Bad Faith, Responsibility and Freedom.

Oli, you said that, ‘we must also justify our actions in the face of the reality that we can seek support from nowhere else but ourselves.’ Solomon (2006, p.146) reaffirms this observation by saying, “The bottom line, however, is that self-deception is not primarily a matter of beliefs, much less contradictory beliefs. It is not (literally) a matter of self-deception. It is, rather, a question of taking responsibility.” Can we ever take full reasonability if we are located in a realm of bad faith? If we do not take into account our past and our full potential we are not showing ourselves full respect, therefore we are not being responsible in allowing ourselves to have the best life possible. Sartre says, “Bad faith seeks to affirm their identity while preserving their differences.” (p.56). Heter (2006, p. 63) states, “The concept of bad faith is parasitic on Sartre's concept of human freedom. I define bad faith as a lived misrecognition of one's own freedom. Bad faith is 'lived' in the sense that it is expressed through actions, as well as beliefs and attitudes.” It seems then that to not be in bad faith, we must truthfully acknowledge our past, recognise our potential, make the correct judgements and give meaning to what we do all at the same time. This brings me back to your point Oli, in that we can only examine our actions and cross reference them with ourselves once we have carried them out. Heter (2006, p.64) goes on to say, “Just as one can fail to recognize the freedom of others by disrespecting them, one can fail to recognize one's own freedom by disrespecting one's self.” But is this a modern interpretation of freedom. To be responsible, to acknowledge our past and to reach out for our true potential, is that the concept of freedom today? Somewhere deep inside each one of us there is an empty space, what Sartre calls Néant, or nothingness, which no one and no thing can touch. That place is freedom, for in it I can give the events of my life any meaning I choose. (Alford, 2005, p.56). So for Sartre the women was acting in bath faith because she was reduced the action of leaving her hand there and being nothing, we only have Sartre to thank for providing us with the narrative of meaning. As I have said before both have negative meanings. The true meaning would have been locked deep inside.

The Language of ‘I’.

You seem to have considered the language used by Sartre in some depth and I have to agree with your point Helen that we only hear the voice of Sartre and not of the women in question. Solomon highlights the importance of language by saying:
Many philosophers, linguists, and social scientists would say that self consciousness is the product of language, and not just any language, but a special self-referring language. There must be first-person pronouns in some sense [...]. There must be not only some sense of self but also some conception of self, and this does indeed require language. (Solomon, 2006,p.140).
The whole point of the example is to show that the woman is acting in bad faith. But we are only told of her actions and her supposed consciousness through Sartre’s narration (he does not allow the man and women to become actors with dialogue, but keeps them trapped as mere characters). Not just the actions and thoughts of the women suggest a lack of ownership but the entire piece of writing itself. “She does not even give it a name” (Sartre, p.55). I understand that Sartre is saying the she does not acknowledge what is happening before her, and by not naming it she does not acknowledge that it is happening to her. But as I sit here and type this I am experiencing a terrible feeling of dread. Sartre, as the real man in this story, has ensured he holds all the power from the start. By not allowing us to hear the voices of his characters, especially the women, he has entrapped her never allowing her the possibility to escape her bad faith. “I have a choice to as to how to react about everything that happens to me, and how to come to terms with it.” (Alford, 2005, p.55). Sartre does provide us, the reader, with outcomes as to what will happen if the woman was to either keep her hand there or remove it. Both options presented, however, only provide us with bad outcomes; the reason why there are only bad outcomes Sartre suggests is because she is ‘all intellect’. Hence creating an act of disembodiment, during which time she goes on to talk about her life. This is the nearest we get to almost hearing her say the word, ‘I’. As I stated at the beginning, the use of such language would create her own self-consciousness. Thus acknowledging an awareness of who she is, and not just her essence, something that would seem so important to her, it culminates in an almost out-of-body experience. But this again allows Sartre to focus back to her hand. So we no longer hear her talk, or even think for that matter. She has once again been bereft of language, the ability to say the word ‘I’.

We can edit out what we want in the next few weeks. I think having far too much is better than not having enough. Besides, as long as there is ample contribution from us all, then we can pick the best bits and structure a dialogue that is cohesive from it.

Anyway, whilst reading Maurice Merleau-Ponty's Sense and Non-Sense I have come across the best explanation of Sartre's ontology in Being and Nothingness that I have yet encountered. It is very easy to understand I think.

