuracy, but sincerity.
In Chap. 9, I offer a comparison between what I have called ‘technicist’ and
‘existentialist’ accounts of teaching, based on the divergent ways in which teaching
is represented in Parts I and II. I argue that technicist accounts are concerned pri-
marily with a debased sense of accuracy, and the use and inculcation of a reductive
description of teaching for this very purpose. I explore how account-giving in the
technicist sense is not ‘natural’ but, rather, is a disposition cultivated through train-
ing and professionalisation. This in turn involves a cultivated distrust in one’s own
capacity to account for situations on their own terms. In contrast to this, I explore
how existentialist accounts, exemplified through our conversation with Sartre in
Part II, recognise that the act of account-giving is inherent in teaching itself, where
teachers are always responding to – and, indeed, are responsible for – the situations
in which they find themselves. In this sense, accountability is not a skill but a way
of being in the classroom.
Unlike technicist models of account-giving, existentialist accounts are not cen-
trally concerned with an accurate portraying of events. Rather, they involve relating
oneself to such events, a process inevitably underscored by irresolvable complexi-
ties, by fundamentally uncapturable pre-reflective judgements, and by belated
explanations of what we have done and, indeed, who we are. As such, I aim to shift
the focus of account-giving away from attempts to explain behaviour in situations
so as to guide and improve practice, but instead as a way to lay oneself bare and to
(re)examine the commitments made manifest in one’s actions. This also involves
recognising that although accounts are often ‘poisoned’ by our tendency to explain
ourselves, our ability to continually do so signals a deep and inescapable freedom
and responsibility not only for ourselves, for situations or for others, but inherent in
the very act of account-giving itself.
References 11

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McNamara, G., O'Hara, J., Lisi, P. L., & Davidsdottir, S. (2011). Operationalising self-evaluation
in schools: Experiences from Ireland and Iceland. Irish Educational Studies, 30(1), 63–82.
O’Brien, S., McNamara, G., & O’Hara, J. (2015). Supporting the consistent implementation
of self-evaluation in Irish post-primary schools. Educational Assessment, Evaluation and
Accountability, 27(4), 377–393.
Orwell, G. (2004). Why I write. Penguin Great Ideas.
Rowley, H. (2006). Tête-à-tête the tumultuous lives & loves of Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul
Sartre. Harper Perennial.
Saeverot, H. (2013). Indirect pedagogy: Some lessons in existential education (educational
futures). Sense Publishers.
Sartre, J. P. (1973). Existentialism and humanism. Methuen Publishing Ltd. Originally published
in 1946.
Sartre, J. P. (2000). Words. Penguin Modern Classics. Originally published in 1963.
Sartre, J. P. (2001). The age of reason. Penguin Classics. Originally published in 1945.
Sartre, J. P. (2011). Transcendence of the ego: A sketch for phenomenological description
(S. Richmond, Trans.). Routledge. Originally published in 1937.
Sartre, J. P. (2018). Being and nothingness: An essay on phenomenological ontology (S. Richmond,
Trans.). Blackwell Publishers Ltd. Originally published in 1943.
 Part I
Evaluating Teachers
Chapter 2
Self-Evaluation and the Technicist Logic
of Teaching

Abstract In this chapter, we turn to the example of school self-evaluation, an inter-

nal component of many school inspection systems. Of particular interest here is in
how self-evaluation is underpinned by a ‘technicist’ logic of understanding and
accounting for the practices of teaching. This stands in opposition to the ‘existen-
tialist’ forms of accounting that I call for in subsequent chapters. First, I endeavour
to briefly explore the connection between school self-evaluation and neoliberal
accountability regimes, before turning to an example from my own context in the
Republic of Ireland. Whilst I am by no means suggesting that this is the only exam-
ple of technicist thinking in teaching, nor that it is the only example of neoliberal
discourses in education, it nevertheless provides a concrete point of departure, one
that is likely to resonate with other contexts and practices. Since this technicist logic
underpins wider trends in teacher training and development, it thus serves to exem-
plify the broader ways of thinking that this book seeks to address. Indeed, by draw-
ing attention to the technicist logic, we can thus begin to address some of their
assumptions and the implications these have for the ways we account for teaching.
In doing so, a space is created in which alterative accounts might be offered.

Keywords School self-evaluation · Accountability · Neoliberalism · Evidence-­

based education · Existentialism

2.1 The Neoliberal Turn

Jeremy Bentham, the utilitarian philosopher and co-architect of the infamous

Panopticon, once said: ‘the more strictly we are watched, the better we behave’
(Bentham, as cited in Crimmins, 2011, p. 161). This quote accurately sums up the
penchant of modern societies to manage, monitor, and regulate public services such
that some improvement in our behaviour can be attained. This so-called ‘audit soci-
ety’ (Power, 1999) affects many aspects of our life today, but in education, it par-
ticularly resonates with accountability regimes, a key aspect of which is teacher and
school inspection. According to the Memorandum on Inspection and Innovation

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte 15

Ltd. 2022
A. M. Brady, Being a Teacher, Contemporary Philosophies and Theories in
Education 19, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-7323-9_2
16 2 Self-Evaluation and the Technicist Logic of Teaching

delivered at the Standing International Conference of Inspectorates (2013, p. 9),

‘inspection concerns itself, either implicitly or explicitly, with requiring deliverers
of services or citizens themselves to conform to certain expectations.’ In the case of
education, one might call these expectations ‘standards’, and if education is seen in
terms of service provision, then schools, and indeed teachers, are to be held account-
able in meeting them.
Accountability understood in this way is connected to neoliberalism, a model of
social and economic governance that has received much attention in educational
literature over the past two decades or so (e.g. Grek & Lindgren, 2014). Neoliberal
logic asserts that ‘free markets’ are best served for economic growth, and that by
ensuring the state only intervene in order to create and sustain the conditions neces-
sary for these markets to flourish, competing providers will be incentivised to
improve both the quality and efficiency of their services. Importantly, the neoliberal
logic does not simply apply to the running of the private sector, since in the ‘ideal’
neoliberal society, public sector industries, such as healthcare and education, would
function along the same lines.
But neoliberalism not only involves state impositions of market mechanisms on
institutions. It also is asserted in individual norms, behaviours and, indeed, ways of
thinking and speaking about institutional practices (Ozga & Segerholm, 2015). As
many commentators point out, individualised choice is key in all this, and with that,
an additional concern with making sure that these choices are ‘informed’. For this
reason, neoliberal societies tend to focus on cultivating the skills necessary for indi-
vidual autonomy. For many, this has affected the perceived aims and purposes of
educational institutions, which have often been reduced to purely economic func-
tions, such as the production of a qualified labour force and the cultivation of skills
(flexibility, entrepreneurship, resilience, critical thinking) necessary for the market
to flourish.
Neoliberalism has also affected the ways that educational institutions are man-
aged. For one, the promotion of a free-market economy has brought about a redefi-
nition of professionalism in both the public and the private sector (e.g. Mooney
Simmie & McKenna, 2017; Holborow, 2015; Perryman et al., 2018). According to
Grek and Lingren (2014, p. 31), since public sector services are traditionally thought
to be unresponsive to the needs of the market, they thus require a form of (new pub-
lic) management that would ‘eliminate ossified and compliance-centred behav-
iours’, replacing these instead with more client-oriented and efficient systems.
Many authors have admonished these systems for their role in undermining profes-
sional autonomy through an erosion of trust, in (paradoxically) increasing bureau-
cracy, in changing the very nature of the teacher-student relationship, and in creating
an increased emphasis on institutional performativity due to the ways in which
accountability is measured as well as the competition that is fostered as a result (e.g.
Ball, 2003, 2016; McNamara & O’Hara, 2008; Simons, 2014, 2015).
Importantly, however, both neoliberal and welfarist ideologies see education as a
vehicle for social change – whether this be education as a means to promote eco-
nomic growth, to increase social stability and social mobility, and, ultimately, to
allow the individual to achieve personal emancipation and socio-economic
2.2 Neoliberalism in the Irish Context 17

advantage (Harris, 2007). Indeed, neoliberal proponents argue that educational

institutions must ensure high-quality standards in order to be responsive to the needs
of industry and the labour market, and to be held to account for these wider social
and economic demands.
These broader ideas are also supported in the academic field by important think-
ers such as Francis Fukuyama in the United States and, albeit to a lesser extent,
Anthony Giddens in the United Kingdom.1 So whilst it may thus be tempting to
disparage neoliberalism as a damaging discourse responsible for many of the ills
of society and its educational institutions today, this is not to say that it does not
have some level of support – not only at a government or economic level, but also
in the educational field itself. Undeniably, this neoliberal turn, where the free mar-
ket becomes the source of personal freedom and wealth, has made some individu-
als very successful (and wealthy), and in turn, has also immensely profitable for
the GDP of some countries – most notably, perhaps, my own: the Republic of
Ireland.2

2.2 Neoliberalism in the Irish Context

Some (e.g. Allen, 2000) argue that, following the economic stagnation of the 1980s
in Ireland, this move towards neoliberalism was more practical than it was ideologi-
cal. Because of the somewhat ambiguous concoction of European social democracy
with American neoliberalism (Kitchen et al., 2012), the socio-economic and politi-
cal context of Ireland has been characterised by certain politicians as somewhere
between ‘Boston and Berlin’, similar to centrist or ‘third way’ political contexts
such as New Labour in the UK. As with many countries, Ireland too categorises
itself as knowledge-based economy, where education is seen as essential in ensuring

1
During the 1980s, Fukuyama controversially wrote about the end of the Cold War and the rise of
neoliberal capitalism as marking the ‘end of history’ (Fukuyama, 2006) which would be followed
by a period of unprecedented global economic growth. Giddens (cited in Coulter & Nagle, 2015,
p. 4) supports this idea, claiming that: …capitalism, for all its flaws, represents the form of social
organisation that affords the individual optimal wealth and the opportunity to transcend the restric-
tions of traditional or collective identities… [with] the rapid evolution of information technology
[that] has ‘disembedded’ individuals from their locale.’
2
Until the 1990s, Ireland was a relatively poor and peripheral state, perched on the edge of Europe.
Since the early 1990s, however, the economy experienced a surge with a rapid shift towards high-­
skilled manufacturing supported by foreign direct investment (much of which continues today), a
huge growth in the service industry, population spurts, a housing property boom, and the develop-
ment of a strong consumerist society. Ireland was commended internationally during this time as a
‘beacon of what the deep liberalisation of a small open economy might deliver’ (Kitchen et al.,
2012, p. 1302), and with what the OECD once described as one of the fastest growing economies
in the post-industrial world. Due to its ‘attractive’ corporation incentives, Ireland is home to a
range of multinational corporations. These companies – and, indeed, their CEOs – epitomize the
personal wealth generation that is associated with neoliberal logic, and for this reason, Ireland is
sometimes referred to as the ‘poster child’ of neoliberal Europe.
18 2 Self-Evaluation and the Technicist Logic of Teaching

a viable and well-trained workforce key to attracting the foreign direct investment
necessary to sustain the economy. With this comes a ‘new orthodoxy’, with educa-
tional policy ‘[colonised]… by economic imperatives’ (Mooney Simmie &
McKenna, 2017, p. 320). In turn, this pushes the need for monitoring systems in
order to ensure that the standards of ‘educatedness’ are being met.3
In the Irish educational sphere, neoliberalism has in part been perpetuated
through transnational organisations such as the OECD, particularly through their
PISA, TIMMS and PIRLS research. The epistemic dominance of these suprana-
tional organisations means that there is often ‘little room for alterative voices’
(Todd, 2016, p. 621). In turn, there is also an increase in transnational policy-­
borrowing, with various countries modelling their education systems on ‘what
works’ elsewhere (See, for example: Smeyers & Depaepe, 2006). This, too, has
been the case in Ireland, as evidenced by a rise in neoliberal language in educa-
tional policies – the notion of ‘accountability’ measured through educational out-
comes and quality control systems, the use of the terms ‘customer and clients’
when referring to students,4 the skills agenda that mainly aims at increasing the
employability of students with a view towards economic growth. New public man-
agement approaches can especially be seen in increasing accountability measures,
in the de-­centralisation of teacher training and regulation, perhaps most notably in
the area of initial teacher training. Not only this, but some researchers have noted
how the content of teacher education has also changed, moving from a ‘seminaris-
tic’ to ‘technocratic’ approach involving a set of prescriptive learning outcomes for
teaching graduates, an emphasis on evidence in order to demonstrate this, and an
increasingly reductionist view of teaching such that it can be ‘measured’ in
this way.
I do not wish to suggest, however, that accountability mechanisms can be
explained only in reference to neoliberal attitudes in education, nor that neoliberal-
ism is an impersonal discourse that can be easily pinpointed through such examples.
I also do not wish to suggest that neoliberalism is an ideology encased within one
particular moment in history, or that it is somehow both separate from and inert
within the developments in teaching, as some forms of policy analyses seem to sug-
gest. As Hogan (2009) sets out to show us, concepts that are normally associated

3
It is worth noting that many Irish educational institutions today (most notably at primary school
level) have continued to be under the patronage of the Catholic Church. As Hogan (2009, p. 17)
remarks, this too represents the ways in which the ‘purposes that are educational in their own right
can become colonized and redefined by the interests of a powerful institution.’ Whereas in most
contexts in Western Europe have seen a decline in the dominance of ecclesiastical authorities in
education, this has been, for Hogan (2009, p. 21), ‘replaced by that of commercially minded politi-
cians and technocrats’ where ‘teachers have increasingly come to be ruled by a new set of masters,
and their work has been subject to a range of recurring economic and social pressures’. Thus,
whilst the question of the actual separation of church and state is a complicated matter in Ireland,
the same sorts of mechanisms of control over education in Ireland today may be secular but follow
a similar pattern of paternalism.
4
See, for example, the 1996 policy ‘Implementing Agenda for Change’ (Government of
Ireland, 1996).
2.3 School Self-Evaluation: Autonomy, Accountability and Evidence 19

with the neoliberal turn have, in fact, existed very much prior to this. The subordina-
tion of educational institutions to external institutional powers has been prominent
since the Ancient Greeks, for instance, and globalisation has existed since the time
of the first universities in Europe (perhaps even before). Thus, a purely cynical con-
sideration into accountability regimes and their neoliberal trappings only bears a
small part of a much longer and more complex history.5
Yet, it is undeniable that there is a certain way of speaking about teaching that
has corresponded to these trends. My particular interest here relates to how this
market-led discourse has resulted in a ‘technocratic and managerial view of teach-
ing’, where our very conception of teaching is shaped by a model of disembodied
competencies for monitoring and assessing teacher performance. Indeed, what
effect do these have on the ways in which we think and talk about educational prac-
tices? In what sense does a technicist logic permeate our accounts and our under-
standing of these practices, and to what extent does this displace the fundamental
existential logic that inevitably underpins educational experiences?
In order to think about this opposition, it would be helpful to look at a more con-
crete example. There are, of course, many entry points when considering policies
that epitomise this logic, but instead I will explore just one – namely, school self-­
evaluation. School self-evaluation is an interesting example in that it appears to
overthrow some of the more exacting forms of accountability that we find in teacher
inspection, and it also appears to allow for space in which the experiences of teach-
ers can be accounted for on their own terms. For that reason, it is often considered
to be an attractive alternative to what is implemented elsewhere. And yet, because it
harbours – and, indeed, reproduces – much of the technicist logic inherent in neo-
liberal conceptions of education, it is worth considering it with a more cautious
approach. First, I will outline the policy in rather descriptive terms such that we can
get our bearings, before turning to an entirely different set of assumptions about the
ways in which to account for teaching through an attunement to Sartre’s existential-
ist thought.

2.3 School Self-Evaluation: Autonomy, Accountability

and Evidence

School self-evaluation has been referred to in different ways – ‘intelligent account-

ability’ (Miliband, 2004), ‘smart regulation’ (MacBeath, 1999, 2006), ‘responsive
regulation’ (Braithwaite, 2008; Hislop, 2012), ‘robust evaluation’ (McNamara &

5
This is in line with the implicit post-critical approach I draw on throughout the text, where my
interest not only lies in uncovering or deconstructing the discourses that shape teaching, or that are,
as Felski remarks (in reference to Ricoeur), purely within the realm of a ‘hermeneutics of suspi-
cion’. Like Hogan (2009), I believe that it is unproductive to merely provide (perpetual) critique
without any possible alternative. Having said that, some deconstruction is necessary in order to
make space for new accounts, which I hope to provide in the remainder of the book.
20 2 Self-Evaluation and the Technicist Logic of Teaching

O’Hara, 2008). In each case, it is one part of a combination approach to teacher and
school inspection – i.e. a ‘bottom-up’ internal evaluation supported by ‘top-down’
external inspection. Although calibrated differently across contexts, the idea is that
a combination approach can ensure (a) that a balance of autonomy and accountabil-
ity is maintained, (b) that improvement occurs along the lines of pre-­established
standards, in which all actors are keenly aware of what they are being judged on,
and (c) that schools and teachers learn to conceptualise ‘tools’ necessary for their
own self-evaluative purposes.6 Whilst not necessarily ‘new’ to educational institu-
tions, this internal component requires considerable expertise – ‘conceptual or tech-
nical’ skills embedded in a specific ‘language of evaluation’, as well as knowing
how to utilise and disseminate necessary ‘evaluation data’ (Ryan et al., 2007).
Schools and their teachers need to be able to develop their own ‘evaluation instru-
ments’ to manage large amounts of data, as well as finding the necessary time and
resources to do so. Thus, in order for school self-evaluation to be successful, institu-
tions must build what is often referred to as ‘evaluation capacities’ of teachers.
Perhaps for this reason, a TALIS survey in 2008 found that only 11% of teachers
asked were implementing self-evaluation on an annual basis in Ireland. Indeed,
many schools adopted a minimalist compliance approach when it was first intro-
duced, thus failing to provide teachers with ‘an optimal self-evaluation experience’
(O’Brien et al., 2014, p. 169). Some have noted a scepticism when schools were
faced with the prospect of using data for evaluative purposes. Many authors have
also argued that Irish schools are simply ‘poor at performing adequate and rigorous
forms of research’ into their own practices – namely, ‘operationalising core con-
cepts’ and constructing the relevant instruments necessary to come to valid and
informed conclusions (McNamara et al., 2011, p. 70). Although it is often argued
that encouraging more participation of teachers in cultures of self-review leads to
more committed and genuine approaches, this alone is not enough. It is with all of
this in mind that the more recent policy literature on self-evaluation in Ireland has
been enacted.
For a long time, inspections in Ireland appeared to be virtually non-existent, or at
best, were sporadic in nature. But with the increasingly prevalent belief that educa-
tional quality is linked to economic prosperity, new regimes of school inspection
were gradually introduced in the country, most notably during the Celtic Tiger era
in the 1990s. As it currently stands, Ireland too takes a balanced approach with a
two-tier system of evaluation. External inspections are conducted primarily through
the mechanisms of Whole-School Evaluation – Management, Leadership and
Learning and Subject Inspections, as well as Incidental Inspections and specific

6
According to the OECD (2013, p. 406) report Synergies for Learning: An International Perspective
on Evaluation and Assessment, nearly every EU country has a similar combination approach, with
the European Parliament and the Council of the European Union making it a clear recommenda-
tion for improvement purposes in 2001.
2.3 School Self-Evaluation: Autonomy, Accountability and Evidence 21

evaluations targeting DEIS7 schools and other centres for education. Internal evalu-
ations – the focus of our discussion here – is done primarily through School Self-­
Evaluation (DES (Ireland), 2016a). First piloted in the late 1990s and more firmly
established in 2005, Whole School Evaluation (WSE), had been successful in
increasing the frequency of school inspections, of encouraging greater partnership
between the state and teachers, and in introducing a culture of self-review. Many
authors argue that Ireland’s system of evaluation is ‘low-stakes accountability’,
more ‘improvement-oriented’ than punitive (e.g. O’Brien et al., 2019). This is evi-
denced by the fact that, unlike England, there are no official league tables of schools,
and whilst external inspection reports are published online, the general sentiment
appears to be more focused on developing capacities rather than developing a cul-
ture of competition between education providers.
Despite best efforts, inspections remained sporadic and inconsistent for some
time, however, in part because, according to Hislop (2012), these inspec-
tion models…
…included many non-essential features, and they proved to be far too elaborate and time-­
consuming.… [meaning that] the Inspectorate could not deliver sufficiently frequent
inspections nor could hope to produce published reports on schools with sufficient
regularity.

This was also supported by the work carried out by McNamara and O’Hara (2008),
Trusting Schools and Teachers, who also criticised the inefficient nature of inspec-
tions up until that point, coupled with a lack of necessary professional development
for teachers and schools in order to partake in the necessary internal self-review.
Indeed, before 2012, several issues with the requirements of school self-evaluation
meant it failed to take hold, including:
…the unrealistic extent of the framework itself; the lack of required data collection and
evidence generation to support schools’ statements about their strengths and weaknesses;
lack of clarity about the status of the final reports and the responsibility for following up on
issues identified; and finally the role of the key stakeholders, particularly parents and stu-
dents, in the process (McNamara & O’Hara, 2008, p. 276).

Another weakness of WSE identified by both Hislop (2012) and McNamara and
O’Hara (2008) was the lack of trust in self-evaluation, particularly by external
inspectors. It was seen as insubstantial and unreliable, based purely on subjective
opinions rather than rigorous and objective ‘hard evidence’. For Hislop (2012),
however, a system which relies on public sector autonomy must inevitably face
greater levels of public scrutiny and accountability. Since 2012, the inspectorate
thus sought to resolve this issue through three routes, each of which are linked to an
increasing ‘professionalisation’ of teachers.

7
‘Delivering Equality of Opportunity in Schools’, an initiative launched as part of the govern-
ment’s 2005 ‘Action Plan for Inclusion’, functions as a ‘policy instrument to address educational
disadvantage’. DEIS schools are those that have been identified as catering to disadvantaged com-
munities in Ireland (DES, 2005). This has since been updated in the Department for Education and
Skill’s Action Plan for Education.
22 2 Self-Evaluation and the Technicist Logic of Teaching

Firstly, it sought to create standardised criteria for both internal and external
reviews through the framework, Looking at Our Schools (LAOS) (DES, 2016c)
(See: Appendix 1). Secondly, it focused on supporting and training teachers and
schools undertaking self-reviews, thereby establishing a culture of self-review.
Related to this, both Hislop (2012) and McNamara and O’Hara (2008, p. 31) called
for a streamlined version of the inspection system: ‘[s]horter and more efficient
models’ that would also be more appealing to teachers, thus fostering ongoing com-
mitment. Finally, since, according to Hislop (2012), ‘[t]he most effective educa-
tional systems have good levels of quantitative and qualitative data’, ensuring that
teachers and schools use appropriate forms of evidence to inform their evaluations
was emphasised, in part to make self-evaluation reports more ‘trustworthy’. Let’s
look at each of these three elements in turn.

2.3.1 The Balance of Accountability and Autonomy

In theory, internal evaluation allows schools to formulate and manage their own
expectations for improvement. But since schools are by and large public entities,
some measure of accountability needs to also be in place. Hence, there is wide-
spread agreement amongst self-evaluation proponents that internal evaluation is
best supported by external review (e.g. OECD, 2013). Moreover, where external
inspections are coupled with internal review, the resistance to inspection from
teachers is greatly diminished (Nevo, 2002). When Whole School Evaluation was
first being considered and piloted in Irish schools, for instance, there was much
resistance on behalf of teacher trade unions, many of whom openly refused to teach
in front of an inspector. This in turn forced the Department of Education to take a
more ‘cautious’ approach (McNamara & O’Hara, 2008), and thus the aim of the
school self-evaluation model is in part to alleviate anxieties for individuals involved
in inspections.
Self-evaluation is thus promoted as something which can reduce teacher resis-
tance to evaluation. But it also raises the levels of trust towards the self-evaluation
process. Through inculcating a capacity-building approach – training teachers in
data collection and analysis, for instance – self-evaluation ultimately means that
teachers are seen to be more professional, objective and efficient in the evaluation
of their own practices (McNamara & O’Hara, 2008). As a result, they, and the wider
public, no longer need to be concerned about the rigor of the process.8 Importantly
then, ‘evaluation capacity’ is measured not only in terms of how much time and
resources each school has to conduct self-evaluation, but also in terms of the extent
to which they demonstrate their ‘evaluation literacy’, which involves particular

8
Increasing trust in this way is even more evident since 2011, where external inspections are only
undertaken where there is perceived risk, a conclusion that is drawn in part from the school’s
annual self-evaluation report (Brown & McNamara, 2016).
2.3 School Self-Evaluation: Autonomy, Accountability and Evidence 23

ways of speaking about their practices that are transparent, evidence-based, and
conducive to ongoing evaluation.
School self-evaluation is a ‘catch-all’ concept, one that attempts to incorporate
multiple views on how a school is performing with the aim of building consensus
around development goals – at least in theory.9 In a sense, it is reminiscent of the
‘third way’ climate that characterises Irish society, one that in effect neutralises
outliers in its focus on finding a common ground. On one side, we have those who
see evaluation as a means of holding schools and teachers to account. Undeniably,
this is done on the basis of a particular view of what schools and teachers ought to
be doing. Implicit these discussions, for instance, is the assumption that schools
should be accountable not only to individual students, but to society at large. For
example, their role is partly to produce a qualified workforce, but also individuals
who are active citizens equipped with the skills to make rational choices about their
own future and, by extension, the future of the nation (NCCA, 2015). As Hogan
(2009) remarks, where education has thus been colonized by social and economic
aims in the pursuit of a knowledge-based economy, schools and teachers are held to
account not merely for the educational implications of their practices, but rather, for
outcomes that are fundamentally external to what education should reasonably be
expected to deliver.
The further scrutiny that such accountability involves is justified by appealing to
the other ‘side’ – i.e. those that see the purpose of self-evaluation as enabling teach-
ers and schools to be more autonomous in their judgements. Importantly, the call for
increased autonomy does not preclude teachers being answerable to their specific
educational duties. Instead, it allows teachers to strive for what Hogan (2009) refers
to as the experienced quality of learning, beyond the need to deliver social and eco-
nomic gains. And yet, according to Mooney Simmie et al., for this to happen, the
‘capacity of teachers to facilitate risk and make ethically informed local judge-
ments’ must not be stifled. However, the alleviation of anxieties through adopting a
balanced approach in evaluating teachers, in seeking to avoid risk and uncertainty
as much as possible, does just that.
Given these tensions, the balance of autonomy and accountability is at best pre-
carious, at worse, a fallacy. Despite this, such policies have managed to appease
both teachers and schools, who otherwise might have resisted inspections, as well
as the wider public, who in perceiving self-evaluation as a rigorous process see it as
a trustworthy exercise in holding teachers and schools to account. This is inevitably
tied to the evidence that underpins self-evaluation approaches. For instance, studies
have shown that there is a sense of ‘empowerment’ that comes with this capacity to
harness data in service to judgements, and that this sense of empowerment therefore
leads to greater levels of commitment to the process (McNamara & O’Hara, 2008;
O’Brien et al., 2019). The bottom line, therefore, is that by empowering teachers to

9
In recent literature (e.g. Brown et al., 2021), the inclusion of parental and student voice, mandated
by the school self-evaluation guidelines, is at best ‘aspirational’.
24 2 Self-Evaluation and the Technicist Logic of Teaching

use data, they will use data, and the implicit assumption here is that using data is, in
fact, the best – or perhaps only – way of making judgements about one’s practice.

2.3.2 Developing a Culture and a Common Language

Since self-evaluation does not come ‘naturally’ to schools, relevant policy literature
emphasises the need to create a culture where it becomes an ongoing and routine
practice. This is especially true of models that involve data-collection, target-­setting,
and an engagement with the whole school community, since these were neglected in
the past (e.g. McNamara et al., 2008). One of the ways in which to create a culture
of self-evaluation is to standardise how it is put into practice. In Ireland, self-­
evaluation is a specific, six-step process outlined in the Self-Evaluation Guidelines
(see Figs. 2.1 and 2.2). Throughout each step, consultation with the externally gen-
erated framework, Looking at Our School (LAOS), is necessary (see Figs. 2.3 and
2.4). LAOS also indicates what kinds of evidence might be used for the formation
of judgements, including both quantitative and qualitative, so long as such evidence
is ‘manageable, useful and focussed’ (DES (Ireland) 2016c, p. 13).
Each domain within LAOS is accompanied by a particular list of standards
described as ‘the behaviours and attributes characteristic of practices in an effective,
well-functioning school’ (DES (Ireland) 2016b, p. 8) Each standard is then

Fig. 2.1 The six-step self-evaluation process (2016) (DES (Ireland) 2016c, pp. 11–12)
2.3 School Self-Evaluation: Autonomy, Accountability and Evidence 25

Fig. 2.2 The six-step self-evaluation process (2016) (DES (Ireland) 2016c, pp. 13–14)

elaborated with ‘statements of practice’, namely, ‘effective’ and ‘highly effective’

(See: Figs. 2.3 and 2.4). According to the Guidelines, it is only once such quality
judgements are made that plans about what to do to improve can be created, imple-
mented, and monitored. In order to facilitate this, ‘effective’ and ‘highly effective’
statements are placed side by side in order to more easily and efficiently measure
and compare different levels of quality.
The framework provided in LAOS is comprehensive to say the least. At first
glance, it appears that nothing in the practices of teaching and learning has been left
unaccounted for. But perhaps more importantly, standardising the practice of self-­
evaluation is seminal in creating a ‘common language… for discussing what is
working well and what needs to be improved’, through which both teachers and the
wider public can ‘transcend the terminological difficulties which almost inevitably
emerge whenever individuals working in different settings begin to communicate’
(DES, 2016b, pp. 22–23). This so-called cultural change also helps to create a ‘gen-
uine sense of accountability to the school community’, where all stakeholders are
Fig. 2.3 Domain 1: learner outcomes (DES (Ireland) 2016b, p. 13)

Fig. 2.4 Domain 3: teachers’ individual practice (DES (Ireland) 2016b, p. 17)
2.3 School Self-Evaluation: Autonomy, Accountability and Evidence 27

considered as ‘critical friends’ in the school development process. In short, it

ensures that is everyone on the same page, and that all have access to the discussion
around what teachers should (and should not) be doing. This, in turn, further allevi-
ates the anxieties around self-evaluation being too ‘soft on teachers’ (Brady, 2019).
The key issue to my mind, however, is the way in which this ‘common language’
is construed, and the extent to which it represents a technicist understanding of
teaching, learning and the relationship between both. It also represents a simplistic
model for accounting for these practices such that the focus is only on what is mea-
surable. The term ‘effective’, for instance, is used almost exclusively throughout the
entire body of policy literature, and it assumes a directly causal (and, indeed, reduc-
tive) understanding of the relationship between teaching and learning. Simply put,
the term ‘effective’ relies on the assumption that when professionals do something –
intervene, administer treatments – they achieve certain effects. If the effect is
achieved, then we might call the intervention ‘effective’. Of course, the issue that
researchers such as Biesta (2007) highlight is that an emphasis on effectiveness only
brings about the ‘technological model of professional action’, one in which only the
instrumental values in education are taken into account. What is left out of the
account, however, are the more fundamental or ‘ultimate’ values, such as those that
underpin why we want to achieve this result in education in the first place, and how
our interventions might align with or go against our core beliefs about what is edu-
cationally valuable. These more ‘ultimate’ aims are notoriously difficult to estab-
lish. They require an openness and uncertainty, and yet, mechanisms such as school
self-evaluation seem to be ‘incapable of ambiguity’. Ambiguity is erased through
codified norms of communication, replaced instead with a view of the teacher as
‘disinterested and dispassionate… focused on providing hard evidence of success in
the classroom’ (Mooney Simmie & McKenna, 2017, p. 508). And despite school
effectiveness proponents stating that the term ‘effective’ signals correlation rather
than causation between teaching and learning processes, their vocabulary, and the
way this might be translated into self-evaluation accounts, is very much character-
ised by a linear understanding of these processes.
These judgements are not only incapable of capturing ambiguity – they actively
seek to remove it wherever possible, thus making themselves ‘teacher-proof’
(Bonnett, 1994, p. 8). In doing so, they imply that what is valuable in an account is
that which can be shown to be effective in the purely scientistic sense – i.e. as that
which has some kind of measurable impact. This is an idea that is alluded to in sev-
eral of the Self-Evaluation Issues released by the inspectorate, most notably where
it is stated:
…learning how to measure what you value is essential if you are to be confident that school
improvement has happened. And, while school improvement sounds impersonal, what it
actually means is that teachers can be certain their work has a positive impact, and students
can experience a sense of pride in the real, measurable progress they have made (DES
(Ireland) 2013, p. 3).

This technical focus is above all myopic. As Blake et al. (2000, p. 8) remark, ‘tech-
nology uniquely has the power to displace other possible ways of revealing the
28 2 Self-Evaluation and the Technicist Logic of Teaching

world to us, and it fosters the illusion that things can be viewed in their totality…
overcoming the stubborn resistance of things to facilitate access into a world that, in
losing its recalcitrance, loses its depth.’ Moreover, in its myopia, the danger is that
this becomes the only way in which it is appropriate to talk about such practices.
Indeed, for Hogan (2009, p. 23) this new way of speaking about education and the
purposes of teaching, insofar as effectiveness relates to impact, which in turn relates
to wider social and economic progress, are ‘repeatedly advanced as goals worthy of
the convictions of educators, students and the public more generally’. Hence, the
cultivation of a common language and a common culture of self-evaluation makes
these ways of accounting for practices difficult to call into question, promoting the
idea that the accounts that matter are those that are technically verifiable – and as
Biesta (2007) argues, instead of measuring what we value, we value only what we
can measure.

2.3.3 The Focus on Evidence

Focusing only on what is measurable in our accounts is intimately connected to a

key component of self-evaluation practices – namely, its emphasis on a narrow defi-
nition of evidence. For thinkers such as Coe (1999), the use of evidence-based lan-
guage to inform judgements about oneself is intimately connected to (mis)trust.
Without evidence, wouldn’t public policy merely be guided by unfounded opinion,
and therefore open to all sorts of misuse and abuses of power? And by using evi-
dence, isn’t it easier to hold people to account for what they say, and also for what
they think? Importantly, what is meant by evidence here is usually premised on
what is effective, or on ‘what works.’
The push for evidence in self-evaluation is not only based on the assumption that
it ensures more accurate judgements, however. It also relates to the question of bal-
ancing autonomy and accountability, since its use can appease those concerned
about schools and teachers being too ‘subjective’ or ‘biased’ in portraying their own
strengths and weaknesses. Indeed, because self-evaluation, too, requires the exten-
sive use of evidence, proponents argue that self-evaluation should not be considered
in any way less rigorous, or indeed trustworthy, than external inspections. This is in
line with other proponents of evidence-based education who call for the self-­
evaluation of teachers to become a research-based profession.
It seems somewhat common sense that judgements are not fully realistic or
sound unless they can be substantiated. Indeed, the prevailing sentiment is that
teachers and schools should at least rely on a level of ‘baseline data’, a yardstick by
which they can measure the actual and desired levels of attainment of pupils, as well
as students’ motivations and dispositions (DES (Ireland), 2013). According to the
Inspectorate, the use of evidence in conjunction with evaluation criteria allows
schools to:
2.3 School Self-Evaluation: Autonomy, Accountability and Evidence 29

…gauge how…teaching and learning compares with standards of best practice. Unless you
measure yourself against statements of significantly strong practice, you won’t be able to
ask “How are we doing?” and more, importantly, “What should we be doing in order to
improve? (DES (Ireland) 2013, p. 2).

Evidence should not only be used to form accurate judgements about where schools
and teachers are at now, but also to formulate targets for improvement. Targets must
be SMART – specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time-bound. Often this
translates as numerical, as we can see in Fig. 2.5. All targets should have corre-
sponding success criteria, defined as ‘measurable outcomes’, without which it
would be very difficult to ‘know if the targets have been achieved’ (DES (Ireland)
2014, p. 4).
This use of evidence is challenging, and it is by no means natural for teachers. It
too requires an initiation into a form of language that is, in many respects, alien to
what they do on a day-to-day basis, not to mention their reason for becoming teach-
ers in the first place. Some authors (e.g. Confrey, 2008, p. 13) have suggested that
teachers must acquire a ‘statistical mindset’ – i.e. a ‘belief that statistical inquiry can
solve classroom problems’. And yet, research suggests that the ‘datafication’ of the
teaching profession has led to an identity clash, a disjuncture between their roles as
teachers and their roles as ‘researchers’ and ‘evaluators’ (e.g. Skerritt, 2018). And
since different beliefs about the validity of data can hinder the extent to which it is
used in self-evaluative judgements, this means that teachers not only need to be
trained in ‘data literacy’, but also to ensure that they develop certain dispositions
and attitudes to data that would engender ongoing commitment to the process.
This too concerns itself with a technological model of teaching that is myopic in
nature. It not only assumes things in education are measurable when often they are
not, but also that such things can be articulated in some way, and that those

Fig. 2.5 Sample target from the ‘self-evaluation issue’ (DES, 2014)
30 2 Self-Evaluation and the Technicist Logic of Teaching

articulations can then lead to some form of improvement. And yet, surely there is
little use in simply talking about ‘what works’ without first addressing what our
values and purposes are for education, and what we understand by the role of teach-
ers and, indeed, schools in light of these. Importantly, I do not want to suggest that
such values should be decided in an a priori sense, since this seems to be one of the
primary issues with the statements of effective practice. Rather, as I will demon-
strate in Part II, values are made manifest through the course of actions we under-
take and are implicitly connected to how one responds to and accounts for oneself
and the world. Instead, as I will argue for the remainder of the book, we need to find
a new way to account for the practices of teaching, accounts that incorporate not
only ‘accurate’ depictions of practices, but the existential conditions that under-
pin them.

2.4 Towards a New Account

Evidence-based self-evaluation is attractive, particularly to policymakers, because it

is heavily practice-oriented, because it seeks to make things simpler and less ambig-
uous, and because it carries with it the assumption that it can provide a neutral
framework applicable to all contexts and situations. Ultimately, the question that
self-evaluation seeks to answer is if something is working or not, where proof can
be provided to show that this is the case. This, in turn, comes to be how effective
practice is recognised, and by extension, the effective teacher. But since education
does not just involve ‘physical’ interactions per se, but rather, ‘symbolically medi-
ated’ ones (Biesta, 2007), it is therefore not as amenable to evidence-based practice
as other fields are (e.g. medicine). It involves different actors – students, teachers, as
well as educational spaces and materials like textbooks, desks, chairs – interpreting,
responding to, trying to make sense of what is being taught. For this reason, it is
inherently ambiguous – and so too the ways in which one might account for such
practices.
In his book, Children’s Thinking, Bonnett (1994) compares what he calls ‘calcu-
lative’ and ‘poetic’ modes of thinking, garnered from an engagement with Heidegger.
Calculative thinking implies a form of scientism, where our interaction with the
world involves manipulating what we encounter to our own particular ends, much
like how modern manufacturing manipulates materials in order to make pre-­
designed objects into something effective, manageable, and useful. But our relation-
ship with the world need not be this way – indeed, we can encounter the world
without this manipulative motive in mind, but with an openness that Bonnett (1994)
characterises as ‘poetic’ modes of thinking. Similar to how early craftsmanship
involved working with rather than against the particular grains of wood, for instance,
a teacher also participates in an interplay with ‘materials’ (the students, the physical
classroom space, the curricula content) who are themselves co-producers in the edu-
cative moment, thus entering into the picture an important and necessary unpredict-
ability and complexity. Teachers are often thought of in the calculative sense, as
2.4 Towards a New Account 31

human capital serving a pre-defined endpoint, whose practices are measured in

accordance with these aims. And yet, they are also humans who respond to – and,
indeed, with – the situation in which they find themselves, and through whom the
situation itself is brought to light. As Bonnett (1994, p. 79) remarks:
The value of poetic thinking lies not in specific tangible results or conclusions that follow
logically from it, but rather from a place of attunement, place, and fittingness that it engen-
ders, and within the ambience of which, the rational-calculative systems and arguments in
terms of which we have become habituated into thinking of ourselves, need to be re-located
in order for their broader significance to be understood and for them to be re-humanized in
a deeper sense (Bonnett, 1994, p. 138).

Much of the criticism of school self-evaluation in Ireland has focused on its practi-
cality, related to the lack of time, resources and training offered to teachers, its
unrealistic expectations, and its overall usefulness for impacting practice. Of course,
there is also the concern that such information gathered through self-evaluation, and
indeed through external inspection, may lead to the formation of league tables and
the seemingly unhelpful culture of competition between schools. Whilst these prac-
tical issues are important, they do not address the implicit technicist logic of teach-
ing that self-evaluation (re)produces. What is particularly concerning is what these
assumptions do to our conception of teaching. Evidence-based education and mea-
surement culture does not just assume that we can measure what it is that we value,
nor does it just assume that things that happen in the classroom are easily captured
or ‘proven’ by data. It also pushes the assumption that our accounts of the practices
of teaching ought to only be based on evidence understood in this way, thus articu-
lated along these technicist lines.
In order to counteract this logic, I thus propose a turn towards a new way of con-
ceptualising it means to be a teacher. In order to open up this line of thinking, I turn
to the work of Jean-Paul Sartre, paying particular attention to the (early) accounts
he offers of being human – how we exist and act on the world that we are thrown
into, and how, through facing our ultimate freedom and ultimate responsibility, we
may be given the opportunity to account for ourselves in more authentic ways. In
this sense, Sartre serves as a ‘touchstone’10 by which a new way to make sense of
the lived experience of teaching is offered, and through which we can ultimately
account for being a teacher in new ways. In conversation with Sartre, then, this book
represents a commitment to the value of accounting for teachers with existential
sensitivity to the anxieties and uncertainties, struggles and challenges, exposure and
vulnerabilities, confusion and disorientation, that teaching so often entails. It is not
an attempt to document these in order to raise awareness or to offer recommenda-
tions for alleviating them in the future. It is neither a romanticisation of the struggles
of teaching that we often find in film and in literature, or indeed, in the rhetoric of
‘what works’ teaching policies. Rather, it values all of the challenges of teaching in

10
In Fearless Speech, Foucault (2001) calls Socrates as a ‘touchstone’ in that, rather than providing
‘answers’ to his questions, he encourages his interlocutors to pursue – and to take responsibility
for – the answers they themselves provide. This will be explored more fully in Chap. 8.
32 2 Self-Evaluation and the Technicist Logic of Teaching

and of themselves, as part and parcel of the act of teaching because they are essen-
tial to it, much as they are central to what it means to be human.

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 Part II
Sartre, Existentialism and Education
Chapter 3
Navigating Vocabularies: Transitioning
from Policy to Existentialism

Abstract The turn from the language of policy to the language of existentialism
may be unsettling. But as we have thus far seen, where certain educational policies
tend to be clear, coherent and concise, they are also underlined by a technicist logic
that fails to fully capture the lived experiences of teaching. Existentialist philosophy
might also appear to be technical, given that it is ripe with terminologies that jar
with our everyday way of speaking. Unlike policy, however, its aim is not to reduce
human experience to its most explicit or measurable formats (in an effort to stan-
dardise ways of speaking), but rather, to expand our understanding by creating new
terminologies that give access to previously unarticulated aspects of human life.
Such stylised terminologies are required in order to call into question a range of
problematic ideas ingrained within the technicist discourses of teaching – the
subject-­object distinction, the dichotomisation of fact and value, the separation of
cognitive processes from engagement in action. In this chapter, I will offer a brief
(and certainly insufficient) overview of existentialist thought, before turning to one
of the key figures that will occupy the rest of the book – namely, Jean-Paul Sartre.

Keywords Jean-Paul Sartre · Existentialism · Discourses of teaching

Existentialism has often been associated with morbid preoccupations with death,
anxiety, and indecision, a ‘philosophical attitude’ rather than a systematic doctrine
with easily definable tenets and beliefs. The difficulty in thinking about existential-
ism as a ‘system’ of thought comes in part from our efforts to categorise diverse
thinkers across different historical and intellectual contexts – theistic existentialists
(e.g. Kierkegaard, Jaspers and Marcel) in contrast to atheistic existentialists, for
instance, the latter of which includes many of the French existentialists who were
writing around the time of the Second World War. Some philosophers who have
been labelled existentialists have rejected the work of other existentialists, most
notably Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty in relation to Sartre. But despite these differ-
ences, existentialism might be best understood in terms of its ‘distinctive grammar’
(Levinas, as cited in Kneller, 1958). In re-appropriating language, it attempts to
revolutionise our way of speaking about things we often take for granted, and it is

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte 37

Ltd. 2022
A. M. Brady, Being a Teacher, Contemporary Philosophies and Theories in
Education 19, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-7323-9_3
38 3 Navigating Vocabularies: Transitioning from Policy to Existentialism

for this reason that existentialist thought is not only challenging to understand, but
also challenging in another way – i.e. in how it might test our cherished assumptions
about being in the world (with others).
In general, existentialism ‘does not attempt to produce abstract general, ‘objec-
tive’ principles’ but instead looks at the ‘predicament of individuals in their unique
lived situations’ (Bonnett, 1994, pp. 98–99). It is sometimes thought of as a ‘reac-
tionary’ philosophy, one that appears in response to certain crises throughout his-
tory. But instead of articulating these historical, social and political shifts at the
macro-level, the focus is on the concrete, lived experience of individuals within
these uncertain times. For this reason, existentialism is not solution-oriented as a
philosophy – it isn’t, for example, concerned with ‘what works’ or what interven-
tions might help to alleviate such crises. Rather, existentialist approaches can, in
fact, cause a crisis, the kind of crisis that is often a necessary turning point in order
for us to radically re-evaluate what it is we are doing, and to inaugurate a moment
in which ‘we may begin to come to ourselves [and] seriously reflect upon the mean-
ing of our own existence’ (Bonnett, 1994, p. 106).
A special feature of existentialism, then, is to ‘treat people as subjects’ (Saeverot,
2013, p. 4), and to be open to life’s ultimate contingencies. As Saeverot (2013)1
argues, an ‘existentialist education’ would thus stand in contrast to that which is
underpinned by human capital theory. The latter sees both knowledge and individu-
als as commodities in the (global) economic market, where students (and, indeed,
teachers) are ‘forced into a particular way of existing’ that reduces them to the func-
tions of their practices. In order to combat this, a radical shift in our perspective and
understanding of human practices is necessary, including in education. As we will
see throughout, this shift can arise through a style of writing that is affective – that
forces us to confront difficult questions head on, despite the uncertainty and vulner-
ability it incites. Gordan (2016, p. 3), for instance, remarks on how existentialist
writing is ripe with myths and metaphors, with the purpose of ‘calling our attention
to aspects of the world of which we were previously unaware’. This propensity to
use figurative language, particularly in the literary existentialist works,2 does not
aim to define human experiences but to evoke responses in readers, and in the unre-
strictive nature of symbolic writing, our understanding of the world can be both
enriched and transformed as a result. With that said, in examining existentialist
thought, it is not only important to do so with an instrumental view in mind (i.e. that
it might be used for (re)conceptualising teaching), but to recognise that the
difficulty lies not only in understanding such work in a technical sense, but also in
uneasily accepting it as a possible vision for what our own lives might be.

1
In brief, Saeverot’s (2013) text, Indirect Pedagogy, mainly focuses on how an existentialist form
of education can be fostered in the classroom through the pedagogical approaches. Whilst relevant
for the discussion here, my focus is somewhat different – namely, in its concern with how one
might account for the experiences of teaching.
2
Gordon (2016) draws on several of these, including Sartre’s novel Nausea, which he argues can
serve as a metaphor for the dehumanising force of technology in recent history.
3.1 The Origins of Existentialist Thought? 39

3.1 The Origins of Existentialist Thought?

There is general agreement that existentialism began most explicitly in the nine-
teenth century with Kierkegaard (1813–1855).3 Kierkegaard was in many ways at
odds with how philosophy had conventionally been done up until that point, his
work often being characterised as unsystematic, fragmentary, and at times paradoxi-
cal. As Jaspers (as cited in Barrett, 1962, p. 12) once remarked, those who had
‘really experienced the thought of Kierkegaard… can never again philosophize in
the traditional mode of academic philosophy’. Indeed, Kierkegaard’s profound
exploration of the inward life of the individual struggling for self-realisation did not
cower away from questions of human finitude and the absurdity of our existence in
the world, ideas that would continue to be central to the twentieth century existen-
tialist movement (Barrett, 1962; Blakewell, 2016; Carlisle, 2019).
One of Kierkegaard’s key contributions to existential philosophy was the reversal
of the Cartesian dualism premised on the phrase ‘I think, therefore I am’. For
Kierkegaard, and indeed the later existentialist thinkers, individuals are first thrown
into existence by birth, and only then do we acquire a ‘thinking thing’ or something
loosely synonymous with a ‘self’. This ‘self’ is thus not something deduced via
systematic forms of doubting, but rather, it is subject to constant re-engagement and
renewal through our ongoing choices as we navigate our existence – an existence,
ironically, that we ourselves did not choose. For Kierkegaard, the individual is free
to the extent that they may make choices about how they live and, by extension, who
they become. Such freedom is not liberating, however. It is the source of constant
anxiety in one’s life, an anxiety that both Kierkegaard (2015) and, as we will later
see, Sartre (2018) describe as ‘the dizziness of freedom’. Akin to when we experi-
ence vertigo, this anxiety comes from the enormous amount of trust we must place
in ourselves not to jump off the proverbial ledge, and the realisation that there is
nothing to stop us from doing so except for ourselves. Anxiety comes to the fore
when we are faced with certain moral dilemmas, from recognising both the enor-
mous consequences of sin, but also the possibilities of individual freedom to sin. As
such, our lives are marked by a disorientating choice of prudence and vivacity,
where moral justifications for either do not exist in any a priori sense.
Similar ideas are also shared by Fredrich Nietzsche (1844–1900), another influ-
ential thinker in the later existentialist movement. Nietzsche is perhaps most famous
for his sustained and uncompromising critique of traditional European values, par-
ticularly those that come from religious institutions. His (1997) declaration that
‘God is dead’ in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, for example, raises questions about how
to proceed in a world where abstract values are no longer a ‘requirement’ for life.
Nietzsche is also notable for his aphoristic, high-spirited and fragmentary style of

3
Perhaps most notably in Kierkegaard (2009). Earlier philosophical approaches, however, such as
the Stoics and Epicureans also saw philosophy as a way to ensure a ‘flourishing life’ rather than
merely being an intellectual pursuit in and of itself, and thus in some sense exemplifies a similar
approach to existentialist thought.
40 3 Navigating Vocabularies: Transitioning from Policy to Existentialism

writing, marked by persistent hyperbole and irony. Like with Kierkegaard’s writing,
an active engagement on the part of the reader is required, and one becomes ulti-
mately responsible for their own thinking. Nietzsche was also concerned with the
false consciousness that had permeated into the lives of individuals during his time,
marked by the blind acceptance of received ideas and values (Nietzsche, 1974).
Whilst some might argue that traditional moral values can be grounded independent
of their Christian heritage, Nietzsche was not so convinced. For him, these moral
values have lost their solid and unquestionable authority, and yet since they have so
firmly and insidiously implanted themselves within individual consciousness, it
would be impossible to remove them without causing further damage. In lieu of
this, Nietzsche (2010, 2013) asserts the need for a radical overhaul of values – a
‘revaluation’ that involves a long and arduous restoration of ourselves, ultimately
dismantling some of the more cherished aspects of our lives in the process.
For Nietzsche, it is the role of philosophy (and art forms) to evoke this revalua-
tion of values. But like both Kierkegaard and Sartre, Nietzsche seems to succeed
more so in his via negativa approach. Nevertheless, his ‘meta-ethical’ stance chal-
lenges the so-called ‘common sense’ view of philosophy, and instead promotes the
idea that, ultimately, the act of valuing is a form of ongoing human creation. He
(2010, p. 132) explores this in the Gay Science:
Whatever has value in the present world, has not it in itself, by its nature, – nature is always
worthless: – but a value was once given to it, bestowed upon it and it was we who gave and
bestowed! We only have created the world which is of any account to man!

