Sartre's theory of bad faith
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- čas přidán 28. 04. 2022
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Professor Ellie Anderson, co-host of Overthink philosophy podcast, introduces the theory of bad faith in existential philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre's Being and Nothingness. She suggests that, while bad faith most often takes the form of denying one's own freedom, there's a second form of bad faith that is often neglected in readings of Sartre: denying one's transcendence. This form is especially evident in Sartre's account of the woman on a date (sometimes known as the "coquette").
This video was created just for our CZcams subscribers (thank you for your support!) based on Professor Anderson's Existentialism course at Pomona College.
For more from Dr. Anderson, check out Overthink podcast! Available on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen (including previous episodes here on CZcams!)
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"Above all, do not lie to yourself. A man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point where he does not discern any truth either in himself or anywhere around him, and thus falls into disrespect towards himself and others. Not respecting anyone, he ceases to love, and having no love, he gives himself up to passions and coarse pleasures in order to occupy and amuse himself, and in his vices reaches complete beastiality, and it all comes form lying continually to others and himself. A man who lies to himself is often the first to take offense. it sometimes feels very good to take offense, doesn't it? And surely he knows that no one has offended him, and that he himself has invented the offense and told lies just for the beauty of it, that he has exaggerated for the sake of effect, that he has picked up on a word and made a mountain out of a pea--he knows all of that, and still he is the first to take offense, he likes feeling offended, it gives him great pleasure, and thus he reaches the point of real hostility..."
-- Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
The og smack down. That’s the type shit one will hear upon being drafted and given a drone controller no sidearm
I don’t usually leave comments but I wanted to say thank you for making hard topics in philosophy so accessible in understandable language and on your podcast, you’re killing it and I hope you continue to make cool videos and podcast episodes. Thank you again
This is my greatest fear - that I'll die with a lifetimes worth of regrets that I lived an unfulfilled life...because I was too afraid to ever act.
what should i say: read some Nietzsche lmao
“Free will” is a clever oxymoron. Freedom is not in the will. Freedom is in what you will. The will to power enslaves. The will to love frees. The will to love is the only freedom will can bring. The will to power is a set of chains. Chains that promise freedom with more power which includes more chains. Ask any tyrant. The will to love frees one from choice and reveals this limitless presence. Only here. Only now.
By the way, great job on Sartre. Clear as a bell.
St. John of the Cross explains this in his commentaries on Ascent of Mount Carmel and Spiritual Canticle!
As a retired teacher, I think you are a great teacher. Thanks.
From the preface of the same translation: bad faith is "demanding the privileges of a free consciousness, yet seeking refuge from the responsibilities of freedom by pretending to be concealed and confined in an already established Ego."
You’ve a clear and effective manner of explaining the complex and making it clear without necessarily diluting the core meaning. I appreciate this!
The trouble with modern philosophers is there is little common ground between them, so each has their own belief system. It's like the wheel is having to be invented over and over again because of a collective amnesia.
Husserl talks about this in the beginning of his Cartesian Meditations, it’s not a new thing but rather a problem that has existed since the beginning of the 20th century
You can choose to connect the dots in your own way.
Not modern it’s just atheism lol
Hey! Just got your other Sartre video recommended to me. I loved it! Thank you so much for making this kind of video. Appreciate it very much. Greetings from Brazil
I bought a copy of Being and Nothingness years ago when I was still too young to handle the text. I'm about to give it another try now and this video was a great warm up!
Your philosophy bite-size videos (10-15 mins) are excellent! Please keep up the great work! You put the idea's across succinctly and very understandably.
Great channel! Thank you!
I like to imagine that part of Sartre's inspiration for the concept of bad faith came from an actual waiter he might have known from a café he would frequent that was super extra to the point of annoyance and so he decided to roast him in his magnum opus.
but he knew they would never read it because do bad-faith-waiters read philosophy? NO! they read treatises on waiting tables all the time that they're not waiting them
Yes, but as Freud said, "Sometimes a waiter is just a waiter."
@@CodeSolid Sure, but only *sometimes* 😂
This video is nothing short of phenomenal.
This is my first ever comment on any channel. But you are so clear in your explanations and make complex concepts really easy to grasp. Thanks 😊
Thank you. You made this very clear to understand. Much appreciated 🌸
the best and clearest explanation I’ve ever heard
This channel is amazing, I very much enjoyed the topic of this video.
