The questions around taking the COVID vaccine (or not) brought to mind the existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre’s ethics, along with the question of our ability to make free and rational choices.

We reached a moment earlier this year when my wife began noting the time I first mention ‘the vaccine’ each morning. Apparently, I spoke of it too regularly. At least I began mentioning masks and lockdowns less often in the process. That had to count for something, right?

All the new, significant COVID-induced decisions we suddenly had to make, or felt pressured to make, brought Jean-Paul Sartre to mind, once again[1]. Not because he is the person I turn to in doubt, but because he had thought-provoking things to say about what it means to choose freely when we find ourselves in moral dilemmas.

Sleepless nights during pandemics and wars

Pandemics, like wars, force us to make moral choices we’re not confronted with every day. These scenarios are unusual enough that we don’t necessarily have the luxury of drawing on our own past experiences or falling back on ‘the way it’s usually done’. Instead, we’re confronted with having to tap into our ‘received memories’ or inherited ethical frameworks from which we attempt to respond in accordance with the historic scenarios that the current one seems to be mimicking.

What is the best solution to the problem at hand? What about all the unintended consequences that come along with proposed solutions? What course of action will ensure the long-term flourishing of society and how much short-term damage can the social fabric bear? And what about us, for whom the decisions are made: up to what point do we go along with it all? What is the acceptable amount of freedoms governments can take away in a state of emergency? What constitutes a state of emergency? Is it helpful to liken this pandemic to earlier wars or more so to earlier pandemics only?[2] Who do we ask? Who do we trust?

Then, vaccines against COVID-19 became available to the public on the back of this ongoing dilemma, and with this new option of ‘getting the jab’, further questions arose. Who should get first access to the vaccine? Who benefits most from it? Should everyone take it? What risks does it pose? What risks does not taking it pose? How many should ideally take it before the virus becomes less destructive? Can they ‘make’ people take it? When is the destruction caused by the virus considered negligible, and are we no longer in a state of emergency during which they can ‘make’ us do more than the usual?

Not everyone had (has) sleepless nights because of these questions. The answers are clear and obvious to some. Not because they ‘follow the science’ or ‘see the stats’, but because they trust their sources. Why people trust sources is a good question, and I’ll get back to that in a bit. Sure, data can be interpreted, and logical deductions can be made, but then it’s usually accompanied by a belief that the full story is shared openly and accurately with us in the process.

Those who sleep soundly do so believing they’ve made the right choice or done the right thing. Those who have sleepless nights tend to do so because they fear doing the wrong thing. They are not yet convinced that one course of action is the right one, and continue to hover anxiously over the valley of decision. Or, they recognise that one course seems right in one way while the other course seems right in another, but aren’t sure which is ‘more right’.

In the case of the COVID-vaccine we see some people opting to take, reject or wait on the vaccine for moral reasons, others make their choice based in fear of potential outcomes, while another group chooses as a means to restore lost freedoms.

When is a decision ‘moral’?

Is an action moral because the decision-maker does so for moral reasons? Can someone with wrong intentions commit moral actions? Are we choosing on behalf of ourselves only, or on behalf of everyone else?

Sartre introduced various scenarios to illustrate his point that the morality of a decision, and the necessary action that follows, lies neither in its intention nor its outcome but rather in a commitment to act ‘freely’ and not in ‘bad faith’. His scenarios are especially relevant to situations where two courses of action, both accepted as morally sound, are in conflict with one another. Therefore, those situations when we’re not sure which is ‘more right’.

A famous scenario is that of a student who approached him seeking advice on whether he should join the armed forces and defend his people and their freedoms or stay with his afflicted mother who have no one but him to console her during the war. It’s not merely a choice between defending his nation and being a comfort to his mother, but also between not being a coward and not being a mother-neglecter. It’s not merely a question of What should I do? but also one of Who should I be?

Neither his Christian (deny thyself for another) nor Kantian (regard others as ends, not means… to obtain right outcomes) moral doctrines could resolve the dilemma, so the student concluded that nothing remains but to trust his instincts. But how can his instincts (feelings) guide him into a unique situation he has not yet lived? This touches on another problematic aspect of moral decision-making, namely that intended outcomes aren’t guaranteed. Joining the military does not guarantee a place on the frontlines, and a place on the frontlines does not guarantee surviving or holding off the enemy.  

