Bad faith unifies being and nothingness in a single 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 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

To this difficulty is added another which is derived from the total translucency of consciousness. That which affects itself with bad faith must be conscious (of) its bad faith since the being of consciousness is consciousness of being. It appears then that I must be in good faith, at least to the extent that I am conscious of my bad faith. But then this whole psychic system is annihilated. We must agree in fact that if I deliberately and cynically attempt to lie to myself, I fail completely in this undertaking; the lie falls back and collapses beneath my look; it is ruined from behind by the very consciousness of lying to myself which pitilessly constitutes itself well within my project as its very condition. … Even though the existence of bad faith is very precarious, and though it belongs to the kind of psychic structures which we might call “metastable,” it presents nonetheless an autonomous and durable form. It can even be the normal aspect of life for a very great number of people. A person can live in bad faith, which does not mean that he does not have abrupt awakenings to cynicism or to good faith, but which implies a constant and particular style of life. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 281 (#qualifies, via linked claim)

In bad faith there is no cynical lie nor knowing preparation for deceitful concepts. But the first act of bad faith is to flee what it can not flee, to flee what it is. The very project of flight reveals to bad faith an inner disintegration in the heart of being, and it is this disintegration which bad faith wishes to be. In truth, the two immediate attitudes which we can take in the face of our being are conditioned by the very nature of this being and its immediate relation with the in-itself. Good faith seeks to flee the inner disintegration of my being in the direction of the in-itself which it should be and is not. Bad faith seeks to flee the in-itself by means of the inner disintegration of my being. But it denies this very disintegration as it denies that it is itself bad faith. Bad faith seeks by means of “not-being-what-one-is” to escape from the in-itself which I am not in the mode of being what one is not. It denies itself as bad faith and aims at the in-itself which I am not in the mode of “not-being-what-one-is-not.” If bad faith is possible, it is because it is an immediate, permanent threat to every project of the human being; it is because consciousness conceals in its being a permanent risk of bad faith. The origin of this risk is the fact that the nature of consciousness simultaneously is to be what it is not and not to be what it is. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 320 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Bad faith collapses the deceiver and deceived into one consciousness — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 280; Consciousness’s translucency makes bad faith a metastable, evanescent structure — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 281; Nothingness is a supported recoil from Being that enables consciousness to exist (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Bad faith collapses the deceiver and deceived into one consciousness #corroborates (0.95) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 280
• Consciousness’s translucency makes bad faith a metastable, evanescent structure #qualifies (0.80) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 281
• Bad faith and good faith are both flights conditioned by consciousness’s inner self-disintegration #corroborates (0.80) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 320
• Nothingness is a supported recoil from Being that enables consciousness to exist #expands (0.75)
• Bad faith also positively constitutes the self as what it is not #expands (0.70) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 314