I can't help thanking you, Ellie! You are doing a great job. Keep it up!
You guys are the bomb! I very much enjoy your videos and I have to ask - any chance you could do a video detailing Vico's philosophy of history and its' relation to the development of language? Thanks again!!!!
Great capsulation. Subscribed!
Very well done. As a retired professional ballet dancer and teacher, I wish every ballet student would watch this. Becoming a ballet dancer requires one to be able to truly know oneself, and be able to use the mirror and the teacher as equal tools. Too often students will put way too much credence and responsibility on the teacher, or blame external conditions for their lack of progress. Professionals will become addicted to their titles and when their career naturally ebbs away, be left with nothing but a sad story. Bravo. As I become Diogenes, I still wish to help the struggling future and current athletes of god. Will be recommending this video to several students and friends. Thank you.
Hi, Dr. Anderson here! I had a wonderful student do a dual Philosophy/Dance thesis on Sartre's theory of bad faith :) She wrote an essay about self-objectification and phenomenology in dance, and then choreographed a dance playing with Sartrean themes! It was awesome.
Brilliant. Extremely well put. I am now a subscriber. Thank you.
You have an aura to captivate your audience. I gotta say i'm now hooked to your channel for philosophical advise.
Fantastic!
I'm both comforted and enlightened by your style of explaining things!
Self deception seems to me like it takes the form of denial in many instances. I'm also fascinated by the way we use language, via internal dialogue, to overlook details. It's easier to deny something that I'd assumed had been taken into considetation, when it in fact had not.
Thank you for familiarizing me with these philosophers and their associated ideas and concepts!
I love it!
Within our current schizophrenic world, this aspect of denying our truths is so relevant. Thank you for your talks and your voice.
Really great video!
This was so clear and resonated deeply with me during this time. There is a major pull from me to dissociate from my facticity and dwell solely in transcendence. I find it difficult to maintain a steady and balanced growth pace once you have been shown your “small role” and are opened up to the infinite. I don’t want one or another, but the path of growth from one to the other. This is life. Growth and light(life) IS resistance, IS tension. A peace amongst the duality. Unity.
I love your work. You do a great job of breaking these thinkers down into the right concepts and the right length explanation.
glad you're keeping philosophy alive and accessible, am a fan of the days of he and Camus (regrets died young) and Simone, when the topic was in the forefront of so many people and the press, though its intensity often brought by world wars....
This will be my meditation for a while now. I don't totally get it right now, but parts of it. And with your enthusiasm I think I will grasp it fully soon.
Absolutely great video
I had one student ask me if the Serenity Prayer was the answer to bad faith. I am not an expert but i thought it was a fruitful heuristic if nothing else. Accepting what we cannot change and changing what we can idea is still how i remember the concept of bad faith. I have never thought of teaching it using that idea and probably will never but it is something i learned from a student that i have cherished for many years. Thanks for the illuminating discussion!
@@markvictor8776 Speaking of self-deception, a physicalist or materialist is lying to themselves if they believe in a will that is free. Ayn Rand should have provided a compatibilist theory of responsibility in a cause-and-effect system [including uncaused phenomena, which is useless for theorizing moral responsibility]. Instead, she claimed, without basis, that we have a will that is free to cause our behaviour. An idealist could make such a claim with intellectual integrity, but a materialist or physicalist? Where would the physical energy come from that would make what we will choose a reality? Either it was transferred through a system of cause and effect, or it spontaneously arose, contrary to the laws of physics. The blindspot fallacy is likely the most common issue undermining philosophers across time. Much love!
Pardon the pun, but I’ve made a good faith effort to read Sartre and other existentialists but you’re spoken word explanation. Here has made the subject much more accessible. I’ve seen your other videos and you are currently one of my top go to pics for explaining philosophy.
Love the podcast!!!!
I'm deeply interested in philosophy but have limited time and energy to read. I've really been appreciating this channel since I discovered it! Much more thorough than most philosophy channels.
Great refresher on parts of B&N! 😄
I just wanted to say you are amazing!!!
I am new in philosophy subject. I love your presentation style.
Gracias India 🇮🇳
Thank you so much for allowing me to begin to understand.When I've read philosophy I think I've grasped it, but when I try to explain to others I realise I have not (with the exception of Spinoza). I wish philosophy basics were taught at school (they're not here in the UK), we would end up with a much better society, I feel.
