The theme of self-deceptive thought amounts to little more than the human ability to function in the mode of believing a particular lie whilst simultaneously not believing that lie.
In Being and Nothingness Sartre tackles this human complexity – the human ability to be self-deceptive, through what he considers to be the phenomenon of ‘bad faith’. To be clear, the theme of ‘bad faith’ in Being and Nothingness is one that also strives to describe the phenomenological reality of the human capability to ‘lie to oneself’. It strives to discern the phenomenology of a particular attitude that is manifestly self-deceiving. Sartre’s most basic claim is, moreover, that bad faith is entirely the human (self-consciousness) ability to ‘lie to oneself’.[1] But if ‘bad faith is essentially a lie to one self’, as Sartre describes, I must therefore be both ‘the liar and the one lied to’ because, ultimately, the liar and the one lied to ‘are one and the same’. Moreover, if I engage in bad faith, Sartre seems to suggest that I must hide the truth from myself. To do this I must know the truth.[2] So a paradoxical situation emerges. I must know the truth to conceal it from myself.[3] What this description amounts to is the human ability to lie about something that is known not to be true, and, even further, to live out that lie all the while knowing it is a mode of self-deception.
On my understanding, Sartre goes on to claim that ‘bad faith’ is ultimately grounded in the ‘double property of the human being’, being-for-itself (consciousness) and being-in-itself (the natural or material world). This is also related to the theme of ‘transcendence and facticity’, which is said to be analogous to this double property of being. One might describe it as an interpenetrating and ontological relation. In another way, Sartre’s bad faith places emphasis on a discussion regarding the overemphasis of either the transcendence of consciousness (the for-itself) or the facticity of the material world (the in-itself), as well as the hypostatization (the ascription of material value to) of them in their difference. This is evident when Sartre concludes that: ‘Bad faith does not wish either to coordinate’ transcendence and facticity ‘or to surmount them in a synthesis’, but that it is the nature of bad faith ‘to affirm their identity while preserving their differences’, because bad faith ‘must affirm facticity as being transcendence and transcendence as being facticity in such a way that at the instant when a person apprehends the one, he can find himself abruptly faced with the other’.
In order for an act of self-deception to be ‘a lie to oneself’, it must be a lie that we are conscious of engaging in. On the same token, much as Sartre discerns in his discussion on bad faith, self-deceptive thought is nonetheless faith because it involves both a conscious choice and, ultimately, a belief in that choice to deceive oneself. Self-deception, then, does not begin as belief. On the contrary, self-deception is, first and foremost, about the very nature of our engagements in the world. The notion of bad-faith seeks to explain a person’s prejudiced engagements with a phenomena and the defence of those engagements even in the face of information that contradicts the truthfulness of those beliefs and actions. In another way, it points to the concept of active cognitive dissonance, in which the individual seeks consistency of cognition (i.e., beliefs, opinions) to safeguard the biased orientation or orthodoxy that they have secured. Hence, when an inconsistency arises that contradicts their biased worldview, a lie or a simple act of ignorance must be practice to eliminate the threat of dissonance. And it is from one’s evasive engagements in the world, through which one undertakes a process of self-deception, that one then forms a belief in the lie while knowing it is a lie. Self-denial is thus brought into being. This is what Sartre invariably goes on to say at the end of his chapter on bad faith in Being and Nothingness: ‘the true problem of bad faith stems evidently from the fact that bad faith is faith.’ From this he goes on to ask, ‘how can we believe by bad faith in the concepts which we forge expressly to persuade ourselves?’[4] A question he goes on to answer by stating that it is, indeed, a matter of our engagements in the world, and our belief in those engagements.
The power of the discussion presented by Sartre is in this idea that bad faith must involve a belief that one believes and at the same time does not believe. That is, self-deception involves belief that is not quite belief. What actually makes this possible is the fact that all consciousness is self-consciousness. This is to say that due to the very nature of self-conscious consciousness, belief can fail to be identical to itself. Hence ‘Sartre argues that because belief is conscious of itself at the prereflective level, it is not belief […].The reason that one does not [believe what one believes] is that consciousness of one’s belief, even at the pre-reflective level, removes one just enough from one’s belief to turn one’s belief into non-belief.’[5]
In Sartre’s philosophical observations, we find an account of almost two basic degrees of self-awareness: the background dimension and the foreground dimension of our awareness. The background and foreground of our awareness are in constant interaction with one another. They are also anchored in what can be discerned as the three interactive structures of conscious experience, which consists of the bodily/tacit structure (prereflective consciousness), the instantaneous structure, and the explicitly reflective structure (reflective consciousness). The act of self-deception, the act of ‘lying to oneself’ whilst all the while knowing the truth of that lie and yet continuing to live it out, the argument is that this is a result of the fluid translucency of conscious experience. The translucency of consciousness, on my reading, is a phenomenological description of how on the one hand in we are at once embedded in the phenomenological context of our surroundings (prereflective) and are therefore constantly immersed in the phenomenal world. And yet, on the other hand, this ceaseless orientating and relating with the phenomenal world of experience is different to how we experience ourselves as being conscious of these surroundings (reflective). So our ability to deceive ourselves—to experience the world through the lie of an ideological framework, for example—speaks of how we can therefore manipulate these two forms of experiencing.
The deeper point I think – at least this is my interpretation of Sartre’s broader philosophy of the subject – is how objectivity and reason become suppressed. As one approaches the world through the prejudice of an epistemologically and cognitively biased framework projected on to the object, there is almost like a repression to the subject. It is interesting to think about how these views relating to ‘bad faith’ finally influence Sartre’s arguments on reason and rationality – a topic for a separate entry. The finer balance seems particularly between the ability of the subject to practice reason – and, what I would describe as enlightenment reason – whilst also being rooted in history and certainly influenced by sociohistorical-cultural conditions (which may even be largely irrational and even pathological). It is the fact that the subject is never totally determined by sociohistorical-cultural conditions that makes reason possible.
[1] (Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1966; p.89).
[2] Sartre writes: ‘The ideal description of the liar would be a cynical attitude or what Sartre calls a cynical consciousness affirming truth within himself, denying it in his words, and denying that negation as such. Now this doubly negative attitude rests on the transcendent. The fact expressed is transcendent since it does not exist, and the original negation rests on a truth; that is, on a particular type of transcendence. As for the inner negation which I effect correlatively with the affirmation for myself of the truth, this rests on words; that is, on an event in the world…The liar intends to deceive and he does not seek to hide this intention from himself nor to disguise the translucency of consciousness; on the contrary, he has recourse to it when there is a question of deciding secondary behaviour. It explicitly exercises regulatory control over all attitudes.’ See: (Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1966; p.88).
[3] (Wider, The Bodily Nature of Consciousness, 1997; p.50).
[4] (Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1966; p.112).
[5] (Wider, The Bodily Nature of Consciousness, 1997; p.51) emphasis added.
*Edited 03/07/2017 for clarity, syntax and logical flow.
