Leigh Broomfield

Existentialism Paper 2
One of Jean-Paul Sartres most foundational beliefs is that all humans are
free. With the freedom of being a conscious human being comes responsibilities
for our actions. Realizing the weight of our choices and the multitude of possib
ilities we give up by making our choices can leave us with a feeling of anguish.
One of the ways to deal with this anguish is to act in bad faith Sartre says. A
cting in bad faith is the exact thing a person should not do, because then they
are denying what it is to be a human being, to have their freedom. Sartre gives
multiple examples of bad faith and talks about whether it is or is not possible
for a person to actually live in bad faith.
Essential to the concept of bad faith is Sartres concept of freedom, whic
h is inevitably tied to consciousness. Humans are the only existence that have t
he ability to divorce themselves from the causal chain of events unfolding in th
e universe. Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he i
s responsible for everything he does, (Sartre Being and Nothingness, 1956). A pe
rson does this by bringing what Sartre calls nothingness to the causal series of e
vents, divorcing themselves from them and then making their decisions. The real n
ature of the present revealed itself: it was what exists, all that was not prese
nt did not exist, (Sartre Nausea, 1964). Being separate from the past means that
we must continue to recreate ourselves. The unfolding of events as a determined
chain that leads up to this moment is the past, and the present would otherwise
be determined by the past if it werent for the human ability to create nothingne
ss. Just because a person has been a writer in the past does not mean he is a wr
iter. To be a writer he must once again reinvent himself as such, because he is
divorced from his past, and again in the future he is not a writer unless he rep
eats the same invention. Or as Sartre would say, I am not what I am. Sartre refers
to what makes up the facts that make up our past as our facticity. Our facticit
y is the background which we make our decisions or execute our projects against,
and may give rise to our motivations, but both these motivations and our factic
ity do not determine who we are in the present or future because of our ability
to separate ourselves from them.
With the idea that a human can make their own choices, and are not prede
termined to be anything then their decisions determine what they are and what th
ey will be. Life has no meaning a priori It is up to you to give it a meaning, an
d value is nothing but the meaning that you choose, (Sartre Being and Nothingness
, 1956). Sartre tells us that god does not exist, and therefore humans are not c
reated with a purpose. This is exemplified in his famous quote, existence precede
s essence. There is no human nature, besides being free, which is what it is to b
e a human. We are not born into the world with a concept of ourselves, although
we have our facticity, as soon as we have our consciousness we begin to shape ou
r own world through our choices. Not only do we decide who we are through our ac
tions and choices, but there is nothing besides ourselves to guide us and give u
s values and directions in the world, and this knowledge can weigh heavily on th
e mind of the individual. This stress from the choices you have to make, with no
thing to guide you, and in the face of such a vast amount of choices, Sartre cal
ls anguish. Anguish stems from the universality of our choices as well, or from
the idea that our choices guide others in how they should consciously act, and t
hat they have far reaching consequences, affecting all other beings.
The human consciousness is always directed at an object. A person does not just
think, they think about a thing, a concept, a person, and how they experience an
d relate to the object. The act of thinking about an object reflexively is placi
ng both the person and the object in the world. To take part in reflexive awaren
ess a person must nihilate all of existence that they are not focusing on to cre
ate their experience of the object. Sartre explains that the I of the self arises
with the world, unlike other philosophers, like Descartes philosophy which says t
he I arises before the world, and the empiricists philosophy that says the world ex
ists first and then the I is created. This is not to say that nothing exists befor
e humans posit themselves in relation to the rest of existence, but what exists
before humans are reflexively thinking about existence is what Sartre calls the e
n-soi, which translates to being in-itself. This being in-itself that exists pre-
reflexively is massive, opaque, and not categorized, it is everything that exist
s, or an undifferentiated reality. It is from this en-soi that we nihilate and d
ifferentiate existence to create the world we experience, but because we exclude
aspects of the objects and not their entirety they will always be transphenomen
al, or more than we are experiencing them to be. We have to make the choice to v
iew objects in certain ways, to construct the categorizes to view the world and
nihilate the other datum about the objects. With the ability to shape the world
that we experience in anyway we choose, we are the reason we experience what we
experience. In other words we are responsible for our own lives. This is a key r
ealization in Sartres writings and the source of the anguish that comes from faci
ng this responsibility for our choices is what causes many people to flee in bad
faith. I construct my memories with my present. I am lost, abandoned in the pres
ent. I try in vain to rejoin the past: I cannot escape, (Sartre Nausea, 1964). Th
e attempt in vain to rejoin to connect with the past is an act of bad faith. To
believe in determinism, or in these concepts the idea that our facticity determi
nes our future, is a form of bad faith. This is the attempt of a person to flee
their responsibility and instead of making their own choices allow their environ
ment to determine their actions. Another way to flee ones responsibility is to be
subservient to another persons will and act the way they want you to, or what Sa
rtre calls acting masochistically. Other people see you as an object, they defin
e you while nihilating parts of you, and thus have a perceived version of who yo
u are. By accepting this role they have given you, you avoid making decisions ab
out what to be or how to act and flee the anguish of those choices.
Sartre writes about this type of bad faith in the example of the waiter in the c
afe. This man, who has accepted his role as the waiter, acts how he thinks a wai
ter should act. He no longer has to make choices about his actions because he be
lieves that he is in fact a waiter, that is his project and his decisions stem f
rom there. Sartre gives another example of a young woman on a date, whos male cou
nterpart has complimented her and who reaches over and places his hand on hers.
