An idea · Twentieth Century (to mid-century) · first attested 1943
Bad Faith (mauvaise foi)
The lie one tells oneself in order to escape freedom.
Sartre's diagnosis of human evasion. Because we are radically free, freedom is unbearable; we deny it by pretending to be defined by our roles ("I am a waiter," "I am a woman," "I had to do it"). Bad faith is the universal flight from the responsibility of choosing oneself. Sartre's analysis of the over-zealous waiter — performing waiterhood so completely that he tries to be a waiter the way an inkwell is an inkwell — is a small masterpiece.