Authenticity is the radical self-recovery that escapes the good-bad faith dichotomy

Evidence

The proof of this is that the same man who in sincerity posits that he is what in actuality he was, is indignant at the reproach of another and tries to disarm it by asserting that he can no longer be what he was. We are readily astonished and upset when the penalties of the court affect a man who in his new freedom is no longer the guilty person he was. But at the same time we require of this man that he recognize himself as being this guilty one. What then is sincerity except precisely a phenomenon of bad faith? — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 306 (#qualifies, via linked claim)

In bad faith there is no cynical lie nor knowing preparation for deceitful concepts. But the first act of bad faith is to flee what it can not flee, to flee what it is. The very project of flight reveals to bad faith an inner disintegration in the heart of being, and it is this disintegration which bad faith wishes to be. In truth, the two immediate attitudes which we can take in the face of our being are conditioned by the very nature of this being and its immediate relation with the in-itself. Good faith seeks to flee the inner disintegration of my being in the direction of the in-itself which it should be and is not. Bad faith seeks to flee the in-itself by means of the inner disintegration of my being. But it denies this very disintegration as it denies that it is itself bad faith. Bad faith seeks by means of “not-being-what-one-is” to escape from the in-itself which I am not in the mode of being what one is not. It denies itself as bad faith and aims at the in-itself which I am not in the mode of “not-being-what-one-is-not.” If bad faith is possible, it is because it is an immediate, permanent threat to every project of the human being; it is because consciousness conceals in its being a permanent risk of bad faith. The origin of this risk is the fact that the nature of consciousness simultaneously is to be what it is not and not to be what it is. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 320 (#qualifies, via linked claim)

But bad faith is not restricted to denying the qualities which I possess, to not seeing the being which I am. It attempts also to constitute myself as being what I am not. It apprehends me positively as courageous when I am not so. And that is possible, once again, only if I am what I am not; that is, if non-being in me does not have being even as non-being. Of course necessarily I am not courageous; otherwise bad faith would not be bad faith. But in addition my effort in bad faith must include the ontological comprehension that even in my usual being what I am, I am not it really and that there is no such difference between the being of “being-sad,” for example—which I am in the mode of not being what I am—and the “non-being” of not-being-courageous which I wish to hide from myself. Moreover it is particularly requisite that the very negation of being should be itself the object of a perpetual nihilation, that the very meaning of “non-being” be perpetually in question in human reality. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 314 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Sincerity aims at an ideal mode of being human nature prevents attaining — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 312; Bad faith also positively constitutes the self as what it is not — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 314; Bad faith and good faith are both flights conditioned by consciousness’s inner self-disintegration — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 320 (+9 more)

Broader Connections

• Bad faith also positively constitutes the self as what it is not #expands (0.80) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 314
• Bad faith and good faith are both flights conditioned by consciousness’s inner self-disintegration #qualifies (0.80) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 320
• Sincerity reveals itself as a form of bad faith #qualifies (0.80) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 306
• Sincerity can be an active ingredient of self-deception rather than its opposite #contradicts (0.75) — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 1405
• Sincerity shares the same structure as bad faith and can collapse into it #qualifies (0.75) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 311
• Bad faith mistakes a made condition of inferiority for a fixed essence #expands (0.72) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 59