I argue that athletes should neither be taken as role models nor present themselves as such. Indeed, they should resist any attempt to take them as such on the grounds that seeing athletes (or other celebrities) as role models abrogates the existential and ethical responsibilities of both parties. Whether one takes on the role of being a model to others or whether one chooses to model one’s own behaviour on that of another, except in respect of the development of technical (...) skill, one engages in bad faith and fails to act in an existentially ethical way. To this end, I consider the inclination to influence and admiration, as well as self-respect, agency, motivation, and envy. I argue that while celebrity sportspersons and similar others do not have duties that others do not have just by virtue of their notoriety alone, they may have situational responsibilities commensurate with their social reach. More importantly, however, since social influence is not a transformation of inert matter, there are also responsibilities belonging to their audiences, those who merely observe and those who choose to imitate. (shrink)

This article seeks to develop an under-appreciated aspect of spectator activity: the way in which viewers make use of film to enter or sustain a project of bad faith. Based on Jean-Paul Sartre's account of bad faith in Being and Nothingness (1943), the article explains the aspects of bad faith that are pertinent to viewer activity, then explores the way viewers can make use of filmic depictions to facilitate self-denial. For example, spectators may emphasize the fact that (...) persons are depicted in narrow terms as corroboration for their belief that human nature is just as its depicted, thereby denying that we have the freedom to be otherwise. Or spectators may deny the relevance of problematic aspects of themselves when they find it depicted in characters who are admirable in other ways. I then consider whether films themselves can be described as being in bad faith. While technically they cannot, I identify ways that a film may encourage or discourage bad faith in viewers. I also examine how the immersive aspect of film enables viewers to turn attention away from themselves while they engage in self-denial. The case for this approach to viewer activity and film analysis is supplemented by a distinction between traits that do apply to film, e.g., being racist, sexist, or homophobic, and the resources it gives persons to be in bad faith about these social attitudes. I argue that a film can have traits like these while not encouraging bad faith and vice versa, demonstrating the unique perspective offered by approaching film and spectator activity in terms of bad faith. (shrink)

In 'Sartre on Bad Faith' Leslie Stevenson attempts to formulate the Sartrean notion of bad faith. According to Stevenson, someone is in bad faith, if she reflectively denies some state of affairs, of the truth of which she is pre-reflectively aware. Jeffrey Gordon counters with the criticism that, although Stevenson's analysis of Sartre is correct, it is a position which is philosophically indefensible. I argue that Stevenson's reflective denial account falls to Gordon's criticism, but that it is (...) also inadequate as a description of bad faith. I then offer an analysis of bad faith which provides both a better reading of Sartre and a way of overcoming Gordon's objection. (shrink)

This essay defends a modified version of Nahum Browns “dialetheist” interpretation of bad faith. On this interpretation, bad faith, as a form of self-deception, constitutes a dialetheia or true contradiction. While in agreement with the dialetheist interpretation, I argue that bad faith is just as much a flight from true contradiction and towards what I call “sham consistency.” I also put forward a multi-step model of bad faith as cyclical, recursive and reflexive. And I respond to (...) the objection that bad faith involves a truth value gap rather than a glut. I finally employ the dialetheist interpretation to explain Sartres contention that bad faith has its origins in the most primitive layer of human experience: the pre-reflective cogito. (shrink)

Lewis Gordon presents the first detailed existential phenomenological investigation of antiblack racism as a form of Sartrean bad faith. Bad faith, the attitude in which human beings attempt to evade freedom and responsibility, is treated as a constant possibility of human existence. Antiblack racism, the attitude and practice that involve the construction of black people as fundamentally inferior and subhuman, is examined as an effort to evade the responsibilities of a human and humane world. Gordon argues that the (...) concept of bad faith militates against any human science that is built upon a theory of human nature and as such offers an analysis of antiblack racism that stands as a challenge to our ordinary assumptions of what it means to be human. (shrink)

