Sartre defines bad faith as denying responsibility by blaming circumstance

Evidence

Sartre does not deny that the need to keep making decisions brings constant anxiety. He heightens this anxiety by pointing out that what you do really matters. You should make your choices as though you were choosing on behalf of the whole of humanity, taking the entire burden of responsibility for how the human race behaves. If you avoid this responsibility by fooling yourself that you are the victim of circumstance or of someone else’s bad advice, you are failing to meet the demands of human life and choosing a fake existence, cut off from your own ‘authenticity’. — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 37

Categorization

• DEFINE: Introduces the concept of choosing on behalf of humanity and defines inauthentic existence as refusing that burden — key for movement orientation.
• XREF: Foreshadows the Kantian categorical imperative that Sartre repurposes; useful synthesis for the reader’s Continental-focused orientation. — connects to: Bad faith involves performing a fixed role to deny one’s underlying freedom — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 505; Bad faith is making excuses from circumstance rather than acknowledging one’s own freedom — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 507; Bad faith is a form of belief, not a lie or certainty — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 315 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Bad faith is making excuses from circumstance rather than acknowledging one’s own freedom #corroborates (0.95) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 507
• Bad faith involves performing a fixed role to deny one’s underlying freedom #expands (0.85) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 505
• Bad faith is a form of belief, not a lie or certainty #expands (0.80) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 315
• Bad faith takes past motives as fixed things immune to present meaning #expands (0.75) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1076
• Bad faith mistakes a made condition of inferiority for a fixed essence #expands (0.75) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 59