Bad Faith and Authenticity

Jean-Paul Sartre initially discussed the notion of authenticity through the phenomenologico-ontological treatment of the concept of bad faith. In his Being and Nothingness, he devoted a chapter dealing with the latter concept. He commenced his inquiry by attempting to describe what bad faith is, or more specifically, what bad faith is not. This researcher wants to underscore that he attempted a description, for as noted earlier in the introductory part of this thesis, a definition of authenticity is self-nullifying.

An introduction to the Sartrean notions of bad faith and authenticity shall be taken up in this paper in three steps. Since the Sartrean discussion of authenticity derives primarily from his initial discussion of consciousness, an attempt shall be made to expose the necessary connection that exists between the concepts of consciousness and bad faith. After such an exposition, a via negativa description of bad faith shall be introduced. This strategy is a must in the discussion of Sartrean authenticity since the concept of bad faith is derived from the concept of consciousness, and we shall later see that consciousness is more a negative, than a positive concept. This in turn shall be followed by a positive description of authenticity through the portrayal of authentic heroes depicted in various Sartrean works that deal specifically with the concept of authenticity.

1. Consciousness and Bad Faith

The Sartrean approach to the notion of bad faith necessarily follows the ontological elaboration of the concept of consciousness. Sartre defines consciousness as "a being, the nature of which is to be conscious of the nothingness of its being." On the one hand, the given definition explicates self-awareness on the part of consciousness. As what Sartre writes in The Transcendence of the Ego, "consciousness is aware of itself insofar as it is consciousness of a transcendent object." On the other hand, such a definition restricts the concept of consciousness to a perpetual attempt to a nihilation of being, more specifically, of one's being. Consciousness then is a Not, and its transcendent character makes it an enduring negation of being. In fine, consciousness is dynamic and any attempt to view it as a static entity is itself a negation of the very definition of consciousness.

Jacob Golomb points out the relationship between consciousness and authenticity in Sartre:

Sartre's characterization of consciousness as free spontaneity reflectively positing its own transcendent objects, as active rather than reactive, as neither caused by nor causing external objects and as transparent to itself, calls to mind the attributes of authenticity: spontaneity, lucidity, activity, reflectiveness, self-sufficiency and originality. Sartre felt that this characterization of consciousness sufficed to secure the phenomenological viability of the aesthetic model of authenticity, though not, of course, its ontological and social viability.

The aforementioned phenomenological attributes of authenticity are evident in the authentic heroes portrayed in early Sartrean works. However, before providing positive descriptions of authenticity, it would best serve to recourse first to provide negative descriptions of this concept through a discussion of what bad faith is not, after tracing the phenomenon of bad faith to consciousness.

We now recall Sartre's consideration of being as for-itself and in-itself. The horrifying reality that man is a transcendent being, devoid of any stability prompts man to attempt to approximate some degree of constancy, thereby negating his transcendent nature. Thus exists the phenomenon of bad faith (mauvaise foi). Sartre calls bad faith that "consciousness instead of directing its negation outward turns it toward itself." Consciousness is characterized by transcendence in such that it is directed towards what is not itself. However, the terror brought about by its lucidity and lack of a solid foundation induces man to direct it inwardly through a negation of what he truly is. Bad faith then is project of flight from being towards nonbeing and from nonbeing towards being. It is a negation of the transcendence of one's being. Indeed, Sartre holds that the goal of bad faith is to put oneself out of reach; it is an escape.

2. Negative Description of Bad Faith

The primordial character of bad faith disqualifies an immediate formulation of its essential definition and direct positive description. Since bad faith is itself a negative concept, a via negativa description becomes the best recourse towards an understanding of this concept.

First, bad faith is not essentially the same as falsehood. While Sartre affirms that both lie and bad faith are negative attitudes and that falsehood has basically the same phenomenological structure as bad faith in such that there exist acts of lying, deceit, and distortion of truth in both instances, he also asserts that there exists a basic difference between them. He defines a liar as "a cynical consciousness, affirming truth within himself, denying it in his words, and denying the negation as such." There are two basic considerations as regards this definition. First, the negation that exists in a lie is directed towards a transcendent Other, and not to one's consciousness itself as in the case of bad faith. It thus affirms fourfold aspects of existence: of myself, of the other, of myself in relation to the Other and of the Other in relation to myself.