It is well known to Sartre scholars that Sartre claimed his ethical theory follows from his ontology in his early philosophy. However, this claim had not been examined as closely as it deserved. Some scholars accepted it, but none of them has given a plausible explanation of how ethics is supposed to follow from ontology. Others rejected it, without taking trouble to explore the possible connections between ontology and ethics. ;I think this claim should be taken seriously. For Sartre himself (...) took it seriously; he spent much time and energy developing ethical views that can be based on his ontology. Through a detailed study of two critically important notions in Sartre's early philosophy, "bad faith" and "pure reflection," I give a close and in-depth examination of this claim. On the basis of the examination, I conclude that Sartre's early ethical theory is a "failure." ;The first two chapters are preparatory. In the first chapter I clarify some of Sartre's basic terminologies in his early philosophy. In the second chapter I explicate Sartre's basic ontological project in Being and Nothingness. ;In the third chapter, I study the ontological characters of "pure reflection" that Sartre presented in Being and Nothingness, which prepares the ground for a study of the ethical characters of "pure reflection" in the fifth chapter. ;In the fourth chapter, I study the ethical implication of the ontological characters of bad faith. Through a detailed examination of the notion of "bad faith" in Being and Nothingness, I show that bad faith as Sartre presented it in Being and Nothingness has only trivial and non-salient ethical implication. ;In the fifth and last chapter, I study the ethical characters of pure reflection that Sartre presented in Notebooks for an Ethics, on the basis of which I show that the ethical characters of pure reflection do not exactly follow from its ontological characters. As a result of these studies, I conclude that in Sartre's early philosophy his ethics does not really follow from his ontology. (shrink)

An autobiographical account of a philosopher's fall from innocence, Bad Faith relates the author's discovery of the God-like nature of morality and his realization that a self-styled atheist such as himself could therefore no longer believe in it. The book describes in detail what the author's life was like both immediately before and immediately after this "anti-epiphany." Proceeding from secular morality to secular amorality, the transformation was every bit as traumatic for this earnest moralist as the loss of belief (...) in God would be for a devout theist. Yet a new basis for living finally emerges. (shrink)

One of the characteristic features of Sartre’s philosophical writing, especially in Being and Nothingness, is his use of extended narrative vignettes that immediately resound with the reader’s own experience yet are intended to illustrate, perhaps also to support, complex and controversial claims about the structures of conscious experience and the shape of the human condition. Among the best known are his description of Parisian café waiters, who somehow contrive to caricature themselves, and his analysis of feeling shame upon being caught (...) spying through a keyhole. Commentators disgaree over what these two examples are intended to convey and how they relate to one another. My aim here is to defend and enrich the interpretation of these vignettes and their associated theories that I offer in my book, The Existentialism of Jean-Paul Sartre. On this reading, the waiter should be understood, as he usually is, as as an example of bad faith, but this discussion of bad faith is much more significant than has generally been recognised. We should read the later discussion of shame and interpersonal relations within this framework of bad faith. Sartre describes two aspects of shame: the revelation of the existence of what Sartre calls ‘the Other’, a perspective on the world other than my own; and the ascription to another person of a particular kind of attitude towards me. This second aspect presupposes the first, but is not essential to shame. It is simply the way we experience other people within the project of bad faith. (shrink)

Innovatively combining existentialist philosophy with cutting edge post-structuralist and psychoanalytic perspectives, this book boldly reconsiders market freedom. Bloom argues that present day capitalism has robbed us of our individual and collective ability to imagine and implement alternative and more progressive economic and social systems; it has deprived us of our radical freedom to choose how we live and what we can become. Since the Great Recession, capitalism has been increasingly blamed for rising inequality and feelings of mass social and political (...) alienation. In place of a deeper liberty, the free market offers subjects the opportunity to continually reinvest their personal and shared hopes within its dogmatic ideology and policies. This embrace helps to temporarily alleviate growing feelings of anxiety and insecurity at the expense of our fundamental human agency. What has become abundantly clear is that the free market is anything but free. Here, Bloom exposes our present day bad faith in the free market and how we can break free from it. (shrink)

Bad Faith and Sincerity: Does Sartre's Analysis Rest on a Mistake? In this opening chapter, I intend to deal with an issue that vexed my earliest ...

