Week 11 -- Sartre/de Beauvoir



 Why we put ourselves in bad faith
I believe this ties back into the ideal self scenario that I’ve come back to on multiple occasions. I believe that it could be that people who have a less clear definition of who their ideal self is can fall into the trap of bad faith, as they are not aware of what their authenticity actually entails. Thus, we do not put ourselves in bad faith, but rather bad faith puts itself into us.

A person becoming a label
I definitely believe a person can be typecast, mostly due to the stereotyping bias that is natural in human beings. I also believe that a person can typecast themselves given that they listen too much to that feedback from society rather than from themselves.

Acting in bad faith/sincerity simultaneously
I don’t think this is objectively possible… however, it could occur on a perspective basis if a person internally is confusing bad faith with their own sincerity. This goes back to the first topic where a person is not aware of what that true sincerity actually is.

You are what you are and you are what you are not
I definitely agree with this point. If I am a fireman, then that means that my label to society, consciously, is “fireman” – however, it also means that, subconsciously, my label is also “not police officer”. Similar things apply for similar circumstances, and it all occurs within a single moment in time (for example, if I quite being a fireman and become a police officer, then the labels simply change there).

For whom do we put ourselves in bad faith
I believe whenever we are in a situation with someone we are actively trying to impress – be it a interviewer, a mentor, or a crush – we will act in bad faith to try and make a falsely ideal version of ourself, despite the fact that the best way forward in such a situation is to act as your true ideal self.

Continuing to move forward in life in the face of failure
I believe, in order to accomplish all of ones goals, and to live up to the ideal self, people must always continue in the face of failure. It’s pretty easy to define success as confronting failure. Whereas most will typically run away from difficult things, those who continue to confront their challenges and fears will end up seeing the majority of their goals achieved and have the greatest success. Often times, our greatest in-the-moment fears correspond to what we need to do the most, and so often people will forgo doing something important at the time as they fall into this hole.

Winning without losing
The thing about good and evil, winning and losing, and all such things like that, is that they fall under “paired concepts” – that is, one cannot exist without the other. Certainly we could have a scale of “Things that are good versus things that are better”, but eventually sentiment would arise where the things that are good are actually bad, and so it regresses back to paired concepts.





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