Deferring a decision is an enacted form of self-deception about freedom

Evidence

This time then she refuses to apprehend the desire for what it is; she does not even give it a name; she recognizes it only to the extent that it transcends itself toward admiration, esteem, respect and that it is wholly absorbed in the more refined forms which it produces, to the extent of no longer figuring anymore as a sort of warmth and density. But then suppose he takes her hand. This act of her companion risks changing the situation by calling for an immediate decision. To leave the hand there is to consent in herself to flirt, to engage herself. To withdraw it is to break the troubled and unstable harmony which gives the hour its charm. The aim is to postpone the moment of decision as long as possible. We know what happens next; the young woman leaves her hand there, but she does not notice that she is leaving it. She does not notice because it happens by chance that she is at this moment all intellect. She draws her companion up to the most lofty regions of sentimental speculation; she speaks of Life, of her life, she shows herself in her essential aspect—a personality, a consciousness. And during this time the divorce of the body from the soul is accomplished; the hand rests inert between the warm hands of her companion—neither consenting nor resisting—a thing. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 291

Categorization

• DEFINE: The climactic image of bad faith: the body made thing, ‘neither consenting nor resisting,’ as flight from commitment.
• XREF: Echoes the ‘divorce of body from soul’ theme that Beauvoir makes central to woman’s situation in The Second Sex. — connects to: Freedom that withdraws into self-interest denies its own nature; Bad faith involves performing a fixed role to deny one’s underlying freedom — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 505; People use small self-imposed constraints to avoid confronting their freedom — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 504 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Freedom that withdraws into self-interest denies its own nature #expands (0.88)
• People use small self-imposed constraints to avoid confronting their freedom #expands (0.85) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 504
• Bad faith involves performing a fixed role to deny one’s underlying freedom #corroborates (0.82) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 505
• Bad faith is making excuses from circumstance rather than acknowledging one’s own freedom #expands (0.80) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 507