After this, I think I have said my point. I stand in defence of his Philosophy.

"...Sartre thinks that liberty is exactly nothing - but a nothing which is everything. It is like a curse and at the same time the source of all human grandeur. It is indivisibly the principle of chaos and the principle of human order. If, in order to be subject, the subject must cut himself off from the order of things, man will have no 'state of consciousness', no 'feeling' which is not part of his consuming freedom and which is purely and simply what it is, the way things are. From this follows an analysis of ways of behaving which shows them all to be ambiguous. Bad faith and inauthenticity are essential to man because they are inscribed in the intentional structure of consciousness which is presence both to itself and to things. The very will to be good makes goodness false, since it directs us toward ourselves at the moment we should be directed toward the other" (Merleau-Ponty, 1964, p.74). Furthermore, "The principles of good and evil are therefore but one principle. Man wretchedness can be seen in his grandeur and his grandeur in his wretchedness. Sartre's philosophy, wrote another critic, 'starts by putting out the light of the spirit'. Quite the contrary: it makes it shine everywhere because we are not body and spirit or consciousness confronting the world but spirit incarnate, being in the world" (Merleau-Ponty, 1964, pp.74-75).

I think that the last exert helps also in some way to defend Sartre's philosophy against certain moral criticisms which could be aimed his way. For example, it defends it against the critique that stipulates that if we embrace a philosophy that tells us we have no obligation to our past, or indeed to who we are to be in the future, and only to recreate ourselves in the moment of constant flux, then we have no obligation to the moral goodness of the 'who-we-are'. Sartre's philosophy contests that this 'who-we-are' is itself an act of bad faith, and a projection of of the static into the transient flux. In our constant recreation of ourselves, we are the masters of our destiny. We must only justify our actions to ourselves, not to the external world (including a deity external to ourselves). However, in such self justification, we must also justify our actions in the face of the reality that we can seek support from nowhere else but ourselves. There is no get out clause. And, in addition, when we fashion ourselves, we fashion the world, and in doing so we must also justify this to ourselves. I find it a moral principle not dissimilar to Kant's categorical imperative.

"In morality as in art there is no solution for the man who will not make a move without knowing where he is going and who wants to be accurate and in control at every moment. Our only resort is the spontaneous moment which binds us to others for good or ill, out of selfishness or generosity" (Merleau-Ponty, 1964, p.4). Sartre's ontology in Being and Nothingness exhibits the fundamental importance of the importance of the philosophical emphasis of this spoantaneous moment.

...

Hey guys, we can edit this out.

We appear to be excelling the word limit at light speed. So I'm going to give a real short answer to your blog Pete -- then launch in there with some Sartre criticisms -- De'beauvoir I think. There's quite a lot of material there. If either of you need to send me any extra notes regarding the previous lec, email me: helen_calcutt@hotmail.com.

X

Language problems...

Firstly, in response to you Oli.

I agree with you when you say, that language does not undermine Sartre's work in its philosophical validity.
'Thought', can be elaborated in the language used to express it. Here I am taking the Neo-Classic approach that language is the 'dress' of thought. And that such language can be used to express any given thought, but without any intrinsic change by the 'procedures of style'. (The Art of Poetry: Pg 52)

However there is a great power in discourse, in particular as you have said, in the way that Foucault would contend. Discourse is not simply the language used, or the words spoken. But also how this language and these words are received; how they work in a social reception. The validity of a given argument, can further depend on how it is received. How it is discussed or debated, can rest on how 'it' has thus been articulated in the first place.
Most importantly, the meaning that is further extracted can also depend on language, and how this language has been used to convey an idea. (I must point out here that 'meaning' is by no means fixed. Meaning by its very nature fluxes. But with regards to any given philosophical theory, the meaning assigned by the philosopher is crucial to the inter-workings of their theory?)
This is where I think Sartre stumbles. Perhaps he didn't mean to debase women, students, waiters etc. But the ways in which he has articulated his examples, have given rise to such responses, especially from the voices of feminism. Yes, the intrinsic thought does not change. But this thought or idea can be expressed under various guises. The ways in which Sartre chose to articulate his theories, were perhaps not the best therefore. And this is rather a huge failing on his part. Language is essential to the communication of thought. Does the thought exist for any 'other' if it is not either spoken, or written down? The idea, to be taken in the way it was meant to be recieved, thus rests heavily on the form in which it is externalised.
You say Oli, that 'we should be careful no to appropriate meaning to terms because of the commonsense applicability which encapsulates them'. However in various instances the terms used by Sartre are simply nonsensical:
“What must be the being of man if he is to be capable of bad faith?”/ Take the example of a woman... '( Sartre Pg 55). This, is not so much a word game ( as I admit can be taken with your example of the waiter 'playing with his condition'.) This is more a failing of words on the grounds of terminology.
Sartre's theory as a whole however, does not fall down on its expression. But it is important to acknowledge how his choice of wording at times, has led him to such criticism. While this can be seen as 'nit -picking', it is of importance, because Sartre does either one of two things. He either firstly, undermines the validity and power of language by using it so carelessly.
Or secondly, 'writes as if he could speak of the conscious life of those in his stories, by the same right as he projects his own consciousness of a situation'. (Genre and Void. Pg xxvii) If the second, Sartre 'speaks as if for the whole world. (Genre and Void. Pg xxvii)'. It can be argued then, that Sartre not only undermines, but also speaks for others. Whether this is the case or not however, is debateable.