In fine, the duality of the deceiver and the deceived in a lie is rooted in a distinction of subjectivities. This characteristic of lying in general makes facile the act of hiding the truth from the Other. Second, the liar possesses the truth in its totality in so far as he is able to hide it from the Other. Sartre then concludes that he is willing to grant that bad faith is a lie to oneself, with the prerequisite of a distinction between lying to oneself and lying in general. Emphasizing the fact that lying in general is not necessarily the same as bad faith, Sartre says:

Thus the lie does not put into play the inner structure of present consciousness; all the negations which constitute it bear on objects which by this fact are removed from consciousness. The lie then does not require special ontological foundation, and the explanation which the existence of negation in general requires are valid without change in the case of deceit… In bad faith it is from myself that I am hiding the truth. Thus the duality of the deceiver and the deceived does not exist here. Bad faith on the contrary implies in essence the unity of a single consciousness.

Second, bad faith is not the same as insincerity. Sincerity presupposes an ideal, which can not be affirmed by the early Sartrean notion of absolute freedom. Early Sartre asserts that man is abandoned in this world with no set of extrinsic, objective criteria imposed upon him. The ideal of sincerity consists in one having to be for oneself only what one is for others. According to Sartre, the essential structure of sincerity and bad faith are not altogether different. The goal of sincerity is "to bring me to confess to myself what I am in order that I may finally coincide with my being; in a word, to cause myself to be, in the mode of the in-itself, what I am in the mode of 'not being what I am.'" Meanwhile, the goal of bad faith is "to cause me to be what I am, in the mode of 'not being what one is,' or not to be what I am in the mode of 'being what one is.'" Both sincerity and bad faith are attempts to flee from my being.

Since bad faith is not the same as insincerity, is the project of sincerity in bad faith? In his critique of an article by A.D.M. Walker which suggests that the project of sincerity is in bad faith, Ronald Santoni argues that such cannot be found in the Sartrean ontological system. He hypothetically argued, however, that given that Walker's argument is valid, it may be true that "the person who pursues sincerity as a goal is in bad faith." Furthermore, the notion of sincerity is integral to the possibility of the phenomenon of bad faith:

Thus in order for bad faith to be possible, sincerity itself must be in bad faith. The condition of the possibility for bad faith is that human reality, in its most immediate being, in the intrastructure of the pre-reflective cogito, must be what it is not and not be what it is.

Finally, bad faith is not a state one undergoes, nor a malady infected on one's consciousness. Since bad faith involves a single consciousness, there is nothing outside consciousness which makes possible the phenomenon of bad faith. Bad faith is integral to the very structure of consciousness. The need to construct a semblance of duality between the deceiver and the deceived in view of its absence depends solely on one's consciousness.

A corollary to the aforementioned premises is the fact that since consciousness is intentional, bad faith is likewise intentional. However, the intentionality of this phenomenon is directed reflectively and inwardly, and this makes bad faith a special phenomenon. As Ronald Santoni says in his article, The Cynicism of Sartre's 'Bad Faith,' "bad faith involves a conscious decision to be in bad faith; it decides and wills what it is; it is 'conscious of its own structure.'" Moreover, Sartre traced the possibility of bad faith to the human tendency of fleeing from that which threatens its very own project towards self-fulfillment.

This affirmation of the inevitability of the possibility of bad faith shall later on be taken up vis-ŕ-vis the discussion of the possibility of authenticity. But before engaging in a discussion on the possibility of authenticity in early Sartre, we now turn to a positive description of authenticity in Sartrean works, giving more emphasis to authenticity as portrayed in the mythic heroes of various Sartrean works.

3. Positive Description of Authenticity

Authenticity "supposes a self-recovery of being which was previously corrupted." We recall here that the nature of consciousness itself is favorable to bad faith. Indeed, bad faith is rooted in the very consciousness of man. However, with the Sartrean affirmation of the possibility of authenticity, we are now confronted with this question: what then is authenticity?

