Bad faith operates by restricting another’s conduct to the present and refusing temporal meaning
Evidence
Take the example of a woman who has consented to go out with a particular man for the first time. She knows very well the intentions which the man who is speaking to her cherishes regarding her. She knows also that it will be necessary sooner or later for her to make a decision. But she does not want to realize the urgency; she concerns herself only with what is respectful and discreet in the attitude of her companion. She does not apprehend this conduct as an attempt to achieve what we call “the first approach;” that is, she does not want to see possibilities of temporal development which his conduct presents. She restricts this behavior to what is in the present; she does not wish to read in the phrases which he addresses to her anything other than their explicit meaning. If he says to her, “I find you so attractive!” she disarms this phrase of its sexual background; she attaches to the conversation and to the behavior of the speaker, the immediate meanings, which she imagines as objective qualities. The man who is speaking to her appears to her sincere and respectful as the table is round or square, as the wall coloring is blue or gray. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 291
Categorization
- DEFINE: Sartre’s canonical illustration of bad faith in operation — the woman freezing another’s behavior into the present, treating qualities as permanent like things.
- XREF: Directly sets up Beauvoir’s treatment of woman as the inessential Other and of feminine bad faith; the reader’s stated purpose is the backdrop to Beauvoir. — connects to: Bad faith neutralizes doubt by declaring non-persuasion universal — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 317; Bad faith takes past motives as fixed things immune to present meaning — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 1076; Bad faith involves performing a fixed role to deny one’s underlying freedom — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 505 (+4 more)
- SEED: The ‘hand left but not noticed’ passage is the single most-cited example of bad faith in existentialism; a short essay unpacking why this scene is the perfect teaching case—labor in plain sight, treated as intellectualizing—would be accessible and memorable.
Broader Connections
- Bad faith takes past motives as fixed things immune to present meaning
#expands(0.85) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1076 - Bad faith involves performing a fixed role to deny one’s underlying freedom
#expands(0.80) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 505 - Bad faith is making excuses from circumstance rather than acknowledging one’s own freedom
#expands(0.75) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 507 - Bad faith arises because humans as negativity face anguish before their freedom
#expands(0.75) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Ethics of Ambiguity, 31