The notion of bad faith lies at the heart of the existentialism of Sartre. It appears early in Being and Nothingness and is discussed and dramatized in Nausea and The Childhood of a Leader. In this article, what Sartre means by bad faith is introduced and explained.
Introduction
To the existentialism of Sartre belongs the conviction that the human being is completely and radically free. Sartre defines consciousness in such a way that inserts this radical freedom into that from out of which consciousness emerges into the world. Sartre defines human consciousness as that which is what it is not. (This article explains Sartre’s definition of the being of the ”for-itself”)
This seemingly paradoxical statement means that there exists a distance in consciousness that allows it to have projects into the future. This distancing allows consciousness to surpass its facticity toward what it is not, away from what it is. This surpassing is what Sartre means by freedom.
According to Sartre, the absolute freedom belonging to, forming, and defining consciousness allows it to surpass its own situation in the world and its own facticity. That is, the human being, through its own projects, actions, and decisions, can make and remake itself, constantly and infinitely.
In Sartre’s existential thinking, this absolute freedom is constantly linked together with total responsibility. That is, since there is no God deciding and determining the actions of the human being, and since there is no pre-determined nature or fixed essence forming the human being, we are both radically free and completely responsible. We are always responsible for our actions, projects, and decisions, for our continuous making and re-making of ourselves.
It is in the space opened up by our absolute freedom and responsibility that bad faith first arises and announces itself. That is, since we are completely free and responsible for our actions, we might find in bad faith an attempt at hiding and escaping from our absolute freedom and responsibility.
Self-deception, for Sartre, allows us to escape from this absolute freedom and responsibility. This is why in Being and Nothingness the notion of bad faith appears immediately after Sartre’s definition of human consciousness as nothingness and hence as freedom. Another notion that is closely linked together with freedom and responsibility is anguish.
Sartre says that because consciousness is fundamentally free and completely responsible for its actions and decisions, it is constantly anguished, it is itself anguish. Hence, there is a constant attempt at escaping this radical freedom, this absolute responsibility, and this constant anguish. This attempt is what Sartre calls bad faith.
In a word, because Sartre defines consciousness as that which is what it is not, he inserts a spacing into the heart of human consciousness from out of which notions such as freedom, responsibility, anguish, and bad faith emerge into and through their close relatedness to one another.
Bad Faith in Being and Nothingness
Because the human being, for Sartre, is essentially and basically anguished, and because anguish is a condition that any human being would rather avoid and escape, it is not only expected, but also natural that human beings will endeavor to flee and escape anguish. (This article explains Sartre’s statement that ”We Are Anguish”)
This fleeing from anguish occurs through what Sartre calls bad faith. But what is bad faith? Bad faith is an attempt, carried out by consciousness, at lying to itself. Although bad faith is an attempt, carried out by consciousness, at lying to itself, bad faith differs from mere lying because, in bad faith, the boundary separating the “liar” from the “lied to” disappears.
That is, in bad faith, the same individual is both the “liar” and the “lied to”: I am the one who is lying to oneself, and yet, I believe the lie and the liar, for to me, the lie is true. For me, the lie is the truth itself. In other words, the difference between bad faith and mere lying is that when I lie to another individual, I know that what I am saying is nothing but a lie and I know that this lie is not true. When I lie to another individual, I project the lie toward the other whilst knowing the truth.
Lying to an Other is an attempt at deceiving the Other, not oneself. Bad faith, on the other hand, occurs when one deceives oneself about what is not true. This is why Sartre calls bad faith a precarious state. It is a precarious case because it is paradoxical. That is, in bad faith, I know that what I am saying to myself is nothing but a lie and thus I am aware of the lie and I am also aware that I am the one who has invented this lie, yet I choose to believe in it.
In his attempts at justifying this paradox and explaining how there could exist moments in which consciousness can lie to itself successfully and how one can generally lie to oneself successfully, Sartre introduces two scenarios in Being and Nothingness: the romantic rendezvous and the waiter in the café.
The Romantic Rendezvous
The first example that Sartre offers describes the attitude of a woman going out on a date with a man for the first time. Sartre says that although the woman in this scenario knows that the man has his own intentions, plans, and desires, she decides to ignore the part of herself that speaks to her about the man’s plans, intentions, and desires.
In her ignoring of this part of herself, in her hiding of and escaping from this part of herself, what she is endeavoring to accomplish is merely to postpone the moment at which she will be obliged to make a decision, the moment at which she will have to choose a certain behavior or a certain attitude toward this man’s intentions and sexual desires.