Importantly, existentialism is not confined to philosophy. It also appears throughout

various art forms both in Sartre’s time but also earlier than this, in writers such as
Beckett, Dostoevsky, Camus, Kafka, Beauvoir, and, indeed, Sartre himself. Such
writers also attempt to capture the difficulties of being an individual – the disen-
chantment that follows seismic changes in societies, the paradoxical ways in which
individuals often live, trapped between an adherence to the cultural traditions of
which they are apart, and their individual freedom in responding to these. Various
movements in art are also associated with existentialism, most overtly in the appar-
ent absurdity of Dadaism. It is difficult to say which influenced which, or whether it
was simply the intellectual milieu at the time. The fact that Sartre was also a prolific
novelist and playwright indicates that, indeed, this was also achieved through an
engaged encounter with other forms of literature, something I also try to emulate
throughout.

3.2 Common Themes in Existentialist Thought

Existentialism itself is difficult to define it in any systematic sense. Perhaps, indeed,

it is inherently unsystematic given that its point of origin is the human person and
their individual experiences. Having said that, there are some common themes
amongst those associated with the term, which may prove useful to briefly (and
3.2 Common Themes in Existentialist Thought 41

insufficiently) explore in order to lay the groundwork for a more in-depth consider-
ation into one of the key figures in the movement, namely Jean-Paul Sartre.

3.2.1 The Individual in a Disenchanted World

Most commentators agree that challenging times provide a fertile ground upon
which existentialist thinking flourishes. Whether it be the fall of feudalism, the wan-
ing influence of religious thinking in intellectual circles, or the time before, during,
and after the Second World War, most thinkers associated with existentialism have
explored the question of what it means to be human in times of upheaval.
Undoubtably, many have turned towards an exploration the individual’s place within
this so-called ‘disenchanted’ world. According to Weber, who popularised this term
just before the First World War (Grosby, 2013; Weber, 2010), disenchantment is in
part relates to a loss of pre-established destinies, corresponding to a rise in individu-
alism where each of us experience the liberating but destabilising effect of the new-­
found freedom in defining oneself. Individual freedom is often seen to be the ‘the
finest achievement of modern civilisation’ (Taylor, 1991, p. 12), and yet it is a
Pyrrhic victory in many respects. Indeed, the freedom of the individual in a disen-
chanted world has been accompanied by a new kind of rationality, based on
‘calculat[ing] the most economical application of means to a given end’ (Taylor,
1991, p. 55), where optimal efficiency becomes the ultimate marker of success.
Now that older (e.g. ‘superstitious’) ways of thinking are obsolete, the world is
thought to be more accurately and neatly directed by scientific modes of thought.4
Dehumanization sets in, and it begins to feel as if we no longer have any direct con-
trol over our life or our projects, despite the individualism that we claim to uphold
(Gordon, 2016). The legacy of this can also be seen in the ‘neoliberal’ form of indi-
vidualism – where on the one hand the individual is ‘free’ and yet, they are simulta-
neously ‘managed’ by normalising, scientistic discourses that impact upon how
they behave and how they understand themselves. As indicated, this also relates to
individuals being seen purely in terms of their (socio-economic) functions.
Whether or not individualism is a blessing or a curse is not the primary focus for
Sartre, but rather, what becomes of individuals in light of this ‘inward turn’. The
disenchanted world has certainly allowed for more freedom to question values that
were once seen as having utmost authority in our lives, as well as the roles that are
demanded by society. Ironically, however, this new-found freedom ‘does not liber-
ate: it binds’ (Camus, 2005, p. 64). For one, it requires us to continually revalue our
own lives and to take responsibility for how it is that we live. One common theme
that may be said to characterise existentialist thought then is the idea that anxiety is
an inescapable component of being an individual in a disenchanted world, where

4
Of course, such changes are gradual, and the apparent upheaval that disenchantment characterises
may be related to the general zeitgeist of an era (defined in retrospect) rather than the result of a
sudden and radical overhaul of earlier ways of thinking.
42 3 Navigating Vocabularies: Transitioning from Policy to Existentialism

pseudo-individualism proliferates, and where there is a constant striving for more

authentic forms of individual expression in spite of this. It calls for individuals to
commit themselves in certain life ‘projects’ and to take responsibility for these com-
mitments, whilst also recognising the difficulty in doing so: particularly where the
temptation of nihilism appears.

3.2.2 The Lure of Nihilism

Such a temptation is described in Albert Camus’ (1957) Noble Prize speech:

These men [sic], who were born at the beginning of the First World War, who were twenty
when Hitler came to power and the first revolutionary trials were beginning, who were then
confronted as a completion of their education with the Spanish Civil War, the Second World
War, the world of concentration camps, a Europe of torture and prisons – these men must
today rear their sons and create their works in a world threatened by nuclear destruction.
Nobody, I think, can ask them to be optimists. And I even think that we should understand –
without ceasing to fight it – the error of those who in an excess of despair have asserted their
right to dishonour and have rushed into the nihilism of the era.

Sartre and Beauvoir, contemporaries of Camus, also recognised the seductive force
of nihilism in their writings. As such, they sought ways to address this – to encour-
age their readers to ‘forge for [themselves] an art of living in times of catastrophe in
order… to fight openly against the instinct of death at work in our history’ (Camus,
1957). As Rowley (2006, p. 154) notes:
It was no coincidence that existentialism struck a chord in the post-war world. Sartre’s read-
ers had experienced the Holocaust and the atom bomb. Having discovered history, with its
most savage face, they had lost their faith in eternal progress. What was so refreshing was
that existentialism acknowledged the horror and absurdity of the human condition, while at
the same time insisting on individual freedom.

For some, counteracting these nihilistic tendencies comes from a full, committed
engagement with life, whether that be engaging in artistic practices that give shape
to our existence, or simply as a matter of recognising the value in even the most
banal aspects of our lives. This is again something I will return to at a later point in
the book, particularly as it relates to a (concrete) understanding of the experiences
of teaching.
According to Taylor (1991), nihilism is not merely a temptation that can be
avoided, or that arises in explicit forms as a result of radical changes in society. It
can also be seen as a form of instrumental reasoning, propagated in the ‘industrio-­
technological’ society that gives us little space for serious contemplation. Referring
to Tocqueville (2003), he explores how the choices we make that allow us to lead a
quiet, comfortable life can result in our becoming dangerously apathetic to the
world around us, except for that which serves us in an instrumental sense. Genuine
political participation may be a way to address this apathy in the face of instrumen-
tal reasoning, and many of the existentialist thinkers referred to here – including the
‘intellectual powerhouses’ of the so-called French movement – were politically
3.2 Common Themes in Existentialist Thought 43

active in part for this reason. In their later writings in particular, there is an attempt
to signal a commitment to living that opposes the blind acceptance of a societal
order, whether that be patriarchy, nationalism, colonialism.5 Above all else, the exis-
tentialist writers during this time (and, indeed, before) aimed to provoke their read-
ers to address their own forms of false consciousness, and to ultimately take
responsibility for what they think.

3.2.3 Reactions to Scientism

As Camus (2005) argues in the Myth of Sisyphus, the only question that philosophy
should concern itself with is whether or not we should live. In answering this, he
(2005, p. 4) acknowledges how ‘it is almost impossible to be logical to the bitter
end’, since when we are contemplating such questions, it is not an appeal to logic
that we make, but ‘absurd reasoning’. The Absurd is a feeling that can hit at any
moment – ‘at any street corner’ (Camus, 2005, p. 9) – suddenly slapping us out of
our stupor. It is in such moments, faced with the possibility of nihilism, that we thus
decide to live, knowing that the legitimacy and value in doing so does not originate
from purely ‘rational’ ways of thinking.
Existentialists thus seek to address the wider discourse of scientism that has per-
vaded both everyday as well as intellectual life, correlating to a ‘disenchanted’
world and the nihilistic tendencies it embodies. Scientism is not restricted to ‘scien-
tific’ fields (and, indeed, we should be cautious about conflating the two). Abstract
forms of philosophy are also culpable in this regard, exemplified in the ways that
they separate facts and values, or seek to reduce the life of the individual to what can
be measured or calculated. Since science bases itself on the knowability of quantifi-
able objects, hypotheses are worked out via observation and experimentation, much
like we see in evidence-based educational research (Kneller, 1958). For existential-
ist thought, however, such approaches are not conducive to the study of the human
situation. Humans cannot be atomistically understood as the sum of our ‘parts’ –
I.Q.s, biological drives and urges. Rather, we are self-conscious beings – beings that
are able to question our own being, to say ‘no’ to our so-called instincts (Bonnett,
1994), to give an account of an inner life not immediately public, to assign meaning
to the world of objects, and to continually (re)define ourselves in light of this.
Scientism is dangerous not only because of the atomistic ways that it conceptu-
alises the human, but also in its prevalence in economic and political realms where

5
There are, of course, contrasting views on these topics amongst each of the ‘French’ existential-
ists. The post-colonial scholar, Edward Said (1993, p. 208) referred to Camus’ writing as ‘inca-
pacitated by colonial sensibility’. Sartre and Beauvoir were both vocal about their support for
Algerian independence, something which (perhaps indirectly) led to a rift between the thinkers that
was never quite solved during Camus’ lifetime. Sartre has often also been accused of sexism in
both his writing and his personal conduct (e.g. Rowley, 2006) and this of course contrasts with de
Beauvoir’s (2010; 2018) direct discussions on patriarchal society in The Second Sex.
44 3 Navigating Vocabularies: Transitioning from Policy to Existentialism

one is reduced to ‘functions’. This ‘function-oriented’ view of the human is not

based on a belief in the greater cosmic order, but the perceived necessity of eco-
nomic efficiency. But not only this, by applying the ‘scientific method’ in all areas
of lived experience, much of the complexity and richness of that experience is dis-
placed. Indeed, whereas a pen’s existence is pre-determined by its function (a func-
tion assigned by humans), our existence is defined through the very process of
existing itself.

3.2.4 The Committed Individual

For some existentialist thinkers, there is no inherent ‘self’ that exists as an unchange-
able essence at the core of our being. This is part of the reason why, for them, scien-
tistic modes of thinking are not conducive to the study of human practices. As the
dismantling of the Cartesian cogito might suggest, it is not a permanent ‘self’ that
distinguishes us from one another. Rather, it is how we have chosen to live.
Individuals are simply ‘thrown’ into the world, where for Sartre (2018, p. 718), we
are ‘condemned to be free’. Often, this lack of determinacy in our lives is made
immediately clear in moments conventionally termed as ‘existential crises’,
moments that can leave us with a sense of the absurd nature of our own existence.
As Camus (2005, p. 11, 17–18) states:
In certain situations, replying ‘nothing’ when asked what one is thinking about may be
pretence in a man [sic]… But if that reply is sincere, if it symbolises that odd state of soul
in which the void becomes eloquent, in which the chain of daily gestures is broken, in
which the heart vainly seeks the link that will connect it again, then it is as it were the first
sign of absurdity….This heart within me I can feel, and I judge that it exists. This world I
can touch, and I likewise judge that it exists. There ends all my knowledge, and the rest is
construction. For if I try to seize this self of which I feel sure, if I try to define and sum-
marise it, it is nothing but water slipping through my fingers.

For atheistic existentialists in particular,6 it is ultimately us as individuals who

assign meaning to the world as we navigate our existence, although not always on
the level of explicit awareness. The world itself is absurd, and thus ‘deaf’ to our
calls for meaning. But it is in these so-called ‘existential crises’ that one may be
awakened to this (Camus, 2005). For Sartre, the individual is not ‘forced’ into hav-
ing particular commitments but instead, is always in a state of deciding upon and
responding to what they have committed themselves to. Although he dismisses the
possibility of becoming fully sincere in this endeavour, he nevertheless emphasises
the importance of being honest in our commitment to certain values, and through
holding ourselves responsible for them.

6
But also, to a certain extent, theistic existentialists like Kierkegaard who argue that God is Absurd,
and as such faith is something we must continually renew and commit ourselves to as individuals.
3.3 Sartrian Existentialism 45

To sum, existentialism is a ‘multi-vocal expression of feelings and states of

mind’ (Kneller, 1958, p. xi), departing from the individual subject and yet affirming
the paradoxes that seem to be central to this. Such paradoxes are things we must
learn to cope with rather than overcome, not by comforting ourselves in the cer-
tainty of scientism, but by a willingness to commit oneself as an individual fully in
the world, to ‘penetrate the marrow of life’ (Kneller, 1958, p. xi). This involves
recognising that we exist in tension, a tension that may be the source of anguish, but
that is also testament to our existential freedom. Such a realisation allows us to
conquer the forces of depersonalisation evident in our world, particularly during the
times in which each of the key thinkers were writing, but also in relation to our time
today. The existentialists sought to reinvent philosophy in a way that would revolt
against an abstract conceptualisation of the human person by attending more closely
to lived, concrete experiences. It is, for some, a form of philosophy that is ‘a con-
stant confrontation between man and his own obscurity… an insistence upon an
impossible transparency… challeng[ing] the world anew every second’ (Camus,
2005, p. 52).7

3.3 Sartrian Existentialism

When writing his autobiography at the age of 59, Sartre (2000) was tentative about
making any claims that suggested his becoming a writer was determined by his
upbringing. This, as we will understand later, would be very much against the entire
thrust of his philosophy. In Words, he examines the idea that we inevitably become
the summation of our actions, and that, only in death, something ‘essential’ about
that ‘who we are’ can be created. I will therefore avoid making any such claims on
Sartre’s behalf.8 Instead, I will attempt to offer a brief trajectory of his thinking
before turning to a closer examination of key aspects of his philosophy.
Although Sartre by no means invented existentialism, he is nevertheless one of
the main thinkers associated with term, alongside his lifelong companion and

7
For Camus (2005), this was not strictly speaking ‘philosophy’, but ‘life’, where choosing to live
becomes the ultimate revolt against the instinct of suicide in our lives, analogous with the seduc-
tiveness of nihilism.
8
As discussed in the Introduction, this is not to deny the controversial aspects of Sartre’s own life,
which writers such as Rowley (2006) have accounted for. The debate as to whether or not these
actions are manifest in his thought is not one I entertain here, although it is an important consider-
ation. In line with a more ‘post-critical’ reading of Sartre, my aim is instead to focus on his ideas,
and the extent to which they resonate with our thinking today, given that such ideas are not solely
encased within a singular time period or a singular mind.
46 3 Navigating Vocabularies: Transitioning from Policy to Existentialism

writing partner, Simone de Beauvoir.9 In their high school days, de Beauvoir (2005),
pp. 336–337) describes Sartre and his friends’ outlooks as follows:
… in their speech, their attitudes, their gestures, their jokes – they set out to prove that men
were not rarefied spirits but bodies of flesh and bone, racked by physical needs and crudely
engaged in a brutal adventure that was life.

Both Sartre and Beauvoir lived through the First World War. During the Second
World War, they were key members of the French Resistance movement. In 1933,
Sartre spent some time in Berlin studying Husserl’s phenomenology, and as a
Prisoner of War, he read Heidegger’s Being and Time. These would later come to
significantly shape his own seminal text, Being and Nothingness. A number of
Sartre’s novels and plays, such as Nausea (1938), No Exit (1944), and The Roads to
Freedom (1945) trilogy, also deal with key existentialist themes. Indeed, Sartre and
Beauvoir were key figures in the French literary scene at the time, so much so that
Sartre was offered, but ultimately rejected, the Noble Prize for Literature on two
separate occasions. Since Beauvoir and Sartre wrote concurrently (quite literally), it
is difficult to draw a strict boundary between their ideas. Both were extremely influ-
ential in shaping post-War minds in France and, indeed, internationally. For instance,
they founded the existentialist-themed journal Les Temps Modernes, first issued in
1945 and only ceasing publication in 2019.10
After the war, both thinkers became increasingly politicised. Despite at first ten-
tatively rejecting communism, Sartre came to embrace it more fully in his later
years, attempting to combine Marxism with his overall existentialist philosophy.
This combination was not always successful, since both theories contain deep con-
tradictions that Sartre could never quite resolve. The later Sartre, however, recog-
nised the significance and power of societal structures on the extent to which
freedom can be truly and authentically enacted, an idea he may have once labelled
as ‘bad faith’. He (2008, p. 150) admitted that this ‘most recently acquired knowl-
edge… gnaws at [his] old established facts without entirely dispelling them.’ Thus,
he never quite dismissed his central idea of freedom but instead, re-focused his
conception on the ways that we are always responding to situations in some way,
even in those where we appear to be wholly unfree. Arguably, it is this ‘milder’

9
Although she is often immediately linked with Sartre or is seen as someone who merely ‘applied’
his ideas to feminist ethics, Beauvoir is most certainly a philosopher in her own right. This has
been the focus of a recent publication on Beauvoir’s life, Becoming Beauvoir, where the author,
Fitzpatrick (2020) convincingly argues that the hierarchisation of Sartre over Beauvoir throughout
history is grounded in sexism. I am often asked why I chose to write a book on Sartre rather than
Beauvoir, and to be honest, I don’t have a good enough answer for this. Is the question itself also
a form of sexism (because I myself am a woman, I must therefore write about Beauvoir and not
Sartre!)? Or perhaps it is simply a call to more fully appreciate a thinker who has been in some
ways denigrated to the mere ‘companion’ of Sartre?
10
Les Temps Modernes was staunchly against political neutrality and contained a number of key
essays from important thinkers such as philosophers Aron and Merleau-Ponty (both of whom were
early members of the editorial board), novelists and playwrights Beckett and Genet, as well as
Sartre and Beauvoir themselves.
3.3 Sartrian Existentialism 47

understanding of Sartre that I take up here, despite focusing almost exclusively on

his earlier works.

3.3.1 Existentialism and Phenomenology

Many of Sartre’s earlier essays, including the Transcendence of the Ego, the
Imaginary, and A Sketch for the Emotions, demonstrate his then-emerging ideas
around the nature of consciousness. In these three essays, Sartre employs what he
calls ‘phenomenological psychology’.11 For Sartre, phenomenology represents an
attempt to reconceptualise the ‘scientific’ understanding of perception and experi-
ence by taking a descriptive rather than an explanatory approach. The phenomenol-
ogy that Sartre employs comes from his study of Husserl in Berlin between the
years 1933 and 1934.
What appealed to him most in Husserl’s thought was the idea of intentionality.
Simplistically put, intentionality relates to the fundamental nature of consciousness
i.e. that consciousness is always consciousness of something. On the surface, this
seems like a simple idea, but its implications are far-reaching. Cartesian thinking
was dominant in philosophy, and with that the so-called mind/body dualism that in
part led to the sharpened distinction between ‘objective’ and ‘subjective’. The con-
cept of intentionality, however, calls this into question. In the Imaginary, for
instance, Sartre (2010) describes how a ‘doorknob’ does not appear to me in its
‘brute’ mode of existence, the ‘meaning’ of which I come to establish via systematic
forms of reflection. Rather, it appears to me immediately as it is because of the inter-
subjective and conventional ways in which it is used. Such conventions are contin-
gent, for Sartre – they very much depend on the communities of practice in which I
am situated and are not wholly reducible to my perception. Despite this, however,
their objectivity is always suffused with (inter)subjectivity. For Sartre, conscious-
ness is creative in this sense. Through encountering so-called ‘brute existence’,
either physically or in memory, conscious individuals are therefore complicit in its
meaningfulness.
Part of Sartre’s initial attraction to phenomenology also relates to its focus on
more strictly describing what it is we experience in the world by starting from the
concrete, lived experiences of individuals.12 But whilst Sartre used the phenomeno-
logical method throughout his career in various ways, there was one aspect that he
felt threatened the key idea of intentionality in Husserl’s account – i.e. that of the

11
In Being and Nothingness, he refers to ‘phenomenological ontology’, where he expands his
phenomenological account to give a more fundamental description of Being.
12
Raymond Aron, Sartre’s friend and mentor, introduced Sartre to Husserlian phenomenology by
stating that ‘if you are a phenomenologist, you can talk about this cocktail and make philosophy
out of it!’, which appealed greatly to the young Sartre who had been somewhat disenchanted by
the abstract nature of philosophy. See: Blakewell, 2016 and Rowley, 2005.
48 3 Navigating Vocabularies: Transitioning from Policy to Existentialism

‘transcendental ego’. He therefore set out to reject this in his earlier work, a rejec-
tion that formed the basis of his entire philosophical position.

3.3.2 The ‘Pre-reflective’ Cogito

In his 1934 essay Transcendence of the Ego, Sartre (2011) reconceptualises two
related understandings of the self along these lines. Firstly, he considers the sense of
self that arises from the Husserlian idea of the transcendental ego. Secondly, he
turns to the ‘psychological’ manifestation of this – i.e. the material ego. In concep-
tualising an ‘ego’ at our core, Sartre thought that Husserl undermined what is most
fruitful in his phenomenological approach, i.e. that consciousness is pure, outward-­
facing intentionality. In response to this, he puts forth the idea that there is, in fact,
a distinction between two forms of consciousness – ‘reflected’ and ‘pre-reflective’.
This latter sense of consciousness is pre-personal, and is most fundamental. It is that
which exists at our core, and not some essentialist self. Ultimately, when we talk
about the self, or when we suggest in some way the existence of a ‘me’, then what
we are strictly speaking about is the produced or reflected ego.
When we think about activities that we are completely absorbed in, Sartre would
say that we more closely experience this fundamental sense of consciousness. Once
we reflect upon what we are doing, however, or when we realise that we are ‘seen’
by others, our (material) self is thereby produced in the world. What this (perhaps
bizarrely) suggests is that, ultimately, there is no real, essentialist ‘self’ at our core,
but only a self that exists in the world. And whereas pre-reflective consciousness is
fundamentally ungraspable, it nevertheless underpins this very production of the
‘reflected self’ in the first place. This, of course, paves the way for many of Sartre’s
later ideas expounded not only in his philosophical texts (most notably, Being and
Nothingness), but also his literary works, and will be more fully explored in Chap. 4.

3.3.3 Facticity and Transcendence

Since there is no ‘essential self’ for Sartre, we are therefore ultimately free and
ultimately responsible to become who we are, including how it is that we think of
ourselves both in the future and in retrospect. Sartre did not believe in the authority
of god(s), and thus the value of our choices is solely created by human society. But
all of this does not mean to say that we live our lives aimlessly. Rather, human
beings decide on what Sartre calls a ‘fundamental project’, a project not determined
prior to our undertaking it, but as that which is made manifest in the ways that we
act. It is through this project that our choices and our understandings of the world
are grounded. This project itself is contingent – indeed, we can choose to adhere to
it or to abandon it, even if this is not normally what we do. For this reason, we are
also ultimately responsible for how we live and understand our lives. Having said
3.3 Sartrian Existentialism 49

that, Sartre does not deny the situatedness of our existence, or what he calls ‘factic-
ity’. Indeed, freedom for Sartre does not mean that I can be whatever I want, but
rather, I am free to conceptualise the life that I want to live in spite of these uncon-
trollable aspects of our situation.
Sartre’s later writings takes on a slightly different tone in relation to freedom,
however. As we have seen, he recognised that there are social forces at work that
seem to determine us in specific ways. He (2008) does not deny that we internalise
aspects of our social conditioning, and that we may then ‘re-externalise’ these
through our actions. He also does not deny the space we occupy as bodies, and how
this inevitably restricts certain choices we can make, or the ways that we might
understand ourselves. And yet, we always respond to such concrete situations – in
fact, we cannot choose but to respond in some way. As we will explore in Chap. 5,
freedom for Sartre is ontological rather than practical, underpinning our existence
because of the very fact that we are conscious beings.

3.3.4 Bad Faith

Sartre recognises, however, that this is often not how we think about ourselves and
the world. In order to alleviate (or deny) the tension between our situation and our
freedom, we often resort to what he calls ‘bad faith’. Indeed, since Sartre’s concep-
tion of freedom implies an enormous weight of responsibility, it leaves us perpetu-
ally anxious and uncertain. But this is not how we navigate our existence on a daily
basis. When I am buying a coffee, I do not often reflect on the implications my
choices have for the perpetuation of capitalism. Despite the fact that I abhor capital-
ism, I can certainly recognise my complicity in its reproduction through my role as
a consumer. I am aware that if I stopped buying coffee, I may contribute in some
small part to living in accordance with my own fundamental values. And yet, I buy
the coffee anyway. Some may argue that I am determined into buying the coffee –
my job makes me tired, and I therefore need it. Or, because of the very nature of the
world in which I live, I do not have the time or space to really consider the impact
my choice has on wider society. Some might argue that this is not really my respon-
sibility – capitalism is not going to be dismantled because one person decided not to
buy coffee. It is certainly easier to rationalise in this way than to acknowledge the
weight of responsibility that I might have. Many of us do not necessarily have these
thoughts when buying coffee at all since, if we did, the gesture itself would be
impossible to continue.
If his reputation is to be believed, Sartre was no stranger to coffee. But he does
introduce a concept that might explain why it is that we live in this way – i.e. the con-
cept of ‘bad faith’. Simply put, bad faith is the denial of oneself as transcending our
situation, where instead we define ourselves as ‘fixed’ or ‘determined’ within it. Sartre
(2018) provides not uncontroversial examples of bad faith in Being and Nothingness.
The issue of ‘bad faith’ relates to our failure to accept responsibility for the fact that
50 3 Navigating Vocabularies: Transitioning from Policy to Existentialism

we could act in a different way.13 But in order to see ourselves outside of our situation,
we need to first accept that we can become more than what this situation dictates.
Most of us fail to do so, not because we are choosing to be in bad faith in an active
sense, but because we simply do not think to question how we might be perpetuating
it. Indeed, it is often only when something is amiss that such an opportunity arises.
But even then, it is often easier to believe that we are completely determined by our
situation rather than admitting that our inaction is also a choice. Remedying bad faith
requires both an awareness as well as an acceptance of this freedom and responsibil-
ity, but also the accompanying anxiety that doing so entails. It is not just about sincer-
ity, since sincerity itself may also be a way to avoid taking responsibility for ourselves.14
Bad faith thus appears to be something unavoidable in our lives. There are, however,
more or less innocuous examples of this, all of which is explored in Chap. 6.

3.3.5 The Other

Much of Sartre’s earlier writing seems to focus heavily on the individual and their
relationship with the world, one that perhaps I am also guilty of in my focus on the
teacher. But he also discusses the relationship between one individual and another.
For Sartre, much of what defines this relationship is an inescapable sense of uneasi-
ness, since it restricts the capacity of the individual to live in accordance with their
own ‘nature’ as free conscious beings. In accounting for how it is that we engage
with each other, Sartre is interested in describing this phenomenon in a concrete
sense. He is not particularly interested in questions around whether others do exist
since, for him, such questions always presuppose an immediate consciousness of
the Other. He also does not necessarily discuss how it is that we should encounter
other people, although this is something he considers in his later works.
Sartre’s most overt discussion of our existence with others is in Being and
Nothingness, but it also features heavily in his literary work (particularly No Exit) as
well as his (1973) lecture Existentialism and Humanism. A key idea in relation to
this is the ‘look’ of the Other, something he explores through the concept of ‘shame’.

13
The later Sartre introduces the concept of ‘counter-finalities’, where we may try to live in accor-
dance with our fundamental values and yet unforeseeable consequences that go against these val-
ues arise as a result of our (in)action. For instance, perhaps I stop buying coffee in order to disrupt
the perpetuation of capitalism. But perhaps this adversely affects those most disadvantaged by
capitalism, therefore increasing the inequality that was the very reason why I abhor capitalism in
the first place. Counter-finalities are distinct from bad faith in that they are made in ‘good con-
science’, and yet they represent a quasi-tragic tension of intention and consequences, thus present-
ing a more complex picture of individual freedom and responsibility.
14
For instance, I might sincerely decide not to buy coffee any longer because of my awareness of
the damage I am causing as a result. But if my purpose in doing so is to simply feel better about
myself or so that I can gloat to others, or if I convince myself that by cultivating a ‘sincere disposi-
tion’, I will always be in a position of ‘good faith’, then I have not, in fact, avoided being in
bad faith.
3.4 An Educational Focus 51

When I am performing an embarrassing act, I can continue to do so unhampered

until I realise or suspect that another is watching me. This realisation is then accom-
panied by an immediate feeling of exposure, and ultimately, a heightened sense of
awareness of myself as a body present in that moment. Whereas I was previously ‘at
one’ with my actions without my ‘self’ being present at the scene, in being seen by
the Other, this sense of (my)self ‘erupts’. I become defined in ways over which I
have no control – defined, indeed, by the shameful act I am engaged in. This produc-
tion of oneself through being seen comes about through reflection, through gauging
or measuring the situation, through judging myself as ‘one who should feel
ashamed’, thus resulting in an objectification of who I am. Importantly, this can only
happen through our existence in relation to other people.
As Sartre rightly identifies, the Other need not be physically present for this
objectification to arise. As such, I am always existentially exposed to the Other, an
exposure that in turn impacts upon my own self-understanding. Whereas Sartre
argues that we can always respond to our situation, the Other places a special limita-
tion on my freedom, since they are also a conscious, free being. We may struggle
against the ways in which we are recognised by the Other, but this struggle may not
necessarily amount to us being redefined by the Other on our own terms. We may
avow the old trope that one must not care about what others think, but indifference
can only be momentarily sustained. And since we will always exist in the world
with others, this struggle is inescapable. More of this will be discussed in Chap. 7.

3.4 An Educational Focus

The classroom serves as a microcosm where many of Sartre’s ideas make sense – for
instance, being so absorbed in the task at hand that we experience a more fundamen-
tal form of consciousness where we are not present as ‘persons’, or moments that
interrupt this fragile state of being – a student (rightly or wrongly) disrupts the class,
or one becomes attentive to the gaze of the inspector at the back of the room. Perhaps
there are moments when one resorts to bad faith in order to temper the feeling of
exposure, where one sees oneself only in terms of their pre-defined roles as ‘teach-
ers’ rather than as a person. There are also moments where one responds to situa-
tions in other ways, ways that make manifest our inherent freedom and responsibility
to act. In this sense, a conversation with Sartre’s ideas can serve as a touchstone of
sorts, one that allows us to (re)conceptualise teaching in new ways.
In the Chaps. 8 and 9, I consider these questions more directly, in particular how
to account for teaching in light of these ideas. Ultimately, since so much of teacher
accountability is embedded within the paradigm of ‘effectiveness’, the current focus
is often on how to measure or ‘prove’ our accounts of teaching in neat and simpli-
fied forms, often with a debased understanding of evidence and accuracy. Against
this current grain of teacher accountability, we can therefore begin to explore how
Sartre’s ideas might allow us to rethink our accounts of teaching, moving from a
technicist to a form of existentialist sensitivity to concrete experiences in the
52 3 Navigating Vocabularies: Transitioning from Policy to Existentialism

classroom. But in order to do that, his ideas need to be explained more fully and in
more concrete terms – an endeavour which is by no means simple. I will therefore
attempt to situate these key ideas in conversation with examples from the classroom
(largely from my own experience). My hope is that these ideas will resonate with
those who wish to navigate away from the neatness of policy to the messiness of
educational experiences in their accounts, which I argue is better captured in the
messiness of existential thought in Sartre’s body of work. I by no means believe that
Sartre was ‘correct’ or ‘justified’ in everything that he said, which I hope is clear
from what I discuss in the next few chapters. But I do think that there is some value
in his thought, particularly where it comes to ways in which we might account for
concrete, lived experiences and how these might allow us to account for teaching in
a new way. With this in mind, let’s start with the origins of Sartre’s entire philoso-
phy – his understanding of the ‘self’.

References

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Blakewell, S. (2016). At the existentialist café: Freedom, being, and apricot cocktails. Chatto
& Windus.
Bonnett, M. (1994). Children’s thinking: Promoting understanding in primary schools. Continuum
International Publishing Group.
Camus, A. (1957). Nobel banquet speech [online]. Available at: https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/
literature/1957/camus/speech/. Accessed 13 Apr 2020.
Camus, A. (2005). The myth of Sisyphus and other essays. Penguin Classics. Originally published
in 1942.
Carlisle, C. (2019). Philosopher of the heart: The restless life of Søren Kierkegaard. Allen Lane.
de Beauvoir, S. (2005). Memoirs of a dutiful daughter. Harper Perennial.
de Beauvoir, S. (2010). The second sex. Vintage Classics. Originally published in 1949.
de Beauvoir, S. (2018). The ethics of ambiguity. Open Road Media. Originally published in 1947.
Fitzpatrick, K. (2020). Becoming Beauvoir. Bloomsbury Academic.
Gordon, M. (2016). Existential philosophy and the promise of education: Learning from myths and
metaphors. Peter Lang.
Grosby, S. (2013). Max Weber, religion, and the disenchantment of the world. Society, 50, 301–310.
Kierkegaard, S. (2009). Concluding unscientific postscript to philosophical fragments: A mimical-­
pathetical-­dialectical: An existential contribution. Cambridge University Press. Originally
published in 1846.
Kierkegaard, S. (2015). The concept of anxiety: A simply psychologically oriented deliberation in
view of the dogmatic problem of hereditary sin. Liverlight.
Kneller, G. F. (1958). Existentialism and education. Philosophical Library.
Nietzsche, F. (1974). The gay science, with a prelude in rhymes and an appendix of songs
(W. Kaufman, Trans.). Random House. Originally published in 1882.
Nietzsche, F. (1997). Thus spoke Zarathustra. Penguin Classics. Originally published in 1883.
Nietzsche, F. (2010). The anti-Christ. (W. Kaufman, Trans.). SoHo Books, Originally published
in 1895.
Nietzsche, F. (2013). On the genealogy of morality (W. Kaufman, Trans.). Penguin Classics.
Originally published in 1887.
Rowley, H. (2006). Tête-à-tête: The tumultuous lives & loves of Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul
Sartre. Harper Perennial.
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Saeverot, H. (2013). Indirect pedagogy: Some lessons in existential education (educational

futures). Sense Publishers.
Said, E. W. (1993). Culture and imperialism. Chatto & Windus.
Sartre, J. P. (1973). Existentialism and humanism. Methuen Publishing Ltd. Originally published
in 1946.
Sartre, J. P. (2000). Words. Penguin Modern Classics. Originally published in 1963.
Sartre, J. P. (2008). Between existentialism and Marxism. Verso Books.
Sartre, J. P. (2010). The imaginary. Routledge Classics. Originally published in 1940.
Sartre, J. P. (2011). Transcendence of the ego: A sketch for phenomenological description
(S. Richmond, Trans.). Routledge. Originally published in 1937.
Sartre, J. P. (2018). Being and nothingness: An essay on phenomenological ontology (S. Richmond,
Trans.). Blackwell Publishers Ltd. Originally published in 1943.
Taylor, C. (1991). The ethics of authenticity. Harvard University Press.
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Originally published in 1835.
Weber, M. (2010). The protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism. Oxford University Press.
Originally published in 1905.
Chapter 4
Putting Oneself Into Words: Sartre
and the Production of Selfhood

Abstract The basis of Sartre’s overarching existentialist theory can be found in his
early discussions on the ‘self’. This chapter will first provide a brief overview of this
complex idea, pointing to its significance for his later writings in Being and
Nothingness. Concrete examples from educational practice – most notably, a dis-
tinction between ‘reflective’ and ‘pre-reflective’ experiences in the classroom – will
help to illuminate these ideas further. I also consider the kind of ‘self’ that is evalu-
ated in self-evaluation, or in conventional accounts of teaching, such that we may
begin to address the challenges of putting oneself into words, particularly in ways
that require us to forego any uncertainty in these accounts. These examples not only
serve to clarify my interpretation of Sartre’s self, but they also draw our attention to
how we can use them in order to account for the existential conditions of being a
teacher.

Keywords Self · Phenomenology · Teaching · Reflective practice · Sartre ·

Existentialism

4.1 Phenomenology of the Self

In 1937, Sartre (2011) published the Transcendence of the Ego, an essay that would
serve as the basis for his wider existentialist theory in Being and Nothingness.
Throughout this work, he considers three kinds of selfhood - namely, the pre-­
reflective or pre-personal cogito, the produced ego, and the self as an (incomplete
future) project (Barnes, 2003), the latter of which will be discussed in more detail in
the next chapter. Importantly, Sartre does not often use the term ‘self’ and because
of this, his discussion is replete with difficult and elusive terminology. This may be
seen as an attempt to get the reader away from binary thinking – to resist the

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte 55

Ltd. 2022
A. M. Brady, Being a Teacher, Contemporary Philosophies and Theories in
Education 19, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-7323-9_4
56 4 Putting Oneself Into Words: Sartre and the Production of Selfhood

dichotomies that discussions on selfhood often involve (e.g. object and subject),1 as
well as the essentialist connotations that the word ‘self’ can often imply.
It is worth clarifying beforehand some of the terminology he employs, particu-
larly since these stylised terms are perhaps rather jarring. One term that appears
throughout this essay is ‘ego’. For Sartre’s early English translator, Hazel Barnes
(2003, p. 43), ‘ego’ generally refers a ‘bundle of character traits and a structured
personality’ formulated on the basis of how individuals understand themselves.
There are two main variations of this – the transcendental ego (adopted from the
philosophy of Husserl (2012)) and the material ego (stemming from psychological
conceptions of selfhood). In basic terms, ‘ego’ is the kind of self that is assigned to
individuals (by themselves or by others) on the basis of their actions in the world,
and in that sense, it positions them in the world in specific ways. For instance, I may
be seen as an ‘effective’ teacher, since my actions in the classroom have afforded me
this label, and I am therefore positioned in the staffroom as someone who may be
able to give good advice to new teachers. What Sartre is getting at here is not only
these more obvious designations of a person’s character, however – the ego, as we
will later see, is fundamental for my own self-understanding beyond my role as a
teacher.
Often, this positioning leads us to believe in a permanent self or ‘personality’
that persists across time, one that allows us to speak about ourselves in a conven-
tional sense – I am the person I was yesterday, or it will be me that is standing in
front of the class tomorrow morning. And yet, for Sartre this sense of self only exists
in the moment that it is reflected upon. It is not there as some kind of fixed and per-
manent immovable core akin to an appendage or organ (Brady, 2016), but rather, is
produced in the moment we think about ourselves. This idea may appear to be akin
to the later poststructuralist understanding of the self popular in educational research
(e.g. Bonnett, 2009), one that encourages us to see the self as that which is continu-
ally (re)constructed by external forces or ‘discourses’. In some ways, Sartre’s ideas
in relation to the produced self parallel this. For instance, this enduring sense of
‘who I am’ is certainly constructed on the basis of how I exist in the world (with
others), or how I am recognised (e.g. as an effective teacher). But although this
produced self is intimately rooted to the situation in which one finds oneself, it is
nevertheless underpinned by a more fundamental pre-reflective form of conscious-
ness, one that Sartre will later argue is central to the ultimate freedom and responsi-
bility we have in fashioning ourselves.
A second important term that Sartre employs is precisely this - the ‘pre-reflective
cogito’ or ‘pre-reflective consciousness’. This contrasts with the Cartesian under-
standing of selfhood i.e. a ‘pre-existing self that lies at the centre of the world’

1
There are debates, particularly in reference to Being and Nothingness, around whether or not
Sartre was continuing the Cartesian discourse he initially set out to refute, where his understanding
of Being is reduced to categories produced by consciousness. Ironically, there are many who argue
that much of his own discussion remains dualistic. On the other hand, however, some argue that he
remains loyal to the phenomenological tradition in recognising that the conceptual ordering of
Being is limited by the perspectival nature of consciousness (See, for example, Whitford, 1979).
4.1 Phenomenology of the Self 57

(Bonnett, 2009, p. 359). This has led to a number of ‘embarrassing dualisms’ in

philosophy, psychology. and indeed education (Eilis, 2000, p. 23; Sartre, 2018) –
the sharp distinctions between private and public, outer and inner, fact and value,
objectivity and subjectivity, to name a few. These dualisms, derived from Descartes
and embedded in our everyday thinking about the world, come about by failing to
first attend to our direct (conscious) experience of the world. Following the phe-
nomenological tradition in philosophy, Sartre aims in part aims to dissolve these
dualisms by arguing that, firstly, our experience of the world differs from that of
other beings (trees, rocks, benches) because we are fundamentally self-conscious.
Consciousness, rather than a ‘thing’ that exists at our core, can only be understood
in terms of intentionality – i.e. where consciousness is always consciousness of
something. It is always directed outwards in a sense, and whilst the ‘thing’ it is
directed towards (the ‘intentional object’) is an intimate part of consciousness, it is
not consciousness itself. Rather, consciousness is pure intentionality – i.e. without
an internal object, and thus fundamentally without substance. Because of this, con-
scious beings2 are underpinned by a distinct lack of content, an ‘insubstantiality’
that, at the same time, exists in relation to the world and in time - towards a future,
and as situated within a particular context of the past.
For this reason, phenomenologists argue that by focusing only on how things
appear to us, or how we experience the world, conclusions that lead to a dualistic
understanding of humans and of the world cannot be sustained (Blakewell, 2016).
But even though Sartre’s approach is in line with the likes of Husserl, there are fun-
damental disagreements between the two thinkers, and it is on this basis that the
Transcendence was written.
Throughout this chapter, I will examine the conceptions of the self that Sartre
explores in the Transcendence, as well as his own exploration of what this ‘self’ is,
and how it comes to be produced. I will include some examples from the educa-
tional context throughout, but not merely for explanatory purposes. In considering
the ways in which Sartre disrupts some of the more conventional and implicit under-
standings we have of concepts such as the ‘self’, we can also begin to think about
how this line of thinking might disrupt the kinds of educational discourses exempli-
fied in Chap. 2, particularly in their accounts of the experience of teaching.
The Transcendence is divided into three main parts. The first section explores
Husserl’s claims in relation to the transcendental ego, which Sartre argues is based
on a misconception of the fundamental nature of consciousness. For similar rea-
sons, Sartre also reconceptualises the psychological conception of the self – i.e. the
‘material ego’. The second section is dedicated to a discussion on the so-called
‘produced self’. In the third section, Sartre concludes by demonstrating the

2
Sartre is most likely referring to human beings when he speaks of conscious beings. Arguably,
this analysis could also apply to other conscious beings, such as animals. I am also very sympa-
thetic to the argument that Sartre’s description of consciousness is very anthropocentric, and that
by re-thinking the ‘criteria’ for consciousness, we can in fact include many other forms of being.
This would require much discussion beyond the scope of this book and, as such, I use ‘human
beings’ and ‘conscious beings’ interchangeably throughout.
58 4 Putting Oneself Into Words: Sartre and the Production of Selfhood

implications of the distinction between pre-reflective consciousness and the pro-

duced self for themes that would later become central to Being and Nothingness.

4.2 Transcendental and Material Conceptions

The overall aim of the Transcendence is to show that the self is not in conscious-
ness, but rather, ‘is outside, in the world… like the Ego of another’ (Sartre, 2011,
p. 1). In this sense, the self is always rooted to the particular situation in which one
finds oneself (Bonnett, 2010). Sartre does not deny that we have some sense of self,
one that, as we have seen, positions us in the world in particular ways. Nevertheless,
this sense of self is underpinned by a consciousness that is prior to this positioning –
namely, what might be called the pre-reflective or pre-personal cogito.3

4.2.1 The Transcendental Ego

Like Husserl, Sartre argues that in order for there to be consciousness, there must be
consciousness of consciousness – i.e. self-consciousness. Husserl takes this to imply
the existence of an ‘ego’ or a self that is the origin and unifier of conscious thought,
‘a real consciousness, accessible to each and every one of us’ (Sartre, 2011, p. 3).
This in turn implies that consciousness can be divided between an ‘I’ as separate
from the activity of thinking. As a result of this, ‘[c]onsciousness has become
heavier, and [has] lost the character that made it into the absolute existent by virtue
of the fact that it did not exist. It is now heavy and ponderable (Sartre, 2011, p. 5).
For Sartre, however, consciousness is nothing except for the being conscious of
the object towards which it is directed - it is not that object itself. For example, I may
be conscious of a glass of water on the table before me. But it would be bizarre to
claim that that glass of water is ‘in’ my consciousness. Equally, I may be conscious
of the fact that I am angry about something. But it is not that that anger is ‘me’ –
rather, it is directed towards the thing that is affecting my emotional state.4 My
thinking about these ‘intentional objects’ (the glass on the table, or the thing that is

3
For Sartre, this understanding of consciousness as pre-reflective is endangered by Husserl’s tran-
scendental ego, thus destroying what was most fruitful in Husserl’s phenomenology in the first
place – i.e. consciousness as intentionality. Whilst Husserl himself subscribes to the idea that
consciousness is intentional, Sartre takes this one step further by claiming that such intentionality
is all that consciousness is.
4
In The Imaginary, Sartre (2010) rejects the so-called ‘gallery model’ of the mind, which portrays
mental images as immanent – i.e. as in consciousness. Since for Sartre, what we call a ‘mental
image’ is the imaginative consciousness of that object. It is not consciousness itself, since con-
sciousness is without content. This is also true of memories – i.e. the ‘thing’ that my consciousness
is directed towards does not have to be immediately present before me in a concrete sense when I
am remembering it.
4.2 Transcendental and Material Conceptions 59

making me angry) occurs to me after my reflection. And yet consciousness, in the

strict sense of the term, is prior to this. But what, exactly, does pre-reflective con-
sciousness look like then in a concrete sense? And perhaps more importantly, why
is this distinction important?
Say I am remembering a book I was reading on the train yesterday. I can remem-
ber both the act of reading as well as the person – me – involved in this act. In this
moment, I am reflecting on the fact that I am also involved in this act of remember-
ing, and that the person remembering now is the same person who was reading on
the train. For Husserl, the transcendental ego (or ‘self’) is necessary for the appre-
hension of a thought or a memory over time. Without it, how can we understand the
continuity of consciousness – that I was the same person yesterday as I am today?
Surely there must be something that unifies both the reflecting (present) and the
reflected on (past) consciousnesses?
Whilst Sartre accepts that there is a synthesis of both consciousnesses in the
present moment, the consciousness that is remembered is, fundamentally, not the
consciousness that originally moved me to act. When I was absorbed in reading, for
instance, I was purely at ‘one’ with the activity itself, and at that point, I was on the
level of pre-reflective awareness. It is not that I was unconscious in such moments,
since if that were the case, I would not be able to understand what I was reading. But
if I reflected on what I was doing – the external details of the activity (like the dots
and lines on the page that make up the words), or myself as a body present at the
scene - a radical modification in consciousness occurs. At this moment, there is a
movement from the pre-reflective to the reflected plane. I become ‘detached’ from
the activity – no longer ‘plunged into the world of objects’ (Sartre, 2011, p. 8) - and
begin to conceptualise myself as a distinct entity in the world. Perhaps I am unable
to continue reading, being no longer absorbed in the narrative.5 Those moments of
pure absorption most closely represent the fundamental nature of consciousness as
‘pre-reflective’ – and, perhaps most significantly then, the fundamental insubstanti-
ality that exists at our core.
When a teacher first walks into a room full of students - especially for the first
time - they are often accompanied by an uncanny sense of anxiety and exposure,
stemming from a heightened sense of self-awareness. This relates to what Sartre
(2003, p. 260) later calls the ‘irruption of the self’.6 Teachers may feel as though
their ‘self’ has been put on display, a self now open to the forces of evaluation from
others. In such moments, they may resort to a kind of ‘performativity’ in order to
ease this sense of anxiety (Brady, 2019, 2020a). Such anxiety is not just about
whether or not one will be recognised as ‘effective’, but is also circumscribed by

5
This is assuming that reading involves some level of comprehension in order for it to be consid-
ered ‘reading’, opening up further discussion around the differences between performing an activ-
ity such that one ‘loses’ oneself, versus a more performative sense, where one becomes so
self-conscious that they fail to do so. This distinction is exemplified in the example of the ‘perfor-
mative pupil’ in Chap. 6 and is also discussed in Brady (2019).
6
In newer translations, it is referred to as a ‘sudden entrance of the self’ (Sartre, 2018, p. 357). I
have decided to use the original translation by H. E. Barnes (Sartre, 2003).
60 4 Putting Oneself Into Words: Sartre and the Production of Selfhood

potential shame or mockery, by being seen as an ‘imposter’ of sorts, or, indeed,

purely by the fact that one is a body present in the classroom in front of others,
‘seen’ in a way that is beyond one’s control. Conventionally speaking, we think of
this ‘self’ as pre-existing the moment the teacher arrives in the classroom, and as
enduring in that sense. But it nevertheless only ‘erupts’ when she enters the room
and becomes self-aware. In that sense, it exists only upon reflection.
Let’s say that this heightened self-awareness recedes as the lesson progresses, as
the teacher and the students become more absorbed in the educational moment.
Arguably, both are engaged with one another on a fundamentally pre-reflective
level. It can take just one destabilising moment in the classroom for one’s ‘self’ to
erupt – a student comments on what the teacher is wearing; another teacher enters
the classroom to help address the racket they hear in the hallway. The classroom is
thus always underpinned by a fragile but constant oscillation between the pre-­
reflective and the reflected state, thus highlighting the distinction that Sartre dis-
cusses in his essay (Brady, 2020b).7 This oscillation is not something to be overcome,
since the production of the self is very much central to how we navigate our day to
day lives. And whilst this produced self is not arbritrary, it is something that we
negotiate (with), as explored in the next chapter. But thinking of ourselves only in
terms of this sense of self represents what Sartre will later call ‘bad faith’ - a denial
of the fundamental ‘pre-reflectivity’ of conscious human beings. Interestingly,
many argue that a good practitioner should always reflect on what they are doing,
not simply on action, but in action (e.g. Sarivan, 2011; Schön, 1983; Zwozdiak-­
Myers, 2012). But much like the case of reading, unreflective absorption is also
necessary if the educational activity is to ensue (Brady, 2020b).
When we talk about inspection systems like self-evaluation, what sort of ‘self’ is
being evaluated? Who or what is put into words in such accounts? In some ways, the
ways in which we ‘measure’ effective teachers implies a separation between teach-
ers as ‘selves’ and teaching as ‘activity’, a detachment therefore between the teacher
and the educational moment. This, of course, has a range of implications for the
very idea of reflective practice, including the extent to which it can ever fully cap-
tures what is going on. It is particularly pertinent when such reflections are used to
offer an account of oneself, and when one is held to account by virtue of this. How
might Sartre’s conception of selfhood help us make sense of this? In order to under-
stand this more fully, let us turn to Sartre’s second account of the ego – the so-called
material ego.