The article develops Sartre's remarks on the paradox of the actor in two ways. Firstly, it derives from them an 'existential ontology' of mimetic performance - an 'onto-mimetology'. Secondly, it uses this reconstruction in order to put pressure on Sartre's analogy of the actor with bad faith. In grasping the problem of acting from a Sartrean perspective, I show that this analogy is not as clear cut as he assumes and that a crucial difference exists between the situation of (...) the theatre and that of bad faith. To master the paradox of his own being I argue the actor's technique indeed utilizes the same 'non-persuasiveness-of-belief ' thesis identified by Sartre as the condition of possibility for bad faith, yet in the actor's case it need not necessitate the condition of bad faith. In conclusion, I propose that through the notion of play, the actor sheds intriguing light on Sartre's notion of freedom. (shrink)

This article considers the ethical dimension of contemporary first-person avowals of genderless or agender subjectivity. Drawing on Talia Mae Bettcher’s transfeminist account of transgender first-person authority and Simone de Beauvoir’s existentialist notion of choice, the author argues that authentic first-person avowals of genderlessness are gestures that pursue ethical self–other relations. In doing so, this article reconciles Beauvoir’s claim that a woman who says she is “just human” is in bad faith with genderless trans subjectivities.

This chapter contains sections titled: An Authentic Self College, the Place to Feel Inadequate about Sex The Look The Nature of College Sex Bad Faith or True Desire.

What is wrong with participating in a democratic decision-making process, and then doing something other than the outcome of the decision? It is often thought that collective decision-making entails being prima facie bound to the outcome of that decision, although little analysis has been done on why that is the case. Conventional perspectives are inadequate to explain its wrongness. I offer a new and more robust analysis on the nature of voting: voting when you will accept the outcome only if (...) the decision goes your way is an act of bad faith: you are not taking part in a ‘process that decides what we will do’. This analysis sheds light on understanding the intrinsic nature of voting and what we are doing when we make decisions collectively. (shrink)

I begin by comparing the question of what constitutes continuity of Personal Identity Online (PIO), to the traditional question of whether personal identity is constituted by psychological or physical continuity, bringing out the compelling but, I aim to show, ultimately misleading reasons for thinking only psychological continuity has application to PIO. After introducing and defending J.J. Valberg’s horizonal conception of consciousness, I show how it deepens our understanding of psychological and physical continuity accounts of personal identity, while revealing their shortcomings. (...) I then argue that PIO must also be understood against the backdrop of the horizonal conception, that this undermines sharp dichotomies between online and offline identity, and that although online psychological continuity might become necessary for the preservation of our personal identities, we cannot become our PIOs. Finally, I argue that if PIO is understood solely in terms of psychological continuity, any increasing identification with our PIOs assumes the form of a paradigmatic project of bad faith: a technological reduction of our self-consciousness, rather than the enhancement it should be. (shrink)

Freud's account of repression retains vestiges of the Cartesian model of the mind. Sartre's argument against Freud is essentially an objection to this Cartesian aspect, which Sartre's own theory of bad faith dispenses with.

Psychoanalysis had a profound influence on formation of Merleau-Ponty’s thought. However, at the same time, he rejects Freud’s idea that the unconscious consists of latent mental contents that cause a certain type of behavior. Instead of a hidden experience, Merleau-Ponty argues that the unconscious is an ambiguous consciousness. In The Structure of Behavior and The Phenomenology of Perception, he specifies this ambiguity by means of the concepts of habit, bad faith, bodily expression, affective intentionality and body schema. In this (...) paper, I will present the interconnection of these aspects of the human existence, following Merleau-Ponty’s two early major works. Further, I will show the difference of Merleau-Ponty’s notion of bad faith from that of Sartre, and, finally, I will suggest a limitation of Merleau-Ponty’s approach to the unconscious. (shrink)

Atheism: young Hegelian style -- A social thing -- The tenacity of an illusion -- Beyond God and evil -- The liberal turn -- A precarious left.