Help with the transience of being...

I think that these two writers help to sum up what I am continually trying to say about transient flux:

"...from beginning to end, the philosophical thought of Sartre maintains a remarkable unity and permanence throughout all his works: this permanence is displayed by his repeated affirmation that consciousness is not a thing, that the distinctive feature of human reality is to always surpass itself towards its end, and therefore that it cannot be reduced to the level of determinism" (Audry 1955, in Lafarge, 1970, p.170).

In addition,

"We make ourselves what we are, in terms of a chosen end and according to a project which is always surpassing of the given. In other words, man "is only to the extent that he exists and he exists only by projecting himself toward, he is only by being elsewhere, outside-of-himself-in-the-world, he is, in a sense, this impossibility of being oneself. I am never in myself, I have no consistency of being within me, I exist only in my relation to the world" (Jeanson, 1952, p.75). And thus, according to Sartre, there is no such thing as human nature; only our freedom exists" (Lafarge, 1970, pp.170-171).

The understanding of tranisent flux

Peter, I am inclined to comment that you have, although not entirely, misunderstood the concept of what I meant by my interpretation of why the woman in the cafe is acting in bad faith. I say that in positing a certain idea of what it would be to be sincere to 'herself', and in doing so establishing a static conception of self that renegades against the transient nature of her being, the woman is acting in bad faith. In contemplating such a hypothetical instance, it is unimportant what either the man or the woman expect will happen at the culmination of the meeting, and likewise it is unimportant as to whether their wants, desires and expectations will change over time (although this can be taken as highly likely). For instance, your example of the fact that the man thinks that they will end up in bed together because of inherent chauvinist characteristics is irrelevant. The act of bad faith on the woman's part is in its totality conditional of her understanding of herself as a particular 'type' of individual with a particular 'set' of character traits and inclinations. Sartre exemplifies this when he writes "She draws her companion up to the most lofty regions of sentimental speculation; she speaks of Life, of her life, she shows herself in her essential aspect-a personality, a consciousness" (1993, p.56). It is her showing of her essential self as a personality of particular categorization that is key here. As I have previously contended, the woman is projecting a static ideal of her self onto the transient flux of her being. This qualifies as bad faith because it "seeks to affirm... identity while preserving... differences" (Sartre, 1993, p.56). Furthermore, it affirms "facticity as being transcendence and transcendence as being facticity" (Sartre, 1993, p.56). In other words (and in line with my earlier identification of the key terms of Sartre's ontology), the woman posits all that she has been as intrinsic to the possibilities of everything she can be, and subsequently appropriates her possibilities as fundamentally conditional upon all that she has been.

Sexist Sartre?