7
Of course, these disruptions are often necessary. Whilst such questions are important, my interest
here is more so on accounting for the ways in which we might experience this ‘absorption’ without
resorting to claims about what ought to be the case.
4.2 Transcendental and Material Conceptions 61

4.2.2 The Material Ego

Sartre argues that the most tangible distinction between the pre-reflective and the
reflected ego can be found in the psychological or ‘materialist’ conceptions of the
self, particularly in thinkers such as Rochefoucauld.8 de la Rochefoucauld (2015)
posits that the drive of amour propre9 sits behind all our actions and yet conceals
itself in various ways. These unconscious drives demonstrate the necessity of a sub-
stantial self that acts as a magnet for how we see the world. For Sartre, however, this
conception arises from a confusion over the essentially distinctive structure of
reflective and unreflected acts. It also implies that conscious action has a degree of
determinism that he later denies (Detmer, 2005).
How might we understand this distinction? Sartre turns to a more familiar exam-
ple. Let’s imagine my good friend Pierre needs help. When I see him in this state,
my immediate and sole focus is on him. His visible suffering becomes ‘an objective
world of things and actions that have been performed or are going to be performed’
(Sartre, 2011, p. 10). Amour-propre moralists see this desire (to help) as something
unconscious - I act in order to satiate my unconscious desire to end this uncomfort-
able, distressing situation. The situation, along with my unconscious drives or dis-
positions, determine how I will act. But for Sartre, these unconscious motives are
interpretations of why I act after the fact, arising as a result of my reflection on the
situation and are not what necessarily moved me to act in a more immediate sense –
i.e. the pre-reflective consciousness as intentionally directed towards Pierre-in-need.
When one is absorbed in the act of teaching, so much so that they are not aware
of the lesson objectives in a reflective sense, then what precisely is it that moves one
to act? There are examples of teaching when one enters a kind of ‘autopilot’ mode,
engaging fully in the educational activity with students, often without explicit refer-
ence to targets or goals or standards of effectiveness (except, perhaps, after the
activity is reflected upon). It seems unlikely that what moves a teacher to act is
explicit standards for good practice, since these are not necessarily at the forefront
of one’s consciousness in each and every moment of teaching. Of course, an engage-
ment with these standards can shape what we think about teaching. But it would be
naïve to assume that they condition teachers in such a way that they completely
remove any exercise of so-called ‘subjective’ judgement. Perhaps certain judge-
ments are performed on the basis of an unconscious desire to control situations in
the classroom, which is better explained by Rochefoucauld’s drive of amour-­propre.
But is that always the case? And even if that is the case in this instance, can they
serve as predictions of how a teacher will behave in every situation? For Sartre,
these are instead rationalisations that come later, and they require a more fundamen-
tal ‘pre-reflective’ form of consciousness for teaching to even occur in the first place.

8
Francois de la Rochefoucauld (1613–1680) was a famous French nobleman and writer of maxims
and memoirs, often celebrated for his clear-cut and unsentimental view of humankind.
9
Taken up later by Rousseau (2001), amour propre characterises a love of oneself founded upon
the approval or recognition from others, in contrast with the purer ‘self-love’ (amour de soi).
62 4 Putting Oneself Into Words: Sartre and the Production of Selfhood

What this implies, then, is that the self exists only upon reflection, even though it
then comes to define me as a ‘(certain kind of) person’ in the world. In contrast to
this, the more fundamental pre-reflective state is ‘pre-personal’. This pre-personal
cannot be adequately or fully captured – indeed, put into words – since through
reflection, this immersion is disrupted by the rationalisations we offer, and the ways
in which we define ourselves thereafter. Indeed, when educationalists10 refer to the
importance of ‘reflection-in-action’ – i.e. reflecting on why I am doing X in the
moment I am carrying it out – is, for Sartre, akin listening to oneself talk. Reflection
on action is not wholly distinct from this, then, since it also means offering
­rationalisations as to why I act in a certain way in the classroom in order to adjust
or improve my practice as a teacher accordingly. What is important, however, is to
recognise that in reflection, I am also producing myself. It is therefore impossible to
fully capture ‘who I am’, since who I am is fundamentally pre-reflective.

4.3 The Produced Self

What this then implies is that there is no persistent self within us, expect that which
is produced upon reflection. But even so, it is undeniable that we experience a sense
of self, without which we could not speak about ‘who we are’. Indeed, this sense of
self is implied in the ways that we speak about ourselves and others, in phrases such
as ‘I am who I am’ or ‘He is Irish’, or even, ‘I took the tube yesterday’. In the final
sections of the Transcendence, Sartre sets out to examine how this sense of self
comes about. Ultimately, whilst this sense of self is not arbitrary, it need not be a
‘totalising essence’ that determines who I am and who I will always be (Bonnett,
2009). Rather, it is continually re-constituted through actions we perform in the
world (with others). And this is precisely because our sense of self is underpinned
by pre-reflective awareness, or what Sartre would later characterise as a fundamen-
tal nothingness or ‘freedom’ at the core of human beings.
Through our interpretation of our actions and experiences, Sartre argues that we
produce a state that seems to be persistent in nature - a ‘self’ that acts as a unifier of
these discrete moments. But the discrete moments and the process of interpretation
are ontologically distinct – i.e. one is on the reflective plane, whilst the other is fun-
damentally pre-reflective. This explains why our interpretation or accounts of situ-
ations never fully suffice, since the consciousness that precedes our reflection is
fundamentally ungraspable.

10
I am referring to the popular distinction made by Donald Schön (1983). Arguably, the ways in
which Schön’s ideas have been applied in educational policies is most likely less complex than he
had originally intended. Nevertheless, the idea is that good professionals are able to reflect not only
on action, but in action as well, i.e. making the necessary adjustments to one’s practice in the
moment in which they are carrying out a task.
4.3 The Produced Self 63

4.3.1 Uncertain States

Let’s return to our friend Pierre, who it seems I now hate:

I see Pierre, I feel a kind of profound upheaval of revulsion and anger on seeing him (I am
already on the reflective level) … I cannot be in error when I say: I feel at this moment a
violent revulsion towards Pierre. But is this experience of revulsion hatred? Obviously
not… After all, I have hated Pierre a long time and I think I will always hate him. So an
instantaneous consciousness of revulsion cannot be my hatred. Even if I limit it to what it
is, to an instantaneous moment, I will not be able to continue talking of hatred. I would say:
‘I feel a revulsion for Pierre at this moment’, and in this way I will not implicate the future.
But precisely because of this refusal to implicate the future, I would cease to hate (Sartre,
2011, p. 13).

The revulsion I feel towards Pierre is immediate - it appears without reflection from
the moment I encounter him, in memory or in person. The state of hatred, however,
only comes about through my unification each of those discrete moments of revul-
sion – i.e. by reflecting on the (immediate) sense of revulsion I feel towards Pierre,
I conclude that I hate him. Although both hatred and revulsion appear at the same
time, the revulsion is prior to the ‘state of hatred’. In fact, it is only on the basis of
this revulsion that the ‘state of hatred’ is offered as an explanation for how I feel.
Unlike immediate reactions that are by nature discrete and ephemeral, we tend to
see states as ‘permanent’ – i.e. as continuing beyond the present reactions that arise.
For instance, I might believe I have always hated Pierre, and that I will continue to
hate him after he has left. But I only feel revolted by him when he is present to me
in some form.
And although Pierre is repugnant to me at this moment, I cannot be certain that I
will hate him forever, that my feelings toward him in the future will not change. Of
course, this doesn’t mean that my hatred towards him is hypothetical or illusionary.
The uncertainty of our reflections simply reveal that reflection itself has two forms –
pure and impure.11 Whereas impure reflection implies something infinite and
unchangeable about how I feel, pure reflection maintains this hatred within a given
moment, without assuming that it will be that way in the future. Even though both
forms of reflection are apprehending the same ‘data’ (i.e. the situation where Pierre
arrives), only in impure reflection do we affirm more than what we ‘know’. For
Sartre, it is on the basis of impure reflection that an essentialist and deterministic
sense of self arises.
Say I have a student who irks me in some way – they never do their work, they
are disruptive, or perhaps they are annoyingly keen on being a ‘good’ student (it
would be dubious to claim that one is always irritated for the ‘right’ reasons). What
Sartre might say is that my annoyance is not the result of some permanent state.

11
Sartre (1975, 2001) admits that he cannot offer an example of what would constitute ‘pure’ over
‘impure’ reflection. In his later works, he implies that it is nearly impossible to distinguish sincere
actions from gestures, but that perhaps the best we can do is to have ‘critical self-awareness’ of
ourselves in the past. There are undeniable ethical implications for this that Sartre does not admit
to, however.
64 4 Putting Oneself Into Words: Sartre and the Production of Selfhood

Rather, it only arises in certain instances when that student confronts me, when I
recall them in memory, when I rant about them to my friends and colleagues. My
annoyance arises immediately and without reflection, only being ‘named’ as irrita-
tion upon my interpretation of the situation. I may conclude from this that this stu-
dent is an ‘annoying person’, or that I am an overly ‘irritable teacher’. The ‘self’ that
I identify (and perhaps try to improve) by virtue of this reflection is the produced
self, as separate from the irritation that causes me to define myself or others in those
terms. Fundamentally, however, those immediate reactions do not determine who
me or the student is or will be – this self that is produced is purely confined within
the moment I reflect on it.
Not only can these interpretations not account for the state that I may be in the
future, they also cannot completely verify the state I am currently in. Indeed, the
language I use to describe how I feel (and by extension, ‘who I am’) fails to fully
capture the feelings that arise. Such reactions also do not signify something perma-
nent within me – perhaps my attitude towards the student will change as time goes
on, or I will become more relaxed in my demeanour. Of course, this does not sug-
gest that my feelings are ‘blind’, without any basis or grounding as such. It does,
however, call into question a number of assumptions concerning ‘truth’ claims (as
accuracy) that are made in the evaluation of teaching: the possibility of pure or
‘objective’ reflections about oneself and others, or the seeming predictability inher-
ent in the causal assumptions harboured by improvement discourses in education,
for example. It also points to the challenges of accounting for oneself in regimes
where one is ‘measured’ or held to account in reference to the accuracy of their
statements. As I will later argue in Chap. 8, this calls instead for a rethinking of
accountability – a move from a concern with accuracy to a concern with sincerity.
Fundamentally, when we reflect on the reasons for acting or feeling a certain way in
the classroom, when we attempt to predict the behaviour of myself and others in the
future, when we speak about ‘effective’ or ‘ineffective’ practice - these rationalisa-
tions are always after the fact and not ‘there’ in the moment we are attempting to
grasp. Because of this, our reflections are always underpinned by a sense of uncer-
tainty – and so, too, our sense of ‘self’.

4.3.2 Actions and Dispositions

For Sartre, the self is produced through our interpretations of actions in the world –
in fact, it can only be understood as a ‘sum’ of our actions in the past. Action here
includes both the more ‘visible’ kinds - driving a car, playing the piano - as well as
‘mental’ ones, such as reasoning, doubting, meditating, theorising, and indeed,
learning. Sartre emphasises that a strict boundary between these two kinds of action
should not be drawn, since both ‘physical’ and ‘mental’ actions lead to the (re)pro-
duction of our sense of self. Importantly, the self that we produce through our con-
scious efforts to interpret our actions are first and foremost based on a pre-reflective
and more immediate form of consciousness.
4.3 The Produced Self 65

In fact, pre-reflective consciousness is necessary for any action to be pursued or,

indeed, put into words. In order to explore this further, Sartre turns to a third aspect
of the production of the self, namely ‘qualities’. Qualities include tastes, talents,
instincts, and tendencies – i.e. that which is often used as definitions of one’s char-
acter or as rationalisations that explain what kind of a person might act in this way
when in this state or situation. For our purposes here, I will refer to ‘psychical dis-
positions’ (Sartre, 2011, p. 16), since this seems to be the more conventional way in
which we understand someone’s personality. For instance, I may come to believe
that I have certain character traits that cause me to act in a particular way – because
I am hot-headed, I am more disposed towards acting violently when in a state of
hatred. I might extend these to other areas of my lived experiences as well – my
irritability in part explains why I am single, why I am introverted, why I like to plan
everything in advance etc. In other words, I define myself and my (future) actions
on the basis of these dispositions. And yet, my ‘knowledge’ of these only come
about because of the way that I have acted in certain situations. Indeed, dispositions
are produced on the basis of the interpretations of my (past) actions in the world -
they do not necessarily determine how I (will always) act (Brady, 2020c).
For instance, we might think of teaching not only as profession that requires
pedagogical and knowledge expertise, but also particular dispositions or character
traits – charisma, empathy, articulateness. Teachers are also often expected to culti-
vate dispositions in their students. In the Self-Evaluation Guidelines, this is one of
the key areas that teachers are evaluated on. Moreover, teachers need also to ‘prove’
that such dispositions have been developed in students or in themselves as teachers.
But if we are to follow Sartre, then a number of limitations in this line of think-
ing arises.
The first relates to how we might measure dispositions. Measurement requires
explicitness about a teacher’s practices, not only so that they can reflect on what can
be improved, but also so that the account of this evaluation is articulable in the first
place. To do so requires a belief in the direct and essential connection between
actions, dispositions, and who that person ‘is’. Let’s imagine that a teacher has cul-
tivated the disposition of ‘fairness’ in a student, evidenced by the way that that stu-
dent appears to treat others. If in certain instances he does not act in that way, we
may say that it is ‘out of character’, or that ‘he is not himself today’, or perhaps that
more work needs to be done to improve his behaviour. But what if the student is
only performing these acts of fairness in order to manipulate others, or in order to
gain favour with the teacher and with other students for less noble reasons. Surely
such motivations would affect our interpretation of his actions, and by extension,
our definition of ‘who he is’. Indeed, our reflections do not capture a self that is the
cause of these actions or our thoughts about the student. Rather, these reflections
produce that student is. And although, for Sartre, such interpretations are not to be
dismissed as arbitrary, since they are all that this ‘self’ amounts to, it would be
incorrect to assume that we can know a person in full by only reflecting on their
behaviour.
Secondly, the Self-Evaluation Guidelines contain contradictions in their assump-
tions about what is cultivated, and in fact, what ‘cultivation’ means. On the one
66 4 Putting Oneself Into Words: Sartre and the Production of Selfhood

hand, they call for the holistic development of students such that they can become
their ‘own person’. On the other hand, students should leave school with certain
desirable traits, ones seemingly tied to the maintenance of economic and demo-
cratic values (e.g. NCCA, 2015). Sartre offers us another lens here – the idea that
whilst the cultivation of dispositions is an inevitable part of the production of self-
hood, dispositions do not exist at our ‘core’, and are fundamentally distinct from the
pre-reflective consciousness that does. So even if we were to cultivate certain atti-
tudes, does that therefore guarantee how a person will behave in the future? The
short answer is ‘no’, but I will explore this more fully in the next chapter.
Finally, if we are to understand dispositions as innate and persistent, and if one
is completely determined to act in a certain way because of these, how then do we
assign responsibility for their actions? In his account of bad faith (explored in Chap.
5), Sartre ultimately denies the deterministic account that dispositions imply. For
him, dispositions are not inborn characteristics that determine the ‘type’ of person I
am. Rather, they represent patterns (choices) of behaviour that produce the sense in
which I am disposed towards certain ways of acting, and that I am therefore a ‘cer-
tain kind of person’. These choices depend on the context in which they arise, as
well as the norms and values that determine which choices are appropriate (or not).
Importantly, Sartre does not wish to imply that the pre-reflective cogito is the
‘subject’, and the reflected self is the ‘object’. Whilst the produced self is not pre-­
reflective consciousness, the two are nevertheless intimately connected. Also, by
referring to this self as produced, Sartre is not suggesting that it is arbitrary in any
sense. On the contrary, it is on the basis of this produced self that I exist in the world
in a concrete sense. This produced self explains the exposure that I feel when I am
self-conscious, when I am hypervigilant of how I am acting, of how I am coming
across to others. It is an embodied self that does exist, albeit not ‘within’ us but in
the world. This is particularly important, for Sartre, when considering the ways in
which we exist in relation to others.

4.3.3 The Self and the Other

Since my ‘self’ is in the world rather than ‘in me’, it is only given on the basis of
‘observation, approximation, anticipation, experience’ (Sartre, 2011, p. 22). For this
reason, Sartre concludes that the produced self is ‘too present for one to look at it
from a really external point of view’ (Sartre, 2011, p. 22). As such, one must always
take a ‘step back’ in order to understand this embodied self, something that can only
be done as if I were viewing myself as another person would:
Am I lazy or hardworking? I will find out, no doubt, if I ask those who know me... Or else,
I can collect the facts that concern me and try to interpret them as objectively as if I were
dealing with another person. But it would be futile to ask the me directly and try to take
advantage of its intimacy to get to know it. Quite the contrary: it is this intimacy that bars
our route. Thus, ‘to know oneself well’ is inevitably to look at oneself from the point of
view of someone else.
4.4 Freedom, Responsibility and the Self 67

This necessity of looking at oneself through an ‘othered’ perspective not only dem-
onstrates that the material self exists in the world, but it also shows us that the pre-­
reflective cogito is ‘by nature, elusive’ (Sartre, 2011, p. 23):
[It] never appears except when we are not looking at it…it is never seen except ‘out of the
corner of one’s eye.’ The moment I turn my gaze toward it… it vanishes (Sartre, 2011, p. 23).

In this case, the self that we evaluate in something like self-evaluation is the self that
is produced, one that can only be looked at through an ‘othered’ lens. This in part
relates to the feeling of alienation that putting oneself into words can involve, and
the idea that, for Sartre (2018, p. 111), this very act of accounting for oneself is
simultaneously a ‘constant disavowal’ of oneself, such that no account of ourselves
will ever fully suffice. It also, as we will now explore, has significant implications
for Sartre’s most steadfast ideas – i.e. the idea that we are condemned to be free.

4.4 Freedom, Responsibility and the Self

In sum, Sartre argues for a distinction between the fundamental pre-reflective con-
sciousness and the self that is produced through the ways we interpret actions, states
and dispositions in the world. This produced self is often studied in psychology,
since it can function as an object of study in a way that the fundamental elusiveness
of consciousness cannot. Similarly, the kind of ‘self’ implied in self-evaluation –
that which can be measured, tested, improved – is precisely this produced sense of
self. In any situation that involves offering an account of oneself, we inevitably
produce a picture of ‘who we are’, one that therefore involves taking an ‘othered’
stance towards ourselves. The important thing is not to overcome this process of
production, but to nevertheless remain cautious that the act of production does not
deny our fundamental freedom and responsibility to engage with ourselves, and to
accept the inherent unpredictability that our being in the world involves.
Sartre admits that this reconceptualization of who we are can be quite unnerving,
given that it posits each individual as someone fundamentally unstable. He recog-
nises, however, that most of us do live our lives with particular patterns of behav-
iour. But the very fact that one can act unpredictably demonstrates a freedom at our
core – a freedom we cannot grasp, and that is therefore inarticulable in words except
through producing ourselves. It is here, then, that we find what Sartre calls ‘the
absolute and irremediable anguish, this fear of oneself, that in [his] view is constitu-
tive of pure consciousness’ (Sartre, 2011, p. 28). Perhaps, therefore, the function of
the produced self is practical – indeed, it gives us a sense of something solid through
which we feel that we can know ourselves and others. This is most certainly the case
in educational accounts of our practices, which I will explore in more depth towards
the end of the book. Sartre considers these ideas further through the lens of two of
his key concepts – i.e. freedom and facticity – towards which we will now turn.
68 4 Putting Oneself Into Words: Sartre and the Production of Selfhood

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Chapter 5
Freedom and Facticity in the Classroom

Abstract In this chapter, we will continue our exploration of Sartre’s early thought,
this time focusing on his concepts of ‘freedom’ and ‘facticity’, which build upon his
broader ideas around selfhood. Importantly, for Sartre, ‘freedom’ is understood in
an ontological rather than practical sense. It does not deny what he calls ‘facticity’ –
namely, the ways in which the individual is situated within the world in particular
ways. Towards the end of the chapter, I will work through these ideas in relation to
classroom experiences – firstly, as a way to question conventional accounts of teach-
ing and the problematic dualisms that this so often entails, and secondly, as a way to
rethink one’s responses in the classroom as fundamentally shaping what is brought
to light therein.

Keywords Freedom and facticity · Existentialism · Sartre · Teaching

5.1 Sartre’s ‘Phenomenological Ontology’

Sartre’s (2018) early work takes a phenomenological approach to his study of being
human. Ultimately, this means that the focus is on what is it that we experience as con-
scious beings (and not, for instance, whether those experiences are ‘right’ (ethics) or
‘accurate’ (metaphysics)). As explored in the previous chapter, this includes our experi-
ence of selfhood. In this chapter, we will first examine Sartre’s conception of what he
calls ‘freedom’ and ‘facticity’ – what this means for how we experience the world, and
also, what this implies for offering an account of the experiences of teaching.
Sartre discusses these ideas not only in his philosophical work, but also in his
literary texts. In one famous scene from his novel, Nausea, the protagonist,
Roquentin1 encounters a chestnut tree in the park, and he begins to feel nauseated

1
Roquentin is a neurotic character – by most standards, he could be said to be suffering from a
mental illness. But he nevertheless serves as a conduit for some of Sartre’s main ideas – particu-
larly in relation to the ‘nauseating’ experiences of freedom and facticity. Although histrionic, he
helps make accessible the more taxing of Sartre’s philosophical writings.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte 69

Ltd. 2022
A. M. Brady, Being a Teacher, Contemporary Philosophies and Theories in
Education 19, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-7323-9_5
70 5 Freedom and Facticity in the Classroom

when confronted by its brute existence - its roots ‘[k]notty, inert, nameless’ (Sartre,
2000, p. 51). Roquentin realises that the tree exists beyond its ‘function’ or the
words we might use to describe it. It lacks any inherent purpose for its existence in
that sense – it is just ‘there’. And yet, when considering himself, Roquentin sees that
he is not simply ‘there’ in the same way that a chestnut tree is. Instead, he is a being
with consciousness, distinct from the tree as that which simply ‘is what it is; opaque;
[u]ncreated without reason for being’ (Sartre, 2018, p. 42). In Sartre’s magnum
opus, Being and Nothingness, he also distinguishes between two kinds of ‘being’ –
what he calls being-in-itself or brute existence (i.e. the tree) and being-for-itself or
consciousness. It is on the basis of this distinction that we can come to understand
‘freedom’ and ‘facticity’.
Importantly, Sartre is careful not to use words that are loaded with meaning when
describing these two forms of being, instead attempting to ‘re-invent’ language in
order to describe being at its most fundamental level. For this reason, although I
(and others) often use terms like ‘consciousness’ and ‘brute existence’, Sartre is
careful not to do so. As we have seen in the previous chapter, this is also the case
with the term ‘self’. Ultimately, this fundamental nature of being is best understood
not in words, but rather, on the basis of immediate and pre-reflective experiences
(e.g. the nausea that Roquentin experiences when the contingency of existence
comes to the forefront of his thinking, or as we will later see, the shame that arises
when I am caught doing something inappropriate). Sartre thus approaches the ques-
tion of the lived experience of consciousness through ‘phenomenological ontology’,2
an approach that contains stylised terminologies that I will first briefly explore.

5.1.1 Being-In-Itself and Being-For-Itself

Earlier phenomenologists argue that consciousness ‘brings about’ the phenomena

or the object it perceives – i.e. it produces objects in their meaningfulness. When I
see a pear in a fruit bowl, it is because of me that it appears as a ‘pear’ and not, for
instance, a collection of atoms. But for Sartre (2018, p. 6), this pear can appear to
me in an ‘infinite series’ of ways. For example, I can hold a pear in my hand and
move it around such that it appears to me as different on all sides - in relation to the

2
Sartre has been accused on conflating ontology with metaphysics, particularly in relation to his
separation of the two forms of being, most notably perhaps by Heidegger. One tension relates to
Sartre’s usage of the term ‘existent’ implies that it does not exist independently of consciousness,
but neither is it a ‘representation’ that exists in consciousness. There are also tensions in Sartre that
come from his attempts to combine ontology and phenomenology. His ontological approach
reduces Being to a set of categories but his conceptual framework is somewhat insufficient to
explain what it purports to describe. For Merleau-Ponty in particular, the in-itself/for-itself distinc-
tion does not translate into conscious experience but, as Whitford (1979) points out, this is because
Merleau-Ponty erroneously saw the ‘for-itself’ as completely interchangeable with ‘conscious-
ness’ and ‘subject’. Such terms do not fully capture the insubstantiality of the for-itself since they
are loaded with meaning.
5.1 Sartre’s ‘Phenomenological Ontology’ 71

position of my hand, where it is placed, the background that frames it. There are
also infinite temporal dimensions – what this pear looked like a moment ago, how it
will look in the future. All of these dimensions refer to the ‘totality’ of the object.
But since totality does not appear to me at once, I must rely on interpreting (‘tran-
scending’) these in order to be able to identify objects in the world. From this, Sartre
argues that whilst the meaning of the pear and the pear itself are intimately related,
they are not reducible to one another. The pear exists in-itself, regardless of how (or
whether or not) I perceive it. And yet, the meaning of that pear very much depends
on my conscious perception, or what is also called ‘transcendence’ or
being-for-itself.
Transcendence - or in more simple terms, conscious perception - is solely the
immediate awareness of things, as related to but distinct from what it is aware of.
Since the meaning of things comes to us immediately, however (e.g. when I see the
pear in the fruit bowl, I am immediately able to identify it) it is nearly impossible to
talk about brute existence (the pear) and our consciousness of it as separate.
Importantly for Sartre, both forms of being require each other in order to exist –
consciousness is necessary for perception and meaning-making in the world, and
brute existence is necessary for the world to be perceived in the first place. In some
ways, Sartre appears to be dualistic in his thinking here – indeed, to what extent
might consciousness be understood as ‘subjective’ and brute existence as
‘objective’?3 Importantly, these dualisms are purely conceptual in nature – they say
nothing about how it is that we experience the world or ourselves within it. This
again points to the differences between – and, indeed, challenges of - ‘accessing’
being through words and through immediate experiences.

5.1.2 Concrete Nothingness

What this implies is that our perception of the world is not only in relation to what
is immediately in front of us, but also what is not there. Indeed, because the infinite
series of appearances of objects are not immediately present to us, our conscious
perception always transcends what is present at that moment to include a perception
of what is absent. Imagine that I go to a café to meet a friend, Pierre, who it turns
out is not there. I may feel a certain surprise at this. I may question what is going on.
Or perhaps, I feel anxious about the situation. Of course, my ‘judging’ that Pierre is
absent only occurs because I expect him to be there, and yet, it would be strange to
say that this experience is ‘all in my head’. Even though these reactions (e.g. frustra-
tion, concern) arise immediately and pre-reflectively regardless of how quickly I

3
In dividing being-in-itself and being-for-itself, Sartre is often accused of maintaining the ‘embar-
rassing dualisms’ that the phenomenologists wished to undermine. Merleau-Ponty argued that
Sartre’s ideas very much followed the rationalist discourse of Descartes, maintaining the problem-
atic subject/object dualism. See Stewart (1998) and Whitford (1979) for a more in-depth discus-
sion on this.
72 5 Freedom and Facticity in the Classroom

can offer explanations for Pierre’s absence, this experience reveals a concrete reality
about the very situation itself. It relates to what Sartre calls ‘concrete nothingness’.
Such feelings not only signal an encounter with absence in the world, however.
They also reveal a ‘questioning attitude’ that underpins consciousness more
broadly - a ‘lack’ that makes conscious beings distinct from brute existence. An
empty chair does not question situations in this way - it is simply ‘there’ without any
sense of time or, indeed, the presence or absence of itself or other things. Because
of this, Sartre argues that brute existence is ‘stable’ in its existence. On the contrary,
consciousness - underpinned by this questioning attitude - is inherently unstable. As
we saw in Chap. 3, since (conscious) human beings are underpinned by pure inten-
tionality, and thus we exist without a stable sense of ‘self’, but a self that is constant
striving (Barnes, 2003).
Of course, human beings are not only ‘free-floating’ consciousnesses. They are
also embodied in specific ways. Humankind are thus defined by both of these modes
of being – pre-reflective consciousness and embodiment in the world. And it is for
this reason that our existence is always in tension, much as Roquentin experiences
himself in Nausea. In order to examine this, let us look more deeply into the concept
of ‘lack’ or ‘striving’ that sits at the core of conscious human beings, including how
this relates to our being in the world and, indeed, how one might put oneself and
one’s experiences into words. This, as we will later see, has several implications for
our understanding of educational experiences.

5.2 The Pursuit of Meaning

As we have seen in Chap. 3, the relationship between consciousness as pure inten-

tionality and our sense of self produced through actions in the world is complex. It
is not a relation between ‘self-as-subject’ and ‘self-as-object’, since this would
imply that our embodied selves are merely objects we do not have an intimate con-
nection with. For Sartre (2011), conscious human beings are not made up of a per-
manent self but rather a lack of identity. In spite of this, we are persistent in our
attempts to understand ourselves, to pinpoint ‘who we are’ with some sense of cer-
tainty. And yet, this striving to account for ourselves further reinforces the perpetual
instability at our core.
This is not to suggest that, as conscious beings, we live our lives in accordance
to some ‘blind instinct’, however, since consciousness is always directed towards
the situation in which it exists. This relates to what Sartre and others have referred
to as being-in-the-world. Indeed, situatedness, or what Sartre calls ‘facticity’, refers
on one level to the unchangeable circumstances of our existence: facts that are not
necessarily subject to manipulation in any ‘physical’ sense: our bodies, for instance,
or the fact that we exist in a particular time in history. Facticity has no inherent
5.2 The Pursuit of Meaning 73

justification – the way we are situated is purely accidental.4 But in the face of this,
we are often driven to provide a foundation for our own existence - to justify why
we have these particular bodies, why we were born in this place, or, indeed, why we
were born at all! Importantly, to say that facticity is ‘accidental’ does not mean to
say that it is arbitrary. Whilst my situation does not provide inherent justification for
my existence, it is nevertheless the context that frames my experiences of myself
and of the world.
Thus, individuals continually try but fail to find a concrete expression of them-
selves – to say with complete certainty ‘who I am’. Often, however, this tension is
obscured in some way, only becoming visible when ‘questionable’ situations appear.
What Sartre means by ‘questioning’ here is not the kind that comes about via reflec-
tion or critical thought. It is an immediate experience that refers to our relation to
the external world, the concrete nothingness that we experience when, for example,
Pierre is absent from the café. Through immediate forms of questioning, Sartre
argues that, for humans, existence precedes essence: I am thrown into the world by
birth, and through navigating this existence I continually attempt to formulate an
essence or identity for myself – in short, to say ‘who I am’. Yet, ‘who I am’ is
always in question, and our responses to this always falls short. In this sense, any
account I give of myself will always be insufficient, uncertain, and ‘incomplete’
(Sartre, 2018, p. 136). And for Sartre, it is in this very uncertainty – characterised by
the perpetual striving to define oneself - that our fundamental freedom is best
understood.
Indeed, this very ability to question myself demonstrates that I have no inherent
or ‘fixed’ self, but only a self is that is continually (re)produced through my actions
in the world. This produced self is partly contingent upon others, as we will explore
more fully in Chap. 7. But it is also based on the ‘fundamental project’ that I set for
myself, towards which we will now turn.

5.2.1 The Fundamental Project

The fundamental project is something we ‘choose’, but not in the sense that it is
selected or decided before we act on the world (e.g. ‘I want to be this kind of person
in 10 years’ time’). Rather, it arises in the ‘very upsurge of consciousness’ (Sartre,
2018), and only becomes manifest within human conduct itself. It intimately relates
to the kinds of values we hold as human beings, and the ways in which we want to

4
This fundamental groundlessness is not shared by other thinkers (Catalano, 1985, 2010). Descartes
seemed to understand this contingency on one level, but by using this as a way to prove the exis-
tence of God, he therefore offers a justification for existence. Heidegger also tries to justify our
existence (according to Sartre) by claiming that in realising this contingency, one can learn to live
more authentically. Sartre was on quest to find an ontology congruent with an atheistic worldview,
however, based on the idea that there is fundamentally no ‘reason’ for our existence outside of
our own.
74 5 Freedom and Facticity in the Classroom

‘be’ in the world. But when Sartre speaks of ‘values’, he is not talking about ethical
values per se, but rather, the ways in which we make judgements about, or evaluate,
a situation, and the ways in which that situation is brought to light on that basis.
Indeed, how a situation appears to us depends wholly upon our conscious percep-
tion of it, an interpretation of which is intimately connected to our fundamental
project.
On a fundamental level, then, the project relates to how we orient ourselves in the
world - what it is that we do with our lives, what we have committed ourselves to,
what options we subsequently see available to us. In this sense, it gives meaning to
all of our actions in the world, providing the context for understanding our conduct,
and for the ways in which we (and others) see ourselves. This project is not totalitar-
ian, however. It can also be called into question, even if doing so causes a crisis
where we must redefine all of our life choices, as well as the person we have
‘become’ by virtue of these.
In that sense, the fundamental project is also intimately connected to the ‘lack’
or ‘questioning’ at the core of human beings. Say, for example, part of my funda-
mental project is to become a teacher. Of course, there are most likely deeper rea-
sons for this – my wanting to educate others, or to be recognised as an educated
person, or my wish to teach others about the things that matter to me, or to have a
stable job, and so on. This fundamental project is, however, a ‘completed totality’,
one that is, and always will be, lacking at present, in the sense that it can never be
fully attained. And yet, it is this completed totality that orients my actions, as well
as determining how my situation is brought to light. Perhaps I start to define myself
in terms of this goal – a ‘teacher’, an ‘educator’ – or, indeed, a ‘failed teacher’
should I end up pursuing another career. This ‘lacking totality’ not only drives me
towards my goals, but it also defines ‘who I am’, as well as the situations in which
I find myself. At any stage, this totality can be surpassed – i.e. I can decide to give
up on my goals entirely. Indeed, the project (and who I am by virtue of this) is thus
always in question.
The ways in which we evaluate a situation thus relates to the often subtle and
inarticulable original goals that underpin our conduct. Their relation to the funda-
mental project means that possibility is ever present in my actions. For Sartre, pos-
sibility is a real state of affairs in the world – it is not, as some might think, simply
that which does not exist yet, nor something that awaits our eventual recognition or
acknowledgement. Since human reality is underpinned by this lack that drives for-
ward our conduct, human beings are perpetually ‘what they are not’, projecting
towards ‘what they can be’ – i.e. towards possibility. Possibility is nevertheless
foreseeable, where certain horizons are open to us because of our fundamental ori-
entation in the world.
This also, therefore, relates to Sartre’s conception of ‘time’. For Sartre, none of
our conventional understandings of time make sense outside of consciousness.
Indeed, without consciousness, things would not be ‘endowed’ with possibilities or
a future. However, humankind are caught within an uneasy tension in their experi-
ence of time, in part because of this sense of possibility, but also in part because
there is no moment in time in which I am ever at one with myself. I am instead
5.3 Freedom and Responsibility 75

always defined by a sense of becoming or, indeed, waiting to become something.5

Consciousness therefore shapes the world in terms of our experience of time, as one
way in which it organises the world in a meaningful sense.6 All of this demonstrates
not only how conscious beings give meaning to the world, but also how they rely on
encountering brute existence in order to do this. Like Heidegger, Sartre understands
the world as meaningful by virtue of this encounter. Unlike Heidegger, however, he
sees this encounter (although immediate) as ultimately contingent and inherently
unstable, and thus, always open to question. Whilst this distinction may seem unim-
portant at first, it nevertheless reveals the extent to which our entire evaluation of the
situation in which we find ourselves depends on our conscious perception of it, and
as such, humankind ‘being condemned to be free, carries the weight of the whole
world on his [sic] shoulders: he is responsible for the world and for himself, as a
way of being…. the incontestable author of an event or an object’ (Sartre, 2018,
p. 718, emphasis added).
What does all of this mean for our attempts to account for ourselves – as teach-
ers, and as human beings? In what sense does the idea that we are always becoming
affect the extent to which we can ever really account for ‘who we are’? In order to
understand this more fully, we will first turn to Sartre’s conception of ‘freedom and
responsibility’, before examining how all of this plays out in the classroom.

5.3 Freedom and Responsibility

Importantly, for Sartre, every human action is intentional, even those that are acci-
dental in nature, since intentionality does not refer to the reasons or motives for
actions, but rather to specific ‘endpoints’ that orient (and determine the meaning of)
that action in the first place. We can agree, for instance, that accidentally taking
someone’s coat is different than intentionally stealing it. But this entire action only
makes sense by virtue of our wider and more fundamental intentions – whether we
want to live our lives as a (minor) thief, or perhaps, whether we feel guilty for doing
this because it goes against our general conception of the ‘good’.

5
This is not to say, however, that we could ever be totally dissociated from our past - it carries
weight in the present, as something that affects us and that we still hold ourselves responsible for.
In spite of this, the past can only be called ‘the past’ if there is some disconnect between it and now.
Of course, this is not to deny that things have happened, and the only certainty which we can know
ourselves is with regards to how we once were or how we once behaved. But even this is open to
re-interpretation. The past is thus best thought of as facticity, one that provides the context in which
consciousness exists, and whilst it ‘haunts’ us, it can nevertheless be transcended.
6
Sartre’s discussion of meaning involves several other considerations as well, of things that simply
do not make sense without consciousness – the distinction of different qualities and quantities in
particular things, the world as organised in terms of possibility and potentiality, meaning-making
through our conventional usage of different things, echoing Heidegger’s distinction between
‘ready-at-hand’ and ‘present-to-hand’.
76 5 Freedom and Facticity in the Classroom

As we have seen, this project is something we ultimately choose to adopt or to

abandon. Indeed, it should not be understood as that which ‘forces’ us to act in a
certain way, since it is always open to question. For Sartre, the reason why we do
not question it is not because we are unable to, but because we usually have very
little reason to do so, or are unwilling to accept the potential crisis that doing so
would entail. In fact, it is only when something is ‘amiss’ that we become aware of
our ability to respond otherwise. For instance, a worker does not realise he is being
exploited until he conceives of the possibility of revolt. When one is faced with the
real possibility of change, our consciousness surpasses our particular situation
where a new horizon of possibilities is opened up. It is only then that we can adopt
a different attitude to our lives, and it is only then that we are aware of our freedom
to do so.
Despite the difficulties that arise when we try to articulate this project clearly in
words, it nevertheless becomes clearer once our choices have been enacted.
Importantly, Sartre’s idea of freedom should not be conceived of something ‘added’
on to human reality, nor something that is cultivated in the way we might conven-
tionally understand ‘autonomy’. Since it pertains to this very idea of nothingness or
‘lack’, it is thus an innate ontological condition central to what it means to be a
(conscious) human being. Many take Sartre’s idea of freedom as suggesting that we
have no obstacles or limitations except those that we place upon ourselves, and that
something like ‘autonomy’ may allow for a richer sense of freedom in light of this.
But the freedom that Sartre is referring to is ontological rather than practical
(Detmer, 2005).7 It is not simply about the fulfilment of certain intentions, but con-
cerns why we have those intentions in the first place, what is perceived as an obsta-
cle or limitation in light of this, and how we therefore understand the world and
ourselves within it (Brady, 2020). Freedom and facticity are reciprocal, a relation
signalling our ‘inherence in the world and the world’s inherence in us’ (Bonnett,
2010, p. 31). Indeed, facticity is a condition for freedom, shaping the ways in which
our situation is made meaningful. Let us examine a number of concrete examples in
order to explore this further.

5.3.1 Freedom as a Response

Firstly, Sartre looks at the situation of one’s ‘lived place’ in the world. Oftentimes,
these so-called ‘brute givens’ pose as obstacles to practical freedom. I may wish, for
example, to live in Paris, but I do not have the money to afford the trip. Sartre does
not deny that my lack of economic means is an obstacle, nor the fact that I was born
in Dublin and not Paris. At the same time, however, these obstacles can only be
understood in terms of a more fundamental freedom – i.e. my freely chosen project
to live in Paris (for whatever more fundamental reason), and my very conception of

7
However, he is sometimes accused of conflating the two (e.g. Detmer, 2005).
5.3 Freedom and Responsibility 77

this possibility in the first place. Although I often have no direct control over these
contingencies (e.g. where I was born, or how much money I have), and although
these contingencies are by no means arbitrary, they only make sense in terms of my
fundamental freedom.
Let’s say I do manage to acquire the material means to go to Paris, but the trans-
port has stopped because of a global pandemic. These unpredictable obstacles also
curtail my practical freedom, but the meaning I apply to them depends entirely on
my intentions. If I still wanted to go to Paris, I would be bitterly disappointed with
this situation. But perhaps I changed my mind – perhaps I realise that the thought of
going to Paris is better than the reality of doing so. In this case, these unpredictable
obstacles might be seen more favourably. Of course, there are also what Sartre
(2004, 2006) later calls ‘counter-finalities’ to consider – unintended outcomes of
my actions that, in fact, go against my values, thus a quasi-tragic misfiring of action
that is difficult for me to take responsibility for. Nevertheless, even these unintended
consequences only make sense by virtue of my fundamental values.
Similarly, we might think of the past as an obstacle of sorts. In one sense, my past
weighs on me - I feel determined by it in some sense, where the choices I made
before (and the person I am because of this) still affects me. And yet, whilst it is true
that I cannot change things that have happened in my past, I can in some ways
decide the meaning of those circumstances for me. And even though I may still be
responsible for what I have done, I am not necessarily determined by what has hap-
pened. In each example, therefore, the ‘brute given’ of the situation may remain the
same, but its meaningfulness – how I evaluate and respond to it - only makes sense
in relation to my freedom.
Of course, our interpretation of the extent to which we are responsible for the
past is not only decided by me. Indeed, it is difficult to not think of oneself as some-
how ‘determined’ by the way that they ‘are’ (based on how they behaved in the
past). Indeed, the past is often thought of as a predictor of future events, whether or
not that actually turns out to be the case. In any case, it is important to acknowledge
that we always exist in the world with others, where the world itself is made mean-
ingful in an intersubjective sense.8 Thus, Sartre places a special emphasis on the
Other as the only possible limitation to my freedom.
One way to understand this is through the example of language. Fundamentally,
it is through language that the world has meaning, but since language is something
we are initiated into as part of the situation of our birth, it is thus not entirely of

8
Sartre is sometimes criticised for not taking into account the intersubjective element of meaning-­
making in the world, or the fact that the fundamental project can involve ‘common goals’ (some-
thing he later considers in his attempts to reconcile existentialism with Marxism) (Stewart, 1998;
Whitford, 1979). Merleau-Ponty, for example, argues that whilst Sartre allows for a plurality of
consciousness, the fundamental project is nevertheless formulated on an individual basis, and this
in turn implies that the meaning we apply to the world is ‘subjective’ rather than ‘intersubjective’.
Whilst there are merits to this criticism, thinking of the world and the formulation of our funda-
mental projects in terms of intersubjectivity does not radically alter Sartre’s position. As explored
in Chaps. 7 and 8, whilst we always exist in relation with the Other, we also respond to this relation
as individuals.
78 5 Freedom and Facticity in the Classroom

one’s own making. Using language involves knowing certain laws related to gram-
mar, as well as knowing when and how to use them in order to be intelligible.
Language inevitably carries intersubjective values - knowing when and why it is
(culturally) appropriate to use certain words, for instance. As Austin (2005) explores,
language is not simply a matter of uttering words in a constantive sense but can
often involve performing a commitment to oneself and others. It is impossible to
live outside of language in this sense, and this in turn indicates our inescapable rela-
tion with others.
But since words only have meaning within certain contexts – a sentence, a con-
versation - they only make sense because of a particular ‘free’ act that underpins
them. Of course, this is not to imply that we are completely free to construct our
own sentences and words in an arbitrary manner. In order to be understood, we must
limit ourselves to a particular context involving a set range of words we can use - not
only in terms of appropriateness, but also in relation to the facticity of our birth and
the (albeit contingent) historical factors that have established the particular lan-
guage we speak (e.g. Irish vs. English). At the same time, however, the laws of
language are always open to change, to re-evaluation, to nuance. Rather than being
fixed in an exhaustive sense, they can be experimented with or re-invented entirely.
James Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake, for example, shows us that such obstacles to free-
dom are not totalitarian. Through such experimentations, there are, of course, limits
to our intelligibility. But our particular use of language - the words we choose to use
at a particular time, our choice to at least try to be intelligible or to be unconcerned
with this, or perhaps to choose unintelligibility as a ‘protest’ of sorts - are all indica-
tions of the fundamental freedom that underpins my action in the world and my
response to the context in which I find myself.
In summary, although we do not freely choose the brute givens of the world, and
although the meaning of this world is not always of my own making as an individ-
ual, this is not then to suggest that we are completely determined by these. For
Sartre, our freedom lies in choosing our relation to these brute givens, givens that
are also the very context in which my freedom arises in the first place.

5.3.2 Anguished Responsibility

For Sartre, the sense in which our actions in the world are always underpinned by
our fundamental project means that above all, we are responsible for such meaning.
Indeed, as we saw earlier, humankind carry the weight of the whole world on their
shoulders. Being responsible in this way – as a result of the mere possibility of over-
turning of everything that I value in life as well as ‘who I am’ on this basis - means
that a subtle sense of anguish underpins our existence. Despite our attempts to resist
this (by resorting to bad faith, for instance, as I will explore in the next chapter), it
is always there in everything that we do. Nevertheless, it is rare that we explicitly
acknowledge this. We may even make attempts to mask it, but for Sartre, ‘we cannot
eliminate it, since anguish is what we are’ (Sartre, 2018, p. 84).
5.3 Freedom and Responsibility 79

In Nausea, Roquentin experiences a moment of crisis when he begins to reflect

upon his fundamental project in writing a biography of the Marquis de Robellon.
Roquentin represents the ways in which we come to value our projects in situations
where there is no one forcing us to do so except ourselves, and where the reasons
we formulate to continue them are as justifiable as the reasons to abandon them. But
this was a project that Roquentin had committed himself to – he had organised his
life around it and had come to define himself in its terms. As the work unfolds,
beckoning him to complete it, it becomes more and more difficult to call it into
question, with each written sentence acting as an implicit justification for continu-
ing the project. And yet, in each moment that Roquentin writes or researches
Robellon, he is simultaneously a person who does not need to do so. He at first tries
to avoid reflecting on this, later thinking about his original motivations for writing
in an attempt to convince himself that they are still relevant. But gradually, he dis-
covers his lack of desire to undertake this project, and he eventually decides to
abandon the book. This decision, and the ways in which his life changes radically as
a result, brings Roquentin to the brink of insanity.
Roquentin, of course, could have pressed on, seeing his life as fully determined
by the work he must complete. He could have allowed himself to be governed by
facticity, to distract himself from his concrete possibilities, to yield to the certainty
that the project offered. In doing so, it is likely that he perhaps would have been able
to momentarily suppress the anguish that arose. Such flights from freedom are ulti-
mately unsuccessful in the long run, however. This is because we always exist in
question, and we must therefore make an effort to continually maintain this sense of
stability whilst in the midst of a permanent possibility of being otherwise.
The freedom here is also concerned with a certain temporality, one that creates
another layer of anguish. The person ‘I am’ at present is a projection, and as such, it
depends on future intentions. But there is nothing that necessarily forces me to have
these particular intentions – I choose things knowing they might not be completed,
that I might fail or give up on my decision to follow through. This is also true of my
relationship with the past – I might make a past resolution to give up smoking, but
since this resolution is of the ‘past self’, I experience a ‘rupture’ between the person
that resolved to stop smoking last week and the person now with the cigarette in her
hand. Since nothing prevents me from breaking this resolution, I must decide and
commit anew in each moment. I am thus always in a position of questioning and
deciding, and it is this that signals our fundamental freedom and, indeed,
responsibility.
In short: Sartre argues that we cannot be but responsible for both ourselves and
for the world – to continuously renew our commitment to projects, or to abandon
them entirely, in how we evaluate a situation, and in how those situations are there-
fore brought to light. For Sartre (2018, p. 79):
I cannot have recourse… to any value to set against the fact that it is I who maintains values
in being… I have to actualize the meaning of the world and of my essence: I decide it alone,
without any justification or excuse.
80 5 Freedom and Facticity in the Classroom

The Other, of course, plays a role in the meaningfulness of situations as well. But
despite the limitations they place on us, we are free to respond to this relation. We
are free, for instance, to appropriate or to discard the ways in which they see us. We
are also free in our decision to be intelligible to them or to push the boundaries of
what is intelligible in the first place. Intelligibility is in some ways a collective
responsibility - an act of expression as well as an attempt at understanding - but the
overarching decision to be so is still determined by the individual’s response.
Sartre’s conception of freedom thus implies that we are always responsible for
how it is that we are in the world, as well as for the world itself. We may not have
decided to bear this responsibility, but because we were born, we are ‘condemned
to be free’.9 Although we have no real control over the facticity of that situation, we
do have control over how it is we respond to it, and how we make sense of it. Above
all, there no way for us to avoid responding - or in this case, to take a stance.10
Although this freedom and responsibility may seem in many ways terrifying, it
is also profoundly liberating. And yet, Sartre also recognises that we do not live our
lives in perpetual anguish - it may only come about momentarily and, indeed, rarely.
Importantly, the discussion here is not necessarily concerned with an ethical or
political sense of freedom, but more so a description of how we live. Sartre does
attempt to make more explicit ethical considerations, however, perhaps most
saliently in his post-war lecture, Existentialism and Humanism. I will briefly turn to
this before considering what all of these ideas might mean for the lived realities of
teaching, and how we might account for this.

