Bad faith works by forming concepts that fuse facticity and transcendence without synthesizing them

Evidence

It is a certain art of forming contradictory concepts which unite in themselves both an idea and the negation of that idea. The basic concept which is thus engendered, utilizes the double property of the human being, who is at once a facticity and a transcendence. These two aspects of human reality are and ought to be capable of a valid coordination. But bad faith does not wish either to coordinate them nor to surmount them in a synthesis. Bad faith seeks to affirm their identity while preserving their differences. It must affirm facticity as being transcendence and transcendence as being facticity, in such a way that at the instant when a person apprehends the one, he can find himself abruptly faced with the other. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 292

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the very mechanism of bad faith: contradictory concepts that affirm identity while preserving difference between facticity and transcendence.
• XREF: This is the core structural definition of bad faith that Beauvoir’s ethics of ambiguity will presuppose and transform — central backdrop. — connects to: Bad faith exploits transcendence to evade reproach by affirming it as a thing. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 294; 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; Bad faith involves performing a fixed role to deny one’s underlying freedom — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 505 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Bad faith exploits transcendence to evade reproach by affirming it as a thing. #expands (0.85) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 294
• Bad faith requires the for-itself to both be and not be what it is #expands (0.80) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 313
• Bad faith involves performing a fixed role to deny one’s underlying freedom #exemplifies (0.78) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 505