Bad faith requires a conscious effort that simultaneously recognizes and denies an experience.
Evidence
Here we find a pattern of distraction. Admissions which Steckel was able to draw out inform us that these pathologically frigid women apply themselves to becoming distracted in advance from the pleasure which they dread; many for example at the time of the sexual act, turn their thoughts away toward their daily occupations, make up their household accounts. Will anyone speak of an unconscious here? Yet if the frigid woman thus distracts her consciousness from the pleasure which she experiences, it is by no means cynically and in full agreement with herself; it is in order to prove to herself that she is frigid. We have in fact to deal with a phenomenon of bad faith since the efforts taken in order not to be present to the experienced pleasure imply the recognition that the pleasure is experienced; they imply it in order to deny it. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 289
Categorization
- DEFINE: The frigid-woman case concretely defines bad faith: awareness exercised precisely to deny what is recognized.
- XREF: Directly parallel to denial and self-deception structures later formalized in the book and taken up by Beauvoir. — connects to: The Freudian unconscious cannot explain bad faith because it fragments psychic unity. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 289; The psychoanalytic censor must be conscious of itself, hence in bad faith — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 286; Bad faith requires the for-itself to both be and not be what it is — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 313 (+7 more)
Broader Connections
- Bad faith requires the for-itself to both be and not be what it is
#corroborates(0.95) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 313 - Bad faith requires a self-decentering power that nihilates anguish while being it
#corroborates(0.95) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 260 - Bad faith is the contradiction of asserting both freedom and its absence at once
#corroborates(0.90) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 77 - Willed self-correction can be carried out in bad faith, working and refusing simultaneously
#corroborates(0.90) - Bad faith emerges when one acknowledges facts but refuses their imposed conclusion.
#expands(0.85) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 307 - Bad faith involves performing a fixed role to deny one’s underlying freedom
#exemplifies(0.85) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 505 - Bad faith exploits transcendence to evade reproach by affirming it as a thing.
#expands(0.80) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 294 - Bad faith is making excuses from circumstance rather than acknowledging one’s own freedom
#qualifies(0.75) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 507