5.4 Freedom, Responsibility and Ethics

Sartre’s conception of freedom and responsibility softened considerably after the

Second World War. Although he never altogether abandoned the idea that we are
free to respond to perceived limitations in our surroundings, his Marxist influences
forced him to reconsider the (perhaps overly) individualistic account in Being and
Nothingness, particularly in relation to ethical demands. Certain tensions appear in

9
Towards the end of the chapter of Freedom and Responsibility, Sartre even takes the somewhat
extreme stance that we are all responsible for wars, even if we ourselves were not the perpetrators.
What he means is that we are responsible for our attitudes towards war, and for the actions we take
in light of these. Sartre revises this position in his later works, differentiating between the innocent
victim and the implicated agent (See, for example, Sartre, 1992). Again, the emphasis here is on an
ontological rather than ‘practical’ or ‘political’ sense of responsibility.
10
Camus’ (2007) short story, L’Hȏte, also explores such themes in relation to the responsibility of
those embroiled (innocently or otherwise) in the Algerian struggle for independence. For an analy-
sis of this, see: Brady (2017).
5.4 Freedom, Responsibility and Ethics 81

his later works as a result of this, and his attempts to combine existentialism with
Marxism is widely disputed.11
Of course, even though Sartre may have sought to be purely ontological in his
earlier works, there are undeniable ethical questions at stake. The circumvention of
freedom in the form of bad faith is often seen as the ‘cardinal sin’ (Catalano, 1985,
p. 17) of existentialism, for example. Equally, however, his discussion on freedom
and responsibility may be read with a less accusatory tone. Nevertheless,
Existentialism and Humanism, delivered at Club Maintenant at the pinnacle of his
popularity and barely a month after the official end of the Second World War, per-
haps represents Sartre’s first real attempt to consider the ethical implications of his
earlier work.
Much of what Sartre (1973) says in Existentialism and Humanism was criticised
on philosophical grounds - he himself later regretted its publication, in fact
(Warnock, 2003). Heidegger’s (2008) Letter on Humanism, for example, explicitly
rebukes the association of existentialism with humanism on the grounds that the
very idea of humanism harbours essentialist claims that existentialism sought to
overcome. Existentialism was also not universally popular – it is seen as vulgar in
certain circles who interpreted it as promoting a life without constraint, as not only
impractical but dangerous. On the one hand, Sartre accuses those who attack him of
suppressing those who ‘meddle in matters above [their] station’ (Sartre, 1973,
p. 25). But he also laments that existentialism seems to have become a trend without
any real substance, so loosely applied that it means nothing at all. He thus sets out
to offer a more accessible vision of what Being and Nothingness entails, as well as
expanding this in order to take into account its ethical import.12
Whilst difficult to systematise, Sartre claims that the commonality around exis-
tentialist thinkers rests on one simple tenet – that existence precedes essence, and
that all philosophy should therefore take the human subject as its starting point. The
first principle of existentialism is therefore subjectivity, and a belief that each mem-
ber of the human species is a project. In an attempt to move beyond the individual-
istic conceptions of this idea, Sartre also argues that, in choosing to create a
particular ‘image’ of myself, I am affirming and signalling a commitment to some-
thing that I believe to be valuable, and as universally enlisting on some level.
Because of this, we must think carefully about what we do, and the extent to
which we are comfortable in taking responsibility for ourselves, particularly since
this will come to define us beyond our ability to do so. Both Sartre and Beauvoir

11
Some have remarked that Sartre’s attempts to combine both theories marked the end of existen-
tialism. Others see this later period as a continuation and enrichment of his previous writings. For
a collection of short essays and interviews on this topic, see Sartre (2008a). These later texts will
not be considered in depth here. Perhaps if we consider the context in which Sartre and his literary
counterparts were writing, however, one can be more forgiving of the somewhat ‘extreme’ account
of freedom and responsibility in his earlier works.
12
de Beauvoir (2010, 2018) also explores the ethical implications of existentialism in her work,
The Ethics of Ambiguity, and also in reference to the lived experiences of being a woman in The
Second Sex.
82 5 Freedom and Facticity in the Classroom

admit to feeling the weight of responsibility for future generations who may misin-
terpret what each says (Blakewell, 2016; Kirkpatrick, 2020). But even though many
of us do not think that our words and deeds will have all such significance in the
future, we should nevertheless always act as if this is the case. In this sense, the way
that we act is always in address to the Other. As we will explore in Chap. 7, one is
not only pre-reflectively aware of oneself, but also of others – I am immediately
aware of the Other who recognises me in a certain way, through whom I come to
know myself, an ‘intimate discovery… [that is] at the same time a revelation of the
other as a freedom which confronts mine’ (Sartre, 1973, p. 45). Our choices not
only rest on the intellectual and linguistic apparatus that we can avail of in situa-
tions, but the stakes that are involved in the choices also signal a responsibility for
both myself and for others. If, for example, one were to ask what would happen if
everyone behaved in the way that I did, then a disturbing anxiety might arise. But
this anguish need not be debilitating, nor lead to quietism or inaction. Importantly,
it is not that anguish results from having to act – rather, it is the very condition of
action itself.
To exemplify this, Sartre refers to his own tormented student who asks him
advice on whether he should go to war. This is a war that had taken the life of his
brother and had revealed his father as a collaborator, a war that had left his mother
with no one but himself. To fight in the war meant fighting for a greater collective
end. To stay with his mother, on the other hand, was a more concrete and immediate
choice. Within this choice implies two ‘kinds’ of morality – one of sympathy and
personal devotion, and one concerning the importance of collective action.13 There
is no external guidance that can make this choice for him, and both decisions could
be justified depending on one’s overarching values. So what is it, then, that helps us
decide? Perhaps a kind of instinct or ‘feeling’? Frustratingly, however, one can only
know the strength of one’s feelings after the decision has been made. In Fear and
Trembling, Kierkegaard (1986, pp. 91–92) makes a similar observation:
If anyone on the verge of action should judge himself according to the outcome, he would
never begin. Even though the result may gladden the whole world, that cannot help the hero;
for he knows the result only when the whole thing is over, and that is not how he becomes
a hero, but by virtue of the fact that he began.

On top of this, deducing the sincerity of my feelings is difficult - whether I feel

relieved because I think it was the right thing to do, or because I am no longer in the
tormented state of indecision. What about an appeal to abstract guidelines? This is
possible, but to do so is nevertheless a choice, as well as the ways in which we inter-
pret and apply this to concrete situations. Dialogue with others does not necessarily
help either - in choosing an advisor, we already have some expectation of what they

13
Camus was faced with a similar dilemma in relation to the Algerian war for independence.
Whilst he agreed with the collective end of the independence movement (although not with their
violent means), he nevertheless stated that: ‘My mother could be on one of those trams (that is
bombed). If that is justice, I prefer my mother’. This also reveals two kinds of (equally justifiable)
ethical positions (Camus, as cited in Brady, 2017).
5.4 Freedom, Responsibility and Ethics 83

might say, and this shows us that on some level our decision has already been made.
One must instead simply act.
In moral terms, we therefore exist within a kind of ‘creative’ situation, analogous
with artistry, something de Beauvoir (2018) also claims in the Ethics of Ambiguity.
A (true) artist might not rely on a pre-defined image before making his art, and as
such, it becomes coherent in the course of their drawing. Just as this artist is respon-
sible for what they produce, we too are responsible for the values made manifest in
the course of our committed actions. The artist exists within a particular ‘unde-
cided’ orthodoxy – in relation to the tools at their disposal, the way they hold the
paintbrush, the training and education they received that serve to ‘confine’ the
choices they make. Nevertheless, such orthodoxies are always negotiated with
rather than ‘passively’ adopted. Perhaps the artist wishes to be intelligible in their
artwork, or perhaps they wish push the limits of what is intelligible. Such decisions
represent the freedom – and, indeed, responsibility – at the core of our creative
endeavours.
Morality, like art, involves both creation and re-invention. One cannot decide a
priori what must be done in all concrete cases – indeed, there is often no sufficient
or exhaustive guidance that would tell us definitively what must be done. One is
therefore obliged to invent a ‘moral law’ for oneself, or to choose to adopt one that
has been created elsewhere. All of this, for Sartre (1973, p. 50), tells us something
deeply about what it means to be human:
Man [sic] makes himself; he is not found ready-made: he makes himself by the choice of
his morality, and he cannot but choose a morality, such is the pressure of circumstances
upon him. We [existentialists] define man only in relation to his commitments.

Does this make it impossible to judge others for what they do? Sartre admits that
this is true in some respects. In one sense, with whatever someone chooses to do and
to commit to in sincerity, it is not possible to say that another choice is preferable
for him. This is the moral problem – it has never been adequately solved over time,
nor will it be solved in his lecture, it seems. Ultimately, for Sartre, ‘[l]ife is nothing
until it is lived, but it is yours to make sense of and the value of it is nothing else but
the sense that you choose’ (Sartre, 1973 p. 54). For Sartre, then, it is important that
we ‘live without hope’ for a new and unfeasible horizon of possibilities, for some-
thing other than what is possible in the realms of things I cannot control. To live
without hope does not involve the illusion that all possibilities may be realised, but
simply that we confine ourselves to a form of committed action based on what we
can do. It is through this that we define ourselves since, for Sartre (1973, p. 47), ‘we
are nothing but our purposes’.
Within this is the possibility of creating a human community – and for this rea-
son, Sartre declares that existentialism is a form of humanism (despite ridiculing
humanism in Nausea). Sartre’s particular interpretation of humanism is distinct
from those that come from Enlightenment thinking, however (Kakkori & Huttunen,
2012). Simply put, it reminds us that there is no legislator but the individual them-
selves, that we are abandoned and thus responsible for what we commit ourselves
to, not in the sense that we must turn back upon ourselves, but rather, ‘by seeking,
84 5 Freedom and Facticity in the Classroom

beyond [oneself], an aim which is one of liberation or of some particular realisation,

that [one] can realise [oneself] as truly human.’ (Sartre, 1973, p. 56).14 This is the
optimism of existentialism – a doctrine of action and commitment, a declaration
against self-deception, embracing a life without hope and without despair.

5.5 Freedom and Facticity in the Classroom

What does Sartre’s accounts of freedom and facticity have to say about educational
experiences? In this final section of this chapter, I turn to some avenues for further
thought that are revealed by this way of thinking: our actions in the classroom, our
self-understanding, and the ways in which we might account for ourselves and our
experiences on this basis. These examples are by no means exhaustive, but merely
point the way in which Sartre’s ideas might serve as a touchstone for the accounts
of lived experiences of teaching, accounts that are more (existentially) sensitive to
the complexities this involves. To emphasise – I am merely pointing the way at this
stage, and by the end of the book, I hope to make these forms of account-giving
clearer, and perhaps more practical. First, however, I will begin by anticipating
some possible misapplications of Sartre’s thought.
In many educational circles, most notably the liberal tradition in philosophy of
education, autonomy is seen as something that education systems should strive to
cultivate in students (see, for example, Dearden, 1972; Callan, 1988; White, 1990).
Whilst there are differing and sometimes competing ideas about what this entails, it
is often coupled the idea that the maintenance of desirable (e.g. democratic) values
depends in part upon children acquiring autonomous dispositions through schooling
(Hand, 2006, 2017). Sartre’s account of freedom does not imply a deficit model of
humans, however – namely, the idea that there is something ‘absent’ in our capacity
to act freely until we are taught otherwise. Unlike the above conception of auton-
omy, Sartrian freedom is an innate ontological condition that cannot be separated
from action, and it is through action itself that this freedom is made manifest.
Indeed, for Sartre, there is no choice but to act in every situation, regardless of
how desirable these actions or responses might be. A discussion around what is
desirable or not is ultimately contingent upon the situation in which it is embarked
upon, interpreted in light of one’s fundamental projects, and therefore impossible to
account for in any exhaustive or a priori sense. This is not to say that a discussion

14
The question of whether we should take such an anthropocentric view of the world exists in post-­
humanist thought. I am not sure if Sartre would necessarily disagree with these positions. Firstly,
Sartre’s focus is on the individual and not ‘collective’ sense of being human. For instance, he
argues that it is absurd for us all as individuals to take credit for the so-called ‘human’ achieve-
ments, as though our membership to the same ‘species’ allows us to do so. Secondly, if he sees that
the fundamental aspect of humankind is consciousness, then any being we consider to be sentient
might also be included in this argument. There are, however, many interpretations of what con-
sciousness counts as that call into question the anthropocentrism at the heart of Sartre’s
understanding.
5.5 Freedom and Facticity in the Classroom 85

on ultimate values has no place in education. As we have seen in Chap. 2, without

these wider normative questions about what education is for, we are in danger of
only thinking about educational practices in a purely ‘technological’ sense (Biesta,
2007, 2009). Importantly, however, what Sartre is focusing on is how people act,
and not how we might desire them to act, or how we might differentiate between
‘good’ and ‘bad’ actions on the basis of this.
In relation to this, the instruction of students to act in a certain way is sometimes
accompanied by a concern that, in doing so, educators must ‘bite the indoctrination
bullet’ (Hand, 2014, p. 521). But implicit in this is the assumption that the student
passively re-enacts the instructions given. Sartre’s conception of freedom offers
another lens, however. Instead, the so-called passive student is actively choosing to
respond to directions in particular ways - in consent to them because they are
unaware or are in denial of their capacity to respond otherwise, or because they want
to be seen as an ‘ideal student’, perhaps. Or, as is often the case, students may resist
these instructions to some degree. In any situation, therefore, the freedom of each
participant must be recognised as that which is already there in the relationship to
begin with.
The later post-structuralist movement, particularly that which is influential in
sociological research in education, would probably voice certain disagreements
over Sartre’s account of freedom. If we consider Foucauldian thought (e.g. Foucault,
1991), for instance, to what extent can freedom even be conceptualised in a context
where so many of our gestures are facile, where power dynamics make acting freely
an impossible choice, and where, in fact, so much of what we think and do is on the
basis of unconscious, internalised norms of behaviour? Sartre anticipates some of
these objections in his denial of the unconscious, as explored in the next chapter.
But also, it is important to recognise that Sartrian freedom is not necessarily some-
thing to be celebrated. Writing at a time when the very definition of freedom was
being usurped by far-right nationalist agendas, Sartre undoubtably recognised the
danger that this freedom could result in (Sartre, 1973). But he also recognised the
more subtle ways in which it is made manifest – resisting populist or consumerist
conceptions of freedom (even in small ways), refusing to see oneself in the insipid
ways that those with more power do (Heter, 2006). One is thus always responding
to the situations in which they find themselves, even if it just means imagining how
things might be different. This, as mentioned, represents an ontological rather than
practical conception of freedom.
And yet, in the context of education, in what sense is this helpful? What does it
mean to say that schools, teachers, and their students are ‘free’ given the demands
that are placed on them by current educational discourses? To what extent are they
able to even imagine things otherwise? This is particularly complex where, as exem-
plified in Chap. 2, certain norms of communication are imposed on the ways that
one might account for themselves and their practices, norms that are based on tech-
nicist understandings of teaching that stand in stark contrast with what being in a
classroom feels like.
Even though it appears to be difficult to think outside of the language encapsu-
lated in these kinds of policies, these conceptions are inevitably negotiated with on
86 5 Freedom and Facticity in the Classroom

some level. The question, of course, is thus not if but how might we negotiate with
these technicist accounts of teaching. First, let us examine more closely some prob-
lematic dualisms that underpin educational policy, and the ways in which Sartrian
thought might serve to challenge these. In relation to this, by paying attention to the
perception of absence as vital and yet missing from the accounts of classroom prac-
tices, the so-called implicit/explicit dualism can be rethought. Thirdly, dismantling
these dualisms might also help to conceptualise professional judgement in new
ways. Finally, all of this may help us rethink not only the problematic assumptions
and expectations of these technicist understandings of education, but also, the very
experience of teaching itself.

5.5.1 Problematic Dualisms

One of the more obvious dualisms in educational policy, particularly the kind that
focuses on the evaluation of teaching, is the division between the objective and the
subjective. As we have seen in Chap. 2, evidence plays a key role in the formation
of judgements about such practices, and is seen as particularly important in identify-
ing and measuring potential areas for improvement. Evidence is also seen as vital in
(numerical) target-setting, where student learning is reduced to that which can be
calculated in a clear and explicit manner. Coupled with this is the perceived need to
build teacher capacities in order to collect and analyse necessary data, and to incul-
cate them into a particular language by which greater ‘objectivity’ is not only
assured but adopted confidently and willingly. As Bonnett (1994, p. 80) remarks,
this conception of objectivity is conflated with ‘scientistic’ objectivity, where if a
teacher ‘cannot produce the hard ‘proof’ for their claims… [they] have sometimes
been regarded as merely subjective, inferior, or illusionary.’ Indeed, the use of evi-
dence in self-evaluation reports is thought to ensure the accounts do not fall into the
latter category, an aim that is also in part focused on assuring the wider public that
internal review is as robust as external inspections. But what, precisely, might be
wrong with this?
As indicated, Sartre is sometimes accused of maintaining similar dualisms in his
own thought, with thinkers such as Merleau-Ponty once characterising him as a
‘faithful Cartesian’ (Whitford, 1979). This is perhaps most clear in his distinction
between brute existence (being-in-itself) and consciousness (being-for-itself). Most
importantly for Sartre, however, is the idea that when we encounter things in the
world, we immediately associate them with some form of institutional understand-
ing – their conventional use, or the features that are immediately obvious to us that
suggests ‘what they are’, despite having never encountered them before. Because of
the so-called infinite series of appearances, we never encounter brute existence in its
totality, but always through interpretative lenses. When we think about what teach-
ers are required to demonstrate with evidence, such interpretation is also an inescap-
able component of what is brought to light. On a more surface level, we might think
about this in terms of what the teacher decides to focus on – the so-called ‘areas for
5.5 Freedom and Facticity in the Classroom 87

improvement’ (DES, 2016). Let’s say she decides to focus on improving student
behaviour. Is this ‘problem’ something that exists as an objective ‘fact’? Or is it a
decision made by the teacher in line with her own values about her role and her
capacities to educate her students? Or, perhaps, both?
Firstly, since misbehaviour can only be understood in terms of norms and expec-
tations of how students should behave, it cannot be understood as brute objectivity
independent of subjective interpretation. Secondly, both the area the teacher focuses
on and the intervention itself are decisions made by the teacher, over and against
other things that she could focus on instead. If her interventions are premised on the
idea that the responsibility for behaviour is ultimately down to the students, she
might come up with interventions that make manifest this belief whilst ignoring her
own approaches and demeanour in the classroom, or other potential explanations of
the ‘issue’. Both are apprehending the same ‘data’, and yet both explanations may
be justified. What makes them distinct is in relation to the values of the person
involved, and their understanding of the issue as informed by their fundamental
project. Thirdly, the extent to which an intervention ‘works’ - even if measured
numerically (e.g. the students spend less time disrupting the class) - only makes
sense in terms of the original project, i.e. the desire to make students behave in a
certain way, based on particular values about what education is for, and so on. This
is not to say that there is something necessarily wrong with the teacher wanting to
improve behaviour, nor that she is insincere or untrustworthy. It is simply to show
that the separation of objective and subjective here makes little sense, since any-
thing we might call ‘objective’ can only be understood in terms of the wider funda-
mental project that underpins the teacher as a subject in the classroom.
But what happens when such strategies for improvement are decided at a societal
level, using more accurate and comprehensive forms of data? Are they more valid?
School self-evaluations in Ireland, for instance, are required in part to follow the
National Literacy and Numeracy Strategy (DES, 2017) – i.e. to implement interven-
tions that improve the overall literacy and numeracy rates in student learning across
all subject areas. Following the implementation of this policy, Ireland was ranked
fourth out of the 36 participating countries in reading literacy (OECD, 2018). One
could assume, then, that these interventions have worked. But again, since implicit
in this are particular values about what education can ‘do’ for wider society, albeit
whilst not decided at an individual level (although adopted by the individuals
involved), the ‘objective facts’ here make little sense without an appeal to the so-­
called ‘subjective values’ that are necessary in order for this data to make sense in
the first place.15
Closely related to this is the dualism of cause and effect. As we have explored in
Chap. 2, there are numerous assumptions in self-evaluation policy that relates to
how certain interventions lead to certain levels of effectiveness, both of which are
measurable in an explicit sense. For instance, in the Self-Evaluation Guidelines, one

15
Perhaps what self-evaluation policy seems to be getting at, however, is a form of honesty rather
than objectivity. Indeed, if we do not ask teachers to be evidence-based, how can we trust that their
accounts are genuine? We will return to this question in Part III.
88 5 Freedom and Facticity in the Classroom

of the statements of highly effective practice in relation to ‘Learner Outcomes’

asserts that ‘[s]tudents’ enjoyment in learning is evident and arises from a sense of
making progress and of achievement…[t]heir engagement with learning contributes
to their sense of well-being’ (DES, 2016, p. 23). How do we determine the direction
of causation, however, when two ‘directions’ are implied? Is it that learning (cause)
leads to well-being (effect)? Or is it that well-being (cause) motivates learning
(effect)? Do we therefore need to focus on improving learning or improving well-­
being? Different answers to this question reveal fundamentally different concep-
tions about the purpose and promise of education. In this sense, the cause/effect
relationship is not neutral, but inescapably related to what we value in the educa-
tional process itself. Any measurement that is therefore based on this will also
involve such ambiguities. But also, brute existence itself is indifferent to cause and
effect. It only comes to be understood in this way via consciousness as that which
produces it in part as an explanation of a situation. It therefore makes little sense to
talk about it as somehow removed from the interpretative powers of conscious beings.
What underpins these dualisms is the distinction between ‘fact’ and ‘value’. In
simple terms, this divide surmises that there are facts that are indifferent to our
opinion or belief, that we come to know via scientific observation, and that are
therefore conducive to demonstration through accurate forms of evidence. Distinct
from these are ‘values’. These are normative in nature, and can only be studied
through the field of ethics, for instance. For some philosophers (e.g. Hume (2012)),
statements of fact (‘is’) do not naturally correspond to statements of value (‘ought’).
Later traditions, such as logical positivism, argue that facts are fundamentally value-­
free. Others, however, such as those associated with the pragmatist tradition, argue
that this distinction is not so clear cut. This is because facts can only be understood
in terms of the wider, ultimate values that underpin them (See, for example: Gorski,
2013). In other words, our very conception of ‘fact’ or ‘truth’ directly relates to
desirable ends that are fundamentally normative in nature. Although Sartre appeals
to the irreducibility of ‘brute existence’, he nevertheless understands that our con-
scious experience of the world can never be removed from the act of valuing, and
for that reason, the fact-value divide makes little sense when attempting to account
for concrete experience.
Educational policies often contain examples that imply a fact-value divide, par-
ticularly in terms of the very definition of effective practice as ‘what works’. It
implies, for instance, that assessment data as ‘factual’ - a form of numeric, objective
evidence that reveals the extent to which students have learned something. But what
this fails to take into account, however, is that assessment is an interpretation of
learning, and not a direct correlation with some kind of learning that takes place in
a world independent of values (Brady, 2018). Also, the very decision to base such
judgements on assessment data relates to what Biesta (2007, 2009) calls the ‘ulti-
mate values’ in education, those that help us decide what assessment is effective for.
Whilst we may be able to say that certain interventions have ‘worked’, we can only
do so if we understand that our very definition of what it is working for is related to
a particular purpose. But it is not necessarily the case that that which purports to
focus only on what is ‘effective’ has no purpose in mind. Rather, it may simply be
5.5 Freedom and Facticity in the Classroom 89

that this aim is problematic or reductive – the idea that education is purely for the
cultivation of certain skills necessary for economic growth, for example. In this
sense, ‘values’ and ‘purposes’ are always inherent to whatever it is we decide to do
in education.
The discussion about what aims education should have is important, but it is not
the focus of here. Rather, what Sartre attempts to show us is how these values come
to be. For Sartre, values do not exist outside of human action, but arise with the very
upsurge of consciousness as an aspect of this ‘lack’ at our core. Rather than arbi-
trarily decided prior to action, they are part of this wider fundamental project which
orients our actions, made manifest on the basis of our striving towards this project
as a totality yet to be attained. Values are not simply related to what I think is impor-
tant as aims or purposes. They are the very things that give meaning to my situation
and to the ‘facts’ that appear within it - it is through them that I make sense of the
world, and by which the world comes to light, where ‘how and why things matter to
us personally – our own evaluation and understanding of them – is a reflection of
our genuine concerns, either already present, or evoked by the situation itself’
(Bonnett, 1994, p. 112).

5.5.2 Concrete Nothingness

Educational policies underpinned by a technicist logic of education (such as school

self-evaluation), which are in part aimed at holding teachers to account for their
practices, tend to focus on what is there – what is visible, what can be verified by
measurement or tracked through improvement plans. What they do not always take
account of is what is not there. By this I mean Sartre’s idea of concrete nothingness,
where despite all of the (infinite) appearances of objects not being available to us at
once, we still recognise what they are. Indeed, in all encounters with brute exis-
tence, consciousness transcends the present moment towards what is not there
through interpreting what is amiss. Importantly, this is not simply a judgement ‘in
my head’. It says something real and concrete about the situation in which we find
ourselves.
This experience of absence arises immediately within us through a ‘questioning’
attitude that exists at the heart of conscious beings. When a student is missing from
class, I experience their absence not directly through explicit forms of questioning,
but rather, pre-reflectivity (e.g. through the emotions that immediately arise within
me upon realising they are not there). Of course, this is in part mediated by an
expectation of presence – indeed, I would not have noticed their absence if I wasn’t
expecting them to be there. But all of this is premised on the more immediate sense
that initially arises from the very fact that they are not there.
How might something like a school self-evaluation targeting student engagement
account for this experience? Does the feeling itself even matter, given that it does
not help us improve the situation? And yet, attending to those feelings are first nec-
essary for an explicit improvement plan to even be considered. If we simply did not
90 5 Freedom and Facticity in the Classroom

notice or care that that student was absent, then it is likely that the very idea of
increasing student engagement would not have been selected as part of the improve-
ment plan in the first place. Moreover, the feeling that arises from a concrete experi-
ence of absence is intimately tied to our fundamental values – i.e. to how I evaluate
the situation. Perhaps I think that this student is disruptive and, on some level, I am
relieved that they are not in my class that day. Or perhaps I genuinely care about
their schooling, and thus, I am anxious not just about their absenteeism now, but
how that might impact their future. Thus, this fundamental sense in which the stu-
dent is absent may manifest itself differently - as anxiety, disappointment, or relief -
but is only identified as such after the immediate reaction itself. By attending to
those immediate reactions, one may come to realise the values that underpin their
practices.
Thus, whilst policies tend to focus only on what is explicit in the classroom, so
much of what goes on includes experiences of what is not there. We cannot under-
stand teaching and learning practices without this and, as such, we cannot ade-
quately measure these practices if our measurement only focuses on what is
‘present’, especially when what is present is thought to be devoid of any ‘subjective’
valuation. Importantly, this sense of concrete nothingness is also revealing of the
very lack at our core, the fact that we are always in a state of questioning and of
deciding, and that our actions in part involve an inherent instability that also cannot
be captured in any fixed sense. This, in turn, has implications for one’s judgements
of situations in the classroom.

5.5.3 Professional Judgement

Like the concept of autonomy, professionalisation in teaching often implies a deficit

model, where professional judgement, for example, is a capacity that is ‘lacking’
until cultivated or developed through training and other means. According to self-­
evaluation proponents such as McNamara and O’Hara (2008), it is through such
capacity building that ‘trust’ in teachers is warranted. In some contexts, the
Aristotelian idea of ‘phronesis’ helps to explain professional judgement over and
against an idea of professionalism as a ‘technique’ (see, for example, Dunne, 2009),
where it involves ‘practical wisdom’ in the ability to achieve certain ends, but also
to reflect on those ends in reference to broader understandings of the ‘good life’.16
Sartre’s ideas are arguably not so far removed from this. Of course, Sartre would
deny any one conceptualisation of the good life since, for him, these wider sets of
values are ultimately contingent upon individual situations. Nevertheless, as implied
in phronesis, these values inform and orient our actions in an implicit rather than
explicit sense. As such, professional judgement cannot be considered as removed

16
As we will explore in Chap. 9, however, ‘phronesis’ itself is often understood as a technique or a
skill in accountability literature.
5.5 Freedom and Facticity in the Classroom 91

from concrete situations. It is not an abstract capacity or skill developed in individu-

als, nor is it a ‘technique’ or disembodied competency applied without due refer-
ence the person involved or to the situations in which it is enacted.
For Sartre, since humans exist in the world as conscious beings (and not as things
in themselves) they are always acting on some level. Often, judgements are not
decided a priori, where values are articulated as a clear and coherent guide for
action. But this does not imply that judgement is ‘blind’, however, since as we have
seen, judgements always occur in response to concrete situations, our evaluation of
which is intimately tied to our fundamental project. To return to the student misbe-
haviour example, the teacher may be said to use her professional judgement in the
sense that she is appealing to what is ‘there’ before her (i.e. the ‘objective fact’ of
the disruptive student). She may also be considered ‘professional’ if she consults
guidance on what the best course of action will be, implementing an intervention on
the basis of this and continually monitoring its effectiveness. But all of this is pre-
mised first on her identification of who is misbehaving, and why this ‘fact’ is even
important to begin with. Hence, whilst her approach is not problematic in and of
itself, the implication of what counts as professional judgement in light of this is
dubious. Judgement itself is premised on us identifying what needs to be addressed
in the first place, and is therefore already framed by particular values. Indeed, these
values do not always appear in an explicit sense but as already there in the actions
we take, and in our very understanding of the obstacles that appear before us.

5.5.4 Freedom, Facticity and the Fundamental Project

As we have seen, Sartre’s account of freedom is not about the capacity to fulfil cer-
tain intentions but instead relates to the ways in which one understands and responds
to their situations. It is intimately tied to the notion of intentionality, not as ratio-
nales for acting in particular ways, but as ‘horizons’ towards which we are oriented
in the world. Intentionality is always located within facticity – those brute and
unchangeable aspects of our lives. Perhaps, in the case of education, facticity also
includes the particular ‘discourses’ that currently define what being a teacher
means.17 This situation is, in fact, both the context and the origin of our freedom.
But the ways in which I respond to this situation rests upon how I interpret it, not
only in terms of how the situation immediately appears to me, but also, the ways in
which I am oriented at more fundamental level – i.e. in relation to my fundamental
project. As we have seen, this orientation can be called into question or abandoned
entirely, despite the fact that it rarely is. In fact, oftentimes we consciously avoid
calling it into question, since to do so would also lead to a collapse of everything

17
Of course, Sartre was not a poststructuralist and thus, I am extending his argument here in a way
that he himself might not have. However, I will return to Sartre’s connection with poststructuralism
in Chap. 8.
92 5 Freedom and Facticity in the Classroom

that we understand about the world and ourselves. Yet, the very possibility of doing
so persists in the background of our thoughts and experiences.
In the case of teaching, our interpretations of a situation, and the wider values
that underpin these interpretations, may also be called into question. The teacher
who witnesses misbehaviour in her class might be confronted with an outburst from
a student who remarks that ‘she doesn’t care about them’. Such confrontations can
(although not always) offer a different understanding of the situation that the teacher
was perhaps unaware or in denial of before. Perhaps such confrontations lead to a
series of realisations that there was something amiss in her original assessment of
the situation - it wasn’t the students who were the problem, but her! Maybe she
realises that, in fact, she doesn’t care about the students, and she begins to wonder
if she should really be a teacher. Of course, this is not to say that this should happen,
nor that her new assessment of the situation is any more accurate than the previous
one, but rather to exemplify that what gives meaning to a situation is ultimately
oriented in terms of our freedom to interpret it, an interpretation that is nevertheless
not immune from the ‘questioning attitude’ at the heart of conscious human beings.
There is therefore a reciprocity between the facticity of the situation and the
freedom in terms of our responses to it. Within this, the Other is also present, each
with their own fundamental responses to both the situation and to ‘the person that I
am’ within it, something I will return to in Chap. 6. This is not always easy to
account for, not only because of the limitations of language, but because of the anxi-
ety that it might bring to the surface. As such, it is often easier to seek comfort and
security in the language of certainty, a language epitomised in the ways in which
teachers are sometimes expected to describe and reflect on classroom situations. For
instance, teachers may be expected to report on the extent to which they have deliv-
ered ‘highly effective instruction…eliciting deep student engagement… skilfully
manag[ing] their own input to optimise student participation and response’ (DES,
2016, p. 26). Of course, one might account for these in relatively simple terms – the
students spoke up in class, and therefore this meant that student participation was
achieved. But the ways in which we account for these might also be called into
question, something that involves deeper existential questions about what we are
doing. Am I a good teacher? Do I talk too much? Do I annoy the students? Do they
like me? Do they understand me? Do I understand them? Such questions are not
insignificant when it comes to thinking about what one experiences as a teacher. But
when we think about teaching in a purely technicist way, where the focus is on
articulating practices through an explicit language not amenable to these sorts of
questions, so much of what is central to teaching remains limited in our accounts.
The fact that fundamental projects are open to question means that we must con-
tinually strive to hold our precarious sense of certainty intact. Oftentimes, however,
we are successful circumventing the anxiety this involves, in part through a form of
self-denial that Sartre calls ‘bad faith’. Let us consider this concept more deeply, as
well as its implications for our accounts of teaching.
References 93

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Chapter 6
Bad Faith, Sincerity and the Role
of the Teacher

Abstract Sartre’s concept of ‘bad faith’, where individuals suppress the ‘anguish
of freedom’ by reducing themselves to ‘things in-themselves’, is one of his most
steadfast ideas. Ultimately, bad faith points to a fundamental ambiguity at the
heart of the individual, characterised by the tension of being both a situated,
embodied being on the one hand, and free to respond to this situation on the other.
There are many examples of ‘bad faith’ in educational practice. Since Sartre’s
discussion mainly focuses on the individual, we can use it to better understand our
attempts to quash the sense of anxiety that often accompanies being in a class-
room. But there are also institutional examples of bad faith, where educators are
encouraged to see themselves as ‘things’. In this chapter, I will first elucidate the
idea as it appears in Being and Nothingness, as well as in Sartre’s novel, The Age
of Reason. I will then demonstrate how this concept can help us make sense of
educational experiences, as well as pointing to the ways in which it enters almost
any account of ourselves. This latter point in particular will be picked up again in
Chap. 8.

Keywords Bad faith · Sincerity · Teaching · Sartre · Existentialism

6.1 Uneasy Tensions

Bad faith is sometimes described as the antithesis of authenticity, but although

authenticity is implied throughout Sartre’s work, it is never fully (or, at least, clearly)
defined.1 Instead, Sartre takes a ‘via negativa’ approach, creating a space in which

1
Towards the end of Being and Nothingness, Sartre (2018) indicates that he had planned to write a
book dealing with ‘ontological ethics’ where the idea of authenticity would become clearer.
Although not directly the case, some related ideas are discussed in Existentialism and Humanism
and in the posthumously released Notebooks for an Ethics (Sartre, 1973, 1992). A more thorough
(and perhaps convincing) consideration into ‘existential ethics’ can be found in de Beauvoir (2018)
text, the Ethics of Ambiguity.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte 95

Ltd. 2022
A. M. Brady, Being a Teacher, Contemporary Philosophies and Theories in
Education 19, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-7323-9_6
96 6 Bad Faith, Sincerity and the Role of the Teacher

to unveil the furtive ways that bad faith functions in our lives, and to thus awaken
his readers to their own false consciousness. In one sense, Sartre’s discussion on bad
faith is educational in nature, where overcoming it entails a courageous and persis-
tent struggle so as to ‘lucidly perceive the games that one’s own consciousness
continually plays’ (Gordon & Gordon, 1999, p. 238). In many ways, paying close
attention to the inauthentic ways we account for ourselves requires a form of con-
tinual (self-)criticism, and a persistent attempt to be sincere in the stories we tell
ourselves. And yet, as we will see here, sincerity doesn’t necessarily exclude
bad faith.2
Broadly speaking, bad faith is a coping mechanism or a way to circumvent the
anguish that an awareness of our fundamental freedom and responsibility can evoke.
The constant desire to overcome the ‘lack’ at the heart of humankind has led Sartre
to refer to humans as a ‘useless passion’, and as discussed in the previous chapter, it
points to the idea that we exist in an uneasy tension as situated beings, on the one
hand, but as free in our responses to this. Our relationship with others also points to
these uneasy tensions, where my conduct – and, indeed, ‘who I am’ – is always
considered from two disparate viewpoints. Indeed, as further described in the
Notebooks for Ethics, Sartre (1992, p. 94) comments: ‘on the same plane, I am a
specific object and a free subject, but never both at once, and always the one haunted
by the Other.’ It is in relation to these tensions that Bell (1989, p. 32) notes, ‘…being
human is itself a challenge many would prefer to avoid.’ And it is in confrontation
of these tensions that ‘bad faith’ arises.

6.2 Bad Faith and Self-Deception

Bad faith is premised on an attempt to assimilate these paradoxes of being, in part

by denying the ambiguous tensions that underpin them. In the Notebook for an
Ethics, Sartre (1992) states that individuals are in bad faith, for example, when they
try to define themselves solely in terms of their facticity, thus denying their freedom
to respond to their situation. But we are also in bad faith when we deny our situation
as the context in which our freedom is enacted. One controversial character from the
Roads to Freedom trilogy who may be said to exemplify bad faith is Daniel Sereno.
When first introduced in the Age of Reason, he is described as:
…a hard, forbidding character, but underneath it all… a shrinking victim pleading for
mercy. It was odd, he thought, that a man could hate himself as though he were someone
else…When he despised himself he had the feeling of detachment from his own being, as
though he were poised like an impartial judge above a noisome turmoil, then suddenly he
found himself plunging downwards caught again in his own toils (Sartre, 2001, p. 85)

As revealed towards the end of the first novel, Daniel is gay, something he sees as a
fixed aspect of who he is but is nevertheless unwilling to embrace. As such, he is

2
We will return to a more in-depth discussion on this in Chap. 8.
6.2 Bad Faith and Self-Deception 97

embroiled in self-contempt. This self-contempt allows him to separate himself from

his so-called ‘condition’, where he is thus able to act as an impartial spectator pass-
ing judgement on his ‘sins’. Daniel encourages his justification for self-hatred by
committing various atrocious acts, including his purposive attempts to sabotage the
lives of others. He is first introduced concocting (but eventually abandoning) a plan
to drown his cats in the Seine. He tries to guilt the protagonist, Mathieu, into mar-
rying his mistress Marcelle, despite knowing that this would be devastating to both
characters. Towards the end of the first novel, Daniel marries Marcelle not out of
sympathy, but out of the sheer effort of destroying the solid persona that Mathieu is
seen to represent in his eyes. It is only towards the end of the first novel - when he
finally admits to Mathieu that he is gay - that he starts accepting it himself. He rea-
sons this as follows:
Well I… wanted to see the effect it would produce on a fellow like you,’ said Daniel, clear-
ing his throat. ‘Also, now that there’s someone who knows… I shall perhaps succeed in
believing it.’” (Sartre, 2001, p. 301)

Rather than relying on his own ontological freedom to fully embrace his sexuality,
Daniel requires the existence of the Other in order to do so. This, for Sartre, may be
characterised as a form of bad faith in which one sees oneself as fully determined by
their facticity on the one hand, but perhaps more importantly, by only accepting this
facticity once another has characterised us in the same way.
Whilst bad faith is often interpreted as a kind of ‘self-deception’, it is therefore
altogether more complex than this. In order to draw this distinction out further,
Sartre (2018, p. 88) formulates a distinction between lying to oneself and lying in
general:
We do not lie about something we do not know… we do not lie when we get something
wrong. The ideal of the liar is, then, a cynic in his consciousness, who affirms the truth in
itself and negates it in his words, while negating this negation for himself.

Unlike lying to oneself, lying in general is deliberate and therefore conscious, where
the liar must be in full comprehension of the truth being altered. It thus involves a
‘cynical consciousness’, where one first affirms something as true and then denies
this through explicit words or gestures. It is connected to a kind of performance –
‘…rehearsed; [with] the character he is playing in full sight of his interlocutor’
(Sartre, 2018, p. 89). Not only must the liar be conscious of his actions, he must
enact the lie with complete clarity, consciously hiding something from another who
takes this enactment as truth, ‘[making] profitable use of the ontological duality
between my own self and the Other’s’ (Sartre, 2018, p. 89). Lying in general is thus
not restricted to inner consciousness, but always bears relation to things or to per-
sons ‘outside’. And yet, as Sartre (2018, p. 90) remarks:
… in bad faith… the duality of the deceiver and the deceived is not present here. On the
contrary, bad faith implies in its essence the unity of single consciousness… From this it
follows, first, that the person to whom one is lying and the person who is lying are one and
the same (Sartre, 2018, p. 90).
98 6 Bad Faith, Sincerity and the Role of the Teacher

Daniel seems to inwardly acknowledge his sexuality (albeit without ever naming it)
and yet he carefully performs in such a way as to disguise this. Indeed, in punishing
himself for ‘what he is’,3 he must first recognise that which he is trying to disguise.
Thus, in lying to himself, he is therefore consciously choosing to avoid admitting
that he is gay, thereby curbing the anxiety that this acknowledgement might entail.
In fact, he wills certain roles into existence for this very purpose - willing himself
into ‘bad faith’.
Indeed, bad faith is not a ‘state’ that is attained by a person once and for all, but
rather, must be perpetually willed into existence, actively4 sustained against the con-
stant threat of collapse. It involves a ‘constant and distinctive style of life’ (Sartre,
2018, p. 91) akin to putting oneself to sleep - purposeful, and yet, ‘consists… in
avoiding reflection upon [its] purpose’ (Bell, 1989, p. 35). But this raises a number
of questions. Since consciousness is always translucent to itself, then to be in bad
faith must also mean being conscious of being in bad faith. But, curiously, in being
conscious of the lie that one directs towards oneself, in what sense are they really
lying? Is it possible, therefore, to maintain the dual role of being the deceiver and
the deceived in a single unity of consciousness?

6.2.1 The ‘Unconscious’ Explanation

Self-deception might make sense if there is an unconscious ‘censor’ who functions

like a ‘passport controller’ (Sartre, 2003, p. 81). The unconscious allows for a ‘psy-
chic dualism’ where the person can be a stranger to themselves, and to therefore act
as both the deceiver and the deceived. According to Sartre, Freudian psychoanalysis
posits that one is not always in the position to understand their (unconscious) drives.
Nevertheless, the unconscious has a concrete reality that in part explains ‘who I
am’, and can therefore be analysed. My reasons for lying may remain alien to me
until I have performed this act explicitly and until I have studied these acts in order
to ‘uncover’ those original motives. For Sartre (2018, p. 93), the unconscious thus
‘introduces into the depths of my subjectivity [an] intersubjective structure’, where
psychoanalysis is necessary in order to establish a mediator between the conscious
and the unconscious, an ‘Other’ who can synthesise this apparent opposition in the
individual. As such, one can only know one’s reasoning through the eyes of
the Other.

3
This of course is not to suggest that Daniel should punish himself for his sexuality, and we could
also remark how terrible it is that he feels compelled to do this. But Sartre is not talking about how
one should or should not behave – he is instead attempting to offer a description of how we live
and act.
4
There may be instances, however, where one does not explicitly realise that they are in bad faith.
Nevertheless, failing to realise something is not the same as being unable to ever realise it. Hence,
there is a subtle but important distinction between explicit awareness and consciousness.
6.3 Sincerity and the Forms of Bad Faith 99

Such forms of analysis ‘can succeed only if I mistrust any kind of intuition, and
apply to my case - from outside - abstract schemas and rules already learned’ (Sartre,
2018, p. 92). With an increased accuracy in psychoanalytic hypotheses, greater dis-
trust in our own account of ourselves is then necessary, as well as a greater reliance
on ‘technicians’ to put us right. But if consciousness is translucent, this would make
an ‘unconscious consciousness’ impossible. How else might we explain the ways in
which we are selective about which ‘drives’ to allow (e.g. hunger) and which to
supress (e.g. perverse sexual desires)? Importantly, the suppression itself renders
such drives to the unconscious only after the initial pre-reflective awareness of what
to suppress. Selectivity therefore must be conscious – it must be consented to on
some level, and as such, it must involve an element of conscious choice.5
Bad faith as a form of unconscious self-deception cannot be explained through
the lens of psychoanalysis, although Sartre (2008) later admitted that his under-
standing of the unconscious here is based on a reductive interpretation of Freud.
Nevertheless, bad faith does not relate to some ‘veiled end’ that can only be com-
prehended obscurely or through the Other, even if our acting in bad faith is not
always at the forefront of our thinking. How is it, then, that bad faith appears? And –
perhaps more interestingly – why do we lie to ourselves in this way? In order to
explore this further, Sartre turns his attention to concrete examples that serve to
exemplify this phenomenon in a more everyday sense, showing us that, in all its
complexity, bad faith is nevertheless an intimate part of how we live.

6.3 Sincerity and the Forms of Bad Faith

The examples Sartre offers in Being and Nothingness are certainly not uncontrover-
sial. They are ripe with problematic assumptions in relation to class, gender, the
nature of sexual orientation, and consent.6 The ways in which Sartre assigns respon-
sibility in these situations is dubious for this reason. For one, he does not always
fully consider the stakes involved in choosing to act freely or in choosing to remain
in bad faith. These controversies have led certain commentators to differentiate
between ‘weak’ and ‘strong’ notions of bad faith (Catalano, 1983), something we
will explore further in the next section. But perhaps more importantly - bad faith
need not necessarily be an accusation. It is simply a demonstration of the ways in
which we act, rightly or wrongly. As such, the discussion here might be read as an

5
In support of this, Sartre explores instances where a patient resists treatment the closer the psych-
analyst gets to the ‘objective truth’ of his inner drives. See, for example, The Man with the Tape
Recorder, a controversial publication that appeared in Les Temps Modernes in 1969 (Sartre, 2008).
6
This is particularly true of the first example he discusses in reference to the woman on a date with
a man, who refuses to acknowledge his advances by actively making herself into a passive object.
The Second Sex, where de Beauvoir (2010) expands on an ‘existentialist ethics’ through the lens of
feminism, offers a much more compelling example of gendered relationships and power dynamics,
which I do not have the space to discuss here.
100 6 Bad Faith, Sincerity and the Role of the Teacher

attempt to offer some explanation of human action rather than providing us with the
material to judge how one ought to act in given situations. For the purposes of our
discussion here, I will focus on perhaps the most famous example: the waiter.
Sartre describes a waiter who is ‘a bit too precise… a bit too attentive’ (Sartre,
2018, p. 102). His behaves like an automaton, imitating its ‘inflexible exactitude’.
This person is ‘playing at being a café waiter’– a performance intimately connected
to an idealised version of what that entails, in part based on what paying custom-
ers demand:
…the public demands [him] to actualize [functions] as a ceremony… We can see how many
measures exist, to imprison a man in what he is. It is as if we lived in the constant fear that
he might escape from it, that he might burst out and suddenly elude his condition.

And yet, what the waiter (and, indeed, the customers) fail to remember is that this
waiter is not just a waiter in the way that an ‘inkwell is an inkwell’. The waiter can
contemplate and make judgements with regards to his situation. He knows what
being a waiter means, and the acts he must perform in order to be a waiter (e.g. wak-
ing up at 5 am, smiling enthusiastically at customers). These meanings are not
‘brute facts’, but only exist because of human consciousness, and are intimately
related to how we interpret situations more generally.
Our understanding and enactment of roles are intimately tied to ideals created by
human society, where we come to know the functions of a role through its ‘ideal’
representation. Think of the famous characters from movies that we often idealise
in teaching – John Keating in Dead Poets Society, or Erin Gruwell in The Freedom
Writers. Indeed, these images of ideal teachers are not just inspirational for those
entering the profession. They also carry with them a particular definition of what
that role necessitates. These necessary conditions of a role may be implicit, and, of
course, they do not necessarily need to come from famous movie characters, but
also our own experiences as former students, or perhaps through training or more
explicit criteria that delineate effective practices. Roles nevertheless relate to a cer-
tain ‘performativity’, one in which the expectations of that role pre-determine how
it is we behave once we adopt it, often stopping us from thinking about these roles –
and, by extension, ourselves - in any other way.
Role-playing is an important part of any profession, as well as a most social situ-
ations. In many ways, role-playing is intimately connected to the ways in which our
selves are produced with the Other in mind. In Words, Sartre (2000, p. 46) refers to
his own upbringing in light of this, and the roles he inhabited both as a ‘writer’ and
also as a ‘son’:
I used to lie on my stomach, facing the windows, a book open in front of me, a glass of
water with a dash of wine to my right and a jam sandwich on a plate to my left. Even when
alone, I was performing… In the evening I was asked: ‘What have you read? What did you
make of it?’ I was expecting this, I was in labour and I gave birth to a precocious remark…
when [the grownups] were not there, their future gaze came in through the back of my head,
came out again through my pupils and shot, at floor-level, along those oft-read sentences
which I was reading for the first time. Seen, I saw myself: I saw myself reading as one hears
oneself speak.
6.3 Sincerity and the Forms of Bad Faith 101

And yet, since all of these examples involve reducing ourselves to particular func-
tions, they are also examples of bad faith. This is not to say that we should admonish
ourselves for doing so, since there is no reason to doubt that one might do so with
best intentions in mind – as a way to provide the best kind of service one would
expect, or to obtain the material means necessary to live. Indeed, it would be inter-
esting to suppose what Sartre might say about a waiter who is also a struggling
artist, who acts in accordance with the functions of a ‘good’ waiter such that he can
afford more ‘authentic’ endeavours outside of this. Moreover, these roles are not
just individually produced and performed. They are also institutionally imposed,
and thus the question of the place of responsibility in these cases is not so clear cut.
Indeed, important to our discussion here is in thinking about how those roles are
understood at an institutional level, and how this very understanding proliferates
such that the waiter feels compelled to adopt it at whatever cost. Yes, the waiter
could refuse to wake up at 5 am or to be ‘professional’ with the customers. Yes, he
is choosing not to risk their jobs by doing so, and must therefore take responsibility
for these choices. But perhaps the issue is less with him ‘playing the game’, and
more with the specific rules through which this game is defined – as well as the way
that bad faith is encouraged by the institution who in turn profit from their employ-
ees becoming like ‘things-in-themselves’. This denial of freedom is often necessary
in order for a person to sustain themselves within a role, where in this instance, ‘I
can be one only in the neutralized mode… by mechanically making the typical ges-
tures of my condition as I aim through these gestures… at being a café waiter’
(Sartre, 2018). And yet, in calling himself a waiter, and in living up to the expecta-
tions of the role, he is certainly not lying, but where one thinks about themselves
and their possibilities only in those terms, one is in bad faith.
Isn’t the waiter simply insincere, however, in the same way that Daniel is insin-
cere about his sexuality and his true motives for marrying Marcelle? In order for
both characters to be in good faith, mustn’t they therefore be more sincere, perhaps
by defying some of the expectations imposed on them from the outside? We must be
careful, however, not to conflate sincerity with good faith. Sincerity too can come
from a kind of ‘idealisation’ of a person, where it is thought of as a quality or dispo-
sition that determines how one will always behave. But this too, denies the freedom
that always underpins the ways in which we act – in this case, the freedom to be
insincere.
Of course, there are also less sincere motives for being sincere. Calling oneself
‘sincere’ may have an instrumental purpose - allowing us to stave off criticisms for
our decisions, for instance. It is certainly common for a person to acknowledge their
faults whilst immediately exclaiming, ‘at least I’m honest!’ On the one hand, this
double act allows us to grant ourselves the moniker of sincerity. On the other hand,
it implies that, despite acknowledging our faults, one is not responsible in making
any effort to change them, or indeed, to respond to them in any genuine sense. Such
‘faults’ thus take on a fixed but fully conscious character, and yet seem less repre-
hensible and thus less likely to be addressed.
Sartre also draws on an example of the sincere, attentive student here to demonstrate
why the pure performativity of a role can be problematic. This student has his eyes
102 6 Bad Faith, Sincerity and the Role of the Teacher

‘riveted on his teacher, all ears’ (Sartre, 2018, p. 104). But he exhausts himself in play-
ing this attentive role, missing out on all of the other constitutive factors which make
him not only a pupil, but a person. His hypervigilance and the attention he pays to being
attentive means that he no longer hears anything that the teacher or any other is saying
to him. He becomes reduced, then, to a particular ‘function’ – not a human being capa-
ble of interacting with others, with his own thinking or with the material. His attentive-
ness to performing this role invades not only what he does, but also who he is.