In the present essay I shall attempt three tasks. First, I shall try to illustrate the frequency and contexts in which Sartre associates violence with bad faith. Though focusing primarily on Notebooks for an Ethics, I shall want to show that this connection is hardly confined to that uncompleted and fragmented work. Second, and usually within the same context, I shall aim to make evident the sense or senses in which Sartre ascribes bad faith to violence. For example, (...) what aspects or dimensions of his analysis of bad faith in Being and Nothingness apply here? Third, I want to raise a fundamental question, intended in part to be critical: If, indeed, violence instantiates bad faith, on what grounds can, or does, Sartre justify it on occasion? Given his overall and persistent criticism of bad faith, as well as his embrace of a conversion to authenticity, how can he, in good conscience, strongly endorse, even justify, violence in specified situations? Is there not an inconsistency here? Would not a justification of violence be tantamount to his justifying bad faith in certain circumstances? If so, is not Sartre in bad faith regarding the justification of violence? (shrink)

From the beginning to the end of his philosophizing, Sartre appears to have been concerned with "bad faith"—our "natural" disposition to flee from our freedom and to lie to ourselves. Virtually no aspect of his monumental system has generated more attention. Yet bad faith has been plagued by misinterpretation and misunderstanding. At the same time, Sartre's correlative concepts of "good faith" and "authenticity" have suffered neglect or insufficient attention, or been confused and wrongly identified by Sartre scholars, (...) even by Sartre himself. Ronald E. Santoni takes on the challenge of distinguishing these concepts, and of showing whether either or both existential "attitudes" afford deliverance from the hell of Sartre's bad faith. He offers the first fill-scale analysis, reconstruction, and differentiation of these ways of existing as they develop in Sartre's early works. Although he attempts to redeem Sartre's slighted concept of good faith, Santoni warns that it must not be viewed interchangeably with authenticity. Further, in one of the earliest and most sustained studies of Sartre's _Notebooks for an Ethics_ available in English, Santoni shows how Sartre's posthumously published notes for an "ethics of Salvation" confirm his differentiation and argument. The way out of Sartrean hell, Santoni insists, is authenticity—living "with fidelity" to our unjustifiable freedom and assuming responsibility for it. (shrink)

What is one to make of Sartre's treatment of his waiter in one of his famous analyses of bad faith? The example is supposed to be an obvious one, but the more we examine it, the less obvious it becomes. Let us remind ourselves of Sartre's example: Let us consider this waiter in the café. His movement is quick and forward, a little too precise, a little too rapid. He comes toward the patrons with a step a little too (...) quick. He bends forward a little too eagerly; his voice, his eyes express an interest a little too solicitous for the order of the customer. Finally there he returns, trying to imitate in his walk the inflexible stiffness of some kind of automaton while carrying his tray with a recklessness of a tight-rope walker by putting it in a perpetually unstable, perpetually broken equilibrium which he perpetually re-establishes by a light movement of the arm and hand. (shrink)

The concept of self-stigmatization is guided by a representational account of selfhood that fails to accommodate for resilience against, and recovery from, stigma. Mainstream research on self-stigma has portrayed it only as a reified self, that is, as collectively shared stereotypes representing individuals’ identity. Self-stigma viewed phenomenologically, however, elucidates what facilitates a stigmatized self. A phenomenological analysis discloses the lived phenomenon of stigma as an act of self-objectification, as related to the experiential self, and therefore an achievement of subjectivity. Following (...) a phenomenological account, the stigmatized self can thus return to a state-of-being, similar to that Jean-Paul Sartre once referred to as bad faith. Regarding your identity as analogous to an inanimate thing is ultimately self-deceptive. Self-stigma is here phenomenologically illuminated as constituted by basic discretion, that is, as a minimal form of agency. The study found that basic discretion can uphold the possibility for emancipation from a stigmatized self. (shrink)

