Bad Faith Good Faith

2. Bad Faith and "Lying to Oneself"

2 Bad Faith and "Lying to Oneself" In Chapter I, I attempted to show some equivocations related to Sartre's claim that sincerity is a "phenomenon of bad faith" and shares its fundamental structure and goal. Although I do not retract the thrust of my argument, I now believe that I either ignored or overlooked some of the complexities and problems involved in Sartre's views on bad faith. In the present chapter, I wish to attend to a few of these issues. While attempting to offer a close, integrative analysis of Sartre's views on bad faith, I intend to raise some questions concerning the adequacy of his position, as it develops. In particular, in the light of his initial characterization of bad faith, I shall raise the question of whether, given his ontological premises and system of meanings, it is possible to lie to oneself. On Sartre's terms, of course, this question entails the question of the possibility of bad faith. Despite my persistent misgivings, I shall concede that there is, finally, a highly modified sense of "lying to oneself" in which bad faith as lying to oneself becomes a possibility for Sartre. But even this qualified sense, I shall show, is not without its problems. Let us begin by reviewing Sartre's preliminary characterization of bad faith and elucidating the initial and gnawing question to which it gives rise. 28 Copyrighted Material Bad Faith and "Lying to Oneself" 29 Lying in general and lying to oneself Sartre's discussion of bad faith follows both his discussion of the origin of negation and his introductol)' definition of human consciousness as "a being such that in its being, its being is in question in so far as this being implies a being other than itself ."l The human being is not only the being through whom concrete negations (negatites) come into the world; he is also the being who can take negative attitudes toward himself. In order to illustrate this possibility of self-negation, he chooses to examine "one determined attitude .. . essential to human reality . . . which is such that consciousness instead of directing its negation outward turns it towards itself."z For Sartre this attitude is badfaith. Sartre, in a preliminary move which remains to tantalize the rest of his discussion, allows that bad faith is a "lie to oneself."3 He does this with one proviso; namely, that lying to oneself be distinguished from "lying in general," or falsehood. The essence of the lie, as we have seen, entails that the liar is actually and completely in "possession of the truth which he is hiding": "a man does not lie about what he is ignorant of.'" Moreover, the liar intends to deceive and does not try either to hide this intention from himself or to disguise the translucency (translucidite ) of consciousness.S Through the lie, consciousness affirms its existence as hidden from the Other and exploits for its own ends the ontological duality between myself and myself viewed from the eyes of the Other.6 But the situation cannot be the same for bad faith. As lying to oneself, bad faith, of course, hides or misrepresents truth. As we saw in the preceding chapter, "what changes everything is that in bad faith it is from myself that I conceal the truth.''7 Here there is no ontological duality between deceiver and deceived. On the contrary, bad faith entails "the unity of a single consciousness ." The one who lies and the one to whom the lie is Copyrighted Material 30 CHAPTER 2 told are one and the same. Consciousness "affects itself" with bad faith. Hence, it must have both an intention and a project of bad faith. Moreover, given the complete translucency of consciousness , "that which affects itselfwith bad faith must be conscious (of) its bad faith. "8 Otherwise, we would have a consciousness ignorant of itself, which, for Sartre, is patently absurd." Early in Being and Nothingness, we learn that, because of the self-referential and pre-reflective nature of consciousness ,'o we can wish "not to see" a specific aspect of our being only if we are acquainted with the aspect that we do not wish to see. Accordingly, our flight from anguish, for instance, "in order not to know" is in bad faith because, given "the unity of the same consciousness", we "cannot avoid knowing" from what we are fleeing. The flight from...