Jean-Paul Sartre held the position that human beings always have the capability to make rational, conscious decisions. He coined the phrase bad faith in order to describe the state wherein one denies his or her total freedom and sees oneself as an inert object. Sartre's The Look

Bad faith

A critical claim in existentialist thought is that we are always radically free to make choices and guide our lives towards our own chosen goal (or 'project'). We cannot escape this freedom, even in overwhelming circumstances. For instance, even an armed mugger's victim possesses choices: to hand over his wallet; to negotiate; to beg; to run; to counter-attack; or to die.

Although we are limited by our circumstances (our facticity), these cannot force us, as radically free beings, to follow one course over another. For this reason, we choose in anguish: we know that we must make a choice, that it will have consequences, and that some choices are better than others. But for Sartre, to claim that one amongst our many conscious possibilities takes undeniable precedence (for instance, 'I cannot risk my life, because I must support my family') is to assume the role of an object in the world, merely at the mercy of circumstance - a being-in-itself that is only its own facticity.

Intentional Consciousness and Freedom

For Sartre this attitude is manifestly self-deceiving. As human consciousness, we are always aware that we are not whatever we are aware of - we cannot, in this sense, be defined as our 'intentional objects' of consciousness, including our facticity of personal history, character, bodies, or objective responsibility. Thus, as Sartre often repeated, 'human reality is what it is not, and it is not what it is': it can only define itself negatively, as 'what it is not'; but this negation is simultaneously the only positive definition it can make of 'what it is'.

From this we are aware of a host of alternative reactions to our objective situation - i.e., of freedom - since no situation can dictate a single response. Only in assuming social roles and value systems external to this nature as conscious beings can we pretend that these possibilities are denied to us; but this is itself a decision made possible by our freedom and our separation from these things. It is this paradoxical free decision to deny to ourselves this inescapable freedom which is 'bad faith'.

Sartre's Examples

Sartre cites a café waiter, whose movements and conversation are a little too "waiter-esque". His voice oozes with an eagerness to please; he carries food rigidly and ostentatiously. His exaggerated behaviour illustrates that he is play acting as a waiter, as an object in the world: an automaton whose essence is to be a waiter. But that he is obviously acting belies that he is aware that he is not (merely) a waiter, but is rather consciously deceiving himself. Sartre, Jean-Paul, Essays in Existentialism, Cidatel Press. 1993, p. 167-169

Another of Sartre’s examples involves a young woman on a first date. She ignores the obvious sexual implications of her date's compliments to her physical appearance, but accepts them instead as words directed at her as a human consciousness. As he takes her hand, she lets it rest lifelessly in his, refusing either to return the gesture or to revoke it. Thus she delays the moment when she must choose to either acknowledge and reject his advances, or submit to them. She conveniently considers her hand only a thing in the world, but his compliments as unrelated to her body; thus playing on her dual human reality as a physical beings, and as consciousness separate and free from this physicality. Sartre, Jean-Paul, Essays in Existentialism, Cidatel Press. 1993, p. 160-164

Sartre tells us that by acting in bad faith, the waiter and the woman are denying their own freedom; but by actively using this freedom itself. Thus they manifestly know they are free, but do not acknowledge it. Bad faith is paradoxical in this regard: when acting in bad faith, a person is both aware, and, in a sense, unaware, that they are free.

Two Modes of Consciousness

Sartre's tells us that the consciousness with which we generally consider our objective surroundings is different to the consciousness of ourselves as conscious of these surroundings (pre-reflective and reflective consciousness respectively); though neither can properly be called unconsciousness. An example he gives is of running after a bus; one is certainly not unaware of running after it, but only after stopping would one reflect and think 'sacre bleu, I was really running there'.

In this sense consciousness always entails being self-aware (being-for-itself). Since for Sartre consciousness also entails a consciousness of our separation from the world, and hence freedom, we are also always aware of this. But we can manipulate these two levels of consciousness, so that our reflective consciousness interprets the factual limits of our objective situation as insurmountable, whilst our pre-reflective consciousness remains aware of alternatives.