6.4 The Faith of Bad Faith

So what is it that enables us to be in bad faith? As we have seen in the previous

chapter, consciousness is a ‘lack’, something that bad faith utilises in order to sus-
tain itself in contradiction. This, in turn, has implications for how we account for
ourselves more broadly:
To keep constant account of what one is amounts to a constant disavowal of oneself; it is to
take refuge in a sphere in which one is no longer anything but a pure and free act of looking,
the goal of bad faith…is to put oneself out of reach; it is an act of flight (Sartre, 2018,
p. 111).

In the last section of his chapter on bad faith in Being and Nothingness, Sartre turns
his attention to something fundamental about bad faith that has so far been over-
looked – the idea that bad faith is, indeed, an example of ‘faith’. Indeed, the reason
why we can persuade ourselves to be in bad faith (despite on some level knowing
that we are) is because of the nature of faith more generally.
Sartre argues that bad faith is ultimately an unnamed decision, something that we
decide in such a way that we believe ourselves not to be in bad faith. This is because
‘naming [it] what it is’ would constitute good faith. And yet, it seems impossible to
persistently be in bad faith if we cannot persuade ourselves or acknowledge that that
is the case. Bad faith must therefore be a decision that is perpetually willed into
existence, but that at the same time, cannot be too obvious. In order to sustain it,
there must be some peculiarly non-persuasive evidence. Under what conditions
might this be possible?
Catalano (1985) offers a helpful example. Say a student believes that they lack
the ability to do mathematics well. He fails his first examination and is left with the
decision as to whether he will put in any effort into passing the second time. He
wonders what will happen if, in spite of his effort, he still fails. In order to avoid a
situation where he would have to confront failure once more, he decides that he is
simply not good at mathematics. This fixed image of himself as being incapable of
mathematics is an example of bad faith, if, of course, we accept that his perceived
inability is due to a lack of responsibility, effort or motivation and not some innate
facticity like his intelligence, for instance. As a result of this image – which, in this
instance, he himself knows on some level to be dubious - he doesn’t make any effort
to study and, of course, fails his second attempt at the exam. This second failure,
premised originally on the project of bad faith, then serves as evidence of his
6.5 Being Who You Are in the Classroom? 103

inability to do mathematics. And although this evidence was designed through bad
faith, it nevertheless persuades the student of his ‘inescapable condition’ of being
poor at mathematics, regardless of its veracity. The project of bad faith thus man-
ages to maintain itself by deciding and enacting the nature of its own evidence. This
aligns itself with the nature of faith more broadly, in that faith, in order for it to be
faith, it must never be fully persuasive.
Let’s look at this from another angle. At the beginning of the novel, Mathieu
believes that Daniel is his friend, and not someone who, in fact, despises him in
secret. Of course, Mathieu is unable to know for certain if Daniel is, in fact, his
friend (e.g. he may look to his behaviour as signifying this, but he can never be fully
certain). Believing thus means that I ‘give into my impulses to trust’ (Sartre, 2018,
p. 115), as is often necessary in navigating relationships with others. But ultimately,
these beliefs are decisions, and in order to maintain them, I must act as if I am cer-
tain of them, and to ignore or deny evidence that signals the contrary. Such is the
very nature of belief as inherently paradoxical – ‘[t]o believe is to know one believes,
and to know one believes is to believe no longer’ (Sartre, 2018, p. 115). Good faith
is not necessarily immune from this, since every belief falls short - ‘we never believe
in what we believe’ (Sartre, 2018, p. 116). And yet, believing intentionally and con-
sciously in impossible beliefs does not dissuade me from acting on them – there is
much that we take on faith.
How is bad faith distinct from good faith, then? Indeed - what exactly does it mean
to be in ‘good faith’? According to Santoni (1995, p. 110, emphasis added), good faith
is ‘an attitude that is open to the metastability of consciousness, to the ambiguity and
incompleteness of all belief, to critical evidence… an attitude that confronts and
affirms, rather than flees from, the freedom and responsibility to which (for Sartre) we
have been abandoned’. Good faith is therefore not fixed a character trait that deter-
mines how a person is and will always be. It is, however, a prerequisite for what we
might call authenticity, if we understand the authentic life to mean an acceptance that
‘no matter how tragic… human action [is] the root of all our accepted values’ (Sartre,
as cited in Catalano, 1996, p. 171).7 This, as we will now explore, has important impli-
cations for how it is that we might account for ourselves and our practices.

6.5 Being Who You Are in the Classroom?

The crux of the issue, then, relates to how we think of ourselves (as essential, or as
free), and the extent to which we are willing to take responsibility for both ourselves
and the situations we find ourselves therein.

7
Many important commentators have accused Sartre of failing to elaborate on the connection
between ‘good faith’ and ‘authenticity’ (e.g. Catalano, 1996; Santoni, 1995, 1997). These are
interesting discussions, but I do not have the space to consider them at length here. I will, however,
touch upon an understanding of ‘good faith’ and ‘authenticity’ in relation to the concept of par-
rhesia in Chap. 8.
104 6 Bad Faith, Sincerity and the Role of the Teacher

Of course, the time that Sartre was writing was certainly different than ours,
where globalised technological advancements have given us a new range of choices
in ‘being who we are’. How do we make sense of bad faith in a context where it
seems like we have more opportunities or calls to be authentic? This relates to the
rise in things like social media, where more and more one’s identity is put on dis-
play, re-interrogated, and re-configured, and where one seems to have an expanded
capacity for exposing the bad faith of themselves and others. And yet, although a
purely function-determined form of identity is being increasingly called into ques-
tion, the pseudo-individualism that replaces this is still aligned with complex iden-
tity profiles that we adopt.8 Importantly, these identity profiles one might adopt are
more than simply ‘options’ to choose from. Rather, through our continued and sus-
tained exposure to them through technologies such as social media, they give us a
language through which we can account for ourselves, and in doing so, they allow
us to adopt an identity that is intelligible to others. Thus, when our choices are tied
to the process of marketisation – not only in terms of what we want to buy, but also
how we understand ourselves - is this problematic, or does it, in fact, allow us to be
more ‘authentic’? Perhaps our more conventional understanding and usage of the
term ‘authenticity’ is a form of bad faith in and of itself, like the concept of sincerity
outlined above. Indeed, in thinking of ourselves or our identities as ‘authentic’, to
what extent do we perpetuate a fixed idea of ourselves as an ‘authentic person’?
The institutional discourses that come to shape how we define ourselves is cer-
tainly significant here, as is the case with the waiter in the previous example. This is
particularly true of the identity profile that is perpetuated by ‘effective teacher’ dis-
courses, through which one comes to know themselves, and indeed, puts themselves
into words. Do we also see more pervasive forms of bad faith stemming from insti-
tutions then, who ‘force’ individuals to see themselves in terms of these restrictive
role profiles? Given the ubiquity of bad faith in society more broadly, it is therefore
important for us to consider it not only as something an individual might fall into,
but something that is perpetuated at an institutional level as well. In fact, institu-
tional and individual forms of bad faith are inseparable in many respects, and an
analysis of this relationship allows us to more deeply consider the location of
responsibility.
First, however, I will consider ‘micro-instances’ of bad faith in the classroom. As
before, such classroom examples are not by no means exhaustive, nor should they
be thought of in an ‘accusatory’ sense. When Sartre speaks of responsibility, he is
not thinking of the ‘accountability’ that we see in educational discourses today. But

8
For example, social media influencing is now a potential career choice, where the influencer’s
sole aim is to ‘sell’ a particular brand or product, and where, oftentimes that ‘brand’ is actually the
individual themselves. These individuals are very much defined by the needs of the market - by
what is trendy, and by the ways in which they will be viewed by the wider public in light of this.
Not all of these trends are (intentionally) malicious, of course – increasingly, influencers have used
their platforms to talk about a range of important issues, from feminism to climate change to the
growing levels of mental health issues amongst young people. And the point here is not to dispar-
age individuals from making such career choices, but rather, to think about how Sartre’s ideas
might be applied to the modern context in light of this.
6.5 Being Who You Are in the Classroom? 105

rather than remove the term ‘responsibility’ entirely from the language of educa-
tion, might we also reimagine its more technicist conception in a more existential-
ist vein?

6.5.1 Role-Playing in the Classroom

The question of role-playing is central to the concept of bad faith. This is exempli-
fied quite clearly with the waiter example, where a ‘sincere’ adoption of certain
roles can lead us to deny the extent to which we can respond to our circumstances
as free subjects. Role-playing, however, does not just happen in the workplace.
Each social situation demands it, and with that, certain norms of speaking or ways
of behaving appropriately in line with that context. Often we are all complicit in the
perpetuation of roles – Sartre every time he buys a coffee, for example. All of this
depends on what we consider bad faith to look like, and this is especially tricky
when it comes to assigning it to other people, whose motivations for acting are not
always clear to us. Moreover, bad faith is often something we do without full aware-
ness, and in this sense, it permeates much of our lives, as Bonnett (1994, p. 102-103)
so pertinently describes:
We submerge ourselves in the world by living busily and unthinkingly according to the
roles, stereotypes, expectations, with which ‘they’ provide us, and thus measure ourselves
according to standards that are not truly our own. We lose ourselves in hobbies, pastimes,
intellectual pursuits, and we make sure that we don’t give ourselves the opportunity to think
genuinely about our own unique individual existence. Instead we get comfortably carried
along in what is essentially just ‘gossip’ or ‘hearsay’, and fashion in one form of another.

In the classroom, role-playing is also intimately tied to the ways in which we act,
perhaps in an even more explicit sense than in other social situations where, argu-
ably, we are freer to ‘be ourselves’. On one level, this is because teachers and learn-
ers are often thought of as roles, and this implies certain recognisable ways of being
in the classroom (e.g. the teacher stands in front of the class, the students sit behind
desks in uniform). But these roles are still complex, in part relying on societal
demands that are not always clear. In teaching, there has been extensive research
conducted that considers the roles that one adopts – caretakers, curriculum delivers,
guardians of culture. Each of these has its own particular way of being in the class-
room, but they are not clearly definable, nor are they clearly recognisable in a ‘mea-
surable’ sense. Indeed, roles are contestable, since they are not only connected to
the particular needs of society at the time, but also a particular definition of what
education is for – both on an individual as well as institutional level (e.g. Biesta,
2014; Hoyle, 1969).
Despite this, roles are often outlined in a more ‘fixed’ sense, particularly in poli-
cies that aim at measuring effective teaching. The discourses that define teaching in
this way are often technicist in nature, delineated through what might be called
‘profiles’ of effective practice. Often, these profiles reduce the less measurable (or,
indeed, immeasurable) components of teaching to pure ‘subjectivism’. But in
106 6 Bad Faith, Sincerity and the Role of the Teacher

considering the teacher purely in terms of this (technicist/easily defined) role

involves considering their practice as distinct from their identity as teachers, or
indeed, as persons acting on and interpreting the classroom situation in particular
ways. As we saw in Chaps. 4 and 5, however, whilst our responses to situation pro-
duce our identity, this identity is nevertheless distinct from the fundamental pre-
reflective mode of being that underpins it – the lack of self at our core that constitutes,
for Sartre, our fundamental freedom. But where we conceive of our identities purely
in terms of fixed roles, we are therefore denying this more fundamental freedom at
our core. This, of course, is the epitome of bad faith.
Within this technicist discourse, the role of the teacher is also connected to a
particular conception of responsibility. Teachers are expected to adopt certain
approaches in the classroom that are effective – the fulfilment of pre-set objectives
evidencing that the teacher has satisfied what it is she is thought to be accountable
towards (e.g. student outcomes). In one sense, the use of effectiveness profiles gives
us clear benchmarks for clearly recognising good teaching along these lines, and
they in part alleviate anxieties for those concerned with the rigour of teacher
accountability measures. But these profiles also serve to pacify the anxiety of teach-
ers who perhaps just want to know if what they are doing is working, or indeed, if
they are doing well (Brady, 2019). Of course, this is understandable – the less trust
that one places in teachers might help to explain their reliance on externally pro-
duced frameworks. As a consequence, these profiles come to be how teachers rec-
ognise themselves, particularly in contexts where they are expected to ‘account’ for
their practices using specific forms of evidence.
And yet, to focus solely on this more technical understanding of teachers, learn-
ers, the lesson and indeed, the relationship between all of these, is to deny the ways
in which teachers and learners are inevitably free subjects in the classroom. Teachers
(and, indeed learners) are fundamentally responding to – and thus responsible for –
the classroom in a way that is beyond their functions. Since accepting this brings to
light the precarity of any definition of a role, and indeed, the risk and ambiguity that
is part of classroom experiences, risk-adverse discourses in education instead opt
for bad faith (Biesta, 2014; Brady, 2019, 2020, 2022).9
Having said that, there is something recognisably ‘teacherly’ about a person,
their gestures (Vlieghe & Zamojski, 2019), or perhaps something more ineffable or
inarticulable. Of course, seeing someone as ‘teacherly’ does not necessarily involve
reducing them to functions. Rather, what is implicit in our understanding of this is
that any description of teachers is never definitive in nature. Such descriptions are
inevitably tied to ‘ideals’ which, as we have seen above, can carve out a particular

9
This is not to deny that, of course, there are some things in education and in the practice of teach-
ers that can be thought of in a more ‘functional’ sense. The danger lies in seeing these functions as
the essence of being a teacher – not only in the sense that there is much more to being a teacher
than these prescribed functions, but because the teacher herself is a human in the room, and is
therefore acting on the situation in ways that we explored in Chap. 5. This is not simply a discus-
sion on the ethics of treating teachers as ‘humans’, but the fallacy of not accepting subjectivity
when it comes to interpreting the classroom situation.
6.5 Being Who You Are in the Classroom? 107

path for how one should act in the classroom. At the same time, these descriptions
are unsaturated in that they are open to renegotiation and expansion. Indeed, these
representations are engaged with, often in implicit ways. They are not simply delin-
eated in advance of teaching, but rather, are (re)produced through the act of teaching
itself. This includes the ways that we come to our definitions of effective teaching,
definitions that do not exist ‘out there’, independent of human opinion, but as always
(re)created as part of our responses in the world.
In bad faith, it is not necessarily the act of role-playing itself that is problematic,
but instead, how our adoption of them denies ourselves or others as beyond this. And
although roles profiles can be intrusive, this does not suggest that we are merely
passive recipients of them. These roles are not solely imposed by some impersonal
‘they’ (e.g. neoliberal discourses), since we are very much a part of this ‘they’ and
thus in some ways impose these functions on ourselves. Teachers, for instance, are
often very well aware of the problematic assumptions that are contained in policy
discourses around effective practice (e.g. O’Brien et al., 2019). Their adoption of
particular roles may very well be with the student in mind, where being in bad faith
may, in some circumstances, seem to be the ‘right’ choice. Calling these role
descriptions into question can also be risky, not only in terms of the more immediate
effects on their students, but also in terms of the vulnerabilities that teachers may
become exposed to as a result – being seen as ineffective, or as a troublemaker,
perhaps (e.g. Mooney Simmie & Moles, 2020; Santoro, 2017). They are also risky
in deeper sense. For instance, if a teacher is to adopt a different ‘language’ in
accounting for herself, to what extent would this be intelligible to others, particu-
larly given the (technicist) coherency in the language we use to talk about teaching?
These anxieties around the possibility of acting against the discourses is very much
the reason why most of us, instead, choose to remain in bad faith.

6.5.2 Responding to the Situation

Bad faith can also exist where one makes oneself into a ‘passive object’, objects that
do not – and, indeed, cannot – respond to the situation. The dichotomy of ‘active’
and ‘passive’ often appears in educational policies, particularly in relation to stu-
dents, and the roles that (effective) teachers can play in ensuring active engagement
(e.g. DES, 2016). In one sense, we might be tempted to refer to the passive student
as someone who is in bad faith – i.e. as someone unwilling to respond to the situa-
tion – tactically or otherwise – but instead turning themselves into an ‘thing in
itself’ without the necessary freedom or responsibility for acting. Of course, I am
not commenting here on the reasons one might make themselves into a ‘passive
object’, and whether or not those reasons are good or bad, but simply that it is some-
thing that may appear to occur in classroom experiences.
What about those students who decide to be disruptive in some way? Does this
more visibly ‘active’ response to the situation of schooling represent something
more ‘authentic’? Indeed, a disruptive student may very well be understood as
108 6 Bad Faith, Sincerity and the Role of the Teacher

acting upon their freedom - to call into question the unelected authority of the
teacher and the school, or to raise questions about the necessity of them being there
in the first place. In this sense in particular, the student may be acting on their free-
dom in accordance with their fundamental values.
Of course, the disruptive student may also do this for less noble reasons - with
little regard for the freedom of others or for the facticity of the classroom, or perhaps
as a way to remain popular with others, engaging in a kind of ‘counter-hearsay’
(Bonnett, 1994, p. 104). Perhaps they are merely adopting the ‘role’ of disruptive
student, not as a way to challenge and respond to the situation, but to live up to
certain expectations in accordance with profiles made available to them. Hence, the
‘active’ student is not immune to bad faith. In a similar vein, whilst passivity is often
characterised as the absence of choice, it in fact can signal the act of not choosing
to respond to a situation, or an unwillingness to consent to what is being taught. It
is thus not simply the case that the passive student is in bad faith. Thus, we should
be careful with conflating the dualism of ‘passive’ and ‘active’ with ‘good’ and
‘bad’ faith, since these behaviours do not necessarily demonstrate the reasons why
one is acting. Rather, our interpretations of situations are always belated.
In any case, bad faith is also a response. So although we may deceive ourselves
into thinking that we are not acting, or that we are forced to act in a certain way
based on our pre-defined roles, there is always a fundamental choice underpinning
every situation, including the ways in which those very situations are brought to
light. One may question the extent to which students or teachers should, or can, be
held responsible for all situations. Importantly, responsibility here does not neces-
sarily refer to our conventional understanding, particularly the kind we find in cur-
rent educational discourses – e.g. the student as ‘responsible’ for their learning, and
therefore ‘accountable’ for the grades they receive. Responsibility here relates to the
ways in which a person responds to the facticity of their situation.
It is, however, not only the individual that may be in bad faith. In fact, perhaps in
adopting one form of bad faith (e.g. disrupting the class because the student wishes
to align themselves with a fixed role), a deeper sense of bad faith is exposed as a
result (e.g. the problematic expectations in relation to a fixed understanding of what
being a student entails). The latter example represents what I call institutionalised
forms of bad faith.

6.5.3 From Individual and Institutional Bad Faith

So far, we have discussed the extent to which role-playing can be problematic in

that it can ‘essentialise’ teachers or students, and therefore deny the extent to which
both are more than what these roles define. In Being and Nothingness, Sartre seems
to relegate the responsibility of recognising (and, perhaps, responding to) this to the
level of the individual. For him, it is the waiter that fashions himself as an object
with set functions. It is the individual who pretends that his duties are not free
choices, and that these prohibit him from responding otherwise. Ultimately, it is the
6.5 Being Who You Are in the Classroom? 109

individual who fails to transcend his facticity, to constitute himself as beyond those
conditions, or to at least conceive of another life where all of this might be possible
(Brady, 2022). In some sense, it is conceivable that an individual may actively
decide to perpetuate bad faith in order to avoid the anxiety of freedom and respon-
sibility. And, as indicated, there is no reason to doubt that one may act in bad faith
with the best intentions in mind, like the teacher who has convinced herself that
aligning her practice with role profiles will pay off in some way.
Important to our discussion here is in thinking about how those roles are described
at an institutional level. In the case of education, bad faith may be perpetuated not
only by the individual’s subscription to certain role profiles, but by the content of
the role profiles themselves. Although teachers are always responding to the situa-
tion in which they find themselves, the institution inevitably frames the direction of
those responses.
One commonly voiced concern with self-evaluation is that it might become a
form of self-inspection, where the teacher is merely forced to emulate the role of the
inspector (MacBeath, 2006). This can result in a more obvious form of bad faith,
where teachers are not only described in an essentialist way but are, in fact, encour-
aged to see and evaluate themselves in this same way. Indeed, the Self-Evaluation
Guidelines explicitly instruct teachers to adopt their role profiles, insofar as they
provide ‘a language for discussing what is working well and what needs to be
improved’ (DES, 2016, p. 22). The ways in which those guidelines might be seen to
represent bad faith also comes to be how the teacher defines herself. And by follow-
ing the directives indicated in the frameworks for self-evaluation, the possibilities of
what can be discussed is also constrained along these lines. Indeed, the very idea of
what being a teacher entails is already moulded, and so too the possible ways in
which we might discuss or account for this.
This ‘language of evaluation’ - produced at an institutional level and imposed on
the individual teacher - is done in a way that assuages certain anxieties. But this is
not the kind of anxiety that Sartre accounts for, as that which inevitably arises when
one confronts one’s fundamental freedom and responsibility. Rather, it is an anxiety
of performativity, one that arises from concerns over the extent to which one might
appear to be an (in)effective teacher (Brady, 2019). Lyotard (1984) relates perfor-
mativity to a kind of ‘terror’, where anxiety of this kind can lead to a neurotic obses-
sion with making sure that the ‘outputs’ (what is visible and measurable in a
classroom) are executed in a technically perfect way. Ironically, it is an anxiety that
arises from being in bad faith, as distinct from the (necessary) anxiety that, in choos-
ing to be in bad faith, one attempts to suppress.
And yet, even if those role profiles are premised on an institutionalised form of
bad faith, one inevitably responds to these profiles in the classroom. The quasi-­
tragic element of all of this is that both teachers and students may perpetuate insti-
tutional bad faith – without fully realising it, perhaps – by adopting those profiles in
their understanding of themselves and others in the classroom. Often, the stakes
involved in acting as a free subject means that, more often than not, we choose to
remain in bad faith, even if one is acutely aware that this is the case.
110 6 Bad Faith, Sincerity and the Role of the Teacher

Undeniably, one is often encouraged to remain in bad faith by the institution

(Brady, 2022). Perhaps, in this sense, the issue is less with employees of the insti-
tution ‘playing the game’, and more with the specific rules through which this
game is defined. The waiter must always smile despite the rudeness of a customer
if he wants to remain employed. The teacher must be prepared to ‘teach effec-
tively’ if she wishes to be seen as a good teacher by her colleagues, her school and
her students. Bad faith, in these instances, is encouraged by the institution, who in
turn profit from those employees becoming like ‘things-in-themselves’ - resources
that, for the moment, serve to emulate the ‘ideal’ employee as defined by the
institution.
The ambiguity of the role of self-deception in bad faith has led some com-
mentators to distinguish between so-called ‘weak’ and ‘strong’ forms. According
to Catalano (1983, p. 79), ‘weak’ forms relate the idea that bad faith is a ‘neces-
sary aspect of the human condition’ – necessary in the sense that it allows us to
‘cope with our freedom by assuming the roles of society’. A weak sense of
‘good faith’ in relation to this would simply be an awareness of the ways in
which we are fixed by our roles and their expectations. A strong sense of ‘bad
faith’, however, involves a failure to see the wider context in which the adoption
of our roles are situated, and how this, in turn, might go against our own funda-
mental values and intentions. We are unwilling to take responsibility for our-
selves in this instance not because we have genuinely convinced ourselves of the
constraints imposed by our environment, but because we are unwilling to accept
the values that have been made manifest in our actions – and the kind of person
we are as a result of this. A strong sense of ‘good faith’ would involve not only
recognising this, but a genuine ‘leap’ of sorts – a radical overhaul of what we do
in order to become someone else. But as Catalano (1983, p. 80) points out, the
most we can often hope for is the weak sense of good faith. Indeed, we must
expect that most people, even if they do recognise the bad faith by which they
live, will be unwilling to risk their lives or their self-­understanding in this way.
Perhaps more importantly, it is society that ‘must be open and encourage ques-
tioning if the average person is to avoid living a life of bad faith [in the strong
sense of the term]’. But would our current ‘disenchanted’ society want this –
and, indeed, the institutions that operate within this context?
Perhaps, then, a disruption of sorts is necessary – a new way in which to account
for these practices that brings institutional bad faith to the fore, such that these
impoverished ways of thinking about teaching can be not only acknowledged but
(continually) struggled against. Importantly, however, the teacher and the students
are not only responding to these role profiles, nor are they only responding to the
situation in which they find themselves. They are also responding to each other. In
order to understand this, an account of the Other is necessary, to which we will
now turn.
References 111

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Chapter 7
The Look of the Other and the Experience
of Teaching: The Failure of Solipsism
and the Pursuit of Vulnerability

Abstract In Being and Nothingness, as well as many of his literary works, Sartre
discusses our relationship with others primarily through what he calls ‘the look’. In
simple terms, the ‘look’ concerns the ways in which we are seen by others, and how
this in turn relates to how we see ourselves. In education, this point is particularly
reminiscent of the experiences of teaching, where one is inevitably exposed towards
others in the classroom. Sartre sees our relationship with others in mainly conflic-
tual terms, however – a perpetual struggle to assert one’s subjectivity by denying the
objectification that comes from others. And yet, our relationship with others need
not only be defined along those lines. Towards the end of the chapter, I will discuss
this in terms of the educational context, including the necessary and mutual vulner-
ability that is very much part of the lived experiences of teaching.

Keywords The other · The look · Sartre · Existentialism · Teaching

7.1 From Being an Individual to Being for the Other

When Sartre (2018) discusses the individual’s relationship with the Other, it is on
the basis of lived experience. Indeed, how it is that we ‘know’ whether the Other
exists is not really his central concern (as it has been for previous philosophers).1

1
For Sartre, questions about generally reside on one of two poles – namely, the ‘realist’ and the
‘idealist’ positions. If one were to take the ‘realist’ perspective, then the existence of the Other
relates to their bodily presence before me. What this then implies is that, by analysing the other’s
bodily behaviour, we can assume that this ‘other’ is conscious like me. But ironically, this account
resorts to a kind of idealism in inferring the existence of the Other. For Sartre, the ‘idealist’ posi-
tion fares no better – e.g. Kant posits a universal ‘subjectivity’ that essentially differentiates
humans from other animals, insofar as I encounter others as ‘the presence of structured forms –
such as facial and other expressions, actions and ways of behaving’ (Sartre, 2018, p. 313), which
allows me to recognise them as ‘humans like me’. But even though I realise that there are certain
commonalities between us, I must assume this without knowing it for a fact. In both the realist and
the idealist position, then, we are always in danger of entering into a kind of ‘solipsism’.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte 113
Ltd. 2022
A. M. Brady, Being a Teacher, Contemporary Philosophies and Theories in
Education 19, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-7323-9_7
114 7 The Look of the Other and the Experience of Teaching: The Failure of Solipsism…

This may seem like a trivial point, but it is one that allows Sartre to offer a different
understanding of the Other, not as ‘deduced’, but rather, as experienced. The Other
is not simply a person of ‘separate substance’ (e.g. flesh-and-blood bodies). Rather,
they are identified as other insofar as they are a self which is not me, as defined not
by their presence but by an absence of relation between us. In short: the Other is
something that I immediately experience, regardless of whether or not I know that
they exist, or what their existence consists of.
The experience of ‘shame’ is a good example to think further about this complex
idea since, as Catalano (1985, p. 152) puts it, it ‘reveals that we immediately view
ourselves as before the “other”’. when I make ‘a clumsy or awkward gesture… [it]
sticks to me; I neither judge it nor blame it; I simply live it’ (Sartre, 2018, p. 308).
When the Other is present in a shameful situation, I am forced to think of myself as
an object, and before them I ‘erupt’ as a self that can be studied and judged. This self
is not some ‘bad portrait of myself’ (Sartre, 2018, p. 308). Rather, I recognise that I
am as the Other sees me – even if I do not like what I see, and even if the way in
which the Other views me is unfounded. All of this happens pre-reflectively, and
when we are caught in a shameful act, shame arrives as an ‘immediate shudder that
runs through me from head to toe, without any discursive preparation’.
Shame demonstrates that our existence in the world is therefore also defined by
the Other in ways over which we have no control. Unlike bad faith, it cannot be
avoided simply by owning up to the responsibility we have for ourselves. In this
sense, the latter half of Being and Nothingness might be thought of as an explicit
move from being an individual to being an individual with others, an important
distinction that marks our lived experiences in the world. For Sartre (2018, p. 344),
any attempt to deny the existence of the Other, or to care less about what they think,
is futile since:
…the nature of the Other’s existence is that of a contingent and irreducible fact. We encoun-
ter the Other; we do not constitute him… the necessity of the Other’s existence must, if it
exists, be a ‘contingent necessity’, i.e. of just that type of factual necessity with which the
cogito impresses itself on us.

It is on this basis that Sartre formulates the idea of a concrete realisation of the
Other. And as we will see towards the end of the chapter, this understanding of our
experiences with others sheds light on the experiences of exposure and vulnerability
in the classroom.

7.2 The Look of the Other

Imagine, Sartre says, that we are in a public park, with lawns and benches and other
objects readily associated with the scene. There is a sense of stability here – things
are arranged and are made meaningful according to me, where I thus serve as the
‘focal point’ of the scene. If another person enters and I recognise their presence, I
might at first be tempted to see them purely as another object. And yet, gradually, I
7.2 The Look of the Other 115

begin to realise that they are a conscious being like me. Rather dramatically, per-
haps, this slowly leads to a disintegration of my world – things I realise that things
are bound to them in the same way that they are for me, that their relation to other
objects is external to me. In turn, the world is ‘brought to light’ in a way that I can-
not control. Moreover, in recognising the subjectivity of another, I become aware of
the fact that I, too, am being seen. This objectification can only be understood in
terms of my relation with the Other, and since I always exist in the world with oth-
ers, I am therefore permanently exposed to this possibility. Indeed, it is because of
this relation that I am (partly) defined in the world.
This is explored in Sartre’s (1989) dramatic play, Huis Clos,2 where he tells the
story of three characters – Garcin, Estelle, and Inez – who have found themselves in
hell. Hell (as a physical location) is, surprisingly, not a place made of brimstone and
fire, but a rather bourgeois room with Second Empire furniture. For the characters
in the play, this is at first a relief. But it gradually becomes clearer that hell is not this
physical space. It is the very fact that these three characters will have to exist with
one another forever. Garcin, the first to arrive, is informed that they will never be
able to sleep in hell, or even blink, something he describes as ‘a life without a break’
(Sartre, 1989, pp. 183–184). There are also no mirrors in the room, only a brass
mantlepiece that reflects a distorted image of each character. In this sense, they can
never see themselves but are only seen by each other – for all of eternity.
As the play progresses, each character begins to reveal the reasons why they have
ended up in hell. In typically Sartrian fashion, these examples are quite scandalous.
Garcin deserted the army during the war. Inez taunted her lover about her recently
deceased husband, resulting in the lover killing them both in a murder-suicide.
Estelle uncharacteristically reveals how she had murdered her own baby. Their
rationalisations are all retrospective, changing considerably throughout as the con-
flict between the characters evolves. Despite being jovial and polite towards one
another in the beginning, the three begin to act as mutual tormentors – simply by
virtue of the fact that they are always there. Famously, Garcin announces at the end
of the play that ‘Hell… is other people!’ (Sartre, 1989, p. 233).

7.2.1 The Other and the Production of the Self

What affects the characters is not the physiology of the fact of being seen, or the
‘look’ of the Other – the ‘eyes’ that are watching me, for instance. Of course, the
eyes serve as necessary objects that supports the existence of the look. But when one
focuses on someone’s eyes, they are no longer experiencing the sensation of being
watched. Conversely, when one experiences being looked at, this physiology fades

2
A popular play written by Sartre is 1944, sometimes translated as either ‘No Exit’ or ‘In Camera’.
Interestingly, ‘In Camera’ is a legal term, coming from the Latin for ‘in chambers’, and refers to a
hearing or discussions with the judge in the privacy of his chambers, or where spectators and/or
jurors have been excluded from the courtroom.
116 7 The Look of the Other and the Experience of Teaching: The Failure of Solipsism…

into the background. In this sense, the look itself immaterial, and it takes merely the
possibility of being seen in order to experience this feeling of exposure towards
the Other:
What I grasp immediately when I hear the branches breaking behind me is not that someone
is there, but that I am vulnerable, that I have a body that can be hurt, that I am occupying a
place and that I cannot in any circumstance escape…in short, that I am seen (Sartre, 2018,
p. 355).

Imagine I am looking through a keyhole, believing that I am alone. In this moment,

I am so absorbed in the task at hand that I fail to grasp myself as a ‘self’ present at
the scene, and I remain on the pre-reflective level. Suddenly, I hear footsteps and my
entire being is affected. I immediately suspect the presence of the Other and become
suddenly conscious of myself as ‘the person… as an object for [them]’ (Sartre,
2018, p. 357). I realise that I now have a foundation outside of me, and there is an
immediate and lived ‘recognition that I really am this object that is looked at and
judged by the Other’ (Sartre, 2018, p. 358). But it is not only me that is radically
modified in this relation. I am no longer able to see the Other as an object insofar as
I immediately recognise their subjectivity.
In Huis Clos, Hell is not the ‘material’ objects in the room – the sparse furniture,
the brass mantlepiece and the distorting images it creates, the doors, the ‘windows’
looking back on life on earth. These material objects merely frame the condition of
being seen by the other (e.g. the walls indicate the inescapability of the situation).
Through the look, each character becomes objectified with recognisable traits and
dispositions based on past actions and present justifications, all of which result in
the formation of a concrete identity about who they are. Their admitted complicity
in their sins on earth means that they are gradually exposed not only to one another,
but also to themselves. Indeed, in acknowledging that we are seen by others, we
both recognise their subjectivity as well as our own objectivity. In seeing another,
this too is the case but vice versa, and thus our relationship with Others, for Sartre,
is one of constant struggle.
But what if one is somehow mistaken about how the Other sees me? What if, in
fact, the Other is not present at my most shameful moments? Why is it that we feel
ashamed, nonetheless? Sartre (2018, p. 377) refers to this as a kind of ‘false shame’ –
a shame before nobody that, in fact, reveals an even purer notion of my
being-for-the-other:
I do not cease to undergo my being-for-the-other; my possibilities do not cease to ‘die’, nor
do the distances stop unfolding towards me from… that dark corner where a human pres-
ence ‘might’ be hiding. Better still, if I start at the slightest sound, if each creak announces
a look to me, this is because I am already in the state of being-looked-at.

In a sense, despite the absence of the (physical) Other, I still remain hypervigilant,
particularly in an act that I would feel embarrassed by if I were caught. This indi-
cates that the look of the Other is present everywhere, even in absence. Sartre
explores absence and presence elsewhere in Being and Nothingness, but this false
dichotomy is particularly pertinent in our experiences with others. In Chap. 5, we
explored how our experience of absence is framed by what should be present – I feel
7.2 The Look of the Other 117

Pierre’s absence from the café when I am expecting him to be there. But the percep-
tion of his presence or absence can only come about through the co-existence with
other human realities. Indeed, Pierre’s absence is only meaningful insofar as others
that are bound to him expect his presence. In short: our embodiment only really
makes sense in reference to others, whether they are physically present or not.
And even if I am mistaken about the other’s perception of me, my self is nonethe-
less produced through this relation. This relation thus forces me to recognise that I
am as the Other sees me and, given that this comes about through another who is
always in some sense unknowable, the recognition that is conferred on me is by
nature indeterminate and uncertain. Instead, the Other ‘haunts’ my being like
a shadow:
…projected on to some moving and unpredictable material, such that no system of cross-­
references could allow us to calculate the distortions resulting from these movements. And
yet it really is a question of my being, and not my being’s image. It is a question of my being
as it is inscribed in and through the Other’s freedom (Sartre, 2018, p. 359).

In fact, I cannot be what I am without the look of the Other, even though this rela-
tionship strips me of the possibility of completely deciding ‘who I am’. Even the
possibility of somehow ‘hiding’ from the Other remain open, evidenced by my
hypervigilance in any situation that is potentially shameful, for example, where ‘the
Other may… [unmask] me, identifying me and apprehending me’ (Sartre, 2018,
p. 362). Indeed, I am perpetually at risk from the look of the Other, and even if I do
feel that I can exert some control over the situation, there are all sorts of unforeseen
possibilities that the Other can enact. Thus, it is through the Other that I irredeem-
ably live my experience as an embodied and objectified being in the world.
Towards the end of Huis Clos, Garcin finds a way to escape. But he decides
against this, knowing that such an escape will not change how the other characters
see him. Instead, he remains within the room, with the explicit aim of convincing
the others that he is not the coward they think he is. It appears that Garcin – and each
of us in our own way – craves the recognition from others such that we may recog-
nise ourselves in the same way, even from those that we dislike. Similarly, Inez
speaks of this in relation to the others in the room, demonstrating that the old trope
which states that ‘we should not care about what others think’ is not really feasible:
To forget about the others? How utterly absurd! I feel you there, down to my marrow. Your
silence clamours in my ears. You can nail up your mouth, cut your tongue out – but you
can’t help prevent your being there… Why, you’ve even stolen my face; you know it and I
don’t! (Sartre, 1989, p. 231).

Of course, there is no measure of accuracy in how one accounts for or sees oneself,
even if that is distinct from how they are ‘described’ by another. Indeed, there is no
way of telling which ‘version’ of the story – or, indeed, the person – is correct. This
is because no ‘version’ of the self exists prior to being offered in an account. It is
thus in our accounts of ourselves, and in the accounts that are offered by others, that
we become who we are. And even when we think of ourselves through (dissociative)
forms of self-reflection, it is always through the eyes of the other. We will return to
this idea as it relates to educational experiences towards the end of the chapter.
118 7 The Look of the Other and the Experience of Teaching: The Failure of Solipsism…

Importantly, for Sartre, we are not only situated in relation to others by physical
locality, but also by other ‘facts’ – the fact that I am European in relation to non-­
Europeans, bourgeois in relation to workers, young in relation to old. These all
constitute what Sartre calls the ‘original presence’ of the Other, which grounds our
relations with other people as well as our own situatedness in the world. Thus, our
relationship with others is not on only on an individual level – it is, in fact, an
‘unnumbered reality’ (Sartre, 2003).

7.2.2 Perpetual Struggle

What happens when, re-asserting my subjectivity, I not only acknowledge the pres-
ence of the Other, but look back at them? In this instance, the omnipresent and
unnumbered reality of the Other is ‘isolated within a multiplicity’ (Sartre, 2018,
p. 382). And the moment when I begin to see them as individuals, the ‘look’ itself
disintegrates. Sartre (2018, p. 383) gives this example:
…if we find ourselves appearing ‘in public’ in order to perform a role or to give a lecture,
we do not lose sight of the fact that we are looked at, and we… perform in the presence of
the look… For as long as we are speaking, and attending only to the ideas that we want to
develop, the Other’s presence remains undifferentiated. It would be a mistake to unify it
under the categories ‘the class’, ‘the audience’…those are images that we might use later
to express our experience and largely to betray it. But neither do we grasp a plural look.
Rather, we find ourselves dealing with an intangible, fleeting and omnipresent reality… If
on the contrary, I want to check that my idea has been clearly understood, and if I look in
my turn at the audience, I will suddenly see some heads and some eyes appearing. In becom-
ing objectified, the pre-numerical reality… immediately disintegrates.

It sometimes might occur that one becomes so absorbed in their own speaking in the
classroom that they fail to acknowledge the ways in which they are being seen,
where the class is reduced to an anonymous ‘they’. In some ways, this can even be
a strategy to manage or cope with the feeling of exposure that comes with standing
before others. And yet, it is something that can only be sustained momentarily.
There also seems to be something rather uneasy about a teacher who fails to recog-
nise the presence of a plurality of subjectivities in the room, despite the (sometimes
understandable) motives behind this. The ‘looking back’ that Sartre describes then,
where this ‘unnumbered’ look disintegrates into a plurality of others, seems to be a
necessary step in allowing for a more authentic relationship with others, since it
involves recognising them – and myself – as individual beings. Not only does look-
ing back allow me to assert my own subjectivity, but it also forces me to recognise
that others are present: indeed, that I am not the only ‘person’ in the room (Brady,
2020). In looking back, however, we can often engage in a perpetual struggle to be
recognised as a subject by the Other (who, in turn, is struggling to be recognised as
a subject by me). For Sartre, it is this ‘conflictual’ aspect that ultimately defines our
relationship with the Other in the world.
7.3 Our Embodied Relationship with Others 119

Since this struggle is perpetual, the Other is the only thing that can limit me, and
that can strip me of my transcendence. They reveal to me the instability of my self-
hood, and the ways in which I am embodied in the world through the mediation of
others over which I have no control. And yet, whilst I am certainly limited by the
Other (in terms of my own self-definition), this force of objectification should not
be seen as the ultimate limitation to my freedom as a subjective being. Sartre says,
the Other ‘teaches me who I am’ (Sartre, 2018, p. 374) as situated in the world, but
they do not say anything about what I could be, or what I am in a fundamental
sense – an existence that precedes an essence. I can always respond to this objecti-
fication by engaging with the very struggle itself. In that case, being-for-the-other is
not a refutation of my fundamental freedom, but part of its manifestation.

7.3 Our Embodied Relationship with Others

Of course, our relationship with Others is in part founded upon, or realised, by the
fact that we as individuals are not merely floating, disembodied minds, but rather,
are embodied in the world. This point is of particular interest to de Beauvoir (2010)
in The Second Sex, since part of one’s embodiment as a ‘woman’ in turn shapes the
ways in which they are recognised as other. By existing within a particular body, a
person is seen in terms of the expectations that are attached to that ‘category’ of
being (e.g. a woman), who may thus define them on this basis. This, as we have
seen, is a limiting force on the one hand, but it is not an ultimate limitation, since we
are always able to respond to our embodiment – in short, to account for ourselves
on our own terms. Beauvoir, herself, offers examples of where this has been possi-
ble for women in the past, despite the struggles it so often entails.3 For Sartre, my
relationship with the Other (as an ‘embodied being’) is not the same as my relation-
ship with objects. Fundamentally, my relation to the Other is one of engagement.4
But in order to recognise the Other as such, we need first to accept that they are more
than the ways in which they are embodied before me, and that they can only be
indirectly understood through immediate and lived experiences. How we come to do
this is perhaps better dealt with in the more concrete writings of Beauvoir (and also,
perhaps, the later Sartre). In the educational sphere, I offer my own example below.

3
In the Ethics of Ambiguity, de Beauvoir (2018) rather scathingly compares some women to chil-
dren in the sense that children are not ‘responsible’ for who they are. Children are ‘happily irre-
sponsible’ in the sense that they do not suffer from the anguish of freedom since they are only
defined by others. For some women, they are also ‘happily irresponsible’ in the sense that they
accept the definition of ‘who they are’ that comes from the men in their lives, or from patriarchal
society. In opposition to this, there are women who struggle to define themselves on their own
terms, in part by disrupting the (social) expectations that being a woman so often involves.
4
Saying that one is engaged to a person is different than how we might use the term in relation to
objects (e.g. I am engaged to Pierre vs. the knife is engaged in the wound). In one instance, the
object is a passive instrument, but in the other sense, I am expressing and performing a certain
commitment to a person that I know to be a subject.
120 7 The Look of the Other and the Experience of Teaching: The Failure of Solipsism…

Before that, it is important to emphasise that, whilst all of this might imply that
humans consist of an ‘inner’ consciousness and an ‘outer’ body, Sartre does not
wish to suggest that consciousness merely ‘surveys’ the world from the inside, akin
to the Cartesian understanding of the self. Rather, this world exists because of a
perspective we have that directly relates to how we are concretely embodied.5
Indeed, the body is the very context in which consciousness projects itself onto the
world. But my body also exists for others. It is not that the Other has ‘access’ to our
being through our bodies, but rather, their objectification of our bodies reveals our
subjectivity (and vice versa), since it reveals that another has a particular point of
view distinct from my own. At the same time, because of my body, I may be inter-
preted by the Other in ways that I had not expected and that I cannot control. As
such, there is a certain ‘unknowingness’ about ourselves that comes from our exis-
tence with others – an exposure as well as an alienation from our own body, now an
exterior ‘thing’ analysed and judged by a multiplicity of others in ways over which
we have no control.
Since Sartre, and in some ways Beauvoir, seems to portray this bodily relation-
ship with others in a cynical way, it might lead us to the presumption that it is better
to be an individual untethered to the Other in any way. But I don’t think this is quite
what either were getting at. Indeed, the vulnerability and exposure that we experi-
ence in relation to others is crucial in many ways. Of course, in many contexts, this
vulnerability towards others has often horrendous implications, particularly in situ-
ations where the ways in which we are recognised not only affects our self-­
understanding, but also how we are treated by those who hold power over us. My
concern here, however, is more so with the necessary and, above all, mutual vulner-
ability that one must engage with willingly (e.g. in the classroom), since it is on the
basis of this that we come to recognise the other as other.
Having said that, Sartre accepts that there are also less confrontational aspects of
being with Others, referring to what he (rather abstractly) calls the ‘we-relation’.6
This ‘we-relation’ looks to particular artefacts in the world that points to the exis-
tence of others without affecting our own objectivity nor subjectivity. One key

5
This again relates to Sartre’s attempts to overcome Cartesian dualism. He provides a lengthy
description of the senses in order to show that the relations of our different bodies to brute exis-
tence yield different experiences. A blind person’s entire world appears in a completely different
way than those who experience it as sighted, for example.
6
As opposed to the ‘us-relation’ proposed by Heidegger’s Mitsein, which Sartre argues is a is a
reflected idea produced after our more fundamental, pre-reflective encounters with others. In rather
obscure terms, Sartre talks about how we experience the ‘us’ as a ‘detotalised totality’ – a totality
that can never be fully experienced once I am a conscious being that is embedded within that total-
ity itself. In other words, the ‘us’ comes about via an abstraction of our relationship with others – a
‘third person’ who can view this relation from the outside. If I am in conflict with a person, a third
person who acts as a witness to that conflict would, in fact, be able to ‘objectify’ it – to study and
analyse it in less involved way. Sartre considers class consciousness here as an example of such a
conflict, where the third person might be a Marxist analyst, or a governmental official who ‘assigns’
individuals to two different class categories, something one is unable to do if they are embedded in
the relationship that defines these categories in the first place.
7.4 The Self and the Other in the Educational Context 121

example is the way in which we make ourselves ‘intelligible’ to the Other on the
basis of a shared language. Complex sets of artefacts, including language, are not
created by us as individuals, and yet they must often be used in order to transcend
our own possibilities, and to therefore involve ourselves in purposes that also
­encapsulate the freedom of others. The artefacts of language may be impersonal, but
they can nevertheless be utilised in order to get a sense of my fundamental project,
a project that therefore involves communicating with the Other in some way. Thus,
whereas Sartre’s discussion of the Other is mainly defined in terms of conflict, this
we-relation indicates the necessity of our existence with others in order to act on the
world. In accounting for ourselves, we are thus always situated within a ‘scene of
address’ (Butler, 2005).

7.4 The Self and the Other in the Educational Context

When we think of a teacher as ‘being seen’, we might think of inspection regimes,

and the way that these regimes turn the teacher into an object of study and analysis.
Because of the pervasiveness of audit culture in schools, the teacher is embedded in
‘panoptic performativity’ (Perryman, 2006) – they conduct themselves in accor-
dance with norms and behaviours externally imposed, adopting a language or man-
nerisms in order to appear ‘effective’. This performativity terrorises the soul (Ball,
2003; Lyotard, 1984), not only dictating how one should behave, but actively con-
tributing to the internalisation of norms such that teachers need not be policed in any
explicit sense. Performativity causes us to focus on what ‘techniques’ I can employ
in the classroom in order to ensure that I am seen as effective by students, by inspec-
tors, and also by this dissociated ‘me’ using evidence-based approaches to reflect on
my own practices (Brady, 2020).
But does the tyranny of performativity account for the nuances in our experi-
ences, that even if there is an imposition on teachers from external bodies, they are
nevertheless always responding to this in some way? Perhaps some teachers are
very much in agreement with what is laid out in the profiles of effectiveness, or
perhaps they enjoy being told they are effective, and thus, they act in accordance
with the regimes of truth because they chose to do so. As we discussed in the previ-
ous chapter, not all teachers are in ‘bad faith’ should they follow the demarcated
paths to effectiveness, subsuming themselves to the regimes of truth in neoliberal
discourses, just as it is not always an example of ‘bad faith’ should one choose to be
intelligible to (and thus limited by) the Other. Of course, often there is an element
of bad faith in the kinds of profiles or discourses themselves, and they certainly do
not capture the uncanny feeling when walking into a classroom for the first time.
But whilst much of these profiles direct one’s practice, a decision is still made in
adopting them or not, and how this is done in a concrete sense. Indeed, policies are
not linearly implemented, but are engaged with in and through practices (see, for
example, Braun et al., 2010).
122 7 The Look of the Other and the Experience of Teaching: The Failure of Solipsism…

Nevertheless, much of what we do is framed by our responses to the perceived

ideas of ourselves that come from others. This includes the institutional expecta-
tions of our roles, but also the simple fact that, as teachers and as humans, we are
always before the Other in some way. Even though others’ perceptions of us are not
always accurate, they still play a role in the production of our ‘self’ in the world.
Indeed, our existence with others says something about ‘who we are’.
Thus, whereas some accounts of the constructions of teachers’ identities in light
of others take a rather fatalistic approach to the possibility of resistance, for Sartre,
this produced self is always responded to in some sense. And just because we are in
some way ‘made’ and thus limited by our existence with the Other, we are not fully
acquitted of the responsibility for ourselves in these situations. Let us consider some
examples of these responses in teaching, and how the teacher-student relationship
might exemplify and expand upon Sartre’s account of our existence with others.

7.4.1 The Solipsistic Teacher

Sartre spends much of his account of the Other refuting the idea that we might ever
experience a truly solipsistic frame of mind. And yet, a teacher might invoke such a
response in the classroom – a ‘practical solipsism’ perhaps – in order to pacify the
acute feeling of being exposed towards Others to some degree. In ‘doubting’ the
subjectivity of others, one is then able to assert their own subjectivity, and therefore
to think of themselves as the sole point of reference for themselves and for the
world. In my own experience, the times when I did feel more comfortable were the
times when I thought of the class as an ‘anonymous’ they, when I tried to ignore the
fact that I was being seen in some way by a plurality of subjectivities. Or, at least, I
convinced myself that I was merely performing in my role, and that it therefore
wasn’t really ‘me’ on display in the classroom, the ‘real me’ being beyond reproach
(or so I thought).
Since so much of what the teacher does is underpinned by a sense of exposure
towards the other, the solipsistic approach is inherently unstable. Indeed, the very
attempt to pacify this acute sense of exposure shows that we are implicitly aware of
our existence before others. With particularly difficult classes, I could try to con-
vince myself that I didn’t care what the students thought of me as a person. But this
forced indifference never quite worked, not because I am an especially sensitive
person, but because one needs the mediation of Others in order to know who they
are. Even if I convinced myself that these negative perceptions of me were down to
my being a teacher, and even if I truly believed that they should not be taken person-
ally, I was nevertheless still affected by my interpretation of the freedom of the
Other – and how it was that I thought they were interpreting me. In this sense, the
very idea of being a teacher is produced through the Other, often in ways over which
one has no direct control, or indeed no direct knowledge of. Even our attempts to
perform ‘effectively’ is no guarantee of how we will be seen by the Other. And yet,
this is also true of one’s self – it does not simply disappear once a teacher steps
7.4 The Self and the Other in the Educational Context 123

‘into’ and ‘out’ of the role despite, perhaps, efforts to disguise oneself. Importantly,
I am always responding to this production in some sense – incorporating or subvert-
ing the expectations of others, perhaps. In any case, the very ways in which one
responds to this indicates that indifference is not really an option, and that, funda-
mentally, we inescapably experience our being before others.