Sartrean authenticity may be radically described as the affirmation of human reality of its lucidity, spontaneity and freedom. It is when man confronts the dreadful truth of his existence, and starts to live with it that he begins to live an authentic life. Authentic living supposes the transcendence over the naturally negative tendency of consciousness of being what it is not, and not being what it is. This we shall clearly see in the authentic heroes portrayed in the Sartrean novels that we shall soon discuss. However, we encounter a problem here. If the nature of authenticity is to transcend the tendencies of consciousness itself, then it is itself in bad faith.

Following Sartrean thought, this researcher argues that such cannot be the case for the fact that even the nature of consciousness itself induces a sense of transcendence over itself. We must never take consciousness as a static principle from which everything else follows because in so doing, we negate its very nature which is spontaneity.

Still, there is truth in such an accusation. Indeed, to argue authenticity for the sake of authenticity is an act of bad faith, for in such an act, there is the supposition of an objective ideal, i.e. authenticity, which the notion of authenticity attempts to avoid. In a passage that quotes Sartre's Notebooks, Golomb contrasted Sartrean and Kantian ethical opinions by remarking:

Kant urged us to be moral for the sake of morality per se. Sartre, on the other hand, claims that to behave authentically for the sake of authenticity or being hailed as an authentic person is not to behave authentically at all: 'If you seek authenticity for authenticity's sake, you are no longer authentic' (Notebooks, p. 4). Thus to will authenticity for its own sake is to will to be defined as being-for-itself-in-itself, as a conscious thing-in-the-world, which is not possible. As a predicate of human reality, authenticity is unattainable, because authenticity is nothing.

In his early novel, Nausea, Sartre has already suggested the horrifying character of existence. The hero, Roquentin, feels the paradox of existence. Existence is empty in the sense that there is no reason sufficient enough to explain it, yet it is also overflowing, an excess, in so far as it envelopes the whole being of man. Such a paradox insinuates the meaninglessness and the absurdity of existence. For Sartre, "every existing thing is born without reason, prolongs itself out of weakness, and dies by chance." While acknowledging that he had no right to existence since he only appeared by chance or exited like a stone, Roquentin admitted the excess of existence:

I realized that there was no halfway house between non-existence and this flaunting abundance. If you existed, you had to exist all the way, as far as mouldness, bloatedness, obscenity were concerned.

Such an absurd reality makes man feel the nausea of existence. He feels the tendency to flee from it. In the novel, Sartre points to the character portrayed by a doctor as an epitome of bad faith:

The doctor would like to believe, he would like to hide out the stark reality: that he is alone, without gain, without a past, with an intelligence which is clouded, a body which is disintegrating. For this reason, he has carefully built up, furnished, and peddled his nightmare compensation: he says he is making progress.

In order to veil such naked reality, the inauthentic person resorts to playing the role imposed by society upon him. He attempts to deceive others by acting; ultimately, his role becomes his life:

People who live in society have learned to see themselves in mirrors as they appear to their friends. Is that why my flesh is naked? You might say - yes you might say, nature without humanity… Things are bad! Things are very bad: I have it, the filth, the Nausea.

On the other hand, an authentic man is one who acknowledges the nobility of existence despite its preposterousness:

I exist. It's sweet, so sweet, so slow. And light: you'd think it floated all by itself. It stirs. It brushes by me, melts and vanishes. Gently, gently. There is bubbling water in my throat, it caresses me - and now it comes up again into my mouth. For ever I shall have a little pool of whitish water in my mouth - lying low - grazing my tongue. And this pool is still me. And the tongue. And the throat is me.

Furthermore, even the possibility of individual authenticity is already evident in such an early work when Roquentin says that despite the fact that it is very difficult to be a man, he might succeed in accepting himself.

Meanwhile, in his novel No Exit, Sartre offered a threefold description of an authentic man. For him, an authentic man is one who accepts the inevitability of death, the responsibility of choice, and the abandonment of play-acting. On top of that, the condition for authenticity springs forth from the same phenomenological root as that of bad faith, the look of the Other.

