In reading over our conversation so far, there seems to me an underlying connection between Bad Faith and our emotions. Sartre gives us facts, our facticity, and he also gives us transcendence, but what I feel screaming for attention every time I revisit Sartre is the impact of our emotions as motivation for bad faith. Yes, I still stand by the idea that in bad faith we are attempting to evade responsibility, but why?
When I draw upon the concept of bad faith, Sartre’s examples fall short. It feels as though his whole philosophy of existentialism contradicts the notion of providing examples through the other. A process so personal to the self, that to understand it through the other devalues it somehow. So I seek inwardly for examples from my own path, that through reflection seem to capture elements of we have thus far defined as bad faith. Admittedly, these are deeply emotionally intertwined. When we are angry, our anger can often become our choice, the same goes I believe for any overbearing emotion, and if you remember Sartre believes we always have choices in any given circumstance. So, if our emotions can override these choices, and furthermore, if we are in essence made by our choices, then surely the source of our driving emotion is to be the source of our bad faith.
Is Sartre to imply that our emotions- from anger, love, pain, to cowardice- are all part of our seeing and shaping, our negation, of our Being-for-itself, which can be understood as our reflection and awareness of self? And likewise, if our transcendence is the “ability to intend and reach beyond” our facticity, as we have defined, then does this not also necessitate our emotions? So simply by being-for-itself, we are automatically submitted to bad faith by default. Simply by being we contradict ourselves. And this is yet to mention being-for-others?
Being-for-others is a concept that Sartre only divulges into once he has outlined and discussed bad faith in ‘Being and Nothingness’. This can, in simple terms, be understood as our inquiry into the existence of other minds. Sartre again agrees with Heidegger in that ‘the other’ is more an issue of being, and therefore existentialism, rather than that of an epistemological problem. According to the Internet Encyclopaedia of Philosophy Sartre provides us “with a place for the other as an a priori condition for certain forms of consciousness which reveal a relation of being to the other.” So, if I understand the concept correctly, that in relation to others we become objects of their subjectivity, and that this can be reversed so that others in turn become the object; and this seems to me, in the crudest of terms, the last ingredient into the emotional melting pot. This subject-object relationship with others suggests to me that Sartre is really paving the way to make an ethical point on authenticity, however I believe that it also highlights how the balance of our transcendence and facticity, so crucial to the concept of being-for-itself, is subject to being-for-other, and that both are, or can often be, ruled by our emotions. This brings us back to Sartre’s key doctrine, at least by my understanding: by being, we have choice, and these choices we become.
So choose wisely, because 'Bad Faith' and 'others' are here to fuck with your being.
To close, Sartre himself: “Man is fully responsible for his nature and his choices” [Existentialism and Human Emotions, 1957]
Chris that is an interesting point you raise as to what you think bad faith is, I am in agreement with what you say that ‘Bad Faith can be seen to me as the misperceptions of the self for the purpose of avoiding responsibility of the self.’ You set out a good argument as to why you define bad faith as this and I have now changed my mind about what I think bad faith is now, although I still hold that my point of view is part of what bad faith is in accordance with Sartre. I would also go further onto say on the issue of lying, as Sartre mentions on the issue of lying that Bad faith is not lying to oneself, as Sartre mentions that Heidegger talks of an interesting point on the issue of lying that to lie means that we know what the truth is to know that we are lying, Sartre says that in structure of lying, bad faith can be seen as lying to oneself but as you have mentioned Chris, that to be in bad faith means to be consciousness and so therefore the lady on her date in this example cannot be unconscious as to what is going on, and this is where I think bad faith links in with this example but not fully as I mentioned earlier on there are more things in this example that are conducts of bad faith. However on this point of lying to oneself, I would like to argue against Sartre’s idea of human beings been in constant flux in relation to who ‘we’ are. In everyday speaking ‘we’ are always talking of who we are and what we are not, if someone asks me who I am, I would usually give them a simple answer rather than well at this moment in time I am this person but in two minutes time I could be some thing else. This idea of Sartre’s is not practical in this sense and I also argue that it certainly is not true. However I would like to add I am not against the idea of bad faith because I am uncomfortable with the ideas that come with it, but because I believe ’we’ as human beings have personalities, I am the same person today as I will be tomorrow although concepts may change in essence I am still the same person. Williams (2002) has similar views on the idea of truth that there must be some truth, he talks about the use of language that there must be a notion of truth in our understanding of language, again this comes back to my argument that in everyday language we cannot take ourselves away from talking about something that is us such as our personality or whatever it maybe and therefore there must be something about us that allows our transcendence within the lines of singular static human being. However, on this matter of consciousness Sartre goes further onto say about bad faith that, we cannot ‘constitute ourselves as being what we are’. (p 86) as this would mean that we are being introspective, we are looking to see what we are but there is not one thing that is us, as we are always in flux and so therefore we can never be sincere in as Sartre says in conversation or confession. In the case of this example of the women on the date, in even the moment in which she is conversation with the man she is with when holding this mans hand she is in bad faith as she is some way trying to have some kind of sincerity or introspection about herself when she is speaking of her life, life in general, so it is not just the fact that she is keeping her hand there to postpone making a decision that keeps hers on bad faith but that she tries to speak of herself as if there is a singular self. Again here we can go back to the idea of lying to oneself, although I am not stating this is all bad faith is but, this example also shows as Chris has mentioned, that bad faith in this way is an imbalance of our transcendence and facticity.
