JEAN-PAUL SARTRE P GROSSE

PROCESS AND THEMES FALL 2002

FROM BEING AND NOTHINGNESS

BAD FAITH
Some Key Terms (taken in part from Hazel E. Barnes translation of Being and Nothingness,
“Key to Special Terminology”, 1956 by Philosophical Library, Inc.)

Being - “All-embracing and objective” existence, in the strict sense, Being is. Things exist as they
are. However, Sartre distinguishes different modes or ways of being. For example;

Being-in-itself – This is being conceived without having consciousness. Some things this rock or
tree could be characterized as non-conscious Being. Being-in-itself “is the Being of the
phenomena and overflows the knowledge we have of it.” We never see all sides of the
object we perceive, and the object is never completely reduced to the knowledge we have
or the concepts we form of it. Being-in-itself is full and complete. It is what it is.

Being-for-itself – conscious being and “the nihilation of Being-in-itself; consciousness conceived

as a lack of Being, a desire for Being, a relation to Being. By bringing nothingness into
the world the For-itself can stand out from Being and judge other beings by knowing
what it is not.” Because consciousness is nothingness (no-thing), it has no foundation, no
cause of being, yet is supported by being, which it is not, (for example its body, its past).
It is in Sartre’s phrase “condemned to be free”, condemned to choose or make itself
through the chosen projects it takes on. Therefore, consciousness (the for-itself) must
perpetually reinvent or create itself without ever completely coinciding with itself.
Unlike things (being-in-itself) that are full and complete but can never be exhausted by
what we know about them, consciousness is translucent, nothing is hidden.
Consciousness is always consciousness of something, and intentionally directed to
something other than itself.

Being-for-others – “The Self conceived as existing outside as an object for others.” This
involves what we have been or how we are defined as others see us. Strictly speaking,
there is no self or ego because ‘consciousness itself’, as nothingness, is empty of content.
Self and ego then are pure invention; they are constructs that exist out there in the world
and outside consciousness.

Facticity and Transcedence – Sartre’s terms for characterizing the human condition as
fundamentally ambiguous. We are a unity in opposition with ourselves. The synthesis
we seek in our own being is impossible to attain, since each pole of our being is the
negation of the other. It is this perpetual disintegration of our identity that gets revealed
in Bad Faith. “We have to deal with human reality as a being which is what it is not and
which is not what it is.”
The Project
The selection on Bad Faith is concerned with establishing what human reality must consist of for
self-deception to be possible. A preliminary answer is that human reality is radically free and
cannot escape the burden of continually making itself through its choices. Recognition of this
fact causes anguish. We attempt to flee and slip into bad faith by denying what we are or
affirming what we are not. Bad faith consists in the disintegration of a single consciousness into
two poles, one consisting of its facticity , the other consisting of its transcendence.

Note: Sartre says “these two aspects of human reality are and ought to be capable of a valid
coordination.” In general, Facticity refers to; (a) my past or what I have been, (b) to my body
which positions me in the world and makes me here rather than there, (c) my being-for-others or
my identity as constituted by others and the way they view me. Facticity constitutes the essence
I have made through my choices. Transcendence refers to the freedom of my open future,
whose essence is not determined but still to be made through my choices. Transcendence is
intimately linked to consciousness, since consciousness is nothingness and therefore any identity
as a ‘self’ is either in the past or still to be constituted or reinvented through the projects I take on
in living my life. Valid coordination would suggest that we realize that we are both fixed by our
past and free to change it.

Note: See the Handout from Dostoyevsky, last paragraph of page one for a possible comparison
to Bad Faith.

BAD FAITH
I. Bad Faith and Falsehood:
a. Consciousness: This section opens with a few brief disclosures about the nature of
consciousness. Refer to the definition above concerning Being-for-itself. In particular Sartre is
concerned with showing the connection between consciousness and negation. It is through
consciousness that negation first enters the world. You’ll notice that you become aware of a
particular object in the field of you perception by excluding or ignoring other objects. Negation
is the first act of awareness. Consciousness is being aware of what consciousness is not.