I have two aims: to analyze Jonathan Webber’s analysis of bad faith and compare it to my own, traditional, account and to show that Webber’s focus on character, as a set of dispositions or character traits that incline but do not determine us to view the world and behave in certain ways, contributes further to understanding Sartre’s ‘bad faith’. Most Sartre scholars have ignored any emphasis on ‘character’. What is distinctive and emphatic in Webber’s interpretation is his insistence (...) ‘on bad faith’ as a ‘social disease’ distorting the way one views, interprets, and even thinks about the world.. But, again, this pattern is not deterministic. Early in his work, Webber tells us that Sartre does not claim that we have bad faith by ‘ascribing character traits where there are none but by pretending to ourselves that we have ‘fixed natures’ that e.g. preclude the behaviour or character trait of which one is being accused.Though hardly disagreeing radically with Webber I do offer critical considerations. While Webber focuses on character, I focus on Sartre’s contention that the ‘most basic’ or ‘first act’ of bad faith is ‘to flee from what [the human being] cannot flee, from what it is’, specifically human freedom. And I disagree partially with Webber’s articulation of the ‘spirit of seriousness’, and strongly with both Sartre’s and his supporting claim that bad faith cannot be cynical. I also demur from Webber’s overemphasis on the ‘social’. For me, the root of all bad faith is our primitive ontological condition; namely, that at its very ‘upsurge’, human reality, anguished by its ‘reflective apprehension’ of its freedom and lack of Being, is disposed to flee from its nothingness in pursuit of identity, substantiality - in short, Being. (shrink)

This essay argues that an adequate account of bad faith cannot be given without taking the second half of Being and Nothingness into consideration. There are two separate but related reasons for this. First, the objectifying gaze of Others provides a necessary condition for the possibility of bad faith. Sartre, however, does not formally introduce analysis of Others until Parts III and IV. Second, upon the introduction of Others, Sartre revises his view of absolute freedom. Sartre's considered view (...) of freedom helps to make sense out of bad faith in a way that does not seem possible were freedom absolute. (shrink)

In this article I introduce a new reading of Jean-Paul Sartre's account of bad faith. The reading contrasts with previous accounts by denying that states of bad faith are exhausted by attitudes towards transcendence and facticity. Instead, I argue that bad faith can involve attitudes to many other aspects of the human being. I also respond to an argument which claims that affirmations of freedom are inconsistent with the motivations behind bad faith. The inconsistency is here (...) resolved by demonstrating how in bad faith we can still affirm a restricted version of freedom which avoids us acknowledging the unpleasant aspects of our full freedom. (shrink)

A Sartrean existentialist ethics of authenticity model can serve as an alternative to tradi­tional approaches to the issue of moral responsibilities to future generations. Traditional utilitarian and rights-based positions can fall short when addressing future-persons concern, both through technical problems and their failure to show our interconnectedness with other generations. Sartrean concepts of freedom, responsibility, and authenticity can offer an alternative approach which focuses on interpersonal adoption of the Other’s projects. There is bad faith present in the typical discussion (...) about future generations. We need to rid ourselves of this bad faith in order to engage in authentic relationships with humans of the past, present, and future. (shrink)

이 글은 인간 현존재에게 범죄가 존재론적으로 어떤 의미를 지니는지 밝힐 목적으로 작성되었다. 논구의 출발점은 범죄에 대한 심판이 존재론적으로는 언제나 이미 사르트르가『존재와 무』에서 자기기만이라고 명명한 의식에 의거해서 일어나는 행위라는 것이다. 이 글의 논증은 다음과 같이 요약될 수 있다.BR1. 사르트르가 자기기만이라는 말로 묘사하는 것은 인간 현존재의 현사실성에 대한 기만적 이해이다. 사르트르에 따르면 나의 실존은 전체적으로 어떤 근본적인 이유도 갖지 않는다. 이성적 이유의 관점에서 보면 실존하는 나의 자유는 부조리하다.BR2. 범죄에 대한 나의 심판은 윤리적으로 존재하거나 윤리적 존재가 되는 것이 나의 실존의 근본적 이유로 인정되어야 (...) 함을 암묵적이거나 공공연하게 전제한다. BR3. 그러므로 범죄에 대한 나의 심판은 인간 현존재의 현사설성의 근본적 부조리를 무화하고 부정하려는 의식의 행위이다.BR4. 그러나 범죄에 대한 심판이 언제나 이미 자기기만의 행위라는 존재론적 언명은 범죄가 존재론적으로 현존재의 본래적 자기에게 알맞은 행위로서 정당화될 수 있음을 뜻하지 않는다. 범죄는 내가 아닌, 그러나 내가 되기를 원하는, 그러한 자기-존재를 실현하려는 나의 욕망과 의지의 표현이다. 범죄란 자신의 고유한 실존론적 자유를 제약하고 무화하는 실존의 이유를 스스로 자신의 근본적으로 부조리한 실존에 부여함으로써 초래되는 것이라는 뜻이다. (shrink)