Finding this video has inspired a very tangible shift in my thinking. Be it Sartre’s writing or just your eloquence in describing his work in context, it feels as though I’ve been yanked from the sidewalk into an open alleyway and given, finally, an opportunity to forgo my hubristic thinking in a very realistic way.
But on the topic of bad faith, and how a waiter or a tailor is not wholly thus, I’ve been bred to believe that many of my creative endeavors will and ONLY ever will see fruit when I give all of my self to that trade or skill; unless I live and breathe being a writer, or comic artist, etc., I should expect no future in it. The ramifications of this, in a matter of speaking, I’m still healing from, now three years deep into a seemingly impenetrable burnout.
So I’m inclined to ask: how am I to reconcile what Sartre purports as a higher foundation of the individual who is NOT wholly the embodiment of their characteristics, from entire industries that say otherwise?
A native English speaker with perfect French pronunciation: what a way to kick off the video!
Thanks!
excellent, thank you
Not taking philosophy this semester but you make this sound so interesting lol
Thank you
There's something fun about having the potential for transcendence but identifying with your facticity.
This video helped me
Good! thank you
This is the second time I've watched this, and it strikes me as an even deeper idea than the first time. I recently retired and noticed the inertia of the facticity of my career confronting the freedom of the rest of my life. Another thread of interest here is thinking about the extent to which humans are able to escape their freedom through myriad forms of nonsense. I'm a (western) Buddhist, but realizing that on a deeper level, Buddhism is as rich in mumbo-jumbo as anything in the Judao-Christian-Islamic tradition, as I'm investigating by reading a bit more into Islam. In a related connection, I enjoyed your video on logical positivism (analytic philosophy) "vs." continental since I think existentialism + logical positivism is really where I end up. Cheers.
If we had a waiter who denied his facticity it could be the aspiring actor who says "I'm not a waiter" to customers while he is on the clock! :D
Ellie, without you I would have failed my philosophy unit a long time ago, thank you :)))
Great videos. Thanks.
So, there´s a dialectic with this concepts, transcendence and facticity. They need each other to avoid being full facticity o full transcendence, and in ether case, that will be "bad faith". So if got this right, that is the explanation on the "movement" or "dynamic"(i don´t know how to call it) of the "being". If the existence precedes the essence, you will need something that allow you to shift the "being" or the essence.
Is that make sense?
Thanks.
Hi suggest some books for further readings on bad faith and similar themes
This is a really helpful overview. To be honest I still have a bit of a hard time reconciling that the "active" of absorption in facticity (e.g. waiterhood) can be regarded as having the same underlying quality as "passive" escape to transendence (i.e. both are bad faith). I can see a similarity in that there is something false about them, but they just seem fundamentally different attitudes/modes. Also, to avoid bad faith, and to be true to what we are, do we need to avoid denying our facticity and avoid denying our transendence simultaneously? But in that state what would one be doing? Would you be doing anything at all?
Anyway - thanks for these. 10 minutes is a really good time frame to cover a topic....
perhaps that is mindfulness, "sitting", "be still and know I am G-d", etc. The only times we get a break fro this tension is slowing down.
Seeing things as they are, not as you would like them to be: Skt. Yathabhutam
I'd love to see your choice on the most interesting secondary literature of 20. century philosophy.. :)
tq for explainnation,but how to counter this bad faith?
I would like to see this fetching, winsome, philosopher present Marcel.
Thank you for making these.
The example of the woman being seduced and denying her body - couldn't it just be escapism, she doesn't want to be seduced. In that case denying her "facticty" is a coping mechanism, how can it be considered good or bad?