The play is about three people, Garcin, Inez and Estelle, who die and find themselves in hell after a life characterized by bad faith on earth. The punishment they get for acting in bad faith while alive is their becoming perpetually what they played. At first, all of them resolve to play-acting for fear of the look of the rest. However, when they realize that they have nothing to gain from acting in bad faith, one of the characters suggests that they might as well live in good faith. The ironic characterization of authenticity among the characters manifests in a threefold manner.

First, the inevitability of death was a reality they found very hard to accept. At the start of the novel, all of them pretend to act as if they were alive. But then, they could not deny the fact that their past life was gone and redeemable no more. Sartre then presents that the acceptance of the concepts of anguish and abandonment characterizes an authentic life. In a sense, man is a depraved creature and it is only when he has the courage to face such a harrowing truth that he starts to live authentically:

One always dies too soon - or too late. And yet one's whole life is complete at that moment, with a line drawn neatly under it, ready for the summing up. You are - YOUR LIFE, and nothing else.

Second, an authentic man is one who accepts the heavy burden of his humanity, that he is condemned to be free. With this freedom comes the burden of making choices and being solely responsible for them. By embracing such a Herculean task, man then approximates authenticity. Inez manifests such a metanoia when she says to Estelle:

You can nail up your mouth, cut your tongue out - but you can't prevent your being there… I prefer to choose my hell; I prefer to look you in the eyes and fight it out face to face.

Finally, authenticity is surmised by abandoning play-acting. Garcin, following the metanoia of Inez, suggests to the whole group that they might as well abandon play-acting and commence to show what they really are:

We might, anyhow, be natural… Do you know, I used to be mad about women? And some were fond of me. So we may as well stop posing, we've nothing to lose. Why trouble about politeness, and decorum, and the rest of it? We're between ourselves. And presently we shall be naked as - as newborn babes.

This said, it must likewise be noted that despite such an ideal characterization of authenticity in early Sartre, the then flowering writer was still very much obsessed with the idea that individual authenticity is what matters; collective authenticity is a vain endeavor. This observation is proven by what Garcin says at the concluding portion of the play:

So this is hell. I'd never have believed it. You remember all we were told about the torture-chambers, the fire and brimstone, the "burning marl." Old wives' tales! There's no need for red-hot pokers. HELL IS - OTHER PEOPLE!

Even in the play, The Condemned of Altona, we already find that the Other contributes a necessary factor in making conducive the phenomenon of bad faith. Reminiscent of the young Poulou's tragic experiences of childhood with his grandfather, we find in the play both Franz and Werner von Gerlach accusing their father of coercing them into bad faith. In a dramatic dialogue, Werner says:

Oh, Father, not once in your life have you trusted me. You thrust me at the head of the firm because I am your sole male heir, but you first made sure of turning me into an ornament.

Moreover, even Franz acknowledges the inevitability of facticity when he argues with what his sister Johanna says about choice:

Johanna: What does that prove? It's of your own choosing.

Franz: Mine? But I never choose my dear. I AM CHOSEN. Nine months before my birth they had chosen my name, my career, my character, and my fate!

What Franz says about his being chosen is yet another poetic disquisition of the Sartrean thesis of man's being thrown into the world. However, Sartre presents that authentic life consists not in brooding over what is, but in projecting oneself towards his own possibilities in view of the situation where one is. Franz is in bad faith in the early part of the play because there he attempts to flee from the reality that haunts him - the reality that Germany was on its way to recovery after the war:

Yes. The ruins gave me my justification; I loved our looted houses, our mutilated children. I pretend that I was locking myself up so that I should not witness Germany's agony. It's a lie. I wanted my country to die, and I shut myself so that I should not be a witness to its resurrection.

Likewise, Johanna is in bad faith because she does not face the dread of her existence. Living in a war-torn country and having a deranged brother is too much for the sensibilities of a feeble mind:

Johanna: Because they are true. Madmen often speak the truth, Werner.

Werner: Really? Which truth?

Johanna: There's only one: THE HORROR OF LIVING. I can't stand it. I can't stand it. I prefer to lie to myself.

This said, we find in The Condemned of Altona that the fullness of self-realization can only be achieved through authentic life. While it may be true that Johanna acknowledges that she acted in bad faith, it was only a prerequisite for her transition to authentic life:

Johanna: I am not beautiful, is that clear?