7.4.2 Being Seen

Sartre’s idea of the ‘look’ is certainly reminiscent of what a teacher often feels like
amid an inspection, and the heightened sense of awareness that this involves. What
inspections (are in danger of) do(ing) is considering the practice of a teacher as
somewhat distinct from their identity as teachers, as something which can therefore
be measured, benchmarked and compared with what is laid out in profiles of effec-
tiveness without implicating the teacher herself. Arguably, the role of the teacher is
brought about by the performance of certain actions that we identify as ‘teacherly’
(e.g. Vlieghe & Zamojski, 2019), without which that very role itself would not be
recognisable. And yet, as we discussed in the previous chapter, it is difficult to pin-
point exactly what being ‘teacherly’ consists in. Is it possible (or desirable), for
example, to offer an exhaustive list all of the characteristics of ‘teacherliness’?
One of the issues with this way of recognising teachers is that it leads to an essen-
tialist conception of the teacher in terms of their function. Other existentialist think-
ers such as Marcel (2008, 2018) were rightly concerned about the reduction of
individuals to their functions, where through performing and through being seen in
line with one’s role may come to be solely how individuals think of themselves.
With teaching, however, not only is there a potential danger of being reduced to
one’s functions, but the porous nature of those functions themselves means that
their fixation is an implicit form of bad faith. Indeed, any attempt to characterise
teaching in a way that is easily measured or ‘evidenced’ in terms of effectiveness
leads to an inevitable reductiveness in what teaching entails – and, more impor-
tantly, what teachers experience in the classroom. This is in part because the teacher
is ‘existentially exposed’ in an acute and pertinent way, where part of their work
quite literally involves standing in front of a group of ‘others’ (i.e. students). As
Standish (2014) points out, it is often through teaching that we become aware of our
individual attributes for the first time – certain mannerisms we demonstrate or ways
of speaking we had not realised. Indeed, the very personhood of the teacher is on
display in the classroom, open to interpretation from others in often overwhelming
ways. The extent to which teaching affects one on a personal level demonstrates
this. And although having the skills to navigate this sense of exposure is important,
there is always something inevitably unnerving about entering a classroom, where
what happens there directly affects me because it is not just my ‘function’ that is on
display, but who I am as a person.
In Sartre’s analysis, this ontological structure of being in the world with others is
fundamental, and it is one of conflict – the Other who is attempting to assert their
124 7 The Look of the Other and the Experience of Teaching: The Failure of Solipsism…

subjectivity by objectifying me, and me attempting to do the same in confrontation

with the Other. This, it seems, is an inevitable process, one that we nevertheless try
to circumvent in various ways. And whilst this conflict seems to capture the extant
battle of wills that is not uncommon in a classroom, it does not capture the more
necessary sense of mutual vulnerability that teaching often involves, as I indicated
earlier. Indeed, not everything that happens in the classroom is conflictual, but
instead, there are moments in which something like an ‘armistice’ with the Other
can be maintained on some level. What might this look like?

7.4.3 An Armistice with the Other?

In my music classes, I often worked with students on compositions. Composition

requires a lot of technical know-how, such as a quasi-mathematical language neces-
sary for written music to be intelligible, as well as a socio-historical orthodoxy
adopted from stylistic references to famous composers thought to characterise dif-
ferent musical eras. Indeed, all of this prerequisite socio-historical and technical
knowledge was necessary in order for the students to be able to compose, none of
which, of course, was invented by the students themselves. As such, they were lim-
ited by certain artefacts produced by the Other.
As we have seen, Sartre also discusses the ways in which we might use artefacts
produced in conjunction with others that are often necessary in order to live in
accordance with our fundamental projects. One example of this is ‘language’.
Language is not something we individually create, nor is it simply something that
we ‘use’ in a technical sense, and it implicitly indicates our relation with others. In
our attempts to account for ourselves, for example, we strive to be intelligible, an
intelligibility that is circumscribed by our existence with others. In order to express
ourselves intelligibly, we must therefore accept a limitation that the Other imposes
on us. We can, of course, choose to speak unintelligibly. But since unintelligibility
itself is always framed by what is intelligible in the first place, it thus never quite
‘escapes’ this existence with others.
In my music classes, students were not merely passive in their own composi-
tions, adopting these artefacts in any ‘linear’ sense in a way that completely cur-
tailed their freedom of expression. Rather, the students utilised these artefacts, in
part created by others, for their own means and, in doing so, they created something
new that bore their individual stamp. When we think back throughout the history of
music, it would be difficult to think of any composer who created music out of a
vacuum. Or, indeed, any writer like Sartre. And whilst many of the compositions
pushed the limits of intelligibility, they always referred in some sense to stylistic
and historical artefacts that came before. Sartre would say that such artefacts are
contingent but necessary, and although they only make sense in reference to one’s
fundamental project (e.g. the wish to compose in the first place), they nevertheless
indicate a ‘we’-relation that cannot be denied. Importantly, this we-relation is not
conflictual, but is a springboard from which further creation can ensue.
7.4 The Self and the Other in the Educational Context 125

7.4.4 The Suspension of Being-for-the-Other

In one class, I told the students about more recent composers who attempted to push
the boundaries of musical intelligibility, one typical example being John Cage and
his piece 4′33″.7 As we sat and listened to the piece, it was no doubt uncomfortable
at first. I was hypervigilant of the sense in which we were sitting there as bodies in
silence, becoming more aware of my dry throat and my need to cough, the mouth
sounds of other people, subtle attempts to stifle a snigger, the pronounced confu-
sion. Eventually, all of that died down. Mind wandering, I became less and less
aware of the presence of others at that moment. But it wasn’t a sort of indifference
towards them, an attempt to be ‘solipsistic’, but rather an experience that I felt we
were undergoing together – in short, a mutual vulnerability in which all parties were
exposed to one another (through, of course, the direct mediation of the educational
material). I paid closer attention to the sounds around us, realising (as Cage had
probably intended) that we were not sitting in silence. In 4′33″, the boundaries
between the audience and the composer shifts. The music is not a fixed object in
time and space – the notations on the page or the music that grasps a hold of our
attention, mimicking certain stylistic orthodoxies that I mentioned above.8 Rather, it
became a perpetually unfolding event only later fixed as an object through our dis-
cussions and analyses. But it wasn’t just that we were actively involved in the cre-
ation of the piece in that moment – we were the piece itself.
Cage’s piece is especially interesting since it seems to be, like consciousness,
without content. It draws solely on the emotional sensibilities of the audience, who,
rather than acting as objective observers analysing the piece from ‘afar’, relate to the
‘music’ in a distance-less sense. The divisions between object and subject are blurred,
not only in terms of the relationship we have with Cage and with the piece itself, but
also with one another. The piece is demanding in that sense, requiring a radical
change in one’s habitual perception, disrupting the need to offer explanation and
analyses, and immobilising the drive towards the certainty that clearly delineated
roles can offer us. Yet, the experience of discomfort that, in part, relate to this dissolu-
tion of boundaries is necessary for the execution of the piece itself. And in that imma-
terial space, in which myself and the Other were completely absorbed,9 our roles as
teachers or students – as ‘selves’ and ‘others’ – were momentarily suspended.
As soon as we entered into the reflective plane of the piece, it was disturbed in
some sense, and the role divisions between teacher and student resumed. We started
to analyse the piece – its meanings, the intentions of the composer, its socio-histor-
ical context and influences. These reflections are, of course, invaluable. But the

7
An experimental piece composed by Cage in 1952 for any instrument, with a score that instructs
players to not play their instruments for 4 minutes and 33 seconds.
8
Of course, the unorthodoxy of the piece can only be understood in relation to the orthodoxy of
music more broadly, hence it still does not escape the ‘we-relation’.
9
Or at least, potentially so – I’m sure there were a number of students who did not find it so
absorbing!
126 7 The Look of the Other and the Experience of Teaching: The Failure of Solipsism…

piece would never be experienced in the same way again – new sounds would
replace old ones; the students would no longer experience the surprise upon realis-
ing there was ‘no music’; they would no longer immediately encounter the piece
without those reflections in mind. Indeed, there is a distinction between the piece as
performed – the unfolding moment witnessed by all of us who experience and par-
ticipate in its composition – and the piece as executed –having been already
unfolded, lost in memory or in our explanations and reflections. The piece itself is
therefore fleeting and fragile, as well as the moment in which the gaze is temporar-
ily suspended. It takes just one moment of disruption – a student clears his throat,
another’s stomach rumbles – and we have then landed back in the room ever more
‘separated’ from one another as persons.
In education, as in art, there is inevitably a process of unfolding, of suspension,
of becoming and of encountering, where teachers and students work together in
attempting to grapple with something (Masschelein & Simons, 2013; Vlieghe &
Zamojski, 2019). Any reflections on these moments will disrupt them, and hence,
the difficulties in accounting for this in language arises. Sartre recognises these
‘suspended’ moments of pure consciousness when he talks about the self. Since
such moments of production are disruptive, it may in part explain why he focuses so
heavily on the conflictual nature of our relations with others. In the educational
context, we can easily pinpoint such examples – the inspector who is watching us
makes us perform in a way that bars these more absorbing moments from taking
place, our hypervigilance when entering the classroom for the first time, or indeed,
the times when we force ourselves to ‘reflect in action’ (Schön, 2008). But not all
our experiences with the Other result in these moments of production, nor the con-
flict that underpins them. Indeed, in teaching, there may sometimes be attempts to
suppress vulnerability, but there also may be times when this mutual vulnerability is
actively pursued. Vulnerability is, perhaps, an educational moment that we cannot
capture in language, in reflection, in our measurement of ourselves and others, but
it does appear to be not only possible, but necessary. Importantly, I am not suggest-
ing that this suppression of vulnerability is not a problem to be overcome, nor the
production of the self that comes from our relationships with others. Instead, this is
merely how it is that we are in the world (with others).

7.5 Being an ‘Authentic’ Teacher?

So now that we come to the end of our conversation with Sartre’s early philosophy,
what are we to do with all of this? What I have tried to show so far is that engaging
with Sartre allows for new ways in which to understand and reflect on being a
teacher, ways that do not seek to suppress but rather embrace the uncertainty and
paradoxes that teaching involves. Certain conceptions of being a human in Sartre’s
account are directly relevant in that sense – the tensions of freedom and facticity in
the classroom, the prevalence of bad faith in descriptions of classroom practice, the
many aspects of being a teacher that relate to being seen by others. These examples
7.5 Being an ‘Authentic’ Teacher? 127

serve as an extension of Sartre, a way in which to demonstrate how his accounts of

being human make sense in the context of teaching. What I have thus begun to offer
is an existentialist account of teaching, one that goes against the technicist models
discussed in Chap. 2.
And yet, up until now I have taken (like Sartre) what might be called a ‘via nega-
tiva’ approach, indicating the ways in which an engagement with his thought is
distinct from – and reveals misconceptions in – how we currently understand and
account for the practices of teaching. But this engagement has left me wondering: is
there perhaps a more affirmative or authentic way to account for teaching? Is this
approach ever possible, and if so, what might it involve? In other words: if I have
managed to show that there is always more to teaching beyond what is captured in
technicist accounts, what exactly might this ‘more’ consist in, and how might it be
articulated?
Perhaps what the policies outlined in Chap. 2 really call for is a kind authenticity
in our accounts. Authenticity, as discussed, is a concept that Sartre implies but fails
to elaborate, except through somewhat melodramatic examples.10 In the context of
teaching, how might one point to this authenticity? Because of the difficulty in
doing so, perhaps, technicist accounts instead opt for things like certainty and objec-
tivity, or at least a pacification of risk-related anxieties (Todd, 2016; Mooney
Simmie & Moles, 2020). The process of authentication, then becomes not dissimilar
to how one might ‘measure’ the authenticity of a clothing brand or a chunk of gold.
But does this then mean that a pursuit of authentic forms of account-giving are
futile, and that we should therefore simply abandon this quest?
Whilst I do not aim to explicitly address normative claims around what ‘authen-
ticity’ looks like, nor offer prescriptions for how one ought to live or teach as an
authentic human being (with others), I would nevertheless like to consider a more
practical approach in relation to this question. Arguably, this is absent from the
philosophical writings of Sartre, particularly given his suspicion of being in good
faith with oneself in the first place. But he does exemplify something close to this
when writing his (2000) own autobiography, Words. In order to analyse this, I turn
to another important thinker – Michel Foucault – and his discussion of ‘parrhesia’.
Despite differences in Sartre and Foucault’s lines of thinking, looking at what might
be called a ‘parrhesiastic account’ of oneself allows us to begin to consider what an
existentialist account of teaching might involve, one that is ultimately more sensi-
tive to the lived realities of teaching than the technicist accounts in Chap. 2. A com-
parison between technicist and existentialist forms of accounting is further developed
in the final chapter. First, let us digress for a moment to consider the very possibility
of accounting for being a teacher in this way, and what difficulties or ‘risks’ this
might involve.

10
I am thinking here of the scene in which Matthieu in the Age of Reason thrusts a knife into his
hand in order to demonstrate that he can act in spite of circumstances that appear to limit him, and
that acting in this way is somehow an example of living authentically (Sartre, 2001). And yet, there
seems to be something curiously inauthentic about this example – a sort of forced sincerity that is
very much the epitome of bad faith.
128 7 The Look of the Other and the Experience of Teaching: The Failure of Solipsism…

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 Part III
Accounting for Oneself in Teaching
Chapter 8
Parrhesia, Bad Faith and Accounting
for Oneself

Abstract In this chapter, I aim to reconceptualise the basis for trusting accounts,
proposing a move away from trust based on ‘absolute accuracy’ to a trust encapsu-
lated in the practice of parrhesia. On the surface, parrhesia appears to be the opposite
of Sartre’s concept of ‘bad faith’. Paradoxically, however, our attempts to be sincere
in our accounts are inevitably tainted by bad faith. This tension is especially evident
in autobiographical writing, as explored here through Sartre’s own autobiography,
Words. The existence of these tensions does not mean that we should abandon trust
in these accounts, however. Rather, parrhesiastic practices in autobiographical writ-
ing can offer a different understanding of how we account for ourselves and our
practices, one that does not pertain to a narrow definition of truth as accuracy, but
instead leads to a form of self-criticism where one situates oneself in relation to the
‘truth’ of their accounts in new ways. Towards the end of the chapter, I explore three
‘parrhesiastic techniques’ and their relationship to accounting for oneself as a
teacher, to reimagine these techniques from technicist to existential ways of relating
to our practices, a distinction more fully examined in the final chapter.

Keywords Parrhesia · Foucault · Sartre · Existentialism · Bad faith ·

Accountability

8.1 Sartre, Foucault and Care of the Self

The concept of ‘parrhesia’ in the later thought of Michel Foucault may open new
ways in which to account for oneself and one’s practices as a teacher that move
beyond the technicist model exemplified in Chap. 2. It also allows us to speak of
‘trust’ in a different way than that which is implied in current accountability regimes.
Contrary to the idea that trust can only be attained should we be able to provide
clear and distinct evidence that ‘proves’ that what we say is accurate based on a

This chapter has also been published as: Brady, A. (2021). Accounting for Oneself in Teaching:
Trust, Parrhesia and Bad Faith, Studies in Philosophy of Education, 41, pp. 273–286. CC-BY 4.0

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte 131
Ltd. 2022
A. M. Brady, Being a Teacher, Contemporary Philosophies and Theories in
Education 19, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-7323-9_8
132 8 Parrhesia, Bad Faith and Accounting for Oneself

specific language amenable to evidence, this is a trust that is instead concerned with
sincerity.1 In this chapter, by turning to the practice of parrhesia, a very different
sense of account-giving is offered – namely, as that which involves an ongoing and
sincere attempt to situate oneself in relation to the ‘truth’ of one’s (past) practices.
This, as we will later see, has implications for how we might think of teacher
account-giving practices.
I will consider the autobiographical work of Sartre (2000) as exemplifying a
‘parrhesiastic approach’ in accounting for oneself, one that reveals the paradoxes,
uncertainties and risks of putting oneself into words. Towards the end of the chapter,
I tentatively offer three ‘parrhesiastic techniques’ such as to reimagine account-­
giving for teachers, thereby pointing to the possibility of moving from technicist to
existential sensitivity in relation to their lived experiences. This latter form of
account-giving calls for the continuing reconceptualization of the language often
used to describe teachers and teaching, something I more fully develop in the final
chapter.
It is important to first clarify, however, that Foucault was by no means an existen-
tialist. Despite both being similarly active in a political sense, Sartre and Foucault
are often seen to represent ‘opposite poles of the philosophical globe’ (Flynn, 2004,
p. 47). Foucault is overtly anti-humanist in his stance, particularly in his initial
refusal to resort to any theory of the subject. Sartre, on the other hand, is often
accused of downplaying the structural constraints of historical and social circum-
stances on individual freedom (Gillam, 2013), something very much central to
Foucault’s work. Indeed, Sartre was also not a post-structuralist. For one, he did not
write at length about the nature of ‘truth’ in the way that Foucault did. When he
(1973, 1995, 2004, 2006) does touch upon the subject of truth – for example, in the
Critique of Dialectical Reasoning, in Search for a Method, and also in his posthu-
mously published work Truth and Existence – it is more so ‘historical truth’ that he
is interested in, a truth that gains significance from its relation to human totality and
not from its correspondence to accuracy in terms ‘brute facts’.2 For our purposes
here, my concern is mainly with this understanding of truth, especially in terms of
engaging with our own personal histories, since it is this conception that is also
important for Foucault’s ideas around parrhesia.
Whilst both Sartre and Foucault moderated their positions towards the end of
their lives, the main tension between both thinkers is in relation to the question of
agency. As we will explore more fully here, Sartre (2008) later began to

1
These contrasting ideas of trust are explored widely in the epistemology of testimony which, due
to space limitations, is not discussed here. For a start, see Lackey and Sosa (2006).
2
In Truth and Existence, Sartre (1995) clarifies his position against those who argue that his view
makes a ‘common world’ impossible, given that, for him, my relation with others is always in
conflict. In turn, this allows Sartre to accept an intersubjective understanding of truth and meaning.
Catalano (2007) has attempted to summarise this position on truth, where he argues that, for Sartre,
truth is (always) a relation between for-itself and all of human reality – it is ‘what happens to reality
when it encounters human existence’ (Catalano, 2007, p. 49). Since all human reality is constituted
by ‘social facts’, such facts are also truth, and not simply what we call ‘brute’ facts (See, for
example: Sartre, 1973).
8.1 Sartre, Foucault and Care of the Self 133

acknowledge the importance of circumstances in our ability to act freely, particu-

larly in his attempts to combine existentialism with Marxism. Indeed, a softer inter-
pretation of Sartre (one that is arguably taken throughout this book) considers this
situatedness of the individual as impinging upon the direction of their free actions,
where actions are only meaningful in relation to our understanding of and response
to those situations. Moreover, the later Foucault acknowledges a sense of agency in
subjects3 where power relations might be understood as ‘transversal’ – i.e. no longer
total or hegemonic, and thus, with ‘the scope for resistance… widened exponen-
tially’ (Leask, 2011, p. 63).
According to Foucault (1990a), we are, in fact, ‘always free’, even if that free-
dom is not always ‘enjoyed’ within the constraints of institutional power. Freedom
is a form of resistance – ‘for all, by all, everywhere’ (Leask, 2011, p. 66) – one that
is ontologically prior to power. This, in turn, opens up spaces for ‘acting and think-
ing differently about our relation to ourselves and others’ (Ball, 2019, p. 133), and
is particularly important for how we might account for ourselves within institutional
contexts. In an interview given in 1984, Foucault (1987, p. 123) remarks that, whilst
he does not deny this original emphasis on power, he also acknowledges ‘the way in
which the subject constitutes himself in an active fashion by the practices of self.’
Like Sartre, Foucault implies that there is always the possibility to respond to pow-
erful forces, and that ‘power’ only exists because ‘freedom [is] everywhere’
(Foucault, 1987, p. 124). In any case, both concern themselves with the active sub-
ject – for Sartre, the subject as always responding to (and thus responsible for) the
situations in which they find themselves, and for Foucault, the subject that resists
domination through aesthetic practices of the self. In bringing both into dialogue,
might a more satisfying picture of agentic action can thus be offered?
As some have suggested (e.g. Flynn, 2004; Seitz, 2004), it is in Foucault’s later
ideas regarding philosophy as ‘care of the self’ that similarities between him and
Sartre might be found. As we saw in Chap. 3, existentialism is in many ways reac-
tionary, and Foucault also takes a similar stance in his later writings, where he
argues that having a ‘critical attitude’ allows us to respond to situations that appear
to limit us. Where philosophy is understood as something pertaining to lived experi-
ence rather than abstract principles, both flourish in terms of how they open up
spaces for thinking anew.
Foucault’s discussion on parrhesia is one aspect of this wider project concerning
‘care of the self’. Parrhesia is intimately connected to an ancient form of ethics
(which he explores in relation to Greek and Roman contexts), one that concerns a
‘harmonious life’ (White, 2014, p. 491). He (1987) defines ‘care of the self’ as the
following:
…an attitude, a mode of behaviour; it became instilled in ways of living… developed into
procedures, practices, formulas that people reflected on, developed, perfected, taught. It

3
In fact, Foucault never quite denied this agency, but merely shifted his emphasis in his later years.
Unlike Sartre, who later claimed that all power is ‘evil’, Foucault sees power as a given – neither
good nor bad, existing across all relations and not simply in relations between individuals and
institutions. For a more thorough examination of this, see Foucault (1987).
134 8 Parrhesia, Bad Faith and Accounting for Oneself

thus came to constitute social practices, giving rise to relationships between individuals, to
exchanges and communications, and at times even to institutions.

In the Ancient Greek context, ‘care of the self’ is connected to the Delphic maxim
‘know thyself’, involving ‘those intentional and voluntary actions by which men
[sic] not only set themselves rules of conduct, but also seek to transform themselves
in their singular being, and to make their lives into an oeuvre’ (Foucault, 1990b,
p. 10). Knowing oneself was not originally ‘epistemological’ (Hattam & Baker,
2016). Rather, it related to caring for one’s soul as well as the souls of others through
specific practices that focused on examining oneself and one’s interlocutors.
Importantly, care here is not understood in the purely empathetic sense, but is for-
mative in nature. In The Hermeneutics of the Subject, Foucault (2005) refers to this
as a ‘turning [of] one’s gaze inwards’ in order to actively and continually cultivate
one’s ‘self’ through specific techniques. As we will later see, this is turn relates to
how one might respond to themselves in parrhesiastic forms of account-giving, a
process that is nevertheless not without challenges.
Foucault is not suggesting that we return to antiquity, but he believes that such an
approach to self-care is possible in modern life – and even necessary. According to
White (2014), the modern sense of ethics often refers to a duty that comes from
external impositions, or what Foucault might understand as an obedience to
externally-­set rules and procedures. Care of the self offers an antidote to this, since
its primary focus is on the inner life of the individual. In this sense, the ‘self’ is
regarded as a work of art – not a fixed object that can be moulded through disciplin-
ary procedures, but rather, an ongoing process, similar to Sartre’s own understand-
ing of the ‘self in the world’. For Foucault, this ‘self’ has become impoverished in
modern times – for one, it is bombarded with identities from the outside. Care of the
self may allow us to free ourselves from the ways in which we are subject to such
modes of self-production. Indeed, it is in ‘our capacity and opportunity to partici-
pate in self-formation’ (Ball, 2016, p. 66), that a person can ‘become other than how
[they] find [themselves]’ (Foucault, 2001). In other words, through responding to
oneself, the discourses that come to ‘define’ you in the world may be disrupted.
Care of oneself might sound self-indulgent but, as we will examine later, it
implies both a care of others and care of the world. For Foucault, however, caring
for oneself is always ontologically prior to caring for others.4 What Foucault is get-
ting at is arguably quite similar to Sartre’s understanding of the pre-reflective
cogito5 – that in order for there to be relations with others, or indeed with the world,
there must first be an awareness of one’s own subjectivity, where ‘the very possibil-
ity to govern the other is conditioned upon first being capable of self-governance’
(Vlieghe & Zamojski, 2019, p. 105). In this sense, the practices that constitute ‘care

4
Some accuse the later Foucault of not recognising intersubjectivity in the formation of subjects,
and since such self-indulgence is insufficient in dismantling power relations, it is also depoliticis-
ing. According to Wong (2013), however, such criticisms represent a misunderstanding of what
Foucault means by ‘ontological priority’.
5
Although Wong (2013) disagrees with this assertion.
8.1 Sartre, Foucault and Care of the Self 135

of the self’ involve reciprocal relations with others, but also with the world more
broadly, since it is in these relations that one cares about oneself in the first place:
A person who cares about something identifies with that which she cares about. She is
concerned with what concerns her objects of care. She makes herself vulnerable to losses if
what she cares about is diminished and is proud of the success if what she cares about suc-
ceeds. In short, she is invested in the object of care (Wong, 2013, p. 106).

Vlieghe and Zamojski (2019) draw similar parallels in their ontology of teaching.
According to them (2019, p. 128), ‘[b]eing a teacher means that one testifies to a
love for the world, and that one puts the truth of this devotion to the test… in the
view of attention, love and care for an object of study they must engender in the new
generation.’ This care for something is what makes teaching an educational endeav-
our – a care for something worth preserving, or worth paying attention to.6 This is
not to deny the relational dimension of teaching, particularly in the accounts we
give. But it is to say that such accounts of oneself (in the world) are always ontologi-
cally prior to any relational account of teaching and learning.
But whilst care of the self involves the other and the world, this is not what makes
it an ethical endeavour. For Foucault, the care of things outside of oneself are mea-
sures of this care. For instance, in order to take care of oneself, one can seek teach-
ers or mentors to test and examine their accounts, where doing so more explicitly
shows a willingness to take responsibility for how one has lived. Care, as men-
tioned, is not an act of empathy – it is, in fact, a critical act, where one must be
willing to ‘adopt a critical stance that oscillates between attempts to recreate our-
selves and the world, and in doing so, make ourselves vulnerable… to interrogation’
(Ball, 2019, p. 138). This involves an attitude of permanent criticism, one that is
possible through ongoing aesthetic practices of the self. Critique is also not pre-
scriptive, and it involves risk – and therefore courage – to jeopardise intelligibility
in our accounts, to risk uncertainty and unsettledness, anxiety and destabilisation, to
‘write about ourselves as something we are not yet, and may come to disavow’,
where we are thus forced to take responsibility to ‘choose ourselves through what
we do’ (Ball, 2016, pp. 72–73). Such risk, as we will later see, is both necessary and
desirable.
The critical attitude that Foucault calls for is similar to Sartre’s (2018) under-
standing of good faith. As we have seen, good faith is difficult to define, particularly
since it so often leads us to assume that, in being in good faith (e.g. in being sincere)
it is possible to attain a fixed character trait that ensures that we are always in good
faith. But this, in fact, is an example of bad faith, since it radically reduces our free-
dom and responsibility to be otherwise. Indeed, being in good faith is not the same
as being a ‘good person’ (now and forever). Rather, we are responsible for continu-
ally putting good faith into practice. Since good faith is a pre-requisite to

6
For Vlieghe and Zamojski (2019), this care for the ‘something’ in education is ontologically prior
to the care for others in the educational context, a care that is equated with care for oneself as a
teacher (where the ‘object’ of teaching is not distinct from the ‘teaching self’), something that they
accuse certain thinkers of missing out on – e.g. Biesta (e.g. 2017) in his relational view of teaching.
Bonnett (2010) also makes a similar argument.
136 8 Parrhesia, Bad Faith and Accounting for Oneself

authenticity, where authenticity is conceived here as a ‘reflective’ attitude that

comes about through our persistent and ongoing attempts to remain honest with
ourselves, it is therefore crucial for the enactment of parrhesiastic (self-)practices.
Care of the self involves not only a critical relation to oneself and others, but also
to ‘truth’. It is not only concerned with particular truth positions, but with using
philosophy as a tool in order to examine and test the consistency by which one
relates themselves to such truths, and how they employ these truths in order to jus-
tify their lives and the conduct of others. In this sense, philosophical discourse is a
‘spiritual activity’ that requires the performance of ‘truth games’ in order to under-
stand one’s wider commitments and conduct in the world. This is distinct from the
Cartesian notion of truth (Papadimos et al., 2013), one that equates to a debased
sense of accuracy so often emphasised in self-evaluation accounts, for instance. For
Descartes, accounting for oneself becomes a matter of judging the truth of our
actions in propositional terms. This in turn reduces moral self-examination to a
purely rationalistic endeavour, and it also allows for a disconnect between truth and
selfhood, where the pursuit of truth does not implicate (Vlieghe & Zamojski, 2019)
nor demands any work on the self (Hattam & Baker, 2016).7 Trust, in this context,
is also based on the extent to which ‘proof’ is offered, and not necessarily on the
kinds of demands or work on the self that is required in parrhesiastic practices.
‘Care of the self’ is concerned with the relation of truth, where ‘truth-seeking
inquiries are to be conceived as stages on unfinished journeys, as distinct from des-
tinations securely reached’ (Hogan, 2009, p. 106). It understands that self-­
examination is not simply a matter of introspective verification, but instead opens
up the possibility for radical transformation in our own self-understanding. For
Foucault, this is the way in which one attains freedom, and through which one is
able to legislate for oneself in more ‘authentic’ terms. For Sartre, of course, freedom
is not something to be attained, but is inherent in all our actions and responses in the
world. And yet, a ‘conversion’, premised on an ongoing attempt to remain in ‘good
faith’, is necessary in order for one to live more authentically. Living authentically
is a reflective practice in which our freedom is realised – something that can be
anxiety-inducing (since it may undermine our then-current self-understanding) and
is thus often avoided in different ways.

8.2 Care of the Self as Parrhesia

In a series of lectures delivered shortly before his death, Foucault (2001) offers a
genealogy of ‘truth-telling’ in Ancient Greece, relating this to the care of the self.
Truth-telling in Ancient Greece centres around the practice of parrhesia and, as

7
Of course, truth can be understood in different ways – or, at least, it has different stakes depending
on the context. The ‘medicalisation of madness’, for instance, purports a ‘truth’ in order to nor-
malise behaviour. Truth in the field of mathematics arguably does not serve the same function, or
at least is circumscribed by a very different truth-power relation. See Foucault (1987, 2006)
8.2 Care of the Self as Parrhesia 137

such, Foucault sets out to explain some of its key aspects. Most commonly, parrhe-
sia is understood as a form of ‘frankness’, where one ‘says everything’ and ‘opens
his heart and mind completely to other people through his discourse, [giving] a
complete and exact account of what he has in his mind so that the audience is able
to comprehend exactly what the speaker thinks’ (Foucault, 2001, p. 12). The par-
rhesiastes’ concern, however, is with telling as well as situating themselves in rela-
tion to truth. But what, exactly, might this ‘truth’ mean? For thinkers such as
Descartes, acquiring ‘truth’ necessitates clear and distinct ideas, a notion that leads
to the subjective-objective dualism that is pervasive in modern epistemology. For
the Greeks, however, truth is only guaranteed through a possession of particular
moral qualities. It is therefore ethical rather than epistemological or metaphysical.
To say that truth is an ethical rather than epistemological is not to deny the existence
of ‘truth’ in the Cartesian sense, but merely to distinguish it from a truth that ‘mat-
ters’, i.e. a truth where there is something ‘at stake’.
Parrhesia is often seen in opposition to forms of rhetoric that seek to embellish
the truth, where one’s only concern is in convincing others regardless of one’s own
standing. Embellishment is also used with the function of appeasement in mind, the
aim of which is to neutralise rather than encourage (self-)criticism.8 But in speaking
a truth that ‘matters’, one is often put in danger – anger from one’s interlocutor, a
risk to one’s social standing within certain groups. It might even result in a threat to
one’s life if employed in order to challenge political authority. The practice of par-
rhesia relates to the possibility of criticism – in fact, this is the very purpose of par-
rhesia – ‘not to demonstrate the truth to someone else, but [with] the function of
criticism: criticism of the interlocutor or of the speaker himself’ (Foucault, 2001,
p. 17). Demonstrating one’s commitments and measuring the extent to which they
are present in one’s actions and deeds, opens up the possibility of inconsistencies
that can pave the way for self-criticism. Because of this, the measure of the sincerity
of parrhesiastic truth is courage, something that is not always the case when speak-
ing ‘truth’ in a Cartesian sense, where there is no necessary risk involved.9 Self-­
criticism should be understood as a duty – it is not something that can be forced
upon a person, but rather, must be freely chosen in spite of the dangers it poses to
oneself and one’s relationship with others. (Self-)criticism is thus necessary in order
to establish a closer union between the values one is committed to and the ways in
which one acts, but it is also concerned with encouraging others to do so as well.

8
Rhetorical devices are also used by Socrates, as well as Beauvoir, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, but
with a different purpose in mind – they encourage rather than neutralise debate, forcing individuals
to take up a relation to truth.
9
Foucault uses the example of a mathematics teacher teaching a theorem to children. The teacher
knows that what he is teaching is the truth. There is no real risk in him teaching this concept to the
children, and it is therefore not a parrhesiastic form of truth. Of course, there are examples that
show that speaking certain (e.g. scientific) truths does require courage, where doing so involves a
threat to one’s life. Hence, the separation of Cartesian truths and truth in a parrhesiastic sense is not
absolute. If speaking scientific truths involves risk and courage, one is also practising a form of
parrhesia, since this involves a form of commitment to the value of the truth where there is some-
thing at stake.
138 8 Parrhesia, Bad Faith and Accounting for Oneself

Foucault outlines the shift in parrhesiastic practices from the political10 to the
personal realm in Ancient Greece. In demonstrating this shift, Foucault uses the
example of Socrates, a ‘touchstone’ who aims to evoke responses from his inter-
locutors that encourage parrhesiastic accounts. Socratic dialogues, for example,
involve what Foucault calls ‘parrhesiastic games’ – games that are face-to-face and
personal, where interlocutors are not only ‘shown’ the truth but are actively encour-
aged to situate themselves in relation to what they say. The dialogues involve giving
an account of oneself not in terms of a confession or a therapy of unburdening one-
self, but in order that they live harmoniously, as explicated through a ‘rational’
account of oneself and the concordance between their words, actions and values.
These dialogues are also intensely political, serving as a model for more authentic
forms of democratic deliberation where political authorities can be held to account.
Importantly, Socratic dialogues involve giving an account of oneself not as a ‘ther-
apy’ of unburdening oneself. In order to live harmoniously, an account that reveals
the extent to which there is a concordance between words, actions and values is
necessary. But how do we account for this concordance, and how are we to under-
stand its veracity?

8.3 Parrhesia and Bad Faith

Although Sartre never used the term ‘parrhesia’ himself, it may in some sense be
understood as the opposite to bad faith. As we have seen, bad faith is best under-
stood as a form of self-denial that aims at curbing the anxiety that admitting to the
freedom underpinning our commitments involves. But as we have also seen, it also
relates to the denial of our ability to respond to the ‘factual limitations’ of our exis-
tence. Such uneasy tensions between facticity and freedom underline the human
condition, and it is within this that the difficulties in accounting for oneself might
best be understood.
Interestingly, Butler (2005) refers to similar tensions, albeit in more subtle terms.
In accounting for oneself, one is constrained by the norms through which one can
be made intelligible to the other. But whilst, for Butler (2005, p. 11), the ‘I’ is
always ‘implicated in a set of conditioning norms’, that is not to say that one is
completely stripped of agency, or indeed, responsibility. In accounting for myself, I
always take up a particular relation to those norms, relations that also open up
spaces such that these norms can be challenged or potentially overturned. This is in
part possible because of the parrhesiastic relation we establish between ourselves
and certain regimes of truth, where a ‘critical opening’ appears, and where a poten-
tial rupture on the horizon of normativity is therefore made possible. In the mean-
time, however, we are engaged within a perpetual struggle, given that we are neither

10
A discussion on this can be found in Hodgson (2010). For the purposes of this paper, I will focus
primarily on the personal sense of parrhesia as a form of reflexive self-criticism rather than on the
political sense – although, notably in the case of Socrates, these two are not wholly separate.
8.3 Parrhesia and Bad Faith 139

radically determined nor radically free in our accounts of ourselves, and that, in
self-creation, one ‘invariably struggles with conditions of one’s own life that one
could not have chosen’ (Butler, 2005, p. 19).
Like bad faith, central to any discussion on parrhesia is the question of responsi-
bility towards oneself and others, since such practices inevitably involve a ‘scene’
in which both the other and myself are addressed (Butler, 2005; Brady, 2020). There
is always a risk in these moments of address. The courage that parrhesia requires is
in part to do with our vulnerability towards being unconcealed in some way, through
exposing to ourselves and to others the extent to which we are willing to take
responsibility for the ways we have lived. But whereas bad faith allows us to (tem-
porarily) pacify anxieties around confronting this responsibility, parrhesiastic prac-
tices encourage such risks as a measure of our own sincerity. When parrhesia occurs
alongside an interlocutor, it also involves a danger in terms of how the Other may
define us. However, according to Foucault (2001, p. 17), this is an essential compo-
nent of parrhesiastic practices:
When you accept the parrhesiastic game in which your own life is exposed, you are taking
up a specific relationship to yourself: you risk death to tell the truth instead of reposing in
the security of a life where the truth goes unspoken. Of course, the threat... comes from the
Other, and thereby requires a relationship with the Other. But the parrhesiastes primarily
chooses a specific relationship to himself: he prefers himself as a truth-teller rather than as
a living being who is false to himself (Foucault, 2001, p. 17).

In offering an account of ourselves, the extent to which we can really be ‘authentic’

is tricky. This is especially complicated when, as Sartre (2000, p. 45) points out, it
is impossible to judge retrospectively the extent to which we have acted sincerely in
the past, as he reflects upon in his autobiography:
I have set down the facts as accurately as memory permits. But how far did I believe in my
frenzy? That is the basic question and I cannot make up my mind about it. I realised after-
wards that it is possible to know everything about our affections except their strength; that
is to say, their sincerity. Actions themselves will not serve as a standard unless it has been
proven that they are not gestures, which is not always easy.

Gestures are intimately connected to the concept of role-playing. Even in perform-

ing such roles with utmost sincerity, we may still fall into bad faith with ourselves,
where being too sincere about our roles may lead to us thinking of ourselves only in
those terms. Importantly, parrhesiastic sincerity requires perpetual self-vigilance
and self-examination, an ongoing struggle to remain honest with oneself in taking
stock of how we are living our lives. In this sense, the authenticity that comes to
define parrhesiastic practices is not conceptualised as a ‘fixed quality’, where we
assume that, in being a ‘sincere person’, my accounts will always be sincere, and
should therefore always be trusted. But rather than a character trait that ‘disposes’
me towards more sincere and honest actions in the future, authenticity must con-
tinually be put to the test. In order to explore this further, let us consider an example
of parrhesiastic practices in relation to Sartre’s autobiographical writing.
140 8 Parrhesia, Bad Faith and Accounting for Oneself

8.4 Autobiographical Writing as a Parrhesiastic Practice

It is worth noting that, throughout the lecture series, Foucault (2001) presents par-
rhesiastic practices as distinct from confessional forms of autobiographies.
Parrhesiastic practices do not entail providing a narrative of historical events that
have taken place in one’s life, but instead situating oneself in relation to the truth
that is revealed in those events. The former is how autobiographical writing might
be conventionally understood – the mere reporting of things that have happened to
us in the past which are no longer subject to change, or a confession of sorts where
one unburdens their feelings of guilt or provides justification for their past actions.
And yet, when we consider the idea that recounting significant moments from our
past is always tied to the lens of the present moment – a moment which comprises
of a matured acquisition of language and experience – then to what extent can we
really claim that such an account is mere reporting?
Autobiographical practices inevitably involve a (re)interpretation and (re)analy-
sis of events and their supposed influence on our words and deeds, and in doing so,
one is continually (re)situating oneself in relation to the ‘truth’ of what has hap-
pened (Brady, 2020). It is not that each new account is superior to the former, but
they are distinct in some ways, in part to do with the changing nature of our com-
mitments, or indeed, the changing nature of our selves. With regards to this, Butler
(2005, p. 131) addresses the extent to which such accounts of oneself can ever be
non-confessional in nature. Indeed, a confessional approach in this sense may allow
for a ‘critical opening’ within the process of self-(re)formation. In making oneself
intelligible to the world, it is also a means of ‘publishing’ oneself:
Giving an account of oneself is thus also a kind of showing of oneself, a showing for the
purpose of testing whether the account seems right, whether it is understandable by the
other, who “receives” the account through one set of norms or another.

Given this, we may need to rethink how it is that one may account for oneself in a
way that corresponds to parrhesiastic practices, but that also takes into account the
furtive ways in which bad faith seeps into these accounts. Indeed, a publication of
oneself in such a way as to become ‘intelligible’ can implicitly involve a denial of
our freedom to respond to facticity, or to the objectification that is imposed by our
relationship with others. Engendered in autobiographical writing is both a vulnera-
bility and a ‘confessionalism’, and it is therefore a site upon which a parrhesiastic
relation with oneself is possible. But it is also a site where bad faith may appear.

8.4.1 Frankness and (Self-)Criticism

At the age of 59, Sartre (2000) published an autobiography entitled Words, covering
roughly the first 10 years of his life. The text is punctuated with particularly poi-
gnant moments of his upbringing, and serves as a critical commentary of the bour-
geois values that underpinned much of what he understood about the world at the
8.4 Autobiographical Writing as a Parrhesiastic Practice 141

time. Unlike many of his philosophical texts, Words is clear and unembellished,
written in a jargon-free, ‘everyday’ language. Haphazard, it represents more closely
what the experience of remembering feels like, and it is through engaging with this
work that we gain access to the intimate memories that Sartre himself permits us.
First drafted between 1954 and 1957, Words was revised and eventually redrafted
almost 10 years later (Whitmore, 2006). It demonstrates how Sartre’s seemingly
uncompromising position on freedom and responsibility softened considerably in
his later years. Indeed, Words can be read as a palimpsest of sorts, one that reveals
an uneasy tension between the existentialist idea of radical freedom in making who
we are, and the Marxist idea that who we are is conditioned by our past and by our
social circumstances.
How does Sartre navigate these two opposing ideas?11 There is a certain frank-
ness when he admits that much of his upbringing afforded him opportunities that
would later influence his decision to become a writer. Throughout, he (2000, p. 53)
consistently refers to the effects that circumstances and the adults in his childhood
had on the bourgeois values he uncritically held, referring to himself as a ‘monster
they were forming out of their regrets.’ His grandfather, Charles, was particularly
significant in this regard, so much so that Sartre (2000, p. 108) saw his future as a
writer to be a fully determined fact, ‘just as Charles was [his] grandfather, by birth
and for ever.’ His exposure to Marxist ideas undermined the more radical anti-­
determinism of his earlier works. The very act of autobiographical writing revealed
these tensions between his thoughts, thoughts he would later moderate consider-
ably, even going so far as to confess that those ideas which made him the most
famous were, in fact, over-stated (Sartre, 2008). There is a vulnerability in what he
writes, in how he (2000, p. 27) portrays himself as a coddled, precocious son, a
‘cultural possession’ who was both impregnated with and reflected bourgeois val-
ues, a child marked by ‘arrogant hypocrisy’ who ‘knew [his] worth’ (Sartre, 2000,
p. 20). Such statements are forms of self-criticism that the older Sartre directs
towards himself as a child as well as an intellectual. They are also criticisms towards
bourgeoisie values in general, many of which his readers might recognise in them-
selves. By exposing his own hypocrisy, he is therefore exposing the hypocrisy of his
audience.
Should Sartre be criticised for inconsistencies between his later and earlier
thought? Perhaps. The point here is not to argue about these thoughts specifically,
but rather, the way in which we can account for such inconsistencies, and how, in
fact, inconsistencies seem to be an inevitable aspect of any account we offer of our-
selves. Importantly, in accounting for discrepancies between what we think now and

11
Rather than resolving these dichotomies, Sartre attempts to maintain an ambiguous tension
between both, as indicated in one revealing section: ‘When I was in a good mood, everything came
from myself… an obedient child, I would obey until I died, but I would obey myself. When I was
depressed and aware of the sickening feebleness of my availability, I was able to soothe myself
only by forcing it on predestination… I was merely the product of collective demand. Most of the
time, I achieved peace of mind by taking care never to exclude altogether either the freedom which
exalts or the necessity which justifies.’ (Sartre, 2000, p. 109)
142 8 Parrhesia, Bad Faith and Accounting for Oneself

what we thought in the past, there is a certain self-criticism that we are opening
ourselves up to – a way in which we can therefore (re)situate ourselves in relation
to the truth of these events. Furthermore, in revealing changes or contradictions in
our thinking, we are also in some ways directing our future action, much in the way
that Sartre had later attempted (perhaps unsuccessfully) to re-invent his earlier work
to account for his new Marxist-inspired ideas.
Given the deep level of introspection that autobiographical writing involves, the
critical openings that are necessary for a parrhesiastic relation with oneself are made
possible. In accounting for oneself in this way, we reveal ourselves to be different
than we had initially thought. As Butler (2005) argues, there is an aspect of our-
selves that is always ‘opaque’ – parts of ourselves that can only be revealed through
a relationship with the other who, in this case, might be thought of as the reader, or
perhaps the writer of the present moment addressing the person they once were. But
as Sartre says, this separation of ourselves now and in the past is purely an invention
in the present moment (2000, p. 126), a way in which to understand the ‘self’ as it
exists in the world:
It is no good putting yourself in the dead man’s shoes… you cannot help assessing his
behaviour in light of results which he could not foresee and of information which he did not
possess, or attributing a particular solemnity to events whose effects marked him later, but
which he lived through casually… It is not surprising: in a completed life, the end is taken
as the truth of the beginning.

It is not always easy to talk in a sincere manner about how we behaved, and thus,
perhaps this ‘invention’ is necessary in order to offer any account for oneself, par-
ticularly one that is premised on an openness to (self-)criticism. Much of Words
serves as a confessional in this regard – Sartre is admitting to those moments in his
life when he was an imposter, often with vehement criticism that we might not nor-
mally direct at a young child. He does not do so in order to unburden a sense of guilt
in living the way that he did, nor to offer definitive explanations for why this is the
case. In laying himself bare in this way, he is instead forcing himself – and, in some
ways, his readers – to take responsibility for the values he reflected, even if it means
exposing a disharmony between his commitments then and his commitments today.

8.4.2 Truth, Sincerity and Bad Faith

But what if Sartre was wrong about why he behaved in the way that he did? Indeed,
to what extent do autobiographies allow us to capture the ‘truth’ about our past and
its relationship to now? In autobiographical writing, there is often an element of
fictionalisation. Fictionalisation understood here might sound like a ‘fabrication’ of
stories in order to help explain ourselves in more favourable terms, perhaps. This
might also involve the invention of pre-determined destinies that we apply in retro-
spect, even if those explanations that ‘poison’ the moments that originally moved us
8.4 Autobiographical Writing as a Parrhesiastic Practice 143

to act. Sartre (2000, p. 127) does not directly accuse himself of this, but he does
accuse other biographers:
But here was the poison: without ever mentioning the name Rousseau, Bach, or Molière,
the author deployed his skill in planting allusions everywhere to their future greatness,
recalling casually, by some detail, their most famous works or actions, and arranging his
narrative so that you could not grasp the most trivial incident without relating it to subse-
quent events.

Of course, memory must be selective. In Borges (2000, pp. 98–99) short story
Funes, His Memory about a man who cannot forget anything, he demonstrates how
if we were unable to be selective in our memories, we would be also unable to
account for anything at all:
Funes, we must not forget, was virtually incapable of general, platonic ideas. Not only was
it difficult for him to see that the generic symbol “dog” took in all the dissimilar individuals
of all shapes and sizes, it irritated him that the “dog” of three-fourteen in the afternoon, seen
in profile, should be indicated by the same noun as the dog of three-fifteen, seen frontally.
His own face in the mirror, his own hands, surprised him every time he saw them… he
noticed – the progress of death, of humidity. He was the solitary, lucid spectator of a multi-
form, momentaneous, and almost unbearably precise world…. I suspect, nonetheless, that
he was not very good at thinking.

In Words, however, there is another sense of fictionalisation, one that is intimately

connected to the concept of role-playing. Indeed, in recounting our past, the central-
ity of role-playing should be acknowledged, since it directly relates to our inability
to deduce the sincerity of past motives. As Sartre (2000, p. 46) puts it, ‘how could
[one] pinpoint – especially after so many years – the intangible, shifting frontier that
divides possession from play-acting?’ How can one situate themselves in a relation
of truth when the ‘truth’ of the past is unclear, where our motives are suspect?
Perhaps fictionalisation is retrospective bad faith, where we look to the past as
though our future was already determined to be what it is now. In doing so, are we
avoiding the extent to which our past is constituted by an orientation to a then-­
unknown future, where ‘who we are’ now is, in fact, the result of a series of unde-
termined but fundamental choices?
Fictionalisation need not mean that our accounts are misleading, unless we were
to value these accounts only in terms of their correspondence to (a debased sense of)
truth as accuracy. In doing so, however, we are missing out on one important
aspect – the idea that an account might be reaching for some form of sincerity, one
that recognises that, since any account of our past experiences will involve a re-­
interpretation through the lens of the present, fictionalisation is an inevitable part.
Perhaps, then, what we value most in autobiographical accounts is not simply the
extent to which they represent the ‘truth’ (in a fixed sense) but rather, the extent to
which the account-giver is trying to be sincere.
Fictionalisation, thus, is inevitably how we relate to our (past) selves, and it is
therefore an inevitable aspect of offering oneself in words. The concern here does
not necessarily relate to how assured we can be about our interpretation of the past.
It does not try to accurately measure correlations or causality in what has happened,
nor understand with certainty what our ‘true’ motives were at that time and what
144 8 Parrhesia, Bad Faith and Accounting for Oneself

that tells us about the person we are today. It does not deny the selectivity that
accounting for the past must involve, and how that very process of selection may
diverge in line with our changing fundamental commitments. Rather, such accounts
are about how we situate ourselves today in relation to truth, understanding that
commitments are made manifest in how we have acted as well as how we have
interpreted these actions in the present moment. If we consider the past as ‘factic-
ity’, it therefore does represent ‘things that have happened’, but not in a fixed sense.
Rather, these moments are nevertheless continually responded to and (re)inter-
preted. As Sartre rightly argues, there is no neutral position from which to under-
stand our past. Indeed, the act of autobiographical writing is, in itself, an act of
existential freedom, and as Fell (1968, p. 429) puts it: ‘[p]erhaps the philosophy is
not a product of [Sartre’s] childhood, but rather childhood here ‘recounted’ is the
product his philosophy.’
For Sartre, with such freedom comes responsibility. This implies that we are
responsible not only for what has happened, but also for our (re)engagement with
our past ‘selves’ and, indeed, for the accounts that we give. This responsibility in
recounting the past is also tied to how it is that we account for ourselves. Importantly,
it is not a form of responsibility that is cultivated or attained, since in responding to
our past, we are inevitably responsible as such (Brady, 2020).