Well, that is why the student turns to Sartre, who might have experienced something similar before, to tell him what his trained intuition might suggest. The only advice Sartre had on offer was to remind the student that he must choose because he is free. Herein lies the essence of Sartre’s (hopeless attempt at an[3]) ethics, that human existence must be understood as freedom. Not political freedom but ontological freedom – humans don’t have freedom but are freedom. Whatever our political or social reality might be, we exist as freedom.

Even when a student turns to someone for counsel or interprets a life event as a guiding sign for making important decisions, he must understand that it was him who chose his counsellor or interpreted the sign. He is ‘abandoned’ to choose who he will be (a brave soldier or a good son) and this weight of responsibility will cause great ‘anguish’, so much so that it can lead to sleepless nights. Acting out a choice made on one’s behalf would be to act in ‘bad faith’ and to live in denial of one’s free existence.

Sartre draws from ideas of earlier philosophers (e.g. Kierkegaard, Heidegger) who dealt with the so-called ‘problem of existence’ and concludes that each person is responsible for their own ongoing act of existing. The student must know that he is freedom and that whatever action he takes, he is responsible for that action, which is an expression of what man ought to be according to him in that moment. The weight imposed by that admission of responsibility to choose is immense, especially because one chooses not only for oneself but essentially for all men, choosing to act as all people ought to. That feeling of anguish is what it feels like to be freedom, tempted to deny oneself and commit inauthentic acts of bad faith. We are ‘condemned to be free’; freedom is the curse as which we exist.

Where does this leave someone choosing between getting vaccinated or not?

As far as Sartre is concerned, it leaves them abandoned and in anguish, until they choose. His only encouragement is to do so knowing that you are freedom and the one responsible for choosing. Not so that others may hold you morally responsible, but as an act of defiance against any influential person or institution to whom responsibility might wrongly be ascribed.

It’s worth noting that Sartre’s work arose during a time when totalitarian regimes were advancing across the European continent and many of his contemporaries turned to religious or other moral authorities for ethical guidance. On the one hand, Sartre’s existentialist ethics was to be an encouraging reminder to mankind that no regime or law can ever erase our existence as freedom, regardless of authoritarian pressures that might be applied. On the other hand, he pleaded with his audience not to turn to any authority – religious or otherwise – and act as if they and not you are the author of your existence that you are responsible for acting out.

Sartre’s diagnosis of existence as freedom (based on the symptom of anguish resulting from our denial of freedom) is not merely relevant to difficult political decisions but to all aspects of life. It is meant to free us (or, remind us that we are free) from all identity markers that might dictate our being in this world. No one should act according to their job description, family trade, organisational affiliation, or cultural norms as if they cannot act as someone else at any given moment. Taking or rejecting the vaccine because it is what your station in life dictates you ought to do are both bad faith acts.

Can we make decisions in ‘good faith’?

It’s all good and well to encourage people to make their own decisions but is Sartre’s diagnosis of existence as freedom, correct? Are we truly capable of making uninfluenced decisions? Or, is it fair to say we are free, despite being influenced?

Is it not so that all our decisions involve a form of trained intuition by which we ‘see’ the path we should follow? The more radical Sartre might say, “There is no path but that of bad faith, you must tread your own”, while the more moderate one may settle for, “Yes, as long as you understand that it is you who give yourself permission to go down that path.” But what makes that path emerge as the more correct or more attractive one? I might say I chose to exist as someone going down the path I did, but did I choose for that path to become the obvious one to go down?

This brings me back to ‘received memories’ and the sources we trust. Making difficult decisions involves moral muscle memory that we’ve inherited through observing and relating to characters in stories and influential people we’ve known and trusted. The path I eventually opted for between taking or not taking the vaccine emerged not merely because of statistics or graphs, but because people whose stance, concerns, convictions, and character in grappling with the difficult question at hand represented a collective ‘character’ I became willing to trust and imitate. My own past actions, both honourable and regrettable, played a part in this too. This ‘character’ emerged as the one that best aligned with the so-called ‘reasonable man’, or dare I say ‘righteous one’, that formed as the moral man in my mind over the years. I became willing to trust certain people opining on our times and the vaccine because they collectively represented the people I’ve come to know as trustworthy. Could I still have made the ‘wrong’ decision? Of course, I could have. But then we must ask likewise, what is a ‘wrong’ decision?

[1] Since studying his work for a paper I wrote on his idea of the self, I’m constantly haunted by his thoughts.

[2] Historian and columnist Tim Stanley raised this question in an interview.

[3] Sartre’s premise of existence as freedom undermines the possibility of a prescribed ethics.