Helen, in previous correspondence concerning criticism of Sartre by Le Doueff, you have mentioned to me that she argues that Sartre's philosophy lacks basis because of inherent sexism and a 'superiority complex' exhibited in the examples he uses to justify his understanding of acting in bad faith. Both of the apparent unfortunate weaknesses of Sartre's outlook can in some way be identified in his example of the woman in the cafe that we discuss. However, I do not believe that such an attack by Le Doueff is particularly useful in trying to undermine Sartre's work in its philosophical validity. It is true that the language exhibited by Sartre does at times unfortunately embody the character of sexist language. Sartre does sometimes talk of the woman as if she is beneath him, as he does with the case of the waiter who, in his role of service to others, is "playing, amusing himself" (Sartre, 1993, p.59). It is true that at first glance this sentence is demeaning, as if Sartre believes he is superior to this 'poor and unfortunate' waiter who's occupation is so monotonous that he must play games with his own imagination and act out roles to pass the time whilst at work. I also agree with what you have said to me in correspondence Helen, in that language is indeed a powerful communicative tool, particularly, as you have mentioned, in the way that Foucault would contest. However, and this is important, I think that the sense of superiority that Le Doueff attempts to identify is not exactly what she conceived. We can point to Sartre elaborating on what he means when he says that the waiter plays. He writes "the waiter in the cafe plays with his condition in order to realize it" (1993, p.59). We should be careful not to appropriate meaning to terms because of the commonsense applicability that encapsulates them. To play is not always to engage in the trivial. This can be understood when we look at Wittgenstein's understanding of how we play language games. It is not a loosely conceived term intended to exhibit casual and uncomplicated phenomena. To play is to engage oneself in this sense. I am sure Sartre would agree that he too was playing the role of the philosopher when he engaged in critical analysis of his ontological outlook, and in doing so he too was playing with his condition in order to realize it. In addition, apart from perhaps proving that Sartre may have indeed been sexist and viewed women as subordinate, what does this discovery of Le Doueff actually contain that effectively refutes Sartre's philosophy 'in-itself'? She may have concluded that Sartre understood women as "beings-to-be-referred-to-by-their-sexual-existence-alone" (Le Doueff, 1991, p.61), but that in itself does not detract from Sartre's philosophy as a valid ontology.

A woman in love?

WoW....you guys have not made this easy have you.



Helen, in your piece dated 19th Feb., you have mentioned that essence is the "sum total of everyting that we have been [...] here one moment and gone the next." You then ask the question as to how much meaning can it have. I actually think that our past actions do not actually have any significant meaning at all. It is the actions that take place in each moment that have the most meaning to us. Sartre states, (1993, p.56) "She disarmed the actions of her companion by reducing them to being only what they are; that is existaing in the mode of the in-itself." Her understanding of his actions could only be that an understanding, her interpretation of what she obvserved. It will be the man in question that knows the meaning of his actions. Maybe the question is the perceived meaning of anticipated future actions that are of most important. Just as I am experiencing now as I type. I am thinking of the best words to use to convey the most accurate meaning to yourselves even before I touch each key.



I would also like to pick up on the idea of a concrete identity. I don't think the lady is trying to project a concrete identity. I think she is trying to maintain a concrete experience, to hold onto the moment in time, with a very attentive gentleman sitting opposite her. "She speaks of Life, of her life, [...] the hand rests inert between the warm hand of her companion." She is sharing the experience, not with a guy sitting opposite her, but with 'her companion'. I feel that she is so captivated by the moment, unaware as to if, 'the table is round or square.' I also find it interesting that Sartre starts the piece off with referring to the person opposite her as a man, a physical object, obviously a sexual one, whilst when we arrive at the end he is being described, suppossively by her as her companion.



Oliver, you have suggested the idea that the lady is in 'bad faith' because she is not willing to entertain the idea of events after they leave the cafe. I guess Sartre is alluding to the fact that from the guys point of view they will end up in bed together before the night is out. But even if my assumption is correct, according to Sartre it would not be inevitable as the occurance of continual flux could change any future plans either members of the party may hold. Whilst I would initially agree with the idea that we are continually being who we are, the time frame for such a manifestation is but a small one I would feel. An hour or two at the most. Hence, whatever it is that the lady may feel for the man whilst seated opposite him her feelings may not necessarly be the same a few hours later. Her feelings in the cafe are left there, locked in time, unable to be changed in that moment, but both their feelings for each other will be in a continual flux in occurdeance with their experience at the moment of feeling.

'Flux' and Bad Faith

To begin with, I would like to briefly run over the key concepts of Sartre’s ontology, for my own sake and for yours Oli, so that you can analyse my progress on the subject. I will then work my own reflections and responses into this.

