Bad Faith (existentialism) - Intentional Consciousness and Freedom

Intentional Consciousness and Freedom

For Sartre this attitude is manifestly self-deceiving. As human consciousness, we are always aware that we are more than what we are aware of, so we are not whatever we are aware of. We cannot, in this sense, be defined as our 'intentional objects' of consciousness, including our restrictions imposed by (facticity) our personal history, character, bodies, or objective responsibility. Thus, as Sartre often repeated, "Human reality is what it is not, and it is not what it is." An example would be if one were now a doctor but wished and started to "transcend" to become a pig farmer. One is what one is not (a pig farmer), not who one is (a doctor): it can only define itself negatively, as "what it is not"; but this negation is simultaneously the only positive definition it can make of "what it is."

From this we are aware of a host of alternative reactions to our freedom to choose (an objective situation), since no situation can dictate a single response. Only in assuming social roles and value systems external to this nature as conscious beings can we pretend that these possibilities are denied to us; but this is itself a decision made possible by our freedom and our separation from these things. "Bad faith" is the paradoxical free decision to deny to ourselves this inescapable freedom.