8.4.3 The Scene of the Address

It is important to acknowledge that, even in autobiographical writing, the Other is

present in some way. In struggling to account for oneself, we are also struggling
within the particular social normativity in which we are situated, one that must be
incorporated if the account is to be intelligible (Butler, 2005). Such norms are
impersonal in nature – they are not created by us as individuals, but rather, our sto-
ries are always told in a belated sense, through a ‘facticity’ that we have been thrown
into and are inescapably situated within. Foucault refers to these as ‘regimes of
truth’ – regimes by which we recognise ourselves, that decide what and who can be
recognised, and by extension, what one can ‘be’. The later Foucault argues that such
norms are not totalitarian but are nevertheless negotiated through our lived experi-
ences. Similarly, Sartre admits that the ‘we-relation’ (in which we use artefacts of
Others in order to express ourselves) is necessary in our accounts. In either case, we
situate ourselves in relation to such norms, and in doing so, we situate ourselves in
relation to our ‘selves’ as subject to these. This requires a level of reflexivity – a
form of self-questioning where one may risk becoming unrecognisable or unintel-
ligible, where one struggles within and against the facticity in which one is situated.
This reflexivity is represented in parrhesiastic practices, and in the ways in which
we might enact this through our attempts to account for ourselves more broadly.
In Words, Sartre admits that he had not quite thought about the fact that books are
read by others. As he grew older, he remarks how he began to feel the ‘presence’ of
the author in the words he was reading, their ‘souls haunting the work’, carried forth
8.4 Autobiographical Writing as a Parrhesiastic Practice 145

by another – the reader – who responds to, reinterprets, and rebirths their words.
Indeed, like authors who leave behind legacies of words that are then (re)read by
their audience, individuals are similarly (re)defined by others through how it is that
they account for themselves. As Butler (2005) points out, the structure of the
address, where norms facilitate my ability in giving an account of myself, means
that there is always a vulnerability towards the Other who may (re)define us in ways
over which we have no control. It is in such instances that we might understand one
of the inevitable dangers of accounting for oneself – the danger of being misrecog-
nised or concretised in such a way that it leads us into bad faith with ourselves. This
‘crisis’ of misrecognition need not be fatal however, since it can also inaugurate the
opportunity for renewal, where our account challenges the limits of what is recog-
nisable, and where the situation itself is potentially overturned as a result.
As Foucault (2001) points out, if we are to account for ourselves in parrhesiastic
ways, we must not only accept the risks it poses to ourselves, but welcome these as
a measure of our sincerity. But did Sartre write his autobiography with this in mind,
or with an emphasis on how he wished to be portrayed such that he could attain
approval from others? These latter motives would also be a form of bad faith, since
it would allow us to defuse our anxieties in the face of being exposed, to neutralise
the risk that this involves, and to actively avoid the danger of speaking freely and
sincerely about oneself. And yet, as Butler (2005) argues, self-formation neverthe-
less exists in a relation of dependency. As we saw in Chap. 7, our existence with
others is experienced in an immediate sense, and when accounting for ourselves, an
‘other’ is also immediately posited.
When Foucault (2001) states that ‘the account of myself that I give never fully
expresses or carries this living self’, might this be because the ‘self’ is not graspable
except through a concret(ised) account one gives of oneself to the Other? Indeed,
for Sartre, there is an inevitable dispossession or ‘disavowal’ that occurs when one
puts oneself into words. In such accounts, the psychosocial self erupts, something
Sartre himself seems to imply in his repeated references to his ‘true self’ in Words,
usually in situations where the Other is involved in some way. Inevitably, this con-
ception is also accompanied by a critique of imposture that Sartre (2000, p. 53) as a
child seemed to embody:
My true self, my character and my name were in the hands of adults; I had learnt to see
myself through their eyes… I was an imposter… Those bright, sunlit appearances which
composed my personality gave themselves away: through a defect of being which I could
neither quite understand nor stop feeling. I turned to the grown-ups, begging them to vouch
my merits: I was plunging into imposture.

And yet, Sartre also appeared to have battled with this, a struggle within the very
scene of address in which he was situated, in which he (2000, p. 109) was concre-
tised by the Other:
I was leading two existences, both of them lies. In public, I was an imposter: the famous
grandson of the well-known Charles Schweitzer; alone, I was absorbed in an imaginary fit
of sulks… I had no difficulty in switching from one role to the other… Yet I was threatened:
my true self was in danger of remaining those alternating lies of mine to the very end.
146 8 Parrhesia, Bad Faith and Accounting for Oneself

What was it that allowed Sartre to escape from this? Was he naïve in thinking he
could ever escape fully? Perhaps. But it appears that through writing in a parrhesi-
astic way, he could pay closer attention to the gestures or role-playing underpinning
his behaviour such that they could then be interrupted, tested, called into question.
This only appears to be possible when one enacts a certain parrhesiastic reflexivity
about oneself and one’s practice, and when one can finally account for oneself in a
way that does not completely yield to certainty, fixity, and the risk-aversion. This
ongoing practice is, perhaps, the closest we can hope for in terms of being in
‘good faith’.
But should we trust his account? And if not, doesn’t this call everything he says
into question? Or does it instead require a reconceptualization of the basis for such
trust? Let us turn to this question in the context of teaching.

8.5 The Beautiful Risk

Thus, autobiographies can involve parrhesiastic practices in terms of how we

account for ourselves and our (past) practices. They are often confessional in nature,
a way to publicise and expose ourselves towards ourselves and others. Their con-
cern is not necessarily in figuring out a measurable causality between our actions in
the past and ‘who we are’ now, nor testing the extent to which our accounts are
accurate, given that it is unfeasible to identify precisely when we acted in a commit-
ted sense, or when we performed mere gestures. But a willingness to expose oneself
to both the potential criticism and to uncertainty is a measure of sincerity. It is,
perhaps, the best we can hope for in terms of being in good faith with ourselves,
something that therefore opens up the possibility of account-giving in more authen-
tic terms. In trusting such accounts, there is thus more at stake than a scientistic
understanding of truth as measurable objectivity.
Importantly, any account of oneself is situated within a scene of address with the
Other. This sense of exposure towards the Other inevitably accompanies such
accounts, acting as a risk in at least two ways – self-criticism and criticism from
others. There is also a danger in our tendency to offer explanations in such accounts,
often with the other in mind, where the act of putting oneself into words in order to
be intelligible carries with it the risk of falling into bad faith. Parrhesia, like good
faith, requires that we therefore put those accounts to the test, that we see sincerity
not as a fixed quality we can easily cultivate, identify or measure but as something
that is continually pursued. It also requires that we allow for the space in which
uncertainty is not suppressed but welcomed, and where we are courageous in the
confrontation with the risk parrhesiastic accounts involve.
In teaching, giving an account of oneself (i.e. in terms of accountability) is often
tied to a sense of certainty, however, and is also underpinned by ‘risk-adverse’ dis-
courses. This in turn relates to an inherent mistrust in the ability of teachers to
account for themselves in other ways. Indeed, as Biesta (2014, p. 123) remarks, this
‘particular discourse begins to monopolise thinking and talking’ about education in
8.5 The Beautiful Risk 147

its effort to generate ‘increased uniformity [and] a reduction of diversity’. As such,

it is not only the discourse itself that is problematic, but the ways in which it pro-
motes a view of teaching that is then ‘repeated, promoted, and multiplied.’ But all of
this is a misconception of the possibility of accuracy understood in the reductive
sense, a misconception that allows us to avoid taking stock of what is at stake in our
practices, of what ultimate values are made manifest in these, and, perhaps most
importantly, of what the lived experiences of being a teacher entail in light of this.
Not only do these discourses fail to capture the messy reality of teaching, they also
lead to a form of bad faith in which anxieties around potential uncertainties are
assuaged. In order to allow teachers to give an account of themselves in other ways –
and, indeed, to trust them to do so – an entire shift in the discourse of teaching needs
to occur, one that embraces risk and uncertainty as a key component of the entire
educational process (Todd, 2016; Mooney Simmie & Moles, 2020).
In The Beautiful Risk of Education, Biesta (2014) sets out to show us that risk,
indeed, is inherent in educational practices, despite the difficulties in capturing this.
This is because education necessarily involves an interaction between humans,
where teachers and students inculcate responses from one another around a ‘com-
mon world’. Education is never simply a matter of teachers moulding students to
respond in particular ways, and since the direct correlation between ‘inputs’ and
‘outputs’ is not guaranteed, any attempt to account for this denies the extent to
which both parties are inevitably responding in the classroom. In spite of this, teach-
ers are asked to suppress risk and uncertainty in various ways. As we have seen
throughout Part I, for instance, current discourses in education are so often focused
on degrees of predictability, and indeed, on the stability that such an understanding
of education might allow. These ‘risk-adverse’ discourses conceptualise risk in a
negative sense, where the focus of technicist accounts of teaching is often on the
efforts that have been put in place to eliminate it. But as Biesta (2014) remarks,
without risk, there is simply no education. Indeed, education is not a reified product
but an event centred on creating the time and space ‘in which existential singularity,
irreplaceability and particularity of each person can emerge through being in a
responsive relationship to others and to the world’ (Paolantonio, 2019, p. 604) of
which risk and unpredictability are inescapable components.
Interestingly, Biesta (2014, p. 123) argues that a ‘lack of courage to think and act
differently’ in our accounts of teaching underpin this push for certainty. For him,
there is something infantile about this. I am inclined to agree – and in its refusal to
accept that the world cannot be put under our absolute control, there is equally a
failure to accept the world as it is. Technicist accounts aim to reduce the world (and
our interactions with it) into ‘simpler’ and ‘easier to digest’ formats. But to do so is
to lose so much of the important richness and complexity of life, and the difficulties
of making sense of ourselves within it. This loss not only represents a form of bad
faith, but a fallacy that such a reduction can, in fact, represent the world in the first
place. In The Myth of Sisyphus, Camus (2005, p. 42) remarks on this:
You describe it to me and you teach me to classify it. You enumerate its laws and in my
thirst for knowledge I admit that they are true. You take apart its mechanism and my hope
increases. At the final stage you teach me that this wondrous and multi-coloured universe
148 8 Parrhesia, Bad Faith and Accounting for Oneself

can be reduced to the atom and that the atom itself can be reduced to the electron. All this
is good and I wait for you to continue. But you tell me of an invisible planetary system in
which electrons gravitate around a nucleus. You explain this world to me with an image. I
realise then that you have been reduced to poetry.

For Biesta (2014), education cannot be accounted for in what he calls the ‘strong
metaphysical sense’. Rather, the ‘weak existentialist sense’ sees education as both
an encounter and an event. This, in turn, leaves us with two choices in how we might
account for such practices – either in ‘essentialist’ or ‘existentialist’ terms, a choice
between ‘whether we want to take the risk of life – with all the uncertainty, unpre-
dictability, and frustration that come with it – or whether we look for certainty out-
side, underneath or beyond life’ (Biesta, 2014, p. 17). So often, it seems, we opt for
the latter. But why might this be the case? Indeed, why this drive for certainty unless
there is something implicitly uncertain that underpins our experiences?
Importantly, all of this calls into question our current understandings of ‘trust’
and of the possibility of authenticity in our accounts. In the current climate, there is
an implication that we can cultivate ‘trustworthiness’ in teachers through training
them is specific areas of expertise (e.g. data-collection, evidence-based account-­
giving). By doing so, there is also an assumption that such training might allow us
to cultivate a ‘trustworthy person’, ones whose accounts will always be trusted,
since they will be trained to identify, measure and account for their practices in the
most ‘robust’ ways. But isn’t there something a little too easy about this – and, per-
haps, even insincere? Perhaps, instead, we should think about trustworthiness in a
different sense, as something we must continually put into practice, test out, exam-
ine, reflect upon.
Certain policies seem to call for this continual flexibility in our accounts, and yet
they are still marked by a relentless drive for assuredness. But the measure of the
ongoing practices of sincerity in our accounts would, in fact, be uncertainty. Indeed,
if we wish to trust accounts, would we appeal to those that are certain? Or would we
rather appeal to those that are more sincere – a sincerity that accepts the uncertainty
that is part and parcel of what we do as teachers? This risk that any account of one-
self might entail – being misunderstood, being unintelligible, being contradictory or
paradoxical – is a risk that nevertheless signals a very different understanding of
response and responsibility in teaching, one that does not deny the freedom by
which individuals act upon the world.
Vlieghe and Zamojski (2019) offer a distinction between ‘care’ and ‘expertise’
models of teaching that might help to illuminate this idea further. The ‘expert’
model of teaching involves a pre-defined set of competencies and skills that, if cor-
rectly cultivated, can ensure that the teacher will always give the best response to
situations. This model therefore relies on a degree of reliability in how to account
for the practices of teaching. Indeed, pedagogy is often understood here as an
‘applied science’, one that assumes that ‘there is first a body of knowledge, a set of
skills, full-proof [sic] procedures… and in a second movement the teacher brings all
this to bear on whatever situation s/he finds himself/herself in, so as to bring out the
best possible outcome’ (Vlieghe & Zamojski, 2019, p. 100). On the other hand, the
‘care’ model of teaching involves giving ‘shape’ to a particular ethos as a teacher,
8.6 Parrhesiastic Techniques in Teaching 149

one that requires a ‘ceaseless endeavour to cultivate and perfect oneself’ in line with
aesthetic practices of the self. By returning to the three parrhesiastic ‘techniques’
that Foucault (2001) offers at the end of his lecture series, I will thus offer some
tentative suggestions for how to do this.

8.6 Parrhesiastic Techniques in Teaching

Importantly, such techniques may sound ‘technical’ in nature, thus fitting in well
with the educational discourses I seek to critique. Importantly, however, these tech-
niques are not meant to be prescriptive guidelines for offering a parrhesiastic
account of oneself, but rather, to open up new avenues for thinking about teaching
in a way that does not suppress the uncertainty and risk that giving an account
involves. Perhaps in thinking through these, a new form account-giving can be
thought of, one that is modelled on the autobiographical writing I have considered
thus far. I will explore this more fully in the next (and final) chapter but for now, let
us consider each of these techniques in turn.

8.6.1 Self-Examination

Self-examination should not be confused with ‘self-evaluation’ as examined in

Chap. 2. Self-examination does not rely on a narrow, assured definition of evidence.
Its function is not to neutralise but to open up critical questions about what is going
on, about ‘who we are’ as teachers, and about what is valuable in what we are doing.
Self-examination involves positing an inner judge who, rather than accuse, measure
or ‘evaluate’ (in the technical sense), simply takes stock of what has happened.
Indeed, as Foucault (2001) argues, the (self-)criticism that self-examination involves
is not one of guilt or shame, but instead focuses on so-called ‘practical errors’, and
how to habituate changes in oneself in light of these.
This account of taking stock of things is, perhaps, overly rationalistic. It may not
align with what it feels like to have an inner judge, nor account for some of the cata-
lysts of self-examinations in educational settings. Certain crises that appear in the
classroom – a disruption, a student who voices a concern that makes you question
entirely what it is you are doing there together: these are often the moments when
we begin to examine more intensely who we are as teachers, and what it is that we
represent. Or if not crises, then situations where lessons go well – where one is so
completely immersed in the activity that they forget the time, where the lesson plan
goes off track because something more important is happening. Self-examination
requires a rigorous form of introspection, where one is exposed not only to others,
but also to themselves. It can be harrowing and uncomfortable, but it can also be
revealing. It is inherently risky, where we may not like what we see when we expose
ourselves to an honest and sincere account of our practices. At the same time, it may
150 8 Parrhesia, Bad Faith and Accounting for Oneself

allow us to re-evaluate what is at stake in what we do, calling us to respond to our

practices in an ongoing sense, to take responsibility for them not simply because we
are coerced into doing so, but because we believe that these practices matter in some
way. Self-examination requires courage – the courage to expose oneself, to undergo
the introspection by which this is possible, to confront the ways in which we behave
and the extent to which we are comfortable in taking responsibility for this. But it
does not have to always be so solemn. Self-deprecating humour can often provide a
window into what we really think, or how we are ‘presenting’ ourselves to the class.
Sartre’s autobiography is replete with such examples. Thus, where autobiographical
writing involves a similar form of self-examination, it may therefore be employed
as a model for accounting for one’s practices as a teacher in ways that concern sin-
cerity rather than (just) accuracy.
How we go about examining ourselves in this way is difficult, particularly in the
current climate of teaching that very much focuses on ‘what works’. But in allowing
the space for teachers to confront themselves in a parrhesiastic way, one can account
for oneself in a language that is, perhaps, more amenable to – and more honest
about – the messy uncertainties of the lived realities of the classroom. It is impor-
tant, however, to recognise that the ‘self’ that is revealed through parrhesiastic prac-
tices is one that appears on the basis of an interpretation and is not an indubitable
‘fact’ about who we are. Indeed, as Hogan (2009, p. 105) rightly remarks, ‘compete
self-transparency is just not humanly possible.’ It is also important to realise that,
for Sartre, that ‘self’ does not necessarily determine how we behave – now, or
indeed, in the future. Self-examination as a parrhesiastic practice involves giving an
account of oneself as a ‘self’ in the world in this moment, and the very act of self-­
examination is also an act that contributes to the ongoing production of that self in
the world, a practice that must therefore be continually enacted.

8.6.2 Self-Diagnosis

For Foucault (2001), self-diagnosis is a matter the ‘self-possession of the self’. Both
Sartre and Foucault diverged greatly from their own understandings of the self, but
on some level, both understood it as that which is produced by being in the world
with others. It is unclear what Foucault (2001) meant by self-diagnosis exactly (or
if, indeed, this was his own account or merely the description of the Ancient Greeks).
For our purposes here, self-diagnosis refers to the idea that she who is undertaking
this self-diagnosis is also she towards whom the examination is focused, and this
both conditions and produces ‘self-mastery’.
The exposure that we ourselves experience through forms of self-diagnosis can,
as we have seen, be uncomfortable, but it is nevertheless a necessary component of
parrhesiastic accounts of ourselves. Foucault (2001) refers to Seneca’s metaphor of
seasickness here. When one is undertaking a voyage at sea, one feels a certain mal-
aise due to the ‘perpetual vacillating motion which has no other movement than
“rocking”’ (Foucault, 2001, p. 153). This rocking motion is partly related to a lack
8.6 Parrhesiastic Techniques in Teaching 151

of self-mastery over what is happening, a lack of stability that is, indeed, nauseat-
ing. But it is nevertheless an inescapable component of the journey, and because it
cannot be overcome during this voyage itself, we must find a way to live with it.
Sartre famously talks about the nausea of existence, of coming to realise the contin-
gency of the world. It is also through this nausea that one comes to realise their
freedom as conscious human beings, as not those inanimate objects that exist super-
fluously. This in turn allows us to realise our innate self-mastery – a form of authen-
ticity that is both liberating and anxiety-inducing.
Indeed, as we discussed in Chap. 4, although this feeling of exposure can cause
anxiety, it can also dissipate as the lesson continues, as the class becomes more
absorbed in what is going on. This initial feeling of exposure is testament to our
freedom in front of others, a freedom in the sense that we are always responding in
the world (with others). We are even responding in moments where it seems that we
are constrained by conventions, by social norms, by the circumstances, by ‘lesson
plans’, by the (institutional) definitions and expectations of our roles. In the context
of teaching, this appears to be hindered by the discourses through which one
‘speaks’ as a teacher, through which one describes or translates their practices to
those who hold them to account. Perhaps it is also hindered by the extent to which
we unquestioningly ‘step into the role’ of teaching, as many of us often do. And yet,
teachers do not need to speak through these discourses. They do not need to adopt
the ‘language of effectiveness’ in order to evaluate themselves or in order to provide
descriptions or explanations for their conduct in the classroom. Through parrhesias-
tic acts (e.g. modelled on autobiographical writing), it is then possible for teachers
to find another way of speaking about their practices, of giving an account of them-
selves and what they do in a less detached way than that which is encouraged by
current forms of evidence-based accountability, one that is underpinned by an exis-
tential rather than technicist logic.

8.6.3 Self-Testing

Self-testing, for Foucault (2001), is a form of self-surveillance. Foucault’s (e.g.

1991) earlier work characterised self-surveillance as a way in which institutions can
control not only the body of a person, but also their ‘soul’, where more overt forms
of coercion are no longer necessary. Self-surveillance thus leads to self-discipline –
a disciplining of one’s behaviour and one’s subjectivity in light of impersonal social
norms they are conditioned by. Much of this, of course, has been accounted for in
educational research, particularly in relation to high-stakes accountability regimes
(e.g. Ball, 2003; Perryman et al., 2018).
But self-testing in a parrhesiastic sense does not seem to have this agenda in
mind. Although it involves an element of self-governance, it is not a governance that
leads to the unquestioning internalisation of external norms and values. Rather, self-­
testing can lead to a form of self-mastery. Although Sartre would not see self-­
mastery as an end to be attained but an innate aspect of all human beings, his
152 8 Parrhesia, Bad Faith and Accounting for Oneself

conception of freedom does not imply that we aimlessly navigate our way through
life. This freedom is also not ‘practical’ – indeed, we are free to attempt certain
actions but not necessarily to ‘complete’ them if those actions are outside our situ-
ated capabilities. Since we do not live aimlessly, Sartre argues that we make a so-­
called ‘fundamental choice’, as discussed in Chap. 5. This original choice underpins
all other choices in our life and through it, our subsequent actions are meaningful.
It provides the context for the actions we have undertaken, and thus the person we
‘are’ by virtue of those. Of course, we can go against this fundamental project, but,
since doing so goes against our sense of self that has been ‘produced’ by our mean-
ingful actions in the world with others, we rarely do.
Self-testing can therefore be a way in which one ‘checks in’ with (and potentially
(re)evaluates) one’s fundamental project, similar to the ongoing questioning that,
for Sartre, is an implicit aspect of living more authentically (Santoni, 1995; Catalano,
1996). It is important to understand that this project is not always clear, nor is it
always (if ever) possible to ‘make intelligible’. When a teacher asks themselves why
they entered education, or why education matters to them, they may not be able to
articulate this clearly in words. They may, perhaps, offer romanticised ideas about
teaching without really being honest with themselves. ‘Authentic’ answers, how-
ever, may be made more evident through accounting for one’s practices in the class-
room in a parrhesiastic way. The difficulty, however, lies in how we recognise where
an account is more genuine. Again, our concern here is not necessarily with accu-
racy or truth as ‘objectivity’. The problem with accounting for oneself is the reason
why Words and other forms of engaging with oneself are often so ambiguous, espe-
cially when it comes to delineating why we behaved in certain ways, or, indeed,
what our fundamental project is. And yet, perhaps there are glimpses of this initial
project in how we behave. Through the technique of self-testing, perhaps such
glimpses can be brought to the fore, thus allowing for a reflexivity that imbues a
relation between oneself and a more authentic – or at least sincere – account of their
responses to situations.

8.7 Trusting Teachers

Sartre argues that the irresolvable issue of bad faith arises because of the nature of
faith itself. Faith is inherently paradoxical – it holds us in a position where we both
believe and not believe since, in faith, we know that we cannot know for certain that
what we believe is true. In the same way, there is something paradoxical about how
we account for ourselves and the trust this form of account-giving requires, where
our attempts to be frank and sincere also require that many of our explanations be
taken on faith. This includes the trust that is directed at teachers from the wider
public who hold them accountable, as well as the trust that is directed towards our-
selves. This is not a trust that is cultivated on the basis of certain capacities to be
‘accurate’ in one’s account (for example, through being ‘data-literate’). Rather, it is
a trust that is pre-supposed in educational relationships. Trust understood here is
References 153

akin to how we meet people on a personal level – a trust in one’s ability to use their
own language to talk about their own practices – in short, to account for themselves
on their own terms. Trust is, of course, risky, but it is an intimate part of what we do
as humans. Unless we think of teaching as a purely technical endeavour that can
avoid risk at all costs, then isn’t trust also something we must risk placing in
accounts of teaching that do not appeal to ‘measurable evidence’? With this in mind,
let us now consider more precisely what an ‘existentialist’ account of teaching
might look like over and against the ‘technicist’ accounts that are exemplified in
Chap. 2, starting from my own account of the messy but rich experiences of being a
teacher.

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Chapter 9
Towards an Existentialist Account
of Teaching

“Look,” he said, with sudden vehemence, “why don’t you put

yourself into your writing? You’re more interesting than all
these Renées and Lisas.” The blood flushed up in my cheeks; it
was a hot day, and as usual the place was full of smoke and
noise. I felt as though someone had banged me hard on the
heard. “I’d never dare to do that,” I said. To put my raw,
undigested self into a book, to lose perspective, compromise
myself – no, I couldn’t do it, I found the whole idea terrifying.
“Screw up your courage,” Sartre told me, and kept pressing
the point.
Beauvoir (1994, p. 380) on a conversation with Sartre prior to
‘Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter’.

Abstract I begin the final chapter with an account from my own experiences of
teaching. The purpose of this account is not to provide an ‘accurate’ depiction of
teaching, nor to generalise the experiences of all teachers. Rather, it should serve as
a point of resonance that demonstrates how and in what way Sartre’s ideas make
sense in the classroom. Following this, I explore two ways in which this – and
indeed any – account of teaching might be understood. Firstly, I discuss ‘technicist’
forms of account-giving that, with the aim of cultivating evaluative dispositions
perpetuate an underlying assumption that connects accountability with accuracy. In
contrast to this, I introduce what might be termed as ‘existential’ forms of account-­
giving, garnered from an engagement with Sartre. Ultimately, this can be thought of
as an ongoing project of engagement with one’s responses in the classroom, with
the commitments made manifest in these responses, and with one’s responsibility in
light of this. Notwithstanding the complexity that this latter form of account-giving
involves, new understandings of accountability and account-giving in teaching are
invited, not as an imposed requirement or a skill, but as a way of being in the
classroom.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte 155
Ltd. 2022
A. M. Brady, Being a Teacher, Contemporary Philosophies and Theories in
Education 19, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-7323-9_9
156 9 Towards an Existentialist Account of Teaching

Keywords Accountability · Teaching · Responsibility · Evidence-based education

· Existentialism · Sartre

9.1 An Anecdotal Account

When I was 19, I entered my first secondary school classroom as a teacher. I had
done some work in primary schools before then, but this felt entirely different. For
one, most of the students looked to be about the same age as me. I had been at uni-
versity for about 2 years at that stage. I had studied lots of pedagogical strategies
and tips, and like many teachers, I had a fairly good idea of what these different
strategies meant and what they hoped to achieve. But I’m not sure how explicit they
were in my thinking once I began to speak in front of the class. I had carefully
planned my lesson beforehand, writing out neatly what I was going to do, how long
each activity was going to take, what sort of approaches I would incorporate and
why. This wasn’t because I was particularly organised, but because it was needed
for my teaching portfolio submitted at the end of my placement. These plans offered
me a sense of security, however, and I continued writing them even when I didn’t
need to, just as a precaution in case I completely forgot what I was there to do – a
worry that, of course, never materialised.
The feeling I had when walking into the classroom for the first time wasn’t one
of excitement or hopefulness. It wasn’t exactly anxiety either, except when I allowed
myself to overthink what might or might not happen, or when I paid too much atten-
tion to that slight feeling of tightness in my stomach. Rather, it was a strangeness
that I felt – something to do with the idea that I would adopt a role I had witnessed
in the many years of my schooling, that these students were going to be looking at
me in the same way that I had looked upon my past teachers – indeed, that I would
appear to them as a teacher. It was strange to think that, as soon as the students
walked into the room, I would immediately be recognised as a teacher, and that if I
appeared in another room in another building with other strangers, I wouldn’t get
the same response. I had certainly dressed for the occasion. Looking back, it was
clear that I had in my mind what my teachers used to wear, and the clothes I wore
were just used for teaching, as if I needed those clothes in order to appear ‘teacherly’.
I remember that I stood at the front of the class and wrote my name on the board.
I imagined that scene from Freedom Writers where Erin Gruwell accidentally wipes
the chalk on her backside, making the students laugh at her. I was careful not to
repeat the same mistake. I had completely forgotten that strategy of somehow writ-
ing on the board in a straight line without having your back to the students (some-
thing I still cannot manage today). I later learned why there was so much emphasis
on this in my training. As soon as I looked away, it was as if a whole other group of
people would appear behind me. We were all playing a kind of game, where no one
was really being sincere with each other – me trying my best to appear ‘teacherly’,
the students trying their best to look just serious enough so as not to appear mischie-
vous, but just mischievous enough so as not to not appear overly serious. When I
9.1 An Anecdotal Account 157

looked away, I could sense their quickened moves, the way they threw glances at
each other, the stifled whispers, the crumpled paper as it flew through the air, some
of the students looking on at those ‘class clowns’ and sniggering awkwardly, others
petulantly annoyed. Often, the charade was difficult to keep up. A student would say
something funny but inappropriate, and I would have a really hard time trying not to
laugh. I’m not sure why I didn’t just laugh, but instead, I had the same feeling as
when you’re trying not to laugh at a funeral, where suppressing it seems to make
things even more irresistibly funny, though you’re not quite sure why.
Once the students arrived in the room, I knew I had to just start, that I would most
certainly feel less awkward than if I just stood there. So, I briefly introduced myself
and the topic we were all here to look at. I seemed to be somewhat unconsciously
enacting the idea that you shouldn’t smile before Christmas, something I held onto
quite steadfastly in my earlier years. I most certainly did not command much respect
in any immediate sense – I’m not sure I did for the whole time I was there. The
students were ‘harmless’, though cheeky and disruptive. They came up with fake
names. They talked over me about irrelevant topics. I even had another teacher walk
in and loudly say that she thought there wasn’t ‘anyone’ in the room (ironic given
that she could clearly hear the students in the hall – of course, by ‘anyone’, she
meant a teacher). I had expected this to a degree – I used to be one of those students,
and the university was very thorough about preparing us for this. They made it
sound almost like a secret rite of passage, one that was difficult to explain but would
be understood more fully once we had gone through it ourselves. I remember after-
wards that I felt immensely shameful of how it was that I used to behave in class.
But in that moment, I just pressed on as best I could, hypervigilant of myself as a
body standing in front of others, with this anonymous crowd looking at me, evaluat-
ing to what extent I would live up to the image of the ‘trainee teacher’ in their
minds. When the class finally ended, I felt a sense of relief. I realise that much of
what I like about teaching is that feeling, in fact – not a relief that it is over exactly,
but just that I could finally be ‘myself’ again.
During the lesson, I found myself parroting phrases that teachers used to say to
me, mimicking their gestures. All of these intricate habits were not only premised
on representations of teaching that I had come across, but also because of the ways
in which I imagined that I was seen by the students, and my interpretation of what I
needed to do in order to seen as ‘teacherly’. I had entered in the room as the cate-
gory of ‘teacher’, and with that, all of the expectations that are attached – for some
students, a knowledgeable, older other who had life experience and subject exper-
tise; for others, an undeserving authority figure, who really only wanted a group of
people to boss around. Rightly or wrongly, I implicitly felt that this was the way I
was being looked at, and because of that, I unthinkingly inhabited the role that was
in part defined by my own experience of being a student, by what I had learned in
university, by teachers I had seen in films. It wasn’t that I couldn’t have acted in any
other way. It was that I was so absorbed in ‘myself as a body’ in that moment that I
didn’t really think of myself as responding to the situation. Of course, I was respond-
ing, and I am responding to it now.
158 9 Towards an Existentialist Account of Teaching

Is it even possible to know with any certainty the meaning behind my gestures in
the classroom, or the extent to which I was sincere about what I felt? I may write
about it retrospectively as if that is the case, because I know on some level that
teachers should be sincere about what they do. But teaching is something I came to
value much later in life. Despite what I felt about it then, it’s difficult for me to not
think about my early years as valuable or formative or even profound in some
small way.
When I watch TV documentaries or films about teaching today, especially those
centred on teachers just starting out, I get mixed feelings. On the one hand, I find it
quite moving to see teachers on screen because I recognise myself in those moments.
But I also know that there is an undeniable voyeurism perpetuated by these shows.
I’m not always convinced by how the teacher is represented, nor the fact that the
show invites armchair judgements from an anonymous crowd of onlookers, judge-
ments that are not necessarily spontaneous but are cultivated through the manipula-
tion of equally anonymous directors and editors. There is something potentially
harmful in these overly romanticised ideas about teaching in fictional films like
‘Dead Poet’s Society’, ‘Freedom Writers’, perhaps even comedies like ‘School of
Rock’ and ‘Sister Act’. I have also noticed an increase in TV ‘documentaries’ about
schools that work in the same way – the ‘fly on the wall’ look at the classroom, the
trials and tribulations of being a teacher in today’s world, the important and (eventu-
ally) rewarding task that teaching is. Their narrative is recipe-like. The teacher
enters the classroom for the first time, overly optimistic about what can be achieved.
Confronted with ‘difficult’ students who do not share the teachers’ perkiness, con-
testation continues until, on the brink of breaking point, the students finally see that
the teacher does care about them, and that what they are teaching them is relevant to
their lives. But in my experience, teaching was always much more like Sisyphus
pushing that rock up the mountain only to watch it fall back down. For Camus
(2005), Sisyphus is heroic in his ability to recognise this absurdity but to keep going
despite this. Is this, perhaps, where the ‘heroism’ of teaching lies?
There is one example that particularly springs to mind for me – an episode from
‘Tough Young Teachers’ (BBC Three, 2014).1 In one scene, we see Claudenia, a
trainee science teacher, trying to enact what she imagined would be an effective
strategy to demonstrate the phenomenon of sound. Claudenia is attempting some-
thing ‘whacky’ (according to the programme’s narrator), involving a select number
of students standing in front of their peers and re-enacting how sound vibrates and
travels from its point of origin to its receiver. Now displaced from their usual spots
behind their desks, the students start to act up. They are clearly frustrated, as indi-
cated by one student who remarks that the task ‘didn’t make no sense’, and with
another accusing Claudenia of ‘[making them] look like idiots’. Claudenia, in turn,
becomes visibly frustrated herself. She tries to power through, but ultimately caves
into her perceived failure of the situation, and the awkwardness becomes all the

1
‘Tough Young Teachers’ follows the lives of trainee teachers undergoing their ‘Teach First’ place-
ments in the UK.
9.1 An Anecdotal Account 159

more palpable when the students start to mockingly applaud her and their peers for
their effort. At one point, another teacher, Mr. McDonald, enters the classroom to
check if Claudenia is having any problems. Through his ‘death stare’, he manages
to force the attention of some of the students. But this is only momentary victory,
since once he leaves, things go back to how they were. It’s likely that Claudenia felt
even more awkward given that he had (unintentionally) undermined her even fur-
ther.2 The scene ends with Claudenia visibly upset, stumbling over her words as she
asks the students to pack up, later telling a colleague that she doesn’t know what she
is doing, and that the students also do not know what she is doing. She then relegates
the entire lesson as a waste of everyone’s time.
The scene is particularly poignant given that, the day before, Claudenia experi-
enced a really great teaching moment, where she also tried something ‘whacky’
(filling balloons with different gases and putting a flame next to them so the students
could hear the different ‘explosions’). She was excited, the students were excited,
and even another teacher who walked in when she heard the ‘racket’ in the hall, like
Mr McDonald had, also appeared to be excited. But such are the highs and the lows
of teaching, the uncertainty of how each lesson will pan out despite our best plan-
ning efforts and ideas, of how we will feel about ourselves afterwards, and the need
to press on regardless of all of this. In that sense, Sisyphus may feel a momentary
relief when he lets go of the rock, but his true heroism is in the way that he continues
to push it back up that mountain.

9.1.1 Analysing Accounts

She explained to me that a suitably programmed computer can read a novel in a few minutes
and record the list of all the words contained in the text, in order of frequency. “That way I
can have an already completed reading at hand,” Lotaria says, “with an incalculable saving
of time. What is the reading of a text, in fact, except the recording of certain thematic recur-
rences, certain insistences of forms and meanings? An electronic reading supplies me with
a list of the frequencies, which I have only to glance at to form an idea of the problems the
book suggests in my critical study. Naturally, at the highest frequencies the list records
countless articles, pronouns, particles, but I don’t pay them any attention. I head straight for
the words with the richest meaning; they can give me a fairly precise notion of the book.”

This passage from Calvino’s (1992, p. 186) novel, If on a Winter’s Night A Traveller
concerns Lotaria, a student of literature, employing what might be called a ‘techni-
cist’ method for reading an account (in this case, a novel). Lotaria, it seems,

2
It is important to mention that Claudenia is not just a young, inexperienced teacher but also a
black female in a subject that, traditionally, both women and BME teachers are underrepresented
in. The fact that Mr McDonald is a white older male might also have something to do with the
automatic respect he seemed to generate. This is, of course, a belated explanation for the students’
behaviour, but it nevertheless points to the idea that our relationship with others in part depends on
the ways in which we are characterised by virtue of our race, gender, and ‘place’ within a particular
subject area.
160 9 Towards an Existentialist Account of Teaching

understands the ‘true meaning’ of an account as correlating to the frequency of

repeated words. In doing so, she is undeniably missing out on much of the nuance
and depth that reading the narrative as a whole has to offer. In reducing the text to
frequencies of words, she is also narrowing her field of vision such that these wider
and more implicit complexities are taken out of frame. This is akin to looking
through a microscope, which ‘effectively downgrades or even erases the embedded-
ness that is a feature of our normal experience of the world… [prioritising] what can
be made explicit and in effect [denying] the ineffable’ (Blake et al., 2000, p. 7).
Indeed, the very technology she employs – the computer as well as the method
itself – changes not only the meaning of the story but also the very nature of what it
means for her engage with an account, where it is the computer rather than the
reader that generates the criteria for truth and meaning in the story.
At a later point in the novel, the writer, Silas, with whom Lotaria shares her
‘method’, accounts for the self-consciousness that this revelation makes him feel:
The idea that Lotaria reads my books in this way creates some problems for me. Now, every
time I write a word, I see it spun around by the electronic brain, ranked according to its
frequency, next to other words whose identity I cannot know, and so I wonder how many
times I have used it, I feel the whole responsibility of writing weigh on those isolated syl-
lables, I try to imagine what conclusions can be drawn from the fact that I have used this
word once or fifty times. Maybe it would be better for me to erase it… But whatever other
word I try to use seems unable to withstand the test… Perhaps instead of a book I could
write a list of words, in alphabetical order, an avalanche of isolated words which expresses
that truth I still do not know, and from which the computer, reversing its program, could
construct the book, my book (Calvino, 1992, pp. 188–189).

In what sense does Silas represent an anxiety of performativity that account-giving

might invite on the part of account-givers expected to employ technicist norms of
communication? To what extent do we rely on these mechanisms to reveal the
‘truth’ of what we do, much as Silas relies on the technology to construct the mean-
ing of his book? And to what extent might this alienate us from what we experience,
and from our attempts to capture this in our own terms? Much as Silas’ approach to
account-giving is also altered by the ways in which he suspects his novel will be
‘received’, account-giving teachers also alter their accounts along the same lines.
Of course, I wrote my anecdote at the beginning of this chapter knowing that it was
going to be read, and I most likely would have not written it in that way had I known
that parents, or inspectors, or even students would be the ones reading it. Perhaps it
may have looked more like the ‘best practice’ example taken from the School Self-
Evaluation website (Fig. 9.1) below. In this sense, when one offers an account, there
seems to be an inevitable ‘performativity’ involved, given that any account is offered
within a scene of address. It also seems to be inevitably tied to the expectations of
one’s role within a given context – a teacher reflecting on the existential underpin-
nings of her practice, or one describing her practices within accountability regimes.
In my anecdote, it is also certainly the case that the account itself was influenced
by ideas garnered from my engagement with Sartre, and as such, there are Sartrian
‘themes’ that may be abstracted from the text and analysed in a similar way to how
Lotaria ‘reads’ novels. The account I offered was produced in this way because of
9.1 An Anecdotal Account 161

Fig. 9.1 Best practice example from the school self-evaluation website (DES, 2016a, p. 4)

my engagement with Sartre, and if I were to account for the same experience years
ago, it would most likely look very different. Perhaps, since I have now acquired
new theoretical, philosophical and linguistic lenses, I am therefore better equipped
in offering a more robust account of my practices, of myself, and of others in the
classroom. Perhaps Sartre’s theory allows me access to previously unarticulated
aspects of classroom practices. Whilst the account I offer in my anecdote is not sup-
ported by what might count as ‘evidence’, it may nevertheless be seen as an improve-
ment from the account I would have offered as an inexperienced teacher unacquainted
with theoretical understandings of my practice. Arguably, this same logic exists in
the ‘capacity-building’ agenda of school self-evaluation. So, on what basis is one
account better or worse than others?
In one sense, the ability to ‘distance’ myself from my practices through an appli-
cation of theory therefore allows me to formulate a more ‘objective’ account of
them. This is very much what is implied in both school self-evaluation and, indeed,
in more technicist forms of account-giving. These methods therefore serve to nar-
row my focus on what seemingly suppresses the ‘subjective’ in my account, focus-
ing instead on what is explicit and measurable.3 Lotaria’s method might invite an
assumption that what she is doing is more akin to a ‘factual’ endeavour, one that
replaces human responses to stories with an automated technology that accesses and
presents the ‘brute’ information in the text. And yet, even though Lotaria’s method
seems to invite this ‘detachment’ of the reader, the ‘objective/subjective’ divide this
implies cannot be sustained. The method itself and her choice to use it inevitably
reflects certain values – the importance of efficiency and simplicity, or perhaps of
the need to remove ‘reader bias’ from the account such as to focus solely on what
the writer said. Indeed, the nature of her project influences the means by which she
reads the text, and by sharing this method with Silas, the means also inadvertently

3
Of course, my use of Sartre might be thought of in the same way – because of Sartre, I now focus
on aspects of my practice that would have not been brought to light had I engaged with another
thinker. I do not wish to deny that the anecdotal account I offer is latent with existentialist under-
pinnings. But as mentioned, Sartre serves as a ‘touchstone’ for engaging with my practices, and
not for explaining them.
162 9 Towards an Existentialist Account of Teaching

influence the ways that the account is given. How might we understand this in rela-
tion to technicist and existentialist accounts?
In the first part of this chapter, I will point to what I see are the main issues with
practices like self-evaluation, which serves as an example of the kinds of ‘techni-
cist’ account-giving expected of teachers within wider accountability regimes –
namely, a norm of communication that prioritises accuracy, and the cultivation of
‘distrustful’ dispositions that perpetuate this. I will refer back to examples in Chap.
2, where this policy is initially outlined. Following this, I will introduce what it
means to think about account-giving in existentialist terms, garnered from the ideas
explored in Part II of the book. This involves seeing account-giving as an ongoing
practice that forces us to continually (re)examine our commitments as teachers, and
that encourage us to see responsibility in terms of our responses in the classroom.
Ultimately, I argue that this latter form of account-giving opens up new ways to
think about teaching in ways that do not reduce but instead embrace the lived com-
plexities that being a teacher involves.

9.2 Technicist Accounts

In Chap. 2, we explored how the ways in which teaching is accounted for in prac-
tices like self-evaluation might be called ‘technicist’, in part due to the conceptuali-
sation of teaching as that which can be analysed in explicit ways through the
collection and examination of ‘data’. As Biesta (2009, 2014, 2017) and others have
argued, the over-emphasis on teaching as a measurable activity brings about a ‘tech-
nological model of professional action’. This involves only considering instrumen-
tal values in educational evaluation without the more ultimate ones that underpin
why we educate in the first place, or which interventions may be considered
desirable.
Technicist accounts are broadly associated with the wider discourse of scientism
that has pervaded the educational sphere in recent years (e.g. Halliday, 1998;
Johnson, 2014; Mooney Simmie & McKenna, 2017), as caricatured in reference to
Lotaria’s method for reading. In simple terms, scientism focuses on the reduction of
lived experience to what is calculable and most efficiently monitored and directed,
employing mechanistic techniques to evaluate practices. As we saw in Chap. 3, the
existentialist movement in part sought to address this, particularly the assumption
that lived experience can be neatly categorised and explained through direct and
explicit forms of observation and analysis. Technicist models fail to recognise that
there is always a pre-reflective ‘valuation’ in every situation, where the meaning of
that situation is already informed by one’s fundamental project, and that what we
pinpoint as educationally ‘(in)effective’ hinges upon this – both as the writer and as
the reader of accounts. In short: since educational practices cannot be understood in
relation to ‘pure objectivity’, but as the ongoing product of the experiences of all of
those involved in concrete classroom practices, the technicist logic that underpins
accounts such as self-evaluation are fundamentally reductive.
9.2 Technicist Accounts 163

Despite this, account-giving practices such as those outlined in the Self-­

Evaluation Guidelines seek to provide a language that perpetuates this technicist
conception of teaching, where statements of effective practice serve not only as
benchmarks against which teaching can be measured, but are also actively and con-
tinuously recycled within the accounts of teaching themselves. The report in Fig. 9.1
serves as a good example of this, where much of the language employed to describe
teaching comes directly from the guidelines. Just as Silas’ reaction to Lotaria repre-
sents, these methods for account-giving also affect the practice of teaching itself. By
making the teacher attuned to what counts as ‘(in)effective’ in her practice, and by
encouraging her to focus her accounts solely on explicit correlations with standards
of effective practice, her classroom conduct is also narrowed. Thus, in attempting to
disrupt technicism in teaching, we must examine not only the content of such poli-
cies, but also the ways in which they affect both the accounts of teaching as well as
its practices.

9.2.1 Language and Accuracy

The language of educational policies is often clear, coherent and neat, and in order
to achieve this, a reduction in its descriptions of teaching is necessary (DES, 2016b).
This reduction also aims to ensure that the descriptions of teaching are standardised,
as well as the ways in which we might recognise (in)effective practices. Often, this
language is couched within a ‘school effectiveness’ discourse and driven by the
principles of evidence-based research. By developing ‘data literacy’ in staff, the
assumption is that they can then provide more robust accounts of their own strengths
and weaknesses, and to set targets for improvement. As we explored in Chap. 2,
since this technicist logic certainly seems to lead to more efficient and simplified
ways of recognising and accounting for effective practice, it has often been hierar-
chised as the most accurate and, indeed, trustworthy.
Nevertheless, this technicist logic harbours a number of problematic assump-
tions. For one, it relies on a dichotomy between ‘objective’ and ‘subjective’, pre-
mised on a broader separation of ‘fact’ and ‘value’. Such dualisms are not present
in the lived experiences of teaching nor the accounts that we offer thereafter. Indeed,
since any account that I give of my situation is already framed by particular values,
this affects both the account that is offered as well as my interpretation of the so-­
called ‘data’ I use to do so. If I attempt to account for the extent to which my prac-
tice effects the engagement of my students, then in order to do this, I have already
identified on some level what desirable engagement might look like. Perhaps this is
evidenced by the students actively participating in class, raising their hands and
offering their own perspectives on the topic. Or perhaps engagement counts as
exactly the opposite – students not speaking but instead listening attentively to the
teacher. The ways in which I value engagement thus impacts what is brought to light
in the classroom, and whilst the data that I use to evidence this might appear to be
purely objective, it is inevitably framed by my responses to the situation.
164 9 Towards an Existentialist Account of Teaching

In the technicist logic of self-evaluation, however, the teacher is expected to

detach herself from her practice by assuming the role of ‘evaluator’, in pursuit of the
kind of objectivity and robustness that would make the account trustworthy.
Importantly, if we are to understand Sartre well, the self that is analysed in this con-
text is what he calls the self ‘in the world’, i.e. the self that appears to us as essential
and persistent, and yet is, in fact, continually (re)produced through our ongoing
responses to the situations in which we find ourselves. This includes the situation of
self-evaluation practice, where the self ‘under evaluation’ is thus also produced in
part through the evaluation itself. Indeed, what we recognise as ‘effective’ does not
correlate to some brute reality in the world – it is produced in line with the frame-
works designed to recognise effectiveness, as well as the ways in which those
frameworks are interpreted with this purpose in mind. The assumption that a teacher
can somehow separate herself from the practice of account-giving is therefore a fal-
lacy, since it fails to account for the fact that she is inevitably implicated in the
process of evaluation. Indeed, the teacher produces herself as ‘an (in)effective
teacher’ through the accounts of her practice she gives. Her very identification of
what is (in)effective came about because she was implicated in the process, a pro-
cess that in turn produces her ‘self’ as a particular kind of teacher.
Ultimately, however, the technicist logic of account-giving is premised on a
debased understanding of ‘truth as accuracy’ – i.e. that truth is what corresponds to
the apprehension of ‘brute facts’ without the presence of ‘subjective bias/values’ –
and so too the basis for what would make this account trustworthy. This in turn
narrows the focus of account-giving only on what is amendable to measurement,
and therefore explicit in practices. In doing so, it puts the more implicit aspects of
lived experiences out of focus. As explored throughout the book, these implicit and
immeasurable experiences are both manifold and complex: the ways in which we
encounter not only what is present but absent in our experiences, for instance, or the
immediate and pre-reflective responses that we have in relation to the world, our-
selves and others. These implicit experiences also include the values that are embed-
ded in our decision-making, and the fact that we are always deciding on, interpreting
and responding to the situation we are thrown into – responses that, in fact, bring
those very situations to light. Indeed, there is so much that goes on in the concrete
and lived experience of the classroom that cannot be accounted for in any simple or
straightforward way. Yet, there are certainly ways that we might try to articulate
them, not with a focus on accuracy,4 but instead with more (existential) sensitivity
and sincerity. I will return to this in the final sections of the chapter.

4
Of course, this is not to suggest that we should never be concerned with accuracy in accounts, nor
that all accounts are of equal merit along these lines. It does not suggest that accuracy cannot be
‘approached’, nor that accounts should not be open to interrogation, particularly when there are
high stakes involved. But for such concerns to be part of the conversation, the instrumental value
of those accounts needs to be considered – i.e. what those accounts are for, and what they seek to
capture in light of this. In the case of accounting for teaching, perhaps accuracy is not the ulti-
mate aim.
9.2 Technicist Accounts 165

The technicist logic that underpins these kinds of account-giving, however,

not only deny the implicit aspects of practice that are difficult to put into words.
They also fail to appreciate the significance of the fact that our explanations are
always after the fact – namely, that they are constructed in order to explain expe-
riences that have already taken place, and yet are not necessarily present in the
moments that initially moved us to act. In order to explore this further, let us turn
to one of the aims of self-evaluation practices – to cultivate ‘evaluation literacy’
in teachers.