Her postposing of the moment at which she will have to decide frees her and lets her enjoy her free being, for it allows her to escape the fact that she is, at this specific moment, an object, an object of a sexual desire. But then the man holds her hand, and now she has to make a decision. If she leaves her hand, this will mean that she is saying yes to the man and his intentions and desires. And if she withdraws her hand, this will mean that she is saying no. Both actions involve decisions; both actions require a certain deciding. According to Sartre:
“The young woman leaves her hand there, but she does not notice that she is leaving it. She does not notice because it happens by chance that she is at this moment all intellect. She draws her companion up to the most lofty regions of sentimental speculation; she speaks of Life, of her life, she shows herself in her essential aspect—a personality, a consciousness. And during this time the divorce of the body from the soul is accomplished; the hand rests inert between the warm hands of her companion—neither consenting nor resisting—a thing”
Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness
According to Sartre, what the woman accomplishes here is rendering herself a disembodied mind. By rendering herself, by transforming herself into a mere disembodied mind, the woman refuses her facticity and denies her embodied being.
By denying her embodied being, she succeeds at postponing the moment at which she must decide, the moment of deciding whether to say yes or no to man and his desires. Yet this does not mean that she has to continue as a disembodied mind throughout the whole date. At other moments, she may freely decide to acknowledge her own facticity, herself as both a body and a mind, and her whole situation. At other moments, she may decide to acknowledge her body, herself as a sexed and free woman, and the situation in which her body is desired by the man. But at this specific moment and whilst allowing the man to hold her hand, she is lying to herself because she knows that she is both a body and a mind, and yet she renders herself a disembodied mind. This transforming of herself by herself into a merely disembodied mind means that she is lying to herself about herself. (This article explains what Sartre means by freedom, condemnation, and the situation)
The Waiter in the Café
The second example that Sartre discusses in order to argue for and explain what he means by bad faith is the example of the waiter in the café.
“Let us consider this waiter in the café. His movement is quick and forward, a little too precise, a little too rapid. He comes toward the patrons with a step a little too quick. He bends forward a little too eagerly; his voice, his eyes express an interest a little too solicitous for the order of the customer. Finally there he returns, trying to imitate in his walk the inflexible stiffness of some kind of automaton while carrying his tray with the recklessness of a tight-rope- walker by putting it in a perpetually unstable, perpetually broken equilibrium which he perpetually re-establishes by a light movement of the arm and hand. All his behavior seems to us a game”
Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness
What this example endeavors to render very clear is a man who “is playing, he is amusing himself… he is playing at being a waiter in a café”. The man is “playing at being a waiter in a café” because he is essentially not a waiter, since the “for-itself” has no essence or fixed nature determining and deciding it. Since the “for itself” has no essence, the man is essentially not a waiter, and accordingly, he has to attempt to make himself that which he is not, that is, a waiter.
This means that because the “for itself” has no essence or fixed nature, it must always oblige itself to appear in a certain way. This superficial appearing is nothing but playing. This man is and will never be a waiter in itself because “being in-itself” is completely different from and does not belong to the being of the “for itself”. The waiter— because he is a human being— is fundamentally free, since he is not what he is and is what he is not.
This indicates that he can freely decide to quit the café and start doing something else, yet he refuses and consciously insists on making himself into a waiter. All of the man’s gestures and moves are attentively planned and executed so that he could make himself into a waiter, so that he could transform himself into what a café waiter does.
But, for Sartre, it does not matter how hard this man tries, for he will never reach the state of the “in-itself” regarding his being, regarding being a waiter. He simply cannot be; he can merely exist as a being that is constantly attempting to reach what he chooses to transform himself into.
He could decide to become a writer and he could become a good writer, but he will never be a writer, for he cannot reach the being of the “in-itself” of a writer. Sartre says that “If I am one [café waiter], this cannot be in the mode of being in-itself. I am a waiter in the mode of being what I am not”.
The waiter, for Sartre, cannot escape bad faith because he is only focusing on and endeavoring to show specific attitudes, behaviors, and gestures. All of his attempts are turned toward the wrong ends. Sartre says that this turning toward the wrong ends happens also to the student who only attempts to stay focused. The student “exhausts himself in playing the attentive role that he ends up by no longer hearing anything”. That is, because all of the student’s attempts and motives are turned toward the wrong ends, toward merely playing the attentive role, the student “ends up by no longer hearing anything”.
What Sartre is attempting to render clear here is that when one says that one only is, one is thus misrepresenting one’s being, for one’s being is not a static being or that which is simply fixed and never changing, but rather what is constantly changing and hence made and re-made, constantly and infinitely. By saying that one only is, one is denying that one is nothing but what one makes of oneself through one’s actions, decisions, and projects.
This view is the direct result of Sartre’s argument that “consciousness is not what it is”, which means that being is constantly sustained through making, remaking, acting, and projecting. But does this mean that we cannot escape bad faith? Are genuineness and sincerity impossible?
Sartre’s example of someone who is attempting to be genuine and sincere shows how even this individual is in bad faith, for all of this individual’s attitudes and gestures are turned toward achieving the impossible state of “being in-itself”. For Sartre, even the genuine attempts at reaching a certain state are themselves nothing but playful attitudes and gestures that are only turned toward escaping one’s own being, the being of the “for-itself”. (This article explains what Sartre means by ”being in-itself”)
Sartre’s conclusion in Being and Nothingness is that to be a human being is to be dwelling in bad faith, is to be constantly placed into these playful and escaping endeavors. And although he says in a footnote that authenticity remains a possibility, he does not say anything about how it could be approached, thought, or attained.
