Quotation
Last reviewed:
“Bad faith is a lie to oneself.”
Jean-Paul Sartre · Existentialism · Modern · 1943
What does it mean?
Bad faith is a lie to oneself. The trouble, which the short clause hides, is that the liar and the lied-to are the same, so one must know the truth in order to hide it, and hide it in order not to know it. A rival reading treats bad faith as ordinary hypocrisy, saying one thing and doing another in public. Hypocrisy has two people, or at least a public. Bad faith is a pattern of self-escape, the waiter who is only a waiter, the person who is only their facticity or only their freedom.
Did Jean-Paul Sartre really say this?
The library’s label is Paraphrase or translation. A shortening of Barnes's account. Bad faith is a lie to oneself in which the deceiver and the deceived are the same person, so the usual split inside a lie does not apply. The card keeps the short definition and flags the shortening.
Where it comes from
Being and Nothingness, chapter 2, in Hazel Barnes's translation
Approximate date: 1943.
How to use it
A waiter in a café in Soho, his own example, moves a little too much like a waiter. The lie is not to the customers. It is the attempt to be a role the way a table is a table. You can see a version of it in any job that becomes an alibi for not choosing. Seeing it is not a reason to despise the person, who is doing something he thinks consciousness always tends to do.
A mindset reading
The shortening is marked because the paradox is the point. A lie to oneself sounds easy. The chapter is hard because it has to explain how a consciousness can hide something from itself without splitting in two. If that problem does not bother you, you do not yet have the concept.
Understand the philosophy
Chapter 2 of part 1 is the analysis. Hazel Barnes is the translator. Bad faith is not yet the look, and not yet the useless passion. It is the ethical psychology the rest of the book keeps using.
- self
- ethics
- mind
FAQ
What does it mean?
Bad faith is a lie to oneself. The trouble, which the short clause hides, is that the liar and the lied-to are the same, so one must know the truth in order to hide it, and hide it in order not to know it. A rival reading treats bad faith as ordinary hypocrisy, saying one thing and doing another in public. Hypocrisy has two people, or at least a public. Bad faith is a pattern of self-escape, the waiter who is only a waiter, the person who is only their facticity or only their freedom.
Did Jean-Paul Sartre really say this?
Paraphrase or translation. A shortening of Barnes's account. Bad faith is a lie to oneself in which the deceiver and the deceived are the same person, so the usual split inside a lie does not apply. The card keeps the short definition and flags the shortening.
Which work is it in?
Being and Nothingness, chapter 2, in Hazel Barnes's translation Approximate date: 1943.