Questions: Sartre — Being and Nothingness, Bad Faith

Question 1

Sartre's distinction between being-in-itself (en-soi) and being-for-itself (pour-soi) maps onto:

• A. The distinction between physical objects and mental representations
• B. The distinction between the self-identical existence of things and the negating, self-questioning existence of consciousness
• C. The distinction between authentic and inauthentic existence
• D. The distinction between free will and determinism

Answer: (B)

Being-in-itself is the mode of existence of things: a rock simply is what it is, fully self-identical, with no internal distance or self-awareness. Being-for-itself is the mode of existence of consciousness: it is never simply what it is, because it is always aware of itself, always separating itself from its current state through negation ('I am not merely this'). This is not the mind-body distinction — Sartre is not a dualist in the Cartesian sense. It is an ontological distinction between two ways of being.

Question 2

In Sartre's philosophy, bad faith is the same as lying to others.

• T. True
• F. False

Answer: False

Bad faith (mauvaise foi) is self-deception, not deception of others. In lying, I know the truth and hide it from someone else. In bad faith, I hide my freedom from myself — I pretend that I am a fixed thing (a waiter, a coward, 'just the way I am') rather than a free being who is always choosing. The paradox of bad faith is that the deceiver and the deceived are the same person: I must know my freedom to successfully hide it from myself. This structure — knowing and not-knowing at once — is possible because consciousness is never fully transparent to itself.

Question 3

Sartre famously describes a waiter in a cafe as an example of bad faith. What makes the waiter's behavior an instance of bad faith?

Model answer: The waiter performs his role with exaggerated precision — his movements are too crisp, his attentiveness too studied — as though being a waiter were a fixed essence rather than a freely chosen activity. He is in bad faith because he treats his social role as defining what he is, denying that he is a free consciousness who could at any moment choose differently. He plays at being a waiter the way an inkwell is an inkwell — as a thing-in-itself rather than a for-itself.

The waiter example illustrates that bad faith is not always dramatic self-deception about large matters. It pervades everyday life: whenever we identify completely with a role, a label, or a character trait ('I am shy,' 'I am a teacher,' 'I am not the kind of person who...'), we are in bad faith — treating our freedom as though it were a fixed nature. Sartre's point is not that social roles are bad but that inhabiting them as though they define our being — rather than as ongoing free choices — is a flight from freedom.

Question 4

Sartre argues that we are 'condemned to be free.' This implies that freedom is:

• A. A reward for living authentically
• B. An inescapable condition of human existence that cannot be surrendered, even through self-deception
• C. Something that can be lost through oppression or coercion
• D. An illusion that consciousness creates to cope with determinism

Answer: (B)

For Sartre, freedom is not something we possess or achieve — it is what we are. Consciousness is freedom: the capacity to negate, to transcend any given situation, to imagine alternatives. We cannot stop being free, even if we try. Bad faith is the attempt to deny freedom, but it fails: the very act of denial is itself a free act. Even a prisoner in chains is free in Sartre's sense — free to interpret the situation, to choose an attitude, to resist or submit. This is why freedom is 'condemnation': we did not choose to be free, and we cannot escape it.