Patterns and Inevitability Bad Faith

The previous discussions may have already given a glimpse of the patterns of bad faith. The descriptions of both bad faith and authenticity that were presented hitherto already contain a subliminal image of the phenomenon of bad faith. Let us then attempt to summarize and clarify the previous discussion with the presentation of the threefold patterns of bad faith that are implied in Being and Nothingness.

The first pattern of bad faith is what Sartre calls the metastable concept of transcendence-facticity. On the phenomenological level, this consists primarily in deferring the moment of decision. When a person is confronted with the challenge to choose, the usual tendency is to postpone the moment of decision for in so doing, he avoids the responsibility corresponding to his choice. He does not want to take accountability for his existence and this he does by means of indulging in life-patterns devoid of commitment. On a deeper ontological level, such a pattern of bad faith consists in confusing transcendence and facticity. The possibility of bad faith of this kind is rooted in man's being at once a facticity and a transcendence. Man is a facticity in so far as he is condemned to be in the world; he is transcendence in so far as he is free to project himself. This model of bad faith is committed when one considers facticity as transcendence, and transcendence as facticity:

Bad faith seeks to affirm their identity while preserving their differences. It must affirm facticity as being transcendence and transcendence as being facticity, in such a way that at the instant when a person apprehends the one, he can find himself abruptly faced with the other.

The second pattern of bad faith is rooted in an interplay between man's being for himself and his being for others. Every human act has a double aspect; it can be seen both by the one who performs the act and the Other. This duality of human act makes possible the phenomenon of bad faith. This we find when Sartre says, "The equal dignity of being, possessed by my being-for-others and by my being-for-myself permits a perpetually disintegrating synthesis and a perpetual game of escape from the for-itself to the for-others, and from the for-others to the for-itself." The ambiguous interaction between the for-itself and the for-others is made manifest in affirming at once that one is what he has been and one is not what he has been. On the one hand, man "deliberately arrests himself at one period in his life and refuses to take into consideration the later changes."

By absolutizing his facticity through considering himself an immutable and finished product, he then refuses to face the responsibility for his existence. On the other hand, man "in the face of reproaches or rancor dissociates himself from his past by insisting on his freedom and on his perpetual re-creation." He then flees from answering for what he has been by seeking refuge in the absolutization of his transcendence.

The third and final pattern of bad faith is one of viewing one's self as Other by permanently assuming one's role, thereby transforming oneself to the mode of being-in-itself. Society demands that each member have a role to play in the proper functioning of society. Sartre presents as an example a waiter in a café who has applied himself to a portrayal of his role as a waiter. The waiter is guilty of bad faith because "the waiter in the café can not be immediately a café waiter in the sense that this inkwell is an inkwell, or the glass is a glass." The waiter cannot assume the being of a waiter because he is primarily more than just a waiter; he is man. Sartre explains:

It is precisely this person who I have to be (if I am the waiter in question) and who I am not. It is not that I do not wish to be this person or that I want this person to be different. But rather there is no common measure between his being and mine. It is a "representation" for others and for myself, which means that I can be he only in representation. But if I represent myself as him, I am not he; I am separated from him as the object from the subject, separated by nothing, but this nothing isolates me from him. I can not be he, I can only play at being him; that is, imagine to myself that I am he. And thereby affect him with my nothingness.

All three patterns of bad faith have one thing in common: they are rooted in a contradiction that inheres in consciousness. The human reality is one characterized by a dialectic of facticity and transcendence, of being what it is not and not being what it is, of a relation to the Other and a relation to the Self. The resulting synthesis is a murky amalgamation of contradictory phenomena. The human person thus perpetually becomes a battleground between opposing forces. The resulting instability becomes itself the very condition for the inevitability of bad faith. Whatever position man takes, he is haunted with the said phenomenon. What complicates the problem of bad faith is the fact that bad faith is itself faith. Sartre holds that taking into consideration the nature of consciousness, belief and non-belief are but two sides of the same coin:

But the nature of consciousness is such that in it the mediate and the immediate are one and the same being. To believe is to know that one believes, and to know that one believes is no longer to believe. Thus to believe is not to believe any longer because that is only to believe - this in the unity of one and the same non-thetic self-consciousness.

Is bad faith then a vain phenomenon? At first glance, this may seem to be the case. On the contrary, the very contradiction that exists in bad faith is itself the very possibility of bad faith. The unitary structure of consciousness makes feasible the phenomenon of bad faith. Is there a way out of this ontological impasse? Early Sartre holds that there is none. Still, he paradoxically admits the possibility of good faith, even if this is just on a phenomenological level:

Bad faith does not succeed in believing what it wishes to believe. But it is precisely as the acceptance of not believing what one believes that it is bad faith. Good faith wishes to flee the 'not-believing-what one-believes' by finding refuge in being. Bad faith flees being by taking refuge in 'not-believing-what-one-believes.'

Sartre explicitly stated the recurring possibility of bad faith in the concluding portion of the chapter dealing with bad faith in Being and Nothingness:

If bad faith is possible, it is because it is an immediate, permanent threat to every project of the human being; it is because consciousness conceals in its being a permanent risk of bad faith. The origin of this risk is the fact that the nature of consciousness simultaneously is to be what it is not and not to be what it is.