Bad faith requires a self-decentering power that nihilates anguish while being it
Evidence
Yet to flee anguish and to be anguish can not be exactly the same thing. If I am my anguish in order to flee it, that presupposes that I can decenter myself in relation to what I am, that I can be anguish in the form of “not-being it,” that I can dispose of a nihilating power at the heart of anguish itself. This nihilating power nihilates anguish in so far as I flee it and nihilates itself in so far as I am anguish in order to flee it. This attitude is what we call bad faith. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 260
Categorization
- DEFINE: Defines bad faith as the structure of fleeing anguish while remaining it, grounded in a nihilating power.
- XREF: This is the core definition that will underwrite Beauvoir’s reading of bad faith; also connects to Sartre’s own development of the concept in the coming chapters. — 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; Anguish is freedom’s self-apprehension, opposed to the serious man’s faith in external values — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 253 (+4 more)
- DEEPTHINKING: The paradox that bad faith both suppresses and presupposes the very nothingness it flees is a dense, resurgent idea.
Broader Connections
- Bad faith requires the for-itself to both be and not be what it is
#expands(0.90) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 313 - Bad faith also positively constitutes the self as what it is not
#expands(0.85) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 314 - Bad faith involves performing a fixed role to deny one’s underlying freedom
#contradicts(0.80) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 505