Bad Faith in Nausea
Sartre’s early views on bad faith can be found in Nausea. Nausea’s main character, Antoine Roquentin, goes on a Sunday to a special show: “A clock strikes half-past ten and I start on my way: Sundays at this hour, you can see a fine show in Bouville, but you must not come too late after High Mass”. The show is about how the bourgeois families act on their Sunday morning walk.
Everyone in the show appears to be following a certain pre-determined script and an already decided role in their encountering and greeting of each other. What the bourgeois families do and how they act resemble the movements and gestures of the waiter of the café; both performances are pre-determined, well-studied, and accurately played, both performances are nothing but playful attempts at being the “in-itself” of something.
The waiter plays at being a café waiter and the bourgeois of Bouville are playing at being bourgeois. Both performances assume that there is a thing in-itself that they can reach or imitate. Both performances are nothing but masks. The waiter and the families are constantly attempting to convince themselves that they are really a waiter and bourgeois. The same attempts at playing a certain role and at wearing a certain mask are noticed again when Roquentin visits the Bouville museum and sees the portraits of the bourgeois that are hung there.
The portraits are of the past leaders of Bouville, the individuals that made Bouville the flourishing and successful town that it is today. Roquentin admires the portraits and compares his experiences of himself as contingent with how these notable leaders confidently experience themselves and how they seem to carry within themselves a conviction and an assertion that they have all the right to exist.
“Then I realized what separated us: [ …] I hadn’t the right to exist. I had appeared by chance, I existed like a stone, a plant or a microbe. My life put out feelers towards small pleasures in every direction. [ …] But for this handsome, faultless man, now dead, for Jean Pacôme, son of the Pacôme of the Défence Nationale, it had been an entirely different matter: the beating of his heart and the mute rumblings of his organs, in his case, assumed the form of rights to be instantly obeyed. For sixty years, without a halt, he had used his right to live. The slightest doubt had never crossed those magnificent grey eyes. Pacôme had never made a mistake”
Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea
Because they are completely certain and convinced that they have a right to live and because they are convinced that they should enjoy many benefits such as material comforts, monetary security, and authority and power over others, the bourgeois lead and govern the others confidently, without ever doubting or questioning themselves and without hesitation.
They assume and think that there exists an essence forming the being of a bourgeois and believe that by behaving according to a certain way, they take part in and conform to this essence. This means that they think because they are bourgeois, they must have specific, fixed, and pre-determined rights and responsibilities. They think that there is a fixed and pre-determined nature of things and of themselves. Hence, they attempt to imitate this fixity.
They never doubt or question what they see as the order of things, they only endeavor to imitate it. Roquentin then says, “farewell, beautiful lilies, elegant in your painted little sanctuaries, good-bye lovely lilies, our pride and reason for existing, good-bye you bastards!” Such individuals, whose portraits are hung in the museum, dwell in bad faith because they refuse to admit or accept their freedom.
They are consciousnesses whose essences are their existences in the world, yet they refuse their freedom by choosing to conform to a specific social order that tells them what and what not to do, and how and how not to act. They are in bad faith because they fail to acknowledge the freedom belonging to, and lying at the heart of, the being of the “for-itself”.
They refuse to see the freedom pertaining to their own being. They think that they must follow a natural, fixed, and pre-determined order of things. In their non-hesitant attempts to adhere to an illusory order, they never become anguished, they never experience the anguish that lies at the heart of the being of the “for-itself”. Hence, they constantly dwell in bad faith.
Bad Faith in The Childhood of a Leader
The notion of bad faith is once again visited and explored in the short story “The Childhood of a Leader”. “The Childhood of a Leader” is one of the stories that are collected and published in The Wall. The main character, Lucien, evolves and changes through different stages in his childhood until reaching adulthood. His own existence appears to him as a riddle whose meaning he cannot decipher. The hypocrisy of the bourgeois surrounding him annoys him and intensifies his own questioning and quests.
Lucien’s father is a factory boss and is convinced and insists that Lucien too will be a leader. That is, to Lucien’s being belongs an essence, the essence of leadership, and his whole life should unfold by responding to and turning toward this essence.
The unfolding of the events of the story shows how Lucien reaches the realization that he is in fact a leader and hence he has rights. Lucien comes to realize that his questioning of himself, that is, his searching during his youth was a mistake. He says: “First maxim, not to try and see inside yourself; there is no mistake more dangerous”.
He now sees himself as the others see him, and he sees himself now as the “real Lucien”. In seeing himself through the eyes of the other, he objectifies himself. In this objectifying of himself, he sees himself as a leader with rights and responsibilities: “Rights were beyond existence, like mathematical objects and religious dogma. And now Lucien was just that: an enormous bouquet of responsibilities and rights”.
For more articles explaining and discussing Sartre’s thought, visit this webpage.