Sartre on Bad Faith Flashcards
Bad faith is the condition that people suffer when they deny themselves that they are radically free, when they think their past determines their future.
Such people are making a metaphysical mistake, turning themselves into inert objects, rather than necessarily free beings condemned to having to make their own choices.
The concept was introduced in Being and Nothingness, and we have these vignettes or anecdotal illustrations who are said to be in ‘bad faith’.
Bad faith is an existential condition and is self-deceptive.
There is the example of a waiter who is identified as somebody experiencing himself as metaphysically inappropriate - an object with determinate properties in the same way as a table.
The waiter is acting out a role and playing a game with himself. He is automating his consciousness. He is trying to represent himself as determined in his gestures by the norms of his profession. Sartre supposes that the waiter’s behaviour this false consciousness of himself / or false representation of himself as so determined.
A table has an essence. A human being does not. However, there is a sense in which our pasts might determine who we are.
How is it possible for a human subject to exhibit itself in a certain way, up to a certain point and yet retains the capacity or consciousness to change the course of behaviour which is contrary to past actions? (the past might be alien).
Sartre is trying to identify something within human behaviour which grounds this capacity.
Facticity - broad category which includes all of the historical, cultural, social and political dimensions of a human individual for which they are in no sense responsible. It also includes their past actions and their relationship with the physical environment. Anything that can be made an object by consciousness refers to one’s facticity.
Transcendence - the capacity to go beyond facticity; it is a manifestation of freedom.
The waiter is denying his transcendence. He is not disavowing his present condition.
Sartre is trying to elicit a reorientation in his readers. This kind of confrontation with self has an ethical and religious dimension to it.
Sartre belongs to a tradition which is attempting very ambitiously to present a comprehensive metaphysical system.
There is an undeniably an impact that Sartre has on you when you read him, which has the potential to change lives.