Existence for Sartre is the earthly or ‘corporeal’ being. ‘Existence’ in itself then, can be the only thing with regards to a being-for-itself (the conscious being) that is non-transient.
Our essence, everything that we have done and thought, is ephemeral or transient by its nature.
I wish to take a moment and reflect on this.
The word transient I think, assigned to Sartre's human 'essence', suggests a certain level of unimportance. As does the word ephemeral. I don’t know how much importance Sartre assigns to ones essence; or furthermore to the very idea of the conscious being-for-itself, in a state of constant flux. If our essence, the sum total of everything that we have been, is in very simple terms, here one moment and gone the next, how much meaning can it have? Has it bared no mark on our own personal conditions? Or does it have no importance, and bare no relevance to our individual identities at all? In saying that our transient essence, is not ‘who we are’, it can be further seen that one is suggesting that our past experiences and previous roles have no bearing on our identity. In later dialogue I would like to look into this a little further.

So to follow on, the being-in-itself is ‘as the table is round or square, as the wall colouring is blue or gray’ (Sartre 1993 pg 55), as this desk is flat and brown. The being-for-itself, is the conscious being, and that which sets us corporeal beings apart from others.

Now for a being-for-itself to act in Bad Faith, to my understanding, is as follows.

Very simply to begin with, Bad Faith is ones ‘bad faith’ in their own transience. It is their knowing negation of this, in whatever action or thought implied. But furthermore it is the concealment of ones knowledge of this transience say, from themselves. The deceiver is also the deceived in a single unity. As Sartre claims, ‘…in bad faith it is from myself that I am hiding the truth.’ (Sartre 1993 pg 49)

Take the example of the young woman in the café. The very act of this woman, say choosing to withdraw her hand as he places his own upon hers, does not make her ‘the woman who withdrew her hand’. She will not exist in this ‘self’ as it were, as a stone will exist as a stone. Her deliberation over whether to withdraw her hand or to take his, in the thinking that either one of these actions will define her in a sense, is absurd according to Sartre. To approach the situation in this way is to deny ones transience from oneself. To do so isn’t right or wrong. Rather, to attempt to work against oneself as a transient being is not merely ridiculous for Sartre, but very impossible.

Perhaps another example of Bad Faith in this particular passage is the young woman’s perceptions of the young man’s sincerity;

‘If he says to her, “I find you so attractive!” she disarms this phrase of its sexual background; she attaches to the conversation and to the behaviour of the speaker, the immediate meanings…’ (Sartre 1993 pg 55)

The ‘qualities’ she then assigns to the young man are somewhat permanent and fixed. Is she acting in Bad Faith in this instance also? In doing so perhaps she is not only attempting to deny him his transience through her own perceptions, but also perhaps her own.

In attaching these permanent qualities, to both herself and the young man, she is being sincere to ‘herself’: perhaps in a way protecting herself from her own transience, because in some way the notion of her as a 'being of transience', questions the authority she has over her identity. It removes her freedom and/or power over the creation of herself, and this is an unsettling thought. Thus to be sincere (or kind) to herself, allows her to permit the idea that she and others can be as they make themselves. They can be ‘the dancer’ or ‘the woman who took his hand’ for example, and so project this identity into the external world.

However this cannot be the case. The ‘flux’ of the being-for-itself is a transient one. I, the conscious being, can therefore never be a ‘fixed permanence’. (Sartre 1993 pg 55) The Bad Faith of the conscious being, comes into play when one is sincere to oneself in the attempt to project a concrete identity. In doing so one is attempting to establish themselves as a static being, which simply cannot be done for Sartre. We are, perhaps without being aware of it (?) constantly remaking and reinventing ourselves. We thus cannot be ‘defined’ as the actor, the girlfriend, or the sister. We may have been all these;(our ‘facticity – all that we have been’), but all these do not make us ‘who we are’.

Defining Sartre's ontology, and the consequences this has for 'bad faith'.

I think we should take what you said in your last post, Helen, and elaborate on it a little further. Then we subsequently arrive a stronger position to see what this means in terms of Sartre's idea of 'bad faith'.

When you say 'Sartre maintains that humans are not exactly as one might consider them to be at any given point in time', and also that you do consider us to be in something of a state of flux, you arrive at a position that allows us to examine Sartre's ontology further. In other words, you establish some fundamental principles of his thought in Being and Nothingness.

Sartre's ontology:

We fundamentally must understand that Sartre's ontology exhibits some very key concepts and terminology.

