What is it about?
Why do we feel forced to “be someone” and to react to everything? This article links Sartre, Hartmut Rosa, Paul, and Bonhoeffer to show how other people’s expectations push us into roles and self-performance. Sartre calls this self-deception; Rosa explains the urge to lose ourselves in collective “resonance” to escape the pressure. Paul and Bonhoeffer offer a Christian answer: we do not need a final verdict about ourselves. Our identity is secured by Christ’s judgment, freeing us to serve others.
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Why is it important?
Today many people feel pressured to present a stable identity, react constantly, and meet others’ expectations. This article is timely because it links that everyday “performance” culture with two major diagnoses of modern life (Sartre’s bad faith and Rosa’s search for resonance) and then tests them against Paul and Bonhoeffer. The unique payoff is a constructive alternative: identity need not be earned or staged. Grounded in Christ’s judgment and God’s address, the self is freed from self-justification and can turn outward in responsible service in church, education, and public life.
Perspectives
Writing this piece helped me clarify a tension I keep encountering in academic and church contexts: the felt need to justify oneself, to appear coherent, and to “deliver” an acceptable identity. Bringing Sartre and Rosa into conversation with Paul and Bonhoeffer was my way of testing whether strong modern diagnoses of self-performance can be met with more than critique. What I value most in the result is its practical edge: it names the pressure without moralism and points to a theological ground for freedom that can reshape how we work, lead, and relate. I hope readers find it intellectually sharp and personally unsettling in a good way.
Magnus Rabel
Universitat Zurich
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Verdammt, sich zu verhalten, November 2025, De Gruyter,
DOI: 10.1163/9789004722255_005.
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