Bad faith collapses the deceiver and deceived into one consciousness

Evidence

Bad faith then has in appearance the structure of falsehood. Only what changes everything is the fact that in bad faith it is from myself that I am hiding the truth. Thus the duality of the deceiver and the deceived does not exist here. Bad faith on the contrary implies in essence the unity of a single consciousness. … One does not undergo his bad faith; one is not infected with it; it is not a state. But consciousness affects itself with bad faith. There must be an original intention and a project of bad faith; this project implies a comprehension of bad faith as such and a pre-reflective apprehension (of) consciousness as affecting itself with bad faith. It follows first that the one to whom the lie is told and the one who lies are one and the same person, which means that I must know in my capacity as deceiver the truth which is hidden from me in my capacity as the one deceived. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 280

Categorization

• DEFINE: Establishes the core structural definition of bad faith: unlike ordinary lying, its duality of deceiver/deceived collapses into the unity of a single consciousness.
• XREF: 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 unifies being and nothingness in a single consciousness; Lying requires full conscious possession of the truth being hidden (+10 more)

Broader Connections

• Bad faith exploits belief’s inherent self-undoing to install impossible beliefs #expands (0.85) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 319
• The Freudian unconscious reintroduces a deceiver-deceived duality rather than explaining bad faith #complicates (0.85) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 282
• Consciousness’s translucency makes bad faith a metastable, evanescent structure #expands (0.80) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 281
• Bad faith is the contradiction of asserting both freedom and its absence at once #expands (0.80) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 77
• Bad faith involves performing a fixed role to deny one’s underlying freedom #expands (0.80) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 505