This young woman flees from making a choice in both circumstances regarding how
she should act, instead of withdrawing her hand or leaving it there consciously
she escapes the facticity of her body and flees into her transcendence of her in
tellect. Again, by turning away from making the decisions this young woman has a
cted in bad faith.
The act of bad faith, Sartre tells us, is an attempt to lie to oneself. This mea
ns both the deceiver and the deceived are not separate and that creates a proble
m because the deceived knows the truth, on some level, that the deceiver is atte
mpting to hide. Most acts of bad faith occur pre-reflexively, as the person does
not contemplate that they are fleeing their choices and attempting. The knowled
ge of their actions is within their grasps however and they could reflect upon t
heir bad faith as see the truth of what they are attempting. The waiter throws h
imself into the role of being a waiter, he could take a moment to observe his ac
tions and see that he knows he is trying to be what he is not and give up his fr
eedom. Making oneself an object would be to annihilate your own will and assume
a role in the causal series of events that humans are by their very nature divor
ced from.
Inherent in these acts of bad faith is both the knowledge of the truth, that you
are in fact lying to yourself, and that to partake in an act of bad faith, you
have to make choices. Even the decision to live by a role, such as the waiter, i
s a decision that one makes. To live a masochistic life, subservient to anothers
will can not be done without choices being made on the part of the subservient p
erson. Acting in bad faith does not actually prevent you from experiencing angui
sh either, because as you flee the anguish, you do so in anguish, being forced t
o live with the same emotions that you are attempting to escape. Living in bad f
aith would mean constantly pushing the truth out of your reflexive awareness, to
your pre-reflexive awareness and attempting to be a being for others at all tim
es.
One of the major flaws with Sartres idea of bad faith is that it seems to be a pa
radoxical behavior. If in every act of bad faith exists an act of good faith, an
d if every lie to oneself is made impossible by ones knowledge of the truth, then
bad faith is impossible. Every action you take is an action you have undertaken
from choices you have made. So there can be no acts of bad faith and there is o
nly good faith. Sartre still wanted to say despite this that a person could live
in bad faith, and that this was not the way to living an authentic life. There
is a need to be aware of the acts of self deception and to avoid them Sartre bel
ieved, as part of the responsibilities of living as a free human being. If a per
son makes the choice to attempt to give up their freedoms, to live as an object,
or to live in the way that another has outlined for them, shouldnt that be permi
ssible to in Sartres existentialism? The existence that Sartre has posited is one
that comes with no morals pre-packaged, and no values to guide the decisions of
a person. So what makes a decision more valuable than any other decision? If th
ere is a truly authentic way to live in the world, without bad faith, then what
is it? These are questions that plague us as we read Sartres writing and can only
be left to our own interpretation as we are not given all of the answers.
If Sartre had considered some sort of duality of the mind as possible then decei
ving oneself because plausible. However he explicitly denies the possibility, ta
lking about Freuds concept of the id, an unconscious state that is hidden from th
e conscious mind, and how that is not possible. The idea that the unconscious wo
uld have to know that its intent was to deceive and what content was not supposed
to be accessible by the conscious mind seems to have to be a conscious directio
n, a decision made for a purpose which does not make sense for an unconscious to
have. So self deception cannot exist for Sartre just because of compartmentaliz
ation of our minds, or some duality of the self. The other consideration is that
we are perpetually in bad faith. This comes from the idea that no matter what o
bject we are focussed on it is transphenomenal, and it will be more than we are
perceiving. However all facts about the object are available to us, as they exis
t in the ensoi, and we are not taking heed of these. Thus It is almost impossible
not to be in bad faith at any one point, as there will always be some truth or fa
ct that we are not aware of and which is not included in our decision making pro
cess, (Arnold-Baker 2002).
Then what bad faith seems to be is how we go about living as a free being. It ta
kes awareness of our freedom, and effort to reflect on our facticity, choices, r
esponsibility, and effects we have on the world. Good faith and bad faith can be
separated by the intention behind the action that is occurring. If a person mak
es a decision after deciding it is what they want to do, not something they are
forced to do or pre-determined to do, then they have made a decision in good fai
th. Making a decision any other way, any way that attempts to escape the burden
of responsibility thrust upon you by your freedom is not only self deception abo
ut the fact that you can not live in the world without making decisions for your
self, but it is an attempt at denying the very thing that it is to be human. Sar
tre extends the notion of bad faith from something you have a duty to avoid, and
declares that when others are in bad faith they can be judged as cowards or scu
m. This extension of bad faith from an individualistic concept to a universal mo
ral is possibly the largest misstep in the whole concept of bad faith.
Existentialism by its very nature is an individualistic philosophy. Every single
person has been cast alone into the world and must suffer through it with no gui
ding principles, no morals, and no values that have been given to them by god or
by some other all knowing being. Sartre has told us that all of our judgements
are subjective and underneath all of it, after our categories have been taken aw
ay there is being in itself. Why does this universal moral hold up in the face o
f the ensoi? There is a tension in this attempt to universalize a moral standard
while still believing in the lack of any morals that exist before human experie
nce. Sartres ideas that the intention behind our actions is more important than t
he actions themselves may be the most lasting lesson we can take away from his w
riting on bad faith.
Work Cited
Arnold-Baker, Claire. "What is so Bad about Bad Faith?." Practical Philosophy: 4
6-51. Print.
Sartre, Jean. Being and nothingness: an essay on phenomenological ontology. New
York:
Philosophical Library, 1956. Print.
Sartre, Jean, and Lloyd Alexander. Nausea. New York: New Directions Publishing C
orp., 1964. Print.