Bad faith also positively constitutes the self as what it is not
Evidence
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
Categorization
- DEFINE: Completes the two-sided structure of bad faith: it denies qualities one has AND posits qualities one lacks, both resting on perpetual nihilation.
- XREF: The ‘perpetual nihilation’ of non-being connects to the for-itself’s fundamental project developed in the later chapters on freedom. — connects to: Psychological guilt stems from evading one’s absolute freedom through bad faith — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 71; Bad faith flees anguish by relocating freedom into a fixed essence of the self — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 257; Bad faith unifies being and nothingness in a single consciousness (+8 more)
Broader Connections
- Bad faith involves performing a fixed role to deny one’s underlying freedom
#expands(0.90) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 505 - Bad faith is making excuses from circumstance rather than acknowledging one’s own freedom
#expands(0.85) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 507 - Bad faith mistakes a made condition of inferiority for a fixed essence
#exemplifies(0.85) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 59