Bad faith flees anguish by relocating freedom into a fixed essence of the self
Evidence
What I attempt to flee here is my very transcendence in so far as it sustains and surpasses my essence. I assert that I am my essence in the mode of being of the in-itself. At the same time I always refuse to consider that essence as being historically constituted and as implying my action as a circle implies its properties. I apprehend it, or at least I try to apprehend it as the original beginning of my possible, and I do not admit at all that it has in itself a beginning. I assert then that an act is free when it exactly reflects my essence. However this freedom which would disturb me if it were freedom before myself, I attempt to bring back to the heart of my essence—i.e., of my self. It is a matter of envisaging the self as a little God which inhabits me and which possesses my freedom as a metaphysical virtue. It would be no longer my being which would be free qua being but my Self which would be free in the heart of my consciousness. It is a fiction eminently reassuring since freedom has been driven down into the heart of an opaque being; to the extent that my essence is not translucency, that it is transcendent in immanence, freedom would become one of its properties. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 257
Categorization
- DEFINE: This is the core bad-faith move: redirecting freedom from the transcendence of the for-itself into a property of a reified self.
- XREF: Directly sets up Beauvoir’s treatment of women’s bad faith as consenting to be ‘the Other’ — the ‘freedom of the Other’ motif recurs throughout The Second Sex. — 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 involves performing a fixed role to deny one’s underlying freedom — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 505; Bad faith also positively constitutes the self as what it is not — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 314 (+7 more)
Broader Connections
- Bad faith involves performing a fixed role to deny one’s underlying freedom
#corroborates(0.92) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 505 - Bad faith is making excuses from circumstance rather than acknowledging one’s own freedom
#corroborates(0.90) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 507 - Bad faith requires a self-decentering power that nihilates anguish while being it
#expands(0.88) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 260 - Bad faith also positively constitutes the self as what it is not
#expands(0.85) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 314 - Bad faith mistakes a made condition of inferiority for a fixed essence
#exemplifies(0.82) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 59 - Bad faith exploits transcendence to evade reproach by affirming it as a thing.
#complicates(0.80) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 294