They are; 1. That existence is the real and tangible (corporeal) being. This is subjective being; 2. That essence is what you have been, or the sum of your decisions and actions. This is a transient essence that is constantly determined and ever-evolving. It is not 'who we are', since we as being are, as you quite rightly pointed out Helen, in a constant state of flux; 3. The notion of being must be defined here. Being is objective and of two kinds. Being-in-itself is non-conscious and exists independent from observation, whereas Being-for-itself is a conscious being. This consciousness sets this being apart from other beings in the world.

In addition to this, we must understand that Sartre identifies facticity all that we have been, and transcendence as the possibilities of everything we can be.

A key to Sartre's thought here is the transience of being, and this has implications for the example of bad faith concerning the woman in the cafe that I shall now exhibit.

Bad faith:

We must understand bad faith as the instance when an individual, knowingly, renegades against the subjective desire under the context of freedom established by the circumstances that reside over the possibilities. This excludes, in my understanding, the case of the actions of an individual that are undertaken unknowingly in relation to subjective desires (although perhaps we can further elaborate and tease out this point further through dialogue).

There is more to be said about lying here (Sartre, 1993, pp.48-50) but again perhaps we can discuss this further through dialogue.

The notion of sincerity is key to Sartre's conception of bad faith, particularly in relation to the case of the woman in the cafe. It seems that, to a certain degree, she has posited a certain idea of what it would be to be sincere to 'herself', and in doing so she establishes a static conception of self that renegades against the transient nature of her being that is inescapable. For example, "she does not want to see possibilities of temporal development which his conduct presents. She restricts this behaviour to what is in the present..." (Sartre, 1993, p.55). In addition "The qualities thus attached to the person she is listening to are in this way fixed in permanence like that of things, which is no other than the projection of the strict present of the qualities into the temporal flux" (Sartre, 1993, p.55). I think this may help you Helen, interpret the concept of 'flux', which you touched upon in your previous post, in a slightly more developed light. I would be interested in hearing how you respond to this. The 'flux' we talk of is very much a transient flux. The emergence of bad faith, in the instance of positing sincerity, is that one is implying some sort of declaration of self, which is nonsensical to Sartre since it involves some kind of proposition of a fixed and static being. This is contra to Sartre's conception of being. His conception of being is one that is constantly recreating itself, has no fixed and static reality, and subsequently cannot be defined as being 'of such a sort or of a certain kind'.

Patterns of Bad Faith

I do think we are in a constant state of flux. But whether we are constantly attempting to reassert our awareness that our existence transcends essence, is questionable.
However, I don't think Sartre speaks with contempt as such. Rather, he makes a large assumption on the intricate workings of human thought.

'The man who is speaking to her, appears to her sincere and respectful as the table is round or square...'

Sartre maintains that humans are not exactly as one might consider them to be at any given point in time. i.e. I am not a student in the same way a house is a house. My being as 'the student', does not transcend or override my being in its entirety. I have a past and a future. Other 'roles' have been, and will be assigned by the 'other' in whose gaze I become an 'object'. In Patterns of Bad Faith, it appears that the young woman is the object of the young man's desire. But why does she choose to see this young man as 'sincere and respectful' as the colouring of the wall is blue or gray? Sartre claims this is because she doesn't know what she wants. Yet she knows, that in order to be 'satisfied' her entire person must be acknowledged and addressed - her freedom of being, must be acknowledged.

Sartre's contempt...

I don't know about you but I really can imagine Sartre going about Paris, observing and interacting with so many people who at least in their actions towards others offer that they are so grounded and sure of the intricacies of their own existence and thinking, 'I need to prove to these people that nothing they take for granted is certain, that their very selves are transient and malleable and not fixed and static, and that they recreate themselves in every moment because existence precedes essence'. Sartre wanted to show them that they are not what their essence would suggest, but they are in a constant state of flux. This fact, above all others, coupled with the problem that they cannot grasp a 'non-static' conception of being, is the source of existential angst that besieges humans.

Sartre... Bad Faith

Ok, i'll get set the ball roling here.

This will have to be edited out later, but I should probably set the parameters of this discussion at the outset so that we know what we're dealing with, and where we stand.

(2500 words per group)

Discuss the example of bad faith Sartre offers of the woman on a first date, pp.55-56. (Section II 'Patterns of Bad Faith) and ending with the line "in such a way that at the instant when a person apprehends the one, he can find himself abruptly faced with the other.

Focus on this example by Sartre, and not the othere examples exhibited in 'Bad Faith'.