A really interesting take on, at least the first kind of bad faith, is in both seasons of White Lotus, the characters of the hotel managers. Is fascinating how the start to reclaim their freedom (and the price they pay for it)
“we can’t deliberately lie to ourselves because if we do we are aware of the lie and then it does not work as a lie”
interesting hypothesis, and the thought occurs to me that there are data to contradict this hypothesis. we know that people can often learn principles that they can explicitly reproduce (on tests for example) and apply to others, but that those same people fail to apply those principles to themselves, or will make errors in the application of these principles if misled by how the data are presented. this is a function of the fact that our sensori-neural apparatus appears to have (at least) two modes of stimulus-response processing. one mode is very rapid and not subject to critical reflection, the other mode is slower and allows the possibility of critical reflection. slow mode can be aware of a lie while at the same time being overpowered by fast mode, which can result in us being deceived by the lie. i think we should not underestimate the power of appealing to people’s fast mode. in the ongoing dialectical balance between fast and slow modes of stimulus -response processing, it is quite easy, i think, to envision someone who lies to themselves while at the same time knowing they are doing so. knowing something is a behavior just as is doing something. neither (sorry descartes) behavior has any sort of a priori precedence over the other. a posteriori, sometimes we see one set of behaviors predominate, sometimes another...and elections i think are often decided on getting people to vote “against their own self interests.” this is not meant to be a critique of your presentation Dr. Anderson, more of a critique of Sartre, whose prioritizing of existence before essence seems, to me, to be an example of the type of bad faith he ostensibly wishes to ameliorate.... ?
There's an interesting tussle to be had between freewill and bad faith.
When someone is said to discuss or argue in "bad faith", does that imply they are lying to themselves?
I love philosophy and I’m beginning to listen more about it. I don’t know why but this sounds kind of similar to eastern philosophies in the sense that we are not our body neither our thoughts, in our constant thinking we think in terms of past and future, plus we identify with our ego and all its roles or identities. The idea behind the eastern philosophies is that we are the Being that transcends all of the machinations from our identities and past to be able to be free to feel joy. But it’s kind of hard to put it in practice because it requires honesty and discipline in recognizing our false facts. In other words, once we recognize them we can decide to change the thoughts dissociation
Well, I think the idea of Eastern philosophy is that we're neither our body nor our thoughts, so we're not a Being -- we're a non-self, which ends up being as nonsensical as anything in Western religious traditions, but we don't see it right away since we're brought up as Westerners and not inhaling the nonsense at an early age.
OMG! You've got ALL the Routledge Classics?!?! Green with envy. What's your favourite? Do a pod on it?
Hi, Dr. Anderson here. I reviewed a book for them a few years ago and they gave me a bunch of website credit as a thank-you! :) Impossible to pick a favorite, but I read Mary Douglas's Purity and Danger recently and found it really interesting.
Would you say this is similar to heidegger’s concept of inauthenticity?
Yesn't.
Has any work been done with facticity and reinforcement in child development?
Goated teacher fr
I'm not sure I understand the example of a man and woman on a date...
Is Sartre saying it's a woman's facticity to accept those advances and that it's bad faith for her to deny it?
So bad faith to Sartre is underpinned by Aristotle's theory of cause? What would a Hume argue?
I’m currently reading being and nothingness I love the insights and the concept of nihilate “negate” objects. The very nothingness has a incestious relationship with being. There’s only nothingness because there is being. He I believe used an example like a carved out ditch that water flows through, the carved out area of nothingness only with exists because of the perception of being around it what’s equally interesting are the “pockets” of nothingness we have “between” objects or metaphysically put distinctions. Like the very thought of an apple for say, me nihiliate “this world” and create an synthetic world in thought with an synthetic apple in it, the synthetic world only exist because it’s an distinction from “this world”. Would you agree that’s what sarte was saying in his book ? Or I’m a in misunderstanding?
I think you're in bad faith.
@@becomingpark4517 explain, also where’s is this “think” you speak of? If you think I’m in bad faith you created an environment in thought where I’m in bad faith. It’s not absolute, furthermore in this environment of thought I’m in bad faith but what’s in between your thought? Does your think / thought expand infinitely? Is it a “space” at all? You indeed believe you think, but does a rock “think”? Does your think also think? I think this is something worth pondering rather than the point of thinking me In your thought whether thought me is in bad faith or not.
@@intp-akil3127 I still think you are in bad faith. I also think you are overthinking thinking.
@@intp-akil3127 Actually, I think you are crazy.
@@becomingpark4517 lol I mean, I wouldn’t be retired traveling the world at 24 if I wasn’t crazy 😉.
Teacher I need you
How does this idea of bad faith work with the reality that our freedom to be and do who and what we please is necessarily constrained by capitalism? Sartre was a leftist, so I’m sure that he isn’t saying that people choose to be oppressed and can pick themselves up by their bootstraps, but this is what the idea of bad faith seems to imply.