Father: If you aren't, who is?

Johanna: No one. There are only ugly women in disguise. I will not disguise myself anymore.

Furthermore, even their father acknowledges that the true cure for the madness of Franz is nothing else but the truth when he says to his children, "But never fear, the only cure to his illness is the truth." Finally, we find in the concluding dialogue of Franz the apex of authentic life. Sartre presents in the play that authenticity consists primarily in indulging in a lucid project of being by making choices, and being responsible for them:

The century might have been a good one had not man been watched from time immemorial by the cruel enemy who had sworn to destroy him, that hairless, evil, flesh-eating beast - man himself … Oh tribunal of the night - you who were, who will be, and who are - I have been! I have been! I, Franz von Gerlach, here in this room, have taken the century upon my shoulders and have said: "I will answer for it. This day and forever."

In The War Diaries, Sartre says that authenticity "can be understood only in terms of the human condition of being thrown into situation … To be authentic is to realize fully one's being-in-situation, whatever the situation may happen to be." Whether this implies surpassing the given or playing within the circumscription of the given can be understood when we grasp what he means by inauthenticity. For Sartre, inauthenticity "consists in seeking out a foundation in order to lift the absurd irrationality of facticity." He shall later reconsider this thesis in his Critique of Dialectical Reason when he affirmed the dialectical interaction between freedom and facticity. Another surprising account on authenticity is found in the same Diaries. Sartre argues that there is no middle ground that separates authenticity from inauthenticity. For him, "one either is or is not authentic."

Finally, let us turn to his other work that deals primarily with collective authenticity rather with individual authenticity, but nevertheless merits a substantial point in a positive discussion of authenticity - Anti-Semite and Jew. Before emphasizing how authenticity is presented in the said work, let us first discuss the Sartrean presentation of three major incarnations of the phenomenon of bad faith, the anti-Semite, the inauthentic Jew, and the democrat. Sartre characterizes anti-Semitism as "the poor man's snobbery." The anti-Semite is in bad faith because he flees from the inevitability of his sociability. He is able to recognize the presence of the Other, the Jew, and with this recognition comes the accompanying fear that the Jew imposes upon him - that the Jew is a threat to his existence. As a result, he resorts to a sadistic and Manichaeistic attitude against the Jews. He sees the Jew as nothing else but a Jew, denying his transcendence. Sartre says:

In espousing anti-Semitism, he does not simply adopt an opinion, he chooses himself as a person. He chooses the permanence and impenetrability of stone, the total irresponsibility of the warrior who obeys his leaders - and he has no leader… The anti-Semite is a man who wishes to be a pitiless stone, a furious torrent, a devastating thunderbolt - anything except a man.

Meanwhile, the inauthentic Jew seeks to flee from his situation. He apprehends the horror vis-ŕ-vis his being a Jew and attempts to deny his plight:

What characterizes the inauthentic Jews is that they deal with their situation by running away from it; they have chosen to deny it, or to deny their responsibilities, or to deny their isolation, which appears intolerable to them… In a word, the inauthentic Jews are men whom other men take for Jews and who have decided to run away from this insupportable situation.

Finally, the democrat views the Jew as man and nothing else. He refuses to acknowledge the latter's Jewish situation. While the anti-Semite condemns the Jew for being Jewish, the democrat chides him for considering himself a Jew. The democrat then refuses to accept the facticity of the Jew as Jew:

The former [Anti-Semite] wishes to destroy him as man and leave nothing in him but the Jew, the pariah, the untouchable; the latter wishes to destroy him as a Jew and leave nothing in him but the man, the abstract and universal subject of the rights of man and the rights of the citizen.

From the aforementioned discussion, we see that Sartre discusses the notion of authenticity vis-ŕ-vis the concept of man as a being in situation. Authentic life is achieved by accepting the facticities of existence and acting within the circumscription of the same:

Authenticity, it is almost needless to say, consists in having a true and lucid consciousness of the situation, in assuming the responsibility and risks that it involves, in accepting it in pride or humiliation, sometimes in horror and hate.