Trying to deny one’s responsibility presupposes the very universal value it refuses.

Evidence

The man who lies in self-excuse, by saying “Everyone will not do it” must be ill at ease in his conscience, for the act of lying implies the universal value which it denies. By its very disguise his anguish reveals itself. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism Is a Humanism, 11

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: A genuinely paradoxical knot: bad faith cannot be self-consistent because the lie itself invokes the universal it denies — the structure of self-deception is internally unstable.
• XREF: connects to: The determinist denial of agency is itself a moral position of nonaccountability; Denying conscious control is itself a moral position of nonaccountability — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 315; Utilitarianism can only treat people consistently by denying their sense of being ethical agents. — Douglas A. Kysar, Regulating from Nowhere: Environmental…, 122

Broader Connections

• The determinist denial of agency is itself a moral position of nonaccountability #expands (0.85)
• Denying conscious control is itself a moral position of nonaccountability #expands (0.85) — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 315