Freedom and Morality

Yet we constantly tell ourselves otherwise in order to escape the anguish of our freedom. Sartre says man is doomed to freedom: whether he adopts an 'objective' moral system to do this choosing for him, or follows only his pragmatic concerns, he cannot help but be aware that they are not - fundamentally - part of him. Moreover, as possible intentional objects of his consciousness, they are fundamentally not part of him, but rather exactly what he, as consciousness, defines himself in opposition to; along with everything else he could be conscious of.

Fundamentally one cannot escape responsibility by handing it over to a moral system for Sartre, but instead, the very adoption of a moral system is in itself a choice that we endorse, implicitly or explicitly, and which one must take full responsibility for - though not one that can be objectively justified. In this sense Sartre claims that human reality is completely self-responsible, but completely unjustifiable.

As free human beings, we cannot claim our actions are determined by forces exterior to us; This is the core statement of existentialism, that, because of being 'doomed' to this eternal freedom, human beings exist, often in anguish, before the definition - or essence - of what it means to be a human being exists.

Truly dedicated professionals of their respective moral codes - priests interpreting sacred scriptures, lawyers interpreting the Constitution, doctors interpreting the Hippocratic oath - instead of only executing pre-ordained rules, feel a powerful inner struggle for every decision they make: because they are aware that precisely nothing stands between those rules and their own chosen interpretation except themselves. For Sartre, this is the nature of responsibility; to act otherwise is bad faith.

A Freudian framework

Freudian psychoanalysis poses a potential solution to the paradoxical self deception that occurs in bad faith. In a Freudian framework, the brain is split into three parts: the Id (the unconscious), the Superego (polices the Id), and the Ego (reflective upper level consciousness). The split between conscious and subconscious allows for a person to consciously believe one thing, and unconsciously believe another. Thus, according to Freud, self deception is possible.

In the case of the waiter, it is possible that his unconscious recognizes his freedom and expresses desires to engage it. Perhaps he unconsciously wishes to spit in his patron’s food. Under this framework, his unconscious desires are repressed by the Superego. He then consciously rejects his freedom and assumes the role of "a waiter".

The Superego acts as a policeman and facilitator between both the Id and the Ego. A self-deception occurs when the Superego knowingly transmits false information to the Ego. The ego, our conscious faculties, fully believes what is transmitted to it by the Superego. The self deception is possible because there exist two separate "belief systems" which are divided. It is with the Superego that Sartre lodges his chief complaint. Sartre, Jean-Paul, Essays in Existentialism, Cidatel Press. 1993, p. 155-158 He tells us that if the Superego is to perform its duties, it must possess knowledge about the information it is restraining from the Ego. Without knowing what it is restraining, the Superego would not be a policeman, but rather a sieve, arbitrarily restricting the Id’s drives. Sartre also tells us that the Superego must know that it is making choices concerning what information to facilitate. It must be aware of itself and what it is doing. Sartre, Jean-Paul, Essays in Existentialism, Cidatel Press. 1993, p. 156-157

Sartre then makes two important moves that deserve fleshing out with some precision: (1) He believes that by "knowing" and "choosing", an entity must also possess the capability to "know itself" and know that it is facilitating false information. He tells us that in order to make the jump from sieve to facilitator, such upper level knowledge is necessary. (2) Sartre rejects the Freudian framework as a response to the paradox of self deception, because the upper level consciousness that knows it is facilitating false information is the same upper level consciousness present in the Ego, which accepts that information as true. Therefore, both the acceptance and the rejection that occurs during bad faith are in the same mental scope, and it is still paradoxical.

See also

• Jean Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness
• Jean Paul Sartre, Nausea

External links

• Sartre Online
• Stanford Encyclopedoa of Philosophy: Sartre
• Sartre.org Articles, archives, and forum

References

Existentialism