In a probing paper entitled "The Misplaced Chapter on Bad Faith, or Reading Being and Nothingness in Reverse," Matthew Eshleman challenges part of my intensive analysis of Sartre's "Bad Faith," arguing that bad faith is essentially a social phenomenon, and that social elements—the Other, in particular—play a " necessary role in making bad faith possible." Although I share many of Eshleman's interpretative points about the importance of the "social" in Sartre's account, I contend, here, with textual (...) support, that Eshleman is too extreme, and slights the original bad faith to which human reality, in its very "upsurge" as consciousness or freedom, is "congenitally" (Spiegelberg) predisposed. My continued appeal to Sartre's concept of "initial," "fundamental," project, or "natural attitude" of consciousness to flee its freedom—what I have called ontological bad faith—becomes the crux of my critical counter-challenge to Eshleman's thesis. (shrink)

In The Imaginary, Sartre provides the foundation upon which the development of his theory of bad faith is built, pointing to a fundamental choice at the level of image consciousness between the unreflective projection of the image and the impure reflection upon that image constitutive of imaginative comprehension, or what he refers to in this text as pure comprehension. Pure comprehension can be seen as Sartre's early formulation of pure reflection in which thought is characterised by movement rather than (...) the reification of thought indicative of impure reflection and imaginative comprehension. This will prove to have consequences for the interpretation of Sartre's conceptualizations of desire and bad faith and consequently for Sartrean ontology, psychoanalysis and ethics. (shrink)

Jury nullification, that phenomenon whereby a jury returns a not-guilty verdict for a defendant it believes to be technically guilty of the alleged crime, is, obviously, a controversial issue. What is not a matter of controversy, however, is the fact that the law protects the jury’s ability to behave this way. Much of the controversy therefore centers on whether juries ought to be informed of this ability to nullify free from legal redress. In this paper I examine a number of (...) arguments both for and against the view that juries ought to be, in the words of the literature, fully informed. In the end I conclude that there is significant empirical evidence to suggest that, rather than simply promoting justice and mercy, as proponents of the instruction argue, fully informing a jury has the unforeseen consequence of encouraging juries to behave in a manner I label bad-faith, and that such bad-faith juries in fact corrupt the principles of justice and fairness that are the cornerstones of the trial system. (shrink)

Based on the notion of bad faith, the article seeks to lay the foundations for a diagnosis of contemporaneity, having as an index, on the one hand, the lack of human determination and, on the other, the effectiveness of the world.

One of the key insights of Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex is the idea that gender-based subordination is not just something done to women, but also something women do to themselves. This raises a question about ethical responsibility: if women are complicit, or actively implicated in their own oppression, are they at fault? Recent Beauvoir scholarship remains divided on this point. Here, I argue that Beauvoir did, in fact, ethically criticize many women for their complicity, as a sign of (...) what she called “bad faith”. I challenge recent accounts by Nancy Bauer and Manon Garcia, who both read Beauvoir as exonerating complicit women. According to this reading, women emerge as human “freedoms” within a social world where a “destiny” of inferiority is already prepared for them. Their self-subordination is then an inevitable product of acting in a patriarchal world. I argue, however, that this interpretation generates a crucial tension, leading Bauer and Garcia to call on women to stop being complicit, while also claiming they cannot avoid complicity. I propose instead a different interpretation, on which feminine complicity is often fueled by criticizable ethical attitudes that are far from inevitable. By revisiting Beauvoir’s notion of “bad faith”, I show that this account is compatible with recognizing the limitations imposed on women’s agency and I show that this feminist ethical criticism is itself an important part of a collective project of social transformation. (shrink)

There are many similarities between the Christian concept of the Seven Deadly Sins, the Stoic concept of internal events, the Hebrew concept of 'awon (sin, punishment), and the existential concept of bad faith. All of these evidence a concern for an internalization of sin or bad faith, which is more common in Eastern than Western religions. These four views are contrasted with the English concept synne which represents the Western extemalization of sin or bad faith. This existential (...) interpretation includes an exploration of 'awon in the Cain and Abel story as well as several reflections concerning the difference between bad faith and good faith. (shrink)