I am in agreement with your interpretation of Sartre’s example of the women been in bad faith. Guignon (2004) gives in my opinion a strong definition to being-for itself and being-in-itself. When someone is being-for-itself means that we are a being in transcendence that we do not see our selves as the object, but that we are in constant flux. What Sartre is doing in this example is saying that this women is in bad faith because she is doing a number of things that are keeping her in bad faith, in that she is denying her transcendence, she is a being a being -in-itself as she is seeing herself as the object. This is because she is seeing herself as a being that is static, because she leaves her hand when the man with her takes her hand, although she does not realise it is still there, this is not what keeps her in bad faith although this is part of it. I believe Sartre is pointing out that the bad faith is when she starts to talk about her ‘personality, her life’ etc… This is what keeps her in bad faith, as according to Sartre we cannot have a personality as we are always in flux we are not out past or our present because every minute something can change, we can change our minds or do something that is totally different to what we have done in our past, and therefore who we are will always keep changing, which is where I am in agreement with Kartik that what Sartre is saying is that what bad faith is, is the fact that we cannot reduce ourselves down to facts or a ‘personality’. We cannot just be one thing and stay one thing, what I think one minute may change in the next and as such I am then a being-for-itself rather than a being-in-itself. Although in your discussion of lying to one’s self, I do believe this has an important part in what Sartre is saying, as Sartre does state that this is part of bad faith although not all of it as I have discussed above and so Simone de Beauvoir’s work should not be so easily dismissed as she has a good insight in my opinion to part of what bad faith is although not all of what bad faith is, as she misses the transcendence and facility of a being and being for and in-itself.
I’ve found Sartre to truly understand the concept of bad faith and the example that we have thus far discussed, you must first understand his method of Philosophy. Sartre was simply an existence philosopher, seeing philosophy as an illumination of existence itself, through action. ‘Being and Nothingness’ is to been seen as Sartre’s continuation of Husserl’s Phenomenology, and Heidegger’s Existentialism (although Heidegger denied this label on his work). In ‘Being and Time’, where Sartre inherits a proportion of his puzzling terminology, Heidegger firmly asserts beyond Phenomenology that we are all beings in the world which are separate from our knowledge, “we are not just reasoning minds with a body attached”. Sartre would firmly agree, respecting but also denying the solipsism of Hume or rationalism of Descartes.
In a series of lectures called ‘No Excuses: Existentialism and the Meaning of Life’ Robert C Soloman explains Sartre’s Philosophy in ‘Being and Nothingness’, and other of his existentialist works, such as ‘Nausea’ and ‘No Exit’, as one of “No excuses”. By this, he observes what I believe is a key point in the conversation of bad faith, which I will refer to when in due course. This is the relationship between our freedom and our responsibility, in that it is not that we can choose what we want, but rather that we always have choices, no matter how restricted we are, and therefore have a responsibility to these choices. Sartre’s existentialism advocates that we are made by these choices that we make. The implication of this is that we can have no excuses in any given situation; we have ultimate responsibility. To provide an example, Sartre was famous for saying that we are all responsible for the war (World War Two). This for Sartre was displayed by the French reaction to occupation and the excuses, often driven by emotion, from many not to join resistance, be they of helplessness, fear, self interest, innocence or following the herd, all are veneers covering the choices we have to make, or have made. If an emotion can become our choice, then I believe we have our foundations for the possibility of Bad Faith to occur.
