Bad Faith

Sartre's famous example describes a café waiter who performs his role with exaggerated precision—his movements too quick, his voice too eager, his attentiveness theatrical. This waiter has dissolved himself into his social function, denying the freedom to be anything other than "waiter." The example brilliantly captures how we flee from the anxiety of freedom by convincing ourselves we ARE our jobs, rather than people who freely choose them moment by moment.

"Mauvaise foi" entered philosophy from French law, where it meant acting with knowledge of wrongdoing—essentially, lying to others. Sartre's genius was recognizing we do something stranger: we lie to ourselves about our own freedom while somehow remaining aware of the lie. This transformed bad faith from a legal concept about dishonesty between people into an existential concept about the fractured relationship we have with ourselves.

Bad faith requires believing something while simultaneously not believing it—you must both know you're free AND convince yourself you're not. This seemingly impossible psychological state has frustrated philosophers for decades because it violates the principle of non-contradiction. Yet we all recognize it immediately: the smoker who "can't quit," the unhappy worker who "has no choice," the person in a failing relationship who insists they're "trapped."

Contemporary scholars argue that oppressive systems actually create conditions for bad faith—marginalized people may adopt limiting identities not from weakness but from survival necessity. A woman in a patriarchal society who embodies "feminine passivity" might be engaging in bad faith, or she might be navigating genuine constraints. This complicates Sartre's seemingly individualistic framework, revealing how power structures can make bad faith a rational adaptation rather than pure self-deception.

Modern digital life has created unprecedented opportunities for bad faith: we curate identities on social media, then forget we're performing. We swipe through dating apps reducing ourselves to fixed characteristics—"I'm an INTJ who loves hiking"—as though personality were a static product. Each profile, each personal brand, each LinkedIn summary invites us to mistake our self-presentation for our self, collapsing the gap between who we are and who we claim to be.

Recognizing bad faith in yourself creates a peculiar opening: the moment you see you're lying to yourself, you've already partially escaped the lie. Existential therapists use this principle deliberately, helping clients notice phrases like "I have to" or "that's just how I am" as red flags for disowned freedom. The practice isn't about judging yourself harshly for bad faith—we all engage in it—but about catching those moments when you're pretending necessity and recovering your agency.