The Blood of Others begins at the bedside of a mortally wounded Résistance fighter named Hélène Bertrand. We encounter her from the point of view of Jean Blomart, her friend and lover, who recounts the story of their relationship : their first meeting, unhappy romance, bitter breakup, and eventual reunion as fellow fighters for the liberation of occupied France. The novel invites the reader to interpret Hélène and Jean’s story as one of positive ethical development. On this progressive reading, although (...) both characters are initially mired in bad faith and ethical irresponsibility, they ultimately transform themselves into ethically exemplary figures. Through their participation in violent political resistance against the occupation, they recognize their responsibility to humanity and actualize that responsibility in the form of positive political engagement. I will argue, on the contrary, that Jean and Hélène exhibit a unique form of bad faith that Beauvoir identifies in The Ethics of Ambiguity, a dangerous form of bad faith, distinct from the Sartrean conception, that promotes the indiscriminate use of violence for political ends. (shrink)

Professor D. Z. Phillips in ‘Bad Faith and Sartre's Waiter’ assigns to Sartre the view that ‘waiters are necessarily in bad faith’, i.e. the profession of waiting as such is in bad faith. What could this mean in the context of Sartre's philosophy? That waiters as a class seek to flee their freedom by adopting that vocation? It must mean something on those lines since, for Sartre, to engage in bad faith is to deny one's freedom. (...) The question then arises: could Sartre have heldsuch a view ? And, if he could not have, how does Phillips manage tothink he did ? (shrink)

Abstract: G. E. Moore claimed to know a variety of commonsense propositions. He is often accused of being dogmatic or of begging the question against philosophers who deny that he knows such things. In this paper, I argue that this accusation is mistaken. I argue that Moore is instead guilty of answering questions of the form ‘Do I know p?’ in bad faith.

Jean-Paul Sartre, in Being and Nothingness, develops the concept of “bad faith” in order to account for the paradoxical fact that knowledge can be ignorant of itself, and thus that a self-conscious subject can deceive itself while being aware of its own deception. Sartre claims that Freudian psychoanalysis would account for self-deception by positing an unconsciousness that guides consciousness without consciousness being aware of it. Therefore, Freudian psychoanalysis is an insufficient model with which to address bad faith. I (...) disagree. There is a specific psychic mechanism in Freud that answers Sartre’s criteria for bad faith, and it is called “disavowal” . Disavowal is the mechanism responsible for fetishism. And thus, fetishism is the Freudian account of bad faith. (shrink)

This essay argues for a new conception of bad faith based partly on Harry Frankfurt's famous account of personal autonomy in terms of higher‐order volitions and caring, and based partly on Sartre's insights concerning tacit or pre‐thetic attitudes and “transcendent” freedom. Although Sartre and Frankfurt have rarely been connected, Frankfurt's concepts of volitional “wantonness” and “bullshit” (wantonness about truth) are similar in certain revealing respects to Sartre's account of bad faith. However, Sartre leaves no room for Frankfurt's central (...) point that people can volitionally commit themselves to develop certain motives and reduce others, thereby shaping an authentic identity through volitional “identification” and “alienation” of motives. Frankfurt in turn minimizes the role that a sense of liberty to form and alter higher‐order volitions plays in experiences of autonomy, which Sartre recognizes in the transcendence of the “for‐itself.” When these points are combined, we get a tri‐level theory of intrasubjective volitional stances that explains Sartre's cases better than his own theory can, and also clarifies how sincere or procedurally autonomous self‐relation is possible. (shrink)

Graphical AbstractIntelligent-design websites misquote to subvert belief in Darwinian evolution. Nowadays, such sites pose as “objective” sources of information. Speaking more generally, spreading misinformation can be linked to climate science denial, vaccination avoidance, and a resurgence of pseudo-scientific racism. Internet regulations to counter these sources of pseudo-science are urgently needed.

In this article I argue that it is underdetermined what Spinoza is arguing for when he says in Proposition 72 of Part IV of the Ethics that (translated) "A free man never acts deceitfully, but always in good faith." In "Spinoza, Lying, and Acting in Good Faith," John Bauer has argued that Spinoza lays down an absolute moral prohibition never to lie.