9.2.2 The Disposition of Account-Giving

Policies like self-evaluation, where one is required to reflect on or ‘inspect’ one’s

own practice, often imply that giving an accurate account is not something that
comes ‘naturally’ to teachers. Rather, accurate account-giving should be understood
as a cultivated disposition (Peterson, 2016). Key to this cultivation is the initiation
into particular norms of communication – the so-called ‘language of evaluation’
that seemingly allows for more robust, evidence-based accounts, or the increase in
the ‘data literacy’ of teachers (DES, 2016b). Conventionally speaking, dispositions
not only function as explanations for behaviour, but also allow us to predict (and
direct) future action. The basic idea behind the cultivating dispositions is premised
on this – that if a person is equipped with a ‘reflective’ disposition, they are more
likely to recognise (in)effective practices and act on them accordingly, both now and
in the future. Importantly, cultivating dispositions is not merely about cultivating
desirable behaviour but also desirable persons – in this instance, the often lauded
‘reflective practitioner’.
Sartre (2011, 2018), however, offers us another lens. For him, dispositions do
relate to the ways that people act. But rather than determining who that person ‘is’
or ‘will be’, these dispositions are constructed on the basis of actions, which in turn,
produces that person as being disposed in particular ways. A person may be led to
believe that they have certain dispositions by reflecting on how they have behaved.
Perhaps I am more disposed towards thinking of myself in terms of others, hence
the reason why I seem to feel so exposed in my account of classroom experiences.
Perhaps this disposition explains other areas of my lived experience – I am terribly
performative on first dates, I am (and always will be) afraid of public speaking, and
so on. But the ‘assignment’ of a disposition functions as an explanation of why I
behave the way that I do after the fact – they are not constituted by brute facts that
determine ‘who I am’, since who I am is always (re)produced, and always therefore
in question.
For Sartre, the way we ‘assign’ fixed dispositions to ourselves can also lead to
bad faith. Indeed, thinking of ourselves as being a ‘particular kind of person’ can
often limit us in acting otherwise. It can also be used as an active excuse in order to
avoid taking responsibility for future behaviour. For example: I categorise myself as
166 9 Towards an Existentialist Account of Teaching

an ‘anxious person before others’ based on my previous experiences, and as a result,

I think of myself as fundamentally unable to speak in public. This becomes a rea-
sonable explanation that I then perpetuate about myself (e.g. by never speaking in
public) such that it comes to further concretise who I am. And yet, the very notion
that who I am is fixed in this way is a myth, one that denies my fundamental free-
dom to be otherwise.
What is particularly dangerous about this line of thinking is that it can lead to a
narrowing of our accounts. In Chap. 6, we considered the ways in which institu-
tional bad faith might do this – for example, in implicitly understanding teachers as
objects of analysis, as predictable and as malleable in line with standards of effec-
tive practice, teachers are then limited in accounting for (or perhaps, even thinking
about) themselves in other ways. In self-evaluation or other forms of self-reflective
practice, teachers are responsible for moulding themselves in this way, and are thus
tasked with accounting for themselves in such a way as to achieve this. This is the
reason why self-evaluation aims at cultivating a specific kind of account-giving –
one that engages with evidence, that refer to statements of effective practice, and
that ultimately encourages teachers to understand themselves in these same essen-
tialist ways.
And yet, all of this denies the extent to which teachers are present as subjects in
both the classroom and in their accounts – as underpinned not by a set of disposi-
tions but a fundamental lack. It is this very ‘lack’, as we will see further below, that
makes the classroom appear as meaningful in the first place. One aspect of teaching
that emphasises this, perhaps, is in how difficult it can be to simply ‘discard’ one’s
role as a teacher once one exits the classroom, or indeed, to ‘discard’ any other
sense of self we have before entering.5 Particularly when I was starting out, I had to
work hard to maintain the image of the ‘effective teacher’ in front of my students.
This very struggle to suppress my vulnerability before others is also indicative of
the inevitable ways my personhood was always on display: the fact that I am defined
by others in ways over which I have very little control, simply because I am embod-
ied in the room and am characterised by particular social expectations. As a teacher,
however, one is always already more than the neat definitions of their role. And yet,
in technicist accounts of one’s practices, one is given little space – or, indeed trust –
to think about their practices or themselves as beyond this.

5
This is perhaps also true of the waiter in Sartre’s (2018) example of ‘bad faith’. Indeed, the waiter
was also already exposed as a person, despite his attempts to suppress this through enacting exactly
what he believed his ‘role’ required. This is what makes the role so difficult to sustain – for exam-
ple, when confronted by a rude customer, it is difficult to maintain composure in the way that
waiters ‘are supposed to’. Waitering also involves a sense of vulnerability, one that Sartre does not
seem to appreciate in his example.
9.2 Technicist Accounts 167

9.2.3 Cultivated Distrust?

As explored in Chap. 8, the concept of ‘trust’ works in a similar way to (bad) faith.
Of course, trust is not inherently bad – in fact, it is very much a necessary compo-
nent of navigating our existence, much like bad faith, in fact. But there are problem-
atic examples of trust. Trusting can sometimes mean ‘resigning’ ourselves to
situations, a trust that therefore tempers anxiety when faced with the ways in which
we are always responsible for – or, indeed, responding – to situations. In Chap. 8,
we discussed how trust that is based solely on our capacities to be ‘accurate’ (but
perhaps not necessarily sincere) can also be problematic – not only in education, but
more broadly as well. Trust in the educational context implies both of these – for
example, the idea that we can (only) trust a teacher’s judgement about herself if she
uses adequate forms of evidence, since this in turn pacifies the anxiety we feel about
letting her make so-called ‘subjective’ judgements (Brady, 2019). In Calvino’s
novel, perhaps Silas’ anxiety of being exposed to the Other can be tempered by
allowing the computer to ‘construct’ his account. Teachers may think in similar
ways about their own accounts of effective practice.
Whilst measurement culture in schools is thought to exemplify a lack of trust
(e.g. McNamara & O’Hara, 2008), it is simultaneously a redefinition of what is
trustworthy. This is a trust that conflicts with a more everyday sense of the term, one
that inevitably involves risk and uncertainty. Much like bad faith, this trust, pre-
mised on a debased understanding of accuracy, is a project that must be continually
willed into existence. For Sartre (2018, p. 113), bad faith is possible because of its
peculiar ‘non-persuasive evidence’ – evidence that is questionable to begin with, but
that later becomes the premise upon which we believe in something, such that this
original (dubious) evidence enters to the ‘background’ of our thinking. This can
make it difficult to gauge the extent to which we are in bad faith, thus allowing bad
faith to endure. Technicist accounts and their related capacity-building agenda may
be said to operate in the same way. They begin by offering clear accounts of teach-
ing, accounts that are portrayed as ‘trustworthy’ because they are based on evidence
or ‘common sense’. Despite such evidence being questionable in the first place, it
nevertheless forms the basis of ‘profiles’ against which educational effectiveness is
measured. These ‘trustworthy’ profiles of effective practice then function as further
evidence upon which the account must be based. Paradoxically, however, this kind
of trust is willed into existence on the basis of questionable evidence. In order to
expose this, there therefore needs to be a disruption of sorts, one that not only calls
into question profiles of effective practice but also the centrality of this kind of
‘technicist’ trust.
Before turning to what is referred to as an ‘existential’ account of teaching, it
might be useful to think through the implications of this technicist trust by drawing
on Sartre’s account of psychoanalysis, something we touched upon in Chap. 6. For
Sartre (2008, 2018), psychoanalysis understands the patient as someone who does
not know their own drives and dispositions. Rather, these dispositions can only be
identified by another who ‘accesses’ them in part by observing to their behaviour.
168 9 Towards an Existentialist Account of Teaching

The patient therefore requires a ‘technician’ (i.e. the psychoanalyst) to act as a

mediator between those dispositions and himself. For Sartre, the issue is seeing
these dispositions as innate rather than as another’s interpretation of ‘me’ in the
world. Their account is not necessarily (more) accurate (in the sense that it might
more or less correspond to brute facts about a person), but rather, it is purely the
Other’s own response to the situation in which I appear, a situation brought to light
by their fundamental values. Despite this, I become more and more reliant on the
psychoanalyst for the purpose of understanding myself, and I increasingly distrust
my own intuitions. Analogously, one could argue that teachers who are embroiled
within the technicist understanding of trust in institutional settings therefore experi-
ence a similar kind of cultivated distrust – of their own intuitions, of their own
judgements, and indeed, of their ability to give an account of these on their own
terms. But if we were to reconceptualise trust – a trust based on an ongoing pursuit
to be sincere with ourselves rather than a pursuit of some debased sense of accu-
racy – might this then call for a change, not only in terms of how we describe and
measure teaching, but also in how we account for it?

9.3 Towards an Existentialist Account

As you can probably imagine, it is not that an existentialist account is more ‘accu-
rate’ than the technicist model. In fact, an existentialist model of account-giving is
inherently flawed if we are to evaluate it in this way. Where it does differ is in its
efforts to capture more fully the lived experiences of being a teacher. In many ways,
it seeks to emulate the acts of parrhesia discussed in the previous chapter, where it
understands risk and uncertainty as key components in the process of giving an
account. This risk arises because of the inherent ‘fictionalisation’ in account-giving,
and also because of the frankness and sincerity it requires, through which we con-
tinually situate ourselves in relation to the ‘truth’ of our accounts even if that means
opening ourselves up to (self-)criticism. Existentialist account-giving, in this sense,
requires courage. Importantly, there is no set ‘product’ or ‘endpoint’ for such
accounts. Rather, they are ongoing practices, much like parrhesiastic practices
involved in caring for oneself.
By considering the anecdotal account at the beginning of this chapter, one might
be tempted to say that this is the kind found in narrative research – certainly, there
are similarities between both approaches. Narrative research also focuses on lived
experiences. Its concern is not with the ‘factuality’ of stories, but instead with how
individuals organise and understand their own experiences through the accounts
they give (Ricoeur, as cited in Josselson, 2012). In this sense, narrative research
tends to focus more so on describing experiences rather than predicting or measur-
ing their outcomes, with an emphasis on meaning-making rather than causation,
interpretation rather than the more ‘hard-lined’ forms of analysis (Josselson, 2012;
Kraatila, 2019). Narrative researchers start from the viewpoint that the individual is
embedded within historical, cultural and social contexts. Since individual accounts
9.3 Towards an Existentialist Account 169

exist within these webs of wider interconnected narratives, the role of the researcher
is to disentangle these, often with a means to understand how the participant’s self-­
identity is formed in response to ‘grand narratives’ imposed from the outside (Moen,
2006). Narrative research thus endeavours to capture human complexity in each
situation, to interpretively account for varied perspectives in light of context, know-
ing that these accounts will differ depending on who is recounting, and indeed, who
is interpreting such stories (Josselson, 2012).
For some narrative researchers, human existence is ‘rendered meaningful’
(Ricoeur, as cited in Polkinghorne, 1988) through account-giving, such that it is
then open to more direct forms of observation. Of course, what is observed has
already been ‘selected’ by those giving the account and is therefore already infused
with meaning. The researcher may look for patterns of meaning in what participants
say, piecing together ‘data’ in order to connect what may seem to be unrelated
aspects of the story – ultimately, to make what is invisible in the account visible for
all parties. Although it attempts to see the events recounted from the perspective of
the storyteller, narrative researchers also recognise the role that the researcher plays
in this process – for instance, the way the story recounted exists under their gaze and
is informed by their research project, where the meaning of the story is thus ‘filtered
through [their] mind’ (Josselson, 2012, p. 5). Often, there is an implication that this
is something to suppress as much as possible, however, with some authors (e.g.
Moen, 2006) suggesting that the systematic deployment theory allows for the neces-
sary distance between the researcher’s position and their object of study.
Undoubtably, there are various kinds of narrative research, and with that, much
discussion around how to assess the quality of narrative projects, as well as the sys-
tematic robustness of the methodology itself (e.g. Fraser, 2004; Atkinson &
Delamont, 2006; Polkinghorne, 2007; Josselson, 2007, 2012). Whilst not the same
as the debased sense of ‘accuracy’ discussed earlier, there is nevertheless a tendency
to explain and to evaluate narratives with the assumption that, on some level, a
priori explanations can be uncovered, i.e. the original motivations of the account-­
giver for both the ways in which they behaved and the ways in which they have
interpreted this behaviour in their accounts. Indeed, there are attempts to ensure the
‘correctness’ of the stories told (Atkinson & Delamont, 2006; Kraatila, 2019), and
to therefore remove researcher bias as much as possible. This involves not only pay-
ing attention to the account itself, but the implicit reasoning that may be ‘invisible’
to account-giver but apparent to the researcher. In light of this, some (e.g. Phillips,
1997) have even argued that the outsider’s interpretation is often more accurate
because storytellers are not always aware of or honest about the meaning they apply
retrospectively to events. Indeed, there are several steps that make the process of
narrative inquiry more or less correct, systematic and rigorous, with the assumption
that certain explanations are closer to the truth than others, and that certain positions
allow us to ‘see’ explanations in a more or less objective way. Importantly, these
positions are demarcated by the capacity to apply a theoretical lens in one’s analysis
of an event (Moen, 2006). For instance, the narrative that I offer at the start might be
seen as more ‘rigorous’ given the theoretical framework I am now able to apply,
170 9 Towards an Existentialist Account of Teaching

since this means that I am therefore better equipped in understanding and in explain-
ing my own past experiences at an ‘objective’ distance.
Although narrative research thus recognises the ‘fictionalisation’ in account-­
giving, its aim is to navigate this by finding ways in which to ‘detach’ oneself as the
analyst of the story. In doing so, it therefore represents an attempt to suppress or
perhaps overcome fictionalisation and uncertainty rather than accepting it as an
important part of the process. All of this seems reasonable, but it is distinct from the
approach that I would like to take here. Ultimately, exploring the possibility of exis-
tentialist account-giving should not be understood as offering a methodology for
doing so. Indeed, the anecdote that I offer at the start of this chapter (or perhaps the
autobiographical account in Sartre’s Words explored in the previous chapter), should
not be thought of as a blueprint for account-giving, since this implies pre-defined
steps or criteria in order to ensure that accounts are ‘existentially robust’, as well as
explicit rules that are more likely implemented by those with some kind of training
in ‘existentialist thinking’. Not only this, but there are all sorts of ways that accounts
seem to go against what might be deemed as ‘existentialist’ – my tendency to
explain why I or Claudenia behaved the way we did, for instance, a tendency that
appears difficult, if not impossible, to suspend.
Existentialist account-giving should instead be thought of as a process by which
an account is offered, where the resulting account is continually (re)engaged with
rather than a fixed ‘product’ that is measured against pre-set methodological crite-
ria. Partly, this makes it difficult to think of the account purely in terms of accuracy,
since it implies an ongoing openness and re-engagement that the certainty and the
time-constraints of other forms of account-giving might not allow. Perhaps it may
be thought of in terms of the more everyday sense of recounting an event, something
that is inevitably accompanied by complexities, uncertainties, risks and paradoxes,
and that alters as time progresses and as the story is retold in new situations. In this
sense, its measure is not exactness but affectivity, where revisited accounts may
change, for instance, not because the past itself has changed, but because our
responses to the past are never entirely ‘fixed’. Instead of aiming at producing har-
mony between the ‘life as lived and experienced and life as told and rendered in
text’ (Goodson, 1992, as cited in Moen, 2006, p. 62), existentialist accounts are
examples (and perhaps also the means) by which we navigate these complexities
without necessarily resolving them, such as they are irresolvable in lived experi-
ence. This involves recognising that any attempt at resolving uncertainties in our
accounts is a reduction couched in the present moment, and that any criteria for
‘exactness’ will also involve an interpretation not present in the moments recounted.
In order to explore this further, let us consider what such accounts might involve –
their challenges and their opportunities.
9.3 Towards an Existentialist Account 171

9.3.1 Language, Certainty and Commitment

When considering the writing of important thinkers associated with the existential-
ist movement, there are certain noticeable aspects of their language and style. Those
associated with existentialist writings, for instance, are often fragmentary and dis-
orienting in their accounts. These thinkers require an active engagement of the
reader, who is then forced to take responsibility for their own interpretations of the
words on the page. In What is Literature?, Sartre (2001) compares two types of
writing – prose and poetry – and argues that the former is subject to scrutiny in
accordance with the commitments signalled on the part of the writer, whilst the lat-
ter is not. Neither prose nor poetry need necessarily be concerned with ‘technically
accurate’ depictions of the world. But prose is concerned with the instrumental use
of language in order to convey a committed response to the world in a way that
poetry is not.6 These commitments might not remain unchanged throughout time,
and yet an attempt to articulate them, rather than using rhetoric to mask one’s true
position, is nevertheless important. Of course, there are many ways that this might
be done – including more committed forms of art or poetry. Paradoxically, whilst
we may say that existentialist writers such as Kierkegaard wrote in a non-committal
way (e.g. given his use of pseudonyms), his reason for doing so in order to provoke
his reader is in reality a commitment to the value of writing as necessarily provoca-
tive. Sartre’s autobiography also functions to demonstrate that in giving an account
of oneself, one is also attempting to lay one’s commitments bare, and to provoke the
reader into doing the same.
But what about Sartre’s early philosophical writing, the focus of our discussions
throughout? Certainly, Sartre’s aim is to offer an account of existence in its most
basic conceptual form whilst also showing how this ‘makes sense’ in concrete, lived
experiences. And whilst his writing often appears to be technical, the reason for this
is distinct from the technicism inherent in many educational policies that describe
teaching. As I’ve tried to show throughout the book, Sartre’s accounts do not attempt
to reduce lived experience to its most simplified format, but instead to open up new
ways of accessing, understanding, and accounting for this and for oneself as a (con-
scious) human being. In this sense, his writing may not help to clarify our experi-
ences, but showcases an attempt to capture experience in all its complexity and
richness. This may also awaken the reader to the false consciousness by which they
live – the overly simplistic ways in which we conceive of being a human, perhaps,
or our failed but persistent attempts at certainty in ‘knowing’ ourselves. The pur-
pose, therefore, is not merely to offer an explanation for human behaviour, but to
incite the reader into taking responsibility for own thoughts and actions.

6
Poetry might also do this, but one would not necessarily be fazed if a poet decided to write in a
non-committal way. Sartre argues that poets use language in a different way than prose writers –
e.g. they are less concerned with being directly intelligible, or with sending a clear message to their
readers.
172 9 Towards an Existentialist Account of Teaching

For Sartre, it is a failure to find certainty is a key aspect of being human. It is

intimately apart of the ways in which consciousness projects itself onto the world,
where our attempts to ‘know’ both the world and ourselves with certainty also
involves recognising our inability to do so. In this sense, the drive for certainty is
underpinned by a more fundamental uncertainty. Importantly, existentialist accounts
do not shy away from these uncertainties in the way that technicist models of
account-giving do, where these more reductive models assume that lived experi-
ences can be neatly categorised and are thus open to direct observation and analysis.
This in itself is misguided, however, since if these accounts truly gave us access to
the ‘objective’ data of lived experiences, how might we then explain the different
responses that the same data invites? A sociological researcher might consider an
account in a more context-sensitive way, seeking, perhaps, to understand the mean-
ing that is constructed by the individual in relation to wider socio-historical dis-
courses. The public may read the same accounts in different ways, depending on
their own personal educational histories. Educational institutions, whose focus is
often on holding individuals to account, may analyse information in reference to
profiles of effectiveness. Even Lotaria, who uses a computer to make accounts more
‘digestible’, still responded to the data by homing in on words that have the ‘richest
meaning’. Indeed, one’s interpretation of the account – as well as the very account
itself – greatly impinges upon the perceived purposes and ‘end-points’ of account-­
giving, but also the fundamental commitments of those involved.
In existentialist account-giving, both the construction of an account as well as its
reconstruction through our reading of it are essential and ongoing aspects of the
process. The point is not that, in amalgamating the two, a more ‘accurate’ picture of
what is going on is made available. Rather, by acknowledging both, one must accept
that our interpretations are always belated, that any attempt to ‘concretise’ one
description or analysis over another is not only misguided, but an example of bad
faith. It is also to recognise that each account is situated within a scene of address,
and that each interpretation of that account is distinct because of one’s underlying
fundamental projects. In accepting that the multivocal interpretations of accounts
are not somehow ‘closer’ to the brute existence of the situation, we can begin to
value this for entirely different reasons – as ‘evidence’ of the fundamental freedom
and responsibility of all of those involved in the very process of account-­giving itself.

9.3.2 The Tendency to Explain

For Sartre, we often come to think of our actions in clearly definable ways because
of a misinterpretation of the fundamental nature of consciousness. In Chap. 4, we
discussed how, for Sartre, consciousness is fundamentally ‘pre-reflective’. And yet,
the conflation of pre-reflective and reflected forms of consciousness seems unavoid-
able when putting oneself into words, given that the language we use to describe
experiences inevitably puts us on the ‘reflective’ plane. In making ourselves
9.3 Towards an Existentialist Account 173

‘intelligible’ to others, we are therefore both grasping at and (re)producing our-

selves in the world.
Interestingly, in the case of self-evaluation, there is a hardened separation
between the self that is accounted for and the self that is recounting the experience
now, even when strictly speaking, both are the same person. As we have seen, this
arises from the problematic dualism of ‘objective’ and ‘subjective’ that underpins
the expectations of self-evaluation policy more broadly. In the Cartesian mind/mat-
ter dualism, there is a similar assumption that a clear and direct line of access to
one’s ‘self’ is possible without being ‘implicated’ as the person observing. But for
Sartre, the ‘self’ that Descartes ‘discovers’ was not there in an a priori sense. Rather,
it is produced through his systematic reflection.
According to Sartre’s logic, then, Descartes’ substantial self ‘poisons’ the pre-­
reflective consciousness that underpins it, just as our explanations ‘poison’ those
original intentions that move us to act. In pushing the assumption that we should
only account for what is explicit or measurable in our practices, technicist forms of
account-giving also ‘poison’ those original and more complex moments that it seeks
to capture. This includes the ways one might offer belated explanations for one’s
motivations for acting, where, in doing so, it enters into those moments an opacity
that fails to capture the immediate, pre-reflective choices that bring each situation to
light. The division of the self in self-evaluation, ‘where one part can remain at the
outside in order to check whether or not what the other part does is justified in terms
of effectiveness’ (Vlieghe & Zamojski, 2019, p. 104) relies on this push for explana-
tions, however. Of course, this does not imply that it would ever be possible to write
or to read an account without offering some form of (implicit) explanation for our-
selves or for what had happened. But the ‘truth’ of those explanations needs to be
reconceptualised – from a truth measured in accordance with accuracy, clarity and
certainty to a truth as that which we relate ourselves to in an ongoing fashion, a rela-
tion that is ultimately subject to our committed responses in the world.
My anecdote at the start was not merely an account of what had happened. As
narrative researchers testify, the aspects that I recounted were selected, whether in
full awareness or not, and as such, they are already infused with meaning and,
indeed, choice.7 Narrative researchers may focus on why I have selected certain
moments, and what that says about what I ‘value’ in the narrative itself, or the iden-
tity I have constructed by virtue of this. But because such explanations are produced
in the moment of reflection, coming up with a satisfactory answer can often be a
fruitless endeavour. This is not to suggest that I ‘made it all up’, of course. Rather,
it shows that whilst our accounts testify particular situations, our understanding of
this situation that can vary in accordance with the freedom underpinning those
engaging with the account. As we saw in Chap. 5, our actions in the world are

7
Choice in this sense does not mean that I am always ‘choosing’ to offer an account of myself or
not, but rather, it relates to the ways in which situations are brought to light by virtue of our (freely
chosen) fundamental projects, a choice that is therefore embedded both in situations where one
feels compelled to offer an account on their own accord as well as in situations where one is forced
into offering an account because they are ‘answerable’ to another (e.g. their superior).
174 9 Towards an Existentialist Account of Teaching

always underpinned by our fundamental projects – the broader sense in which we

are oriented in the world in relation to our ‘horizons of significance’ (to use Taylor’s
(1989, 1991) terminology), horizons that move (rather than determine) us to act in
implicit ways.
Whilst the meaning of these cannot be extracted and examined in any abstract or
exact form, there is nevertheless a tendency to do so, particularly in the evidence-­
based explanations required in the more technicist accounts of teaching. This in turn
relates to the inherent mistrust other forms of account-giving, namely those that are
‘subjective’ in nature. But all of this fails to acknowledge that one is always respond-
ing to situations in some way, both in the moments in which they occurred and in
the ways in which we account for them afterwards. Importantly, it is not just that
subjectivity should be acknowledged. Subjectivity should be valued as an essential
component of the process of account-giving itself because it is only through subjec-
tivity that our narratives can come to light in the first place – indeed, that they make
sense. Without this subjectivity, there would simply be nothing to make sense of,
and there would also be nothing to ‘read’ – it would simply be akin to the computer
in Calvino’s story digesting a text and arbitrarily giving a list of words in order of
frequency. In this sense, the process of accounting for experiences (as both the
account-giver and as the reader) is also a response imbued with a deep and impor-
tant subjectivism, one that is embraced in existentialist accounts but that exist even
in those forms of technicist account-giving that attempt to suppress it.

9.3.3 Response and Responsibility

Given the current educational climate, it would be remiss to make more explicit the
connection between account-giving and accountability. Accountability is ‘chame-
leon like’ but, in simple terms, it may be thought of as being ‘called to give an
account’ to some external authority, a form of social interaction ‘in which people
are required to explain and take responsibility for their actions’ (Sinclair, 1995,
pp. 220–221). This in turn implies a relationship between those who seek answers
and those who are answerable, those who may impose sanctions and those who
anticipate them. There is, of course, a distinction between simply giving an account
and being called to give one (Mulgan, 2000), the latter of which implies an authority
who ‘enforce[s] responsibility’ on another (Thynne & Goldring, 1987).
Overtime, accountability has become more ‘managerial’ in nature, and thus
more concerned with the performance of individuals and institutions, particularly in
the public sector. With this comes the increasing use of the language and logic of
financial accounting systems (e.g. ‘effectiveness’, inputs/outputs binaries). Such
forms of accountability often involve a contract of sorts – in exchange for the accep-
tance of managerially-defined control, it promises new forms of (professional)
autonomy (Brady, 2020). Ironically, however, this creates what some researchers
have called the ‘responsibility paradox’, succinctly defined by Jos and Tompkins
(2004, p. 256) as follows:
9.3 Towards an Existentialist Account 175

Responsible interpretation and application of legitimate external accountability demands

depends on the cultivation of virtues that support good administrative judgement, but the
institution and mechanisms that are used to communicate these external standards, and that
monitor compliance with them, often threaten the very qualities that support responsible
judgement.

In response to this, many institutions have called for more ‘professional’ account-
ability. This involves not simply holding individuals to account through coercive or
managerialist measures, but training professionals to hold themselves to account,
thereby signalling a shift ‘away from the central importance of external scrutiny’
(Mulgan, 2000, p. 557). As we have seen in Chap. 2, this is primarily the kind of
accountability promoted in school self-evaluation and similar policies.
Before this is possible, however, those being held to account need first to be rec-
ognised as ‘professionals’, as having acquired the techniques and values necessary
for making professional judgements in unsupervised contexts, and as having dem-
onstrated the requisite professional dispositions. These include: a ‘sense of (per-
sonal) duty’ (Sinclair, 1995, p. 230) in relation to their respective professions and to
the individuals they are accountable to; a form of ‘practical wisdom’;8 a stable set of
cherished values that are steadfastly and consistently applied to relevant situations;
an ability to tolerate uncertainty and to conduct oneself with openness and flexibil-
ity (e.g. Jos & Tompkins, 2004). Professionals also have reflexive self-­understanding
such that they can examine and decide on the applicability of professional rules and
standards in each situation, ‘tacking’ between both internal and external viewpoints
in order to do so (e.g. McNamara & O’Hara, 2008). Indeed, professionalisation
does not imply that individuals are left to their own devices, since most profession-
als are still answerable to their superiors (Mulgan, 2000, p. 559). Additionally, they
are answerable to the numbers – i.e. to inputs, outputs, and other forms of ‘objec-
tive’ measures used to evaluate their performance. Professional accountability
therefore involves a responsiveness that is already defined along particular lines – in
relation to the needs of ‘clients’, in anticipation of the wishes of superiors, in the
alignment of one’s actions with performance measures or, in the case of school self-
evaluation, to standards of effective practice.
The sheer potential of external scrutiny has led many authors to question the so-­
called ‘internal’ focus of professional accountability models (e.g. MacBeath, 2006;
Grek & Lindgren, 2015; Brady, 2016). But perhaps more importantly, responses
that are witnessed are not necessarily evidence that desirable ‘character traits’ are
actually cultivated. Such virtues are measured in accordance with the explicit ‘out-
put’ of the action, and as such, the belated explanations offered do not necessarily
correlate with what moved a person to act. One may behave as if they are acting in
good judgement, when they are really only focused on ingratiating themselves with
superiors, for example. Perhaps, in reality, they care little about their students or
other important aspects of their professional responsibility. Whilst the discussion

8
This is often linked to the Aristotelian concept of ‘phronesis’. In the literature on professional
accountability, however, phronesis is often narrowly defined as a ‘skill’ or a ‘technique’ (e.g. Jos
& Tompkins, 2004).
176 9 Towards an Existentialist Account of Teaching

here is not concerned with what ‘good judgements’ consist in, this nevertheless
demonstrates that unpredictable (and perhaps, undesirable) responses to situations
may yield the same results as desirable ones, making it therefore impossible to ‘test’
whether or not a sense of ‘genuine’ accountability has really been developed.
Importantly, the question of who one is accountable to is often unclear, particu-
larly in the context of education where competing demands reveal tensions between
personal responsibilities and professional accountability. Such tensions may in part
be due to the changeable nature of accountability itself, understood both as ‘some-
thing a person is or feels’, or as ‘a more abstract impersonal property of an authori-
tative structure’ (Sinclair, 1995, p. 221). A teacher may know that ‘teaching to the
test’ is harmful to students in the long run, but they may nevertheless recognise that,
in some cases, this is a way to ensure so-called ‘effective learning’. Thus, the per-
sonal responsibility she feels in relation to her students may run counter to her
professional accountability. Of course, there is no right way of solving these ten-
sions – arguably, both responses are equally justifiable. The point, of course, is that
the teacher responds nevertheless – either in submission to the professional stan-
dards she disagrees with, or by going against them in some respects, or perhaps by
finding a balance between the two, as teachers often do.
In what sense might accountability relate to offering an account of oneself?
Perhaps a deeper understanding of the connection between accountability and
responsibility may offer an answer to this question. Returning to Vlieghe and
Zamojski’s (2019) book, Towards an Ontology of Teaching, they consider in part
what ‘responsibility’ in teaching consists in. For them, the default position when
thinking about teaching is related to a ‘transcendent’ rather than an ‘immanent’
view of education, where teaching is often justified in terms of external demands.
Since teaching is often understood in this goal-oriented sense, performance-related
accountability has invaded the conversation on what teachers ought to be responsi-
ble for.9 In order to address this, the authors call for an ‘immanent view’ of educa-
tion, where teaching is seen as ‘autotelic’ – a meaningful activity in and of itself,
corresponding to its own internal logic (and, indeed, language) that does not need to
be justified in reference to external aims.10 In reference to the so-called ‘logic of
emancipation’, Vlieghe and Zamojski (2019, p. 79) touch upon something pertinent
to our discussion here:

9
The authors also locate this line of thinking in what we might consider to be the more ‘noble’
justifications of education, such as the emancipatory aims that you find in thinkers such as Freire
or Rancière.
10
I am not fully convinced by this account of immanence, however, given that any description of
teaching that we might call ‘immanent’ involves implicit norms and expectations that ‘transcend’
the given moment that is described. Indeed, descriptions involve explanations that are implicitly
normative in that they relate to the meaning-making of those offering the account – i.e. their own
values that transcend the interpretations of each given moment itself. Whilst I disagree with the
overly sharp distinction between transcendence and immanence, the discussion is nevertheless
useful in situating the current focus of accountability on external justifications rather than the ways
in which a teacher is ontologically accountable in the classroom.
9.4 Giving an Account of Oneself 177

Within this transcendent framework… freedom is seen as the goal of education… from an
immanent point of view i.e. starting from the logic of responsibility, there is always already
a sphere of free action in relation with things in the world.

Although accountability in school self-evaluation is not necessarily tied to such

aims, it nevertheless applies the same logic – that in order to offer an account of
one’s actions, the capacity (e.g. ‘evaluation literacy’) to do so must be cultivated.
But what this denies is the extent to which those giving the account are already
capable. They are, in fact, already responsible for the situation that they are recount-
ing, insofar as one must inevitably respond to the situation in which one finds one-
self. Indeed, as Vlieghe and Zamojski (2019, p. 88) remark, responsibility means
‘giving a response’. Given that we are always responding to the situations in which
we find ourselves in, we are therefore always responsible as such. Indeed, responsi-
bility is embedded in the very situation that one acts, not as ‘enforced’ or ‘culti-
vated’, but a ‘fundamental relation of each human being with the world’ (Vlieghe &
Zamojski, 2019, p. 88). Indeed, ‘[it] conditions the very possibility of situations in
which someone is rendered accountable’ (Vlieghe & Zamojski, 2019, p. 88). Might
we say the same about accountability? That in every situation, we offer a response
of both ourselves and of the situation – a response verbalised as an account – and
for this reason, we are always accountable as such?
Of course, the concept of accountability can be understood in both formal and
substantive terms – the latter of which relates to particular things or persons to
whom we are accountable (e.g. students, the lesson, the wider public). Substantive
accountability, however, relates to this (aforementioned) ontological condition of
being able to respond and to offer an account of something, and thus being account-
able as such. In current educational discourses, our conception of accountability
focuses only on the formal sense of the term. In doing so, it denies the extent to
which accountability as such cannot be defined or decided in any a priori sense (in
terms of the content of desirable actions) – rather, it is a form of a response that is
‘invented in each situation’ (Vlieghe & Zamojski, 2019, p. 93). This therefore points
to accountability as a form of ‘orientation’ rather than something enacted or culti-
vated with a pre-defined direction, an ongoing process that is (re)negotiated with an
existential sensitivity to lived experiences in the classroom. And it is this orientation
that existentialist forms of account-giving seek to articulate, despite the complexi-
ties it involves.

9.4 Giving an Account of Oneself

So, what then does it mean to give an account? The answer to this question therefore
depends on our interpretation of what purpose or use accounts serve, and indeed,
what they are. As we saw throughout, technicist accounts are concerned primarily
with a debased sense of accuracy, and the use and inculcation of a reductive descrip-
tion of teaching for this purpose. Despite the problematic assumptions that these
178 9 Towards an Existentialist Account of Teaching

descriptions harbour, technicist accounts are nevertheless hierarchised as the most

‘trustworthy’, given the so-called evidence that they are seen to be based upon.
Account-giving in the technicist sense is not ‘natural’ but is a disposition that is
cultivated through training and professionalisation. But this is also a cultivated dis-
trust – a distrust in the possibility of accountability without managerialism, and in
one’s own capacity to account for situations in ‘subjective’ terms. And whilst some
authors claim that professional accountability leads to more autonomy (and there-
fore more ‘trust’ in professional judgement), it nevertheless determines criteria for
trust such that other kinds of accounts are seen to be wholly unreliable and, perhaps,
pointless.
Existentialist accounts, on the other hand, recognise that the act of account-­
giving is not cultivated but is inherent in teaching itself, since teachers are always
responding as subjects to situations and are therefore always responsible as such. In
the classroom context, teachers inescapably offer an account of something – their
meaning-making in situations with others (upon which they base their judgements),
the subject matter that they love, the world as they understand it (Vlieghe &
Zamojski, 2019) – accounts that signal a particular response to the world. In this
sense, accountability is not a skill but a way of being in the classroom.
Importantly, existentialist accounts are not centrally concerned with an ‘accu-
rate’ portraying of events (ones that can be proven or disproven through selective
use of evidence), but rather, with relating oneself to such events. Account-giving is
thereby a process inevitably underscored by irresolvable complexities and risks,
given that the pre-reflective judgements it attempts to articulate are fleeting, our
explanations always belated. Indeed, existentialist account-giving recognise the
ways in which accounts are often ‘poisoned’ by our tendency towards (easy) expla-
nations, and yet, doing so in a persistent (perhaps critical) manner can signal our
deep and inescapable freedom and responsibility not only for situations or for oth-
ers, but in the very act of account-giving itself. The purpose of our accounts is thus
not to deduce the causes or reasons for behaviour in situations, and what can be
done to guide and improve action in the future. Rather, it is about laying oneself
bare – examining the commitments that are made manifest in one’s actions, and to
continue to examine and to test those commitments, much like the ongoing parrhe-
siastic practices of the self.
For this reason, existentialist account-giving does not necessarily involve a pre-­
specified direction. When I wrote my anecdote above, I did not check with any
explicit framework for what it is that I needed to say. I tried instead to write it like
an Emersonian essay, without a real understanding of what would transpire in the
writing itself, where it would lead me, or what it would reveal about my practices
and about myself. In some ways, autobiographical accounts can function in the same
way, as discussed in the previous chapter. This in part demonstrates the riskiness
that offering an account in an existentialist sense involves, the anxiety that may
appear in not knowing how the account will ‘pan out’.
Of course, I had all sorts of (Sartrian) ‘explanations’ in my head already, and I
knew that my account was going to be read by others. Undoubtably, Sartre’s writing
has shaped my conception of teaching considerably over the last number of years,
References 179

and thus, the account I give is most certainly laced with ‘existential threads’ that
would probably not have existed had I written this when I had started out as a
teacher. Again, I am not suggesting that this is a blueprint upon which other teachers
can offer an account, nor that one’s thinking escapes the influence of the situations
in which we exist, the books we read, the people in our lives. Account-giving should
ultimately be seen as a response within these situations, one that reflects my respon-
sibility both in the situation recounted, in the act of accounting for the situation
itself, and in the process of interpreting it for our purposes here. It is a form of
reflective practice, but not the pre-set ‘skill’ as defined by Schön (2008) and others.
Rather, it serves as an example of care of the self, one that Vlieghe and Zamojski
(2019, p. 102) define as a relation of the teacher ‘to herself/himself in a particular
way, which is not spontaneously given, but which on the contrary presupposes prac-
ticing and demands making a continual effort’. Accounts are not to be ‘settled’ in
this sense – they are an important part of our continual attempts to understand our-
selves and to open ourselves up to continual critique, to ‘test’ oneself and one’s
commitments with as much frankness, sincerity, and indeed authenticity, as any
account might allow, despite the uncertainties and risk that this involves. What,
indeed, is the measure of that?

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Chapter 10
Concluding Thoughts and Reflections

10.1 Summary of the Text

Through engaging with the early existentialist thought of Jean-Paul Sartre, this
book seeks to offer an alternative discourse that generates another way in which to
account for the practices of teaching, one that moves from a ‘technicist’ to an ‘exis-
tentialist’ approach imbued with a sensitivity towards the lived experiences of being
a teacher. In the first section, I addressed this in relation to the policy of school self-­
evaluation, which hierarchises specific communication norms at the expense of oth-
ers, thus silencing alternative forms of account-giving. I identified three interrelated
fallacies that this and related policies represent: the perceived need to balance
accountability and autonomy for teachers and for the wider public, the focus on
developing a common language of evaluation in order to achieve this, and the hier-
archisation of ‘data-rich’ accounts as a result. As we saw, most educational litera-
ture that discusses the drawbacks of self-evaluation focuses on the practical issues
surrounding the process. I instead reflected on the problematic assumptions that it
harbours, not only in relation to the ‘profile’ of effective practice that the policy
promotes, but also the form of account-giving it encourages. Ultimately, I argued
that self-evaluative account-giving is couched within a technicist understanding of
teaching that fails to adequately capture the lived experience of being a teacher.
In response to this, I then introduced a very different account through exploring
the early existentialist philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre. I analysed four specific com-
ponents of his early thought: his conceptualisation of pre-reflective consciousness
which in turn posits the ‘self’ as existing in (response to) the world; how such
responses signal both a freedom and responsibility that underpins human existence;
the ways in which this responsibility is circumvented through bad faith; and finally,
how our responses and responsibility are an inherent part of our lived existence with
others. Each of these were considered in reference to concrete examples from edu-
cation, not merely to show how Sartre’s ideas might be applied to the educational

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte 181
Ltd. 2022
A. M. Brady, Being a Teacher, Contemporary Philosophies and Theories in
Education 19, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-7323-9_10
182 10 Concluding Thoughts and Reflections

context, but to demonstrate the ways in which they make sense in the classroom. I
argued that by engaging with Sartre as a ‘touchstone’ of sorts, we can therefore
reconceptualise the ways in which we understand – and, indeed, account for – being
human, something that has important implications for our accounts of being a
teacher.
In the final section, I offered a comparison between ‘technicist’ accounts of
teaching exemplified in the self-evaluation policies in Part I, and ‘existentialist’
accounts construed on the basis of my reading of Sartre in Part II. Throughout this
section, I explored the extent to which we can ‘trust’ the sincerity of such accounts,
given the ways in which trust and accountability is conceptualised in the current
educational context. Through exploring Foucault’s conception of ‘parrhesia’ in
Chap. 8, I considered new ways in which one might relate to oneself as a teacher
such as to disrupt the problematic conception of ‘accuracy’ in technicist accounts. I
exemplified this in relation to the autobiographical work of Sartre. In short, in
recounting such events, Sartre’s aim does not appear to be the accurate portraying
of events. Rather, the account serves as a means by which to relate to oneself in both
the past and the present, to take responsibility not only for our actions then, but our
responses to those actions now. This, I argue, represents an ongoing sincerity in
account-giving, a sincerity that is not seen as a ‘cultivated’ character trait, or as
imposed through accountability regimes, but one that necessitates a continual effort
on the part of the account-giver. Ultimately, Sartre’s continual reinterpretation of his
past through offering an autobiographical account of himself demonstrates this, and
as a parrhesiastic act, it demonstrates the value of accounts, not in terms of their
(technical) accuracy but their (existential) sensitivity. This model of parrhesiastic
account-giving serves to disrupt some of the technicist ways in which teachers are
expected to account for their practices and for themselves in self-evaluation dis-
courses, and to offer a new way in which to think of account-giving in light of this.
In the final chapter, I further elaborate on a distinction between technicist and
existentialist account-giving processes. Technicist accounts are those that concern
themselves with a debased sense of accuracy, where account-giving is thought of as
a cultivated disposition towards evidence-based norms of communication. I argue
that this also implies a cultivated distrust in accounts that do not adhere to these
norms. In contrast to this, existential accounts represent responses, and it is in this
sense that Sartre’s understanding of responsibility can be best understood. This in
turn calls for a mode of account-giving that is a process – a process that is by no
means ‘neat’ (since it more closely represents the lived experience of being a
teacher) but that necessarily involve vulnerability and uncertainty, as they are more
closely linked to the concrete lived experiences of teaching.
10.2 Final Reflections 183

10.2 Final Reflections

Part of my argument rests on the idea that there are other ways of accounting for
oneself as a teacher, and how this does not necessarily require some kind of ‘train-
ing’ in existentialist thought. But what I am suggesting is that an exposure to this
line of thinking may make us more sensitive to the nuances in our accounts, to the
fact that our explanations always fall short in some way, but that this uncertainty is
not something to be ‘overcome’, despite the anxiety and risks it might entail. This
then seems to suggest that there is one particular way of accounting for oneself, a
way that is circumscribed by a more existentialist understanding of the world and of
ourselves within it. Does this then mean that I am also suggesting a hierarchisation
in the forms of account-giving? Perhaps. Importantly, however, my aim is to gener-
ate discussion on these issues rather than offer a prescriptive or definitive model of
account-giving. Sartre, in that sense, serves as an example of how we might engage
with our practices in a new way, a touchstone that sparks future discussion (much as
Socrates serves as a touchstone for parrhesiastic practices, as Foucault (2001) sur-
mises). But so too might other ways of thinking that also compel a response, and
that invite us to think about teaching in a way that is not limited by the technicist
descriptions prevalent in current educational discourses.
I have tried to showcase that there are also number of limitations in Sartre’s
thought, however, even if these weren’t always explored in detail. For instance,
perhaps Sartre’s conception of freedom is, as Merleau-Ponty once remarked, so
uncompromising that it is untenable. It does not adequately account for the weight
of circumstances, nor the ways in which, at times, it really is impossible to respond
to situations in any meaningful way. Although, to some extent, it may be true that
one does not always recognise their fundamental project unless presented with
another way of responding to their situation (like the worker who does not realise he
is being exploited until he conceives of the possibility of not being exploited), Sartre
is somewhat dismissive of the stakes involved in responses, in terms of the extent to
which they may change the course of a person’s situation, or the consequences of
acting otherwise that may prevent us from making a meaningful choice in the
first place.
Of course, freedom for Sartre is ontological rather than practical, and is therefore
not necessarily about the ability to achieve desired ends, but merely the capacity to
conceive of those ends in the first place. Does this also imply that his conception of
freedom is impractical? Not only this, but such ends are always circumscribed by
what we can see, and by what we feel that we can do within a particular situation,
meaning that our separation of the practical and the ontological is perhaps not so
straightforward. Sartre also does not always account for the means by which we are
presented with another possibility – does this come from another person (like
Sartre), or from some event or crisis? Is it always there in the back of our minds? It
certainly does not, as Nausea might suggest, come from mere individual reflection
on our situation. And if one refuses to see things in another way, is it because they
are unable to, because they choose not to, or because they are in bad faith? In this
184 10 Concluding Thoughts and Reflections

sense, Sartre seems to deny the entire apparatus in which our thinking is situated,
the means by which we are confronted with other horizons of possibilities, and the
limitations this then places on our capacities to think otherwise, or, indeed, to
‘grasp’ our fundamental project at all. This, too, is true teachers within the current
educational regimes.
Sartre does backtrack on this somewhat in his later years, when he states that
‘[t]he individual interiorises his social determinations…the relation of production,
the family of his childhood, the historical past, the contemporary institutions’. Yet,
he still never quite let go of the idea that we can always respond to these situations
on an individual level, where, in the same interview, he also states that ‘a man can
always make something out of what is made of him’ (Sartre, 2008, p. 35). But what
meaningful response can we expect when someone’s foot is on our neck – both liter-
ally and figuratively? In many ways, therefore, I accept that Sartre may not accu-
rately capture the lived experience of many individuals, the motivations – or indeed
possibilities – of our actions at times, or the ways in which our responses are influ-
enced by things that are external to our fundamental projects. I also recognise that
his later works, which I do not give much weight to here, may offer a more nuanced
account of the stakes involved in acting freely with others – that, indeed, there is a
distinction between the innocent victim and the implicated agent, and that we are
also limited not just by facticity but also by what he later calls ‘counter-finalities’,
where we are not always in control of – and thus wholly responsible for – the out-
comes of our actions. My reasoning for this is that, in order to understand any sense
of ‘collective responsibility’, we must first pay attention to individual responses in
the world. Indeed, as both Sartre and Foucault remark, the individual is always
ontologically prior to the collective. What is thus valuable in Sartre’s earlier line of
thought is the extent to which he tries to capture the lived experience of the indi-
vidual without reifying them to the realm of the collective.
And yet, there are limitations with Sartre’s account of our relationship with oth-
ers in that seems to focus almost solely on its conflictual nature, something that on
one level implies that this relationship is something to be overcome in order for us
to be ‘authentic’ individuals. In Chap. 7, I offered an example from my own practice
that calls this into question, in terms of the ways in which we inevitably ‘use’ the
tools of others in order to realise our own freedom, as well as the ways in which we
can experience something collectively that is educationally worthwhile. My exam-
ple, however, seemed to imply that the only way to experience this is to ‘suspend’
oneself, and in turn, to ‘suspend’ the subjectivity that we are, that objectifies and
that therefore confronts others. But might there be a way in which the subjectivity
of both the Other and I can exist side by side, something closer to the concept of
Mitsein in Heidegger’s account, or the kind of solidarity that Beauvoir fashions in
The Second Sex? Since any account we give of ourselves will always be with the
Other in mind, are all our relationships necessarily conflictual? Indeed, we need the
Other in order to know who we are, even if who we are is a continual process that
does not correlate exactly to the ways in which the other sees us, or indeed, the ways
in which we account for ourselves at discrete moments in our lives.
References 185

In many ways, this book might be accused of being ‘impractical’ – it does little
to help the challenging experiences of teachers in the present moment (particularly,
perhaps, due to the changing nature of educational spaces in light of the Covid-19
pandemic). Indeed, what would a teacher do with all of this? How would it help
them? The answer to this, of course, depends of what we are keen on helping them
do, and for what reason. Might this model of account for oneself help teachers
improve? Perhaps not in terms of the standards of effective practice, but perhaps in
another way – recognising that teaching is not an easy endeavour but requires much
in the way of self-sacrifice. I do not mean this in the strictly ‘heroic’ sense, but in
terms of the ways in which our ‘self’ is always on display as teachers, and the idea
that this exposure is an important and necessary component of the act of teaching in
the first place. This, as Biesta remarks, is part of the ‘beautiful risk’ of education.
Thus, uncertainty need not be construed in negative terms, as something that needs
to be overcome. It need not be seen as opposite to the assuredness that comes from
our engagement with ‘evidence’. In this sense, my discussion can pave the way for
such important reconceptualization, and in doing so, disrupts the technicist dis-
courses that fight against so much of what is essential to teaching.
This book has focused on teachers almost exclusively, but there are also impor-
tant implications for students as well. As such, it may be interesting to expand these
ideas to also consider student experiences in the classroom. Indeed, it is not just
teachers that respond or that offer an account of themselves in those situations –
students, too, offer such accounts that in turn impacts upon ‘who they are’ as well
as how things are brought to light in the classroom. This would require a reconcep-
tualization of ‘learners’ and ‘learning’ in much the same vein, perhaps with a greater
emphasis on the fact that teaching is inescapably relational, as Biesta also discusses.
It would also be interesting to consider these ideas from a less general perspective –
for instance, teachers and students who come from different backgrounds that may
respond in distinct ways, thus showcasing even more the rich and diverse ways in
which individuals account for themselves in concrete situations. As Sartre teaches
us, these ideas should start from the point of view of the individual person and their
lived experience, something that, in some small way, this book has endeavoured to
illuminate.

References

Foucault, M. (2001). Fearless speech (J. Pearson, Ed.). MIT Press.

Sartre, J. P. (2008). Itinerary of a thought. In J. P. Sartre (Ed.), Between existentialism and Marxism.
VersoBooks. Originally published in 1979.
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Statements of Practice

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte 187
Ltd. 2022
A. M. Brady, Being a Teacher, Contemporary Philosophies and Theories in
Education 19, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-7323-9
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