Bad faith
Concept · Jean-Paul Sartre · Philosophy, stage 1: Learn the vocabulary
Bad faith is Sartre's term for the ways people deceive themselves about their own freedom. In Being and Nothingness he describes a waiter who plays at being a waiter so completely that he treats the role as fixing who he is, when he actually remains free to act otherwise at every moment. Bad faith is not lying to someone else; it is a person hiding the truth about their own freedom from themselves, usually to avoid the anxiety that comes with it.
Why it matters
It names a specific, everyday form of self-deception and ties it directly to Sartre's larger claim that humans are condemned to be free.
Part of
Sources
- Jean-Paul Sartre Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- Existentialism Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