One can only be free by consciously experiencing (and actually welcoming and embracing) one’s facticity of, e.g., dying at some point (which is a better example than assuming one is a mug). It is called social agreement to treat a waiter not just as a waiter, a customer not just as a customer, and a homeless person not just as a homeless person. Bad waiters want to show they are better than just being waiters. Bad customers show waiters that they are just waiters and nothing more..
how can i know if i'm acting in bad faith? it depends on what i think i'm doing. true over-thinkers never know for sure
Can we equate Heidegger's concept of being and becoming with Sartre's facticity and transcendence?
Not quite. Facticity is closest to Heidegger's "thrownness" and transcendence to freedom. Sartre spells out the former connection in "Existentialism is a Humanism"
@@OverthinkPodcastPhilosophy Thank you very much
But doesn't this apply to all labels, one can hold many labels during the day but i don't think we are much in control
Isnt this just being vs becoming said in another way by Sartre? Guess I have to read sartre now haha
Watched this video while procrastinating.
What does it say about a person that they arrange their bookshelves by colour rather than author or subject? Something interesting. Something good, I think. Bu what? Much to think about.
doesn't sound like Sartre would think much of the freedom Michael Jordon feels when through practice he finds himself in what psychologist might a zone, sinking basket after basket, which understand musicians et al can attain through denying Satre's actual freedom
For fun, I'd like to step this up a notch. Can you prove the inkwell or the cup of water ISN'T conscious or sentient, anymore so than u can the waiter? Is your ability to drink from the cup or write from the inkwell come from your ability to power remove the self-control of that item? Or from that item agreeing to be controlled. If the latter is true, is not the mere our existence immoral?
If you get stuck on the first question, dont worry, I can help you get around it.
The more i view each and every sediment or episode you make..The more the Sophia fanboy comes out ..Would never miss a class.Dead poets socity vibes .😊
Conclusions, comparisons, preferences? Any infographics to summarise these views. Is Sartre just putting these ideas out for contemplation or is saying they are permanent truths. Maybe the woman on the date is going along with the man games as her own temporary little game, showing enthusiasm and tolerance because it’s a temporary situation and being quite factacious about it. Are philosophers smart or just wordsmiths like salesmen etc.?
I should say a big thank you for saving us the trouble of reading the libraries-full of philosophy. Seriously how do philosophers or philosophy teachers live outside philosophy. Are they like waiters who study and live for waiting, like poets who have to study poets to be poets. Are there any modern philosophers who think for themselves and have their own ideas that can be understood without being professional? I mean free.
"Margaret Thatcher... Jean-Paul Sartre... hello hello hello" [The Beloved; 1990]
To those complaining about the pronunciation...
Proust and Camus how are you?
Would You Say Bad faith can be a negative.outcome of Camus leap of faith done incorrectly
...ja all about the human tragedy are the greatest illusion in life: love free will and freedom, but did he really fall for those? Beauvoir would know...and yet he still wrote one of my favorite books "La Nausee" (der Ekel!!!)
❤❤❤
I had to watch the video twice over the span of more than a week to get the full gist… philosophy will sometimes demand that of you lol
Facticity : Ego Projections
To freedom condemned.
Damn it !
Or , perhaps, dam it ( ie, block it { freedom} out ) and just double down on the bad faith , inauthentic living / being , and the fraught increasingly painful experience of just existing within the sensation of the moment.
Decisions decisions…
Thank you
It's simple really; compare this to Kite Flying the sport, the Kite can only fly as long as it's tied to the string, the string is the facticity while the ability to fly is the spirit. This guy Sartre didn't know what kite flying is other wise his life would be simpler 🙂
How don't you deny your transcendence ?
"The use of the word levels here isn't even particularly good."
"True in some sense, false in some sense, meaningful in some sense, and meaningless in some sense... True and false and meaningless and meaningful in some sense."
--- Sri Siyadasti
Trascendence: Survival imo.
Sartre's phenomenological dialectical essence of freedom,-~by believing in God a person is obliged to some rules, by not believing in God a person makes empty space for himself, in this open space a person can float in this emptiness or nothingness or freedom.
❣
Sartre got influenced by Nietzsche and Dostoevsky?
I don't think Sartre could ever transcend his own negativity and pessimism as a human being. That's why I'm a Camus kind of guy...
I don’t think you will ever transcend your own positivity and optimism as a human being. That’s why you’re a Camus kind of guy…