To grasp the concept of Bad Faith we must further explore how Sartre conceives consciousness. He sees a switch around of our causal relations with the world. Consciousness is Nothingness, it is not an object that hides behind our awareness, it is not caused by the world, but rather it is outside of these causal relations, independent and distinct. In not being caused it is free, and so it is our freedom. To return to Heidegger again and his example of hammering nails in wood, I believe Sartre similarly implies that what we see is defined by or expectations. When we perform a task like hammering, we pick up the hammer with pre-reflections that it will perform the specific task, we do not constantly reason this is a hammer (how is it made? how do I use it? etc...) No, we simply perceive and expect of it. This is because, for Sartre, the self is an accumulation determined by our activity in the world, separate from our consciousness, which is not aware of itself. A distinction which not only accounts for our ability to perform these certain tasks under pre-reflection, but also further opens the door to Bad Faith.
Sartre believes “one does not undergo his bad faith; one is not affected with it; it is not a state. But consciousness affects itself with bad faith” and in line with my comments on consciousness earlier he further states that this process “implies a comprehension of bad faith as such and a pre-reflective apprehension (of) consciousness as affecting itself with bad faith”. If one is fully conscious of deceiving oneself then surely the lie could not hold, and her also expresses, “To escape these difficulties people gladly have recourse to the unconscious”. This Sartre believes the main crux of his argument against the psychoanalytical interpretation outlined by Kartik. By attempting to deny our choices, even those made through default or neglect, is to excuse them, and there is for Sartre no unconscious accountable for in bad faith, he then turns to what he calls refers to as ”the double property of the human being”. So, for my exploration into bad faith I will not further define facticity or transcendence, I will use Jaide’s understanding of them, as the facts true about ourselves, and our overreaching of these facts (plans, hopes, fears etc...) respectively.
Bad Faith can be seen to me as the misperceptions of the self for the purpose of avoiding responsibility of the self. I would further go forward to agree that it is, as mentioned, an act of lying to oneself, an imbalance of our facticity and transcendence. It is a self-deception of the self. It is confusing our transcendence and implied choices with our facticity, but also the reverse can also be seen as acting in Bad Faith, as with the woman on the date in the example already discussed, who is denying transcendence. As Sartre so elegantly puts it “I am what I am not, I am not what I am” – which in translates more simply as ‘what I want determines who I am’.
Sartre argues that many of us often “live in bad faith”, however to live without bad faith entirely would be to omit our fallibility, which unfortunately is intertwined within our very nature. To strike the ultimate balance, is to be god, infallible, all of our facticity and transcendence at once; to be nothingness.
''But how can you trick yourself? How can you at the same time as knowing or desiring so the exact opposite? For Sartre ‘we can neither reject nor comprehend bad faith’.''
According to Mc Culloch (1994) spots that Sartre mentions the liar is different from the person in bad faith as a liar involves 'cynical consciousness, affirming the truth within himself' whereas the person in bad faith 'must know in my capacity as deceiver the truth which is hidden from me in my capacity as the deceived''. Mc Culloch asks the question similar to Jaide, ''How can you trick yourself at chess?'' (p.67) Mc Culloch reaches to the translation that bad faith isnt so different from a 'muddle'. In self deception, truth and falsity are both present, this makes it different to an actual lie to another 'Other'. Self deception Sartre explains are based in the unconscious. "the duality of the deceiver and the deceived, the essential condition lie [with]...the 'id' and the 'ego'. The dilemma is descibed in a very potent way;
"The 'id' tries to make things manifest, the censor see's the damage this would cause to the ego, and so it only allows veiled symbollic expression"
What he is saying is that the 'id' act naturally and is unconscious, the conscious part is the ego and the censor. However the ego is not the problem because the ego 'just wants to know what is going on' (p.55, 1994, Mc Culloch). The censor is what is hesistant or causing hesitation as it knows what implications could take place onto the ego. Sartre however doest want us to solely look from a psychoanalytical standpoint.
Sartre gives us the concepts of facticity and transcendence, facticity being the 'facts' of us prior a new moment and transcendence broadly speaking 'our freedom'. " Bad faith, in sum, essentially involves placing too much emphasis on the facticity or too much emphasis on transcendence. In short what Sartre is recommending is that we stay fluidlike and not make 'facts' about our selves, similarly the woman has presumed that she IS an intellectual, and determining he existence with the other as a Being in itself, therefore violating her transcendence.
Sartre's notions of the lady on a date carries numerous presuupositions however if we take Mc Culloch's understanding that she is in a 'muddle' deciding on a number of truths yet remaining fluid and undecisive, it actually could be seen as empowering her transcendence rather than limiting it.
