in relation to chris (mainly) :D

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.